Emerging Of Digital And Virtual Materiality
In the 1990s the internet did not find its way into mainstream yet – for most people it still was something obscure and unknown. This was the time when artist Jan Robert Leegte started experimenting with so-called Net-sculptures and Net-installations – the internet changed his way of perceiving and creating art respectively. At this time material definitions were still very unclear and the question what digital materiality is was completely fresh, as Leegte (2018) explained in an interview. One of Leegte’s earlier pieces was the scrollbarcomposition.com in 2000. A composition made out of ‚windows‘ and scrollbars that would only be able to exist in the online realm in form of a website. The scrollbar as an object was especially interesting for Leegte. Coming from a sculptural-architectural background he understood it as building material which would give you a special connotation, however, online.
When his work was misread as hacker-art, he decided to bring it outside of the digital. By projecting his compositions on structures, an interesting hybrid-dialogue started. Since then he works a lot with the process of bringing digital material into the tangible world. This hybrid practice teaches him a lot about material itself. As Leegte (2018) said: “Often by making it physical you understand the digital better. It needs this sort of physical research into it”.
With bringing the digital material to the physical world and back to digital his works start to inform each other. He juxtaposes the virtual with the analogue world to see how they interact and inform each other.
A few years ago hardly anybody could understand the complex process of 3D printing and what it really meant. People probably could not even image how a 3D printer would look like. Just a few years later the industry around 3D printers has developed rapidly. The goal is to produce printers suitable for the mass market. In the future everybody should be able to 3D print at home. I dare to say, this will take several more years.
However, 3D printing became much more accessible and common over the last years. The advanced and developed technology around 3D printing has created new possibilities in many fields. Cyclist Bradley Wiggins broke the Hour record in 2015 due to a customized 3D printed handlebar that would reduce aerodynamic drag. The handlebar caused controversy – a record requires equipment available for purchase off-the-shelf only. The record stood because for the first time 3D printing was categorized as a means of mass manufacture. However, one of the biggest turning points in 3D printing technology history is the 6th May 2013. This is the day Cody Wilson fired his 3D printed gun – the Liberator – for the first time. Wilson designed physible guns and gun components that can be downloaded by anyone anywhere in the world. This – as he put it –„political“ act transforms the way we think about new manufacturing technologies and the unregulated sharing of files online. The Liberator was downloaded over 100,000 times within a few days only before the US government seized the files and Wilson was ordered to remove them from his website. Both objects discussed above are part of the Rapid Response Collecting at the V&A in London.
