Insight Out

Jens Dyvik: Crafting Accessible Technology in the Heart of Norway

• Pavel & Carol • Episode 1

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Venture into the heart of Norway's countryside with a tale of sheep farmers who redefine technology by tracking their flocks with mobile devices, sparking the inception of one of the world's first Fab labs. This episode delves into the democratization of technological access, comparing Fab labs to public libraries, where the tools and knowledge for creation are freely available to all.  Jens`s advice is a treasure trove for young students contemplating a future in design—reminding us that, while it might be "hard mode," the rewards of crafting with intention and innovation are limitless. 

Kick back, relax, and let the waves of wisdom wash over you in this podcast episode – where learning meets laughter, and knowledge is served with a side of chill vibes!
 
https://www.fablabs.io/labs/fellesverkstedet
https://www.instagram.com/jensdyvik/?hl=en

All music clips were used from the song "Jukka Tukka" after agreement with amazing band and friends 2+1 Jam band.
This podcast episode was created under the technical and official support of University of Oslo, Norway.

Pavel:

Hi Jens. Welcome to our first episode of the podcast.

Jens:

Thank you.

Pavel:

It's a very nice pleasure to have you here today. Could you briefly introduce yourself please?

Jens:

Yes, so my name is Jens Dyvik. I am an independent industrial designer and researcher. I'm based here in Oslo and I also do some projects with international peers, but mostly local projects at the moment.

Pavel:

Nice. So, since you are an industrial engineer, yeah, designer .

Jens:

Okay, sorry, Self-taught engineer and educated as a designer.

Pavel:

Yeah, cool. Could you just tell us what was your path towards this kind of education and maybe how someone could become an industrial designer?

Jens:

Yeah, so growing up as a kid I loved making things and drawing and anything that had anything to do with something being in my head and idea and then sort of shaping my reality around me to express that. So definitely loved building and making things. And then when I was in my early teens, at one moment I said to my mother that when I grow up I want to make cars, I want to design cars. And then she said I think you have to become an industrial designer for that. And I started researching this profession and the more I got into it, the more I realized that the diversity of the study appealed to me much more than just making cars. And as I grew older I realized that the car industry is pretty conservative with really long time frames. So if you come up with something wise and radical right now to improve something, it might be implemented slowly over the next four or five generations of cars.

Pavel:

Yeah, I see.

Jens:

And then I had a bit of a crisis of doubt because I wanted to study basically all the creative professions. I ended up choosing what gave me the most freedom also to work physically, not only digitally, but also to tactile stuff, to be able to work on materials and make actual objects, not just things that are shown on the screen or two-dimensionally, and I ended up finding a nice combination of schools for me. I really enjoyed going to what's called fo K Skola, which is a really nice invention from Denmark that's also quite popular in Norway. It's meant to be a little bit of a break in between finishing high school or upper secondary and higher education, a little bit sort of disconnecting you from the environment where you grew up in, because all the students live in the school, typically in other places where you grew up, and that was great.

Jens:

So I went to a fantastic school called Krabbesholm in Denmark and I realized, wow, my homework is to make something. I never want to study something else. Then combined that with the foundation here in Norway and then I ended up doing my degree at a fantastic school in the Netherlands called the Design Academy Eindhoven and then Through this school I found you know much more of my direction as a creative individual, and I got also exposed to the fab lab in Amsterdam, which really ended up changing a lot in my life. So I think we're gonna talk a lot more about that in a little bit.

Pavel:

Yeah, we will return to that definitely. I would just like to pinpoint that you are really a detailed material oriented person and we entered the studio you started checking out all the materials that the walls and other supportive equipment for this sound dampening. Yes, the room are installed and yeah, delicous person about that.

Jens:

Yeah, it's like I have a radar that's been trained to just detect how was the environment around me shaped and made? And you know, and, and by always paying attention to these things, you also, you know, you, you is a way to refill your inspiration and learn techniques and maybe you, if you don't know how something is made, maybe you want to, you know, realize it, no, research it, and to learn more, or maybe get inspirations, ways to use materials and so on.

Pavel:

Yeah, that's totally true. I guess you also get the impression of the material when you touch it, right?

Jens:

Yes, tactility is super interesting. no, how you, how y? ou get the information in three year senses. With the sound absorbing walls next to us, I couldn't help but touch them to see, like you know, how they were constructed. Constructed. Is there, you know, a sound absorbing material inside?

Pavel:

Okay, I will very briefly return to your education. I appreciate this gap year right, training. It's really cool, in my opinion. I did not know that it was invented in Denmark, but it's nice that it's implemented in Norway as well. Yeah, and you also studied abroad, which is quite cool. Is there, or was there, any alternative in Norway, or is there any alternative nowadays that people like you could pick to follow this type of education?

Jens:

Yeah, they're actually. I, through my work in In the previous decade, I gave a little bit of support to newly created the folkeskule skuula in the south of Norway, in Mandal, called SKAP, and they have been inspired by the Fab lab lab network and the machines and capabilities there and they try to replicate that For the students. So the type of digital fabrication machines that I work a lot with and try to express people Express themselves with is actually available there. So but that was not available when I did my studies, so A product design as its direction in folkeskule a folkøy skuula was only available to me in Denmark back then and and I ended up, you know, then through half that Half a year folkeskule folkeskule that folkøy skuula got the sort of the Danish design perspective.

Jens:

Mm-hmm and then I went to design institute in Norway. I got a bit of the Norwegian perspective. It was a nice foundation year school founded by Per Fæste, professor industrial design, who unfortunately passed a few few few years ago, and and then in that and then again there's a little bit more crazy and a little bit more challenging way of looking at design from the Netherlands, and that became a really good combination for me and I ended up sort of you know, not sort of swallowing the whole, all the dogmas as truth because, I could compare those different design cultures to each other thanks to that combinations of different schools.

Pavel:

I can see that, since it's basically like three a a h countries, three countries approach like combined. Do you still have some t to, to Netherlands or to Denmark in terms of , or you, for example, been invited to give some talks or lectures?

Jens:

Yes, absolutely I was. Just half a year ago I was celebrating a 10-year anniversary of a public art project that I helped a former teacher work on in Rotterdam and just this morning I got a Whatsapp that? Message message from from the Fab former five lab manager of Amsterdam. We was a good friend of Alex, alex Schaub, who, who sent me a picture of some complicated furniture parts that he made on the on milling the Milling machine down down there yesterday, running software that I developed. I made open source software that makes it easier to set up 3D complicated 3d milling jobs and other types of digital fabrication jobs for milling and and, and he uses that on the on the regular basis and and gave me an update today.

Pavel:

S We've touched this mysterious word Fab lab. Y, Could you elaborate a little bit on that? I ever read little bit about that and I find it really interesting myself.

Jens:

Yeah, so it's. It's Fab lab is short for fabrication laboratory, and it's a global network of people who collaborate and share knowledge and as a set of of o digital fabrication workshops that locally try to give Equal access equal to to technologies t to develop ideas and manufacture things or test things. And the network itself is a bit more than 20 years old and it's been out of the Center for bits and Bits atoms, Atoms CBA at , , who, and it's a bit interesting because, depending on who in the network you talk to, you do get different stories of the origins, so you sort of like a legend almost.

Jens:

Yeah absolutely, but it started out as sort of a social outreach. As far as I could understand, the, the National Science Foundation in the United States had. They gave a huge research grant to the Center for Bits and Atoms and some of that had to be used for social outreach and that that funded quite a bit of the early development. And here in northern Norway, in or, like you know, quite a bit further north than we are in northern Norway, in Lincoln, was Lyngen depending on who you talk to maybe the third or fourth fab lab in the world was actually set up there and that was a bunch of sheep farmers who developed mobile phones for their sheep, oh wow.

Pavel:

wow. Oh, , for a sheep.

Jens:

Yeah, so. So the Lyngen Alps it's a peninsula and and the sheep farmers traditionally, or, and still they, you know, in the, in the springtime they let the sheep or lamps roam freely in the mountains to grace, and they collect them in the autumn, and but then, you know, imagine being able to know if they're sick, if they're not moving, you can go and help them, instead of them Just dying. Or if they get stuck, you want to get them unstuck and if it comes time to collect them, you, if they get lost, you know you want them. Yeah, you want to be able to track them in the mountains. So, and and then, as far as I understand, the researchers at MIT thought that was a super nice application of like real world needs for, for digital technology, you know, you know both on the electronics, the software side, but also the hardware side, to you know to physically Prototype and fabricate prototype tracking devices. So they're in the market now known as the tailes poor.

Jens:

But j Håkon u , who rents the fablop of Fab lab lab their says is that that they were invited to come to the MIT to develop this project. And but the sheep Sheep farmers they wanted to be on their farms, with their sheeps, with their family. They had no interest in uprooting themselves and move across the Atlantic Ocean to be at this prestigious technology university and and I think that I understood Understood it made the researchers at MIT realized like then MIT should come to you. And the different types of machines that they used in their research. They realized that some of them are not that expensive actually, and simple, robust, versatile machines like laser cutters and CNC milling machines and so on. If you can bring this capability there locally, then we can. ou You know, bits and bytes can flow across the world, but we can produce things locally and prototype locally to help local people solve local problems.

Pavel:

Exactly. I think this is a very great example of this type of reasoning b , at least what I understood. Does that mean it also helps to democratize access to technology right??

Jens:

S divide divide digitaldivide divide divide divide divide is an important word and something that gets increasingly important. I think that you don't want to leave people behind, and who grows up with access to develop these skills and who doesn't? And I've been myself comparing this to the importance of public libraries. And also a bit of interesting thing like you had the printing press being invented in the 1500s, but it was only, you know, only in the late 1800s, early 1900s, we had the first public libraries, right, exactly, you had libraries but no public access, and, to my understanding, that was a bit of a game changer for society, that you wouldn't need to belong to a university or some sort of gentleman's club or whatever kind of institution in order to access books, but anybody could access. And I personally have been feeling this has been equally important with technology and develop ideas and fabricate things that should be equal access.

Pavel:

Actually, I like that because it seems to me that all type of people can access the FabLab Lab Lab facilities and use the machines for their own use, like being, I don't know architects, being designers, even just people with the hobby towards some, let's 3D say, 3d printing or whichever interest they have. And I think it's very cool to have something like that in at least one country or in each country, since it's like not very centralized thing, and it seems that everyone can build their own FabLab in a way if they are super hyped about it, and that's pretty cool. And I would also like to ask you about your d, Humphrey2 2 2 name, hempri2, if it's the correct pronunciation, because it was quite a big milestone.

Jens:

Yeah. So I've been on a really long research streak myself. I got very interested in how can, and so one thing is then in a FabLab you get to master a tool or a machine because you get to use the machine yourself. Right, you don't come with the USB key and give away your files and somebody else operates the machine for you. You actually use the machine and then it helps you think and be creative with the machine in a very different way when you're also allowed to make mistakes on the machine, and then becomes part of your creative process in a super different way than if you just outsource things. And I got sort of interested in okay, but then what's the next level? How can you make it almost more malleable, almost like clay? That not just being comfortable playing around with existing machines, but if you're also comfortable building your own machines, then theoretically it opens up for even more development of new ideas, whether that's ending up being economically important or just important from a cultural point of view or personal expression point of view or whatever.

Jens:

And these digital machines, they're so versatile. Like one of the sort of common things with 3D printing, laser cutting and CNC milling is that complexity in geometry of the parts you fabricate is cheap or relatively easy. With traditional tools like, say, a table saw, to cut the straight line is really easy, but to make complicated shapes then you would need to have a handheld jigsaw and igos to do that and to be able to do it precise and to be able to replicate it later. It's complicated, but with these digital fabrication machines you can put a whole lot of complexity in the actual design and then you can very easily execute that complexity in the part when you fabricate the part. So then these machines are interesting to use for making new machines, because you can then start making components that you would traditionally buy, that would get traditionally mass manufactured with specialized machines.

Jens:

And I've been exploring that a whole lot and I've discovered that we've been joking that, doing it both for sport and for practical reasons. So a little bit for sport, like how much percentage of these machines are able to make ourselves. What was the result? I think it's so hard to you know. Do you measure by weight, do you measure by volume? Do you measure by part count? But I guess with Humphrey too, we're up to about 80%.

Jens:

But I certainly also discovered the limitations, like, for instance, like linear rails, to position yourself linearly. They are made with specialized machines in factory that grind them and so on, make them super flat and precise and you make that yourself. You're never going to get the same quality. So this has been the sort of for me also very much about learning what are also the limitations. So making a machine that works okay today is not the same as a machine that can robustly manufacture parts on a daily basis for 10 years, right? But Humphrey too is a full-format CNC milling machine that you can take any kind of sheet material. That is 244 by 122 cm, so the standard sheets 2.5 meters by 1.2 wood or aluminium or plastics, and it can make all kinds of complicated 2D and 3D shapes from these materials by cutting away layer by layer material. But it can also then make about 80% of its own parts.

Jens:

So the design of the machine so that you can load a full phenolic resin composite sheet into the machine and it can actually cut out about 88% of its own parts. And then you buy things like motors and cables and linear rails. But even the rack and pinion, the little gear and the teeth for positioning is made on the machine itself.

Pavel:

I think that helps with the sustainability as well. I guess Like making production locally as well.

Jens:

A bit easier too. Personally, I'm not as convinced as I used to be about that. I wish I could give you a strong yes on that. But this is tricky Because, for instance, in this case the material was made in Finland. There are no factories in Norway making that kind of material, as far as I know. So whether you ship the raw material to fabricate then locally or the manufactured parts maybe, is not that big of a difference. And then also, industrial scale processes tend to be quite optimized and have less waste, but versus one offs tend to like. You know, maybe you've looked so you need to redo something, and maybe, because you may work locally with such a diverse range of materials, you don't have the proper recycling or processing systems for this. But that's also one of the reasons why I'm also on another machine called Hanso.

Jens:

I'm working on combining large scale additive manufacturing 3D printing, with milling. So the goal is to 3D print recycled plastics and then being able to mill with precision. So typically when you 3D print with recycled materials, it's very difficult to be precise and consistent. But if you can overdo it, basically you make your parts a little bit too blobby, a little bit too much, and then you use the milling process to almost like a cheese scraper. You take off a little bit. That has a lot of potential. So this machine is operational now the milling and the printing part but not the recycling part yet. But I have an ongoing project with this.

Jens:

But this also is to do that reliably is tricky, but I find it very interesting and I like to contribute to this research.

Jens:

This really sorry I don't know what you call it low level research that it's not about being cutting edge, but it's more about making it accessible. Smart techniques that helps people do it themselves locally for a low budget instead of having to buy it with a high budget. And that reminds me a little bit of how I view my work in a way is more of a translator than an inventor. So you could think about like in the past hundreds of years, humanity, or thousands of years humanity, has come up with so many smart techniques for fabricating things, but often they're so specialized, they're based on dedicated special machines or it's not so accessible. So I almost in a way consider myself as a sort of translator, the way maybe somebody would read obscure Latin texts and translate them into simple English. I study brilliant industrial processes and see if I can come up with ways to design it so that it can be made locally by almost anyone with machines that you can find in the Fab Lab.

Pavel:

I know you have two papers out. Yeah, how challenging is it for you as a product designer or industrial designer to publish with collaboration with universities, and do you see broader potential there, also like internationally? Or, let's say also, is it something you would like to follow? Or is it like off-product or by-product, let's say, of your effort?

Jens:

It's a good question.

Jens:

It's been a very nice experience for me because I started this research project, fabricatable Machines, and I opened a community-based project outside of academia and then Frick Faustal, who has become a good friend of mine, started a PhD in Bergen and he came into this project and took part in the development of these different fabrication techniques and geometric designs that I just described, and then he ended up being the main author on these two papers, with support from a former PhD student at a friend of mine, nadia Pieck, who studied at the CBA at MIT, and other great people.

Jens:

I thought it was nice to experience that sort of my I guess you could call it in a way, grassroots research got sort of the formal treatment of writing a paper, that it felt a bit like I've been the guy throwing things up into the air and making things sort of happen organically. And then Frik has been doing quite a good job, or really good job, using this sort of academic method of looking at, looking at this work through the academic lens and describing it in a way that makes it, you know, more accessible through the traditional paper based Procedures. But it's also a little bit interesting to notice from a ego, ego tistical point of view like what's in it for me, right, so so, so. So what a PhD researcher has a pressure to publish right to get your PhD, sort of this bit like you don't get your.

Jens:

You don't get your candy if you don't make papers, and and they and then, and they and they and then, because they did this, follow this, come here how they say it, this demand to make papers. They continue getting funding for doing their research. They want to do and, and, but then as a then running this non-commercial, idealistic, open research project and you know, none of that funding is then streaming out to support us. So it's supporters by helping making a name for the project and getting sort of recognition, which is great, but it's a, it's a bit of an odd one in a way that you could say that our Community based research project has been supporting academia in that way, more than academia has been supporting us, I see but the same time, the way I described doing this, translating Of on distrub processes, bit like obscure Latin to English.

Jens:

You could say that all these processes that have sprung out of academia, it's just what we are researching and trying to to make more accessible. So there is a two-way link there. And also there has been people Taking our designs and manufacturing them commercially for clients on commission. Both myself and other people have have benefited from that. So it, the research, is based on open recipes and open source licenses, but that doesn't permit Prohibit people from doing actual commercial activity with it. It's just the contrary. It's just that because it's open, anybody can do it nice.

Pavel:

Do you think that the FabLab in general could Could be like a supportive ground for academia in Norway?

Jens:

absolutely and internationally it very much is. And If I wear a little bit dark glasses and see I, you, you could say that Academia has almost hijacked the entire fab lab network.

Pavel:

So oh, wow there.

Jens:

There there are globally Around 2000 fab labs now, which is quite incredible. So it's been growing exponentially. But you can imagine the type of organizations that gets the funding to both get acquired the machines and and the space for it typically has been universities. So so what In the beginning maybe was about giving equal access as to a certain degree ended up being a really good network for helping local academic Institutions do a better job for their students, with a bit of a side thought that you know, on first day afternoons we're open to the public, kind of thing.

Jens:

So it is a dim, is sort of a not necessarily demand, but it's a bit of a Guideline in the fab lab network that you, you should in some form try to Make digital fabrication technology more accessible, whether that's true Opening hours to the public or pricing, for instance. You know typically you know it's very expensive. So if you can make it for free force, you know that's amazing but it's also very expensive thing to do as a nonprofit. But yeah, that If you, if you'd study any kind of list or go on the global maps on fab labsio, you will find a whole lot of those fab labs inside of universities. And, personally, what got me quite interested in the network. One of the things that I liked was the fact that it was outside universities that anybody can play right.

Jens:

So but, then running an independent fab lab, basically making your own Non-profit or idealistic organizations. It's so tough that you typically you end up having sort of a modern institution like a library or a museum or or a university that already have established funding, or or maybe or maybe a company, and then yeah, that makes sense, I think but at the same time you could say that's also the beauty of the success of the fab labs.

Jens:

You could call it sort of the virus on the inside and the virus on the outside, right. So so when you have fab labs inside of academic institutions, talking to independent fab labs outside institutions and together they sort of you know they can also help break up barriers. There's a lot of artificial barriers for For transferring knowledge and, yeah, and and collaboration Across the globe and and that's been a huge success of the fab lab network.

Pavel:

You I have very, very curious questions about the fab lab and its role in students life. Do you provide any workshops or anything like that for, let's say, students from Elementary school or high school that they could just like try and play with various materials, maybe Try to make something out of the materials and see how it is being a designer or the creator?

Jens:

Yeah, like it's. There's so many different labs run by so many different people and and some are actually specialized towards kids, for instance, the fab lab in Leon. Their main focus is after after school program for for school kids Actually. So they do workshops and projects with the kids, teaching them all kinds of things about manufacturing and materials use and expressing ideas and working with microcontrollers and so on. And and also I Think maybe one of the biggest successes of the fab lab network is something called the fab Academy, where Professor and Neil Gerson felt who, who is the maybe you could say is the main main initiator on main force behind the fab lab network is he's the head of the central bits and atoms at MIT. He teaches global class On how to make almost anything.

Pavel:

So oh, wow so.

Jens:

So we imagine there's then a very, very experienced, very talented professor Sitting in this in his own fab lab in his second floor of his house in Cambridge, teaching a global class where the students go to their local fab labs you know, on all continents they, you know you have fab labs joining in on this and so they sit locally and watch the video conference, the lecture in the lab, and then they Execute the homework, the tasks for the next week in the lab with all kinds of different processes for whether that's 2d design and cutting or 3d design or electronics design, molding and casting, networking and so on, and in the end you sort of learn a little bit of everything to how to make almost anything. Yeah, and, and that's been really successful, growing year by year, and it gives the students this really bigger picture value of connecting to a global classroom right.

Pavel:

Yeah, that's true, and it's really built the community strong, I believe yeah, so this, I think they're celebrating 15 years now.

Jens:

Actually, alex Shav that I mentioned earlier. He was in the pilot class together with Thomas Diaz and another person in the fall of 2008 and they really rolled it out in 2009 because the pilot project was just global students joining in on the MIT class how to make almost anything. That's been taught by Professor Nigelersenfeld.

Pavel:

I will probably have like final questions. One is do you have any idol in the world of product designer or in the world of FabLop, maybe, and if you do, what do you like about that person?

Jens:

That's a question I wasn't prepared for. I lost a few idols and you know that studying industrial design in the past, you know some designers got a whole lot of attention, you know 20 years ago, but me sort of star designers, you know they lost. That starfaded for me and I made a conscious choice to not become like one of them. But I rather helped. I sort of found one of my things that really appealed to me. Instead of me solving something for somebody else, how can I, sort of more on the meta level, design a system or an environment that helps people solve something themselves, which really sort of appealed to me? So, in a way, not just being a translator but also a facilitator, to facilitate that expression in somebody else, and then me, on a sort of empathic level, joining in in their enthusiasm and be able to create their own solutions or express themselves. I think Håkon Carlson, jo-njör, that I mentioned, the guy who grew up on the sheep farm, who's now in his 70s still running the FabLop up there in Lingen.

Pavel:

He's impressive.

Jens:

He definitely impresses me, and certainly the professional Gersenfeldt, with everything he's achieved. You know, this combination of doing high level, super specific research at Centrum for Bits and Atoms while also having the social outreach side with the FabLop network and connecting people, I think that's a really nice combination, and one of his main collaborators through many, many years, sherry Lasseter, is an amazing individual as well. She's the president of the Fab Foundation, which is a nonprofit spun out of MIT to manage the Fab Network.

Pavel:

Cool. Of course it would not be very hot podcast if I wouldn't ask about AI artificial intelligence.

Jens:

So what's?

Pavel:

your insight on this disruptive technology in your field, and can you envision a way where you could employ it? In your future.

Jens:

So currently it's not impacted my own work yet, the way I practice my profession now, but I'm keeping it definitely a watchful eye.

Jens:

So, and there's specifically one project on GitHub that I follow, called Free Studio, which is worth researching because they're sort of collecting different open source AI tools that are published for creating 3D models, not because lately text based AI output or image based AI output has been getting a lot of hype, but there's also things brewing with actual 3D models. So I have not been so impressed so far, but it's getting better. But then, whether with text prompts or to the input, they publish libraries and tools for creating actual 3D models, messages that you could then put in a 3D printer, for instance, to make. So it's kind of like typical. It's like it's promising but not super useful yet, unless you find a niche, because it's like a little crude but that's fascinating. But also a lot of card based programs take text input. So I've been playing a little bit together with friends on having chat GPT create a script to actually put into a card program like OpenScard or FreeCAD. So they're both open source card programs that can handle scripts.

Pavel:

Does it?

Jens:

work. Ah, again, it's like kind of so but not really so. It's again, it's sort of promising and it's impressive the level of sort of understanding you could say that the language model has. But it's kind of there but not really Like. For instance, we tried to have chat GPT, make the script for a coffee cup.

Jens:

It was sort of roughly a thing and a roughly handle, but the handle was floating in the air and a little bit sort of like. But that's going to be really interesting to watch. But for the rest, for me, like you know my strong, I'm more of a visual person, so I never really liked text based programming that much. I prefer visual coding, often with node based editors, so to have language models as a co-pilot to generate scripts to run on microcontrollers and stuff is definitely helpful to me.

Pavel:

So let's wrap up. I will ask one last question. What would you recommend to young students who would like to persuade this type of career, being either industrial engineer or whichever job that works with design and craft?

Jens:

Yeah, I think.

Pavel:

What would you like? You know what tips you would give yourself if you were younger. Yeah, it's a bit funny.

Jens:

I've been joking a lot with, like all the smart industrial designers or, you know, product designers. They all started working with UX and so designing user interfaces or service journeys, and you know service design and, like you know all the not all the jobs, but most of the jobs are gone and to beginning with the most, not a whole lot of them in Norway, like.

Jens:

So I maybe double check with yourself if you really want to physically make things as a profession or if you would rather keep that as a hobby because, it is incredibly rewarding to work with your hands and have you know fiscal objects come out of the machine and then you finish it and screw it together and bolt it and test it and so on. But in the current economic climate it's just not a whole lot of you know job opportunities. At the same time it's not entirely true.

Jens:

Like I'm part myself of a sort of local ecosystem here in Oslo with freelancers doing all kinds of odd jobs and custom jobs and, for instance, just the fact that I use the machine that I built myself to fabricate the self-replicating machine that was commissioned by a client last year and they needed to. So then, when I put together the self-replicating machine, I copied it and shipped off both parts, which was great fun, but it's also tough work. It's similar to traditionally. Like any creative profession like to be able to really make a living off your creativity is tough and you could say that when you're not, your end product is not a digital file like anything that will be displayed on the web page, or PDF or a sound file or whatever. So when your end product is something physical, it's sort of you could say you up the difficulty level like a computer game, you're playing in hard mode. So you maybe double check with yourself if you do want to play in hard mode and for the rest, just go for it.

Jens:

The fact that, and also you really don't need to go to school to learn, and especially in these types of times, right, because it's so many tutorials, so many libraries you can study for reference, like software libraries, and so you can learn so much on your own also. So maybe also double check the need to go to school for this. That maybe that's what I've been trying to facilitate with the fab lab that we created here in Oslo. It's like an alternative to okay, maybe I want to do a new career path, acquiring another skill, so you want to sign up for evening school for the next?

Jens:

few years in order to do that, or can I just go to my local nonprofit and get the one-on-one training that I need and get started and play around? So I do want to mention that I've been spending eight years together with super great peers to build up a fab lab in Oslo called Feles Verksted, which means the shared workshop. So we chose to have a local name instead of a little bit like Taco Bell or McDonald's. We wanted to have our own identity, but we are also part of the fab lab network. I'm no longer involved in running that, but I have now a lot of benefit of that nonprofit myself in my own work as a designer, great.

Pavel:

So please, if you are interested in that topic, check out Jens and Fablop in Oslo, and by that I am very thankful to you, jens, that you were so happy to join today, and it was a very nice talk.

Jens:

Thank you for your nighting.