3 Excellent Uses of 3D Printing from Eyebeam's 'F.A.T. Gold' Exhibition

1. Golan Levin's Free Universal Construction Kit (2012). This series of adaptors allows interoperability among different kinds of children's toys, such as Legos®, Tinkertoys® and Lincoln Logs®. The project is decades too late to have helped me with my own childhood battles with proprietary toy formats, but on behalf of future generations, Mr. Levin, I thank you.

2. Addie Wagenknecht's Screwmocracy (2012). To be honest, I mostly just liked the Romney dildo; it seems an apt response to the regressive remarks about rape that hung over the Republican Party like a cloud throughout the last election cycle. The Obama dildo is a bit less interesting, because it obviously already exists as a commercial product. Also, the pairing of black and white introduces a racial element that somewhat obscures the relationship between presidential politics and sex. (Not to mention: where is "Diamond Joe" Biden?)

3. KATSU's Destroyerbot. The rise of 3D printing has not been a uniformly positive development for the visual arts. Artists, if you find that your use of additive manufacturing has led you to create work that is consistently written about in trend pieces by reporters who describe it as "mind-bending," please feel free to place your fabrication equipment in this handy box, and press "Start."

F.A.T. Gold: Five years of free art & technology, curated by Lindsay Howard, ends Saturday at Eyebeam in New York.