Darren Wershler, Lori Emerson, Jussi Parikka: The Lab Book: Situated Practices in Media Studies (2022)

“From the “Big Science” of Bell Laboratories to the esoteric world of séance chambers to university media labs to neighborhood makerspaces, places we call “labs” are everywhere—but how exactly do we account for the wide variety of ways that they produce knowledge? More than imitations of science and engineering labs, many contemporary labs are hybrid forms that require a new methodological and theoretical toolkit to describe. The Lab Book investigates these vital, creative spaces, presenting readers with the concept of the “hybrid lab” and offering an extended—and rare—critical investigation of how labs have proliferated throughout culture.

Organized by interpretive categories such as space, infrastructure, and imaginaries, The Lab Book uses both historical and contemporary examples to show how laboratories have become fundamentally connected to changes in the contemporary university. Its wide reach includes institutions like the MIT Media Lab, the Tuskegee Institute’s Jesup Wagon, ACTLab, and the Media Archaeological Fundus. The authors cover topics such as the evolution and delineation of lab-based communities, how labs’ tools and technologies contribute to defining their space, and a glossary of key hybrid lab techniques.”

Publisher University of Minnesota Press, March 2022
ISBN 9781517902179, 1517902177
x+333 pages

Project website
Publisher
WorldCat

HTML (Manifold)

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)

Access-Space.org: Grow Your Own Media Lab (2008)

A comic book by Sheffield’s Access Space.

Text by James Wallbank
Pictures by Michael Tesh
Publisher Access Space, Sheffield, UK, June 2008
Creative Commons BY-SA 2.0 UK License
ISBN 9780955009136
116 pages

Review: Rob Myers (Furtherfield)

Publisher

PDF (updated on 2017-9-25)