The Swinburne Institute for Social Research is running a one-day symposium on 5th December entitled 3D Printing: Social and Cultural Trajectories. I met Angela Daly, who is on the organizing committee for this event, while in Singapore at the Inside 3D Printing event there, and after she sent me the details for this event, I really wish I was 12,000 miles closer (and it didn’t clash with Euromold). For anyone in the Southern Hemisphere, though, it is one to take a closer look at.
With a wide scope this looks to me as though it could be one of the broadest symposiums on 3D printing I’ve seen in a while — not necessarily looking to provide answers so much as raise issues and stimulate ideas and conversations. Obviously, a session has been dedicated to applications of 3D printing, with a specific focus on medicine, museums and the environment among others. But it is sessions 2 and 3 that I REALLY wish I could get to
Session 2: Site Studies of 3D Printing
Prof Donald McNeill, UWS: ‘3D printing and the restructuring of urban economies: the case of Brooklyn’
Dr Xin Gu, Melbourne: ‘ “New Work Unit”: a 3D printing and hacker space in Shanghai’
Dr Dennis Wollersheim, Latrobe & Paul Taylor, Quantum Victoria: ‘How 3D printing is feeding an Australian Maker Culture’
Session 3: Social Theory and Cultural Studies of 3D Printing
Dr Tama Leaver, Curtin: ‘Let’s Get Physible? The Pirate Bay and 3D Printing’
Robbie Fordyce, Melbourne: ‘Manufacturing household governance: additive manufacturing and the social factory’
Luke Heemsergen, Melbourne: ‘Sintering socio-political assumptions: towards typologies and disciplines of 3D printing research.’
Now if the presentations live up to their titles (how imaginative are they? Particularly the last one!) this is going to be a day well spent for those lucky enough to make it. These sessions are a build up to the Keynote speech, which is to be given by Dr Matthew Rimmer on Intellectual Property and 3D Printing. Dr Rimmer is a law lecturer from the Australian National University in Canberra and has written extensively about 3D printing and intellectual property law as well as being a well known media commentator on IP and other matters in Australia.
The symposium is being organised as part of the Legal and Social Implications of 3D Printing project, funded by a Faculty of Life and Social Sciences Research Development Grant, and managed by SISR. The project examines the emerging technology of 3D printing and its potential cultural-economic, legal and policy consequences in Australia and beyond.
Angela believes that this is the first conference of its kind in Australia — taking a humanities and social sciences view of 3D printing — and likely one of the first globally to adopt this approach. I would have to agree that this is certainly one of the most original line-ups I have seen in a long time for a 3D printing conference.
Full details of the event can be found here.
