Miniminimum 25$ Order

Purchasing each of the least expensive 3d prints until the minimum order amount from Shapeways was met

In August 2009, the fledgling company Shapeways had a community marketplace where people could upload 3d models that anyone could purchase 3d prints of. It was a beta platform and the validation of models to ensure print viability, etc. was not robust. While looking through the marketplace, I sorted by price (low to high) and noticed a number of models that were listed as 0.00$ to print. Curious to see what would happen if I tried to order, I was met with 25.00$ minimum order amount, and decided to add each of the next cheapest models until I passed 25.00$.

As expected, there were a number of 3d models that could not be printed and I have marked them in the table of items below.

The project touches on: shopping the on-demand community marketplace as creative act, the inherent fallacy / difficulty of non-curated / unmoderated places, the looseness of startup culture to allow for growth despite obvious bugs released publicly (and how they respond), the intimate connection of tiny objects with the creators who uploaded often personal objects, a celebration of the miniscule in opposition to the increasing scale of work within the blue chip art market.