From theory to making, and back again …

or, approaches to thinking critically and sustainably with digital things.

kat braybrooke | @codekat

— Chris Csikszentmihályi, director MIT Centre for Future Civic Media

“All over what is called the Global South there are makers everywhere, only they are not called makers. There are fab labs everywhere, only they are not called fab labs…”  

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8Image Sources: Kramer, Kenneth, Dedrick, Jason; Sharma, Prakul; Say Chan, Anita.

FIRST, how can we better correlate the making of objects with critical reflection about their effects?

SECOND, how can we engage in sustainable making (both environmental and social) without producing material excesses or disempowering lesser-served communities?

From reflecting on hacker cultures with hackers…

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and recording their experiences of making things…

to making things with them…

and from bringing makers together…

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to publishing things about making…

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to reflecting with networks…

and making things with teachers.

How can we explain the disjuncture between making things and critically understanding their effects --

especially the environmental and the social?

Those questions again…

APPROACH #1: Providing freedom to make objects without criticality.

From Silicon Valley…

To the upper echelons of global policy.

-- Dr Hamadoun Touré, Secretary-General of the International Telecommunication Union

“…all the world’s citizens will [now] have the potential to … contribute to and enjoy all the benefits of the knowledge society.”

So what, exactly, is wrong here?

-- Judy Wajcman

“Such depictions of a proximate sociotechnical future are far from innocent. We are in fact

being mobilized as a resource…”

corporations rewriting actual community histories…

like these ones in 1970s London.

— Chris Csikszentmihályi, director MIT Centre for Future Civic Media

“All over what is called the Global South there are makers everywhere, only they are not called makers. There are fab labs everywhere, only they are not called fab labs…”  

jugaad: an innovative fix or simple work-around, building solutions that bend rules through making.

— Richard Stallman

…versus “a hacker, someone who explores the limits of what is possible in a spirit of playful cleverness.”

jugaad in practice…

Source: Critical Making, Garnet Hertz.

and who is not invited to the West’s making revolution?

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37Source: Mark Graham, OII.

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— Mark Graham, Stefano De Sabbata and Matthew A. Zook, Oxford Internet Institute and University of Kentucky.

”We find few signs of global information peripheries achieving comparable levels of participation with traditional information cores…”

Meanwhile, an elephant…

Source: Maxwell, Richard and Toby Miller. “E-Waste: The Elephant in the Living Room”. Critical Making. Hollywood: Garnet Herz, 2012.

Source: ifixit.

APPROACH #2: Critical study of the social constructions of objects, and their effects.

APPROACH #1: Providing the freedom to make objects, but no criticality…

Source: Kai Loffelbein

Science and Technology Studies: Digital objects as inherently social.

Judy Wacjman, Bruno Latour, John Law, Donna Haraway, Lucy Suchman, Susana Nascimento, Adrian Smith…

— Donna Haraway

“If technology, like language, is a form of life, we cannot afford to believe there is neutrality in its constitution and sustenance…”

Actor Network Theory (ANT): All subjects act through webs of sociotechnical interaction, from humans to lobsters to machines.

-- John Law, "Actor Network Theory and Material Semiotics", 2009.

…”all actants in a social interaction can express power relations, symbolize social hierarchies, reinforce inequalities and objectify”.

challenging the assumptions underlying deterministic narratives of human-centered interactions with technology…

Criticality through art: Psychogeography, Situationism and Relational Aesthetics.

Source: Adam Barr

Source: Ward Shelley

Source: Superstudio

Superstudio: “Cubic spaces built for city wanders”

Source: Guy Debord

Situationism: “Creating places of play and pleasure”

Sources: Berlin Biennale, Claire Bishop, Jacques Ranciere

Relational Aesthetics: “Sociable encounters for new kinds of interaction”

APPROACH #3: Criticality through making.

APPROACH #2: Critical study of the social constructions of objects, and their effects.

APPROACH #1: Providing the freedom to make objects without criticality…

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Critical Design: Challenging the materialistic and the commercial.

Source: Luiza Prado

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“Critical design is related to haute couture, concept cars, design propaganda, and visions of the future, but its purpose is not to present the dream of industry… its purpose is to stimulate discussion and debate.”

Source: Berlin Biennale

— Anthony Dunne and Fiona Raby, 2001

58Source: Citris Invention

Lab

Critical Making: Integrating theory with hands-on technologies.

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Source: mozfestartofweb.tumblr.

61Source: Tate Digital

Studio

Are conditions of learning, power and access changed in a machine “space within a space” at a cultural institution?

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"When we maintain, resell and make together, we create local value in a throw-away economy where many things are manufactured far away…”

— Janet Gunter, Restart Project

APPROACH #3: Criticality through making.

APPROACH #2: Critical study of the social constructions of objects, and their effects…

APPROACH #1: Providing the freedom to make objects without criticality…

65Thank you for listening! Let’s talk more @codekat.

Sketching activity! Think of the last object you either a) used, or b) designed…