Open design, co-design and p2p production are influencing not only the way we think about designing and making things but also the way we approach economical sustainability, supply chain and business models.
In the past weeks Massimo Menichinelli interviewed us (Bertram Niessen and me) on Openwear and Peter Toxler  on some issues regarding these topics and it’s worth it to reblog here:

Openwear.org (Zoe Romano + Bertram Niessen) interview about DIY Craft / Fashion Microproductions

Openwear is the new open source concept and community in course of developing by EDUfashion, a two-year project for the development of a collaborative platform for fashion creation and continuous education emphasizing skill-sharing and ethical branding. It is born out of the collaboration of Poper – a social communication studio based in Ljubljana – Ethical Economy – the company based in London providing web tools to build ethically significant relations, and 3 universities from Italy (Faculty of Political Science in Milano), Slovenia (Faculty of Natural Sciences in Ljubljana) and Denmark (Copenhagen Business School).

In Openwear’s online space, small fashion producers, designers, stylists, students, interns,tailors, photographers, models, crafters, sewing cafes, silk-screen printers, fashion schools and others will all be able to open their own web space and personal profile, have access to the service and tools made available by the community, network, learn but also take part to the first collaborative, peer-produced, open-source fashion brand and its collections.
For the first time, the result of the innovative process of crowdsourcing will not be owned by a particular firm or company because the owners will be the community itself.

In this post I’m going to interview two of Openwear’s members, Zoe Romano and Bertram Niessen.

Massimo Menichinelli: The phenomena of Open Hardware, DIY and Makers have reached a remarkable level of development, fame and reputation. Perhaps less famous but equally important is the phenomenon of DIY craft and craft / fashion micro enterprises that are often visible on platforms such as Etsy. What are the differences and similarities between these phenomena and how do they relate to each other?

Zoe Romano and Bertram Niessen: All these new scenes have in common a desire to empower understanding what they have in their hands, how it was made and improved. This desire blurs the distinction between producers and consumers, not in the sense that everyone will make everything they need, but that everyone more and more often will able to produce or design something and make it available in a flux of exchange out of which everyone could benefit.

Both phenomena are related with crucial changes that are undergoing in our social and economical environment. The Peak Oil calls to 0 Km chains of production. The rise of 2.0 social networks, mixed with the spreading of p2p communities, encourages new forms of global/local communities of producers and consumers. New technologies in communication and material production foster distributed manufacturing.

The difference is that DIY crafters sometimes have the tendency to perceive themselves more far away from technology because of their handmade pledge. It’s more a problem of cultural background. But as long as they envision the possibilities of new on-demand machines, they realize how craftsmanship could be revolutionized without losing its soul. Continue on openp2pdesign.org

An interview with Peter Troxler about Open Design and Fab Labs

After the interview with Zoe Romano and Bertram Niessen from Openwear.org, I have now the pleasure to interview Peter Troxler, an independent researcher (see his personal website here) and one of the few researchers (if not the only one) that are investigating the business models of Fab Labs and Open Design.

Peter Troxler is also one of the editors of the forthcoming Open Design Now book and runs Square One, an independent research company at the intersection of business administration, society and technology. He has also been an instructor at Fab Academy and Business Developer at Fab Lab Luzern.

Massimo Menichinelli: It seems that the Netherlands are the country where Fab Labs and Open Design have encountered most interest so far. Which are the reasons for such a success and what is the current situation?

Peter Troxler: I am not entirely sure this assessment is actually correct. Let’s look at the two topics, Fab Labs and Open Design, seperately.

01. Fab Labs
It is obvious that the Netherlands has seen a quick growth in number of Fab Labs — from one in 2007/2008 to 6 labs (on the official list and 3 more (mobile, Maastricht, Enschede) that are not on the list now (2010/11). Also, with 9 Labs for 16 million inhabitants this is probably the highest density; the US has 19 Fab Labs for 311 million of people (at this density the Netherlands would only have 1 Fab Lab).

But we should not forget, that Fab Labs are only one player in the fabbing universe; there are Tech Shops, Hacker Spaces, “Offene Werkstätten” (in Germany) etc. that also provide a personal manufacturing infrastructure. According to hackerspaces.org, Germany has some 56 HS, about 40 “Offene Werkstätten” and a handful of Fab Lab initiatives.
And I am just starting to understand what’s going on in France …

So the apparent pole position of the Netherlands might need to be taken “cum grano salis”.

Probably another element helped spread the Fab Lab idea in the Netherlands: the fact that it is just such a small and relatively densely populated country. Ideas can spread really quickly, and that might be the reason why many things are adopted quickly over here.

2. Open Design

Open Design is somewhat vaguely defined. And open design in general is very much in its infancy. If you restrict it to open source type approaches in industrial/product design, you’ll find pockets of it in Berlin, the Dutch Randstad, and probably the Bay Area (US). If you look at fashion, open design has a longer history, and maybe Italy might figure more prominently on the map.

An interesting aside in this context is, that Asian artists/designers traditionally used to get more cudos by copying old masters while the Western culture (at least as of the 19th century romantic illusion of the lone creator as promoted by Diderot) seems more inclined to admire “original creation”.

But then there is the whole area of design where we talk about hardware and electronics — there the Netherlands figure probably not even as second runner up, but you would have to analyse open hardware project collections such as those of Make Magazine and Kerstin Balka’s http://open-innovation-projects.org/ to get some idea of national figure — I have not done that so far and actually don’t intend to do that.

It’s difficult to say, why the Netherlands would be the fore-runner of Fab Labs and Open Design.

What strikes me is that the Netherlands also have one of the least transparent and “greedy” ecosystem of private organisations collecting royalties for all sorts of intellectual property (there seem to be over 20 organisations in the Netherlands collecting (and allegedly re-distributing) such fees).

Having said that, one could think that actually this country is sort of obsessed with dealing with intellectual property. The Netherlands is — to my knowledge — the only country where the national Creative Commons chapter received substantial government funding over a prolonged period of time. It is certainly highly speculative to use that as an explanation for the apparent attention for Open Design in the Netherlands.

Similarly, one would also have to speculate about the role of design in general in the Dutch society — at least in the national self-perception Dutch Design is almost equalled to a (if not *the*) international benchmark of good design. This creates an environment where it is not unlikely that all sorts of off-mainstream projects do get to benefit from the critical mass interested in the overall topic. Continue on openp2pdesign.org

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Via Debitorum - Chiara Birattari and Zoe Romano - Illustration

Last fall in Amsterdam took place the second Economies of the Commons – Paying the cost of making things free – conference. In the panels they discussed the political economy of open content and its consequences for the cultural sector and analyzed critically the economies taking place in the “digital commons..

In that context Jaromil e Marco Sachy introduced their project Dyndy.net, an online lab providing “Tools, practices and experiences for the conceptualization, development and deployment of currency”, following the ethics of the Free Software Movement and Transition town. Their main aim is to improve the self-organization of wealthy communities avoiding the centralized structures of the bank-debt monopoly and to experimenting alternative banking systems and local currencies.

Very often we use money and banks without thinking that they are a given fact, without thinking of them as part of a crystallized system created through a series of practices of an specific historical and social context. And as such can be changed if it’s inefficient, monopolistic or even anti-democratic.

To understand better what is at stake, I interviewed Marco Sachy….

Zoe Romano: Dyndy’s claim says: “Engineering the future of money for democratic economy.” Can you explain briefly what do you think is not democratic anymore in contemporary economy?

Marco Sachy: Dyndy is a project focused on horizontally rethinking economic networking. As Kristinn Hrafnsson put it while talking about Wikileaks: “Democrazia senza trasparenza ? solo una parola vuota”. And this holds also for economic issues. At large, contemporary economy is based on a hierarchical top-down model of governance, e.g. by acting on different tiers of the economic system, economic institutions organize social life on behalf of taxpayers, but without direct participation of the latter in both design and decision-making processes of the economic system in which they are immersed. In brief, economic ‘rules of the game’ are imposed from above on those who then actively develop civilization on a social level.

Most importantly, citizens who effectively produce value in a capitalist system (they did not choose in the first place) are excluded from the process of re-distribution of such value they produce. This is not democratic, literally. In particular, Dyndy centers its point of perspective on an economic element whose control is presently in the hands of the few in positions of power at the expenses of everyone else (and I have got news for you: – We [the people] are ‘everyone else’). Such element of the economic system is what lubricates the wheels of commerce, namely bank-debt money. The monopoly on money creation is exclusive and based on discretion.

They are both elements that render our economy nondemocratic. Indeed, the governance structure of the monetary system influences what happens in the real economy: supranational institutions such as the World Bank, the IMF or still, the BIS (Bank for International Settlements) decide behind closed doors what will be the monetary and – hence – economic policies that taxpayers or consumers will be obliged to adopt by regional authorities (for example the EU) and in turn by national governments and local administrations.

At present such institutions are considering to switch to a super-sovereign global reserve currency; perhaps, they will change idea, but in the case in which they will agree on such solution, I really think that we will not go to express our opinion in a referendum instituted for democratically deciding on such matter.

Zoe Romano: Modern capitalist money presents 6 main shortcomings, which suggest to re-define its nature for today’s economic challenges. At present such shortcomings are exacerbating economic life: modern bank money is debt-based, interest-bearing, poorly performing as medium of exchange, store of value and even as a unit of account, it is kept artificially scarce, it is inflationary and centrally managed.

These are the main reasons why we should rethink the nature of money. Although modern capitalist money was good to take us until the present point of society’s evolution from a straightforward financial point of view, it is revealing as noxious to continue to progress on such surpassed model of economic growth based on that peculiar type of money. In a nutshell, exponential growth of economic profits maybe sustainable in an ideal world of theories or in the virtual one of high-frequency trading, but exponential growth of economic output is not sustainable by definition in a finite world like ours.

In other words, we must keep in mind that if we continue to consider GDP as the only parameter to consider in order to judge whether or not an economy is healthy, we will have to manage scenarios where it will be increasingly difficult to distinguish whether we are experiencing a healthy growth or whether we are experiencing a speculative bubble that will inescapably burst, putting us in the uncomfortable situation of a Second Wave crisis: “Bad banking balance sheets => credit restrictions => recession => worse bank balance sheets => further credit restrictions and so the spiral downward goes” (Bernard Lietaer 2009: 4).

The need to re-consider how we deal with and create money is the necessary step toward a world where financial, banking, and economic crises will be a weird remembrance of the past.

Zoe Romano: How can the monetary rhizome inspired by deleuze and guattari become a valid alternative to the bank-debt paradigm, at the base of contemporary economy?

Marco Sachy: By virtue of its most acknowledgeable features Deleuze and Guattari pointed out in Mille Plateaux, the monetary Tree is a philosophical metaphor representing the traditional, centralized Modern monetary system (central banking with the Bank of England as the first modern central bank founded in 1694; ).

At the international level (or first hierarchic level) operate institutions such as the Fund, World Bank or the less popular BIS, the central bank coordinating the activities of the ten major central banks: here, the top level of the hierarchy, or the root of monetary management is very well reached through the issuance and management of international reserves at a global level. Thus, the structure is astonishingly arborescent. Thus, since we grew immersed in it, the monetary Tree is the paradigm we are used to consider as natural when we think about our monetary system. We do not look at it as the result of the appeal to a peculiar and historically determined evaluation of our monetary reality.

By contrast, the monetary Rhizome is named as such because the currencies resulting from it do resemble the features through which Deleuze and Guattari characterized the rhizome in Mille Plateaux. They aimed at a new way to do philosophy as well as I claim the possibility of new kinds of monetary systems, for instance a multi-currency integrated monetary system as the outcome of a rhizomatic approach to monetary systems design. Thus, the monetary Rhizome represents all the (literally!) Post-Modern alternatives to overtake the Modern paradigm of the monetary Tree and to develop the ontology of money and its manifestations in the 21st century. Furthermore, it is a rhizome because it enables to connect in a horizontal and a-centered way parameters belonging to different domains of existence (ethic, economic, psychologic, etc.), in order to design the most suitable currency complex needed in the social economic context one is willing to fulfill them.

The monetary Rhizome is therefore, a change in perspective, which I like to depict with a a reference to ecology: from the modern paradigm made of a monoculture of national currencies, to an ecology of money in which different types of currencies operate together and are usable in mixed payments. More diversity in the types of currencies will enhance the connectivity of all the participants of the economy and will render the monetary system more resilient in cases of external shocks. resources to increase social capital while maintaining in the best conditions the natural capital. They therefore foster co-operation, because they resemble some of the features a gift economy presents: horizontal and a-centred connection between peer-participants.

Both complementary currencies relationships respectively between scarcity and interest make the dual-currency approach very attractive. Moreover, if correctly designed complementary currencies do not affect inflation rates imputable to national ones: “if in the pockets of highest unemployment people create a complementary currency to alleviate their own problems, then the political pressure to lower interest rates and potentially fuel inflation will also be reduced”.

Zoe Romano: In which sector(s) and under which circumstances do you think is more likely that alternative currencies become widely used?

Marco Sachy :Ideally (but not so much), the leading principle is that alternative currencies can be designed in view of connecting unused resources to unmet needs. In other words, alternative currencies will become more widely used where they will be more pressingly needed: counter-cyclical currencies for addressing unemployment in the Small and Medium Sized enterprises (Business-2-Business sector) are in my humble view the first environment where to develop such alternative-currency systems, because the conditions in the business sector are becoming pretty bad in advanced countries after the contagion of the derivative bubble and related toxic assets spread in 2008.

More in general, since it is not realistic to think to get rid of bank-debt money from a day to the other, the valuable breakthrough is to seriously begin from the complementary currencies approach: they are monetary agreements within a community to use something as a means of payment in parallel with – as complements to – conventional national currencies.

In this view then, alternative or complementary currencies can be used in every sector and under every set of circumstances in which one wants to measure the value of the economic life going on in it. There are no limitations for creativity and thus for possible currency creations: roughly, today there exists almost 5000 complementary currencies in use around the world: from Frequent Flyer Miles (corporate currencies: if you fly only with my company you will increasingly save conventional money), to Transitions currencies such as the Tones Pound in UK or the SCEC in Italy (local currencies to be spent locally for developing and maintaining local economies), or still Social Purpose Currencies such as Japanese Huerai Kippu (I take care of your grandmother for some hours per week and than I give the Hureai Kippu – not Yens – that I gained to my grandfather who is thus put in the conditions to be serviced form another member of the network while keeping Yens in his pocket and use them to go say for sauna treatments or whatever you can have just with conventional money). And so on and so forth…
The important point to bear in mind is that an alternative or complementary currency must be designed to solve very peculiar and detailed problems not addressed by virtue of its own properties by conventional money.

Originally posted on Digimag

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Susan Spencer Conklin is a networker, she’s not a programmer, but knows about programming, she’s not a designer but knows how to sew and in the last months she’s been giving presentations to invite developers to help create a suite of open source software to produce and modify clothing patterns in open data formats to match an individual’s body measurement and generate customized patterns as printable files.
Current applications for pattern making are infact proprietary and expensive, require proprietary operating systems, and on top on that they are not designed to interoperate or give not much control on the creation process. An open source-solution would enable individuals and small labels designers to enter the market with lower investments costs and local markets would flourish more easily being able to share and exchange knowledge.
And it’s not only a matter of business. Schools and educational environment would benefit of a software without paying multiple licenses and students would be involved in the open-source community from the beginning, being able to use it in different and more creative ways.

Some days ago Linux Magazine made an interview to her and this an excerpt from it:

” In today’s global economy, small, independent fashion designers are doing well. Better than ever, in fact. In order for these independents to grow their businesses to keep up with demand, they’ll need tools to expand or speed production, yet retain the high quality, good fit, and creativity that is the source of their success. If they sacrifice any of these characteristics, they may compromise their business. Open source tools are important for programmers, web developers and graphics designers in reducing costs and increasing creativity. It makes sense that open source tools could be developed for fashion designers and garment manufacturers as well. ”

” I’ve been in computer networking for 20 years. I’ve been sewing since I was four. Upon retirement, I decided to sew again, and realized that I wanted more creativity than I had used when I made all my clothes from patterns. Being an old person at this point, I knew I needed help. I looked at the available options and nothing met my needs. I began reading about pattern making, and realized the old ways were incredibly powerful and encouraged creativity, but I didn’t want to bend over a cutting table all the time. So I started talking to my husband about writing a program to perform the manual calculations to make patterns.
My husband [Steve Conklin, Ubuntu Kernel Engineer] mentioned it to one of his friends (whom some people know as Rejon), who thought it was totally cool and suggested I submit a presentation application to the Libre Graphics Meeting in Brussels last May. They accepted me as a presenter! ”

“At the moment, I’m creating Python scripts by hand. Each pattern is developed on top of a grid created in Inkscape using client data. I recently developed a procedure to generate the control points that an individual curve requires so that I don’t have to manually calculate them. Yay!
The goal is to create a program suite with a GUI for the designer and a GUI for the client, for the clients who meet with the designer. I would also like to create a web site version, which would allow designers to post their patterns, and for clients to log in, enter data, buy patterns, etc. I envision the designer GUI to be similar to Inkscape’s GUI.”

steam punk Jacket

———–

Read the complete interview on Linux Magazine.
You can also watch the video presentation Susan Spencer did at the Libre Graphics meeting in Brussels last spring.

Openwear we are very interested in this type of developments and we’ve also been working on finding some funds and partners to develop a workshop to support the current developments in the area of technical fashion design. The discussions and exchanges we had in the past months regarding a pattern software was focused on implementing it in a free and open-source Java environment called “Processing“ and put a special highlight on the parametric ( a method of linking dimensions and variables to geometry in such a way that when the values change, the part changes as well) potential of such a software. It would be good to have soon an international interdisciplinary meeting, we are working on it.

Reblogged from Openwear

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