El alma de las cosas

Una de las tendencias recientes más interesantes en el campo de las industrias creativas tiene que ver con la metamorfosis que están sufriendo los objetos que nos rodean. El creciente auge de la impresión 3D gracias, entre otras razones, al abaratamiento del hardware, ha ido consolidando una comunidad global de usuarios unidos en su afán de experimentación. En una nueva vuelta de tuerca iluminista de pronto podemos crear objetos de formas inimaginables hasta hace muy poco tiempo. 

Vale la pena leer "The shape of things to come" en el Economist. La tecnología nos lleva cada vez más cerca de la naturaleza, y en el medio tiene el potencial de disparar una nueva revolución industrial:

Additive manufacturing, then, is changing not only how things are made, but what is made. In particular, many of the objects on display had an organic look to them. That is no accident. In some cases, designers have deliberately copied nature. In others, they have started from first principles, drawn conclusions (usually aided by clever software), and found that nature got there first. And in some, the decisions have been aesthetic—presumably reflecting an evolved preference in the human psyche for objects that look natural. 

La historia, por supuesto, es dialéctica. A fines de los 60´s en Estados Unidos la revista Popular Mechanics y las tiendas Radioshack desataron la fiebre del "hágalo usted mismo" en miles de aficionados por la electrónica que luego se propagó por el mundo entero. Ahora, gracias a la explosión de Internet, la ética del DIY está de vuelta. La paradoja siempre estuvo ahí: La tecnología nos devuelve a las raíces, al meter mano, al desarmar los juguetes para ver de qué están hechos. 

"More than just digital quilting", también del Economist, echa luz sobre las bases de este nuevo fenómeno:

The maker movement is both a response to and an outgrowth of digital culture, made possible by the convergence of several trends. New tools and electronic components let people integrate the physical and digital worlds simply and cheaply. Online services and design software make it easy to develop and share digital blueprints. And many people who spend all day manipulating bits on computer screens are rediscovering the pleasure of making physical objects and interacting with other enthusiasts in person, rather than online. Currently the preserve of hobbyists, the maker movement’s impact may be felt much farther afield.

La ética hacker colaborativa está en la raíz del movimiento y es potenciado exponencialmente gracias a la red:

The ease with which designs for physical things can be shared digitally goes a long way towards explaining why the maker movement has already developed a strong culture—its third driver. “If you are not sharing your designs, you are doing it wrong,” says Bre Pettis, the chief executive of MakerBot. Physical space and tools are being shared, too, in the form of common workshops. Some 400 such “hacker spaces” already operate worldwide, according to Hackerspaces.org. Many are organised like artists’ collectives.

Aparece una gran oportunidad para los creativos del mundo entero, quienes ahora pueden compartir instantáneamente sus creaciones y alimentarse, a la vez, de lo que está pasando fuera de sus fronteras. Cmo sucede en cada eslabón de la economía creativa, tendrás más éxito aquellos capaces de abrevar en su propia identidad para "contar historias" únicas, personales.

El sueño de la impresión 3D también engendra monstruos. En "Object cancers" Geoff Manaugh enlaza dos fenómenos interesantes para pensar el futuro del futuro: E dilema de los derechos de autor en los objetos tridimensionales y la aparición de objetos deformados como inesperada respuesta al copyright:

Among many other things about this story, what caught my attention was the specific detail that you could scan any object you happen to have on hand; you could then upload that dataset to a kind of eBay of physibles; and, finally, someone on the other side of the earth—or sitting right next to you—could print out their own "pirate" version. As New Scientist writes, however, we might soon soon see a corporate response in the form of what could be called physible rights management—based on, even repeating, certain aspects of the misguided digital rights management (DRM) policies associated with MP3s.
(...)
In any case, what seems more provocative here, on the level of design, would be to appropriate this protective stance and reuse it in the design of future objects, but emphasizing the other end: to allow for the scanning of any object designed or manufactured, but to insert, in the form of watermarks, small glitches that would only become visible upon reprinting. We could call these object cancers: bulbous, oddly textured, and other dramatically misshapen errors that only appear in 3D-reprinted objects. Chairs with tumors, mutant silverware, misbegotten watches—as if the offspring of industrial reproducibility is a molten world of Dalí-like surrealism.

Me gusta pensar que habrá poesía en esta nueva y rebuscada versión de piratería gracias a la belleza mutante de lo imperfecto.

(Pic que ilustra el post).