Printing in the Third Dimension

My recent obsession is 3D printing; so I was delighted when the topic came up in week 6’s symposium. A question was asked as to whether technology could progress independently of art and culture – now, although I think it was a good question, I think the answer or conversation associated with it is rather unproductive: people like Raymond Williams have been arguing about technological determinism for years.

Anyhow, in the case of 3D printing, the answer would be no. There are of course conflicting ideas surrounding the concept of whether the creation of the 3D printer was a result of a societal change or need for the technology or whether it was an outcome of technological advancements (stemming from 2D printers and 3D computer imaging) independent of the outside world. However, when 3D printers did come into existence, people took them on for various reasons and from there they progressed as a result of art and culture, as well as science. A simple example would be the development of 3D colour printers. This element was added to the machine because it was needed for various forms of ‘art’. Let’s take a Nike runner… now some people might not consider a shoe a form of art, but it is still an expression of someone’s creative ideas, a shoe is still ‘design’. What happens in a lot of factories (sweatshops) today is that the ‘perfect’ Nike runner will be printed, colour and all, so that the people who are making the shoe can examine the artificial model to see if they are sewing/dying/moulding the right thing in the right way. This example shows that it was in fact the technology that responded to the needs of society, specifically that of design.

3D printers are still developing now (and have a long way to go in my mind), mostly due to the need for medical advancements. If you’re interested, take a look at this video on human ear transplants, created from 3D printers!

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