Critical making

Last updated

Critical making refers to the hands-on productive activities that link digital technologies to society. It was invented to bridge the gap between creative, physical, and conceptual exploration. [1] The purpose of critical making resides in the learning extracted from the process of making rather than the experience derived from the finished output. The term "critical making" was popularized by Matt Ratto, an associate professor at the University of Toronto. [2] Ratto describes one of the main goals of critical making as a way "to use material forms of engagement with technologies to supplement and extend critical reflection and, in doing so, to reconnect our lived experiences with technologies to social and conceptual critique." [3] "Critical making", as defined by practitioners like Matt Ratto and Stephen Hockema, "is an elision of two typically disconnected modes of engagement in the world — "critical thinking," often considered as abstract, explicit, linguistically based, internal and cognitively individualistic; and "making," typically understood as tacit, embodied, external, and community-oriented."

Contents

Arduino Hardware Materials for critical making.jpg
Arduino Hardware

History of Critical Making

Matt Ratto and Critical Making

Matt Ratto coined the term in 2008 [4] to describe his workshop activities that linked conceptual reflection and technical making. This concept explores how learning is influenced by the learner's participation towards creating and/or making things within a technological context. [5] Ratto's first publication to use the term was in 2009. Ratto claims that his goal was to connect the conceptual understanding of technology in social life to materialized activities. By situating himself within the area of "design-oriented research" rather than "research-oriented research," Ratto believes that critical making enhances the shared experience in both theoretical and practical understandings of critical socio-technical issues. [5] However, critical making should not be reviewed as design, but rather as a type of practice. The quality of a critical making lab is evaluated based on the physical "making" process, regardless of the quality of the final material production. [6] Prior studies have noted the separation between critical thinking and physical "making". Specifically, experts in technology lack a knowledge of art, and vice versa. However, it is very important that technology be embedded in a context rather than being left in isolation, especially when it comes to critical making.

The Critical Making Lab was founded by Matt Ratto in the Faculty of Information, University of Toronto. The Critical Making Lab provides participants tools and basic knowledge of digital technology used in critical making. The mission of the lab is to enhance collaboration, communication, and practice-based engagement in critical making. [7]

The main focus of critical making is an open design. [6] Open design develops a critical perspective on the current institutions, practices, and norms of society, reconnecting materiality and morality. Matt Ratto introduces Critical Making as processes of material and conceptual exploration and creation of novel understandings by the makers themselves. Critical Making includes digital software and hardware. the software usually refers to the Raspberry Pi or Arduino. Hardware refers to a computer, or any other device that facilitates an operation.

Eric Paulos and Critical Making

In 2012, Eric Paulos launched Critical Making as a studio course at UC Berkeley. This Critical Making course was designed to operationalize and critique the practice of “making” through both foundational literature and hands-on studio culture. As hybrid practitioners, students develop fluency in readily collaging and incorporating a variety of physical materials and protocols into their practice. With design research as a lens, students envision and create future computational experiences that critically explore social and culturally relevant technological themes such as community, privacy, environment, education, economics, energy, food, biology, democracy, activism, healthcare, social justice, etc. The course has been offered continuously since 2012 and featured publicly at showcases and exhibitions, including Maker Faire as well as other public venues. Selected projects are archived online on the course website.

Garnet Hertz and Critical Making

In 2012, Garnet Hertz adopted the term for a series of ten handmade booklets titled "Critical Making," published in 2012. [8] It explores how hands-on productive work ‐ making ‐ can supplement and extend critical reflection on technology and society. It works to blend and extend the fields of design, contemporary art, DIY/craft, and technological development. In this project, 70 different authors - including Norman White, Julian Bleecker, Dunne & Raby, Daniel Charny, Albert Borgmann, Golan Levin, Matt Ratto, Natalie Jeremijenko, McKenzie Wark, Paul Dourish, Mitch Altman, Dale Dougherty, Mark Pauline, Scott Snibbe, Reed Ghazala and others - reflected on the term and critical responses to the maker movement. Generally speaking, Hertz's use of the term critical making is focused around studio production and the creation of objects as "things to think with". [9]

Hertz's project consisted of academic papers, detailed technical projects, interviews, and documented pieces of artwork. He then categorized the information into specific topics, thereby producing multiple booklets. The booklet itself is a testament to critical making. It was printed using a hacked photocopier, and roughly 100,000 pages were manually folded and stapled to create 300 copies of 10 booklets each. The publication asks us to look at aspects of the DIY culture that go beyond buying an Arduino, getting a 3D printer, and doing DIY projects as a weekend hobby. These books embrace social issues, the history of technology, activism, and politics. The project also stemmed from a specific disappointment of Make partnering with the US military through DARPA funding in 2012. [10] Many opposed this move, including Mitch Altman, and Hertz's project worked to explore the mixture of making, technology, politics and ethics - as well as bringing the fields of critical design and media arts into conversation with maker culture.

In 2014, Hertz founded "The Studio for Critical Making" at Emily Carr University of Art and Design as Canada Research Chair in Design and Media Arts. The facility "explores how humanities-based modes of critical inquiry – like the arts and ethics – can be directly applied to building more engaging product concepts and information technologies. The lab works to replace the traditional engineering goals of efficiency, speed, or usability with more complex cultural, social, and human-oriented values. The end result is a technology that is more culturally relevant, socially engaged, and personalized." [11]

Other uses of Critical Making

In 2012, John Maeda began using the term while at the Rhode Island School of Design (RISD): first as a title for their strategic plan for 2012-2017 and next as part of the title of an edited collection titled "The Art of Critical Making: Rhode Island School of Design on Creative Practice" published by John Wiley & Sons, Inc. [12] Other individuals who use the term critical making to orient their work include Amaranth Borsuk (University of Washington-Bothell), Jentery Sayers (University of Victoria), Roger Whitson (Washington State University), Kari Kraus (University of Maryland), Amy Papaelias (SUNY-New Paltz), and Jessica Barness (Kent State University).

Nancy Mauro-Flude and Tactical Magick Faerie Circuits

'Networked Art Forms and Tactical Magick Faerie Circuits' was a series of events inspired by critical making and computer subculture curated and devised by Nancy Mauro-Flude in collaboration, in lutruwita Tasmania, at Contemporary Art Tasmania (CAT), and on the Internet, from 31 May-30 June 2013. A cohort of artists, programmers and thinkers from the frontline of the critical maker aesthetic, remotely and locally, linking through live streaming of artist talks, workshops, exhibitions, performances, podcasts, and interview broadcasts, Internet relay chat successively compiled into an online archive.

A durational event that included symposia, exhibitions, performances, workshops and social gatherings. Collaborating with community Edge Radio, and Island Magazine, NAF:TMFC was also a satellite program of the 19th ISEA International International Symposium on Electronic Art. It brought together leading Australian and International artists and educators whose work responds to the emergent conditions of a networked world; a realm increasingly transmitted through fiber and code, this included Matthew Fuller; Florian Cramer; Josephine Bosma; Mez Breeze; Julian Oliver, Danja Vasliev from Critical Engineering working group; Constant Dullart; Jeff Malpas; Doll Yoko); Linda Dement, Rosa Menkman who mentored local artists and designers who were invited to respond to the work and ideas generated through the project which formed the closing exhibition which was programmed as Notorious R + D as a part of the inaugural Dark Mofo festival. The event received critical acclaim such as: "Perhaps it is appropriate that I review NAF:TMFC because it sits just outside my comfort zone....the heart, the ritual, the idea of frailty, are returned to technology, seem to capture the spirit of the endeavour. They hold something I can grasp or identify with. And with time, exploring the exhibition in a near empty gallery, I see that the collected works cultivate potential for play and discovery—qualities that chip away at the white noise and allow for a singular experience." [13]

Participants were encouraged to adopt a feminist and holistic approach to digital literacy, using various aesthetic tools and means to explore systems through critical making and experiential prototyping that enable insightful experiences in an increasingly data driven existence. [14]

DIY and critical making

Traditional DIY is criticized due to its costs and standards. DIY products are difficult to spread in lower-income areas where issues of cost and ease are more commonly cited (Williams, 276). [15] It is not only a lifestyle choice but also a technological product. [16] "DIY activity is not, for example, seen as a coping practice used by those unable to afford to externalize the activity to formal firms and/or self-employed individuals. Instead, and reflecting the broader cultural turn in retail studies, their explanation for engagement in DIY is firmly grounded in human agency" (Williams, 273). [17]

Speculative Design and Critical Making

According to DiSalvo and Lukens, "Speculative design is an approach to design that emphasizes inquiry, experimentation, and expression, over usability, usefulness or desirability. A particular characteristic of speculative design is that it tends to be future-oriented. However, this should not be mistaken as being fantasy-like sense, suggesting that it is "unreal" and therefore dismissible (DiSalvo and Lukens, 2009)." [18]

The term speculative design involves practices from various disciplines, including visionary or futurist forms of architecture, design fiction, and critical design or design for debate instead of referring to a specific movement or style. More than just diagrams of unbuilt structures, the speculative design aims to explore the space of interaction between culture, technology, and the built environment (Lukens and DiSalvo, 2012, p. 25). Practitioners of speculative design engage in design as a sort of provocation, one that asks uncomfortable questions about the long-term implications of technology. These practices also integrate pairs of concerns that are traditionally separate, such as fact and fiction, science and art, and commerce and academia. This provocation extends to questions about design itself.

See also

Related Research Articles

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Do it yourself</span> Building, modifying, or repairing, without the aid of experts or professionals

"Do it yourself" ("DIY") is the method of building, modifying, or repairing things by oneself without the direct aid of professionals or certified experts. Academic research has described DIY as behaviors where "individuals use raw and semi-raw materials and parts to produce, transform, or reconstruct material possessions, including those drawn from the natural environment ". DIY behavior can be triggered by various motivations previously categorized as marketplace motivations, and identity enhancement.

Information art, which is also known as informatism or data art, is an art form that is inspired by and principally incorporates data, computer science, information technology, artificial intelligence, and related data-driven fields. The information revolution has resulted in over-abundant data that are critical in a wide range of areas, from the Internet to healthcare systems. Related to conceptual art, electronic art and new media art, informatism considers this new technological, economical, and cultural paradigm shift, such that artworks may provide social commentaries, synthesize multiple disciplines, and develop new aesthetics. Realization of information art often take, although not necessarily, interdisciplinary and multidisciplinary approaches incorporating visual, audio, data analysis, performance, and others. Furthermore, physical and virtual installations involving informatism often provide human-computer interaction that generate artistic contents based on the processing of large amounts of data.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">ZKM Center for Art and Media Karlsruhe</span> Cultural institution in Karlsruhe, Germany

The ZKM | Center for Art and Media Karlsruhe, a cultural institution, was founded in 1989 and, since 1997, is located in a former munitions factory in Karlsruhe, Germany. The ZKM organizes special exhibitions and thematic events, conducts research and produces works on the effects of media, digitization, and globalization, and offers public as well as individualized communications and educational programs.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Open-source hardware</span> Hardware from the open-design movement

Open-source hardware consists of physical artifacts of technology designed and offered by the open-design movement. Both free and open-source software (FOSS) and open-source hardware are created by this open-source culture movement and apply a like concept to a variety of components. It is sometimes, thus, referred to as FOSH. The term usually means that information about the hardware is easily discerned so that others can make it – coupling it closely to the maker movement. Hardware design, in addition to the software that drives the hardware, are all released under free/libre terms. The original sharer gains feedback and potentially improvements on the design from the FOSH community. There is now significant evidence that such sharing can drive a high return on investment for the scientific community.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Future-proof</span> Planning and building for time to come

Future-proofing is the process of anticipating the future and developing methods of minimizing the effects of shocks and stresses of future events. Future-proofing is used in industries such as electronics, medical industry, industrial design, and more recently, in design for climate change. The principles of future-proofing are extracted from other industries and codified as a system for approaching an intervention in an historic building.

Critical design uses design fiction and speculative design proposals to challenge assumptions and conceptions about the role objects play in everyday life. Critical design plays a similar role to product design, but does not emphasize an object's commercial purpose or physical utility. It is mainly used to share a critical perspective or inspire debate, while increasing awareness of social, cultural, or ethical issues in the eyes of the public. Critical design was popularized by Anthony Dunne and Fiona Raby through their firm, Dunne & Raby.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Foresight (futures studies)</span> Term referring to various activities in futurology

In futurology, especially in Europe, the term foresight has become widely used to describe activities such as:

Locative media or location-based media (LBM) is a virtual medium of communication functionally bound to a location. The physical implementation of locative media, however, is not bound to the same location to which the content refers.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Hackerspace</span> Community-operated physical space for people with common interests

A hackerspace is a community-operated, often "not for profit", workspace where people with common interests, such as computers, machining, technology, science, digital art, or electronic art, can meet, socialize, and collaborate. Hackerspaces are comparable to other community-operated spaces with similar aims and mechanisms such as Fab Lab, men's sheds, and commercial "for-profit" companies.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Hybrid art</span> Art that works with science and technology

Hybrid art is a contemporary art movement in which artists work with frontier areas of science and emerging technologies. Artists work with fields such as biology, robotics, physical sciences, experimental interface technologies, artificial intelligence, and information visualization. They address the research in many ways such as undertaking new research agendas, visualizing results in new ways, or critiquing the social implications of the research. The worldwide community has developed new kinds of art festivals, information sources, organizations, and university programs to explore these new arts.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Maker culture</span> Community interested in do-it-yourself technical pursuits

The maker culture is a contemporary subculture representing a technology-based extension of DIY culture that intersects with hardware-oriented parts of hacker culture and revels in the creation of new devices as well as tinkering with existing ones. The maker culture in general supports open-source hardware. Typical interests enjoyed by the maker culture include engineering-oriented pursuits such as electronics, robotics, 3-D printing, and the use of computer numeric control tools, as well as more traditional activities such as metalworking, woodworking, and, mainly, its predecessor, traditional arts and crafts.

Leah Buechley is an American educator, engineer and designer who is best known as the developer of the LilyPad Arduino toolkit and other smart textiles.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Radical media</span> Journalistic media that disperse action-oriented political agendas

Radical media are communication outlets that disperse action-oriented political agendas utilizing existing communication infrastructures and its supportive users. These types of media are differentiated from conventional mass communications through its progressive content, reformist culture, and democratic process of production and distribution. Advocates support its alternative and oppositional view of mass media, arguing that conventional outlets are politically biased through their production and distribution. However, there are some critics that exist in terms of validating the authenticity of the content, its political ideology, long-term perishability, and the social actions led by the media.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Makey Makey</span>

Makey Makey: An Invention Kit for Everyone is an invention kit designed to connect everyday objects to computer keys. Using a circuit board, alligator clips, and a USB cable, the toy uses closed loop electrical signals to send the computer either a keyboard stroke or mouse click signal. This function allows the Makey Makey to work with any computer program or webpage that accepts keyboard or mouse click.

Design fiction is a design practice aiming at exploring and criticising possible futures by creating speculative, and often provocative, scenarios narrated through designed artifacts. It is a way to facilitate and foster debates, as explained by futurist Scott Smith: "... design fiction as a communication and social object creates interactions and dialogues around futures that were missing before. It helps make it real enough for people that you can have a meaningful conversation with".

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Garnet Hertz</span>

Garnet Hertz is a Canadian artist, designer and academic. Hertz is Canada Research Chair in Design and Media Art and is known for his electronic artworks and for his research in the areas of critical making and DIY culture.

The Public Laboratory for Open Technology and Science is a non-profit organization that facilitates collaborative, open source environmental research in a model known as Community Science. It supports communities facing environmental justice issues in a do it yourself approach to environmental monitoring and advocacy. Public Lab grew out of a grassroots effort to take aerial photographs of the BP Oil Spill in the Gulf of Mexico in 2010. Since then, they have launched a range of projects, including an open source spectrometer, multi-spectral camera, and low-cost microscope.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Solarpunk</span> Literary and artistic movement

Solarpunk is a literary and artistic movement that envisions and works toward actualizing a sustainable future interconnected with nature and community. The "solar" represents solar energy as a renewable energy source and an optimistic vision of the future that rejects climate doomerism, while the "punk" refers to the countercultural, post-capitalist, and decolonial enthusiasm for creating such a future.

Speculative design is a design practice concerned with future design proposals of a critical nature. The term was popularised by Anthony Dunne and Fiona Raby as a subsidiary of critical design. The aim is not to present commercially-driven design proposals but to design proposals that identify and debate crucial issues that might happen in the future. Speculative design is concerned with future consequences and implications of the relationship between science, technology, and humans. It problematizes this relation by proposing provocative future design scenarios where technology and design implications are accentuated. These design proposals are meant to trigger debates about the future rather than marketing products.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Daniel Jolliffe</span> Canadian media artist (1964–2021)

Daniel Jolliffe was a Canadian media artist and art professor who created works of art, design and performance projects using technologies such as Global Positioning Systems (GPS).

References

  1. ↑ DiSalvo, C (2009). "Design and the Construction of Publics". Design Issues. 1. 25: 48. doi:10.1162/desi.2009.25.1.48. S2CID   57572072.
  2. ↑ "CRITICAL MAKING / MATT RATTO | Open Design Now".
  3. ↑ Ratto, M. & Ree, R. (2012). "Materializing information: 3D printing and social change". First Monday. 17 (7). doi: 10.5210/fm.v17i7.3968 .
  4. ↑ Ratto, Matt. "Flwr Pwr: Tending the Walled Garden." 2-day Critical Making Workshop for the Walled Garden conference, Virtueel Platform, Amsterdam, the Netherlands, November 20–22, 2008.
  5. 1 2 Ratto, Matt (2011). "Critical Making: Conceptual and Material Studies in technology and Social Life". The Information Society. 27 (4): 252–260. doi:10.1080/01972243.2011.583819. S2CID   16883478.
  6. 1 2 Ratto, Matt (2011). "Open Design and Critical Making". Open Design Now: Why Design Cannot Remain Exclusive.
  7. ↑ "About the Lab" . Retrieved 28 March 2014.
  8. ↑ "Critical Making - Hertz".
  9. ↑ "Critical Making » FutureEverything". Archived from the original on 2015-01-05. Retrieved 2015-01-05.
  10. ↑ "Makerspaces in Education and DARPA".
  11. ↑ "ECUAD: Critical Making".
  12. ↑ "The Art of Critical Making: Rhode Island School of Design on Creative Practice | Wiley".
  13. ↑ "Cracking the technology Case; RealTime".
  14. ↑ "Interrupts Aren't Hidden; Runway Journal".
  15. ↑ Williams, Colin C. (2004). "A lifestyle choice? Evaluating the motives of do-it-yourself (DIY) consumers. I". International Journal of Retail & Distribution Management. 32 (4/5): 276. doi:10.1108/09590550410534613. S2CID   167996905.
  16. ↑ Blikstein, P. (2013). "Gears of our childhood: Constructionist toolkits, robotics, and physical computing, past and future". Proceedings of the 12th International Conference on Interaction Design and Children. pp. 173–182. doi:10.1145/2485760.2485786. ISBN   9781450319188. S2CID   15007343.
  17. ↑ Williams, Colin C. (2004). "A lifestyle choice? Evaluating the motives of do-it-yourself (DIY) consumers. I". International Journal of Retail & Distribution Management. 32 (4/5): 273. doi:10.1108/09590550410534613. S2CID   167996905.
  18. ↑ Lukens, J. & DiSalvo, C. (2011). "Speculative Design and Technological Fluency". International Journal of Learning. 4. 3 (4): 23–40. doi:10.1162/ijlm_a_00080.[ dead link ]
This page is based on this Wikipedia article
Text is available under the CC BY-SA 4.0 license; additional terms may apply.
Images, videos and audio are available under their respective licenses.