Content tagged with DIY

Mimi Ito’s talk is entitled "Amateur Cultural Production in the New Networked Age." She is a cultural anthropologist who studies new media use, particularly among young people in Japan and the US. She is currently co-leading a multi-year project on Digital Kids and Informal Learning, with support from the MacArthur Foundation. As part of this project she is conducting case studies of anime fandoms in Japan and the English-speaking online world. She is a Senior Fellow at the Annenberg Center for Communication.

The discussion surrounding DIY seminar talks by Mimi Ito and Howard Rheingold last week raised some compelling questions about how to imagine a non-dichotomized architecture for media creation and circulation (as Julian Bleeker put it in his comments below). DIY is not simply an obscure hobby of media activists and enthusiast, or a phenomenon that exists exclusively in opposition to mainstream production practices. DIY, we seem to agree, is an ethos that is increasingly seeping into the mainstream. And as John Seely Brown pointed out, assumptions about leisure and entertainment might be in the process of shifting by virtue of new production practices associated with DIY.

Linked below is a pleasant, yet nostalgic, article and slideshow that features Oakland, CA based craftsperson Eric Clausen, who is producing exceptional work in the decorative/functional (and traditional) genre of blacksmithing.

Surprisingly, what strikes me about this piece is not at all what one would initially anticipate from a guy like me that regularly writes about craft issues (but maybe not so out of the ordinary for a self-proclaimed provocateur). After viewing the slideshow that is associated with this article, I am compelled to comment.

A lot of links related to lo-fi, circuit-bending, hacking electronics, and making noise. Includes forums, schematics, galleries, as well as stuff having to do with game mods, 8-bit inspired creations, etc.