I have an article published in the 2010 Spring edition of Street Signs called Exhibiting Ethnographic Knowledge; making sociology about makers of technology. It discusses an exhibition of my PhD work held at Goldsmiths in October last year. The magazine is produced quarterly by the Centre for urban and Community Research, in the Sociology Department at Goldsmiths.

There is also a write-up in this edition about the Analysing Practical Knowledge workshop held in November and hosted by Dawn Lyon and Les Back. I presented a paper on Stumbling in Digital Suburbia.

It will be free to download here.

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.

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The seminar will run from 4:00pm – 6:00pm,
Interaction Research Studio,
6th Floor, Ben Pimlott Building,
Goldsmiths, New Cross, London, SE14 6NW
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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

My exhibition preparation is progressing interestingly. First, and most obvious, I am doing it from a distance (Australia) and will have to find a way of transporting bits of it across the world. Second, I lost my notebook somewhere between Sydney and Adelaide a few weeks ago and with growing dread I realise how much vital information was in it (initial ideas, detailed lists, scaled drawings of the gallery space!). Third, I’ve too many ideas and need to narrow them down in order to make any kind of visual sense.

Here is some of the background/ contextual imagery I am putting together.

Two other bits of exhibition news:

I’ve got a title: “Makers”, “Mashers” and “Mods”: Grassroots technology practices in suburban Australia

I’ve had confirmation of a small amount of funding from INCITE and the Department of Sociology at Goldsmiths to support the exhibition.

Exciting!

I am currently preparing a second exhibition of my PhD research. The first, in 2007 in the field, revealed my ethnographic work-in-progress in the backyard of a suburban house. Participants, predominantly respondents and family members, interacted with my research by literally entering into it, touching, talking about and eventually taking away objects, field notes, photos and sketches. Feedback was immediate and invaluable to my ongoing analysis. The second iteration will coincide with a conference hosted by the Sociology Department at Goldsmiths for the 50th anniversary of ‘The Sociological Imagination’ (Mills 1959) in October this year. I am very excited about this opportunity to again present my work in a site-specific multi-dimensional manner. Not only does it enable a tactile, visual and sensual engagement with my key findings in a way that differs to that of reading a textual argument or hearing a presentation, it also presents an opportunity to showcase my work to my academic peers.

This is the space I have to work with.

As per the first exhibition, I will fully document the event and explore the way it brings to life the textures, nuances and overlapping multi-dimensional character of encounters with backyard technologists in my fieldwork and subsequent analytic process. I am also very interested in responses to my work and will capture feedback for use in future publications.
Although many researchers seek to expose their findings to as wide an audience as possible, the actual making of knowledge into anything other than text is unusual and an area that remains critically undeveloped (Law 2004; Hine 2007). Producing an exhibition of this nature contributes to the work of those who seek less ordered and linear accounts of sociological knowledge (Pink 2001; Knowles and Sweetman 2004; Hjorth 2005, 2007). As per the DIY nature of my research I will attempt to wherever possible adapt and re-use materials from my previous exhibition in Australia, thereby taking my ‘multi-sited’ ethnography to multi-sites (Marcus 1998).

My aim for the exhibition is to open up for discussion, improvised, hands-on and object-oriented ways of thinking about and through knowledge production.

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.

Having been securely blocked from my blog for a few weeks as a result of a wordpress upgrade, grrrrrr, I will now attempt to catch up on recent events and news.

A few weeks ago I popped down to Deptford High Street for a peek at this very exciting project/ concept which was described as ‘an attempt, to demonstrate what can be created in 24 hours, as part of the London Design Festival 2008′.

Very simple, very nice!

Arriving at about 17.00 on the Friday (half way through the event) I was impressed by the great space created behind the main street, the dedication of the many teams caught up in discussion and debate and of course the weather – will you look at that blue sky!

However, I have to admit I was surprised by the lack of mess. I expected much more mad activity, noise, bustle and crazy making – an intensely charged engagement with stuff and the local community. I was expecting mess, not talk. Ok, mess and talk. But definitely more mess. As a result it felt, to me, a bit distant from stuff, the community and the context despite all the outward signs to the contrary. Perhaps I arrived at a quieter, more intense, thoughtful time….? It was over 24 hours after all. Energy levels must have rollercoasted. Nevertheless, I think it was a cracking idea and would have loved to have been involved/ spent more time observing. Unfortunately I did not get back again to witness other levels of energy and rhythms of activity nor to see the results of the project in the Saturday evening installation. I’m still hoping to track down more stuff on it.

I am obviously biased towards a bit of messiness these days, having studied it for the past four years in the context of community wifi groups and freakbike makers and am now deeply anti-socially embedded in writing about it. In particular my interest is the productive possibilities of engaging with, and making, mess in the process of invention and innovation with an emphasis on visual culture. The people I had the pleasure of spending time with during my ethnography built things from the ground up, interweaving a nuanced and textured understanding of the natural, social and technical. They used their heads and their hands.

As one my respondents explains:

‘It’s really knowing, really knowing with your hands’

and

‘You ask the question of your fingers.’

And another told me:

‘No I think it’s best not to have too many plans. Have rough idea of what you want to do and just start. I don’t plan too much. It just gets in the way. When we think too much we second guess ourselves all the time and it slows down the spontaneity and stops you from achieving as much as you could in a day and you end up not getting as much done as you could. It takes a long time to build a bike if you think it out that much. But as you get the basics down it gets faster and faster. And you always eventually find a way of making it work. It’s a challenge. A huge learning curve.’

I find that my respondents and my experiences of being knee-deep in bike bits, dodging welding sparks while trying to jam things together with blackened greasy hands or helping to build antennas in suburban backyards using biscuit tins and stickytape during my fieldwork in Australia can be better understood in relation to what Turkle describes as bricolage, a term made famous by Levi Strauss. Comparing different computer programming styles, Turkle writes of the stark difference between the ‘hard’ canonical structured system characterised by ordered and organised planning and a more informal ‘soft’ approach that stems from an affinity with the materials (1995:51).

By analogy, problem-solvers do not proceed by abstraction but by thinking through problems using the materials at hand. By analogy, problem-solvers who do not proceed from top-down design but by arranging and rearranging a set of well-known materials can be said to be practicing bricolage. They tend to try one thing, step back, reconsider, and try another. For planners, mistakes are steps in the wrong direction; bricoleurs navigate through mid course corrections. Bricoleurs approach problem-solving by entering into a relationship with their work materials that has more the flavour of a conversation than a monologue. In the context of programming, the bricoleur’s work is marked by a desire to play with lines of computer code, to move them around almost as though they were material things – notes on a score, elements of a collage, words on a page (1995:51-52).

Turkle’s (1995) description evokes a visually rich and materially textured process. What permeates her writing is a thick description of engagement with materials, not just of materials. People don’t just organise materials, they engage with them and open them up. Tinkerers get inside a task, they don’t just hover about on the surface, all of which suggests tinkering is more than a process or practice. It is also about a space, the use of visual materials, personal skills and time.

I just noticed that this exhibition – FIXED – is on at the Design Museum and is due to finish soon (8th Sept!)

Curated by Ben Wilson, industrial designer and bike fanatic, FIXED looks at the fixed gear bicycle from 1888 to the present day. FIXED is in the Tank, the museum’s riverfront exhibition space and free to view day or night.

In prep for 4S, in Rotterdam.