Re-Public The political economy of 3D printing

by Vasilis Kostakis and Michalis Fountouklis

"Customisation and variance seem imperative in a fast changing world.

It has been a common assumption during the last decade or two that the world has been shifting towards information- and networked-based structures, with information production in the limelight. During the installation period of the current techno-economic paradigm, based on and led by Information and Communication Technology (ICT), two parallel shifts have taken place: not only did the economically most advanced societies move towards an information-based economy, but the declining costs of ICT also made them available to a much wider part of the world population

This has led to the creation of a new communicational, interconnected and virtual environment from which new social productive models are emerging, which seem to be radically different from the previous industrial ones. These models are being formed by and form, disperse communities of experts and amateurs which collaborate towards the realisation of certain information production projects."

Re-Public The political economy of 3D printing

Dimitris Papalexopoulos "The 3d printing technology fantasy"

Digital Design Commons

Dimitris Papalexopoulos

Can digital design commons, based on distributed intelligence, help us structure a response to the actual crisis through a low tech - knowledge intensive collaborative perspective? The presentation proposes to reconsider notions related to distributed partial design through a digital commons point of view.

Digital design overflows the limits of isolated works and, through the implementation of open source algorithms, declares its continuous deterritorializations and reterritorializations in a series of projects.

It tends to be ubiquitous and forms a code flow circulating among all possible situated architectural proposals.

Design acquires thus a common character.

Digital Design Commons are pools of a multitude of micro- architecture problem solutions, a multitude of micro - syntaxes covering partial aspects of design, waiting to be actualized in larger design schemes.

They also deny the unique and ultimate “form” in favor of a network’s syntax. They tend to substitute the object’s design with the design of networked multiplicities. Finally, they question the ubiquity of design as an end of work process, linking it to the (local) use value production.

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(International Symposium “Computational Politics and Architecture: From the Digital Philosophy to the End of Work”, November 30, 2011, Ecole Nationale Supérieure d'Architecture Paris-Malaquais)