designmai-part I
The theme of this years designmai was “digitalability”. Interestingly for product design this seemed to be ultimately linked to 3D-rapid-prototyping – at least in the main exhibition.
I would have liked to see more references towards material science. Last not least rapid prototyped material has (sofar) limited application possibilities (in particular you cant make chairs like this…:(). Nevertheless this new wave gave finally two mathematicians the possibility to exhibit in a design exhibition – namely Bathsheba Grossmann, who showed a sculpture and collegue Konrad Polthier who -in collaboration with some students from LTH- displayed minimal surfaces. Also if the first rapid prototyping minimal (and other) surfaces made their rounds probably something like 8 years ago (within the math department) it was very nice to see them in this new context. I will make a separat post about the math part.
Maybe rapid prototyping was suddenly so present due to its similarities to more-or-less current trends in biology in particular to cloning and bio-engineering in general or to trends in robotics. However since I once worked here (as an intern) and saw their animal cages it always takes quite some effort to bring myself to think about these issues.
The trend is certainly also due to the advancements of digital techniques and availability. (see also the recent experiments with sugar and milk)
