Project 4: Tools

Due: March 21, 2024 (link to submission form)

Deliverable

We use tools to build, test, measure, translate, communicate – to realize ideas. For this project, design and prototype your own hybrid craft and technology tool based on concepts you have learned in class so far. It can be functional or speculative, but it should be something you would love to have with you in your physical or conceptual toolbox. As you brainstorm, consider what the values it represents and the audience it prioritizes. Reflect on the benefits it offers and harms it might reproduce.

Document your project on a personal blog, in a Google doc, or another easily readable format that you can submit via the Google form. It must include the elements below:

  • a prototype of your tool. This can be a paper sketch, diagram, 3D model, clay model, pipe cleaner sculpture, etc – anything goes and you should feel free to use an approach that you feel most comfortable with.
  • an explanation of why you want it. How would it change your work?
  • a description of how it might work. This can be written, a visual diagram, and/or a video explanation.

I encourage you to have fun with this!! Submit your documentation to this Google Form before class on 3/21/24.

Context

One underlying question of our course asks in what ways can “different physical materials, tools, and processes can lead to different ways of thinking about, understanding, and constructing electronics”?1

Tools We Want by Ebru Kurbak, Hannah Perner-Wilson, Irene Posch, Mika Satomi

“A tool prepares for other things to happen. The particular function it can carry out defines the making space, and ultimately defines what occupation and pursuits can be executed (successfully). The real and perceived affordances of a tool specify the range of possible activities [68]. ….As means of production, tools determine, control and structure the possibilities, shaping the actions that can be performed in any area of making [2].”2

eTextile Multimeter by Irene Posch

“The form, function and cultural embedding of tools cannot be considered neutral because they potentially include or exclude specific experiences, insights and goals, whether explicitly or implicitly [62]. This makes them explicitly interesting for critical intervention.”3

Resources

  • Tools: Extending Our Reach, Cooper Hewitt exhibition
  • As We May Think by Vannevar Bush
  • Tools We Want
  • The Soul of A New Machine by Tracy Kidder
  • What Can a Body Do? How We Meet the Built World by Sarah Hendren
  • Race After Technology: Abolitionist Tools for the New Jim Code by Ruha Benjamin
  • All the footnotes below
  1. Buechley, L. and Perner-Wilson, H. 2012. Crafting technologies: Reimagining the processes, materials, and cultures of electronics. ACM Trans. Comput.-Hum. Interact. 19, 3, Article 21 (October 2012), 21 pages.DOI = 10.1145/2362364.2362369 http://doi.acm.org/10.1145/2362364.2362369 ↩︎
  2. Irene Posch and Geraldine Fitzpatrick. 2021. The Matter of Tools: Designing, Using and Reflecting on New Tools for Emerging eTextile Craft Practices. ACM Trans. Comput.-Hum. Interact. 28, 1, Article 4 (January 2021), 38 pages.https://doi.org/10.1145/3426776 ↩︎
  3. Irene Posch and Geraldine Fitzpatrick. 2021. The Matter of Tools: Designing, Using and Reflecting on New Tools for Emerging eTextile Craft Practices. ACM Trans. Comput.-Hum. Interact. 28, 1, Article 4 (January 2021), 38 pages.https://doi.org/10.1145/3426776 ↩︎