London-based artist Jonty Hurwitz has created the smallest known, human-shaped sculptures in the world that’s completely invisible to the human eye. The nano sculptures span about the same scale as a sperm, and can only be perceived on the screen of powerful scanning electron microscope. The artist placed them on a human hair or the head of an ant.

When asked how we can even be sure that the sculpture really exists, Hurwitz replies: “Your only way to engage with it is through a screen, and a mouse separating you and the art via a vacuum and a series of mathematically mind-blowing quantum processes that shower the art with particles to map its contours.”

The nano sculpture is created using 3D printing technology and a technique called multiphoton lithography, which works to create super-small features within a photosensitive material.

The pieces are created using the physical phenomenon of two photon absorption: ‘art, literally created with quantum physics’, describes hurwitz. If you illuminate a UV-sensitive polymer with ultra violet light, it solidifies wherever it was irradiated in a kind of crude lump. Some of you may have experienced a polymer like this first hand at the dentist when your filling is glued in with a UV light.

Jonty Hurwitz is well-known for his artworks using technology and science in relationship to creativity and craftsmanship, we’ve featured him previously with his mind-blowing Anamorphic Sculptures.