When I was a girl I thought I would grow up to be a scientist. I spent hours at my workbench, patiently cutting cross-sections with a razor blade and drawing liquids into a pipette before placing my specimens on the glass slides and gently dropping the cover slips over them. I painstakingly labelled each one, and dutifully took notes on what I saw through my microscope. There was a comforting carefulness to the work, and the very idea that cells existed was magical to me. I even went through a phase of collecting samples from my own body, marveling at the reality that I was an assemblage of so many different forms of life. I loved what I was doing, and felt as though my love was rewarded with the knowledge I gained.

As a child, the only female scientist I had ever heard of was Marie Curie. My teachers always held her up as a hero, but in retrospect, never as a person. The only thing I knew at the time was that she was brilliant and her work eventually killed her–which I assumed had been worth it because of how beautiful it all was. (For some reason, I thought that was the heroic bit.)

“Certain bodies . . . become luminous when heated. Their luminosity disappears after some time, but the capacity of becoming luminous afresh through heat is restored to them by the action of a spark, and also by the action of radium.

The compounds of radium are spontaneously luminous. The chloride and bromide, freshly prepared and free from water, emit a light which resembles that of a glow-worm. This light diminishes rapidly in moist air . . . but . . . never completely disappears.

These gleamings, which seemed suspended in darkness, stirred us with new emotion and enchantment . . . The glowing tubes looked like faint fairy lights.”

~ Marie Curie, as cited in Radioactive

But of course it was not so simple, and people do not live on research alone. Marya Sklodowska changed her name just so she could go to the Sorbonne and study physics. She became the first female doctorate in France and despite being the first woman to be awarded the Nobel Prize (with her husband Pierre), she was too ill to travel to Stockholm for the ceremony because she had recently suffered a miscarriage. Although she eventually had two daughters, she also noted that reconciling family life with a scientific career was not easy. Marie suffered horrible depression, and even though she was named the first woman professor in the Sorbonne’s 650 year history, it took the death of her husband to achieve that status. Several years later, she fell in love again and became the first person–man or woman–to win a second Nobel Prize. However, her lover and fellow scientist Paul Langevin was married, and his wife made their affair public after he refused to give her money and custody of the children. Marie suffered terribly as a result. At a time when it was not uncommon for her male colleagues to openly have mistresses, she was insulted and ridiculed by the press for her actions.

Fellow scientists wrote to the Swedish Academy, and directly to Marie, suggesting that her behaviour would taint the ceremonies, if not the award itself, and asking her not to accept it in person. To her credit, Marie responded that she would attend the Nobel ceremony because she saw “no connection between [her] scientific work and the facts of private life” and she successfully collected her award in 1911. However, the public scandal effectively ended her romance with Langevin and she eventually suffered a nervous breakdown that led her to leave Paris for some time. Marie returned to France to help in the war effort, bringing X-ray units directly to the battlefields for the first time. Without Pierre or Paul at her side, Marie started working with her daughter Irène, and she gained positive public attention for their work. (In 1935, Irène, with her husband Frédéric Joliot, became the second woman to win the Nobel Prize; she later died of leukemia, also brought on by her research.) But the new found fame proved difficult, and Marie became more and more withdrawn. By the early 1930s, it was clear that she was ill with radiation sickness and only getting worse. She kept track of doctors’ visits and her bodily deterioration like any other experiment, and her last months were spent feeling her way around the lab, as cataracts robbed her of her sight. On 4 July, 1934 Marie’s final words began, “I am absent… I can no longer express myself… ”

Power (excerpt)

Today I was reading about Marie Curie:
she must have known she suffered from radiation sickness
her body bombarded for years by the element
she had purified
It seems she denied to the end
the source of the cataracts on her eyes
the cracked and suppurating skin of her finger-ends
till she could no longer hold a test tube or pencil

She died a famous woman denying
her wounds
denying
her wounds came from the same source as her power.

~ Adrienne Rich, 1974

I understand why Marie Curie is held up as a romantic intellectual hero, and I think it’s a mistake.

Because when I think of her as a person, I know we could have been friends.

And maybe, just maybe, I would have become a life scientist.

I’ve long admired Adrienne Rich and was really pleased to learn that there will be a reading of her work at MEOW next Wednesday the 11th at 7:30pm. I’ll be going to listen, but if I believed I could do it justice I would read Planetarium. The whole poem is glorious (go read it!) but its layout doesn’t replicate here well so I’ll only post the ending:

I have been standing all my life in the
direct path of a battery of signals
the most accurately transmitted most
untranslatable language in the universe
I am a galactic cloud so deep so invo-
luted that a light wave could take 15
years to travel through me And has
taken I am an instrument in the shape
of a woman trying to translate pulsations
into images for the relief of the body
and the reconstruction of the mind.

(from The Fact of a Doorframe: Poems 1950-2001)

Sigh.

In the comments to my last post on writing as making, Peter Richardson wrote something that’s sticking with me:

“I suspect makers (and coders in particular, myself included) tend to view non-code text as an unstable, somewhat shifty medium.”

And Matt Jones later gave a similar reply to my original question about why writing isn’t Making:

Unstable. Shifty. Unreliable.

Yes please!

I love that people and our words are all those things. As I replied to Peter, and would say to Matt, I prefer the sense of potential that comes from this kind of material and making.

It’s less prescriptive. Less efficient. Less technological. Less machinic.

More space to become something, someone else.

***

“Here all is in life and motion; here we behold the true Poet or Maker.”

- J. Warton, Essays on Pope (1782)

Starting in the 1400s, and for four hundred-odd years, the title of “maker” (and especially the Scottish “makar”) was given to those we later called “poet.” This sense of making comes from “poiesis” or “poesis” (from the ancient Greek ποίησις creation, production, poetry, a poem; ποιεῖν to make, create, produce). We still use this sense of poetics whenever we speak of people who imaginatively synthesise existing things in order to create other, new things. Behold the Poet Hacker!

Along these lines, my friend Virginia pointed me to Robert Creeley’s essay, “From the Language Poets,” which begins:

“Whatever poetry may prove to be at last, the very word (from the Greek poiein , ‘to make’) determines a made thing, a construct, a literal system of words. We are, of course, far more likely to think of a poem as a pleasing sentiment, a lyric impulse, an expression of feeling that can engage the reader or listener in some intensive manner. But, whatever our disposition, it is well to remember that there is a diversity of ‘poetries’ in our world.”

And my friend Courtney currently has me reading Patrick Ness’ very good YA novel, The Knife of Never Letting Go, which has this lovely passage:

“Cuz all I know about Viola is what she says. The only truth I got is what comes outta her mouth and so for a second back there, when she said she was Hildy and I was Ben and we were from Farbranch and she spoke just like Wilf (even tho he ain’t from Farbranch) it was like all those things became true, just for an instant the world changed, just for a second it became made of Viola’s voice and it wasn’t describing a thing, it was making a thing, it was making us different just by saying it.” (emphasis in original)

Language doesn’t just make things–it assembles, cobbles together, entire worlds and all the relations within.

***

I don’t mean to romanticise words and writing. And I don’t mean to suggest they are divorced from technology or machines or even code.

By identifying what is included in our definitions of making or Making–and asking what is excluded–we might, as Ben Highmore writes in the introduction to The Everyday Life Reader, be able to “find new commonalities and breathe new life into old differences.”

And I’m pretty sure there’s lots more to be thought and said about what gets made, how, when and where it gets made, and by whom it gets made.

I know designers who would never agree that writing or speaking is as valuable as making things. Thinking about how much that bothered me, this afternoon I posed the following question on Twitter:

I got some great responses – thanks everyone! – and I’d like to round up some of them here. (The time stamps will be out of order because I didn’t put this post together in one sitting – sorry.)

Anthropunk (Sally Applin) provided an academic take:

Many were along the lines of Kio‘s and Erin‘s comments:

Giovanni and Roberto brought up the matter of labour:

Tom took up the matter of code as dialogue,  à la “how to do things with words“:

And last, but certainly not least, Barry took up my question with more rigour and dedication than I think I was prepared to deal with this late on a Sunday! For example, he suggested that writing has more in common with art than design, because design is a problem-solving activity and writers don’t use design methodologies. And, if I understood correctly, he took issue with me lumping code in with making because the Maker movement deals in hardware hacking, distinguishable from general DIY. For Barry, again if I understood him, the desire (i.e. my attempt) to mush all these things together only results in making all DIY equal and flattening it all into some kind of generic creative practice.

My first thought (and repeated concern) was that we were talking about separate, and maybe even incompatible, things. I mean, the main reason I asked my question in the first place was because I don’t think that Maker culture should only celebrate the creation of physical objects. There is something elitist and exclusionary about that that doesn’t sit well with me.

Alternatively, Sally Applin’s recent talk at Maker Faire focusses on making knowledge and making culture as part of, along with, the things that makers make–this is the basic premise of all social and cultural studies of science and technology (my own academic field)–and how that necessarily includes words. But my concerns go beyond this too, I think.

I’m interested in words as materials for making, and in the written word as an artefact or thing that has been made. I’m also interested in why words (or the written word as distinguished from books) are generally not considered part of “Maker culture.”

Barry’s point was that Maker culture is specifically concerned with hardware, and since I think this definition is generally accepted then words-as-materials have no place there. If Making is about problem-solving, then creative writing has no place there either.

But maybe Glen is getting closer to what the most important difference is; the goals of Making rely on language but not as an expressive force or aesthetic move:

So, does this mean that if the primary goal of (creative) writing is expression, the only way it can be incorporated into Maker culture is to use words explicitly for problem-solving, or the production of (cultural) solutions? How, exactly, does that differ from aesthetic goals–and especially if we do not distinguish between aesthetics and ethics?

…

I’m afraid I’m too tired now to continue but I’d really love to hear what others think!

What have I missed? Did I get anything right? What’s next?

…

P.S. My favourite response to my question came from Peter. (Thanks @meetar and @kissane!) To be honest, I’m not sure how it relates to my question (something about design and repetition and stories and iteration and…) but I love this game review so much I’m going to repost the entire thing and keep thinking about it for days and days and days!

Beautiful.

I’ve been writing fiction.

I don’t think I’m very good at it and I want to get better.

There are loads of books and websites and quotes about writing and story-telling, but right now I’m allowing myself to be guided by one piece of advice from Ernest Hemingway:

“Good writing is true writing.” (By-Line: Ernest Hemingway, p. 215)

“All you have to do is write one true sentence. Write the truest sentence you know.” (A Moveable Feast, p. 22)

I’m pretty sure he didn’t mean “true” in the sense of being completely factual or correct, as much as he meant it in the sense of being honest and faithful enough to actual experience, actions, knowledge and emotions that a reader could not help but be moved. And that kind of “true” is really hard–especially when you’re making things up.

“I was trying to write then and I found the greatest difficulty, aside from knowing truly what you really felt, rather than what you were supposed to feel, and had been taught to feel, was to put down what really happened in action; what the actual things were which produced the emotion that you experienced.” (Death in the Afternoon, p. 2)

Death in the Afternoon is non-fiction, but Hemingway turned a lot of what he actually experienced into fiction, and this resonates with my interest in ethnographic fiction. But, again, doing this is hard.

When asked how a writer can train, Hemingway responded:

“Watch what happens today. If we get into a fish see exactly what it is that everyone does. If you get a kick out of it while he is jumping remember back until you see exactly what the action was that gave you the emotion. Whether it was the rising of the line from the water and the way it tightened like a fiddle string until drops started from it, or the way he smashed into the water when he jumped. Remember what the noises were and what was said. Find what gave you the emotion; what the action was that gave you the excitement. Then write it down making it clear so the reader will see it too and have the same feeling that you have.” (By-Line: Ernest Hemingway, p. 219-220)

I like the value he places on observation and description; these are the same two things upon which all good social and cultural research is built. But mostly I like his explicit recognition that the point of writing is to affect a reader.

The lesson I take here is that this doesn’t happen by telling the reader what the writer thinks. And it doesn’t happen by telling the reader what to think, either. A good story gives a reader something else to think about.

“Some days it went so well that you could make the country so that you could walk into it through the timber to come out into the clearing and work up onto the high ground and see the hills beyond the arm of the lake.” (A Moveable Feast, p. 91)

“What I’ve been doing is trying to do country so you don’t remember the words after you read it but actually have the Country.” (to Edward O’Brien, 1924, Selected Letters, p. 123)

“[Y]ou are beginning to get what you are trying for which is to make the story so real beyond any reality that it will become a part of the reader’s experience and part of his memory. There must be things he did not notice when he read the story or the novel which without his knowing it, enter into his memory and experience so that they are a part of his life.” (unpublished manuscript from the Kennedy Library collection, Roll 19, T 178)

“That is what we are supposed to do when we are at our best–make it all up–but make it up so truly that later it will happen that way.” (to F. Scott Fitzgerald, 1934, Selected Letters, p.407)

There’s plenty going on in these quotes, but I’m most struck by the possibility that a story’s capacity to affect a reader depends on how successfully a writer can bring people, places and things to life. And what I take from Hemingway here is that this requires a writer to blur the line between fact and fiction, to write truly without writing the Truth.

In any case, I want my writing to inhabit, and evoke, this space–and moving in this direction is, I think, the key to merging researcher and writer to create good ethnographic fiction.

Now I know there’s a lot more I need to think about, and a lot more that could be said, but I want to end with a speculative fiction quote (via Jeffrey Callen) that suggests one way we can go about making up true stories:

“He was engaged in a serious search for the meaning of his own existence…. To do that, Cinnamon had to fill in those blank spots in the past that he could not reach with his own hands. By using those hands to make a story, he was trying to supply the missing links. From the stories, he had heard repeatedly from his mother, he derived further stories in an attempt to re-create the enigmatic character of his grandfather in a new setting. He inherited from his mother’s stories the fundamental style he used, unaltered, in his own stories: namely, the assumption that fact may not be truth, and truth may not be factual. The question of which parts of a story were factual and which parts were not was probably not a very important one for Cinnamon. The important question for Cinnamon was not what his grandfather did but what his grandfather might have done. He learned the answer to this question as soon as he succeeded in telling the story.” (Haruki Murakami, The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle, p. 525)

Oddly enough, I think Hemingway would have approved.

This is my third year teaching in the southern hemisphere and it still feels strange to be kicking off the academic year in March! I teach one third-year course this trimester, called Cultures of Design–but if I could rename it, I’d call it Design and Everyday Life. Here are the highlights:

Course description
Original and world-changing design was long considered the product of solitary geniuses, masters and heroes, but recent research has argued that cultural innovation is often the result of everyday actions by ordinary people. This course critically and creatively examines the dynamic and collaborative networks that characterise professional and amateur design today, and prepares students to face the challenges and opportunities that lie ahead.

Course aims
Building on multi-disciplinary approaches explored in CCDN 231 and CCDN 271, this course aims to situate creativity, design and innovation within everyday lived experience. With a focus on critical practice and practical criticism, students will be introduced to social and cultural theories of everyday life and ethnographic methods that can help them understand and explain design in a variety of ordinary cultural contexts. Lectures will introduce students to important concepts in design and cultural studies, and a variety of films, readings, discussions and activities will support further exploration and engagement. Ultimately, students will learn to apply this knowledge through the research and presentation of three artefact ethnographies that critically and creatively evaluate material, visual and discursive culture.

Course content
The course comprises eight interconnected topics of study:

• practices of everyday life;
• object culture;
• aesthetics and ethics;
• creativity and innovation;
• professionals and amateurs;
• technology and media;
• speculative design; and
• possible futures for co-creation.

Each topic will introduce theoretical concepts and related methodological approaches to understanding, doing and explaining design in cultural context. Assignments will require the application of this knowledge to the critical and creative assessment of design in everyday life, and design as everyday life.

Course assignments
To complete this course, students are required to submit and present three original artefact ethnographies, as well as one revised artefact ethnography.

Ethnography involves the systematic exploration, examination and presentation of social and cultural phenomena that make up the lives of people across space and time. Artefacts—objects designed and created by people—have always been central to the expression and experience of everyday life, and can be used as platforms for social and cultural commentary. Artefact ethnographies combine analytical and creative work to explain the social and cultural dimensions of designed objects in everyday life.

Assignment 1: Something Past
For this assignment, each student will select an individual artefact, a class of artefacts, or a single collection of artefacts in order to critically and creatively engage PAST social and cultural phenomena, and how they relate to people, places, objects and/or ideas that exist now or may exist in the future.

Assignment 2: Something Present
For this assignment, each student will select an individual artefact, a class of artefacts, or a single collection of artefacts in order to critically and creatively engage PRESENT social and cultural phenomena, and how they relate to people, places, objects and/or ideas that existed in the past or may exist in the future.

Assignment 3: Something Future
For this assignment, each student will imagine an individual artefact, a class of artefacts, or a single collection of artefacts in order to critically and creatively engage FUTURE social and cultural phenomena, and how they relate to people, places, objects and/or ideas that existed in the past or exist in the present.

Assignment 4: Revised Artefact Ethnography
For this assignment, each student is required to revise and resubmit their favourite artefact ethnography. With student permission, the Course Coordinator and tutors will select up to five artefact ethnographies for submission to the Material World blog.

The submission format is open, but each artefact ethnography must include a 1000-1250 word written component based on a relevant and appropriate combination of academic literature review, observation, creative writing, photography, drawing, video-making, web design, audio recording and/or object creation.

To get started, students are required to complete the following task (adapted from The Exercise Book) for the first tutorial:

1) Go for a walk with a notebook and pay close attention to what’s going on around you.

2) Compose one written page with three sections. Start the first section with “I see…”, the second section with “I remember…” and the third section with “I imagine…”.

Image credits: “Remade” household objects by Jennifer Collier

I took some time off work and had grand plans for catching up on my academic reading and writing, but quickly realised I was on holiday and instead completely immersed myself in highly dramatic and emotive pop culture.

First, I’ve been reading a bunch of young adult speculative fiction. I started with Susanne Collins’ epic Hunger Games trilogy (guess where you’ll find me on 23 March ;)), then I blazed through two more wonderful books: Neal Shusterman’s Unwind and Nancy Farmer’s The House of the Scorpion, and now I’m working my way into Patrick Ness’ Chaos Walking trilogy. Despite covering a wide range of content and character types, all these books are examples of incredibly compelling story-telling. (Unwind had one of the most disturbing chapters I’ve ever read.) I’ve also watched a wonderfully cheesy urban fantasy TV series called Lost Girl, which is full of mythical creatures and hott sex, mystery and adventure, good fights and bad jokes, and I’ve started re-watching Joss Whedon’s classic show, Firefly, because I bought a blu-ray copy of Serenity. Like the books above, these stories aren’t focussed on scientific plausibility, but they sure are emotionally resonant.

Second, I’ve become completely obsessed with contemporary country/bluegrass which continues to provide deeply emotional soundtracks for–and poignant stories of–everyday life. For example, I really enjoy Abigail Washburn and the Sparrow Quartet, whose Chinese folk-music inflected bluegrass could serve as a soundtrack for Firefly. Listen to the beautifully hectic “Tai Yang Chu Lai Xi Yang Yang” for a taste, or “City of Refuge” for Washburn’s most recent work. I also totally dig Gob Iron’s Death Songs for the Living, which brings an almost unbearable sadness to old classics like “Wayside Tavern” and “Hard Times,” and is worth buying just for their devastating cover of “The Little Girl and The Dreadful Snake.” And if you like weird and dark music as much as I do then you also can’t go wrong with Neko Case‘s “Furnace Room Lullaby.” Then there’s the stunning Goat Rodeo Sessions with Yo Yo Ma, Stuart Duncan, Edgar Meyer and Chris Thile–check out this half-hour gig they played at Google. Or if you prefer more traditional, and also incredibly moving, Appalachian bluegrass, I’ve fallen in love with Gillian Welch and David Rawlings‘ music, including “Caleb Meyer,” “Orphan Girl,” “The Devil had a Hold of Me,” “Tear My Stillhouse Down” and “Miner’s Refrain.”

***

Cultural and aesthetic taste is a funny thing: Bourdieu taught us that it is strategic and competitive; we use it to claim or demonstrate our superiority over others.

My own biases in this regard become evident when I say that few things perplex me more than when people completely dismiss popular culture. For example, each time I hear someone say to me that they have no interest in pop culture or that they have nothing in common with people who like it, I feel uncomfortable and maybe, if I detected any pride or smugness in their statement, even offended.

I wonder: What, exactly, do they think pop culture is? Who, exactly, do they think likes it and why?

I also wonder: If they dislike pop culture, what do they think of me? If they want to be distanced from it, how can we ever come together?

***

I appreciate everyday life.

It’s where I feel the warmth of the sun on my bare skin or the softness of my cat’s fur. Where I hear the voices of the people I love or the sounds a cello makes. Where I smell old books or the grass after a heavy rain. Where I see the infinite shapes that snowflakes take or the curious faces of strangers. Where I taste the sweetness of a ripe mango or the difference between rock, ceramic and bone.

Everyday life has provided the setting for my greatest joys and deepest sorrows, my most rewarding accomplishments and most crushing losses–and all the things that happened in between.

It is everything I have ever been and will ever be.

Everyday life holds my stories. All our stories.

***

The story-telling capacities of popular culture can be incredibly powerful social binders if they capture some of these aspects of everyday life.

Mass culture doesn’t need to be associated with the lowest common denominator, but it can represent some of the broadest common denominators.

Shared culture doesn’t need to mean agreed-upon culture.

We don’t need to see ourselves in pop culture as much as we need to situate ourselves through pop culture.

***

Cat breading

“Forget planking. All the cool kids are putting their cats in bread and taking pictures of them looking like little yeasty lions.” – Gawker

“This is why the Internet exists. The long march of human progress has finally ended; we have reached our destination. Rest and rejoice in our accomplishments.” – Neatorama

“The concept is so wonderful it seems shocking that no one thought of cat breading before and many are questioning how they failed to spot the potential of placing their pets head into a slice of bread.” – TNT Magazine

“Some observers believe placing bread around animals is cruel…So far, no cat breaders are replying to allegations of animal cruelty.” – Digital Journal

“The whole thing seemed like an elaborate inside joke, spoofing the nature of short-lived crazes which are more likely to be talked about than actually participated in.” – The Daily Mail