ABSTRACT
This chapter introduces the reader to some results of the inventive process. It shows that explosives can be used creatively not only to produce useful and practical road cuts and underground caverns in rock, but also to play or to please the eye with works of artistic beauty, or to make new materials, the real usefulness of which may still remain to be discovered. The chapter shows some examples of explosive art, such as an ancient, explosively-formed embossed silver plate, and introduces and shows works by two artists who have used explosives in their art. It introduces the fundamentals of several techniques of working materials in which the force of explosives is used as a power source. These include explosive forming of metals; explosive welding; explosive powder compaction; and the emerging technique of explosive reaction sintering of materials.
