Loes Bogers, Letizia Chiappini (eds.): The Critical Makers Reader: (Un)learning Technology (2019)

“A decade ago many gushed at the possibilities of 3D printers and other DIY tech. Today makers are increasingly shaking off their initial blind enthusiasm to numerically control everything, rediscovering an interest in sociocultural histories and futures and waking up to the environmental and economic implications of digital machines that transform materials. An accumulation of critique has collectively registered that no tool, service, or software is good, bad, or neutral—or even free for that matter. We’ve arrived at a crossroads, where a reflective pause coincides with new critical initiatives emerging across disciplines.

What was making? What is making? What could making become? And what about unmaking? The Critical Makers Reader features an array of practitioners and scholars who address these questions. Together, they tackle issues of technological making and its intersections with (un)learning, art and design, institutionalization, social critique, community organizing, collaboration, activism, urban regeneration, social inequality, and the environmental crisis.

Contributors: Kat Braybrooke, Abigail Browning, xtine burrough, Serena Cangiano, David Cole, Critical Media Lab, Maria Dada, Sharon Ede, Lori Emerson, Gareth Foote, Bernhard Garnicnig, Krystin Gollihue, Anja Groten, Xin Gu, Graham Harwood, Deanna Herst, Garnet Hertz, KairUs, Tom Keene, Cindy Kohtala, Verena Kuni, Maya Livio, Benjamin Matthews, Wim Nijenhuis, Paul O’Neill, Samantha Penn, Hannah Perner-Wilson, Matt Ratto, Pip Shea, Caroline Sinders, Lucy HG Solomon, Peter Troxler, Grace Van Ness, and Eva Verhoeven.”

Publisher Institute of Network Cultures, Amsterdam, Nov 2019
INC Reader series, 12
Creative Commons BY-NC-ND 4.0 International License
ISBN 9789492302366
320 pages

Publisher

PDF, PDF (17 MB)
EPUB, EPUB (16 MB)

Journal of Peer Production, 8: Feminism and (Un)Hacking (2016)

“This special issue of the journal shows a growing body of work that brings together feminism with hacking and making. The growth of internet technologies and the pervasion of computer culture into everyday life has prompted a renewed interrogation of the gender limits within these information technologies and digital media. From the shiny glass screens on our mobile devices to the sprawling campuses of technology corporations, gendered configurations of power within technoculture have become the focus of attention in popular culture, media, and academic scholarship.” (from the Introduction)

Edited by Shaowen Bardzell, Lilly Nguyen, and Sophie Toupin (a.k.a. SSL Nagbot)
Published March 2016
Open access
ISSN 2213-5316

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Garnet Hertz (ed.): Critical Making (2012)

“Critical Making is a handmade book project by Garnet Hertz that 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. It also can be thought of as an appeal to the electronic DIY maker movement to be critically engaged with culture, history and society: after learning to use a 3D printer, making an LED blink or using an Arduino, then what?

The publication has 70 contributors ‐ primarily from contemporary art and academia ‐ and its 352 pages are bound in ten pocket-sized zine-like volumes. The project takes the topic of DIY culture literally by printing an edition of 300 copies on a hacked photocopier with booklets that were manually folded, stapled and cut. The 300 finished copies were primarily given away for free to project contributors, individuals and institutions important to them. Some of the handmade copies were traded for reviews, photographs, videos, lectures and were given to library archives.

Due to the large demand for this content, the entire collection had been scanned and released on conceptlab.com/criticalmaking and through the Twitter account @criticalpdfs.”

Publisher Telharmonium Press, Hollywood/CA, November 2012
Open Access
10 booklets, 352 pages total

Reviews: Debatty (We Make Money Not Art, 2013), Blue (Engine Institute, 2013).

single PDF (36 MB)
PDF contributions (67 pieces)