Noam Dover and Michal Cederbaum, ‘Hacking the mould #2’, 2012, Design Space

This collection hopes to take part in a cultural discourse over two related contemporary phenomenas - hacker culture and maker culture. Both of these phenomenas are grass-root reactions to the centralized nature of contemporary systems that control knowledge and production worldwide. In a stark capitalistic reality, where the rights over knowledge are in private hands and involve profit-making interests, these two sub-cultures rose as and act of opposition, reclaiming that which should be a universal property.
The maker culture demands the liberation of materialistic making from its dependency on global mega-corporations and huge assembly lines. In contrast to the massive industries, the maker culture strives for intimate links between the maker, the product and the customer. It promotes ideals such as locality, skill, self expression and value of work. The hacker culture aims to subvert the common methods of controlling knowledge and advances values of sharing, equality, decentralization and freedom of knowledge.
‘Hacking the Mould’ is a collection of three large vases casted in stoneware. During the working process a focus was set on the mould making phase, perceiving the mould as the vases’ genetic code, or theirs master plan. First, standard plaster moulds were casted. Then a second step was preformed by use of chisels and hammers: The mould parts were chiseled out to intervene with the vases formalistic characteristics, as if they were blocks of marble in the sculptors studio. The chiseling action is interpreted as an act of reclaiming the code of production: While the plaster mould represents the industrial aspects of the ceramic practice (and of material practices as a whole), the masonry work charges it with the value of a one-off act. Finally, stoneware was casted into the moulds to form a series of vases, which contain the contrast between the original form and its hack.

Signature: Signed at the bottom.

About Noam Dover and Michal Cederbaum



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