By Gabrielle Kennedy / 30-09-2010

Debate about open source in 3d design is still young and tends to get bogged down in just what it is and how it is going to work. Predictions become so futuristic that the prickly issues of copyright and profit-share are ignored.  Instead, discussion focuses on how a world where almost anyone can design and produce will work.

The reason is that open source design is a great unknown.  If it is the future, then our whole approach to design - from education to manufacturing – will change.  Discussions now need to create and spread understanding to ensure that as many minds as possible are involved in carving out this future.

“My attitude is positive, but with an open eye for the obstacles and pitfalls,” says Jos de Mul, a philosopher and professor at Erasmus University in Rotterdam.

Put most simply, open source design releases design knowledge as well as the means of design production.  It is anti-elitist, democratic and helps to create self-determination in an individual’s immediate environment.  

Too much of the talk on the issue to date, however, sounds more like science fiction than reality, especially when enthusiasts start voicing their predictions.  What should inspire images of a world less controlled by branding and regulations, ends up sounding like chaos with too much choice and an over-abundance of experimentation and waste.

In a beautiful analogy, De Mul employed the Library of Babel as a conceptual metaphor for this dilemma. “The problem with open source design,” he says, “is that there are so many options that it becomes unimaginable.”

De Mul’s own solution is for designers to become what he terms meta-designers, adapt at creating spaces or boundaries around digestible databases.  “When it comes to database design, there can be a combinatorial explosion,” he says.  “Take a simple design with 15 elements.  The possible combinations are fifteen to the power of fifteen, which is already an enormous number of possible combinations.”

De Mul’s ideas remained bound to technology.  “Open source design is linked to computers and the Internet so the characteristics of digital design need to be better understood,” he argued.  

That makes good sense because in the end, open source design, downloadable design and distributed design are all about possibilities and combining available options.  As the possibilities become infinite, managing and controlling the information is going to become more important than the information itself.

The only certainty amongst all of this is that there is no avoiding the future. As with music, software and books, 3d design will change.  In order to live, De Mul points out, one needs to stay open.  “Organisms close themselves to regain an identity,” he says, “but they always have to open up to nourish themselves.”

De Mul believes that given the inevitability of open source design, it will become spaces rather than objects that require design expertise.  “Designers should be able to build multidimensional design spaces where we can all become designers,” he says.  “Even if the user has no experience or time, they need a path to cut through the database of possibilities so that design bricks become more meaningful.”

Choice cannot be unlimited and the bricks of design need to be able to be combined in meaningful ways.  People must be able to navigate their way through a theoretically endless number of possibilities.  

Of course there is another decade of discussion on all the potential problems regarding this issue.  Some that we can not even imagine yet. 

“Collectivism can diminish the importance and uniqueness of individual choice and can lead to digital totalitarianism,” says De Mul touching on one of the problems he foresees. “But just because there are problems does not mean we should avoid development,” he concludes.  “You just have to think of strategies to overcome them.”

The winners of the (Un)limited Design Contest 2010 were announced at the conclusion of this event. The winner in the category Form is Jorn van Eck with his lamp “Shades of Wood”. The other winning designs are "2 Teaspoons // Tablespoons at once!" by Eulàlia Llovet Vidal (Food), the "Coolplus" micro knitted shawl by Marina Toeters (Fashion) and "Magic Box" by Studio Ludens (Fusion).

(Un)limited Design Contest is a project by Premsela – Dutch Platform for Design and Fashion and the Waag Society, in cooperation with the Dutch Fablabs and Creative Commons Netherlands.


Click on images at left to enlarge - Jos de Mul adresses the Picnic audience, winners of the 2010 (Un)limited Design Contest.

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