Non-Standard Bodies: Digital Fabrication and the Custom

Bodies are idiosyncratic. Despite the modern desire to standardize the systems and things we interact with on a daily basis, bodies push back. In the last hundred and fifty years, the world has become more and more thoroughly governed by standards which allow interoperability, interconnections, and interchangeability. But no matter how well those standards are capable of governing the built world, they often fail to govern our bodies. The mis-match between our individual human bodies and the world we've built is one which we increasingly try to navigate with tools like digital fabrication (in the form of 3D printing) and tactics like mass customization. It makes sense to look for ways to map the world to our bodies and our selves, rather than mapping ourselves to standards. It makes sense to try to make the world fit us, rather than changing ourselves to fit.

When we scan our bodies, input our measurements to databases, or otherwise create the data necessary to digitally fabricate custom goods, we build digital doubles of ourselves and, ultimately, often put ourselves into the hands of the companies, agencies, and individuals building our digitally-customized goods. As we negotiate the space between our bodies and the standardized world, our digital doubles increasingly inhabit an ecosystem of corporately-owned data sets. This talk considers problems of individual fit while drawing a lineage between historical modes of custom production and new developments in digitally-aided customization. How do we customize responsibly? Can we customize for others without surveilling? What might we lose by building objects which map one-to-one with individuals? How does the blurring of the line between producer and consumer help or hinder our efforts to fit and to make goods that work for us?