What happens
to the notion of place when objects are created and disseminated online? As makers and consumers, are we willing to accept the global, hybrid aesthetic that has
developed in our increasingly digital world?
These are
some of the questions raised by Associate Professor of Industrial Design Paolo
Cardini in an interesting opinion piece posted earlier this month on Fast
Company.
“It is true that digital tools provide vast possibilities,”
Cardini writes, “but at the same time, they expose us to the threat of
aesthetic and cultural homogenization.”
The designer goes on to underscore the point by noting: “You cannot really say where a website has been designed or where a code has been written or where a piece of plastic has been printed; you can eventually only recognize which kind of tool has been used to shape them.”
Slater Mill in Pawtucket, RI
In contrast, objects made by hand or from analogue production tend to be connected to local resources and reveal something about the era and culture in which they’re produced. The textiles industry took off in Rhode Island, among other places, because it was “historically based on water-powered mills and located in regions with streams and rivers; paper umbrellas were created to protect nobility from sunlight in response to a social demand for pale skin characteristic of specific cultures,” Cardini writes.
Cardini
proposes localized product design and points to several
projects that have successfully added an element of place to a digitally
produced object. His own design for a 3D-printed necklace, for example (pictured above), takes its shape from code determined by the
physical location and gross domestic product of the place in which it is made.
abstract data as geo-tag or geo-marker, place-making, situatedness or situation.
