Who knows better what the Collaborative Economy really is about than the people who are actually active within it? Read on to discover a designer ask and answer the essential questions on copyright, sharing ideas and design work, with Jens Dyvik.
The last few days have been extremely exciting swimming in the waters of open source, digital freedom and meeting some of the free culture pioneers – ordinary folks like you and me, who woke up one day, looked around and said “this isn’t right”!!! and decided to do something about it. They questioned the status quo over and over again, spent their lives researching and iterating these “somewhat” crazy ideas. Among other things, works of Cory Doctorow has been influential for my journey into my "open-source" questions. He was the reason, I became so enthused about the maker and sharer movements - after reading his open sourced freely available book called The Makers. It was this book and its message, which after a lot of twists and turns led me to Oslo talking to designer, sharing avant-garde, entrepreneur and adventurer Jens Dyvik.
“How can a designer like me embrace the share modus completely, be creative to the fullest extent and make a living while improving lives with design?”
We dive head-on into the interview and I ask him, what is his “one-question” worth dedicating his life to, Jens promptly without a blink answers, “how can a designer like me embrace the share modus completely, be creative to the fullest extent and make a living while improving lives with design?” I am intrigued and puzzled, noticing this, he adds, “during my internship I experienced for the first time that manufacturing and retailing took precedence over design and creativity”. I slowly understand his frustration since most of the design work and revolutionary ideas from his field, quickly end up in museums, one-time installations or just become another youtube quick-time killer. Although born in Oslo, Jens has been traveling the world exploring cultures and people, re-questioning the idea of open sourcing designs and making a living with it. After his stint with Fab Lab Amsterdam, he was so obsessed with this (sharing) idea, he wanted to see how, where and what the other sharer were doing. Thus he took off exploring other Fab Labs around the world and meeting other sharing avant-gardes. His journey is nicely summed up in an open source freely available (of course!) documentary, which was short listed for the Ouishare Awards in 2013 (makers category), where he explores ideas, people and making. He points out his exploration on, “ how can the DIY principle empower everyone to create, teach, inspire and sprout entrepreneurs” he beams, “I want to create, make, explore and not wait for permissions from “experts” (designers, programmers) to do whatever I like doing/ making ”, he wants to facilitate the same for others who are enthusiastic about creating through his website.
Jens is on a journey exploring alternative ways to bring ideas into life and in his own words “ how users experience these ideas”. According to him, the best ideas never actually come to life because we are so stuck up with the notion of ownership, IP rights and copyright battles. Among the hundreds of designs he has shared through his website, the “chair” has by far seen the wide-open-source success. I loose count of how many versions (30 versions) of Jens chair now already exist in the world (across four continents), every designer is encouraged to download his design, morph it and make his own “cultural versions” of it – my favorite is the cello chair. Jens recalls, “its funny really, this – Norwegian cliché of a chair has received much attention due to the fact that people felt enough ownership towards the design that they were confident to tweak it”, he continues to add that no matter where the chair is CNC milled, actual buyers always come looking for the source. “I am a story-teller, he smiles, “it’s the story of the chair, a designer, a sharer where a globally shared design idea - comes back to its roots, hand-picking local wood, manufacturing it here (Fab Lab Oslo) for someone in the community to enjoy”, a classic syndrome of – global gone local!
The most obvious thing for Jens to do after his discovery trip was to start a Fab Lab Oslo, bringing his knowledge and inspiration from around the world, to share with his local community. Especially in a design driven country like Norway, where products come with fancy name tags and scary price tags, he wants to revolutionize how people think and feel about design,“ beautiful things are not reserved for the privileged (wealthy) few”, he proudly adds. He is on a mission, to find out how we as a society can democratize the way we make things, explore alternative business models to make a decent living and be content about sharing – and stop this artificial scarcity for high-quality information. With so much talk on happiness, I ask him, how would he feel if somebody in China decided to produce his chairs and became a millionaire, he quickly adds, “I would be very impressed at first, since going into manufacturing at that scale is not a piece of cake, second I would say, Come on man!!! Share some joy,” he adds laughing but admits this won’t change anything and he would not stop sharing or open sourcing his designs and ideas. Jens makes a good analogy with seeds, “I don’t mind taking my seeds (ideas) and throwing them out there, some might end up in my yard and others in my neighbors. However, I can be assured to see a few saplings grow into trees, wherever that might be, instead of fencing around one oak tree - focusing, nurturing it and maybe loosing it in a jiffy to the next storm or a chain-saw (IP fights)“.
Jens is on a mission, to find out how we as a society can democratize the way we make things, explore alternative business models to make a decent living and be content about sharing
As we talk, there is a constant buzzing from the background because of the CNC’s cutting the wood for his next order of chairs. From CNC’s our discussion head to the “all holy” 3D printing. I soon discover that we share similar views on 3D printers - it being an over-sized hype and that this technology is only at its infancy rate – however the CNC’s, if it were a person, it might be signing its retirement papers by now, pointing to say that they deserve a little more credit than what they currently receive. As Professor Neil Gershenfeld puts its, “3D printers (now) are the microwave of the 60’s – everybody was so excited about this box (microwave) heating food in 30 sec that they soon discovered, it did not mean “making” gourmet meals but more about re-heating your left over pasta”. Of course, Jens enthusiastically tours me around the Fab Lab/Hacker-Maker space, explaining the details of the gridlock mechanism, the CNC cutting and the mathematical progression he wrote, so everybody could easily morph his design with little effort. His enthusiasm is infectious!!!
“I don’t mind taking my seeds (ideas) and throwing them out there, some might end up in my yard and others in my neighbors".
As we near an end, I ask him about his learning’s and vision for the creative and design sharing, “People are amazing”, is his biggest learning, “I kind of knew this but this fact was re-empowered after travelling around” that he strongly recommends, people to get out there – spend more time in one place, not go to Fab Labs but meet, exchange and share with the locals. His vision correlates to his learning, “not everybody is meant (or might not like) make/ design (ing) things but what they would appreciate is being able to learn a new skill – even just for fun”, he stresses, “its not about bringing 3D printers or other technologies to homes but to local communal-driven spaces where there is an exchange of knowledge, empowerment, inspiration, facilitation for true connections and the experience of genuine creation”. He emphasizes that it is important to see that by creating artificial scarcity of specific design-based information and protecting our notion of ownership to ideas, there is more vacuum then actually creations happening in that space. “Sometimes, he adds, “I am shit-scared about sharing a killer idea, I take a moment but end up sharing it anyway”. As a designer and sharer, he has never asked people to share, he only encourages them to do so on their own terms and shares his experience on how it has been inspirational and intrigues them enough to at least think about it. He says, “I prefer being a gazelle than a turtle”, a turtle has a hard heavy protective shield, which it has to slog around limiting its movement and a gazelle has no such protection but its strength is its agility, its shift movement- making it always stay ahead of its game. On this note I am confident that Jens in his “wonderland”, will stay ahead of his game, sharing ideas and inspiring people to create – you might catch him at the Ouishare fest in May, if you see him ask him about the Japanese slippers he made for Obama’s grandmother in Kenya!!! :)
Image credits: Jens Dyvik, Mike Roelofs and Wondereight.com