Here’s something from the Inhabitat blog: birdhouses created using 3D rapid prototyping technology. From the entry (Link):

They chose to create these small-scale habitats to experiment with digital rapid (SLA) prototyping. “We are interested in all types of digital fabrication via mill, water jet, 3D printers and contour control sculpting,” says RES4 partner Paul Coughlin, “but the 3D printer seemed the most applicable to our modern modular explorations which exploit volumetric unitization, not surface unitization.”

I don’t know about the design, but the bigger issue in my mind would be: is the SLA material a problem? Unfortunately, I don’t have much time to research this. Hopefully I’ll have some time in November.

{Image source: Inhabitat}

There’s an excellent article discussing Will Wright’s upcoming videogame Spore (reLink1, reLink2) in yesterday’s New York Times. The piece, written by Steven Johnston and titled “The Long Zoom” (Link), is a great read. Of real interest to me though is this bit toward the end:

Everyone’s desk is populated by plastic action figures of Spore creatures, manufactured in-house by Wright’s employees using a 3-D printer that can generate a physical toy in a matter of minutes from a computer model. (Electronic Arts is investigating the possibility of selling customized Spore critters in toy stores as a side business.)

Considering that the article’s foundation is based on the so-called “Powers of Ten” idea which is supposed to “expand the way we think”, it struck me as odd that Johnston didn’t call out a different kind of lens: instead of just zooming in and out of physical space we may be entering an age where another lens breachs the transreality barrier between information and physicality.
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There are interesting articles in today’s New York Times – and two in particular that caught my attention. The first is an article by Alice Rawsthorn titled “But Is It Art?” (Link) which I think makes some worthwhile observations. In particular, these two comments registered with me:

The conception and process of producing art became as important as the work itself, which was increasingly made by someone else, not the artist.
…
Technology has also enabled designers to exercise greater control over the production of their work by using their computers to execute tasks once delegated to engineers or typesetters.

But then she gets into the kinds of distinctions that get me in trouble with fellow designers: Continue reading →

The Brands in Games blog is reporting (Link) that a NYC ad agency, Anomaly, beat the Leo Burnett prima donna’s into the Second Life virtual world. That’s icing on the cake as far as I’m concerned (you’ll recall my earlier admonition – reLink). Even better is that Anomaly didn’t broadband what they were doing, which suggests they have more humility than the clueless big boys (although from what I read on their website, the relatively new Anomaly is impressive in a number of ways).

This of course has me wondering if reBang is the first “Industrial Design” firm inside Second Life (for the record, here’s the Patagonia beachfront prior to breaking virtual ground – reLink)? I don’t know. It’s certainly possible someone tried, or is actively trying and I’m just unaware of their efforts. It’d be nice to hook up with them.

I’m also wondering how many people – if any – are working toward transreality products; truly tying virtual product to real product in ways that start to get us Things like kirkyans, stellayans, and triblyans (I had to come up with a word for a Thing that could replicate without limit on both sides of the tangibility barrier; this seemed like a natural fit. If this is already defined somewhere, I’m still looking for the word defining it so feel free to post a note; there must be a science fiction novel with this thing in it).

If you caught my exchange with Cory Doctorow recently (reLink) you’ll recall the disconnect I pointed out regarding the Creative Commons license he and his publisher, Tor, apparently use on his books. In summary, Creative Commons is a rights management system that depends heavily on what I call Inherent Rights Management (the inability to replicate a physical object) and on the threat of legal action should I attempt to use the content in a commerical endeavor. It’s a two-pronged approach that’s probably effective for book publishers right now.

In some ways this isn’t all that different from Digital Rights Management. Plain and simple, they’re both about control. However, because digital products aren’t inherently difficult to replicate, it opens the door to abuse. In order to prevent that abuse, content providers are effectively attempting to emulate some aspects of tangible products and thus control the content to which they have the legal rights.

In other words, they have mostly the same legal options available to them, but they don’t have the one thing in common that’s turned everything on it’s head from day one: the ability for anyone to make perfect replicas of a product at home.
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