Print World

Topic: 3d-printing

Organization: Sparvnästet and the Royal Institute of Art

Dates: December 11th 2012 - January 29th 2013

Intro

Sparvnästet’s^[1] second workshop at the Royal Institute of Art^[2] meant delving into the world of 3D printing. Professor Donatella Bernardi from the Royal Institute of Art took the opportunity to work alongside us in his own art project, The Hacker Grail^[3]. This project in turn tapped into an already on-going project on clay printing at the Institute, called Print Up^[4] and ran by Charlie Stern.

Here three projects involving differing types of productive modes and creative agencies were intertwined; a meeting which we hoped would enable discussion, exploration, and increased knowledge of techniques of 3D printing – and, if possible, help crystallize different projects in this context of 3D printing. The series of workshops had been announced on the Sparvnästet website.

Background

This workshop involved exploring the promises and possibilities of creation by means of 3D printers. Thanks to these it becomes possible to use three-dimensional computer models for printing different types of objects: toys, fortune cookies, a key to the front door of the neighbor, new body parts, self-destructing guns, a terracotta army of your own, bio blocks, medicines, spare parts for your home (or your body) – a list which includes just a few of many new possibilities.

The RepRap Project

These meetings focused on the different versions derived from the [RepRap] in the RepRap 3D printer family.

In the year 2000, a 3D printing patent expired, and this signaled the starting shot for the RepRap project and the sudden emergence of new possibilities in the field of creativity. The designs for the RepRap 3D printer are an example of an open hardware platform, meaning that all designs produced by the project are released under a free software license – the GNU General Public License – which allows for users to constantly modify the designs and redistribute these new versions. The original printer uses heated plastic to produce its objects, with the material being laid out in a very thin layer by a motor-controlled heated syringe able to move in X, Y, and Z axes.

The RepRap’s open design has given rise to family trees^[5] of different stripes, with a typology of “parents”, “children”, and “modifications”, and creativity has taken off in a multiplicity of different directions and projects. [image: The RepRap family tree]

One of the most fascinating aspects of the project^[6] is the drive to design a machine able to print copies of the parts it itself is built out of – effectively enabling the machine to reproduce itself.

The first printer

The first in this series of meetings was held at the offices of architectural firm in central Stockholm, with 20 people taking a closer look at the MakerBot^[7] 3D printer and participating in a workshop on a 3D modeling open source program called Mudbox.

The MakerBot was originally an open hardware project derived from the RepRap by researchers at the University of Bath. Today, it is the flagship of “pre-packaged openness”^[8] and marketable DIY projects, featured in makerspaces, Maker magazines, and the Maker Fairs they organize.

As the shiny MakerBot proceeded to print a head designed during the workshop on Mudbox, facilitator and designer Dan Berglund^[9] put forth some of the more commonly asked questions about the 3D printing field; what does it mean for design when tools like these now are becoming more affordable and accessible?; does this development represent a new, practically oriented Marxism – or new paths for further entrepreneurial dreaming?

What are deciding factors for shifting from the one to the other? Is it possible for us to find liberation from a consumerist hell using only our creativity? How might we make these systems truly open – including the channels of distribution? What other conditions, aside from developments in design and production processes, must be fulfilled in order for such an opening up to happen?

How are these developments affecting patents and copyright? Our new means of production makes it possible to transform and question the concept of the “original” – but not only through creating exact digital copies; rather, the copies are more reminiscent of versions or leaky repetitions because they exhibit imperfections. Might this fact represent a vision which is even more frightening to copyright enthusiasts than previous alternatives?

If more people get the opportunity to print more stuff, does this really change anything? Will gaining control over the means of production mean nothing more than an exponential increase in the amount of stuff – or could we instead find more responsible ways of making and producing?

Will the people involved more and more start to take on the role of makers and artists? Are we going to be able to go around redesigning our surroundings – creating a space for developing a more generalized creative subjectivity? Or, alternatively, will these new toys do nothing more than meet the tech industry ever-increasing demands for more gadgets?

The 3D printer could very possibly represent a disruptive technology^[10] which could trigger a paradigm shift in production. However, seen in the bigger picture, these claims seem like speculative dreams for today’s material world. The cheap and available 3D printer in itself is not enough for us to move from producer-consumer oriented logic of production, controlled by copyright and patent, to systems of sharing which are more truly open.

Although I can see why one would want to just plug, pay and play, I also think the MakerBot ™ has a dystopian feel to it because this last version marks the end of openness for it. Although the blue light emanating from the MakerBot ™ is enticing, it signals a withdrawal from a bigger vision centered on full openness^[11].

Is capitalism really compatible with radically open systems? Do all open and hacked projects end up semi-protected and enclosed because of the need to find some kind of leverage within a capitalist society? If the answer is yes, what is the underlying logic producing this result? Is it a capitalist one? There is a certain distance separating “easy to use” from “hackable/modifiable”. This distance can be overcome by paying a bit more a removal of difficulty of use at the price of losing some accessibility and hackability. This alternative is viable, cool, but ultimately also unsatisfactory.

Clay printing

The second meeting was very different to the first one, and involved Charlie Stern showcasing a clay printer in his studio at the Royal Institute of Art.

While the RepRap is based on the extrusion of plastics, the clay printer – which is a modified RepRap – instead works by using air pressure to force clay through a nostril. The coiling clay then starts to assume a form, layer by layer, in a technique reminiscent of old ceramic techniques for creating coiled clay vessels.

Thanks to this, the printing method becomes semi-automatic and unpredictable; Charlie has to provide support for the fragile forms of still wet clay from collapsing under its own weight during the process of printing the object, using additional supporting clay, a blow drier and a wet brush.

This live process of interventions and tweaks invites us to reflect and discuss at the site of production, an associative environment which is created by the obvious visual mechanics and performativity of the craftsmanship. It is a space of skill and knowledge which inspire us to speak about the specificities of context and process. Our discussions travelled from machine setup, features, and computer hardware to software algorithms like the one controlling the printing path (which was based on the travelling salesman problem) and the necessary conversions of file formats that underlie the process, moving from 3D model to print instructions in the G-code^[12]. We found connections between open hardware and knowledge, do-it-yourself (DIY), and discussed how hardware accessibility gives rise to a sort of hands-on imperative for learning in everything from early radio history to the Raspberry Pies of today.

The hacker grail

Donatella Bernardi's project involved interpreting Sparvnästet as an example of a digital, creative subculture from an artistic standpoint, and to do this he documented our visit to the Royal College of Art. His efforts resulted in the so-called Hacker Grail. A Grail is a ritual cup.

This hacker grail was created thanks to technology which had become available thanks to hacking and openness. In 2010, only weeks after the release of the Xbox Kinect, Hector Martin had written a driver which opened up the Kinect for use with other platforms than the Xbox only. Soon hundreds of projects and modifications had been created using the readily available technology of the gaming console. One of these projects led to explorations around using the Kinect as a 3D scanner.

After a 3D model of the grail had been created, this data was exported to G-code [image], and the construction of the grail of clay could proceed. During the final pass, one of the walls of the grail collapsed, something which resulted in a drape-like structure looking very much like spaghetti monster^[13] to our eyes.

The Bernardi installation consists of several different print versions of the grail, accompanied by a book. The book contains documentations and descriptions of the grail’s production process, as well as background information on Sparvnästet and the Swedish piracy movement context (including The Pirate Bay, The Bureau of Piracy and the Missionary Church of Kopimi). This work was first exhibited at the Times vs. Machine exhibition at La Box in French Bourges and at Musée de l'Ariana in Geneva.

In order to learn more about Bernardi’s project, visit this link^[14]

Continued experiments

The next Sparvnästet meeting involved assembling and tweaking two other variations on the RepRap in an open workshop, trying to get them to work amidst conversations on art, fantasy, industry, and technology.

Discussion and Issues

How does 3D printing technology inform creative practices? It was clear that special kinds of multi-disciplinary exchanges and acts followed naturally from working with these open machines.

The only possibility of getting the machines to work was through allowing a cross-fertilization of skills and knowledge. There are many different aspects to the 3D printer: technical; mechanical; and program-oriented; ethical; philosophical; and artistic. The machine comes into contact with many different types of bodies of knowledge and of processes, constantly addressing many different types of creative roles: the hacker, the designer, the craftsman, the artist, the entrepreneur.

The highly diverse nature of our conversations was caused by the machine’s hybrid and unfinished nature as well as the open format our meetings assumed.

Getting a 3D printer to work involves a number of different activities: you might find yourself looking for spare parts, reading wikis, configuring/writing small program, asking more knowledgeable peers for help, asking questions in IRC channels or online forums, borrowing a soldering iron, or testing out a new 3D program.

Reflecting on the process of printing the Hacker Grail, Charlie Stern refers to Austrian philosopher Ivan Illich^[15] and his use of the concept of conviviality^[16]. Conviviality is what occurs when a certain technology starts promoting interaction and social contact. According to Illich, a useful tool is the one that “enables autonomous and creative intercourse amongst person” (Ivan Illich, Tools for conviviality).

In addition, creative and creative empowerment also presupposes the existence of a social context in which people might act – and feel invited to do so. The need for many different skills and paths to knowledge makes everyone in a group important. Through his reasoning, he highlights the importance of technology operating in a social context, providing an interest emphasis to the interdependence of technology and social organization.

There is a need for skill not so much for mastering a private mode of production, but rather for understanding systems and contexts which are interrelated. Sure – it’s possible to make stuff, but it’s more important to explore and discover much wider range of practical knowledges.

Here, we are able to clearly distinguish the emergence of new creative roles in a society saturated by knowledge and technology. Knowledge processes, change, translation, hybridization, and transformation move into focus, as production of static objects and anchoring of authorship is relegated to playing second fiddle in a techno-social context challenging the assumption of the artist as a creature of personal authorship, instead indicating possibilities of more collective forms of creativity.

Social trajectories and possibilities get transformed thanks to simplified tools, lowered costs and increased accessibility, leaving room for collaborative processes and a type of creativity increasingly portable and immediate. The hackerspace could be read as a sign for precisely these techno-social processes.

This development is made possible by openness; enclosure is what suffocates it. The model I am looking for must be one of radical (or full) openness.

This understanding also helps us come to grips with the ways in which these tools and technologies get integrated in social movements – in a kind of accessible and communal activism engaging in battle with enclosure, privatization, and centralization. By virtue of their very openness, these technologies might create an edge, providing us with the necessary leverage for overcoming the thresholds which keep us from creativity and participation.

Luddites and craftsmanship

Computer-assisted creation is based on the insertion of an abstract interface between creator and working materials, thus producing yet another level of manipulation. The creator then needs to acquire a new set of skills and work protocols in order to personally make the creative process reality. This could be exemplified by, for instance, the move from drawing designs using a pen to learning how to operate a CAD program.

One of the strong points of 3D printing is the easiness of engaging in a fast prototype feedback design loop. However, in order to actually make something, the creator has to master a number of design tools, format conversions, and different tweaks. The 3D printers represent a technological development which gradually is assuming the form of a more complex industrial-type mode of production.

A balance between the abstract power of interfaces and the immediacy of craftsmanship is struck as more intuitive interfaces and accessible technologies are introduced. As long as the interface become more and more transparent and seamlessly integrated the immediacy of hand and mind can be directly translated into a creative process.

This means the closing of a historical cycle, a cycle which begun in the industrial revolution and its associated industrialization of handicraft activities. It is a process which finds its start and end in the workshop. It is a history of craftsmanship as personal empowerment in relation to the control of the skills of the worker in modern production. In the future we might be able to close the circle of control over individual skills and creativity which the modern mode of production gave rise to.

Industrialization can be conceived as the history of control over the labor and skills of workers; a history of centralized production and generalization of protocols governing the behavior of workers and machines in manufacture and factory assembly lines. As we moved through the mid-20th century, a process of decentralization (enabled by the spread of global communication networks) begun. The 3D printer might represent the next step in this development by virtue of the resurrection of the workshop in a new computer-aided form which is able to churn out objects with industrial precision.

Industrialization meant the enforcement a new kind of system of control which could replace older forms of craft labor in a system of formal protocols for streamlining production. Artisans, skilled workers who hitherto had managed themselves, were now forced into a new system of centralized control. Any gains in efficiency at the central level were always achieved at the cost of a reduction in control at the level of the individual.

The case of the Luddites^[17] makes of an intriguing example of this process, something Smári McCarthy points out in his “Centralization vs. Decentralization: Two Centuries of Authority in Design”^[18]. The Luddites were 19th century English workers in the textile industry involved in violent protests against the new, labor-saving machinery developed during the industrial revolution – stocking and spinning frames, power looms, and the like. These new machines were a threat to the artisans, who feared being replaced with lesser skilled low-wage laborers. They are most famous for engaging in machine breaking as a form of political resistance, acts soon designated as capital crimes by the British government.

Why did the Luddites engage in machine breaking? What were their demands? Why was machine destruction answered by death sentences and deportations?

Skilled workers wanted control over their own lives, but in order to survive they were forced to leave behind their informal protocols in favor of a centralized mode of production. The Luddites were not just random haters of machines and tools – what they feared was the specific machines which threatened their freedom from control from the centralized authority inherent in the new factories.

In a similar manner we might today ask why we should accept Facebook and other impositions of centralized services on distributed planes of possibilities; in an open world, why do we accept closed systems, like the Iphone?

We should strive to become skilled citizens operating in an ecology characterized openness and distribution. Why shouldn’t we demand systems that are open and distributed?

The centralized and closed systems of today deprives us of influence over our own lives – not to mention that we also have to pay a sort of exorbitant rent in order to profit from systems of distribution and access. The Luddites and their challenge to the machines resemble modern hackers and their form of piracy in that both focus on self-organization, the right of access, and distributed creativity.

Throwing off the double yokes of enclosure and centralization (and their associated burdens of rent) means re-educating ourselves to embody a distributed plane. Mastering technology and demands for openness goes hand in hand with emancipation from the control inherent in centralized systems – and it is precisely in this process hackerspaces become important as possible blueprints for the creation of such learning environments.

Types of productiveness. The artist and the community and shared value. There were many people involved in making the hacker grail project come true. Donatella Bernardi, the artist, instigated and coordinated the project; Sparvnästet provided a part of its context; Charlie Stern printed the grail (using a modified RepRap); Paola Torres arranged for the faces to be 3D scanned; Map produced the illustrations for the book; and so on.

Might we develop an authorship format which truthfully would reflect the complexity and communality of a project like this?

Are the dominant idioms of the art world preventing communal efforts from being highlighted? In no way am I passing judgment on the art world, but it seems like a hierarchical structure is established in the interaction between the idioms of the art world, the artwork, and the artist.

As soon as the process of object creation takes place within an institutional setting, authorship gets anchored to individuals at the same time as many aspects of collective ambivalence are lost. Division of labor not only imposes property right on the creative process, it also gives rise to a hierarchy which dictates the relative importance of producers, collaborators, contexts, and helpers.

The concept of free software^[19] is based on the idea of adding a license on top of society’s implicit copyright laws in order to halt its logic of enclosure. Keeping this in mind, we should ask ourselves if we might develop non-exclusive and shareable contexts, creating a sort of generalizable Sparvnästet production process. Here, should we aim for distributed or anonymous forms of authorship – or should we simply just let the whole concept of ownership go?

In a future society, how might we go about making sure that the value produced in our community is equally shared and distributed? One possibility could be to impose a scheme of sharing – claiming its place in space – even before starting on a project. However, this might be perceived as awkward, because we are not used to thinking about the context as important to the generation of value.

Maybe we could engage in a leveling of power structures and thwarting of privatization, centralization, and enclosure by authoring a publishing license which would incorporate the importance of collective labor?

In the end, engaging in debate on collective processes, open-source formats, and openness becomes a kind of ethical storytelling. In this specific case, licensing the work under an explicitly open license would have been informing. Yet another related question is whether, in the absence of authorship, a process could be "frozen" and assigned an index while still remaining an object of interest. Further, what about how rewarding the people involved? In order to develop these ideas further, it would be interesting to take a closer look at the concepts of versions and version control systems.

Unproductiveness: the essence of exploration

At Sparvnästet, we were united by an interest in 3D printing which wasn’t necessarily motivated by a will to produce, but to explore and experiment. Testing out new machines, discussing related as well as unrelated subjects, being noisy: knowledge and randomness. We never produced anything, and in this sense we were unproductive.

This unproductiveness highlights that the value of these workshops had more to do with knowledge and relations than just production. Perhaps they generate a somewhat distant readiness to handle technology and group dynamics, with the end product being a state of anticipation and potentiality, new paths of intensity.

In the hackerspace, process is valued over end result. This is, however, also slightly ambiguous: the knowledge which is produced might be vital for the developer’s day job – and in some hackerspaces this might be the primary motivating force its participants.

Looking beyond any possibly valuable skills, this unpredictability, the slowness, the randomness, our unproductivity and state of unreadiness might be read as methods of resistance or alternatives to a fast paced society of work. Perhaps such strategies addressing speed and randomness could be the clogs that break the flow of work and productivity of centralized authority?

Fear of openness?

The Swedish public TV broadcaster Sveriges Television aired a program called Kobra which discussed 3D printing as part in its series on global contemporary artistic expressions. In my opinion, the most important controversy in the world of 3D printing is the one between open and closed systems and the extent to which the technology can help break, expand, and mix creative roles.

I was left somewhat unsatisfied by their approach to the subject. Their summary of the phenomenon of 3D printing never dealt with the tensions between openness and patents, production and copyright, creativity and property, possibly in order to focus on dramaturgical elements or to present themselves as unbiased. At the most, they presented some different perspectives on 3D printing – a little bit of danger here, and a little bit of design, art, and entrepreneurship there.

Halfway into the show, there is a long scene filmed in the 3D printing lab at the Royal Institute of Art. The lab’s teacher is standing in front of an industrial-looking printer, claiming that they’ve made it look like a coffee machine in order not to scare us. In the background, students are sitting in rows in front of monitors, working on their different projects.

The lab has been running for 14 years, but even though its goal is to produce it still appears as unproductive. In my view, the closed-source machines, low skill-level and hierarchical teacher-student relations seems to cripple the lab. The show presents the 3D printer as a means for artists to produce art while neglecting concepts like context, openness, and empowerment.

It might be possible to understand this as different knowledge models, one where the creator is being part of a process and system and one where the creator is standing by. Here, artist is standing by the sidelines in the production process, and the machines can be seen as both enablers and obstacles in their creative process, just as humans represent either gatekeepers or helpers. This is somewhat similar to the conception of the internet as somewhere to publish content rather than as a system through which to push for change. This view of the world is a stifling misconception of the machine as a static tool and lacks any regard for its role as a system or as way to enact social change at any larger level. Rather than discussing the political or philosophical possibilities of 3D printing technology, we are left with discussions that seem more oriented towards contacts with the business community.

The user’s revolutionary potential is often followed by fear on the one hand and commodification on the other. In the context of 3D printing technology, this might be reflected by an inherent “will to commodification” which prevents any vision from straying outside the boundaries set by capitalist logic. This process is detrimental to any broader visions of full openness.

Fear can instead be read as a kind of constant counterpart to commodification, represented by the possibility of using 3D printing to produce weapons. This also features in the TV-show, and provides us with the hint of the dangerous nature of open technologies and acts to insure us that they are responsible in face of that which they do not understand. Thus a mental wall is constructed to separate us from the insecurity of an unknown void.

The show ends with a comparison to the utopian dreams of the internet: the internet was supposed to make our world more democratic, but now we can also “find bad stuff there, like racism and sexism”. In conclusion, they declare that “3D printing means that we’ll get to see all manners of fantastic projects – but it will also empower the dark side of humanity”. Surprise, surprise.

With new technologies, we come face to face with speculative trajectories of hopes and fears for our future.

User control over means of productions does not represent any real danger – because, actually, the only systems we really can trust are the ones that are open and transparent. Rather than letting us be frightened by the unknown void, we should instead focus on spreading information about the corporations, states, and processes that really present a threat for openness and democratic developments.

In order to know something we must overcome the fear of the unknown in our knowledge processes. We have seen how stifling to creativity patents and copyrights are, and how open systems often manage to outperform the closed ones.

The question then becomes one of when engaging hacking and piracy becomes acceptable, when it becomes the right thing to do – always? Sometimes? Never? It might be hard to predict how practices of piracy, openness and hacking will evolve, but this is nothing in comparison to the problems presented by closed, proprietary, and secured systems.

Should we live in fear of openness, instead relying on the security provided by sweet acts commodification and enclosure, or should we try to learn to live in a world which leaks, instead engaging in a culture of sharing and maximal openness? If so, then we must continue to explore, to hack, and to make sure that systems are open.