3D Printing as a Digital Craftsmanship

Description

With an estimated market volume of US$ 5.1 billion by 2020, 3D printing is predicted toradically change all manufacturing and design industries. Today the global impact ofsuch innovation is hard to overestimate. 3D printing is increasingly becoming anaffordable and common everyday process. Yet currently most of 3D prints are digitalreplicas of existing objects. There is little understanding of how 3D printing technologiescan lead to a new design, new products, and new fields of work. The key to the future of3D printing lies in the past. In the long history of applied arts, the innovation oftechnologies and design has been supported by craftsmanship. Precision, transparency,curiosity and discovery to innovate are the keywords of success.In the era of Rococo, all aspects of craftsmanship and design were geared together tocreate a total work of art. Open to different cultures, the architects and designer ofRococo have understood the value of combining technology and art into aninterdisciplinary approach. With a role model like Chinoiserie, cultural diversity andglobalization became part and essence of this style.Based on this interplay of forces and cultures of the Rococo, this research will examinethe factors of design as well as transfer these methods and strategies to a digitalcraftsmanship. The form-finding process for 3D printing, as visualized in the role modelof the Rococo, can be seen as an initial point, which opens up, hitherto undiscoveredspaces of action and intervention in design and architecture. The result of this initialinvestigation will manifest in the design of prototypes for 3D printing and furthermaterial amalgamations. These objects will articulate the idea and qualities of digitalcraftsmanship into a total work of art.The analysis of the role model of Rococo, the development of the design as well as theprocess of the creation of these objects will be accompanied, evaluated and documentedby periodic recorded meetings of an expert panel. The interdisciplinary members of thispanel correspond to the idea of the interplay of art and technology, shown in thecraftsmanship and design of the Rococo. The members are artist Jane Prophet (SCM),architect Marjan Colletti (TU Innsbruck), Turlif Villebrand, Norwegian computerscientist and pioneer in 3D printing, philosopher Sarah Schmidt (Humboldt UniversityBerlin) and Harald Kraemer, media art/design historian (SCM). The results will bediscussed in a symposium, published in a book, and exhibited.