It was interesting to watch a recent Golan Levin lecture today and reflect on what it is I do as an artist and as an educator. As a community we are trying to formulate terminology that positions this very technical practice within (or not) a postmodern/critical artmaking scope. At my university, as part of our new Emergent Digital Practices Program we are trying to figure out how to reach out to the maker community and or create one, along with other communities connected to our various practices. The question becomes, how critical do we keep the conversation, the framing? Are we open to ppl who want to make ping pong ball guns that shoot thru plywood ? The term Critical Making seems to be apt, but is still being defined – how do we engage without turning people off right from the start? It starts to seem that we do not just want to be a hub, or a space for non-critical education, but we would shape and frame, something unusual and disconnected from the traditional notions of a hakerspace or makerspace or even a FabLab. Rafael Fajardo has met with some success in the past engaging students and recent grads in ongoing conversations about critical/humane games, so it doesn’t seem impossible. I would be interested in those that have tried creating spaces with such framing, how did it go, is it unfair? For now, I’m taking on the moniker of Critical Arts Engineer.
My friend and colleague Christopher Coleman (@digitalcoleman) is puzzling out the balance between the critical and the celebratory in contemporary maker culture. The language is experimental, and will likely have to be evolving. What modest success I have had in the space of games is – in part – the result of slow, persistent work with affirmative definitions.
The very existence of a thing we can now call “maker culture” is the result of a critique of extant conditions a decade ago. That wave had to celebrate DIY and reclaim the original usage of the word “hacker” as it (re)applied it to the crafting of contemporary physical objects. It attempted to decomodify tinkering.
What, then, does a next wave critical arts engineering seek to do? Where does it find and maintain its critical mojo? Is that place a renewable (re)source? What language can be used to describe that place? that source?