Critical making
"[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."
[6] Open design develops a critical perspective on the current institutions, practices, and norms of society, reconnecting materiality and morality.
As hybrid practitioners, students develop fluency in readily collaging and incorporating a variety of physical materials and protocols into their practice.
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".
[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.
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.
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.
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.
Instead, and reflecting the broader cultural turn in retail studies, their explanation for engagement in DIY is firmly grounded in human agency" (Williams, 273).
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).
