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

As the use of computer-based design and fabrication tools have become more
widespread, so new enterprises have been established to meet the engineering
technology needs of diverse industries. This has introduced a more distributed
model of digital production that more readily affords small scale manufacturing
and customised manufacture. New production paradigms have brought
producers and consumers into a closer relationship which has challenged
conventional models of authorship as well as existing industrial and pedagogic
models. New communities are developing around the appropriation and
sharing of user-generated content and knowledge. It is logical to speculate that
3D printing will develop in a similar way to desktop publishing and eventually
allow a mass audience to manufacture physical items at home directly from the
computer desktop. These developments introduce the potential wide
distribution of objects whose function is not defined by the values of established
design discourses. It also implies new modes of consumption for audiences,
users and/or co-creators of these objects.
2.8 A critical challenge to disciplinary domains
With the use of computer-based design and fabrication tools, diverse
practitioners from across the 3D art and design making disciplines are exploring
the potential for future applications outside conventional manufacturing.
Michael Century (Century, 1999) points out that software applications that
converge and integrate data from various disciplines constitute the first
technology capable of bringing us closer to the idea of the Gesamtkunstwerk or
‘total work of art’ (a term attributed to the German composer Richard Wagner)
meaning an artwork which is a synthesis of music, theatre, and the visual arts.
Katherine McCoy (McCoy, 1997) states that convergence may be the dominant
design paradigm for the current, electronic era – she claims that design
disciplines and technologies are converging into each other. Furthermore, she
states that CNC machining, and CAD/CAM are both productive tools and
change agents. This development is significant as it suggests expanded
opportunities for practitioners and the possibility of developing a 3D digital
praxis which draws on the critical discourse of intersecting disciplinary
domains.
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