FABBING PRACTICES- AN ETHNOGRAPHY IN FAB LAB AMSTERDAM

UNIVERSITEIT VAN AMSTERDAM

NEW MEDIA

MEDIA AND CULTURE STUDIES

FABBING PRACTICES

AN ETHNOGRAPHY IN FAB LAB AMSTERDAM

Thesis submitted in partial fulfilment of the requirements for the degree of Master of Media and Culture Studies

Aurélie GHALIM [email protected] aghalim.wordpress.com Supervisor: M.J. DIETER

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Abstract

This thesis, based on an ethnographic approach, investigates personal fabrication. Fab Labs or

FABrication LABoratories, introduced as facilities where you can make (almost) anything, are

small-scale workshops for digital fabrication and rapid-prototyping. Fab Lab that are inscribed in

the maker subculture and based upon open design principles and commons-based peer

production, first emerged in MIT’s Center for Bits and Atoms in 2001. Since then, many labs

have scaled geographically and the present study explores Fab Lab Amsterdam. Fabbing practices

are described in depth in three chapters: 1. Fabbing: Personalization and Networking – 2.

Materiality of the Maker Revolution – 3. Openness.

Keywords: Fab Lab, open design, personal fabrication, Rapid prototyping, CNC machine

tools, commons-based peer production, DIY, open source hardware, maker subculture, mass

customization, Pro-Ams

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Table of Contents

Introduction ............................................................................................................................................5 1 Fabbing: Personalization and Networking ......................................................................... 14 1.1 Atoms Are the New Bits .................................................................................................................... 18 1.2 Machine Tools that Make (almost) Anything ............................................................................ 22 1.3 Fabrication Laboratories: a growing trend ............................................................................... 26

Method: .................................................................................................................................................. 35 2 Materiality of the Maker Revolution ..................................................................................... 38 2.1 Digital Fabrication: a new trend in DIY culture ....................................................................... 38 2.2 The Maker Subculture ...................................................................................................................... 40 2.3 Making a Community ........................................................................................................................ 46 2.4 Making Architecture, Art and Fashion ........................................................................................ 50 2.5 From Do it Yourself (DIY) to Do it Together (DIT) .................................................................. 55

3 Openness ........................................................................................................................................ 59 3.1 Open Design ......................................................................................................................................... 60 3.2 Limits of Openness............................................................................................................................. 65 3.3 Distributed Education....................................................................................................................... 66

Discussion: Towards New Developments in Fab Labs? ......................................................... 70 Conclusion............................................................................................................................................. 72 Works Cited .......................................................................................................................................... 73 Appendix................................................................................................................................................ 77

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Introduction

Fab Labs or FABrication LABoratories, introduced as facilities where you can make

(almost) anything, are these new trendy places that get a lot of coverage on the net these days.

These laboratories are part of the very hip “do it yourself” (DIY), “do it together” (DIT) or “do it

with others” (DIWO) concepts, shared among a community of hobbyists called the makers. A

Fab Lab is a small-scale laboratory for digital fabrication and rapid-prototyping that houses

shared computer controlled machine tools and 3D printers. It was first launched in 2001 in MIT’s

Center for Bits and Atoms (CBA) to investigate the following suit of digital revolution, in

researching digital fabrication, with the goal to develop programmable molecular assemblers1.

Since then, a worldwide network of small-scale Fab Labs2 is growing rapidly both in remote areas

and in big cities of the planet.

The very concept of fabbing or digital fabrication implies the access to means of

production. A new class of geeks – the makers – is now developing around the notion of shaping

things, and in doing so “blurs the line between artist and industrial designer as well as code and

artefacts”3. These hackers engage with rapid prototyping, which is “a group of techniques used to

quickly fabricate a scale model of a physical or assembly three-dimensional computer aided

design (CAD) data”4. This method refers to 3D printing to create 3D objects or “physibles”5, a

new category of physical objects made from digital files. Another important technique to mention

is Computer Numerical Control (CNC) machine tools using computer-aided design (CAD) and

computer-aided manufacturing (CAM) programs. The development of Personal 3D printers and

Personal CNC, based on the analogy of Personal Computer, enable hobbyists to build their own

machine and have it at home or in their garage (homebrew fabrication). The era of the makers is

1 “Fab Lab FAQ”, Fab Central, http://fab.cba.mit.edu/about/faq/, Accessed June 17, 2012. 2 CBA assembled millions of dollars in machines for research in digital fabrication. A Fab Lab outside of MIT houses from 25 000 to 50 000 dollars in equipment. 3 Smith, G., "Means of Producation: Fabbing and Digital Art", Rhizome, March 4, 2009, http://rhizome.org/editorial/2009/mar/4/means-of-production-fabbing-and-digital-art/, Accessed July 28, 2012. 4 “Rapid prototyping”, Wikimedia Foundation, 2012, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rapid_prototyping, Accessed June 17, 2012. 5 “Physible” is a new content category –design or plan for 3D printers- introduced by the file-sharing site The Pirate Bay on January 13, 2012.

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then characterized by the emergence of a new class of tinkerers who enjoy engineering-oriented

activities, using state-of-the-art machine tools such as 3D printers and CNC tools, but also show a

vivid interest in arts and crafts. The process of fabbing an object emerged from the open source

movement notably with the development of open source hardware and the raise of commons-

based peer production. Linked to the counterculture and similar to hackerspaces, Fab Labs share

core capabilities – specific tools that enable people to realize and share their projects - and core

ideals such as open design, open access, mass customization, collaborative work, distributed

creativity and sustainability to name a few.

Fab Labs are inscribed in the maker subculture in constituting workshops for digital

fabrication and are part of the shared culture mindset; Fab Labs must be free and open to the

public, subscribe to the Fab Charter and has its text on display on site and web site. In return,

participants are expected to contribute to documentation and instruction. Such obligations comply

with commons-based peer production principles: learning from peers and sharing documentation.

Finally, it is highly important to contribute and cooperate to a global Fab Labs network. The

following definition summarises quite clearly the very idea of Fab Lab, a vision shared among

Fab users and enthusiasts:

[Fab Lab is] a worldwide hub of open design spaces and facilities where you can make (almost) anything. Fablabs connect digital craftsmanship with open source machines for digital fabrication. The underlying open design principles make it possible to easily share and reuse designs and blueprints over the Internet. This turns Fablabs into a networked structure for global collaborative design and production, sharing of knowledge, and economic growth6

However, each Fab Lab has its own identity depending on the category of users, location of

the lab itself and the type of institution or initiative that is behind the opening of the lab.

“Activities in fab labs range from technological empowerment to peer-to-peer project-based

technical training to local problem-solving to small-scale high-tech business incubation to grass-

roots research”7. The first Fab Labs were settled to help community life in rural areas, providing

6 Heer, de K., "Hypercraft Economy: bottoms-up for innovation!", Waag Society, August 3, 2012, http://waag.org/nl/blog/hypercraft-economy-bottoms-innovation, Accessed August 3, 2012. 7 “Fab Lab FAQ”, Fab Central, op.cit.

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inhabitants with tools in order to design things and technologies they need. The idea to open such

a facility that gives access to digital fabrication got very popular and many Fab Labs have opened

these past few years in urban areas, located in industrialized countries.

Fab Labs can be viewed as a disruptive technology, which aims at disturbing a traditional

market structure and changing manufacturing. Israeli designer Ronen Kadushin who developed

an open design method that enables users to download, copy and modify his products, argues in

this sense. According to Kadushin, “a revolution in product development, production and

distribution is imminent due to the Internet’s disruptive nature and the easy access to CNC

machines”8. Open design, based on open source software principles, is considered as an important

and recent development in creative industry. Accelerated by digitization and digital

communication, open design challenges not only the role of designer itself but also today’s

market-driven culture.

As a consequence of the above-described evolution, it has become impossible to make a

clear distinction between professional and amateur in the field of digital production (computer

programming, music, film, photography). So a new concept, the “professional amateurism” is

now currently used: Pro Ams are networked amateurs working with professional standards, who

now contribute to the production of tangible artefacts as well.

The American economist, Jeremy Rikfin, argues that the conjunction of the Internet

communication technology and renewable energies is giving rise to what he defines as a Third

Industrial Revolution. In the article, “The Third Industrial Revolution: How the Internet, Green

Electricity, and 3-D Printing are Ushering in a Sustainable Era of Distributed Capitalism”9, Rifkin

argues that not only individuals can produced their own virtual information and energy but also

be their own manufacturer, which represents a new economical shift in democratizing

8 Kadushin, R., “ Products in a Networked Culture”, CIS.doc #04. Open Design, Creative Industries Styria, Creative Industries Conventions 2011, http://www.cis.at/de/Schwerpunkte/cis-projekte/downloads/ci-convention-2011-2/view, Accessed June 17, 2012. 9 Rifkin, J, "The Third Industrial Revolution: How the Internet, Green Electricity, and 3-D Printing are Ushering in a Sustainable Era of Distributed Capitalism", The World Financial Review, http://www.worldfinancialreview.com/?p=1547, Accessed June 17, 2012.

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manufacturing10. Additive manufacturing or 3D printing is regarded as a revolutionary technology

that would greatly reduce the cost of production. Digital manufacturing combined with open

source principles is increasingly viewed as an attractive market and many companies such as

MakerBot Industries, Shapeways, Ponoko or eMachineShop are becoming competitive. Along

with start-ups, there are a significant number of platforms (Instructables) and wikis for sharing

DIY projects and design. According to Rifkin, 3D printers are the ultimate machines that can

make a difference in our current market structure. “In the new era, everyone can potentially be

their own manufacturer as well as their own internet site and power company. The process is

called 3-D printing”11. According to designer Paul Atkinson, post industrial manufacturing era is

characterized by the development of personal fabrication techniques and higher users

involvement in design production, which subsequently question their relationship with consumer

products12. In short, the industrial era was about designing products for the masses while in the

post-industrial digital era, the masses themselves design their products13.

In this almost sci-fi scenario describing the upcoming revolution of desktop

manufacturing, Fab Labs already give access, in a small-scale, to the means of production. The

present study examines how these facilities with nearly no market orientation offer an alternative

to our current system of production and distribution of goods. Even though Fab Labs are only

places for prototyping – not suited for production – these facilities challenge a closed and

proprietary market structure. Fab Labs propagate the idea of empowering individuals, which is

something fundamental among hackers spurred on by libertarian ideals. Fab community is

pleading for bottom-up innovation and for creating new systems of trust based on users

innovators: “We need people who think in a cross-disciplinary manner, act like a network, and

embrace technologies and creative forms of digital creation and expression”14. Ultimately, the

question of scalability or the organizational requirements to assist with the perpetuation of socio-

technological change is worth to investigate in Fab Lab ecology. How are Fab Labs and the 10 Ibidem. 11 Ibidem. 12 Atkinson, P., Unver, E., Marshall, J., and Dean, L.T., "Post Industrial Manufacturing Systems: the undisciplined nature of generative design", Undisciplined! Design Research Society Conference 2008, Sheffield Hallam University, Sheffield, UK, 16-19 July 2008, p. 16. 13 Van Abel, B., Evers, L., Klaassen, R., Troxler, P., Open Design Now - Why design cannot remain exclusive, Creative Commons Netherlands; Premsela, Dutch Platform for Design and Fashion; Waag Society, 2011, p. 13. 14 Heer, de K., op.cit.

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makers’ community using multiple strategies outside a closed and proprietary market structure to

appropriate the means of production and shaping things?

In her Master thesis Digital Tools, Distributed Making and Design (2009), Dianne Pfeiffer

who examines the changes operated in design with digital fabrication and distributed and open

innovation, addresses the question of scalability and users innovation:

It would be interesting to explore if whether manufacturing on a different scale, e.g. numerous smaller manufacturing facilities served be the networked communication of digital information for digital fabrication tools, might tip the economy of manufacture further in favor of user innovators as viable producers15 Fabbing initiatives interrogate new ways of creating objects conjoining old and new

methods and ultimately to rekindle craft traditions. According to Atkinson, research projects such

as Fab Labs explore the social impact of digital fabrication16. Therefore, Fab Labs are interesting

environments to study the very concept of personal fabrication and its implications.

This thesis, built on ethnography in Fab Lab Amsterdam, which is located in the heart of

the metropolis, investigates the notion of scalability in a small workshop for advanced

manufacturing. The participant ethnographic analysis explores Fab Lab Amsterdam environment

and its community in reporting the everyday praxis of fabrication in the lab. Our conclusions are

based on two weeks fieldwork. Additionally, this report is completed with the description of

projects available on their website, the description of some events such as the Fab Academy Final

Projects Presentation and other events held by Waag Society, the institute for art, science &

technology, which founded Fab Lab Amsterdam in 2007.

This thesis also analyses important and pioneering studies dedicated to the Fab Labs

phenomenon, such as MIT professor Neil Gershenfeld’s Fab: The Coming Revolution on Your

Desktop – From Personal Computers to Personal Fabrication (2005) and Bas Van Abel, Lucas

15 Pfeiffer, D., Digital Tools, Distributed Making & Design. Thesis submitted to the faculty of the Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University in partial fulfillment of the requirements for Master of Science in Architecture. Blacksburg, VA: Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University, 2009. 16 Atkinson, P., Unver, E., Marshall, J., and Dean, L.T, op.cit, p. 16.

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Evers, Roel Klaasen and Peter Troxler’s Open Design Now – Why Design Cannot Remain

Exclusive (2011). Fab tells the stories of pioneering personal fabrication in small-scale

laboratories that Gershenfeld called Fab Labs, and gives a detailed description of industrial tools

for production used in digital fabrication. In order to illustrate personal fabrication, Gershenfeld

created his own “hello world” objects with the vast range of machine tools located in CBA. Open

Design Now published in 2011 by Creative Commons Netherlands - Premsela, Dutch Platform

for Design and Fashion - and Waag Society, is a collaborative work that examines in depth the

notion of openness related to design and discusses issues of copyrights, authorships, and

sustainability. It also explores topics such as materiality, peer production, users innovation,

education and politics. In feature articles and cases studies17, assembled in the very first

publication on open design, a team of authors explain the drive behind open design and

endeavours to foresee where the movement is going. Open Design Now is licensed under the

Creative Commons.

Another important study concerning Fab Labs is the work of independent researcher Peter

Troxler, who conducted an investigation on the Fab Lab community to examine “how in

commons-based peer-production of physical goods a hybrid, private-collective innovation

ecology is developing”18. In focusing on innovation, Troxler surveyed Fab Lab business models,

interviewed Fab Lab managers and assistants about the pain and pride of their Fab Lab and

finally selected a couple of Fab Labs projects. He addresses the issue of the development of open

source business models for non-software products. To answer this question, Troxler chose the

Fab Lab community for theoretical and practical reasons:

I believe that the Fab Lab network is structurally more developed and better documented than the other communities, and the ambition of Fab Lab is clearly ‘hybrid’ as stated in the Fab Lab charter. Practically, this was the community to which I had the best access, I was involved in setting up a Fab Lab in Switzerland and had looked at the Fab Lab business earlier19

17 Van Abel, B., Evers, L., Klaassen, R., Troxler, P, op.cit, p. 13. 18 Toxler, P., “Commons–based peer–production of physical goods. Is there room for a hybrid innovation ecology?” presentation at the Third Free Culture Research conference (Berlin, 8–9 October 2010), at http://wikis.fu-berlin.de/download/attachments/59080767/Troxler-Paper.pdf, Accessed June 17, 2012. 19 Ibidem.

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Troxler demonstrates that even though Fab Labs have not yet developed business models

borrowed from open source software, they are driven by the desire to establish hybrid innovation

ecology20. In a feature article with Patricia Wolf, “Bending the Rules: The Fab Lab Innovation

Ecology”, Troxler investigates open source innovation in examining intellectual property and

licensing in the context of low-cost fabrication and commons-based peer production. Troxler’s

study is completed with an investigation into the business models of selected Fab Labs21.

According to Troxler, “literature is mainly focusing on Fab Lab users, rather than the labs and

their innovation ecology”22. Finally, his paper proposes a model, Fab Lab innovation ecology,

which constitutes a basis for our analysis of Fab Lab Amsterdam.

Regarding open source innovation beyond software research, Balka, K, Raasch, C, Herstatt

launched the project open-innovation-projects.org to collect through their site examples of open

source hardware projects. Based on this directory, they built a quantitative study on open design

(OD) projects (tangible goods) with the aim to compare it to open source software (OSS). They

find strong similarities between OD and OSS even though the degree of openness is higher in

software development (more transparent, accessible and replicable than hardware)23.

Massimo Menichinelli’s thesis, Reti Collaborative. Il design per una auto-organizzazione

Open Peer –to – Peer (Collaborative Networks. Design for an Open Peer-to-Peer self-

organization), is also worth mentioning. Menichelli investigated, from March 2005 to April

2006, design and community-based organizational forms. This research was conducted at the

very beginning of Web 2.0. Menichinelli’s interest focused on the relationship between design

and local dimension24. In other words, local dimension are bottom-up organizations, opposed to

20 Ibidem. 21 Toxler, P., Wolf, P., "Bending the Rules: The Fab Lab Innovation Ecology" presented at the 11th International CINet Conference (September 2010), Zurich, http://square-1.eu/bending-the-rules-the-fab-lab-innovation-ecology, Accessed June 17, 2012. 22 Ibidem. 23 Balka, K, Raasch, C, Herstatt, C, 'Open source beyond software: An empirical investigation of the open design phenomenon'. Paper presented at the R&D Management Conference 2009, Feldafing near Munich, Germany, 14-16 October 2009, http://open-innovation-projects.org/my-research, Accessed June 17, 2012. 24 Menichinelli, M., Collaborative Networks. Design for an Open Peer-to-Peer Self-Organization, Master Degree Thesis, Politecnico di Milano – Facoltà del Design tutor Ezio Manzini, 2004/2005, openp2pdesign.org, http://www.openp2pdesign.org/projects/past-projects/thesis-

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traditional organizations (top-down), built on open source, free software and P2P principles.

Menichinelli also launched a community-centered design blog, openp2pdesign.org, for studying

open source design and developing metadesign projects25.

Pfeiffer’s thesis is concentrates on design and describes how design is evolving with social-

technological changes, notably trends in making and digital fabrication. Pfeiffer points the lack of

literature on digital fabrication related to design (compared to architecture) and advocates for the

need of a better discourse. Pfeiffer includes examples of digital fabrication on the periphery of

design and her own experiments and projects.

A recent publication on Fab Labs community, Fab Labs. Tour d'horizon, offers an analysis

of different Fab Labs visited in The Netherlands, Spain and the West Coast of the United States

during 201126. This fieldwork, conducted in collaboration with students from Centrale Paris,

presents a typology of Fab Labs and characteristics of fabbing principles. Further research (travel

diaries and fact sheets) are available in the Fing website (Fondation Internet Nouvelle

Génération).

This study is divided into three chapters: “Fabbing: Personalization and Networking” –

“Materiality of the Maker Subcutlure” – “Openness”. The first chapter, “Fabbing: Personalization

and Networking” first examines individualised production made possible with digital fabrication

and personal fabrication techniques. How Rapid Prototyping and CNC machine tools enable

users to fabricate their own things. “Fabbing” details the historical narrative of the emergence of

Fab Labs and their network. From a laboratory equipped with industrial machine tools in MIT to

the establishment of pilot Fab Labs in rural India, Costa Rica, northern Norway, inner-city

Boston and Ghana. The next chapter – “Materiality of the Maker Subculture” – looks at the

community of makers and DIY activities in the creation of engineering-oriented objects. We see

how Pro-Ams appropriate not only the means of production but also manufacturing knowledge.

collaborative-networks-1-1/, Accessed June 17, 2012. 25 “Metadesign for Open Systems, Processes, Projects. Studying and enabling Design for Open, Collaborative and Complex systems since 2005, openp2pdesign.org, http://www.openp2pdesign.org/, Accessed June 17, 2012. 26 Eychenne, F., Fab Labs. Tour d'horizon, Fing.org, http://fing.org/?Tour-d-horizon-des-Fab-Labs,866&lang=fr, Accessed June 17, 2012.

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The final chapter, “Openness”, addresses the question of openness and discusses it in relation to

design. Open design is the philosophy behind fabbing practices. We conclude the third chapter on

distributed education with a description of the Fab Academy.

At the end of this paper, appendixes are divided into three categories: Space – Projects –

Events. It is collection of pictures presenting Fab Lab Amsterdam (Space), Fab practice (Projects)

and Fab community (Events).

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1 Fabbing: Personalization and Networking

Fab Lab Amsterdam is located in the heart of the city on the first floor of a 15th century

building. Founded in 2007, this fabrication laboratory is hosted by Waag Society – a non-profit

institute for art, science & technology. Its 80 m2 is enough to house the lab itself with a small

milling machine (fig.13), 3D printer (fig.2, 3, 8, 9, 18, 19), vinyl cutter (fig.6) and embroidery

machine (fig.5) plus electronic tools (fig.14) and a big screen for video conferencing. There are

couple of big tables to work on it. Another small room is linked up to the main lab where we find

a big milling machine (ShopBot) (fig.12) and a laser cutter, which are the biggest tools. Most of

Fab Labs houses a ShopBot - a type of big milling machine – located in a single room for safety

matters. It produces a lot of wood shaving and a vacuum has to be connected to the machine. The

laser cutter is also located in this small part where we find computers connected to it and to the

ShopBot as well. A Laser Cutting Materials/Settings Reference Guide hangs on the wall and has

been made with the laser cutter. The idea was to use all the different types of materials that can be

cut and/or engraved on the laser cutter. One can read on the inscription:

Materials that CANNOT be cut or engraved: Steel and non-ferro materials such as aluminium,

brass, copper and PVC

In the main lab, on the wall next to the screen, there are parts of the Low Cost Prosthesis

project (fig.4) – an open source lower leg prosthetic with production costs below $50 – with a

detailed explanation (stickers made with the vinyl cutter) just below. We also read that is

collaboration between Waag Society and House of Natural Fiber (HONF), which is a new media

art laboratory in Yogyakarta, Indonesia. Other objects found in the room remind past projects

such as a paper bra, a paper dress (fig.17) and a swimsuit (fig.7) put on a model next to the

embroidery machine. On another wall, there are many tools (screwdrivers, hammers) hanging.

This storage board was created in Fab Lab. The design of working tools was done in Adobe

Illustrator with the “tracing” option and then printed with the vinyl cutter. The image had to

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resemble as much as possible to the actual tools therefore you can place all of them to the right

place.

An Ultimaker 3D printer is placed on a table with a stock of three or four different colours

of plastic roll. The Ultimaker is a small and low cost DIY 3D printer using FFF technology

(Fused Filament Fabrication) with thermoplastic extrusion. There is a table with a lot of

electronic tools and a small milling machine. Finally, we find couple of books with titles like:

Digitallink Digital Design and Advertising, Analogue Interfacing to Embedded Microprocessors,

Linux Cookbook Practical Advice for Linux Users and System Administrator, How to Construct

Rietveld Furniture, Materials for Inspirational Design or Model Making. On the big screen we

can observe what is going on in other Fab Labs worldwide since they also take part to this

videoconferencing system. There is a small kitchen too where we always find a lot of coffee and

tea available. There is a table soccer (Fab Foos) built by Alex Schaub (Fab Lab Manager) whose

players are Michelangelo’s David character (fig.11). It is an open source table soccer game with

two webcams, audio response, and electronic counter system. “The goal was to built the entire

table using the machines of the Fablab”27, writes Alex on Fab Lab projects page.

People are working in the lab while listening to music. There is a very relax and cool

atmosphere that reigns in the place. The other part or the non-laboratory part is called the Zuidlab

where either Waag Society employees are working or where conferences and events are held and

sometimes Fab Academy class too. We find a table and chairs (fig.10) designed by Jens Dyvik

who is a designer using an open and sharing design approach. On the second floor, there is the

Theatrum Anatomicum where the Waag organizes events and the Fab Academy Final Projects

Presentation takes place.

Many components have been made in the lab such as shelving for the electronics corner or

portraits of interns on the wall, called the wall of flame (fig.20): their faces are engraved on wood

using the laser engraving technique. A vinyl cutter (fig.6) is on a chest of drawers, which is an

example of press-fit construction. This stand with parts connected to each other by press fit only

27 Schaub, A., “Fab Foos”, Fablab projects, February 25, 2011, http://fablab.waag.org/project/fab-foos, Accessed July 28, 2012.

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was built for the CAMM 1 GX-24 Vinyl Cutter with the idea to use no glue or nails. It is

decorated with vinyl patterns. One of the main principles of fabbing ecology is to replace over

time the components of the labs with new components made in the labs and eventually makes Fab

Labs totally self-reproducing. One important feature that was also made in the lab is the Fab

Charter (fig.1) engraved in a wooden door with the ShopBot. According to Fab Lab policy, the

Charter text has to be displayed somewhere in the lab and on the website. It is a general set of

guidelines that all Fab Labs worldwide must share:

Mission: fab labs are a global network of local labs, enabling invention by providing access for individuals to tools for digital fabrication. Access: you can use the fab lab to make almost anything (that doesn’t hurt anyone); you must learn to do it yourself, and you must share use of the lab with other uses and users. Education: training in the fab lab is based on doing projects and learning from peers; you’re expected to contribute to documentation and instruction. Responsibility: you’re responsible for: Safety: knowing how to work without hurting people or machines Cleaning up: leaving the lab cleaner than you found it Operations: assisting with maintaining, repairing, and reporting on tools, supplies, and incidents

Secrecy: designs and processes developed in fab labs must remain available for individuals use although intellectual property can be protected however you choose

Business: commercial activities can be incubated in fab labs but they must not conflict with open access, they should grow beyond rather than within the lab, and they are expected to benefit the inventors, labs, and networks that contribute to their success.

Drafted August 30, 200728

Fab Lab Amsterdam has open days (open lab days) every Tuesday and Thursday. On

these days, participants can use for free the equipment that they have previously booked online.

They must documents their work and share their knowledge. For commercial use, there is a

charge per hour to use exclusively equipment and space during office hours (Monday,

Wednesday and Friday). For individuals, the charge is € 75 per hour (and € 50 for non-profit 28 “The Fab Charter”, http://fab.cba.mit.edu/about/charter/, Accessed June 17, 2012.

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project) and if groups want to hire the lab for a (half) day the cost is from € 200 to € 140029.

In the description of Fab Lab Amsterdam, we can first highlight the interest of participants

in Arts and Crafts since it is a top priority to make in DIY manner components of the lab in the

lab itself. From a Fab perspective, there is a demand in a “renewed understanding for

craftsmanship in relation to the design and production principles of the 21st Century”30. Arts and

Crafts movement was a direct reaction against the industrial world of the late 19th Century31 and

advocated to a return to personalized creation – craft. We observe in the lab a juxtaposition of old

and new techniques – state-of-the-art manufacturing tools conjoining with an array of traditional

tools – and the desire to make unique objects. Personalization and individualization in

establishing connection between the people and objects are typical elements in Fab Lab

environment. Secondly, we also see the importance to build and be part of a global network,

which is the reason for installing teleconferencing system. Finally, the objects found in the lab are

examples of open source design. Their design are freely made available online and can be

replicate anytime. Openness or open philosophy is another trend that defines Fab ecology.

Personal fabrication is developed in the first chapter, “Fabbing: Personalization and

Networking ”, which details the historical narrative of fabbing initiatives and digital fabrication

through the emergence of the network of field Fab Labs.

29 “Equipment costs”, Fab Lab Amsterdam, http://fablab.waag.org/costs, Accessed June 17, 2012. 30 Heer, de K., op.cit. 31 Pfeiffer, D., op.cit, p. 28.

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1.1 Atoms Are the New Bits32

The success of desktop manufacturing started with the MIT course entitled “How to Make

(Almost) Anything”, a collaboration between the Centre for Bits and Atoms (CBA) and

Grassroots Invention Group. The professor and head of CBA, Neil Gershenfeld initiated this class

with the idea to bring closer computer science and physical science33. In 2001, the famous MIT

Media Lab created Center for Bits and Atoms (financed by The National Science Foundation

(NSF)), which is a cross-disciplinary center, “to explore how the content of information relates to

its physical representation, from atomic nuclei to global networks”34. The access to machine tools

(prototyping tools) enables individuals to process (assemble) atoms - as they already do with bits

- to shape (almost) anything, writes Gershenfeld in his book Fab – The Coming Revolution on

your Desktop:

At the intersection of physical science and computer science, programs can process atoms as well as bits, digitizing fabrication in the same way that communications and computations were earlier digitized35

This revolution in manufacturing, also described as the Next Industrial Revolution36, is

personal, which means that one can manufacture a product using a personal computer and a

printer to produce three-dimensional solid objects37. Gershenfeld continues to work on the

development of a theory on personal fabrication, whose first elements were already exposed in

his book When Things Start to Think, published in 1999. Nowadays manufacturing machines can

be compared to the first generation of computers; large and housed in specialized rooms, used by

skilled operators for the industry, interesting a limited audience38. Over time, computer became

smaller (with the creation of microprocessors), cheaper and more personal. Once individuals were 32 Anderson; C., "In the Next Industrial Revolution. Atoms Are the New Bits" Wired, Feb. 2010, http://www.wired.com/magazine/2010/01/ff_newrevolution/all/1 , Accessed June 15, 2012. 33 Gershenfeld, N., Fab - The Coming Revolution on your Desktop - from Personal Computers to Personal Fabrication, Basic Books, New York, 2005. 34 “Media Lab creates Center for Bits and Atoms with NSF grant”, MIT News, November 28, 2001, http://web.mit.edu/newsoffice/2001/bits-1128.html, Accessed June 15, 2012. 35 Gershenfeld, N., (2005), op. cit 36 Anderson; C., op.cit. 37 Morris, J., "Personal Fabrication and the Future of Industrial Design, Industrial Design Sandbox, blogpost, http://idsandbox.blogspot.nl/2007/05/personal-fabrication-and-future-of.html, Accessed June 15, 2012. 38 Gershenfeld, N., When Things Start to Think, Hodder & Stoughton, 1999.

19

able to write programs by themselves, companies could no longer dictate the parameters of

hardware and software39. Today, the objective is to do the same with big machines that shape the

material products that constitute our physical environment:

Big companies use big machines to make things we may not really want. Personal computing has not gone far enough: it lets us shape our digital environment, but not our physical environment. By giving computers the means to manipulate atoms as easily as they manipulate bits, we can bring the same kind of personalization to the rest of our lives40.

In the 1990s, Gershenfeld went on a journey to acquire a milling machine with motors, a

keyboard and one screen: something between a manual one and an industrial CN industrial

milling machine41. This is how he started to promote the access to user-friendly machine tools

(not mainframes-sized devices) that constitute the main ingredients of Fab Labs. These

technologies usually found in the industries become accessible –first via Fab Labs – to the masses

in the form of personal fabricators. Later on, they would become one (the Ultimate Personal

Fabricator), similar to the Star Treck replicator that would copy all the molecules of any given

object, and enable users to play with the physical world of atoms on their desktop:

This is the dream of the personal fabricator, the PF, the missing mate to the PC. It would be the one machine that could make all your others, a practical embodiment of the perennial science-fiction staple of a universal matter output device42.

Materiality here is perceived as the next step to achieve in our digital revolution. In Shaping

Things, the American science fiction author, Bruce Sterling explores our environment of tangible

things and the relation between objects and people. According to Sterling, we have moved from

Artefacts (object made by hand) first to an infrastructure of Machines in which people are

customers and secondly to an era of commercially distributed objects defined as Products. In an

infrastructure of Products, people are consumers. We are currently living in a Gizmo era: “highly

unstable, user-alterable, baroquely multi featured objects, commonly programmable, with a brief

39 Ibidem. 40 Ibidem. 41 Gershenfeld explains in When the Things Start to Think the poor state of remaining machine shops at MIT in the early 1990s. Students have embraced the digital revolution and machines tools were left neglected. 42 Gershenfeld, N., (1999), op. cit.

20

lifespan”43. A new kind of objects, Spimes, is coming, which is defined by Sterling as:

manufactured objects whose informational support is so overwhelmingly extensive and rich that they are regarded as material instantiations of an immaterial system. Spimes begin and end as data. They are designed on screens, fabricated by digital means, and precisely tracked through space and time throughout their earthly sojourn. Spimes are sustainable, enhanceable, uniquely identifiable, and made of substances that can and will be folded back into the production stream of future Spimes44

This term coined by Sterling is the result of technosocial transformation we are now

experiencing and which is the theme of this thesis. Emerging technologies and digital fabrication

combined with identification and location technologies are responsible for shaping a new kind of

objects that “become ‘smart parts of an interconnected web of things, similar to the emergence of

the Internet”45.

On a cultural point of view, the need to assemble atoms through personal fabrication

techniques is a response to the divide existing between our digital world and our physical world.

Hardware hacking and physical computing are practices undertook to crack computer as a

material black box46. This interest in materiality is a reaction to information hiding, which is a

consequence of the development of WYSIWYG interfaces. What You See Is What You Get

(WYSIWYG) interfaces enable user to “direct manipulation”47 in giving more importance to the

visual rather to the content. In this sense, Wendy Hui Kyong Chun argues that “the computer –

that most nonvisual and nontransparent device – has paradoxically fostered ‘visual culture’ and

‘transparency’”48. According to Chun, ideology lies where the operating system gives the illusion

of rendering the invisible visible. The invention of already made software means that we do not

know anything about the machine itself. What we see and know is only the interfaces. According

to Alexander Galloway, in the context of ubiquitous computing we came to prefer the image

rather than the reality considered being too “immaterial” or “untouchable” in the name of

43 Sterling, B., Shaping Things, The MIT Press Cambridge, Massachusetts, London, England, 2005, p. 11. 44 Ibidem, p. 11. 45 Stikker, M., “Introduction”, Van Abel, B., Evers, L., Klaassen, R., Troxler, P., op.cit, p. 16. 46 Whitelaw, M., 'Transduction, Transmateriality and ExpandedComputing', (the teeming void) [blog post] (May 03, 2009): http://teemingvoid.blogspot.com/2009/01/transduction-transmateriality-and.html, Accessed June 17, 2012. 47 Chun, W., ‘On software, or the persistence of visual knowledge’ in Grey Room 18, 2004, pp. 26-51. 48 Ibidem, p. 18, 2004, p. 43.

21

easiness: “this is a large trend in software design to hide numerical encoding of data behind more

privileged ‘semantic’ formats such as natural language or graphics”49.

The anthropologist, researcher in artificial culture and computer collector Nicholas Gessler

has a collection of “Things That Think”50, which is composed of computational devices including

a nineteenth-century Jacquard loom, Danny Hillis’s Connection Machine, punch cards used for

weaving patterns in fabric, cryptographic devices and many other apparatuses that date back from

the early history of computing. In the context of ever-increasing disappearance of materiality

regarding information technologies, Gessler’s media archiving of tangible objects can be seen as

a reaction to this phenomenon. “Computation is increasingly hidden on microchips and sealed in

plastic beyond the sizzling screens of our laptops”51.

In How We Became Posthuman, Katherine Hayles argues that in a posthuman view,

information is privileged over materiality. In cybernetic theories, the body is solely viewed as

container for information. According to Hayles, these principles led to the idea of information

separated from the material. “The posthuman view privileges informational pattern over material

instantiation, (…) there are no essential differences or absolute demarcation between bodily

existence and computer simulation, cybernetic mechanism and biological organism, robot

teleology and human goals”52.

New generations of hackers engage with materiality and their hacking practices are pursued

in places like hackerspaces or “open community laboratories”; a term coined by Harvard

professor Yochai Benkler. In the following quote, we understand that there is a recent demand to

bring together digital and physical realms in hacking practices:

49 Galloway, A., “Language wants to be overlooked: On software and ideology” in Journal of visual culture. 50 Gessler borrowed the expression “Things That Think” from MIT program research- Things That Think - on the future of digitally augmented objects and envirnments. 51 Wertheim, M., "Things-that-Think: An Interview with Nocholas Gessler".Cabinet - A Quaterly of Art and Culture, Issue 21, Spring 2006, pp. 21-26, p. 21. 52 Hayles, K., How We Became Posthuman: Virtual Bodies in Cybernetics, Literature and Informatics, Chicago, University of Chicago Press, 1999, pp, 2-3.

22

Previous generations of hackers tended to be enthralled by virtual reality and flows of information. This was often felt as a longing to escape the shortcomings of corporeal and material existence. In contrast, to the new generations of hackers, bodily fluids and rusty scrapyards are their playgrounds of choice. All along, this renewed appetite for the world is pursued while honouring the ideas and methods of free software development and hacking53

The divide between the digital world and the analogue world is now challenged by a series

of DIY activities that aim to the persistence of materiality such as hacking, physical computing,

and media archaeology. The fabrication movement is intensifying the relation of computing and

physical media towards production. Ultimately, “fabbing shows how material matters”54. Personal

fabrication is then introduced as the possibility to shape our physical environment as we already

do with our digital environment. At the end, the reunion of computing and materiality could be

carry out by personal fabrication:

Personal computing has not gone far enough: it lets us shape our digital environment, but not our physical environment. By giving computer the means to manipulate atoms as easily as they manipulate bits, we can bring the same kind of personalization to the rest of our lives55.

1.2 Machine Tools that Make (almost) Anything

Digital fabrication, the use of computer-controlled tools in the making of physical objects,

is usually based on two methods: solid free-form fabrication and CNC (computer numerically

controlled machining tools)56. Most of the following machines are usually found in Fab Labs.

Computer-controlled cutting tools (CNC), introduced as subtractive cutting machines in

Fab - The Coming Revolution on your Desktop, are vinyl cutters, laser cutters and CNC milling

machines. Vinyl cutters are sign cutters functioning with vinyl for graphics such as stickers and

can also run with copper foil (e.g. making printed circuit board, antennas), paper and other

53 Delfanti, A., and Söderberg, J., "Editorial Notes", Journal of Peer Production - New Perspectives on the Implications of Peer Production for Social Change, http://peerproduction.net/issues/issue-2/editorial-notes/, Accessed July 17, 2012. 54 Whitelaw,M., op.cit. 55 Ibidem. 56 Pfeiffer, D, op.cit, pp. 5-6.

23

materials. The laser cutter is an amplifier for light57, used for cutting non-metallic sheet material

such as acrylic and soft materials. This tool can serve in the elaboration of Press-fit construction

kit. Press-fit construction is a way of building object without the use of adhesives or fasteners58.

Other state-of-the-art tools such as the waterjet cutter can cut almost any kind of material (glass,

metal, stone). The CNC mills rotate a cutting tool on three axes and can contour three-

dimensional shapes59. There is the small-scale one, small milling machine, which is used for 3D

milling and 3D scanning as well as for circuit board milling. The big CNC mill makes big things

(furniture, large carvings) on a big working area.

Along with cutting tools, we have additive-fabrication technologies or solid-free

fabrication60, which is a way of building things without waste (unlike subtractive cutting tools)61.

Rapid prototyping and manufacturing (RP&M) tools such as 3D printers have gained a lot of

popularity these past few years, mainly: firstly, they can create three-dimensional objects by

laying down successive layers of material, which is a very attractive method. Secondly, a large

and active open-source community has been promoting 3D printers by making them more

accessible to individuals. They are cheaper, smaller and most importantly opened (ReRap,

MakerBot, Ultimaker, Fab@Home). Nonetheless, these printers should not be considered as rapid

prototyping, writes Gershenfeld, since it takes time to print something (from hours to days)62.

According to him, another approach - equality fabrication - is much more interesting. Techniques

such as vacuum forming or blow moulding simply give material a new shape. Another limitation

to 3D printing lays in the difficulty to build complete working systems63. The next idea would be

to use “an ink-jet printer head to squirt droplets of a liquid binder onto a fine powder”64

Gershenfeld adds: “powders and plastic that conduct electricity can be used to deposit logic

57 Gershenfeld, N (2005), op.cit. 58 Wallace, S., "Letters from the Fab Academy, Part 1", Makezine.com (Make Magazine), January 14, 2010, http://blog.makezine.com/2010/01/14/letters-from-the-fab-academy-part-1/, Accessed June 17, 2012. 59 Gershenfeld, N (2005), op.cit 60 Pfeiffer, D., op. cit, p. 6 61 Gershenfeld, N., (2005), op. cit 62 Ibidem, 63 Ibidem. 64 Ibidem

24

circuits, motors can be made with magnetic materials, combinations of chemicals can store

energy, and so forth”65.

For the event, “World Science Festival’s Innovation Square” that was held in Brooklyn in

June 2012, Neil Gershenfeld gave a speech with the title “What’s Wrong with DIY”66 during

which he directed critiques towards the Maker Movement and its focus on 3D printing (although

he had himself been a pioneer in DIY culture):

The maker movement is pioneering a revolution in personal fabrication, but is also propagating a variety of technical misconceptions. The pioneer of 3D printing takes a step back to survey what some of these are, and discusses viable approaches to truly linking informal and formal learning67

3D printers are just machines among the long line of computer-controlled tools that are not

anymore revolutionary, says Gershenfeld. According to him, the real revolution would “be

putting the information into the material itself”68. The next phase of the digital revolution will

occur into materials. Printing three-dimensional objects is “a slow process, and the material

properties aren’t great. And while 3D printing is additive versus subtractive, the materials are still

analogue: instead of cutting material, you squirt material. The much bigger transition is from

analogue to digital in materials. That’s the real revolution coming”69. This revolution represents

one of the four stages in the transition to programmable materials, says the physicist70. The first

stage occurred in the 1950s when MIT connected the first computer to a milling machine (the

creation of Computer-controlled machines). The next phase is characterized with machines that

can make other machines71. The third one (still to come) is described as the move from analogue

to digital materials. Finally, the ultimate goal is the internal programming of materials: this will

enable mankind to get rid of machines.

65 Ibidem 66 “Mentoring Makers: What’s Wrong with DIY”, World Science Festival, http://worldsciencefestival.com/events/mentoring_makers, Accessed June 19, 2012. 67 Ibidem 68 Hsu, J., "Why A DIY Pioneer Dislikes 3D Printing" in Live Science, 05 June 2012, http://www.livescience.com/20762-diy-pioneer-3d-printing.html, Accessed June 17, 2012. 69 Wolfe, J., Interview with Neil Gershenfeld, "The Fab-ulous Tech in Our Furture", MONEYSHOW.com, November 11, 2011, http://www.moneyshow.com/investing/article/1/GURU-25342/The-Fab-ulous-Tech-in-Our-Future/, Accessed June 17, 2012. 70 Ibidem 71“Machines that make machines – toolheads – control – people” The Center for Bits and Atoms, http://mtm.cba.mit.edu/ , Accessed June 17, 2012.

25

On the FabWiki72, we find the Equipment Portal73 divided into two sections: “Core

Equipment” and “also found in some labs”. Core subtractive machining is composed of Laser

Cutter, CNC Large Scale Wood Router or Soft Materials Mill, Vinyl/Sign Cutter, Precision

Desktop Milling Machine. Although MIT Fab Lab page does not mention 3D printers among the

list of core capabilities, FabWiki adds them in their list. DesktopFab (3D Printing Company) is

mentioned as the latest example of 3D printer. However, it is also mentioned that the Ultimaker,

an open source 3D printer, replaces now the DesktopFab. ReRap is another open source type of

printer that can be found in Fab Labs. Embroidery machines are not part of the official list but

they are many times found in the labs. Then electronics workspace must be present as well.

Finally, Communications/Network system (connection with Fab Lab Video Conference Server,

“the Polycom” or “mcu.cba.mit.edu”) is the last requirement in equipment. There is no indication

for an alternative network system besides the MIT one.

In Fab Labs, these machine tools (equipment) are devices for making artefacts. Fab

practices are defined by the use of this equipment and specific methods - P2P and open design

principles - in the making of tangible things. Here, ethnographic approach enables to make sense

of these practices in describing the architecture and tools of the laboratory. In this sense, the field

of ethnography of science developed in the mid 1970s notably with Bruno Latour and Steve

Woolgard’s Laboratory Life (1979) changed the way we perceive scientific practices.

Ethnographic studies of the scientific laboratory explore scientist’s environment, their culture,

beliefs and practices74. In their ethnography, Latour and Woolgard concentrated on the physical

components of laboratories such as instruments, architectures and texts. They argue that in

constructing scientific knowledge, scientists utilize “inscription devices” to transfer material into

other forms (texts) – “the materiality of the process gets deleted”75. In Fab Labs, CNC machines

and 3D printers produce material from digital model. Contrary to scientific laboratory, materiality

is valued in Fab environment. To the question “How is scientific knowledge produced?” Latour

72 FabWiki is a wiki for and by the whole fab community. Hosted by NMÍ Kvikan, http://wiki.fablab.is/wiki/Main_Page, Accessed June 17, 2012. 73 “Portal Equipment”, FabWiki, http://wiki.fablab.is/wiki/Portal:Equiment, Accessed June 17, 2012. 74 Law, J., After Method: Mess in Social Science Research, International Library of Sociology, Routledge, London, 2004, p. 19. 75 Ibidem, p. 20.

26

and Woolgard argue that reality is being constructed into scientific practices76. In the same line,

we could state that Fab knowledge is constructed into Fab practices. The specificity of the

environment itself, methods being used and further the whole process being described,

documented and shared online are Fab practices.

1.3 Fabrication Laboratories: a growing trend

Gershenfeld pioneered a special laboratory that he named Fab Lab (FABrication

LABoratory), based on the analogy between mainframes and PCs: minicomputers were the

intermediate step and so will be a Fab Lab on the road to personal fabricators77. At the very

beginning of the class “How to Make (Almost) Anything”, this MIT professor was astonished

with the vivid interest of many students across the campus to attend this course. Hundreds of

students (engineers, artists and architect) and many with little technical skills showed up to make

their own things. The scientist realized how engineering combined with arts and crafts could

attract so many people that want to make things just for the fun. The result was quite unique and

unexpected: a biologist built an alarm clock that is a real challenge to turn off, a student made a

computer interface for parrots, an artist created a portable personal space for screaming (the

Screambody), a professor in architecture designed a Defensive Dress, a student “printed” a bike

with the use of the waterjet and even children designed their own toys78. These creations were

possible to realize with the help of diverse and state-of-the-art machine tools located in the fab

class at MIT. The trouble was that, albeit this revolution was meant to be personal, not anyone

could has the chance to go to MIT. Therefore, the next step was to provide mass access to these

technologies.

76 Ibidem, p. 21. 77 Gershenfeld, N., (2005), op.cit. 78 For a complete description of these works, see Gershenfeld, N., (2005), op.cit.

27

In 2002, the first Fab Labs were set up in rural India, Costa Rica, northern Norway, inner-

city Boston and Ghana. They are part of the project of an international network of small-scale

labs, launched by the CBA to explore the implications and applications of personal fabrication79.

Instead of waiting for the personal fabricator, the idea was to investigate personal

fabrication with the establishment of many Fab Labs around the world. These labs were settled to

remote or local areas because one of the main goals of this program was to give local and small

communities access to tools that would enable them to define and tackle their own problems:

“instead of giving solutions, create environment so that people can find out their own

solutions”80.

The first Fab Lab outside MIT campus was set up in Boston in the South End Technology

Center at Tent City (SETC), which was initially a community center engaged in democratizing

new technologies and providing free or low-cost computer training. Their core idea is to “help

residents move from being consumers of information to producers and creators of knowledge”81.

Commons-based peer production is put forward as the key in desktop manufacturing innovation.

Therefore, SETC was an ideal location to set up a Fab Lab: their commitment to improve

community needs with the help of computer-based technologies was in line with Gershenfeld and

his team’s view. Commons-based peer production is a term coined by Harvard Law School

professor Yochai Benkler’s The Wealth of Networks to describe a new model of socio-economic

production made possible in networks environments:

A new modality of organic production: radically decentralized, collaborative, and non-proprietary; based on sharing resources and outputs among widely distributed, loosely connected individuals who cooperate with each other without relying on either market signals or managerial commands82

79 Gershenfeld, N., (2005), op.cit. 80 "Developing various small rural technology project using Fab Lab", Proposal for FAB LAB at Pabal, umbc.edu, www.umbc.edu/studentlife/orgs/aid/FABLAB/FabLab_proposal.pdf, Accessed June 17, 2012. 81 “Who We Are”, South End Technology Center @Tent City, http://www.tech-center-enlightentcity.tv/, Accessed June 17, 2012. 82 Benkler, Y. The Wealth of Networks. How Social Production Transforms Markets and Freedom, New Haven and London, Yale University Press, 2006, p. 60.

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The first Fab Lab outside the United States was established during the summer 2002 in

Cartago within the site of The Costa Rica Institute of Technology. It was part of the project

Learning Independence Networks (LIN), developed earlier by Grassroots Invention Group83, to

help developing nations to build their own technologies instead of importing them. Building a

laboratory was the next step to work on projects in rural Costa Rica such as wireless

environmental sensing modules or making models used for education and even developing a

museum exhibit for the Children’s museum84. This collaboration between local actors and MIT

Medial Lab participants led to the first experiment of implementing a Fab Lab.

Almost at the same period, a second Fab Lab was settled in Pabal, a western Indian

village, which houses the science school Vigyan Ashram. Dr. Kalbag who studied science and

specialized in food technology in Bombay and then in the United States during the 1950s founded

this place in 1983. Like Gershenfeld, he always thought that education should also be based on

hands-on learning and decided to build this school for kids who had no education. They would

learn science and technology based on the method “Learning While Doing”85. It was already a

Fab Lab before the concept was invented (only with no hi-tech tools). In 2001, Gershenfeld

visited the village and got interested with the multiple rural technologies Dr. Kalbag and his

students had developed and built themselves (low cost housing, earth resistivity meter for ground

water prospecting, tractors, food storage, etc)86. Vigyan Ashram needed a Fab Lab to work on

different projects to improve the life of the community such as developing a milk sensor to test

good milk and spoiled milk, a wireless fence to protect the farm, a water table alarm for wells that

would indicate a rising level of water and finally bio fuels. The MIT sent for a total of $ 25000 a

laser cutter, a small milling machine, a vinyl cutter, a scroll saw but also computers, a projector, a

digital camera, an electronic table and drawing tools and drivers with open source software87.

83 Mikhak, B., Lyon, C., Gorton, T., Gershenfeld, N., McEnnis, C., Taylor, J., "FAB LAB: An Alternate Model of ICT for Development", Available online cba.mit.edu/events/03.05.fablab/fablab-dyd02.pdf, development by design (dyd02), Bangalore, 2002, Accessed June 17, 2012. 84 Mikhak, B & al, op.cit. 85 "Developing various small rural technology project using Fab Lab", Proposal for FAB LAB at Pabal, umbc.edu, www.umbc.edu/studentlife/orgs/aid/FABLAB/FabLab_proposal.pdf, Accessed June 17, 2012. 86 Ibidem 87 Ibidem

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In 2003, another lab went above the Arctic Circle in Haakon’s farm to continue Haakon

Karlsen’s work in collaboration with the company Telenor on the production of radio collars and

antennas to aid nomadic herding in northern Norway.

The sixth laboratory was set up in the campus of the Takoradi Technical Institute in

Ghana during the summer 2004. Once the machines, provided by MIT, were installed in the new

Fab Lab, the very priority was to collect the huge amount of solar energy available in the country:

Our goal is to identify community problems and find solutions to them; e.g. to convert the abundant renewable energy such as solar and wind to power machines and mechanize our agriculture and local art and craft industry88 Making solar collectors can be used for cooking, cutting or refrigerating instead of relying

on scarce electricity. Solar-powered machinery is also something the industrial designer, Markus

Kuyser, has been experimenting with in building a solar-powered 3D Printer and a sun-powered

cutter89. The Sun Cutter is a low-tech analogue light cutter that cuts 2D parts like a laser. These

cutting-edge technologies using natural energy question current industrial manufacturing and

address the issue of sustainability, a topic largely discussed among the makers and open design

enthusiasts.

The students in Takoradi successfully developed a solar rechargeable lighting System, local

television antenna, wireless Internet networks and a “Fufu Pounding Machine” that serves to

prepare the most popular national dish90.

Since the establishment of the first Fab Labs, many others have popped up and the

phenomenon is growing rapidly and independently from MIT. Even though there is no formal

procedure, MIT monitors the process and lists all official Fab Labs worldwide91. In South Africa,

the concept of fabbing became a national agenda. In 2005, the Department of Science and

Technology (DST) under the auspices of the Advanced Manufacturing Technology Strategy

Implementation Unit (AMTS-IU) launched many labs across the country. Deputy Minister of 88 “Report From the Ghana Fab Lab”, Center for Bits and Atoms, cba.mit.edu/events/05.07.Norway/.../Ghana.ppt, Accessed June 17, 2012. 89 “Markus Kayser work”, markuskayser.com, http://www.markuskayser.com/work/sun-cutter/, Accessed June 17, 2012. 90 “Fabrication Laboratory”, Takoradi Technical Institute, http://www.takoraditech.org/?q=node/34, Accessed June 17, 2012, 91 Toxler, P., op.cit.

30

Science and Technology Derek Hanekom founded a Fab Lab at the Innovation Hub in Pretoria:

the first AMTS Fab Lab. The Innovation Hub’s Fab Lab focuses on research that can be

transferred to the other Fab Labs in the country and each one has a specific focus (e.g.

community-based projects such as Fab Lab Soshanguave or arts and crafts (Fab Lab Cape

Town))92. The AMTS has entered in partnership with MIT to collaborate on different research

projects. So far, there are six Fab Labs and one Mobile Fab Lab located in South Africa.

While this thesis is being written, the Fab Lab community is expanding rapidly. Ninety Fab

Labs are already operating in the world and another thirty-one are due to open soon. Among the

ninety existing Fab Labs, a total of thirty-three are located in the US (seven more upcoming). In

the rest of the world, there are thirty-nine existing Fab Labs in Europe (and seventeen upcoming).

The Benelux has the largest density of fabbing initiative with already nine Fab Labs established

in the Netherlands (in Amersfoort, Amsterdam, Arnhem, Enschede, Groningen, The Hague,

Maastricht, Utrecht, Weesp) and two in Belgium. Countries like Austria, France, Germany,

Iceland, Italy, Norway, Portugal, Russia, Spain, Switzerland and the United Kingdom harbour

one or more Fab Labs within their territory. Other Fab Labs will be opened soon in Finland,

France, the Czech Republic, Germany, Greece, Belgium, Latvia, the Netherlands, Russia and

Spain. In Asia, there is one Fab Lab in Afghanistan, five in India and one in Indonesia. Africa

also beneficiates of a decent number of Fab Labs in the continent, with six ones located in South

Africa, one in Ghana and two in Kenya. One in Egypt and another one in Namibia will be opened

to the public. One Fab Lab was set up in Costa Rica in 2002, other settled in Colombia and in

Peru, and the next one will be opened in Suriname. Two Fab Labs will also be rolled out in

Vancouver, Canada and finally one in New Zealand. The official and detailed list of all Fab Labs

worldwide is displayed on the MIT’s Center for Bits and Atoms website93.

There are some important steps to follow in order to become a “Fab Lab MIT”. First, the

intended Fab Lab must be equipped with the machines mentioned above and must respect the Fab

Charter. Eychenne reports an interview with Sherry Lassiter – program manager of Fab Lab

network – who lists four important characteristics, which are openness – charter – machines and

92 Zaayman, N., "Welcome to the Fabulous World of Fabrication", Innovation News, n°2, pp 24-25, University of Pretoria, 2007, p. 24. 93 “Fab Lab List “, fab.cba.mit.edu, last update May 6, 2012, http://fab.cba.mit.edu/about/labs/#operating, Accessed June 17, 2012.

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process – Fab Lab network94. Open access is the most important key in any fabbing initiative. The

place has to give individuals free access to tools. The Fab charter has to be displayed somewhere

in the facility and must be respected. Fab Labs must share core capabilities to facilitate any

project, which means a:

computer-controlled laser cutter, for press-fit assembly of 3D structures from 2D parts. A larger (4'x8') numerically-controlled milling machine, for making furniture- (and house-) sized parts. A sign cutter, to produce printing masks, flexible circuits, and antennas. A precision (micron resolution) milling machine to make three-dimensional moulds and surface-mount circuit boards. Programming tools for low-cost high-speed embedded processors95.

Finally, it is important to participate to the network and share knowledge and design.

Therefore, there is a videoconference system available between Fab Labs. It is highly

recommended to organize workshops and collaborate on different projects. Each year there is a

big event for all Fab Labs worldwide. The eighth edition, Fab8, will be the next meeting and be

hosted by Massey University’s Creative Campus in New Zealand from the 22nd to 28th August

2012.

The respect of these rules gives the right to use the Fab Lab logo and the possibility to

raise funds96. However, there are many other so-called Fab Labs and even big brands are opening

these facilities in order to boost their business97. According to Gershenfeld, the cost of

equipments and materials to start a MIT style Fab Lab (in the MIT Fab Lab network) is around

$2500098. Nonetheless, this price can vary with the type of the Fab Lab itself: Massimo

Menichelli reports that usually the costs without MIT’s involvement is about $50000 - $5500099.

However, there are few examples of very cheap investments using only open-source machines

(e.g. Fab@Home 3D printer or RepRap printer) or even the project Replab.org willing to

establish a fully OS Fab Lab.

94 Eychenne, F., Fab Labs. Tour d'horizon, Fing.org, http://fing.org/?Tour-d-horizon-des-Fab-Labs,866&lang=fr, Accessed June 17, 2012. 95 “Fab Lab FAQ”, fab.cba.mit.edu, http://fab.cba.mit.edu/about/faq/, Accessed June 17, 2012. 96 Eychenne, F., op.cit. 97 Menichelli, M., “Business models for Fab Labs”, openp2pdesign.org, http://www.openp2pdesign.org/projects/past-projects/report-business-models-for-open-hardware-fab-labs-diy-craft/business-models-for-fab-labs/, Accessed June 17, 2012. 98 That cost will come down with technology progresses, writes Gershenfeld: Gershenfel, N., (2005), op.cit. 99 Menichelli, M., “Business models for Fab Labs”, op.cit.

32

On FabWiki, all Fab Labs worldwide are listed according to a conformity rating and

defined as “planned”, “under development” or “operational”100. This conformity rating is used to

check if a facility meets the conditions for use of the Fab Lab label. This conformity rating is

community-assessed. In order to get the highest rate, AAAA, a lab needs to: provide at least some

free/open public access, refer explicitly to the charter on site and website, share all core of tools

and processes, participate to network initiatives101. Fab Lab Amsterdam fulfils all these conditions

and is listed with AAAA rate. Among 148 Fab Labs on the list, only 16 locations are rated

AAAA.

Figure 1 Fab Lab Conformity Rating, http://wiki.fablab.is/wiki/Fab_Lab_conformity_rating, Accessed June 17, 2012

Fab Labs are required to become self-sustaining within two to four years. However,

Troxler reports that none of the Fab Lab investigated (10 in total - founded between spring 2007

and summer 2009) had reached this stage102. Usually, Fab Labs receive funding from public

sources or their hosting institutions. Nonetheless, running these places is not an easy task.

According to Fab Lab managers and assistants, the question of funding remains the number one

concern103. Gershenfeld reports the difficulty for him to raise funds from traditional institutions

such as the World Bank, National Academy of Sciences, Capitol Hill or Pentagon that were not

willing to pay for this:

Fab Labs challenge assumptions that are fundamental to each of these institutions. Instead of spending vast sums to send computers around the world, it’s possible to send the means

100 “Fab Lab Conformity Rating”, FabWiki, http://wiki.fablab.is/wiki/Fab_Lab_conformity_rating, Accessed June 17, 2012. 101 Ibidem. 102 Toxler, P., op.cit. 103 Ibidem.

33

to make them. Instead of trying to interest kids in science as received knowledge, it’s possible to equip them to do science, giving them both the knowledge and the tools to discover it. Instead of building better bombs, emerging technology can help build better communities104

Center for Bits and Atoms supports – through the National Science Foundation – the

assistance of new Fab Labs with selected partnerships105. Additionally, micro-venture capitalism

Fab Fund has been launched to provide global access to capital and markets for businesses that

manufacture their products in Fab Labs106. These special laboratories are being more and more

organized in regional networks (e.g. USFLN United Sates Fab Lab Network – Stichting Fablab

for the Netherlands, Belgium and Luxembourg, - FabLab4Germany Netzwerk – Fab Lab

Network India – Fab Foundation Switzerland - Fab Lab South Africa).

As mentioned afore, different types of Fab Labs have been emerging these past few years.

The very first ones went to remote areas in order to enhance community quality of life. Over

time, these places attracted other categories of people or groups as stated in Diane Pfeiffer’s Fab

Lab definition:

[Fab Labs are] studios supplied with basic digital fabrication, electronic and computing tools. These hands-on facilities are created in partnership with institutions, organizations, and governments around the world. Open to potential artists, inventors, engineers, and designers, Fab Labs enable individuals to make objects that meet their own personal needs107

Troxler makes the distinction between labs providing facilities and labs providing

innovation support108. In researching business models of selected Fab Labs located in urban

neighbourhoods in industrialized countries, he defines two types of labs based on their value

proposition:

For the Fab Lab as a facility, the value proposition is providing the best value in terms of the digital production processes; for the innovation Fab Lab the value proposition is providing the best outcome for its users and their innovation journey using the right mix of ingredients determined by the facilities and (networked) competencies available109

104 Gershenfeld, (2005), op. cit. 105 “Fab Lab FAQ”,http://fab.cba.mit.edu/about/faq/, Accessed June 17, 2012. 106 Ibidem. 107 Pfeiffer, D, op.cit, p. 25. 108 Toxler, P, (Berlin, 8–9 October 2010), op.cit. 109 Toxler, P., Wolf, P., op.cit.

34

Usually, Fab Labs offer infrastructures mostly for students even though they all indicate to

address to all kind of clientele (students, researchers, companies and the general public)110. Places

that tend to develop their innovation ecology follow closely users in their projects and also

engage more in public relations activities. According to the data made available by the website,

Fab Lab South Africa, the Free State Fab Lab in Bloemfontein receives 80% learners, 12%

students, 5% general public and 3% entrepreneurs. In Cape Town, the Product Support Space

hosted by the Cape Crafts and Design Institute (CCDI) is specialized in craft and design. It helps

producers in their project. This is a typical example of Fab Lab providing innovation support.

Students are still the majority (44%) but besides, there are 37% of craft producers and 26% of

others. A community-based Fab Lab such as Kimberly Fab Lab receives a majority of learners

(62%) and then general public (20%), students (15%), entrepreneurs (3%). A lab hosted in

universities has subsequently a majority of students (e.g. the North West Fab Lab receives 80%

of students, 18% of learners and only 1% of general public and 1% of entrepreneurs)111. Eychenne

defines three types of Fab Lab, which are for education, for private-business and finally for public

and pro ams112. The education-based facilities are hosted in universities or schools (e.g.

Fablab@school Standford, Fab Lab Barcelona, Fab Lab Costa Rica, Fab Lab Nairobi).

Fab Labs are essentially places to prototype ideas in small scale and are not suited for

production, retailing or repairing. As an open access facility for innovation, machines cannot be

used too long113. Nonetheless, commercial activities can be incubated as stated in the Fab Charter:

Commercial activities can be incubated in fab labs but they must no conflict with open access, they should grow beyond rather than within the lab, they are expected to benefit the inventors, labs, and networks that contribute to their success114 (Fab Charter).

Fab Labs can have different purposes, according to their location, either in universities,

schools, museum, centres, institutions or startups. From educational, innovation, prototyping,

artistic, business to community-oriented ambitions, these small-scale facilities become more and

more diversified overtime. However, the very concept of Fab Lab remains strictly defined around

110 Ibidem. 111 For a complete and detailed list see: “S.A FabLabs Footprint”, SA FabLab, http://www.fablab.co.za/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=11&Itemid=35, Accessed June 17, 2012. 112 Eychenne, F., op.cit. 113 Ibidem. 114 “The Fab Charter”, http://fab.cba.mit.edu/about/charter/, Accessed June 17, 2012.

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openness and P2P principles: “Philosophically it would be ideal for all labs to be fully open all

the time with free access and fully participating with other global labs. However, this may not be

practical for every lab at this moment”115.

Method:

On the seventh of May 2012, I started the ethnography at the Fab Lab of Amsterdam,

which is located in the Waag Society building in Nieuwemarkt, Amsterdam. I had already been

twice to the Fab Lab before starting this research. My first visit was during the event “Social

Cities of Tomorrow” that took place in mid-February 2012 at the ARCAM (Amsterdam Centre

for Architecture). As part of the program, participants could design prototypes and choose to do it

either at the Fab Lab or at the Sensemakers. I was curious to see how a Fab Lab looks like and

then I joined the group bound to the Waag building. We received an opportunity to discover the

place and the machines while Bas van Abel, the creative director of the Fab Lab, gave a quick

presentation of the main principles of fabbing and Open Design such as DIY - Personal

Fabrication - Documentation - Open Source - Transparency. My second visit took place during

the event “Hypercrafting fashion/reflect & get inspired” (3/9/2012) on smart textiles with the

TechCraft students of Eindhoven University of Technology. These students were discussing with

Bas van Abel the relations between smart textiles and open design in general. At this occasion,

Bas gave a stirring speech on the mission of the Open Design Lab. The Open Design Lab is a

cooperation with: Premsela, The Netherlands institute for Design and Fashion, Creative

Commons Nederland, MIT Centre for Bits and Atoms, Etsy, Droog Design DMY, Open Design

City. To cut a long story short, previous to the start of my research proper, I already had two

occasions to get acquainted with a very new community promoting the experience of making and

sharing.

This thesis is built on a participant ethnography. In media ethnography, various

researchers use an interactive method that was originally based on interactive documentary

115 “Fab Lab Conformity Rating”, FabWiki, http://wiki.fablab.is/wiki/Fab_Lab_conformity_rating, Accessed June 17, 2012.

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filmmaking116. Unlike observational method, interactive way focuses also on the presence of the

researcher. According to Patrick D. Murphy, interactive and reflexive117 forms “are capable of

producing a more contextually inspired, descriptively thick, and, ideally, politically transparent

way of writing media culture”118.

Among ethnographic approaches within media studies it is worth to mention The Internet

– An Ethnographic Approach, in which Daniel Miller and Don Slater conduct ethnography on the

Internet in Trinidad. Unlike in previous Internet literature, they view Internet as “numerous new

technologies, used by diverse people, in diverse real-world locations”119. Internet is also

embedded in material culture and social spaces. Miller and Slater’s research is interesting in the

sense they look at a specific medium to study a specific culture and how this culture is shaped by

Internet technologies:

In this sense, we are not simply asking about the “use” or the “effects” of a medium; rather, we are looking at how members of a specific culture attempt to make themselves a(t) home in a transforming communicative environment, how they can find themselves in this environment and at the same time try to mould it in their own image120

The hobbyist subculture emerged around personal computing and gained a bigger

dimension with the Internet technologies. In making together, hobbyists create and transform

continuously their communicative environment. Regarding this phenomenon, Christopher Kelty’s

“Geeks, Social Imaginaries, and Recursive Publics” ethnographic study based on exchanges

concerning Napster, explores how geeks imagine their social existence121 Kelty chose the term

“recursive public” as a defining characteristic of geeks. According to Kelty, recursive public is “a

particular form of social imaginary through which this group imagines in common the means of

their own association, the material forms this imagination takes, and what place it has in the

116 Murphy, P.D., "Writing Media Culture: Representation and Experience in Media Ethnography", Communication, Culture & Critique, Volume 1, Issue 3, pp. 268-286, September 2008, p. 278. 117 Reflexive method also called autoethnography is a mode of representation that “involves a privileging of the process of representation, expressed through poetic exposition, and an open voice”, Ibidem, p. 280. 118 Ibidem, p. 282. 119 Miller, D., and Slater, D., The Internet - An Ethnography Approach, Berg, Oxford, New York, 2000, p. 1. 120 Ibidem. 121 Kelty, C., "Geeks, Social Imaginaries, and Recursive Publics", Cultural Anthropology (20)2: 185-214, 2005, p. 186.

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contemporary development of the Internet”122. The term recursive public is worthy of note in

conducting an ethnographic approach on maker subculture and digital fabrication. The makers

represent not only a community online, in sharing and discussing everything linked to DIY and

hacking activities, but also offline in places like hackerspaces and Fab Labs and during events

like Maker Faires. These offline locations are, in a sense, the materialization of their social

imaginary. A participant ethnography in reporting on series of practices in the lab gives an insight

of the community itself. Ethnography on laboratories or ethnography of practices enables to look

behind the official account of method123.

In addition, Troxler discusses the limitations of his own research and advises to conduct a

study based on participant observation when exploring Fab Lab community:

The three studies into the Fab Lab community used different sources of evidence; yet the approach is lacking at least one fourth element, the study of actual users of Fab Labs. Such a study based on participant observation and other methods should be able to clarify attitudes and behaviour of Fab Lab users as important stakeholders of a hybrid innovation model124

Indeed, Fab users in making, documenting and sharing their design in the Fab Lab website

also define the typology of the lab. However, this study does not investigate Fab users – as

mentioned by Troxler, the existing literature already focuses too much on users - but rather

explore the location itself, the atmosphere and Fab practices. In this sense, the participant

ethnography is valuable to get better insights of what is going on exactly in the lab.

When I start my research, I had neither knowledge nor implication in maker subculture

and fabbing practices. For two weeks on, I’ve immersed myself in the lab observing and

interacting with Fab community (Fab staff and participants). Fab manager, Alex Schaub, was

always enthusiast in describing everything in the lab, from equipment, projects, people, Fab

Academy class to his own reflections on personal fabrication. Fab users were also devotee to

explain their creation and in every case they allowed me to take pictures of their design.

Previously to my research, I had the chance to meet Lucas Evers from Waag Society in the

context of my studies in New Media at the Universiteit van Amstderdam. Lucas is currently

122 Ibidem. 123 Laws, J., op.cit. 124 Toxler, P., op.cit.

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leading Waag Society’s Wetlab, which is one of Waag services that focuses on life sciences and

biotechnology. During my ethnography, I attended the event “DIY Bio: Open PCR”125 held by

Lucas in the Zuidlab next to the Fab Lab. It gave me insights on hobbyist subculture and DIY

biology. I also went to “Waag Open – Get together” event organized for interns and artists who

work or have worked at Waag Society. The theme was to digitally customize food with all the

machine tools located in the lab. The last event I attended was “Fab Academy Final Projects

Presentation” that took place on May 30th, after my period of research.

2 Materiality of the Maker Revolution

2.1 Digital Fabrication: a new trend in DIY culture

On my first day in the lab, three young people are working on their own things, seated on

the big tables of the Fab Lab Amsterdam. The place has been invaded with state-of-the-art

machines, computers and a vast array of tools for five years now. Victor comes from France and

works there as an intern. His true passion is graphics and he’s got the idea to make a nice vintage-

style booklet on selected Fab Lab past projects. In order to get this DIY result, he decided to use a

Risograph GR1750 also called stencil printer. Vincent, a Dutch student, regular Fab user and

former intern is building an old-time style radio based on the thesis of a Design Academy student:

The Alzheimer Open Source Radio. Fab Lab Manager, Alex Schaub is focused on the work of a

young Italian girl who’s polishing a bass guitar. For almost a year now, Alex with the help of

others is making a Fab Lab 3D electric bass guitar. There is a lot of excitement going on as they

reached the final step in the making of the instrument. So far they don’t know whether it will

work or not since they still have to add strings and insert electric components. People in the lab

enjoy making their own things in a DIY/DIT approach as they move from one machine tool to

another. In materializing their project, Alex and Vincent had to use specific manufacturing tools,

which can be found in small size here in the lab.

125 Evers, L., “DIY BIO: Open PCR”, waag.org, May 30, 2012, http://waag.org/en/blog/diy-bio-open-pcr, Accessed July 17, 2012.

39

Chris Anderson, editor-in-chief of Wired Magazine and real hobbyist126, has been

reporting and writing on the democratization of manufacturing and distribution for a couple of

years now. The article, “Atoms are the new Bits” (January 25, 2010)127, detailed the ongoing

availability of tools from factory production to individuals. According to Anderson, this shift

should take about twenty years: “The past decade was about finding new post institutional models

on the web. The next decade will be about applying them to the real world”128.

Post institutional models mean the vast access to information, products and crowdsourcing

of ideas and design that invaded the web in the first ten years of the 20th Century. The Web 2.0

Revolution has enabled users to become producers of everything happening into the digital world.

According to Israeli designer and design educator Ronen Kadushin, “a revolution in product

development, production and distribution is imminent due to the Internet’s disruptive nature and

the easy access to CNC machines”129. On the introduction of the digital tools into the physical

world, writer and analyst, Clay Shirky invokes that “an increasing number of physical activities

are becoming so data-centric that the physical aspects are simply executional steps at the end of a

chain of digital manipulation”130. Hands-on work is in fashion again and this time DIY culture is

characterized with CNC machines, electronic assembly, 3D printing and CAD software. A

community of a new kind of tinkerers is developing fast online with a series of platforms - such

as Ponoko, Shapeways, Thingiverse, Instructables - wikis, social networks, groups, magazines

and blogs (Make Magazine, Craft Magazine, Boing Boing) but also offline during events and

gatherings such as the Maker Faire or in places like Hackespaces, TechShops, 100k-Garages and

Fab Labs:

There’s a demand for personal fabrication tools coming from community leader around the world, who are embracing emerging technology to help with the growth of not only the food and the businesses in their communities but also the people. This combination of

126 Chris Anderson launched DIY Drones, an online community of hobbyist for making DIY drones. In 2009, he co-founded the non-profit company 3D Robotics to create open source hardware for drones. Anderson is a key figure in the movement of makers: he also founded GeekDad, a blog on DIY activities. 127Anderson; C., op.cit. 128 Ibidem. 129 Kadushin, R., op.cit. 130 Shirky, C. 'Re: (decentralization) Generalizing Peer Production into the Physical World'. Forum post, 5 Nov 2007, http://finance.groups.yahoo.com/group/decentralization/message/6967, Accessed June 17, 2012.

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needs and opportunity is leading them to become technological protagonists rather than just spectators131.

According to Anderson, desktop manufacturing became accessible to the masses thanks to

the explosion of cheap prototyping tools and to the economic crisis that radically changed the

business practice of Chinese factories. They are “increasingly flexible, web-centric, and open to

custom work”132. A website like Alibaba.com that gives individuals direct access to

manufacturers in China is an important feature to take into account in the emergence of a maker

community worldwide133. With the first issue of Make Magazine in January 2005 and the

invention of open source hardware (Arduino single-board, microcontroller) the same year, the

makers got the opportunity to be part of a worldwide movement: the maker movement.

In this chapter, we investigate the maker subculture and its manifestation in fabbing

ecosystem. In other words, how the love of making things, hacking, tinkering, circuit bending and

doing/making everything so-called DIY is a significant peculiarity of Fab Labs. We first look at

the meaning and the emergence of the maker subculture and the development of hackerspaces

and shared machines shops. Secondly, we explore how the maker community is shaped and

organized. In a third point, this chapter details a Fab approach of architecture, art and fashion.

Finally, we see how hobbyists moved from do-it-yourself (DIY) to do-it-together (DIT) activities

with examples of making music instruments and biotech.

2.2 The Maker Subculture

The maker subculture is a contemporary subculture, representing a technology-based extension

of DIY culture. Typical interests enjoyed by the maker subculture include engineering-oriented

pursuits such as electronics, robotics, 3-D printing, and the use of CNC tools, as well as more

131 Gershenfeld, N., (2005), op.cit. 132 Anderson; C., "In the Next Industrial Revolution. Atoms Are the New Bits" Wired, Feb. 2010, http://www.wired.com/magazine/2010/01/ff_newrevolution/all/1, Accessed June 17, 2012. 133 Ibidem.

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traditional activities such as metalworking, woodworking, and traditional arts and crafts. –

Wikipedia134

In 1968, the first issue of the American magazine The Whole Earth Catalogue was

released. Subtitled “Access to Tools”, this catalogue listed a vast range of products for sale with

references to the vendors and their prices. Back in the late sixties and early seventies, The Whole

Earth Catalogue was the bible for the DIY movement in providing amateurs information on

equipment and supplies, allowing them to make their own things. This directory was available for

“everyone frustrated with industrialized mass production”135. According to Pfeiffer, The Whole

Earth Catalogue offered something very precious to the non-professional practitioners: the access

to tools and information136. In the second half of the 20th century, there was a boom in DIY

activities with many magazines, television and radio shows dedicated to this topic. From a

necessity to a leisure practice, DIY activity has radically changed to become more and more

sophisticated overtime. Nonetheless, it became also easier with self-assembly processes and kits.

Since the 1960s, manufacturers have developed and promoted easy methods that led to the

simplification and commodification of DIY practices137.

Since the fifties, there was a constant trend in the DIY movement to evolve with the new

technologies138. The introduction of computation science and later the Internet technologies has

enabled users to become designers with the help of easy-use and predesigned templates. On the

one hand, DIY and amateurism practices may be an aesthetic choice - unpolished look and design

– promoting a romantic style and being also a political act against the machines. On the other

hand, everyone can reach the perfection now with user-friendly technologies that give an almost-

professional result. “Today’s DIY emphasizes customization over craft” 139. The cult of the

134 “Maker subculture”, Wikimedia Foundation, 2012, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Maker_subculture, Accessed June 17, 2012. 135 Postrel, V., "Your Design Here", Print, A Quarterly Journal of the Graphic Arts, March/April 2007, http://www.printmag.com/Article/Your_Design_Here, Accessed June 17, 2012. 136 Pfeiffer, D., op.cit, p. 34. 137 Atkinson, P (Ed.) Do-It-Yourself: Democracy and Design, Special Issue of the Journal of Design History, 19(1): 2006, p. 5. 138 We could trace back the origins of this movement to the 18th century, see Atkinson, P (Ed.) Do-It-Yourself: Democracy and Design, Special Issue of the Journal of Design History, 19(1): 2006. 139 Postrel, V., op.cit

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amateur140 - the shift from being consumers to being producers - that first hit the online world is

slowly moving to the offline or, in better words, the physical world. A new kind of amateurs - the

makers - seeks to specialize in engineering-oriented technologies and mastering industrial

machines such as CNC tools and 3D printing. The rise of this making subculture is rooted in the

phenomenon of hackerspaces emerging themselves from the counterculture movement.

Hackerspaces, also called makerspaces, hacklabs, creative spaces are facilities where like-

minded individuals (hackers) can learn and share technologies outside the traditional education

centres141. Hackerspaces members define these locations as “community-operated physical places,

where people can meet and work on their projects”142. They are open labs based on peer learning

where people can learn around computers, technology and electronics with an emphasis on non-

market (or anti-market) orientation. Collaboration between such places is called “hackatons”.

Along with hackerspaces, 100kGarages and TechShops are another type of shared-technologies

places. Such as Fab Labs, 100kGarages “is a community of workshops with digital fabrication

tools for precisely cutting, machining, drilling, or sculpting the parts for your project or product,

in all kinds of materials, in a shop or garage near you”143. ShopBot Tools Inc launched these

Garages in 2008 in collaboration with Ponoko. These distributed manufacturers produce user’s

design for a fee and no shop access. TechShop is a chain of workshops that started in the

California Bay Area in 2006. There are currently five TechShops in the USA. Strictly

commercial, this shared machine shop is based on a membership system that gives users the right

to use the tools and equipment to build their own things. In the vein of Fab Labs, 100KGarages

and TechShop have the same inexpensive machines (laser cutter, 3D mills) using open source

software. The concept of shared machine shops was defined in Karl Hess’ Community

Technology published in 1979:

The machine shop should have enough basic tools, both hand and power, to make the building of demonstrations models or test facilities a practical and everyday activity…For inner-city residents the shared machine shop might be a sensible and practical doorway to

140 Keen, A., The Cult of the Amateur: How the Democratization of the Digital World is Assaulting Our Economy, Our Culture, and Our Values. New York: Doubleday Currency, 2007. 141 Troxler, P., “Libraries of the peer production era”, Open Design Now - Why design cannot remain exclusive, Creative Commons Netherlands; Premsela, Dutch Platform for Design and Fashion; Waag Society, 2011, p. 90. 142 “Hackerspaces”, hackerspaces.org, http://hackerspaces.org/wiki/, Accessed June 17, 2012. 143 Troxler, P ((Berlin, 8–9 October 2010), op.cit.

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the neglected world of productivity as well as being a base for community experimentation and demonstration144.

Peter Troxler puts on a graph the fabbing ecosystem. 100kGarages and TechShops are

solely infrastructure while Fab Labs and Hackerspaces are much more places to undertake

projects with a strong commitment to commons-based principles. Unlike 100kGarages, Fab Labs,

TechShop and Hackerspaces let individuals to access their machines (generative). ProtoSpace is a

Fab Lab based in Utrecht, founded in collaboration with the Dutch Inventors association Novu,

and sponsored by many non-profit or governmental organizations. Diane Pfeiffer salutes its

innovation model: “From an American perspective, it is interesting to see that this facility is

sponsored through a joint initiative of eleven organisations, many of them non-profit or

governmental, but favor access for new commercial entities and unaffiliated individuals”145 and

contrasts this with the US scenario: “While there are approximately twelve Fab Labs in the US,

most are not this well funded. Instead, in the US numerous small, local maker clubs are emerging

alongside occasional for-profit (and not Fab Lab) enterprises such as TechShop in Palo Alto, CA

and Portland, OR”146.

144 Hess, K., Community Technology, New York, Cambridge, Hagerstown, Philadelphia, San Francisco, London, Mexico City, Sao Paulo, Sydney: Harper & Row, Publishers, 1979, p. 96. 145 Pfeiffer, D. op.cit, p. 18. 146 Ibidem, p.18.

44

Figure 2 Toxler, P., “Commons–based peer–production of physical goods. Is there room for a hybrid innovation ecology?” presentation at the Third Free Culture Research conference (Berlin, 8–9 October 2010), at http://wikis.fu-berlin.de/download/attachments/59080767/Troxler-Paper.pdf, p. 10.

A community of makers has been evolving around open source hardware projects and

companies namely Arduino, MakerBot Industries, ReRap Project, Fab@Home and many others.

These artisans 2.0 attend Maker Faires; subscribe to Make (the 21st issue covers desktop

manufacturing147) and Craft magazines and share their design online. The annual Bay Area Maker

Faire is a celebration of do-it-yourself culture where Pro-Ams gather in big number to see all kind

of DIY stuff from robot pets, homebrewed 3D models, crafts, biotech, electronic gizmos. They

are hackers, crafters, artisans and tinkerers. Leadbeater and Miller put forward the love of making

things as the first condition to be considered as a Pro-Am:

A Pro-Am pursues an activity as an amateur, mainly for the love of it, but sets a professional standard. Pro-Ams are unlikely to earn more than a small portion of their

147 “Vol. 21: Desktop Manufacturing”, Make, February 2012, http://makezine.com/21/, Accessed June 2012.

45

income from their pastime but they pursue it with the dedication and commitment associated with a professional. For Pro-Ams, leisure is not passive consumerism but active and participatory; it involves the deployment of publicly accredited knowledge and skills, often built up over a long career, which has involved sacrifices and frustrations148.

In 2008, the Institute for the Future (IFTF) published the study The Future of Making: the

Way Things are Made Is Being Made on the emerging DIY culture of makers (Pro-Ams). IFTF

identified six drivers of change that foster this movement (social networking, eco-motivation, the

rise of the professional amateurs, access to tools, open-source everything and quest of

authenticity)149 and six trends that will change how we design and produce things (desktop

manufacturing, lightweight manufacturing, citizen R&D, networked artisans, grassroots

economics and open innovation)150.

Everyday, In Fab Lab Amsterdam, I could see people making things and for hours on end

being busy with the machines. This is the case of Michael who comes from France and works in

Amsterdam as a network technician. Regular user of Fab Lab Amsterdam, he also attended some

classes of the Fab Academy. The first time I saw him, he was already using the ShopBot for the

third time. He was making a TV table. Like a good Pro-Am he likes to customize things. He

chose to represent the flag of Brittany and other patterns he likes on the pieces of wood. He

explained me that when all parts will be done, he will simply assemble them. This method is

called press-fit construction also known as interference fit or friction fit. Building this kind of

furniture seems as easy as assembling Lego parts. Nonetheless, mastering a big milling machine

takes time. Eva never used this tool before but she is showing much zeal in learning how to run it.

She’s listening carefully to Victor’s explanations while she’s taking notes of every step. She‘s

German and she studies marketing and design here in Amsterdam. It’s her first time in a Fab Lab.

For her final project, she wants to make a presentation on Craft Garage Concept, which is “a Pop-

up Store concept that travels several cities and exposes hand-crafted products of independent

designers and connect them to the creative community”151. Eva first designed at home a whole

series of items (scissors, needles, sewing machine, hammer, hanger, etc) on Illustrator. She wants

148 Leadbeater, C. and Miller, P., "The Pro-Arm Revolution: How Enthusiasts Are Changing the World", TEDGlobal, 14 July 2005, Oxford, UK. 149 Pescovitz, D., The Future of Making Report, Ed. Jess Hemmerly, Institute For The Future, 2008, p. 2. 150 Ibidem, p.3. 151 “Craft Garage presentation”, Fablab Amsterdam Projects, http://fablab.waag.org/project/craft-garage-presentation, Accessed June 17, 2012.

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to use the big milling machine to cut through a sturdy type of wood for her objects. The first step

is to export the Illustrator file as .dxf file to open it on the ShopBot program. Then she could start

running the machine. Eva is very happy with the result and now she has all her items cut. She just

needs to refine edges with coarse sanding paper. In total, Eva came twice to Fab Lab Amsterdam:

the first time just to check around and ask if it would be possible to make this project with the big

milling machine and do some tests. The second time, she was left alone doing the job. That’s a

fabbing principle: “you must learn to do it yourself”. Alex and interns are always happy to help

but it is also important to make something yourself at some point. Eva used the machine during

open days; she paid for nothing except the material she bought in a wood shop. Therefore she had

to document her work and design on the website. She had a very first good experience with

fabbing and said she would come again to make her own things like jewellery.

2.3 Making a Community

On the website of NYC Resistor, a famous hackerspace based in downtown Brooklyn, one

can read:

We meet regularly to share knowledge, hack on projects together, and build community. If you’re interested in joining NYC Resistor, come to some of our public meetings or join the NYC Resistor mailing list152.

As already mentioned above, a worldwide community of makers who communicate online

enjoy hacking together and share knowledge in hackerspaces and other locations, “infused with

an almost utopian spirit of cooperation and sharing”153. They go to events hosted in these

makerspaces on the evenings and/or weekends. For many members, such activities have become

a major focus of their social lives154. From hackerspaces usually located in rented lofts or studios,

social centres or university campuses to official Fab Labs, participants have fun together as they

work on the development of open source hardware in a DIY fashion. These environments are the

main component of this community, where makers construct their identities. “What is important 152 NYCRESISTOR, http://www.nycresistor.com/about/, Accessed June 17, 2012. 153 Tweney, D., "DIY Freaks Flock to 'Hacher Spaces' Worldwide", Wired, March 29, 2009, www.wired.com/gadgetla, Accessed July 14, 2012. 154 Ibidem.

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to understand about this amateurism and hobbyism is the way in which the practitioners construct

for themselves customized environments for learning and critiquing (which implies the

development of the unique communities of differentiated specialists)”155. Kelty argues that

Internet technologies are tools for self-organizing publics that enable to extend the public sphere

to coding, hacking, redistributing and sharing156. Draw on the analysis of geek community; the

concept of recursive public can also be transferred to new areas where social imaginary is

constructed. According to Kelty, free and open-source software give new groups (musicians,

scientists, filmmakers, activists) the possibility to engage with openness and therefore express

their concerns not only online but also offline157. Here, we could strengthen this argument when

talking about makers building a recursive public genuinely materialized in places like

hackerspaces.

The Austrian artist Johannes Grenzfurthner, writer and founder of the international art and

theory group – monochrom – makes a critical study on hackerspaces in the article “Hacking the

Spaces” written in collaboration with Frank Apunkt Schneider158. In writing the historical context

of hackerspaces originally expanding from the counter culture movement and conceived as niches

against bourgeois society, Grenzfurthner and Schneider argue that hackerspaces today function

quite differently as they initially did159. Back in the seventies, these open spaces were imagined as

tiny worlds to escape from capitalism or authoritarian regimes. The idea was much more based on

micro-political tactics than on hippie’s spirit:

Instead of trying to transfer the old world into a new one people started to build up tiny new worlds with the old world. They made up open space were people could come together and try out different forms of living, working, maybe loving and whatever people do when they want to do something160

In a capitalist society, alternative concepts always end up to be commodified such as “indie

music” becomes mainstream. According to Grenzfurthner and Schneider, the same happened to

155 Thacker, E, The Global Genome, Biotechnology, Politics, and Culture, The MIT Press, Cambridge, Massachusetts, London, England, 2005, p. 315. 156 Kelty, C., op.cit, p. 20. 157 Ibidem. 158 Grenzfurther, J and Schneider, F, 'Hacking the Spaces' on monochrome 2009, http://www.monochrom.at/hacking-the-spaces/, Accessed June 17, 2012. 159 Ibidem. 160 Ibidem.

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hackerspaces when “the political approach faded away on en route into tiny geeky workshop

paradises”161. This trend is closely related to the mainstream ideology of creative destruction. In

the ideology of creative destruction, knowledge workers (cultural producers) adopt and

standardize something they think is cool in order to destroy the old. The Austrian-American

economist Joseph Schumpeter extensively studied and then popularised the term of “creative

destruction” in Capitalism, Socialism and Democracy (1942) as a theory of economic innovation.

However, Marxist theories had already developed this in updating the Hegelian notion of

sublation (Aufhebung) in describing the process of the accumulation and annihilation of wealth

under capitalism. Later, this term gained popularity with neo-liberal ideologies of a condition of

efficiency and productivity. Scholar Alan Liu’s “Destructive Creativity” paper examines how

destructive creativity stands for “new governing aesthetics responsive to the postindustrial

ideology of creative destruction”162. In the era of informationalism (the Information Age also

known as the Computer Age) and in the corporate culture, knowledge workers thanks to new

technologies are responsible for shaping and standardizing information culture in constantly

destroying the old163. According to Liu, destructive creativity or what he calls viral aesthetics is

the critical inverse of the mainstream ideology of creative destruction.

Liu’s analysis is interesting as it explores the notion of creative destruction (and

subsequently the notion of destructive creativity) in a postindustrial and information society, and

can be viewed in parallel with Grenzfurthner/Schneider’s description of hackerspaces. In

“hacking the Spaces”, they argue that some features of open space movement were “suddenly

highly acclaimed, applied, and copy-pasted into capitalist developing laboratories”164. Following

the rule of creative destruction, counterculture characteristics became economically valuable and

“alternative life forms were applied ideally as a rejuvenation of what was old”165. On the same

line, Grenzfurthner/Schneider addresse critiques towards hackerspaces community in saying that

geeks and nerds turn to become liberal-democratic defenders166. However, Coleman and Golub

argues that hacker morality is in fact multiple and does not entirely comply with liberal values – 161 Ibidem. 162 Liu, A., The Laws of Cool: Knowledge Work and the Culture of Information, University of Chicago Press, 2004, p. 370. 163 Ibidem, p. 321. 164 Grenzfurther, J and Schneider, F., op.cit. 165 Ibidem. 166 Ibidem.

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or has to be viewed as a cultural sensibility rather than in a traditional perception of liberalism167.

In an anthropological research on hacker practices, they explore how hackers reformulate and

critique liberalism in their everyday practices:

Thus hacking, so often marginalized or misunderstood in popular culture as a sub-cultural group separate or diametrically opposed to mainstream society, is in fact one crucial location whereby the fractured and cultural character of liberalism is given new life and visibility in the digital age168

According to Grenzfurthner and Schneider, hackerspaces are no longer imbue with political

agendas and turned to be only nice and chill small laboratories. He advocates that open spaces

first need to develop a political agenda “that lends some revolutionary glam to what we are doing

on a daily basis making gadgets, networking through the world, or utilizing our technological and

programming skills”169. Secondly, it is important to fight against exclusionist tendencies in the

hackerspace movement being mostly a group of “white and male techno handicraft working

nerds”170.

On May 9th 2012, the “Waag Open – Get Together” event was held in Fab Lab Amsterdam.

Former and current interns, Fab Academy students, people who work in Waag Society and

enthusiasts gathered and brought food to have a DIY dinner (fig. 48, 49, 50, 51, 52, 53, 54, 55,

56, 57, 58). Alex asked me if I would like to stay for the event of the night. I stayed to chat, eat

and drink with the other participants in the Zuidlab. After a while, they all went to play with food

in the lab. They customized sausages, bread, eggs, mint leaves with the ShopBot, laser cutter,

embroidery machine and 3D printer. Over the evening, there was a lively interest to try out every

artistic combination. People divided themselves in small groups for each machine. The laser

cutter was very successful that night: from Space Invader character and stars on eggs to

“Frikandel Speciaal” (Dutch delicacy) inscription on sausages and a flip-flop press-fit

construction made wit Lebanese bread. Some participants were playing with the embroidery

machine and coco bread and Victor was working with chocolate on the ShopBot. Alex was trying

to fix the Ultimaker in order to print with Nutella. Unfortunately, the result was not so good.

167 Coleman, G., Golub, A., 'Hacker Practice: Moral Genres and the Cultural Articulation of Liberalism', AnthropologyTheory 8.3 (2008): 255-277, p. 256. 168 Ibidem, p. 258. 169 Ibidem. 170 Ibidem.

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All participants who went to play with food, were comfortable in using machine tools and

designing quickly their design on Illustrator or other programs to import vector drawings. Most of

them were previous interns, Fab Academy students or simply regular Fab users who have

acquired digital manufacturing knowledge. They were interested in each other’s creation and new

ideas popped up all the time: after inscribing “Frikandel Speciaal” on the sausage, one participant

went outside asking a fries vendor to fry it. Then he brought it back to the lab and amused the

others with his little experiment. Later in the evening, a group of two or three people designed

stars on eggs with the laser cutter and then they made fried eggs. They took pictures every five or

ten seconds to capture the whole process of cooking and see how patterns are changing.

The purpose of this evening was to sustain the network of Waag Society. This type of

meeting is clearly inscribed in an effort to build a community of makers who enjoy do-it-together

activities. Creativity was the key of this event. Anyone could go and fabricate something just for

the fun of it and show it to the rest of the participants. It was also the occasion to learn from peers

and experiment all together. On Waag Society website, there are regularly such kind of events

that constitute a mean to keep up the community.

2.4 Making Architecture, Art and Fashion

A Fab Lab is first and foremost a facility for physical model making, housing rapid-

prototyping machines. Some years ago, one could think that ever-improving simulation software;

Computer-aided design (CAD) that makes prototyping possible in the digital domain171 had made

physical models obsolete. However, a return to the making of physical models has lately been

observed172. This reverse movement is due to improvement of the digital fabrication techniques

that translate digital information to computer numerical control (CNC) machine tools and 3D

printers:

As modeling and fabrication come closer together, more models are being made, and, despite less hand production, the process might be more engaging than ever. Rapid

171 Atkinson, P., “Orchestral Manoeuvres in Design”, Open Design Now - Why design cannot remain exclusive, Creative Commons Netherlands; Premsela, Dutch Platform for Design and Fashion; Waag Society, 2011, p. 69. 172 Werner, M., Model Making, Princeton Architectural Press, New York, 2011, p. 10.

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prototyping technologies short-circuit the design process: the model is no longer necessarily referential, and its role more often now better described by the term prototype173.

Fab Lab Amsterdam also organizes workshops for architects and model makers such as

“Hypercrafting Architecture”174 held in March 24th, 2012. During this event, participants got

introduced with tools for prototyping such as the laser cutter (e.g. press-fit construction) and

ShopBot and software like Grasshopper. The idea was to focus on hands-on experiments in

creating small-scale models and prototypes.

One day in the lab, a Dutch architect named Eric de Lyon came with a colleague to make a

model for his new project. His colleague was executing de Lyon’s design on the big milling

machine: it was a physical model for the competition “Freiheits und Eindheitsdenkmal” in

Leipzig (fig. 28, 29, 30). This competition is for a Monument to Freedom and Unity to

commemorate and honour the contribution of the citizens of Leipzig in the Peaceful Revolution

of Autumn 1989. In making a model of the project, the architect could not only better visualise

the result but also offer to the audience something tangible to see. “Architecture has always

thrived on the tension between representation and material assemblages”175 and now it seems that

we experience “the dawning of an era characterized by a new proximity between digital models

and physical output”176. De Lyon’s idea was to make a model of a design in 1:500 scales and

digital production (big milling machine) was viewed as the best option. De Lyon’s colleague

documented the process on Fab Lab Amsterdam website. The task was not an easy one since the

3D model had different levels. The challenge was to make the milling machine following the path

of these levels (see fig. 29, 30):

I chose to use the big milling machine in order to take out pockets of the MDF [medium-density fibreboard] board. The lines enclosing the pockets were dranw in Illustrator as closed paths. In order to make the model three dimensional I had to assign the different milling levels in the operating system. Here it was very important to keep track of the which levels already have been done and those still to come. Made a mistake once and had to start all over again177

173 Ibidem. 174 “Hypercrafting Architecture”, Fablab Waag Society, http://fablab.waag.org/content/hypercrafting-architecture-4, Accessed July 14, 2012. 175 Smith, G., op.cit. 176 Ibidem. 177 Hubraum, C., “Model for Design Public Space”, Fab Lab Amsterdam, August 5, 2012, http://fablab.waag.org//project/model-design-public-space, Accessed August 10, 2012.

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Further in the description, MDF is described as a good material for milling but it would be

better to use a more solid material (such as chemical wood) next time178. Model making and

digital fabrication enable designers to have this very close connection with objects and materials.

According to Bruce Sterling, “rapid prototyping is a form of brainstorming with materials. It's not

simply a faster way to plunge through older methods of production, but a novel way to manage

design and production”179. Once users engage with fabbing practices they have to think of which

materials and which techniques to use. Going through Fab Lab documentation of design process

give an insight of these questions and reflections. Here, we understand the relationship between

subject and object.

Artists also like fabbing. The Dutch artist Lukas van de Vrande (www.lukasart.nl) is a

regular user of Fab Lab Amsterdam. He has already come in the past to use the Ultimaker 3D

printer for his Personal Candle Holder. There is a video of the whole printing process on his

website. For Lukas, the result could be a lot better, “the plastic doesn’t cool down quick enough

and starts to drip”180. This statement is relevant in the actual debate concerning the enormous

amount of lousy designs now available on sites like Ponoko and Shapeways. Lukas van de

Vrande points out that low-cost 3D printers can engender bad design. This is also a consequence

of masses that participate now in design processes. According to Renny Ramaker, director of

Droog Design in Amsterdam, digital fabrication also causes “a huge volume of unattractive and

clunky design”181. He adds: “This trend will not end well (…) I am worried that it will spread like

a virus. In my opinion, the internet has brought us a lot of ugly stuff”182.

This time, Lukas is busy with the laser cutter in making hundreds of layers of carton for his

new artwork, a kinetic sculpture – De Zoenmachine (The Kiss Machine)183. He has already built

one few years ago but only made by hands (no machine involved). He told me that working with

178 Ibidem. 179 Sterling, B., op.cit. 180 Vrande, van de, L,“Ultimaker 3D Printer”, LukasArt.nl, http://lukasvandevrande.wordpress.com/2012/03/16/ultimaker-3d-printer/, Accessed July, 15, 2012. 181 Klaassen, R., & Troxler, P., “Do it with Droog”, Van Abel, B., Evers, L., Klaassen, R., Troxler, P., Open Design Now - Why design cannot remain exclusive, Creative Commons Netherlands; Premsela, Dutch Platform for Design and Fashion; Waag Society, 2011, p. 133. 182 Ibidem. 183 There is a video of Lukas van de Vrande’s De ZoenMachine, LukasArt.nl, http://lukasvandevrande.wordpress.com/art/, Accessed July, 15, 2012.

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the laser cutter was really great as he could spare a lot of time (680 layers in one day). Lukas was

not the only one artist I saw hanging out in the lab. There was also one guy working on

electronics and Arduino. His name is Cappy Jack (Cappy Jack (www.cappyjack.com)) and he

told me that he was making a sculpture working with an Arduino Uno with a Lady Ada wav

shield. This sculpture would react to 360-degree approach to ultrasonic sensors with sound

(fig.27). Cappy Jack looked at ease with electronics manipulation and he said that he’s working

with computer since 1977 (Xitan computer). He comes regularly to the lab for his installations

(sculptures, etc) using the laser cutter, the Ultimaker and piezo scanner. This is the first time that

he builds a sound machine.

Access to low-cost manufacturing tools enables architects, artists and designers now to

experiment faster with a series of new kind of physical objects. Here, there is a description of one

project realized in Fab Lab Amsterdam, which gives a better understanding of such practices in

the frontier of generative design and art:

Ziga Testen (designer) and Nicholas Matranga's (artist) collaborative practice revolves around their shared interest in applied arts and design. They have collaborated on a series of projects focusing on design as material of their work instead of it's means. They are currently working on and developing a series of conceptual alternative cuts to the ubiquitous Helvetica typeface. Among the proposed expansions to the existing family such as Helvetica Backwards and Transitional Helvetica we are currently working on the Levitating Helvetica. In practical computer typography terms this is simply Helvetica without kerning so all letters stack on top of each other within the 2D space of the screen. However for the upcoming exhibition in Rome where we will be presenting some of our works we would like to develop a 3D prototype of a possible type specimen of the Levitating Helvetica. A sketch of the possible outcome of this endeavour is presented in the attached image. Needless to say all our proposals are useless in practical terms and they are mostly simple playful footnotes and comments on our (designed) environment184

In new media art, digital fabrication and generative art are becoming a trend but also raise

curatorial questions with the emergence of new hybrid industrial design/sculpture objects185.

During my research, I could observe that a majority of students that would use the lab

were usually studying fashion design. I could notice the same in going through projects on Fab

Lab Amsterdam website. Also, several fashion projects can be found in the lab (see the 184 Ziga Testen, “3D Type Specimen Sculpture”, Fab Lab Amsterdam, February 1, 2012, http://fablab.waag.org/project/3d-type-specimen-sculpture, Accessed June17, 2012. 185 Smith, G, op.cit.

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description of the lab in the first chapter). A series of events and workshops on fashion, craft and

digital fabrication are regularly held in Waag Society (Fab Lab Hypercrafting event). For obvious

reasons, manufacturing tools are appealing for students and fashion designers. They usually use

the embroidery machine and the laser cutter. There are also examples of prototypes made with the

3D printer. Among fashion creations made in Fab Lab Amsterdam, there is the example of high-

heeled ankle boots realized by a student for her third year’s collection at the Royal Academy of

The Hage (fashion department)186. The leather was cut with the laser cutter. “It was great to

combine the craft of hand-made shoe, with the technology of the laser cutter”187, writes the user

on the documentation part. Another project was aimed to investigate the combination of print and

machine embroidery on recycled hospital textiles188 or also fashion designer Ellis Biemans who

designed with the laser cutter a robotic-like outfit made with fine silk fabrics and Plexiglas

shapes189. Many other examples can be found on the website and there is also a decent amount of

jewellery creations.

Along with Eva there were other students coming from the Amsterdam Fashion Institute

(AMFI) and using the lab for their final project. During open days, there was once a girl working

with the laser cutter in inscribing some patterns onto leather and also a bunch of female students

and their professor making some products (jewellery) for the launching of their magazine, Tiger

Dragon Slayers from the Underworld190.

186 Charlottesophia “Shoe Making Third Year Collection, Fab Lab Amsterdam, http://fablab.waag.org/project/shoe-making-third-years-collection, February, 7, 2012, Accessed July 17, 2012. 187 Ibidem. 188 Katikaki, “Embroidering Creatures”, Fab Lab Amsterdam, January, 19, 2012, http://fablab.waag.org/project/embroidering-creatures, Accessed July 17, 2012. 189 Ellis Biemans, “Emroidered Robots”, Fab Lab Amsterdam, http://fablab.waag.org/archive/embroidered-robots, Accessed July 17, 2012. 190 “Products”, Tiger Dragon Slayers from the Underworld, http://tigerdragonslayers.com/products/, Accessed July 17, 2012

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2.5 From Do it Yourself (DIY) to Do it Together (DIT)

In the last part of this chapter, we look at two significant examples of do-it-together

projects made in Fab Lab Amsterdam: Shark Bass and Open PCR. We choose to introduce these

examples in order to describe DIT practices as an important feature of the maker subculture.

Do-it-Together (DIT) or Do-it-with-others (DIWO) initiatives are based upon open source

and Internet technologies that enable users to easily collaborate in networked society. In this

sense, “The Materiality of the Maker Revolution” chapter tends to demonstrate how usually

defined as online practices and behaviours are also happening offline –materiality. What is

interesting here is that everything on the Internet is also coming outside of the screen and

expanding into the physical realm. Therefore, we observe peer-to-peer production practices

occurring in Fab Labs and other physical locations.

On the first day of the ethnography, I was immediately introduced with the project Shark

Bass (fig. 33, 34, 35, 36, 37, 38, 39, 40, 41, 42, 43, 44, 45, 46, 47) that has already started a year

ago (around April 2011). The idea emerged with the question “Can you produce a high quality

electric bass guitar using the Fablab methodology?”191. When I arrived in the lab, the bass had

already taken shape and the final step was about to begin – polishing, inserting strings and

electric components and finally plug it in. This project brings together Fab Lab manager Alex

Schaub, product designer based in Amsterdam Alice Mela, product designer based in Rotterdam

Carsten Lemme and industrial designer based in Eindhoven Thomas Van De Werf. Not only Alex

is a Fab Lab expert192 who worked before in designing production machines but he also studied

art and music and received a degree as Master of Music in 2001 at the Koninklijk

Conservatorium in The Hague. His knowledge in music and instruments led him with the help of

other specialists to design his very first bass guitar, which is based on the Fender Jazz Bass. 191 Schaub, A., “3D Bass Guitar”, Fab Lab Amsterdam, April 23, 2011, http://fablab.waag.org/project/3d-bass-guitar, Accessed June 17, 2012. 192 As a Fab Lab expert, Alex Schaub takes part to the opening of many Fab Labs worldwide and he’s asked for advising many Fab Lab initiatives.

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Alex was not the first one to think of making personal music instruments with digital

manufacturing tools. Journalist and blogger Clive Thompson recounts his attempt to design his

own guitar in “The Dream Factory” article published in Wired in September 2005193. Thomspon

designed an electric guitar in remixing various classic guitar designs by drawing the outlines on

eMachineShop’s software (eMachineShop 3D CAD software)194. eMachineShop is an application

that produces physical 3D copy that were previously designed online (online machining). The

idea is to provide low-cost fabrication of custom parts via the web for both engineers and non-

engineers. Once Thompson had finished to design his bass, he had to choose materials on the

same application. There was no wood thick enough and he had to opt for a block of clear acrylic

with unbuffed raw aluminium for the faceplate195. Finally, he could send his creation to the

company that would print his guitar with a 3D milling machine. After a week, he got his personal

fabbed bass but Thompson was not fully happy about it and noticed several design errors that he

tried to fix manually. “As the final pieces come together, I find I’m getting excited again. For all

its imperfections, my creation looks surprisingly close to my original vision – less a straight-head

guitar than a piece of mildly psychedelic Soviet machinery”196.

The whole process took only a week for Thompson to get his object ready. The Shark Bass

project was much longer (approximately one year) and in collaboration with others. Even though

eMachineShop offers to individuals the possibility of personal fabrication in designing their own

things, it does not offer the possibility to engage with hands-on manufacturing and fabrication:

The eMachineShop software (…) included artificial intelligence that operates like a ‘virtual machinist’. In the background – invisible to the users – it runs a precise emulation of the real-world machines that fabricate parts to determine whether the job is possible and how much it’ll cost197

On the other hand, Alex’s guitar was not really made in a rapid prototyping manner but was

the outcome of a greater level of personal involvement with the end product from participants.

The creation of structured knowledge - peer production - and hands-on approach has given a

more sophisticated result in conformity to users’ desire. Thompson, who received a guitar not 193 Thompson, C., "Clive Thompson on 3-D Printing's Legal Morass", Wired Magazine, http://www.wired.com/design/2012/05/3-d-printing-patent-law/, Accessed June 17, 2012. 194 Ibidem. 195 Ibidem. 196 Ibidem. 197 Ibidem.

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entirely similar to his first idea, writes in Wired “the dangers of designing solely on

computers”198.

The process of making Shark Bass has been documented on Fab Lab Amsterdam

website199, respecting, therefore, open design principles.

DIY biotechnologies are also practices that are many times undertook with others usually in

small labs (garages). Emerging from open source hardware development and from Pro-Am

movement trying to build low-cost open source tools and infrastructures for experimenting and

sharing scientific knowledge200, biohacking represents a new contestational form of scientific

practices.

Lucas Evers who leads Waag Society’s Wetlab organized, with Life Science technologist

and founder of the Dutch DIY Bio community Pieter van Boheemen, the event DIY Bio201 to

which I participated during my research. The goal was to assemble the Open PCR and gain

practical DIY Bio experience (fig. 58, 59, 60, 61, 62, 63, 64, 65, 66, 67, 68, 69, 70, 71, 72, 73, 74,

75). Open PCR kit is the first open-source PCR (for sequencing DNA) available for $512 and

including the first Arduino USB storage device202.

The idea of the kit recalls the first computer kits that were sold in magazines during the

1970s. Hobbyists would buy computer parts and assemble them. Such practices led to the

emergence of a hobbyist subculture, developed around personal computing203. Now the same is

happening to bio-knowledge and we could get a glimpse of it that evening in Fab Lab

Amsterdam.

A couple of enthusiasts and experts (not so many people) gathered together in the Zuidlab

to assemble not only the Open PCR (developed by Jankowski and Perfetto204) but also the

198 Ibidem. 199 Alicice, “3D Bass Guitar”, Fab Lab Amsterdam, December 1, 2011, http://fablab.waag.org/project/3d-bass-guitar/documentation/4834, Accessed June 17, 2012. 200 Delfanti, A., and Söderberg, J., op.cit. 201 It was the fourth edition of DIY Bio organized by the Waag. 202 Evers, L., “DIY Bio: Open PCR”, Waag Society, May 30, 2012, http://waag.org/en/blog/diy-bio-open-pcr, Accessed July 17, 2012. 203 Thacker, E, 'A Biotech Hobbyist Manifesto', in Natalie Jeremijenko and Eugene Thacker (eds) Creative Biotechnology: A User’s Manual, Newcastle-upon-Tyne: Locus +, 2004, pp. 38-39, p. 39. 204 Open PCR- The $599 Personal PCR Machine, http://openpcr.org/, Accessed June 17, 2012.

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Amplino (a new generation of PCR) developed by Pieter van Boheemen, cell biology master

student Wouter Bruins and mechanical engineering/bioinformatics student Jelmer Cnossen.

Amplino is a low cost quantitative PCR to use for malaria diagnostics205. All of them participated

to the event and Jelmer even used the laser cutter that evening to build the Amplino. People were

busy with their hands but also had time to raise discussions on DIY Bio.

In a do-it-together style, participants experienced with biotech knowledge and kits.

However, the majority of the audience was actually expert and, to my understanding, there were

very few novices (myself included) participating to the event. Nonetheless, these specialists were

interested in hobbyist practices. According to Eugene Thacker, biotech hobbyist projects employ

a kind of “tactical media” that supports amateur practice and argues that “amateurism and

hobbyism are important here because imply an interest in learning and interest in reappropriating,

repurposing”206. On the same line, Eric Kluitenberg argues that amateur practice is not only about

access to the means of production but also access “to the very systems that define what counts as

knowledge, and how and where value is created”207.

The goal of biotech hobbyists is to bring non-specialists to hands-on experiences and

shared knowledge. This is not about developing “biotech for the people” or solving social

problems208. DIY and DIT biotech approach is much more in line of what the art collective and

tactical media practitioners, Critical Art Ensemble, was doing back to the early 2000s: making

biology hackable and appropriating scientific knowledge and practices that had been monopolised

by scientists and corporations. These tactics that aim for a contestational biology are bringing

biology to public examination209. “A non-specialist (hobbyist) engagement with biotech can count

as legitimate knowledge in the contestation over the meanings of biotechnology in our society”210.

Critical Art Ensemble engages with amateur practice and argues that such practice is capable:

205 Amplino, http://www.amplino.org, Accessed June 17, 2012. 206 Thacker, E, The Global Genome, Biotechnology, Politics, and Culture, The MIT Press, Cambridge, Massachusetts, London, England, 2005, pp. 314-315. 207 Kluitenberg, E., Legacies of Tactical Media. The Tactics of Occupation: From Tompkins Square to Tahrir, Institute of Network Cultures, Amsterdam, The Netherlands 2011, p. 14. 208 Thacker, E, 'A Biotech Hobbyist Manifesto', op.cit, p. 39. 209 Delfanti, A., and Söderberg, J., op.cit. 210 Thacker, E, 'A Biotech Hobbyist Manifesto', op.cit, p. 39.

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To see through dominant paradigms, are more freer to recombine elements of paradigms thought long dead, and can apply everyday life experience to their deliberations. Most important, however, amateur are not invested in institutionalised systems of knowledge production and policy construction211

We have seen in this chapter that not only manufacturing knowledge and production but

also biotech practices have been appropriated by the masses (or the most skilled non-specialists –

Pro-Ams). In doing so, a set of common practices and ideals are shared by these makers.

Transparency in making process and shared knowledge is based upon open source and P2P

principles. In the last chapter – “Openness”- we look closer at this philosophy of transparency

that drives Fab methods or what is also called Open Design.

3 Openness

Fab Moments are your projects you need to document on Fab Lab Amsterdam website:

Here you can find a variety of projects developed at the Fablab Amsterdam. Projects listed here may still be work in progress. Browse through the documentation and you may find similar processes of digital production that you had in mind for your idea. This may help you to optimize your project idea. You can find more projects in the Archive212

According to the Fab principles, it is highly important to provide open access in the design

blueprint of whatever you have created during your stay in any Fab Lab. Sharing your design is at

the core of open design principles. This is something we comprehend when we see, on

bookshelves in the lab, Open Design Now – Why Design Cannot Remain Exclusive’s books,

published by Waag Society, Creative Commons NL and Premsela. Fab Labs give free and open

211 Critical Art Ensemble quoted by Kluitenberg, E, op.cit, p. 39. 212 “Projects”, Fab Lab Amsterdam, http://fablab.waag.org/projects, Accessed August 17, 2012.

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access to fabrication and “merged from our network society, in which the flow of information is

connected with the production of the visible matter around us”213.

The idea of openness has become very fashionable these days and has been spreading to a

multitude of areas. “This does not apply only to software, but also to hardware, design, services,

relationships, companies, data, workflows, industries, and even the Web. Indeed, if it’s open it

must be good”214. In our Internet society, open-everything is becoming a condicio sine qua non

and the Internet itself is regarded “as an ‘open’ and ‘free’ medium for the distribution of massive

quantities of information”215. In June 2012, the Netherlands Media Art Institute held the

exhibition - Yes, We’re Open - on the subject of openness in art. The concept of “open artwork”

calls into question authorship, intellectual property and copyrights. In this last chapter, we

investigate ‘openness’ in design.

The idea of openness raises many concerns, questions and debates. This is partly due to the

vague notion of the term itself when it is used for production beyond software:

What exactly is the ‘Openness’ in Open Design? Should ‘open’ apply to the design itself (pusblishing the blueprint), to the methods of production (Open Source), to all of its users (amateurs and professional designers alike)? Should ‘openness’ always involve this ‘open everything’?216.

3.1 Open Design

Open source beyond software represents things beyond the software arena. In the non-

physical world, these things are consolidated under the single definition of open content such as

213 Van Abel, B., "If you can't open it, you don't own it - Guimarães 2012, Open City Project", Watershed, July 2012, http://watershed.co.uk/opencity/think-pieces/think-piece-2/, Accessed August 17, 2012. 214 Mansoux, A., “It’s not easy being open”, REX alumni magazine OPEN DESIGN (fifth edition of WdKA's alumni magazine), p. 21. 215 Dullaart, E., Heck, P., "Yes, We are Open", Netherlands Media Art Institute, http://nimk.nl/eng/yes-were-open/yes-were-open-info, Accessed July15, 2012. 216 Herst, D., “Form follows user”, REX alumni magazine OPEN DESIGN (fifth edition of WdKA's alumni magazine), p. 27.

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the very popular wikis, open science and open education, cultural goods, maps. In the area of

tangible goods, open design (OD) refers to the open development of physical objects217.

Researchers Kerstin Kalka, Christina Raasch and Cornelius Herstaat attempt to give the

first statistical analysis of open design projects218. Draw on a comparison to open source software;

they observe strong similarities between OSS and OD:

We indicated that, in open design communities, tangible objects can be developed in very similar fashion to software; one could even say that people treat design as source code to a physical object and change the object via changing the source. This suggest the practical applicability of transferring the ‘Open Source model’ to different industries beyond software219

However, they also observe that openness of software components is more important than

openness of hardware components. Nonetheless, they also notice that the phenomenon of open

design is rapidly evolving and a growing number of physical artefacts start being designed

collaboratively via the Internet220. We find more and more advocates of open design who wish

“that the same principles of distributed creativity and free cooperation which free software

development builds on will also come to define material production”221.

Bas van Abel - co-founder of Waag Society’s Fab Lab and the Instructable Restaurant (an

open source restaurant) – is a firmly believer in open design principles. He is at the head of Waag

Society’s Open Design Lab and also co-editor of Open Design Now, the first book entirely

dedicated to this field. Abel pleads to open source products in the same line of Free Software and

Open source movement.

How to define open design? Some describe open design as “design whose creators allow it

to be freely distributed and documented and condone modifications and derivations of it”222 or

“CAD information published online under a CC license to be downloaded, produced, copied and

modified. An Open Design is produced directly from file by CNC and without special tooling”223.

217 Balka, K, Raasch, C, Herstatt, C, op.cit. 218 Ibidem. 219 Ibidem. 220 Ibidem, p. 22. 221 Delfanti, A., and Söderberg, J., op.cit. 222 Van Abel, B., Evers, L., Klaassen, R., Troxler, P., op.cit, p. 10 223 Kadushin, R., Van Abel, B., Evers, L., Klaassen, R., Troxler, P., op.cit, p. 108.

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Others define open design as “a new economic model for design that distributes power among

creative professionals and local manufacturers, rather concentrating it in centralized industrial

brands”224.

Open design is closely related to participatory design already introduced by some

progressive designers during the 1970s. Users were asked to participate in the design process in

order to improve the functionality a product. The term itself first appeared at the end of the last

century with the founding of Open Design Foundation, a non-profit organization that seeks “to

promote an alternative method for designing and developing technology, based on the free

exchange of comprehensive design information”225. Some designer such as Tord Boontje already

distributed the digital design of his chair in the early 1990s. At the end of 1990s, Reinoud

Lambers launched the Open Design Circuits, a website at Delf University of Technology for the

purpose of creating open source hardware and its community in the spirit of free software. The

idea of open design is therefore, closely related to these initiatives launched in the last decade of

the 20th century.

Among professionals, open design practices are approaches to openness. Some designers

choose to engage with openness on only specific steps in their work and others such as Jens

Dyvik are called “Open-Source designer” for publishing all design steps and inviting users to

modify their creations. Israeli industrial designer and design educator, Ronan Kadushin wrote the

Open Design Manifesto stating that:

A revolution in product development, production and distribution is imminent due to the Internet’s disruptive nature and the easy access to CNC machines. Open Design is a proposal to make this happen. It’s aim is to shift Industrial Design to become relevant in a globally networked information society226

Therefore, certain designers prefer to do open design due to ever-growing new

technologies. They perceive their approach as a necessity in today’s designing process. However,

open design is also part of a political agenda that advocates for more transparency in our

products. This is the mission of Open Design Lab of Waag Society that aims to empower people

224 Kennedy, G., Van Abel, B., Evers, L., Klaassen, R., Troxler, P., op.cit. p. 118. 225 Open Design Foundation, http://www.opendesign.org/, Accessed August 17, 2012. 226 Kadushin, R, Open Design Manifesto. Presented at Mestakes and Manifestos (M&M), curated by Daniel Charny, Anti Design Festival, London, 18-21 September 2010.

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to make and understand products and processes, for more transparency227. In the same line of

open data’s promises seeking greater transparency, the agenda of open design is to increase

transparency in the production chain228.

In asking the question, “Why should we be able to open up the products we own?”229, Abel

points out the necessity to move from closed systems to opened systems. Based on the Maker’s

Bill of Rights230, Abel developed a political statement against closed systems, which is

summarized in one phrase: if you can’t open it, you don’t own it. This idea to open source

products pledges to reveal what Finnish designer Dan Hill called the “dark matter”:

The notion of ‘dark matter’ – just like in the universe, in the civic sphere there is dark matter – points to the systems and processes that make things happen but that we cannot see and only know about because of the effect on how things are done […] The only way that dark matter can be perceived is by implication, through its effect on other things. With a product, service or artifact, the user is rarely aware of the organizational context that produced it, yet the outcome is directly affected by it231

Abel argues that the invisible -the dark matter- represents the organizational context that

produces a product. In our current economical system, invisible hands design our goods. It is the

connection of these invisible hands that makes it possible to be surrounded by mass production

design. Here, open design disrupts traditional design in making the invisible visible. Circuit

bending and hacking practices are inscribed in the same line, willing to open up the black box and

make the computer reappears itself. According to Menichelli, not only economic but also design

theories are gradually showing more interests in local dimensions as designers want to provide

sustainable solutions, which is at the opposite of the mass production design and economies of

scale232. John Thackara, the founder and Director of The Doors of Perception who organizes

227 Open Design Lab, Waag Society, http://waag.org/en/node/139, Accessed August 17, 2012. 228 Stikker, M., op.cit, p. 19. 229 Van Abel, B., "If you can't open it, you don't own it - Guimarães 2012, Open City Project", Watershed, July 2012, http://watershed.co.uk/opencity/think-pieces/think-piece-2/, Accessed August 17, 2012. 230 The Maker’s Bill Of Rights, Makezine, http://makezine.com/04/ownyourown/, Accessed August 17, 2012. 231 Hill, D., quoted by Van Abel, B., "If you can't open it, you don't own it”, op.cit. 232 Massimo Menichelli, openp2pdesign.org_1.1. Design for Complexity, p. 13, 2008

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events in which, grassroots innovators are connected to designers and technology innovators,

even states: “Openness is more than a commercial and cultural issue. It’s a matter of survival”233.

A matter of survival - Thackara and other advocates of open design invoke the need to

make social design. Responsibility and sustainability are important features and the actual end

users must be involved in the process:

As a purely creative exercise, open design promotes the unprecedented sharing of knowledge between the professional and amateur designer, breaking down unnecessary barriers. When carried out for the common good rather than for capital gain or profit, open design allows the sharing of creative skills between developed and undeveloped nations for humanitarian benefit, countering the ramifications of global product consumerism234

Finally, open design blurs the distinction between professionals and amateurs. This trend

that has been largely discussed in this thesis is also something taken into account by professional

designers such as Paul Atkinson who explains how DIY activities act as a democratizing

agency235. In other words, non-professionals who dedicate their leisure time to create their own

things can gain freedom from designers and professional helps. On the same line, designers

themselves can gain freedom in practicing open source design, which implies a strong emphasis

on ‘free’ access and sharing and ultimately, the need to opt for copyleft licences such as Creative

Commons. Intellectual property rights - copyrights and patents - that highly privatize public

knowledge and creativity, beneficiate only to the corporate world and to a few-best selling

artists236.

233 Thackara, J., Van Abel, B., Evers, L., Klaassen, R., Troxler, P., op.cit, p. 44. 234 Atkinson, P., Van Abel, B., Evers, L., Klaassen, R., Troxler, P., op.cit, p. 24. 235 Atkinson, P (Ed.) Do-It-Yourself: Democracy and Design, Special Issue of the Journal of Design History, 19(1): 2006, p. 5. 236 Smiers, J., “No More Best Sellers”, Van Abel, B., Evers, L., Klaassen, R., Troxler, P., op.cit, p. 100.

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3.2 Limits of Openness

The idea to implement open-source principles into design aims idyllically at bringing down

global capitalism. However, Aymeric Mansoux sees open source 3D printing scene repeating the

same mistakes of the free-software movement in which paid and unpaid users and developers are

part of this labour force developing open source product controlled by few commercial

companies237 “There is a misunderstanding in seeing free software as some objects or purity,

detached from the harsh reality of the free market”238 Media theorists Geert Lovink and Ned

Rossiter in “Dawn of the Organized Networks” also point this misconception of seeking the Holy

Grail of openness. Advocates of openness should realize that open systems of communication

such as the Creative Commons licences and the libertarian open source movement are actually

embedded in the traditional mechanisms of making money:

If there is a decision to be made, and an enemy to be singled out, it’s the techno-libertarian religion of the “free”. It’s high time to openly attack the cynical logic of do-good venture capitalists that preach giving away content for no money while making millions of dollars in the back room with software, hardware and telco-infrastructures, which the masses of amateur idiots need in order to give and take for free239

Media theorists, Tiziana Terranova defines this tendency as free labor in the production of

free and open source software, which is something structural to the late capitalist cultural

economy240. Contrary to Richard Barbrook241, Terranova argues that there is no a remergence of

communism through the gift economy (giving away content for no money): “gift is itself an

237 Mansoux, A., op.cit, p. 21. 238 Ibidem. 239 Lovink, G., Rossiter, N., "Dawn of the Organized Networks", The Fibreculture Journal, issue 5 2005, http://five.fibreculturejournal.org/fcj-029-dawn-of-the-organised-networks/, Accessed August 17, 2012 240 Terranova, T., “Free Labor: Producing Culture for the Digital Economy”, Social Text, Volume 18, number 2, Duke University Press, Summer 2000, pp. 33-58, p. 38. 241 Barbrook critiques in his books neo-liberal cyber-elite and he’s a real enthusiast of cyber-communism.

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important force within the reproduction of the labor force in capitalism. The provision of free

labor is a fundamental moment is the creation in the digital economies”242.

The idea of open-everything and commons-based peer production might seem to be in line

with leftist’s ideals at bringing down global capitalism. However, the high-tech gift economy can

be rapidly appropriated and used as sizeable labor force.

3.3 Distributed Education

In promoting fabbing practices, Gershenfeld attempts to correct an historical error that

dates back to the Renaissance when art was separated from artisans. The practices of making

things were relegated to the artes illiberales, considered just for mechanical production with the

advent of the first Industrial Revolution. According to Gershenfeld, this artificial division led to

the invention of unskilled labor243. Further, the division of labor between people and machines

accentuated the number of unqualified workers. Thinking about how making things became the

business of specialized engineers: handwork had become a pejorative term244.

In our current educational system, hands-on learning is neglected and the culture of

making is absent. In Fab Labs, we are taught that technologies help us in shaping our ideas and

the importance of doing in the learning process. Indeed, the goal is not only learning how to make

something but also to understand the process. (Re)gaining confidence is the key in fabbing

practices: “One of the primary methods used to address this issue is to create and maintain the

“climate of confidence” which has an integral role in the Fab Lab framework”245.

Along with the possibilities of learning by doing in Fab Labs, Gershenfeld launched a

Digital Fabrication Program: the Fab Academy. Based on the course, “How to Make (Almost)

Anything, the Fab Academy is a series of online distributed learning modules combined with

242 Terranova, T., op.cit. 243 Gershenfeld, N., (2005), op.cit. 244 Ibidem. 245 Eychenne, F., op.cit, p. 18.

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hands-on training in the lab. It was created for anyone worldwide who does not have access to

training in advanced digital production techniques. “It not distance learning, but distributed

learning, as everyone has access to the same tools”246.

The Academy consists of a five-month part-time student commitment, from January 18th

to May 30. Global lectures take place on Wednesdays at 9 am on the US East Coast. Gershenfeld

hosts them and students are linked via videoconference. Instructors who provide instructional

material and assist with projects provide hands-on instruction in the labs. Alex is the instructor

for students in Amsterdam who had previously taken part to the Fab Academy and got graduated.

Classes are ranging from learning computer-aided design, computer-controlled cutting, computer-

controlled machining, to electronics design, 3D scanning and printing, and many other

techniques.

During my research, I could attend two classes and I followed Alex and the four students

(Astrid, Cynthia, Bas and Thomas) to the second floor where we all sit in front of a big screen.

We could see and communicate with Gershenfeld and the other students from the rest of the

world. There were students from Fab Lab Nairobi, Lima, Toulouse, Detroit, Barcelona, and from

England, Israel, India, Iceland, and many other places in the world (13 labs in total). For each

week, there was an assignment to do and students would one by one present their work and the

difficulties they encountered. Gershenfled would give them advices. Afterwards, he would give a

lecture on the new topic. I attended the last two classes that were about “applications and

implications”247 (May 9) and “invention, intellectual property, and income”248 (May 16). At this

point, students were already working on their final projects that they would present during the

Graduation Day.

Astrid is a concept developer at Waag Society and has a background in Industrial Design

Engineering. She decided to take part to the Fab Academy to enhance her skills in rapid

prototyping and learn the basics of electronics. Her project is to make a “contemporary craft

inspiration book”(fig. 86), which is a pop-up book that aims to give inspiration to novices of what 246 Ibidem, p. 19. 247 “Applications and Implication”, Fab Academy, http://academy.cba.mit.edu/classes/applications_implications/index.html, Accessed August 17, 2012. 248 “Invention, Intellectual Property, and Income”, Fab Academy, http://academy.cba.mit.edu/classes/invention_IP_business/index.html, Accessed August, 17, 2012.

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they can make in the Fab Lab249. The book contains “five pages with integrated electronics, and

each page links to an online step-by-step tutorial via QR code”250. Astrid’s interest was to bridge

craft and technology (hypercraft) and her project addresses both to people with technical skills

and people with artistic skills: “I am convinced that if people from these two perspective team up

to learn from each other, it will lead to interesting cross-overs”251. Astrid used all the machine

tools of the lab as it is required to do for the final project of the Fab Academy.

Cynthia is American and has a background in Software Engineering. She lives currently in

Amsterdam. Since my arrival in the lab, I could see Cynthia being always busy with the 3D

printer and I came to understand that she really loves this machine. One day, I asked her what she

was exactly printing (fig. 8) and she explained to me that she was making small parts to replace

broken parts of one item at her place. Since then, I realized the power that might have 3D printing

in putting a term to functional obsolescence.

For her final project, Cynthia decided to make a 3D Zoetrope (fig. 80) with 3D sculptures

and using LED lights252. Bas works as hardware and lowlevel software developed at Waag

Society. Since he really likes electronics, he made a FabScope253. Finally, Thomas who works as

a sound-engineer in Paradisio (Amsterdam) and as a repair engineer for the company “Artist on

the Road”, made a coil winder out of wood254.

On May 30th, Fab Academy Final Presentations took place in the Theatrum Anatomicum (fig.

76, 77, 78, 79, 80, 81, 82, 83, 84, 85, 86, 87, 88, 89, 90, 91, 92, 93, 94, 95, 96, 97). Such as for

the regular classes, students from the around world were linked via videoconference and

presenting one by one their final project. Gershenfeld was hosted the event. Astrid, Cynthia, Bas

and Thomas were joined by two other students from Aalto FabLab (Helsinki)255: Massimo

249 For the video of her project: Astrid Lubsen, “Final Project: Contemporary Craft Book”, Fab Academy, http://academy.cba.mit.edu/2012/students/lubsen.astrid/Finalproject.html, Accessed August 17, 2012. 250 Astrid, “Contemporary Craft Inspiration Book”, Fab Lab Amsterdam, June 7, 2012, http://fablab.waag.org/project/contemporary-craft-inspiration-book, Accessed August 17, 2012. 251 Astrid Lubsen, “Final Project: Contemporary Craft Book”, Fab Academy, op.cit. 252 For the video: Cynthia Mavros, “Final Project – 3D Zoetrope”, Fab Academy, http://academy.cba.mit.edu/2012/students/mavros.cynthia/FinalProject.html, Accessed August 17, 2012. 253 Bas Withagen, “Final Project – FabScope”, Fab Academy, http://academy.cba.mit.edu/2012/students/bas.withagen/final.html , Accessed August 17, 2012. 254 Thomas Hopman, “Final Project – Coil Winder”, Fab Academy, http://academy.cba.mit.edu/2012/students/hopman.thomas/final_project.html, Accessed August 17, 2012. 255 Aalto Fablab is currently under construction.

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Menichinelli and Maattaa Anu. All of them showed their work to Gershenfeld and to the rest of

the students worldwide. Alex was very happy to have his bass finished so he could also present it

during the event.

Even tough it was not the actual Graduation Day Ceremony (that takes place at the 8th Fab

Conference in Wellington, New Zealand on the 27th of August); Victor made a small diploma for

each participant (and a poster for the event). It was also the occasion for him to experiment with

the milling machine that he turned into a drawing machine (he attached pencils to the milling

machine head) – (fig. 87, 88, 89, 92, 93, 94, 96, 97).

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Discussion: Towards New Developments in Fab Labs?

An ethnographic analysis helped to understand that hands-on experiments in shaping things

are what really drive participants, regular users, interns and Fab Lab Amsterdam team. This close

relation between the subject and the object is at the core of fabbing practices.

In this Master thesis, I attempted to portray fabbing practices based on two weeks of

participant observation in Fab Lab Amsterdam. I first described personal fabrication and the

emergence of Fab Labs network. In a second chapter, I explored practices of making and shaping

things. Basically, answering to the question - What can you do in a Fab Lab? - through the

description of a variety of DIY and DIT projects. Finally, I tried to present the philosophy of

openness and transparency that are behind fabbing practices and see the limits of such do-good

philosophy. The last subchapter was dedicated to distributed education and to the Fab Academy.

In researching fab practices and how Fab Lab Amsterdam offers the possibility to prototype

ideas, I could observe an emerging model for bottom-innovation. Troxler who makes a difference

between Fab Labs as solely facilities and Fab Labs that pursue innovative approach, has already

described this trend. In my view, Fab Lab Amsterdam represents a highly innovative lab showing

the possibility of private-collective (hybrid) innovation, as defined by Troxler. This is mostly due

to the institute for art, science and technology - Waag Society – that initiated Fab Lab

Amsterdam. We have seen that in many cases, Waag employees participate to the laboratory life

and even two of them were Fab Academy students this year. Not to mention, the role of Alex who

always shows much zeal in creative projects. With a background in metal work and music, Alex

developed interesting projects such as “50 -$-leg”, “Fab Foos” and lately, “Shark Bass”.

I also notice that regular users and interns are responsible with their creation for giving a

specific identity to the lab. For instance, Vincent’s Alzheimer open source radio is a kind of

unique example.

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I would like to conclude this discussion on Victor’s passion for graphics and how his work

can lead to new innovative developments in fabbing ecology.

In a recent post, “Design & DIY – 5 years of Innovation Fab Lab Amsterdam”, Victor

presents the final of his booklet project (that I mentioned at the beginning of this thesis). This

intern begins with the simple question: “Why there is no print facilities in the Fablab?”256. When

he started his internship, Victor was impressed with all the machine tools available in the lab but

he was also missing printers and printing devices.

If I can print, then I can publish; if I publish, I have to make an object. Will this object be a book? A series of booklets? Posters? Flyers? As I am doing it by myself, then I should have more space for my own formats, techniques, speech, etc…It raises more questions about autonomy. A Fablab can become a publisher, as it is already a possible factory, an atelier, a learning school, an academy257

In order to make a small book on past Fab projects, Victor asked Alex to bring a stencil

printer (Riso) so he could make it in this kind of vintage-style that he likes. This is an old printer

and everything is mechanical, which offers a series of advantages (see Victor’s description in his

blog post). Here, Victor explains the idea behind this booklet:

I wanted to make a publication that highlights the outcome of the Fablab. There are already enough reports about what is a Fablab, what you can find in a Fablab, what is a Fablab for etc., but only few about what has actually been made. Thanks to Alex’s determination and other fablabbers, the documentation is amazing. Many projects are documented, and people enjoy doing it, it is part of the sharing process. Nonetheless to my point of view the documentation is almost always process reports, how-to guides and step-by-step explanations. Few place is given to the final result258

As Victor cleverly notices, if Fab Lab is really the place where you can make (almost)

anything, then any project could be realized. A common set of manufacturing machine tools must

be found but there is no impediment to provide other tools and carry out projects beyond design

as long as it is in conformity with DIY, free access and shared knowledge principles.

256 Brangoleau, V., "Design & DIY - 5 Years of Innovation Fablab Amsterdam", blogpost, Fablab Waag Society Projects, July 12, 2012, http://fablab.waag.org/project/design-diy-5-years-innovation-fablab-amsterdam, Accessed July 24, 2012. 257 Ibidem. 258 Ibidem.

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Conclusion

Since the very first lab in MIT, Fab Labs have scaled geographically, from inner-city Boston

to rural India, from South Africa to the North of Norway. Today, ninety Fab Labs are operating in

the world and thirty-one are due to open soon. The idea is to democratize personal fabrication and

to promote bottom-up innovation. Based on the model of open source and commons-based peer

production, Fab Labs form part of the recent and ongoing movement of Open Design.

In this thesis, we have explained the emergence of a network field Fab Labs that is embedded

in the maker subculture. Looking at fabbing practices in Fab Lab Amsterdam gives an insight of

such subculture, which is characterized by a very close relation with tangible objects. We have

seen that personal fabrication is under way in what some call the next industrial revolution.

Finally, we have exposed how the idea of openness is both an important feature of this movement

but at the same time might also be problematic.

Open spaces and Fab Labs represent the possibility of small-scale fabrication and therefore,

challenge the traditional manufacturing world. However, the concept is still very new, though it is

expanding fast, and further developments need to be achieved: while it seems that a common

philosophy and solid structure of Fab Labs have been settled, it is still challenging to

economically sustain such facilities and provide open and free access at the same time.

Ultimately, Troxler’s proposal of developing private-collective (hybrid) innovation model is

interesting to explore especially in the burgeoning fabbing scene. Indeed, there is a lot of

enthusiasm growing with personal fabrication’s promises.

This ethnography on the environment of Fab Lab Amsterdam demonstrates how people in

this lab attempt to bring innovation at the core of their praxis.

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Appendix

Appendix I – Space.................................................................................................................................................78

Appendix II – Projects ..........................................................................................................................................82

Appendix III – Events...........................................................................................................................................87

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APPENDIX I – SPACE

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APPENDIX II – PROJECTS

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APPENDIX III – EVENTS

FABBING PRACTICES- AN ETHNOGRAPHY IN FAB LAB AMSTERDAM

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