additivism

#Additivism Description

The 3D printer is a profound metaphor for our times. A technology for channelling creative endeavour, through digital processes, into the layering of raw matter excavated from ancient geological eras. Considered as a tool for art, design and engineering, and gesturing towards a forthcoming era of synthetic chemistry and biological augmentation, 3D fabrication technologies are already a site of common exchange between disciplines and forms of materiality.

3D fabrication can be thought of as the critical framework of #Additivism: a movement that aims to disrupt material, social, computational, and metaphysical realities through provocation, collaboration, and ‘weird’ / science fictional thinking. Additivism embraces the 3D Printer in the same way that Donna Haraway embraced the figure of the Cyborg in her influential text A Cyborg Manifesto (1983). By considering the 3D printer as a technology for remodelling thought into profound, and often nightmarish, new shapes – Additivism aims to expose inbetweens, empower the powerless, and question the presupposed.

Joint Biography

#Additivism is a collaboration between artist and activist Morehshin Allahyari and writer/artist Daniel Rourke. Morehshin Allahyari’s work with 3D printing, especially her ‘Dark Matter’ and ‘Material Speculation: ISIS’ series, focuses on the poetic relationship between 3D printing, plastic, oil, jihad and Technocapitalism and their relationship to activism and the political conditions of our time. Daniel Rourke’s written and artistic work investigates speculative and science fiction in search of a radical ‘outside’ to the human(ities), including extensive work on the intersection between digital materiality and the arts. additivism.org / @additivism