The document discusses the histories, cultures, and practices associated with DIY design and maker culture. It examines who is represented and celebrated in narratives around open design and DIY movements. It also analyzes tensions between open and closed approaches to design, such as the tradeoffs of ease of use versus user control when systems are closed versus open.

1. DIY DESIGN
Cindy Kohtala
postdoctoral researcher
cindy.kohtala@aalto.fi
DESIGN AND CULTURE | 26 MARCH 2018
course for Master’s design students, Aalto University
Trashlab, 2014
photo Cindy Kohtala

2. What is DIY maker culture?
Protospace, Utrecht, Nov 2014
photo Cindy Kohtala
What is Open Design?
Who does it? What do they do? Why?
What histories do they claim?

3. FabLab Amsterdam, Nov 2014
photo Cindy Kohtala
DIY DESIGN
HAGIOGRAPHY AND
WILFUL HISTORICAL
IGNORANCE

4. Acknowledgements: thanks
to Shannon for the subtitle!

5. Koppelting, FabLab Amersfoort, Aug 2016
photo Cindy Kohtala
Who are the ‘saints’?
Who and what is proselytized?
What history, if any, is acknowledged?
What is invisible?

6. Vigyan Ashram FabLab, Pabal, Maharashtra, Feb 2017
photo Cindy Kohtala

7. 2006 https://uncommonknowledgeoxford.wordpress.com/2016/07/04/podcast-7-the-whole-earth-catalog-ecology-and-the-early-internet/
domes and Bucky, Whole Earth Catalog,
back-to-the-landers, Digital Utopianism...
acknowledged, referenced antecedent for whom?

8. www.sharingame.org/open-source-ecology-2/?lang=en

9. http://greengalloway.blogspot.fi/2013/06/past-visions-of-future.html
www.radicaltechnology.org
Radical Technology magazine
and Clifford Harper illustrations
acknowledged, referenced antecedent for whom?

10. 2014 2010

11. https://pattisgonetodinner.wordpress.com
2005
punk sensibilities and aesthetics, zines
acknowledged, referenced antecedent for whom?

12. https://timklapdor.wordpress.com/tag/social-media/
2004
and who aligns with hacker culture?

13. http://coolerinsights.com/2015/09/the-maker-movement-manifesto-entrepreneurship/
2013
in comparison to this facet of DIY maker culture?

14. http://coolerinsights.com/2015/09/the-maker-movement-manifesto-entrepreneurship/
2013
2014
and again in comparison to this
perspective on DIY maker culture?

15. Ecodesign FabLab, Montreuil, Dec 2014
photo Cindy Kohtala
what activities does the fablab host?
what traditions are invoked?

16. FAB12 Shenzhen, Aug 2016
photo Cindy Kohtala
what traditions are invoked?
what practices are
decolonized, decolonizing?

17. FAB12 Shenzhen, Aug 2016
photo Cindy Kohtala
what do we see when past
meets present meets future?

18. FabLab Amsterdam, Nov 2014
photo Cindy Kohtala
MIT-Fablab Norway, Lyngen, Sept 2012
photo Cindy Kohtala
what do we see when past
meets present meets future?
how is the local history
represented in the fablab?

19. Genspace, Brooklyn, July 2015
photo Cindy Kohtala
what happens when new practices from the natural sciences enter in?
do newbies to biohacking, attracted by the hype, acknowledge
the existing histories and codes of conduct already developed
by international movements of bio-artists and -hackers?

20. https://spiremaths.co.uk/al2/
who aligns with the saints and principles of computer science?
who keeps women invisible in their represented histories?

21. FAB13, Santiago de Chile, Aug 2017
photo Cindy Kohtala
who are the represented antecedents of the FabLab network?

22. 20182005

23. 20122012
what are the represented histories in the
imaginary of the New Industrial Revolution?

24. www.newsweek.com/garage-band-68117
www.digibarn.com/collections/newsletters/homebrew/newsletters.html
who claims the Homebrew Computer Club
as their forerunner, and what does this say
about money, power, inclusion, individualism,
techno-utopias and definitions of success?

25. FAB12 Shenzhen, Aug 2016
photo Cindy Kohtala
do groups only refer to their own histories
or do they seek to include Others?

26. http://news.mit.edu/2016/forbidden-research-media-lab-0725
when and why do they
venture into dangerous
territory, into ‘disobedience’?

27. Screenshot from Bunnie Huang’s Twitter feed
(the presenter of this
slideshow ranks these two as
among her saints to be
worshipped and adored...) J

28. www.disobedientelectronics.com

29. www.makery.info/en/2017/01/30/sexy-cyborg-la-communaute-maker-est-reservee-aux-privilegies-blancs/
hero for some? or
a thorn in the side?
or an enigma to be
continuously culturally
misrepresented?

30. www.makery.info/en/2017/01/30/sexy-cyborg-la-communaute-maker-est-reservee-aux-privilegies-blancs/

31. makezine.com
who has the power to
decide who is a Maker?
(and can we decolonize that
term and take it back please!)

32. makezine.com
http://ctheory.net/articles.aspx?id=757
I see the maker movement
as taking the controversy
and politics out of hacking.
It's not quite Disney-fying it, but
making experimental electronics
or hacking practices family friendly
has been, in some ways, key to its
adoption and spreading (...).
But in the process it loses a lot
of that punk aesthetic, hacker
attitude, and rawness that I
think is so rich and interesting.
-Garnet Hertz

33. WÄRKfest, Helsinki, Oct 2012
photo Cindy Kohtala
Why is all this important?
Who is included?
What social and economic opportunities does all this bring?
What environmental consequences are acknowledged?

34. https://iq.intel.com/report-shows-maker-movement-natural-entry-girls-women-technology/

35. Koppelting, FabLab Amersfoort, Aug 2016
photo Cindy Kohtala
‘...technical cultures always come from somewhere...’
'...construing DIY to be the universalist antidote to
hierarchical engineering culture was ironically reproducing
some of the very problems the activists sought to evade’
Dunbar-Hester, C. (2014). Radical Inclusion? Locating Accountability in Technical
DIY. In M. Ratto & M. Boler (Eds.), DIY Citizenship: Critical Making and Social
Media (pp. 75–88). Cambridge, MA: The MIT Press.x

36. Factory 2.0
DIY 2.0
Web 2.0
commons-
based
peer
production
material
digital
digital
manufacturing
distributed,
personal
distributed,
personalized
prosumption
distributed
hardware
distributed
software
Kohtala, C. (2015). Addressing sustainability in research on distributed production: an integrated literature review.
Journal of Cleaner Production, 106, 654–668.

37. Smith, Adrian. 2005. “The Alternative Technology Movement: An Analysis of Its Framing and Negotiation of
Technology Development.” Human Ecology Review 12 (2): 106–19.
The Alternative Technology Movement
who emphasizes this today?

38. FabLab Amsterdam, Dec 2014
photo Cindy Kohtala
MAKERS
(and SEWERS)

39. WÄRKfest, Helsinki, Oct 2012
photo Cindy Kohtala
HACKERS

40. Trashlab, Helsinki, Sept 2016
photo Cindy Kohtala
FIXERS

41. GROWERS
Open Source Circular Economy Days Helsinki, Kääntöpöytä, June 2016
photo Cindy Kohtala

42. ARTISANS
Espoo Mini Maker Faire, Oct 2015
photo Cindy Kohtala

43. DIY Maker
Culture
collaborative
provocative
empowering
material-explorativesustainable
entrepreneurial
open
inventive
hybrid craft
DIY 2.0
Fab Labs
repair cafés
Transition Labs
Green Labs
hacktivism
citizen science
citizen sensors hackerspaces
open innovation
bio-hacking
open design
DIWO
open
hardware

44. Pixelache 2011, Suomenlinna
photo Cindy Kohtala
3D printing political imaginaries:
1. Maker-as-entrepreneur in
world of capitalist opportunity
2. Economic revival for a nation
3. Commons-based
post-capitalist utopia
Jesse Adams Stein (2017) The Political Imaginaries of 3D Printing: Prompting
Mainstream Awareness of Design and Making, Design and Culture, 9:1, 3-27

45. and what about design?
Helsinki Hacklab, May 2015
photo Cindy Kohtala

46. Helsinki Hacklab, May 2015
photo Cindy Kohtala
what happens as tools
and practices routinize
as infrastructure?
what design choices freeze?

47. www.makerbot.com
what do we gain by closing the
source code? by black-boxing?
what do we lose?

48. ease of use
amount
of control
based on a diagram by Risto Sarvas
Core Design Trade-off

49. http://brokelyn.com/makerbot-sells-out-as-seen-from-the-inside/

50. (...) MakerBot pivoted towards closing its source code and
keeping its intellectual property cards closer to its chest
(...). Part of closing our source was scrapping the open-
source platform we had previously iterated on every
annual product development cycle. ...
http://brokelyn.com/makerbot-sells-out-as-seen-from-the-inside/

51. ... Instead of tweaking and improving on a design honed
over the course of half a decade, we (...) redesigned our
own proprietary hardware, electronics and software from
the ground up over the course of a single year.
http://brokelyn.com/makerbot-sells-out-as-seen-from-the-inside/

52. We also decided, while we were at it, to jam-pack our 3D
printers with more features than they’d ever had before—
cameras, wifi, apps, “smart” everything. Rather than
design, test, and build, it was design, design, design some
more, and then quick — build!
http://brokelyn.com/makerbot-sells-out-as-seen-from-the-inside/

53. In the past, with our open-source platform, our customer
base had been limited to a smaller group of capable
hobbyists who provided tech-savvy feedback and
suggestions for improvement.
http://brokelyn.com/makerbot-sells-out-as-seen-from-the-inside/

54. By the time this newest (and under-tested [...]) product had
shipped, most people buying our product were largely
incapable non-hobbyists with no useful feedback, only
unrealistic expectations, and had little idea of how to fix
things under the hood when they (inevitably) broke due to
flashy new features malfunctioning (...)
http://brokelyn.com/makerbot-sells-out-as-seen-from-the-inside/

55. (...) our repair team couldn’t fix broken printers fast
enough, our support department was drowned in an
onslaught of complaints, (...) and our parent company's
stock price started to decline.
http://brokelyn.com/makerbot-sells-out-as-seen-from-the-inside/

56. Simply to stamp something as open-source
is not at all sufficient for qualifying it
http://ctheory.net/articles.aspx?id=757
BUDA:lab, Kortrijk, Dec 2014
photo Cindy Kohtala
http://ctheory.net/articles.aspx?id=757
as a critical project or a project that has some
kind of progressive or political sensibility.
Alexander R. Galloway

57. Tooze, J. et al., 2014. Open Design: Contributions, Solutions,
Processes and Projects. The Design Journal, 17(4), pp.538–559.
Visualizing open and
non-open aspects of
design processes.

58. 2011
what is Open Design?

59. http://www.wikihouse.cc

60. http://www.wikihouse.cc/about/

61. http://openstructures.net

62. Timelab, Ghent, Nov 2017
photo Cindy Kohtala
like open source software, enhanced by modularity
but complicated by its very materiality
so implementation at the local
level necessitates improvisation

63. Valldaura Self-Sufficiency Lab, Barcelona, July 2014
photo Cindy Kohtala
sensors, software, repositories for global
information and knowledge sharing

64. http://publiclab.org

65. www.aquafold.com/aquadatastudio/subversion_version_control_client.html
version control is crucial –
but the tools and practices
come to us also from FLOSS

66. https://github.com
and can be opaque
and challenging for
non-coders to learn

67. https://github.com
particularly for those wanting to contribute
to product design and not just bits of code

68. Valldaura Self-Sufficiency Lab, Barcelona, Aug 2016
photo Cindy Kohtala
why should we care?

69. Mirata, Murat, Helen Nilsson, and Jaakko Kuisma. 2005. ‘Production Systems Aligned with Distributed Economies: Examples from Energy and Biomass Sectors’. Journal of Cleaner Production 13 (10–11):981–91.
IMAGES: Menichinelli, Massimo. 2016. ‘A Framework for Understanding the Possible Intersections of Design with Open, P2P, Diffuse, Distributed and Decentralized Systems’. Disegno: Journal of Design Culture
1–2:44–71.
Centralized large-scale production –
negative impacts
*increasing throughput of non-renewable
materials and energy
*increasing waste generation
*increasing movement of raw materials and
products over long distances
*distancing production from consumers
(hiding environmental and social costs)
*weakening local actors’ possibilities to have
ownership and control over their economic
environment
*distorting or destroying cultural identities
*limiting the diversity in regional economic
activities

70. Mirata, Murat, Helen Nilsson, and Jaakko Kuisma. 2005. ‘Production Systems Aligned with Distributed Economies: Examples from Energy and Biomass Sectors’. Journal of Cleaner Production 13 (10–11):981–91.
IMAGES: Menichinelli, Massimo. 2016. ‘A Framework for Understanding the Possible Intersections of Design with Open, P2P, Diffuse, Distributed and Decentralized Systems’. Disegno: Journal of Design Culture
1–2:44–71.
*local people’s preferences
*quality of life
*from chains to networks interacting
*renewable resources
*cleaner production
*more knowledge, know-how, transparency
*feelings of control, capability
*diversity of economic activities, flexibility
*resilience to sudden change
Small-scale distributed production -
opportunities

71. medium- and small-scale
industrial or artisanal
or mass customization
geographically
decentralized
fewer intermediaries
large-scale
industrial
hierarchical
chains of many
intermediaries
peer-to-peer
personal fabrication
self-organizing
geographically
diffused
globally connected
small-scale
small-batch or artisanal
or bespoke fabrication
geographically distributed
few or no intermediaries
Kohtala, Cindy. 2015. ‘Addressing sustainability in research on distributed production: an integrated literature review’. Journal of Cleaner Production, 106, 654–668.
IMAGES: Menichinelli, Massimo. 2016. ‘A Framework for Understanding the Possible Intersections of Design with Open, P2P, Diffuse, Distributed and Decentralized Systems’. Disegno: Journal of Design Culture
1–2:44–71.

72. complexity trade-off
completeness trade-off
user control ease of use
mutable standardized
Open Design Trade-offs
value trade-offalternative, open source inclusive, commercial
Kohtala, C. (in review).
Hielscher, S. (2017). Experimenting with Novel Socio-Technical Configurations: The Domestication of Digital Fabrication Technologies in FabLabs. Digital Culture & Society, 3(1), 47–72.
adapted from a diagram in Keinonen, T. (2009). Immediate and Remote Design of Complex Environments. Design Issues, 25(2), 62–74.
quality trade-offcompetences to hand project management