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\begin{document}

\hypertarget{critical-making}{%
\section{Critical Making}\label{critical-making}}

On its most simple level, Critical Making is a contraction of ``making''
and ``critical thinking''.\footnote{(Hertz, 2020} According to its
inventor Matt Ratto, Critical Making ``signals a desire to theoretically
and pragmatically connect two modes of engagement with the world that
are often held separate --- critical thinking, typically understood as
conceptually and linguistically based, and physical `making,' goal-based
material work''.\footnote{(Ratto, 2011, 254)} Critical Making thus fuses
theory and practice, idea and matter; domains that were traditionally
separated in Western culture.

Critical Making has a cultural and material affinity to maker culture
and accessible digital technologies for ``→ DIY
citizenship''.\footnote{(Ratto, 2014).} In Critical Making, the
technologies are not only being used to bridge thinking and making, but
also to bring elements of design education into university social
sciences.

Critical Making knows at least three definitions, schools, and
iterations:

\begin{enumerate}
\def\labelenumi{\arabic{enumi})}
\item
  Social science Critical Making developed and practiced at University
  of Toronto by Matt Ratto and his research team;
\item
  Critical Making as socially engaged maker culture, practiced by Garnet
  Hertz and his research team at Emily Carr University in Vancouver;
\item
  Critical Making as a design ethos, proposed and practiced among others
  at the Rhode Island School of Design.
\end{enumerate}

\hypertarget{critical-making-in-social-sciences}{%
\section{Critical Making in social
sciences}\label{critical-making-in-social-sciences}}

The following is heavily based on information by ginger coons who
completed her PhD research in the Critical Making Lab of University of
Toronto:

Critical Making, in this school, is a practical study and research
method for students and scholars with no art, design or engineering
background to do their classroom study through material experimentation
instead of merely reading and discussing texts.

For such curricula, ``maker'', Open Source and Internet technologies
dramatically lower the threshold for non-experts to build something - an
object, a piece of technology, an application - to serve as a temporary,
experimental and discursive device for studying and exploring a concept
or theory.

A cultural studies or feminist theory class, for example, could use
Critical Making as a classroom method to study and discuss Audre Lorde's
claim that ``The Master's Tools Will Never Dismantle the Master's
House'',\footnote{(Lorde, 2018).} by practically experimenting with the
possibilities and limitations of using corporate social media platforms
such as YouTube and Instagram for social activism.

\hypertarget{critical-making-as-socially-engaged-maker-culture}{%
\section{Critical Making as socially engaged maker
culture}\label{critical-making-as-socially-engaged-maker-culture}}

``Maker spaces'' became a mainstream phenomenon with the creation of the
first ``Fab{[}rication{]} Lab'' at the Massachusetts Institute of
Technology in 2001 and the launch of \emph{Make:} magazine in 2005. From
the perspective of digital media artists, however, ``maker culture''
boiled down to a mainstreaming and commercialization of radical
technological →DIY that had existed from Nam June Paik's
self-constructed video synthesizer in the 1960s to, among others,
artists' experiments with self-built radio and tv infrastructures in the
1970s and 1980s, and the ``tactical media'' movement of the 1990s.

This difference in politics is epitomized by a cover of ``Make:''
magazine and its parody, ``Made:'' by the designer and artist Garnet
Hertz:

\begin{figure}
\centering
\includegraphics{make_magazine.jpg}
\caption{\emph{Make:}, vol.~25, 2011}
\end{figure}

\begin{figure}
\centering
\includegraphics{made-web.jpg}
\caption{\emph{Made:}, Garnet Hertz, 2012}
\end{figure}

A series of freely distributed and freely downloadable Critical Making
zines produced by Hertz positions Critical Making as an umbrella term
for any art and design that experiments with technology in critical or
non-mainstream ways: from the post-punk robotics of the 1980s
Californian \emph{Survival Research Labs} collective to `tactical media'
art as it has existed since the 1990s, the `critical engineering' of the
homonymous collective around Danja Vasiliev and Julian Oliver, to the
\emph{critical design} of Anthony Dunne and Fiona Raby (which (Ratto)
differentiates from his own concept of Critical Making).

\hypertarget{critical-making-as-a-design-ethos}{%
\section{Critical Making as a design
ethos}\label{critical-making-as-a-design-ethos}}

Design educators often fail to see a difference between Critical Making
and design education as it has been practiced in art schools for many
decades, since design classes often involve concepts from critical
theory explored in experimental design projects. In Ratto's concept of
Critical Making, however, objects made by students are not design
projects, but merely makeshift devices that get discarded at the end of
the class.

It is hence not surprising that design educators reclaim ``Critical
Making'' for their practice in broadest terms. An example of this is the
2013 book \emph{The Art of Critical Making} by the Rhode Island School
of Design in which the school refers to its entire curriculum as
Critical Making.

\hypertarget{epilogue}{%
\section{Epilogue}\label{epilogue}}

In 2019, a temporary bankruptcy of \emph{Make:} magazine marked an end
of over-optimistic expectations for maker culture. Still, the term has
stuck and makes it difficult to use ``Critical Making'' for practices
outside maker spaces.

\hypertarget{references}{%
\section{References}\label{references}}

Bogers, Loes and Chiappini, Letizia, eds.~\emph{The Critical Makers
Reader}. INC Reader 12. Amsterdam: Institute of Network Cultures, 2019.
https://research.hva.nl/en/publications/fe892f5e-c7b9-4a1a-9b76-1674562d56f0.

Boler, Megan, and Matt Ratto. \emph{DIY Citizenship: Critical Making and
Social Media}. MIT Press, 2014.

Hertz, Garnet. \emph{Critical Making}. Canada: Telharmonium, 2012.

Hertz, Garnet. ``Two Terms: Critical Making + D.I.Y.''
\emph{conceptlab.com}, 2020.
http://conceptlab.com/2terms/pdf/hertz-2terms-202011181901.pdf.

Lorde, Audre. \emph{The Master's Tools Will Never Dismantle the Master's
House}. London: Penguin, 2018.

Maeda, John. \emph{The Art of Critical Making: Rhode Island School of
Design on Creative Practice}. Edited by Rosanne Somerson and Mara
Hermano. Hoboken, New Jersey: Wiley, 2013.

Ratto, Matt. ``Critical Making: Conceptual and Material Studies in
Technology and Social Life.'' \emph{The Information Society} 27, no. 4
(2011): 252--60.

\end{document}
