The Computer Arts Laboratory is recognizing the first principles of digital materialism, i.e. the physicality of digital materials or the lack there of, to reveal the many unique properties and temporal virtues of digital existence. The interdisciplinary and applied research partially funded through the Fukushima Prefectural Foundation is putting principles of digital materialism to practical use with the exploitation of implicit objects for the recording, transmission and preservation of digital "knowledge". We are researching the ability to quickly create and utilize implicit objects in the three dimensional printing of tangible objects as part of a system for the digital preservation of knowledge. The radically different, boundless dimensionality of implicit objects encompassing the physical and dynamic information of a natural or imaginary object can be said to be the embodiment of a new kind of knowledge transmission and preservation. Thus the transformation of limited 2D information to 3D knowledge technologies represents an enormous cultural change, the profundity of which is hard to grasp. 

The almost boundless dimensions of digital knowledge technologies determining the development of new indexing systems, digital data structures, and personal fabrication systems as knowledge testing portals is the inspiration for our Digital Arts' framework of the just in time system of learning, where diverse disciplines can exist and come together to provide a flexible, collaborative framework of academic study. Under the Digital Arts' framework, a person is encouraged to create and coordinate their own track of academic study in collaboration with others whenever possible. 

Accordingly, the Computer Arts Laboratory is joined in collaborative research with the MIT Center for Bits to Atoms with a goal of developing fungible systems for Avogadro scale modeling, long term storage and three dimensional printing of implicit objects inclusive of their volumes of mixed materials and dynamic relationship to all other objects natural or imaginary. The research addresses the unique aspects of digital materials and processes, which give rise to basic issues concerning originality, verification, accuracy and obsolescence. The exploitation of implicit representation for three dimensional printing of tangible objects on desktop size, personal fabrication machines, to our thinking the logical next step in the evolution of personal computers, is the focus of our joint applied research and includes substantive issues such as: the volumetric modeling of a dynamic objects of mixed materials; the long term persistence of the digital data structures that define such objects; the verification, secure access and public use of knowledge for all. All of the research is done in support of digital freedom, human rights and environmental sustainability as provided for in the Common Good Public License agreement (http://www.cgpl.org). 

The Computer Arts Laboratory has been fortunate to receive various grants allowing for international collaboration with universities such as West Virginia University, Hosei University, University of California Los Angeles, Bournemouth University, and the MIT Center for Bits and Atoms.