3D Printing at NMC:

Rapid prototyping for hacking reality

I work at DoESLiverpool a makerspace in Liverpool and we helped make Desktop Prosthetics.

Basically we used someone's kit of instructions to 3D print a prosthetic with Baylee and her Dad. Then Baylee & other families started hacking the design and it became a live production line for prosthetics for an exhibition with FACT and the Crafts Council.

Desktop Prosthetics

I like art that makes 'useful' things; the artistic role is to help people do it themselves creatively or make & facilitate new spaces to let that happen. Im pretty open to what 'useful' means.

Reality is a difficult place. The social model of disability says people are not innately 'disabled'; society's lack of ability to make the environment helpful for everyone constructs disability. But sometimes we need to 'hack' our environment while we wait for society to catch up with us.

Hack Reality!

A 'hack' is a simple way of making something work differently, not always good, but not always bad. It's a term from software culture but applied to things in the real world like IKEA Hacking

This is Raul Krauthausen a design teacher & activist in Berlin. He made some cool stuff with a 3D printer to help him get around Berlin and draw attention to things society might need to change. Society changed the entire surface of the planet to make cars work why not other vehicles?

He then published it on Thingiverse so other people can hack their pavements.

Pavement Hacking!

After our #NMCreativity day I think alot of us liked the idea of making stuff with 3D printers that could help us hack things from wheelchair controllers to bottleopeners or clips for a wire that otherwise would cost too much!

As technology gets more complicated we rely on experts to make things for us but we can start doing that ourselves and that's what we've been making with our 3D printer.