Category: Art
3D printers can create the most astonishing things and this new Future Human salon event will explore what that means for artists and designers. Joining the Future Human team for the evening will be:
Brendan Dawes, founder of product design company Beep Industries and digital design firm magneticNorth
Assa Ashuach, creative director of Digital Forming (one of the UK's leading 3D printing companies)
Soner Ozenc, product designer and founder of design firm Razorlab, which specialises in laser cutting.
This event is a must for all small maker designers.
Buy tickets for this Future Human event here.
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Over the past 10 years the Internet has ripped power from governments, companies and other institutions and put it into the hands of normal people, turning passive consumers into socially networked producers. But over the next 10 years, we’re going to see digital economics upturn industrial production and the physical world of ‘things’, as emerging printing technologies and the distribution efficiencies of the Internet give individuals the power to challenge the giants of the manufacturing sector.
Some might argue we’re already there, and that ‘making money from making’ has never been so straightforward. Pioneering websites like Etsy, Threadless, and Ponoko help designers turn their intellectual property into locally produced products that can be sold to a global community of consumers online. Yet up until recently, these websites focused on two-dimensionally printed or lasercut products like T-shirts, plates or flat pack furniture.
The advent of affordable 3D printers is having a profound effect on these business models, however, and offering would-be designers the scope to produce a panoply of products: plastic toys, furniture fixtures, electronic components – even finely crafted chocolates. All of these can be reproduced right now, using 3D design files supplied from anywhere in the world, with printing projects like RepRap and Makerbot lowering the economic barriers every year. Who are the companies and individuals pioneering this shift, and how can ordinary people get involved? And will the Micro Manufacturing movement challenge and supplement the behemoths of global trade, or will it only ever be a niche concern?