The 3D Additivist Cookbook: Are You a 3D Printing Radical?

additivism: a movement that aims to disrupt material, social, computational, and metaphysical realities through provocation, collaboration, and ‘weird’/science fictional thinking

This is your chance to get in on the 3D conversation. Offering you the chance to put your thoughts, discussion, and ‘recipes’ into the The 3D Additivist Cookbook, their team is now actively calling for submissions to the upcoming online tome, which will be a provocative collection of “speculative texts, templates, recipes and (im)practical designs for living in this most contradictory of times.”

Their formal Additivism Manifesto, presented in distorted auditory style in a grim and radical video by Moreshin Allahyari and Daniel Rourke, offers a rather frightening but intense call and list of rules for enlisting 3D printing and contemporary tools to transform the world.

While 3D printing is most often presented as a positive force and forum for changing the world and transforming manufacturing to offer higher quality with better affordability, the authors of the Additivism Manifesto want to look at 3D printing and ‘additivism’ from every angle–including the good, bad, and the ugly.

“By considering this technology as a potential force for good, bad, and otherwise, we aim to disrupt binary thinking entirely, drawing together makers and thinkers invested in the idea of real, radical change,” states the 3D Additivism team.

“By considering the 3D printer as a technology for remodeling thought into profound, and often nightmarish new shapes, additivism aims to expose in-betweens, empower the powerless, and question the presupposed.”

You are asked to submit:

• Templates in .obj and .stl files
• Critical and artistic texts
• Algorithms and code
• Propositions that are “antagonistic to the timescales, infrastructures, and social givens layered into every 3D print”

The ideas you could present for the cookbook seem infinite, but if you are interested, you will want to start out by studying 3D Additivism, as well as reading the manifesto, which is a beautiful and dark collage of comments and poetic declarations regarding 3D printing and applying them to additivism.

Subjects suggested range in topics from concept and physical form to the metaphor of 3D printing to the aesthetic of the technology, as well as political discussions on gender issues, activism, and discussions on how open source technology may disrupt power of all sorts.

It’s your choice as to how you choose to represent your subject, but only three items may be entered. You will be expected to discuss what your entry is, how it functions, and give an explanation of why you think it will contribute to additivism.

The deadline for entering is July 31, 2015.

The 3D Additivist Cookbook will be published under a ‘creative commons license’ next year, with the content meant to inspire symposia, exhibitions, and events which explore, affirm, and narrate everything to do with the additivist movement.

Are you interested in making a submission to The 3D Additivist Cookbook? Discuss in the 3D Additivist Cookbook forum thread over at 3DPB.com.