Shiv Integer

Shiv Integer is a collaborative software-based artwork developed in 2016 with Julien Deswaef. The project centres on an autonomous bot that searches Thingiverse, an online repository and community for user-generated 3D-printable models, randomly selects existing objects and combines them into new assemblages. The resulting digital sculptures are automatically given generated titles and published back to the platform; selected works were subsequently fabricated as SLS nylon 3D prints.

The project uses automated selection and recombination to investigate authorship, appropriation and inheritance within Creative Commons and Copyleft cultures. Its method draws on traditions of chance procedures and the readymade while applying them to a large participatory database of contemporary digital objects. By repeatedly sampling and recombining material from Thingiverse, the bot also produced an evolving snapshot of 3D-print culture and the forms, interests and conventions represented within the platform.

Shiv Integer operated anonymously on Thingiverse, where its activity generated extensive responses from users, including hundreds of comments and sustained debate about whether the bot's activity constituted art, authorship or spam. These interactions became part of the project itself, exposing tensions between automated cultural production and the individual claims to authorship embedded in supposedly open systems of sharing.

The work subsequently circulated through exhibitions and publications in the UK and internationally, including solo and collaborative presentations at Stanley Picker Gallery, iMAL in Brussels, and Rozsirene Autorstvo in Bratislava, and group exhibitions at Somerset House, Humber Street Gallery, HeK/Liste Art Basel and MU in Eindhoven. It was also included in The 3D Additivist Cookbook and discussed in publications including The Guardian, Boing Boing, Printed Web 5 / Bot Anthologia and Nicolas Nova's Dadabots.

• https://www.plummerfernandez.com/works/s...
• https://www.thingiverse.com/shivinteger/...
• https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2016/05/...