I was very lucky to be invited to speak Pecha Kucha style with a group of incredible thinkers and doers on the theme – “Technology You Can’t Live Without” – at the Science Museum’s Dana Centre.

Original Photo on Toastwife’s Flickr

The event was facilitated by the phenomenally talented Dr Aleks Krotoski and included:

Bill Thompson, Technology correspondent, BBC
Margaret Robertson, writer and consultant, Lookspring
Tassos Stevens, Director, Coney
Matt Jones, Director, Design, BERG
Charles Arthur, Technology Editor, The Guardian
Jemima Kiss, New Media correspondent, The Guardian
Rex Crowle (aka Rexbox), Director of Visual Playfulness

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I chose to talk about Stickytape and it went something like this:

1.
I recently completed a sociology PhD during which I spent a year living with a community wifi group and also with a group of freakbike makers. During this research I noticed one particular technology central in both groups that was easily found, cheaply purchased and critical to their making practices……

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2.
Stickytape!
I’m going to briefly talk about it in three ways:
- Stickytape as a technology itself
- As a fixer of existing tech
- And finally the role I believe it plays in new tech innovation and development
At the end of this 6 and a bit minutes, you will come to realise that Stickytape is not only a technology you cannot live without but it is also a metaphor for life.

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3.
What do I mean by stickytape?
I use sticky tape as a moniker for anything that is in tape form and adhesive or sticky so, I include Sellotape, Scotch, Gaffa tape, Duct tape or duck tape, Fusion, Packing, Invisible, Double sided, Electrical, Insulation and Masking. This is a small list as apparently more than 900 tape varieties have been developed over the last century.

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4.
Although, the earliest reference to a sticky kind of tape was in 1676 by lute makers, one of the reasons it really took off in the early 20th century had to do, ironically, with the depression. During this period of rationing, stickytape became a key tool to in the ‘make do and mend’ movement as people were anxious to repair rather than replace things. It became an indispensible part of everyday life.

Image: Taken by Thomas Frederick Scales, Nov 1918 – http://timeframes.natlib.govt.nz

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5.
Because it was so familiar and ubiquitous, it was easy for me to overlook the presence of sticky tape in the first few months of my research, I was otherwise distracted by what I considered to be more exotic and strange ethnographic objects. Yet, sticky tape is stubborn, it kept appearing and not just in the home and office but in backyards, sheds, pockets, toolboxes, car boots and backpacks. Even when it was not being used, it was evoked as a way of working.

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6.
Stickytape might at first appear pretty trivial and boring, yet the mundane holds a special place in sociological studies. Many writers attend to the idea that seemingly unremarkable things make explicit the taken-for-granted ways in which we make meaning in everyday life. What this means is that boring things often have a lot to tell about society.

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7.
This image shows stickytape in the role of fixing tech. The thing about all new digital tech is that it falls over. It breaks. Regularly. And it is often held together by some fix or patch. And tape – in its many guises – just makes that more visible. We have all become fixers and menders of a wide range of new technologies. Technology tinkering is an everyday activity.

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8.
And it is not just new digital technologies that break. Here is a lawn mower that was destined for the dump. Its push handle had rusted and it was impossible to use. So, the owner got ‘a bit of tree and a bit of tape’ and some creative thinking to recreate the handle. Stickytape, and this owner’s ingenious and resourceful fix, gave the mower a new life.

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9.
Here sticky tape creates new relationships between objects. It is used to join things together that do not at first appear to fit – a bike frame and bike light in absence of an appropriate bracket. It’s an incredibly simple and effective hack that fixed an immediate problem – that of getting home in the dark. It enabled the person to adapt and respond to changing circumstances.

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10.
Sticky tape can also get people out of fixes. This plane was destroyed by a bear in Alaska after the pilot left food in it over night. The next day the pilot called for spare tyres, some plastic sheeting and three boxes of gaffa. He patched the plane and flew it home. What you can see emerging in these instances is not just a quick fix but something else which leads into my second type of stickytape use; innovation and adaptation.

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11.
Here tape was used on the Apollo 17 mission in 1972. When a fender on the moonbuggy broke, the astronauts fixed it using maps, clamps and duct tape. Not only is it interesting that duct tape was carried on moon missions but that it literally works anywhere.

Image: Science @ NASA – www.science.nasa.gov

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12.
Sticky tape is also fundamental in making new ideas. This is an antenna made by the community wifi group. The gaffa prevents the jagged edges from cutting fingers. It may not have the most technical application here but it plays a critical role in that it gives the user means to experiment, to try new things without feeling the need to finish or polish them. Things, artefacts, ideas are left open to possibility and change.

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13.
Similarly, tape plays a vital role in the world of freakbike makers who rescue abandoned bikes and re-configure them, thereby challenging the nature of the bike and the conventions of cycling. They trial impossible ideas and if they have ‘mechanicals’ along the way they can fix them as they go. A bike maker rarely goes out for a ride without a roll of gaffa.

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14.
This film still shows David Wallace’s experiment to make his iTouch work using a mouthstick, some copper wire, a stylus and stickytape. As a quadriplegic, David’s work powerfully shows not only the complex work-arounds needed for disabled use but how some new technologies are increasingly inaccessible for those who cannot touch them.

Image by David Wallace at www.lifekludger.net
Creative Commons Attribution Noncommercial 2.5 Australia License

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15.
This is yet another much simpler yet nevertheless innovative use of stickytape. Here, tape gives an object that already had one life, another new one. In this case it is a wallet is made from long life milk and juice packs. Stickytape enables a way of thinking, a way of approaching a problem with no format, no rules, that is open to unconventional processes and methods. What this means is that you can make things up as you go along.

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16.
This artefact is probably familiar to those of you who make or mend your own clothes. Because stickytape is temporary, it can be reversed, removed. This means you don’t need to think about it for a long time. You don’t need special tools. And you don’t to be right every time. Unlike other conventional binding agents – you get a second chance.

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17.
Stickytape can also just be used to customise technology as illustrated by this bike in Austria. In this world of mass production consumer items, stickytape offers a way to indelibly personalise your technology – showing that it is not just in what you do with tech, but what you do to it that also counts. And besides, the sculptural qualities of sticky tape are well overlooked.

Image by flickr user Alimander
Creative Commons Attribution Noncommercial Share Alike 2.0 Generic

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18.
The world is full of stickytape stories – and to some they are a poor fix, a lazy response. It is easy to mock them. But what I argue is that there is innovation at play in many cases. It gets you involved in making stuff– makes you think you can do things, change things – re-imagine how things might be. Stickytape epitomises an experimental approach. It is emblematic of being able to fix anything.

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19.
By and far, stickytape makes motley, mutts, bits of this and bits of that. Here is a letterbox made of wood, nails, plastic and tape. It shows how innovations do not have to be revolutionary or completely new, instead value is perceived in unique re-combinations of existing materials and problems. And these are skills that are highly regarded in the global technology marketplace.

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20.
Stickytape is an essential in the tinkerers toolkit. But because we have all become tinkerers, it is essential tool for life. And as our world’s resources get ever more limited and precious, these skills and innovative approaches will become even more critical to making the most of what we have.

Stickytape is a technology that I and I imagine you cannot live without.

Thankyou

Image: Sticker by Institute of Backyard Studies – http://www.ibys.org/
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A very big thankyou to everyone who contributed to this talk in some way or another: Genevieve Bell, Leah Bennetts, Leon Cmielewski, James Fraser, Jennifairy Gillett, Tillie Harris, Robert Hart, Janet Hawkin, Kim Hawkin, David Wallace, Joseph Jofish Kaye, Gray McKinnel, Paul Schulz, Mike Seyfang, Lyn Stephens, Mark Thomson, Seabird, Mike Seyfang and The Supreme Overlord Gravox.

Yesterday, I had the pleasure of speaking at the final Goldsmiths DesSS seminar: Object Fair, along with Jennifer Gabrys and Joe Malia. My object (or rather series of objects) was an exhibition of my PhD research that I produced at Goldsmiths last year. It was a really interesting session with three very different interpretations on ‘objects’. I was asked a lot of good questions (such as how has this work challenged/interrupted/augmented my sociological practice? and did viewers know I was a sociologists and does this matter?). Thinking more about these will be very helpful in turning this bit of work into an article of some sort very soon. Thankyou to all involved and especially to Tobie Kerridge for organising and facilitating the seminar.

This was the postcard for my exhibition:

The flyer for the event series:

The third event in the Design and Social Science seminar series – Speculative and Critical Objects – is on tomorrow at Goldsmiths.

If you cannot make it, the talk will be webcast from 4pm GMT at: http://www.materialbeliefs.com/stream/dss3.php

— seminar poster:
http://www.materialbeliefs.com/pdfs/The-objects-of-design-and-social-science.pdf

===========================================
Design and Social Science Seminar Series 2009-2010
===========================================
The Objects of Design and Social Science
Seminar 3 – Speculative and Critical Objects
James Auger, Royal College of Art
Wednesday November 18th—————————————————————————

— speaker biography:

James Auger (b 1970, Derby, England) has a BA in Product design from Glasgow School of Art and an MA in Design Products from the Royal College of Art in London. Post RCA He worked as a Research Associate for Media Lab Europe, where the main focus of his research was a design-based investigation into technology mediated human experience.

James is currently based at the Royal College of Art in London where he teaches and is a PhD candidate in the Design Interactions department. He is also a partner in the speculative design practice Auger-Loizeau whose projects have been published and exhibited internationally, including MoMA, New York, 21_21, Tokyo, The Science Museum, London and the Ars Electronica festival, Linz and is in the permanent collection at MoMA.

Prior to being a designer, James completed an engineering apprenticeship at Rolls-Royce (aero engines) and worked as a special effects technician for T.V and film.

—————————————————————————
The seminar will run from 4:00pm – 6:00pm,
Interaction Research Studio,
6th Floor, Ben Pimlott Building,
Goldsmiths, New Cross, London, SE14 6NW
——————————————————————————
Seminar series description:
Common to both design and (parts of) the social sciences is a shared pre-occupation with objects. On the one hand, design is concerned with making and interpreting objects including the finished article (e.g. consumer products), ‘experimental’ design aids (e.g. prototypes), and projective representations (e.g. scenarios). Recently, design has also begun to re-engage with more speculative objects whose ambiguous functionality contributes to the exploration of the social and the material, the political and the aesthetic. On the other hand the social sciences also work with objects, including categorical objects such as race, gender, and health, empirical objects ranging from the mundane to the exotic, and conceptual objects such as the notions social scientists use to understand and theorize the social. Here, the sociology of science and technology has been especially productive, introducing notions such as boundary objects (Star & Griesemer, 1989), epistemic objects (Rheinberger, 1997), immutable mobiles (Latour, 1990), quasi-objects , black boxes (Latour, 1988) to name but a few. Accordingly, a focus on material, empirical and conceptual objects brings into sharp relief overlaps and disjuncture between the two disciplines and a rich space for dialogue.

This seminar series will seek to bring into view and explore existing objects of both design and social science as well as draw out objects of novelty for both disciplines. In doing so we will seek to engage with emerging issues and topics in both disciplines such as the outputs of speculative and critical design, participation, engagement and publics as well as addressing notions concerning heterogeneity, process and event.

This series will continue to serve as a platform for opening up interdisciplinary research futures

This week is busy!

In addition to applying for this, chairing this and talking at this, I am also attending these two INCITE events:

On Thursday

ATMOSPHERES OF PARTICIPATION: ART, MEDIA, POLITICS
Two talks and a discussion about presence, liveness and the importance of participation

Kris Cohen (Art History, University of Chicago) – “Intimacy without Reciprocity: Suffragists, Trolls, and Sharon Hayes’ Art of Protest”

Edgar Schmitz (Art, Goldsmiths) – “Some rather ambient attitudes: indifference, exit and the question of affirmation.”

Chair: Nina Wakeford (Sociology)

Location: IGLT, Whitehead Building
Cost: Free – all are welcome, no booking required
Department: Sociology
Time: 12 November 2009, 18:30 – 20:30

On Friday

ATMOSPHERES OF PARTICIPATION: A WORKSHOP
Friday 13th November 2009
Goldsmiths, University of London
Depford Town Hall, Lewisham Way (map at www.gold.ac.uk)
Organised by Nina Wakeford, Sociology & Goetz Bachmann, CCS

9.30am Welcome and introductions
10am Irmela Schneider (University of Cologne) – “Tele-dialogue in 20th Century German Television: a case study of participation.”
Respondent – Goetz Bachmann (Goldsmiths)

11.30am Coffee break
11.50am Anne Cronin (University of Lancaster) – “Urban billboards, fabulation, and the animation of public space”.
Rachel Moore (Goldsmiths) – ‘Not what the neon sign says…’
Respondent – Celia Lury

Lunch (1.15-2.15, DTHB 110)
2.15pm Karen Mirza (http://www.no-w-here.org.uk/) – “The Museum of Non Participation”
Karen Tam (Goldsmiths Cultural Studies & http://www.karentam.ca/) – “Orientally Yours: Karaoke Singers, Opium Addicts, and Chinese Diners”
Nina Pope (http://www.somewhere.org.uk/) – “Fully Engaged?”
Respondent – Kris Cohen

3.45pm Tea
4.15pm Scott Lash (Goldsmiths) – “Public Sphere as Atmosphere”
Respondent – Ken Anderson (Intel)
5.30 Closing remarks

THIS EVENT IS NOW FULLY BOOKED

Who says I don’t have a job -I don’t have time for a job : )

I have the pleasure of chairing the ‘Working with Industry’ on Wednesday at Goldsmiths which features a presentation by Ken Anderson of Intel and aims to look critically at the possibilities and tensions created in collaborations, as well as the opportunities presented within internship programmes for graduate students. Should be good.

I missed it this year. Hoping to get there next year. Thinking, thinking…… I really want to make a sewing-machine-freakbike, and this could be a good place for it. Hmmm

Call for Expressions of Interest: Format 2010
September 20, 2009

Our call for submissions for the 2010 Format Festival is out now! Email stuff to us before November 15th (or thereabouts).

Call For Expressions of Interest
Format Festival, March 2010
Due Date for Expressions – November 15th, 2009 (although that’s kind of flexible)
Email: contact@format.net.au

Format is a two week festival themed around DIY, artist run initiatives and participatory culture. It’s been described as Adelaide’s answer to This Is Not Art or ‘the Fringe of the Fringe’. In 2010, we’ll be running it out of a central city venue from Saturday Feb 27th through to March 14th.

If you’ve got art, music, film, publications, walking tours, picnics, performances, lectures, ideas for workshops or whatever else, and you’d like to expose it to the good people of Adelaide, please send us a 50 word spiel outlining:

-Who You Are
-What You Want To Do
-What You Need To Do It

If you’ve got websites or links to images of your work etc, let us know that as well.

Email it all to: contact@format.net.au

We should point out that, right now, we’ve only just got our minimum operating budget, so we won’t be able to pay you anything. That said, we’ll be able to provide the venue, the fittings, advertising and, if last year was anything to go by, pretty decent crowds and the ‘party good times’ atmosphere. And if we get a few more grants we should be able to help out with travel and running costs. yours,
Ianto Ware
On behalf of the Format Collective.

My exhibition coincides with this conference at Goldsmiths:

‘The Sociological Imagination’: a 50th Anniversary Celebration
“Developing a quality of mind [and] the capacity to change perspective.”

Saturday 24 October 2009
9.00am – 6.00pm

Ben Pimlott Lecture Theatre, Ben Pimlott Building, Goldsmiths, University of London

Cost (including lunch): £30 (waged); £15 (unwaged).

To book a place, please email sociology @gold.ac.uk

C Wright Mills’ The Sociological Imagination was published in 1959 some half a century ago. This event explores the legacy of the book but also asks: how has the sociological imagination been transformed since its publication. How is the promise of sociology today different from Mills’ formulation? Mills wrote The Sociological Imagination while a Fulbright fellow at the University of Copenhagen during the 1956-1957 academic year. It is a critique of American sociology and also an argument for his own vision enshrined in books like White Collar and The Power Elite. Initially titled ‘Autopsy of Social Science’ he wrote the book, as Daniel Geary has argued in a recent intellectual biography of Mills, out of the conviction that America sociology had broken its promise. US sociology had resulted in the Grand Theory of Talcott Parsons which papered over conflicts and injustices and the abstracted empiricism of Paul Lazarsfeld that could not see the empirical wood for the political trees. In a similar spirit we want to use its anniversary to ask probing questions about the state of sociology today.

This Is Not A Gateway is holding an open interdisciplinary festival this weekend in a variety of Dalston locations with the aim of bringing together people who live and work in Europe, but who’s main preoccupation is the city. I am hoping to get to a few events in the packed programme.

TINAG creates platforms for emerging academics, activists, human rights canvassers, artists, politicians, writers, musicians, architects and more, whose point of departure is the city. TINAG is interested in building platforms for those outside of established circuits including illegal immigrants, travelers and people living in cities of past or continuing conflict. There is no doubt the most compelling new ideas and knowledge on cities is here.

In its first year the festival will be held across Dalston, East London; cafes, community buildings, galleries, restaurants, colleges, parks, bars, streets and occasional plush city office boardroom – to hold workshops, round table debates, film screenings and more. A significant portion of the programme will comprise of peer-to-peer workshops (i.e. A to Z Of Getting Your Book Published; Going Freelance – Taxes & Other Complexities; Organising & New Political Frameworks). Every second year TINAG is open to proposals from other European cities to host the festival.

TINAG are facilitators. We will provide the infrastructure and support to enable participants to hold their own activities. We are interested in finding out what questions and projects, related to cities, are currently being generated by those who live and work in cities everyday.

Finally I’m going to a Sandpit event. I’ve heard much about these and have never been. Hosted by Hide and seek, Sandpits are monthly events where people play games, test out ideas and generally run amuck in the city. Not that you’d want more, but…… there is even whispered possibility of a little tallbike racing through Soho. Now who on earth would be up for that! : )

The next Sandpit will be taking place on Wednesday 29 October. We’ll be playing games at 01zero-one in Soho, from 6.30pm to 10pm. Come along and play – we’ve got a teleporting chasee, a rehabilitated Hopscotch, a game with a slowly moving parcel, the lies of Baron Munchausen, and the looming threat of a vampire.

This is the title for an exhibition in the basement of the Science Museum. It looks good.

How well do you know your vacuum cleaner? When did you last spare a thought for your microwave oven? The Secret Life of the Home gallery takes a close look at the development of those household gadgets and appliances that we use every day but often take for granted.

Most of the objects on show date from the late 19th and 20th century but you’ll also find ancient Roman keys, 18th century cooking utensils and a 21st century robotic vacuum cleaner. In fact, you’ll be able to discover how applied robotics is one of the key ways in which the gadgets and appliances in your home will develop in the future.

You’ll also be able to see how styles, materials, technology and changes in society have influenced the design and use of gadgets and appliances over time.

There are loads of interactive exhibits in this gallery, so you’ll be able to discover how some of these appliances – including CD players and washing machines (and toilets!) – really work. You can also investigate different types of locks, try to outwit a burglar alarm and even play ‘Pong’, the world’s very first home video game.

Thanks gb.