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2008 Saint Etienne International Design Biennial
‘Voices’ is exhibited at the 2008 Saint Etienne International Design Biennial, Saint Etienne, FRANCE, 15-30 November 2008
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‘Voices’ brings the participatory principles of the Internet over to the world of things, inviting anyone to express themselves through three dimensional forms, singing their own meaning into the world.
‘Voices’ is commenting on new digital design tools, contemporary participation culture, user generated products or “brand hacking”, the emerging movements of mass creativity and how it affects the role of the product designer.
What will be the unique offering of the product designer in an era where it is getting increasingly difficult to distinguish between consumption, production and prototyping? Will there be a role for “experts” in form-giving in the future or do we rather value shapes created by ourselves, our family and networks?
As a platform designed to empower people with direct influence on their everyday things and experiences, the “product” in this case consists of computer code, a specially written program, a software prototype which reads the 3D CAD data of any shape and symbolically transforms it to a unique personal composition according to the individual pitch of people’s voices.
The output is a personal shape existing digitally as an STL-file which can be distributed, shared, reworked and brought to life physically anytime through Freeform Fabrication technology (3D printing) which in a near future is expected to be available for the masses.
The concept of ‘Voices’ is here below metaphorically exemplified in the everyday context of a tea drinking experience.
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Please watch the video below for further explanation.
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Tea and coffee- cups are often very personal objects. Some people choose a cup with a special color, some choose cups with a special shape, and some even put their name on their cup.
What does your cup mean to you? How does your cup make you feel? Who does your cup make you become in the social context around the table?
How about creating your very own personal drinking experience, as unique as your own voice?
Based on the 3D CAD data of a cup-shape and according to the unique pitch of people’s voices, the personalized cup-shapes created in this case, ranges from the low, heavy, thick-walled, wide and short to the high, rigid, slim, thin-walled and tall.
These unique personally created conditions embodied in the cup, set the direction of your very own drinking event as a whole, affecting all your sensations and reactions. Starting from how you get visually introduced while noticing the cup of tea in front of you and the way you can see the steam rising from the cup… to the feeling you get at the moment when you touch the cup with your hand, the characteristics you sense when you lift it from the table and the way the scent of the tea reaches your nose… to your reaction when you touch your lips to the edge of the cup and the way the tea reaches your tongue and flows into your mouth…
What is your cup of tea like? Who are you? Who do you want to be?
Are we experiencing a shift where the role of the product designer is changing from being a creator of the shape of things to a facilitator of creative processes?
Is the experience of becoming a producer and the joy of actively creating as valuable as, or even more valuable to the consumer, than the passive use and consumption of an already created artifact?
Is it actually the things we create ourselves, that we really find meaningful?
‘Voices’ opens up the design process of any object and invites everyday people to design themselves into their own product narratives. These designs might exist only in the virtual domain, shared and distributed across networks and communities. However, if they eventually are decided to be locally produced, “printed” into the physical world, these are things which become material objects as an offspring of people themselves.
Will this not only contribute to the creation of attachment and new kinds of emotional bonds between people and artifacts which may result in new ways of valuing materiality and the way we use our natural resources? Can we even say that we are facing a future where new creative processes are increasingly coming to democratize the overall human experience in each and every detail?
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Thanks to:
Protech and Asmund Gamlesaeter.
