Consuming Digital Debris in the Plasticene

• Main Author: Parks, Stephen R
• Format: Others
• Published: VCU Scholars Compass 2018
• Subjects: Plasticene; 3D printing; consumerism; postdigital; plastic; Communication Technology and New Media; Contemporary Art; Digital Communications and Networking; Digital Humanities; E-Commerce; Graphic Design; Industrial and Organizational Psychology; Intellectual Property Law; Labor History; Manufacturing; Mass Communication; Mechanics of Materials; Polymer and Organic Materials; Public Relations and Advertising; Publishing; Social and Cultural Anthropology; Software Engineering; Technology and Innovation
• Online Access: https://scholarscompass.vcu.edu/etd/5438; https://scholarscompass.vcu.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=6516&context=etd

Claims of customization and control by socio-technical industries are altering the role of consumer and producer. These narratives are often misleading attempts to engage consumers with new forms of technology. By addressing capitalist intent, material, and the reproduction limits of 3-D printed objects’, I observe the aspirational promise of becoming a producer of my own belongings through new networks of production. I am interested in gaining a better understanding of the data consumed that perpetuates hyper-consumptive tendencies for new technological apparatuses. My role as a designer focuses on the resolution of not only the surface of the object through 3-D printing, but the social implications to acknowledge consequential conditions of new forms of consumer technology.