One thing we often hear when discussing FATBERG, is why don’t you just 3D print the berg? You can of course understand the question, as the island forms drop by drop through the nozzle of a syringe, mirroring the line-by-line formation of rapid prototyped plastic objects. What is perhaps most striking as FATBERG builders though, is not so much the similarity between the techniques, but rather, whether the urge to build the berg in this manner is triggered by a subconscious, automated process, motivated by the pixel-by-pixel construction that seems to dominate our contemporary understanding of physical and digital space.

A pixel is, of course, the smallest single component of a digital image, much like a droplet to the FATBERG, save for the fact that there was, of course, a single moment in time where the berg existed as a solitary drop of fat. In some contexts, the term pixel is used to refer to a single scalar element of a multi-component representation. Something we are very aware of is that, at the time of writing, we have yet to upscale the droplet size in relation to the physical size of the berg. At present, the mass of the berg, and thus the droplet size, are inherently linked to the spatial dimensions of its habitation – the inevitable consequence of a finite physical space.

And yet despite all of this, the physical form of the berg appears free from the constraints of pixel-by-pixel modular construction, due to the plasticity of fat. Fats behave in a similar manner to silicones, each layer merging and morphing into one another. And yet, no matter its molecular composition (there is no “one” fat after all), FATBERG permanently remains in a plastic (gel-like) state, at the mercy of temperature.