Objects in Common

Objects in common was a series of different activities that ran from October 2015 to March 2016, related to current challenges of material culture in the digital age and developed in collaboration with Medialab Prado in Madrid.

Digital media channels have led to a rise in the distributed manufacture of customised objects. How is it possible to make the manufacture and design of these objects really accessible, beyond the mere publication of online plans and platforms? How does one respond to a larger scale production that is beyond the capacity of the initial community of origin? How is artisan culture able to converse with digital processes? How do we collectively create objects that are flexible in their use and are made by and for other bodies? And what about situated digital manufacturing in for example African cities?

Objects in Common made these and other questions related to current challenges of material culture in the digital age with different activities that ran from October 2015 to March 2016.
The worksession ’Objects in Common’ was the final event in the series that started with ’Funcionamientos: Objects in Common and Diverse Bodies’ followed by ’Interactivos? Material Cultures in the digital age’ and ’Grigri Pixel: makers and energy in African cities’.
During the week of the 7th to 12th of March 2016, 25 makers and thinkers have looked at the potential but also at the problems of sharing practices, processes of manufacturing and the documentation of physical objects. Taking both the permission to reproduce and the availability of source files as a given, there are still many questions to ask about the actual common-ness of digital objects and their potential physical life.

The project was developed in collaboration with Medialab-Prado and curated by Susana Moliner and Constant member Wendy Van Wynsberghe.

Participants: Alberto Flores, An Mertens, Blanca Callén, Cesar García Saez, Danny Leen, Francisco Díaz, Francois Chasseur, Jil Theunissen, Julien Deswaef, Julien Leresteux, Kokou Elolo Amegayibo, Luc Hanneuse, Malcolm Bain, Mamadou Coulibaly, Marc Lambaerts, marthe van dessel, Mireia Juan, Modou Ngom, Paul Appert, Philippe Jadin, Sara San Gregorio, Veerle De Ridder, Wendy Van Wynsberghe, Wim Van Gool, Zineb El Fasiki.

Reports of the activities were bundled in the beautiful publication, ’Peggy, an object in common’. You can freely download/print/distribute this booklet: http://constantvzw.org/documents/oic/Peggy.publication.pdf
Or you can get your own riso-printed physical copy sending an email to donatella@constantvzw.org [5 euro plus shipping costs].

Pictures of the worksession: http://gallery3.constantvzw.org/index.php/Objetos-comunes

Recordings of the worksession: http://sound.constantvzw.org/Objects_in_common/

Notes related to the different themes of the worksession:
MONDAY 07/03
"” Spaces+ relations (fablabs, hackerspaces, makerspaces ..)
TUESDAY 08/03
"” Repositories, sharing platforms, documentation (manuals, videos).
WEDNESDAY 09/03
"” Resources, materials and relations (geopolitics, ecology, economy)
THURSDAY 10/03
"” Licenses and the relations they produce
FRIDAY 11/03
"” Digital to physical (fileformats, vectors, limitations, transformations)