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| ISS Commander Barry Wilmore displays the first object 3-D printed in space |
This week, NASA tested a 3-D printer in space. An on-demand machine shop is a pretty incredible tool if you want to get to Mars. A couple of years ago it was widely reported that we'd all have such devices in our homes by now. Turns out it was a little ambitious to think we'd be fabricating toaster replacement parts in the basement. Still, you can probably have a decent one out of the box and working for about $1000.
The obstacle to ubiquity isn't affordability. It's creativity. Jessica Banks, CEO of RockPaperRobot says "it might be that many people get their 3-D printers and they're like 'This is going to be awesome. I can make everything in my life.' And what do they do? The make a spoon." Spoons are the sorts of objects Banks refers to as "digital poop."
Christopher Williams, director of Virginia Tech's DREAMS Laboratory concurs. The value of 3-D printing, he says, is not in replicating what can be made by other, existing manufacturing processes. Instead, he says, those designing for 3-D printers ought to be looking toward organic structures -- bone, coral, and wood, for example -- that have previously been dismissed as inspiration because of their prohibitive cost or structural delicacy. "There's very little value in using 3-D printing to re-create something that's already been made."
Teachers of digital filmmaking and other expressive arts can probably hear echoes of themselves in these sentiments. Colleagues often lament the derivative nature of student projects. "If I see one more zombie film, I'm going to scream," one professor told me. "I've outlawed superhero parodies," said another.
Yet there's a sweet spot to be found between wholly original art and intentionally instructional mimesis. The task of teaching is to balance the étude with the masterwork, helping our students sidestep piles of digital poop.
