User:Nsilver/Notes making is connecting

Notes Making is Connecting

Introduction

• Making is connecting because you have to connect things together (materials, ideas, or both) to make something new; • Making is connecting because acts of creativity usually involve, at some point, a social dimension and connect us with other people; • And making is connecting because through makingthings and sharing them in the world, we increase our engagement and connection with our social and physical environments.

Craft is a process that takes time, there is rarely a specific endgoal in sight. It is the process of discovery and having ideas through the process of making. It is about shaping the material to convey a message.

Sit back and be told vs. Making and doing.

Web 1.0 is your own space. (read) Web 2.0 is everyone their space like this Wiki. (read/write and thus connecting)

What is creativity?

• Change in a symbolic domain, creating new things.
• Requires an audience and a field of work.
• Creativity is an aspect of human beings even if it isn't recognised by one of the points mentioned above.

The meaning of making I: Philosophies of craft

• Art, craft and design are not to be separated.
• 20th century started to separate the craft from the ideas.
• Creating objects and creating ideas are equal and should not be thought of separately.
• The process of crafting is the process of shaping ideas.
• Working with your hand as a central part of the process of thinking and making
• 'Problem solving and problem finding'
• A pleasure in making even without knowing the end goal
• Mimetic art

John Ruskin and William Morris

• Ruskin was a artist and a social thinker, He was conservative but not religious, he did not appreciate the industrialisation and the self-interest based economy.
• 'THERE IS NO WEALTH BUT LIFE' John Ruskin
• Ruskin on Creativity and Imperfection
• Admiring the 'savagery' and 'rudeness' by embracing them as human imperfections.
• Don't be a slave to perfection.
• Embracing imperfection as human nature.
• The 'tool' and the master.
• Labour division: A capitalist efficient economic machine that suppresses creativity and promotes productivity power but not individual growth or invention.
• Marx and Ruskin both in there on ways claim that repetitive work kills a creative spirit
• Adam smith father of the free market
• William Morris Rides In
• individualistic 'making things'
• Morris believes hope gives worth and continuity to human endeavour
• Morris saw the industrial age as something that could harm the environment and sustainability, he saw that nature and man needed to life in harmony to survive.
• for Morris sharing art and education is core in society
• to quote him in a lecture from 1877: 'I do not want art for a few, any more than education for a few, or freedom for a few.'
• Useful Work overs hope to the maker
• Morris defines wealth similar to Ruskin, but includes the sharing part. A 100 years before the World Wide Web.
• Art separated from the craft but Morris says: 'The best artist was a workman still, the humblest workman was an artist.’
• The web makes it possible the share without the boundaries between craft and art. Online there are niches but there are no forced labels.
• According to Morris the only healthy way of making art is: ‘an art which is to be made by the people and for the people, as a happiness to the maker and the user’
• A diverse community of individualistic voices

The meaning of making II: Craft today

• DIY culture
• The word craft: skill, making, deception.
• Three parts of craft: 'I will describe them as decorative art, the vernacular, and the politics of work.' Paul Greenhalgh
• The arts and craft movement
• the movement was active before the first world war sparked in England moved to America
• 'humankind would be liberated through communal creativity.' Paul Greenhalgh
• Web 2.0 gives way for this liberation
• Paul Greenhalgh says craft was synonymous with power.
• dehumanising industrial gives no room for individualism and high quality craft is too expensive for the average Joe
• so DIY started to rise
• Gustav Stickley, a furniture maker, craftsman, and architect, based in New York, started the first DIY magazine The craftsman an open source magazine which subsequently undermined his own furniture business
• open source today: sharing your resources so others can use it and improve it
• DIY in school and education
• Trusting that kids will learn for themselves
• Stewart Brand The Whole Earth Catalog was highly influential in the DIY culture
• 'Whole earth' inspired on the NASA photograph from 1966
• the photo sparked a consciousness of the earth as a whole
• Brand shows us a the values of self-reliance, do it yourself, and community.
• PUNK DIY
• draws emphasis on content rather than style
• craft as activism Craftivism Betsy Greeg

Question in class about this chapter The writer draws a line from Morris to Ruskin to steward brand to the web the the opposing hippy culture.

What are the ideas of Ruskin? What was he reacting against? He believed in individualistic making things, so that individuals can express themselves.

He was reacting against the assembly line (industrial age), he didn't want individuals to become cogwheels in a giant system.

Believed in self expression in craft.

Was conservative and old fashioned.

'THERE IS NO WEALTH BUT LIFE' John Ruskin

The tool and the master. Dont become the tool be your own master.

What are the ideas of Morris?

He build open Ruskin's ideas but was less conservative. He believed sharing was essential in education and society. A less conservative Ruskin.

Quality was very important for Morris, a little unrealistic because the products becomes more for the elite.

What exactly was the arts and crafts movement and what were the ideas behind them? How do they connect to Ruskin's ideas?

There are made up by the threads of decorative art, the vernacular, and the politics of work. Here craft is power and thus freedom for the individual. A higher quality of life through arts and craft as an individual. Instead of being a cog, which in turn relates to Ruskin's ideas. The movement is based on his ideas.

What is DIY? where does it overlap and differ from arts and crafts?

DO IT YOURSELF, it overlaps on the idea that craft is liberating for the individual. It differs because the dehumanising industrial gives no room for individualism and high quality craft is too expensive for the average Joe. DIY is for everyone and inexpensive the quality of the work also doesn't have to be as high as with arts and craft. Which was for the elite and the people that could afford it.

What is PUNK DIY? How does it differ from the other DIY? It forgets about the selling about the consumerism the big businesses. Craft as activism Craftivism Betsy Greeg. Giving a voice to those who do not care for the mainstream.

What are the similarities between Ruskin and Marx? industrialisation Alienates people from there work.

Ruskin claim that repetitive work kills a creative spirit.

For Marx it is more about ownership, if you create something in the system it is not really yours. This is his problem with the alienation of people from their work.