Manufacturing

Share Festival Manufacturing
11-16 march 2008, Castello del Valentino, viale Mattioli 39, 10-19

Why manufacturing? Because it’s inevitable!
by Bruce SterlingDesign is about ideas. Then come words, sketches, full drawings, three-dimensional renderings, scale models — and the manufacture of the thing itself.

For decades, computers have been climbing that chain. The Internet, a tool of science, spread ideas. Words became virtual with the word processor. Computer graphics started as simple, angular, glowing green lines, mere sketches. Then came shaded images in color, then polygons…. Then raytracing programs for the effects of light, then animated motion, photo-realism, three-d simulation, hyper-photo-realism.… With 3-D design programs for objects and products, computers do rendering.

And what about models? The child of the desktop printer is the three-dimensional printer — the “rapid prototype machine.” Rapid prototype machines make scale models that can be altered, shared, modified — computer-generated models with a real-world existence, beyond the screen.

That left just one step — the computerized creation of the final thing itself. That’s digital manufacturing.

It’s here. The day is at hand. Yesterday’s Internet was a net, but today’s is a “platform.” It’s a platform for publishing, music, cinema, commerce, government… and, yes, of course the net is also a platform for manufacturing.

Digital manufacturing tools now come in wide varieties of prices and capabilities. There are simple computer-controlled saws for the home garage, and powerful drills that can chew programmed forms from solid ingots of metal. Computer-controlled lasers blast transparent plastic liquids into solid opaque shapes. Digital forges heat-blast metal dust into solid metal objects.

Their prices are dropping, their abilities are expanding. And, they’re being hooked to the net and made available to artisans in studios. The virtual is actualizing. When? Now!

In Piemonte, the objects fabricated by Provel are among the world’s most sophisticated — as you will see. The web-start up company Ponoko proves that anyone with the capacity to program a web-page should be able to program a simple fabricated object — and sell it worldwide. As we demonstrate in SHARE 08, digital artists will even program the programs that program the art-objects!

Computer manufacturing was once elite, difficult and expensive. Also, its models mostly mimicked previous forms of manufacturing. Not any more. Computer manufacturing is a new production method, advancing rapidly, with new tools, new approaches, and new ideas. Tomorrow, computer manufacturing will produce objects, tools, products and fine-art works impossible to make through any other way.

So, why ManufacTURINg, and why Turin? Turin is the World Capital of Design 2008, and a world manufacturing center. If not us, whom? If not here, where? If not now, when?

Club Transmediale and Generator.x present
Generator.x 2.0: Beyond the Screen

Digital fabrication (“fabbing”) technologies allow for the planning and production of forms beyond the limits of traditional industrial production. Computer-controlled tools such as laser cutters, CNC milling machines or 3D printers perform direct translations from a digital model into physical space, making possible a new class of objects of previously inconceivable complexity. In an ironic reversal, physical space has thus become the last frontier for digital manipulation.

Generator.x 2.0 brings together artists and architects working with code-based processes, for whom digital fabrication allows an escape beyond the limits of virtual space. Through digital generative strategies to the synthesis of space, they are producing organic structures and surfaces of great complexity. Through fabbing these forms may be rendered tangible – even tactile.

Participants:

Andreas Nicolas Fischer [DE]
Nicholas Bruscia [US]
Commonwealth [US]
David Dessens [FR]
Leander Herzog [CH]
Holger Lippmann [DE]
TODO.IT [IT]
Dennis Paul [DE]
Susanne Stauch [DE]
Satoru Sugihara [JP/US]
Jared Tarbell [US]
Daniel Widrig [DE/UK]

Generator.x is a platform for generative art and computational design, founded by Marius Watz in 2005 to produce a series of events including conferences, exhibitions and audiovisual concerts. The Generator.x blog (www.generatorx.no) continues to be a resource for critical discourse.

PROVEL S.R.L.
Provel s.r.l, is the italian leading group in the production of Rapid Prototyping and Tooling, mainly for automotive industry and also for all the other industrial and design fields. Provel operates in a new, comfortable 3.500 sq.m. plant, very close to the motorway and railway with a young and skilled team of engineers, technicians and cooperators, always looking for new technologies and facilities. Our company goal is the satifaction of our customers, in terms of minimum timing and cost and maximum quality on our projects and produced parts.This powerfull production capacity is today the largest in Italy and one of the larger in Europe.

INDUSTRIAL DESIGN DEPARTMENT  POLITECNICO OF TURIN
La vera forza dei corsi di laurea in design, depositari oggi di quella cultura politecnica e quell’adesione alla cultura del tempo delle facoltà di architettura della fine degli anni Sessanta, è individuabile nella cultura del Progetto (di un prodotto come di un servizio), una risorsa indispensabile capace di dare nuova linfa al made in Italy e di arginare fenomeni diffusi come quello della copia.
L’Innovazione infatti non consiste nello studio di un aspetto tecnologico o del suo perfezionamento, ma nella ricerca costante attraverso la cultura del progetto che, proprio per le sue caratteristiche intrinseche, difficilmente potrà essere scippata e fatta propria da altri.
La tecnologia, invece, risulta facilmente esportabile e pare oggi destinata a rimanere in mano a quei paesi (Cindia su tutti) in cui è quasi nullo il costo del lavoro.Percepito sempre più frequentemente come «antenna» in grado di registrare in anticipo le trasformazioni in atto, il designer vive oggi una straordinaria fortuna che trova conferma anche nell’appeal delle scuole di design con i loro molteplici sbocchi professionali. Una varietà di occupazioni nei numerosi ambiti disciplinari, non solo del prodotto industriale tout court, ma anche nel campo dell’ergonomia, della virtualità, dell’ecologia come della pubblicità o del web.

Luigi Bistagnino

PONOKO
Ponoko is an online place for making, sharing, selling and buying products and product designs. Ponoko supplies the technology and the materials – and you supply the designs. In time, you’ll be able to make almost anything using Ponoko – all at the click of a mouse.

Right now, you can use our laser-cutting technology and range of wooden and acrylic materials to make products like these: Want to try it for yourself?
Then, go to it! This making guide will help you get started.
Get ready to design….
As you know, there are always a few tricks to designing for different materials and different ways of making things. For example, time is money when it comes to laser-cutting. So the fewer cutting lines you have on your design, the cheaper it will be to make. This making guide will help you design products that work within the parameters of laser-cutting technology – and help you test the boundaries of what’s possible!

UNIVERISTAT DER KUNSTE BERLIN

About ID5:
Materialized objects interact between themselves and humans
The work of our project group grew and was developed out of product and industrial design. Throughout the course of our work the creation of objects has been replaced by the creation of interactions. Although the treatment and use of products in design has always played an important role, the emergence of computers and computerized products has allowed interface and the dramaturgy of the interaction to be observed in isolation.
Through our projects we try to elaborate a language and terminology used to describe design and the development of interactive systems. The projects themselves are the interactions with products, regardless of whether they are hardware or software.