Hope's chosen medium is "nanofacture," a neologism that describes fabrication at a molecular level. He builds his paintings using a cobbled-together toolkit of hard and softwares, starting with a molecular modeling software called PyMol and ending with a RepRap 3D printer.

The result: "DNA machines have been built, as a route to nanorobotics," Seeman told UPI's Nano World. "Nanofacturing of new and revolutionary materials is going to result from some of these devices."

Every atom will be in the right place, as specified by the computer program driving its assembly, tugged and herded into place by machines smaller than a virus and many times smarter. True, you can also expect to manufacture — to nanofacture — tiny dedicated computers the size of bacteria…

If you had a nanofacturing system and a supply of raw materials, there's no obvious reason why you couldn't mint anything not forbidden by the laws of physics.