When researcher and artist Matthew Plummer-Fernandez created an app that would distort and encrypt 3D printing files beyond recognition, he did not anticipate the reaction it would get.

"For me it was really tongue in cheek, but people took it really seriously," he told the audience at the Story Festival in London this weekend. The encryption app was created in reaction to a series of events that were taking place as the worlds of piracy, mass surveillance and 3D printing were colliding, he explains.

It all started off with the creation of 3D printed gun files that were circulated online and caused fear and speculation among law enforcement officials around the world. Then came the copyright legislation issues, which saw 3D printing files start to be hosted on file-sharing sites like the Pirate Bay. Finally came the Snowden revelations that brought to the fore issues around encrypting communications.

The way that Plummer-Fernandez's app worked, only the people sending and receiving a file that had the app and the right encryption key would be able to access it. This obviously made it possible to transfer files that might be considered illegal—of weapon designs, for example—without anyone necessarily knowing.

Plummer-Fernandez started working with 3D printing way before it was fashionable. He began by printing copies of everyday objects, enjoying how their imperfections were not part of their decay—as with the original artefacts—but an original part of the new 3D-printed objects. "I liked that I was using something mundane to create something extraordinary," he says.

As 3D printing started to become increasingly democratised and widespread, he refined his process, but many imperfections with the technology and the resulting objects remained. This only served to inspire him further, however. His thinking was that "if something is being eroded in this process… I might as well exacerbate this process," he says. He created two apps—one that contorted the 3D mesh and another that generated the colour. "Distortion of 3D mesh became a part of my own work."

Carrying on his work with everyday objects, he embarked on a project that involved scanning Mickey Mouse. The character was interesting to him, he says, because, "no matter how much you erode him and blow his head off you can still tell it is Mickey."

The other problem was that due to the don't-mess-with-the-mouse fear inspired by Disney's lawyers, he couldn't persuade any printers to actually print it for him. Eventually, he managed to blur Mickey enough that he could print it safely, which formed part of an ongoing project called "sekuMoi Mecy."

It was through using similar technology that he had created for his distorted sculpture projects, that Plummer-Fernandez built the 3D printing encryption app. The practitioner part of him came together with the researcher part of him to create something that allowed him to be both playful and challenging. "Why everyone likes the project, I'm not so sure," says Plummer-Fernandez modestly. We think we can guess.

This story originally appeared on WIRED UK.