John James Marshall thesis.pdf - OpenAIR @ RGU - Robert Gordon ...

In 2005 the exhibition ‘Blobjects and Beyond: The New Fluidity in Design’
curated by Steven Skov Holt and Mara Holt Skov was held at the San Jose
Museum of Art (San Jose Museum of Art, 2005). This was the Museum’s first
exhibition devoted to industrial design. In 2006 Autodesk acquired of Alias
(formerly Alias Wavefront) for $197 million. In 2007 the exhibition
‘Digitalability’ curated by Atilano González-Pérez was held at the DESIGNMAI
Forum, Berlin and explored material things, immaterial interfaces and design
(Dauerer, 2007). At the time of writing (2007) 3D Systems has announced the
V-Flash desktop modeller (to be manufactured by Canon) priced at $9,900 (3D
Systems, 2007) and Idealab has announced the Desktop Factory 3D Printer
priced at $4,995 (Desktop Factory, 2007) 12 . This might indicate a new era of
desktop manufacturing if these less expensive machines are successful.
2.3 CAD/CAM and RP&M in sculpture (practitioner-led activity)
Rapid prototyping has been described as an ontological breakthrough (Ganis,
2004, p.29) bringing the virtual world of a CAD modelling space into physical
space. Sculptors have been using computer-based design and fabrication tools
for many years. Charles Csuri (Figure 4) was using a mathematical function
stored on punched tape to control a CNC machine to make sculptural forms in
1968 (Paul, 2003 p.26).
Figure 4: ‘Ridges Over Time’, 1968. Charles Csuri
12 Previously these price decreases had occurred in the 3D software market. In 2002 Alias Wavefront that had been
selling Maya Unlimited for $16,000 and Maya Complete at $7,500 reduced their prices to $6,999 and $1,999 - the
biggest single price cut in the history of the 3D animation market. This signified a price and feature war between the
high-end 3D modelling and animation applications. In 1999 Softimage was sold in two versions: ‘3D extreme’ at
$11,995 and ‘3D’ at $4,995. By 2004 Softimage XSI Foundation (equivalent to ‘3D’ plus five years of upgrades) was
reduced from $1,995 to $495.
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