TY - JOUR

T1 - Printing Utopia

T2 - The Domain of the 3D Printer in the Making of Commons-Based Futures

AU - Ibach, Merle Kathleen

N1 - Funding Information: This work was supported by the Swiss National Science Foundation (SNSF) under Grant No. 179178. This paper is the result of a continuous, iterative process. I thank the editors and anonymous reviewers of Design & Culture for their excellent discussions and critiques of this article. Furthermore, I would like to acknowledge the intense exchange with Moritz Greiner-Petter and Johannes Bruder and also thank my Ph.D. supervisors, Timon Beyes, Claudia Mareis and Wolfgang Jonas, for their input. Publisher Copyright: © 2022 The Author(s). Published by Informa UK Limited, trading as Taylor & Francis Group.

PY - 2023

Y1 - 2023

N2 - ABSTRACT The 3D printer is a “projection screen” for the eco-social maker movement. It signifies a desire for networked collaboration, ecological and social participation, political empowerment, and socioeconomic transformation. Yet the 3D printer is not producing anything that fulfils such a comprehensive and disruptive potential. While it has become a profound agent for a commons-based future that aims to solve the global challenges of modernity, it is a tool, rather than an agent of the maker movement. This article explores the utopian potential of the 3D printer within the discourse of commons-based future-making. Along with a wide range of academic and popular literature, the sociotechnical motives of a commons-based imaginary are analyzed and discussed in their historical construction and social order. Indeed, the 3D printer revitalizes longstanding desires for social transformation, giving them fresh impetus. Because of its interpretative flexibility, the 3D printer has become a “weak desire machine” that allows members of the maker movement to express their utopian desires. On the one hand, the 3D printer helps make utopian desires tangible and negotiable. On the other hand, the 3D printer tends to promote a techno-positivist approach that oversimplifies social change, losing sight of alternatives and ambiguities.

AB - ABSTRACT The 3D printer is a “projection screen” for the eco-social maker movement. It signifies a desire for networked collaboration, ecological and social participation, political empowerment, and socioeconomic transformation. Yet the 3D printer is not producing anything that fulfils such a comprehensive and disruptive potential. While it has become a profound agent for a commons-based future that aims to solve the global challenges of modernity, it is a tool, rather than an agent of the maker movement. This article explores the utopian potential of the 3D printer within the discourse of commons-based future-making. Along with a wide range of academic and popular literature, the sociotechnical motives of a commons-based imaginary are analyzed and discussed in their historical construction and social order. Indeed, the 3D printer revitalizes longstanding desires for social transformation, giving them fresh impetus. Because of its interpretative flexibility, the 3D printer has become a “weak desire machine” that allows members of the maker movement to express their utopian desires. On the one hand, the 3D printer helps make utopian desires tangible and negotiable. On the other hand, the 3D printer tends to promote a techno-positivist approach that oversimplifies social change, losing sight of alternatives and ambiguities.

KW - 3D printing

KW - boundary object

KW - commoning

KW - degrowth

KW - design activism

KW - maker movement

KW - sociotechnical imaginaries

KW - utopia

KW - Science of art

UR - http://www.scopus.com/inward/record.url?scp=85142231992&partnerID=8YFLogxK

UR - https://www.mendeley.com/catalogue/349a498d-9c14-39e4-b5e8-e2c7b202b6ba/

U2 - 10.1080/17547075.2022.2136562

DO - 10.1080/17547075.2022.2136562

M3 - Journal articles

AN - SCOPUS:85142231992

VL - 15

SP - 323

EP - 344

JO - Design and Culture

JF - Design and Culture

SN - 1754-7075

IS - 3

ER -