ViennaOpen 2013
Open design is a strategy for creatives to find new solutions by creating a collaborative working environment. The main goal of open design is to share ideas and resources and to develop new projects, products and processes collaboratively.
For the second consequitive year, this year’s ViennaOpen Festival is organised by Verein Creative City and Microgiants. After its successful predecessor in 2012, the main idea of this year’s Festival is to display the means of production in the third industrial revolution. This new industrial revolution is not only about machines and technology but also about shared resources, shared economies and its new business models. Since 3D printing is widely known and soon will be accessible on every desk top, the use of „Open Design“ has to be broadly communicated and well mediated.
In 2012, the ViennaOpen Festival wanted to show the different types and applications of open design. Within the Festival, different projects in the fields of fashion, music and design where displayed and collaboratively compiled. This year’s ViennaOpen Festival is focusing on the thinking behind Open Design and shared economies with shared resources. Open design and the open exchange of ideas, as well as working methods built on cooperation and collaboration, are already in use by creatives around the globe.
What does it mean to collaborate? What does sharing ideas and machines entail? How does the sharing effect business models and the distribution of knowledge? These and other questions will be discussed in more than 15 lectures and workshops from the 17 until 31 of October 2013. The temporary Pop-Up Store NEUBAU will be the festival center, exhibition place and workshop site in one. This year’s festival motto “we love the machine, but hate the factory” echos the fundamental believes of the “maker’s movement” and invites all active users and professional designers to collaborate and share their ideas.
The third industrial revolution and Open Design
In resent years, the role of designers has changed with the cahnged accessibility of the means of production. The designer has moved from being a contractor on a single job to the center of production where the designer plays a major role in the development process of goods and services. This changing role from using special skills with limited responsibilities to being responsible for processes and the final product also manifests itself in designers’ acquisition of new skills and appropriation of new means of productions.
Through new interfaces, new technologies and cheap equipment, parts of the manufacturing process has been democratized and easy to use. With these new tools, designers, amateurs and interested people are able to transform their ideas into real goods.
Among commentators and writers who have identified the latest developments in industry and manufacturing as the “third industrial revolution” are the chief editor of the magazine Wired Chris Anderson and the economist Jeremy Riffkin. The third industrial revolution transformes manufacturing with its interconnected production processes, and helps create network societies.
In Open Design, products and the designing process have to be open by definition. The sharing of resources and sharing economies are key to create new ideas and new business models. The ViennaOpen Festival not only presents local but also international projects that are focusing on shared production strategies. In Open Design, as with sharing machines, the sharing of knowledge, ideas and resources are essential to collectively finding solution to new problems. The focus of the ViennaOpen Festival is not only the machines of this new development but also methods, processes and products, as well as applied strategies and business models belonging to the third industrial revolution.