There’s a sad sort of clanging from the clock in the hall and the bells in the steeple too. And, up in the nursery of 3D printed jewellry retailer, Stilnest, an absurd little bird is popping out to say “cuckoo”. In preparation for their exhibit at the 3D PrintShow in London this week, Stilnest has brought together five artists from around the world to collaborate on an update of the time-honoured cuckoo clock, saying, “We asked them to become part of a crazy idea, that we’ve had in mind for a long time: creating a conjoint remake of the traditional German cuckoo clock in sync with the Zeitgeist of the 21st century.”
CUCKOO DesignerIntro from Stilnest on Vimeo.
I don’t know why I’m in love with this endeavour. Maybe it’s just because listening to The Sound of Music always puts me in a generous and sentimental mood, but I think there are several levels to the Cuckoo Project that make it noteworthy. I’ll start with the object being designed itself: the cuckoo clock. This strange artifact tells the time and simultaneously stands outside of it, remaining relatively unchanged since the 18th century. By bringing the cuckoo into the 21st century with social media and 3D printing, the designers are paying tribute to something so quaint that it could survive regardless of technological advancement. No matter how obsolete analogue clocks might become, there’s no recreating the craftsmanship and genuine warmth generated by a cuckoo.
Because, according to Stilnest, the project will be “integrating social media features, hashtags and music”, the bird itself is a perfect symbol for what the project intends to do. The “star of the show”, as Stilnest calls it, is not only the centre of the timepiece, but also representative of social media in the form of the Twitter logo. Without Twitter’s birdie, the world would not be what it is today, with social media serving to join people together throughout the world to share information and collaborate towards common goals. It’s quite appropriate, then, that the clock is being made, not by one artist, but by five.
While the bird may be the star of the show to Stilnest, to me, the real star is the sound that the bird makes. The sound of a clock chiming was one of the original methods for aligning early social networks. By chiming the hour of the day in early societies, the entire community would be set to the same schedule, knowing that markets were opening and closing, regardless of where one was or what one was doing, even if the clock was not visible. It was one of the earliest ways of creating a consensus reality. Social networking sites today are the tolling bells of the 21st century, driving the collective consciousness to a larger consensus reality that unites disparate cultures and populations.
What better object for five designers to construct than a cuckoo clock? Even though there is a growing number of 3D printed jewellery stores, Stilnest has sort of won me over with their Cuckoo Contest to create a clock to chime out over the whole of the 3D printing marketplace. The whole clock will be printed in one piece at Hasenauer & Hesser in Germany and coloured by Cipres Technology Systems and finally displayed at the 3D Printshow 2013 in London. Maybe Rachel can give us an idea of how it turned out?
Until further ado, the sun has gone to bed and so must I. So long, farewell, auf Wiedersehen, goodbye…
