Ever dreamed about a slightly (or even completely) different body?  Do you want a new liver or do you need to substitute some inter-vertebral disks? Why don’t you start with – let’s say an ear. Can you imagine a plastic surgeon, using a Fluid Forms Online-Design-Tool redefining the contours of your ear, getting rapid prototyped afterwards with a 3D-tissue-printer. Or even order not just the clothes, but the body parts on myvirtualmodel. You think you can get the body of your dreams with genetic manipulation too? How about transferring the information about your (second or third) physical body to another galaxy to print it out over there? I heard rumours saying that beaming can be quite dangerous.

Yeah, I know – that’s all Sci-Fi and scary too (at the moment). Anyway, 3D-tissue printing is a fascinating technology, with many possible applications within medicine, not just plastic surgery. However, it will definitely take a few more decades and at least $1billion until we’ll get some functioning human organs.

via rapidtoday

see also envisionTEC

3D tissue printing of an human ear

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Do you remember old school media?

In times of loads of Web-2.0-Best-of-Lists (for Blogs, Webpages,…) we offer something quite strange:

A list of brilliant books we read recently.

YES BOOKS! WE REALLY MEAN BOOKS! THESE BULKY THINGS MADE OUT OF REAL PAPER!

We figured out, that a good part of the ideas we develop, decisions we take and strategic moves we make can be somehow traced back to books we have read. The Internet environment is a great place to find fast and up-to-date information. It’s daily business to keep up with it. But the slow media has its place to.

Reading a book always allows us to take a birds-eye-view on our ideas, rethink our course, our decisions and our motivation.

Does reading a book gives you inspiration too? Then go ahead…

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3 valuable books Stephen (CTO) recommends:

Systemisches Design
(Cyrus Dominik Khazaeli)

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Physical Computing: Sensing and Controlling the Physical World with Computers
(Tom Igoe, Dan O’Sullivan)

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Sketching User Experiences: Getting the Design Right and the Right Design
(Bill Buxton)

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3 valuable books Hannes (CEO) recommends:

The Origin of Wealth: The Radical Remaking of Economics and What It Means for Business and Society (Eric D. Beinhocker)

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Making It: Manufacturing Techniques for Product Design (Jessica Spencer/Publisher)

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Fab: The Coming Revolution on Your Desktop – From Personal Computers to Personal Fabrication ( Neil Gershenfeld)

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3 valuable books Andy (CCO) recommends:

Groundswell: Winning in a World Transformed by Social Technologies
(Charlene Li, Josh Bernoff)

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Crowdsourcing: Why the Power of the Crowd Is Driving the Future of Business
(Jeff Howe)

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The New Rules of Marketing and PR: How to Use News Releases, Blogs, Podcasting, Viral Marketing and Online Media to Reach Buyers Directly (David Meerman Scott)

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It makes -tweet- -tweet- -tweet- since December and we think until now we have been doing great!

twitter means for us:

Provide you with useful links to

• Individual Design
• User Co-Creation
• Fabbing/3D Printing
• Mass Customization
• Design in General
• Fluid Forms
• Generative Design
• Green Gadgets
• Green Issues

Try to give useful answers to people’s questions

Try not to steal your precious time with tweets like: “Now we are having a cup of tea”

We are proud that Exciting Commerce recognized our efforts with this twitter recommendation (sorry, but text is only in German).

If you like how we use twitter, we invite you to follow us.

By the way: Stephen opened his own twitter account recently. He will predominantly treat Generative Design/Creative Coding

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The bycicle add-on LightLane (Designed by Alex Tee and Evan Gant from Altitude Inc.) would make our way home a lot safer, since we all go to work on a bike at Fluid Forms day by day.

via Core77

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Do you know the umbrella term that describes what Fluid Forms is doing?

I am working at Fluid Forms nearly half a year and still find obstacles when I describe people (my horror scenario is the ominous “elevator pitch”) the business we are so passionate about. Quite bad for someone who studied communications, isn’t it?

Are we doing rapid prototyping? Is it additive fabrication? Is it fabbing? Or is it even 3d printing after all? Can we cover all applications for technologies we use at Fluid Forms with one certain term?

Hm, that seems to be a brainteaser.

A few days ago Frank Piller opened a  (due) discussion with an entry on his blog Mass Customization & Open Innovation News about taxonomies in mass customization. Some of the most important takeouts are:

1. Rapid Prototyping is no longer suitable in most instances as umbrella term because rapid prototyping is only one appliance for technologies like CNC, laser cutting or 3d printing
2. A growing number of people is using “additive fabrication” or “additive manufacturing” to refer to systems that join together liquid, powder, or sheet materials to form parts (e.g. Cassius or Earth-White)
3. Consequently you refer to CNC and laser cutting machines as “subtractive fabrication“
4. Piller assumes that “3d printing” will become the most popular mainstream (non expert) term to catch (at least) all additive fabrication methods
5. Fabbing is a nice jargon to refer to additive fabrication and stay cool

Additive and subtractive fabrication sounds good to me. 3d printing might be useful in general use but won’t work as an umbrella term at Fluid Forms because we also use subtractive systems like CNC (e.g. Earth Bowl).

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The categorization of technology is getting a bit clearer and easier now. BUT there is another big uncertainty remaining:

What is it that we offer to prosumers? (Is prosumer actually the right term?)

I don’t think we offer additive fabrication to our customers. To some technology enthusiasts this term might appeal. The majority of visitors on our website might prefer user co-creation. Or user-generated design? What about community product design and individual design?  Uff it’s getting misty again.

What do you guys think? What terms do you use? What terms do you think are the most appropriate?

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Please give us your opinion about the issue!

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This weekend Linz, the capital of Upper Austria, celebrates the opening of Linz09 – European Capital of Culture. In the course of the preparations the famous Ars Electronica Center, home of the Ars Electronica – Festival for Art, Technology and Society, was closed for structural alteration works. Now the center has opened its doors to public again.  The new one-of-a-kind facility shows a fine collection of some of the world’s most exciting media art projects.

And guess what: Fluid Forms is part of the exhibition! Cassius, the custom lampshade you design yourself by giving blows to a punching bag, is one of the center pieces of the so called Fab Lab. The Fab Lab is a kind of laboratory for Rapid Prototyping technologies showing the arts and crafts of tomorrow. During 2009 a series of workshops will be hosted there to which we will contribute our knowledge and ideas together with other awesome projects like the ones from nervous system, Fab @ Home or Bathsheba Sculpture LLC.

We are excited to be part of Fab Lab and looking forward to pushing limits in fabbing!

Some impressions from the opening day:

Cassius, 5 minutes before press people were showing up

Design meets Robotics

Crowds at the opening ceremony of the Ars Electronica Center

Cassius facing martial arts moves – to fast for the camera

more impressions from the opening of the Ars Electronica Center.

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