a framework for toolmaking
In some ways the true cohort of my thesis project is not works of art or tools, but processes. On the creative side are books such as The Artist Way , The New Drawing on the Right Side of the Brain and the plethora that turn up on Amazon claiming to guide you to Monet-hood in 5 minutes a day. The more business driven can find the same tantalizing hints in whitepapers about the famous IDEO Deep Dive or books like Conceptual Blockbusting.
The seduction in these materials is the mantra that everyone is creative, and You Too can get there for $19.95. What they don’t put on the dust jacket is how deeply radical getting yourself to show up for 5 minutes day can be. How turning on the TV or organizing music in iTunes is so infinitely easier. Or even that maybe part of you just doesn’t want to.
The following are examples of resources that try to teach people take on the creative habit.
http://www.drawright.com/Betty Edwards is the author of “Drawing on the Artist Within” and “Drawing on the Right Side of the Brain.” Her goal is really to teach creativity through drawing. Both books are a linear progression of lessons that are very interesting and have become drawing class standards. I used them as a way to think about how the might be adapted to the computational media/physical computing world. She has also recently published a companion workbook to go along with “Drawing on the Right Side of the Brain.” She apparently teaches workshops and has a pre-packaged kit of drawing tools available from her website.
http://www.makezine.com/
http://www.flickr.com/groups/make/
http://del.icio.us/makemagazine
Make magazine and its social-software extensions is an example of the digital technology DIY models that have popped up over the past few years. This is a website, a print magazine and an online movement founded by the clan at O’Reilly. The philosophy as stated by Dale Dougherty the editor: “We’re all Makers now.” It has stiff competition from it predecessor on the web - http://www.hackaday.com/
http://www.flylady.net/
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/FlyLadyMentors/
Marla Cilley founded a yahoo group in 1999 as a way helping herself and others follow the “Side-tracked Home Executive” System. Several reminders are sent out daily to check in and remind people to do certain task. There are weekly reminders and monthly reminders, too. It is not a open list in that Cilley is basically the only one who can post to it, although she frequently share testimonials. It is however quite a community… 256,809 subscribers listed March 13. This project started as a small personal endeavor and people simply started responded very strongly. It had natural resonance. It isn’t about engendering creativity, per se but its whole function is to create habits.
http://fargo.itp.tsoa.nyu.edu/~tigoe/pcomp/index.shtml
http://www.kerismith.com/blog/
Tom Igoe, a Professor of Physical Computing at ITP requires his student to keep an on-line journal of their work. The good ones expose the process of discovery, raw and curious. They are great research tools, but the text-heavy online blog software is not even close to matching the practically sculptural ideation found in the paper journals of people like Leonardo Da Vinci. It isn’t a physical computing journal, but the only online web journal that felt closer to a journal than a portfolio and was visually interesting is the writer and illustrator Keri Smith’s.
http://www.learningtoloveyoumore.com/
Miranda July and Harrell Fletcher’s “Learning to Love You More” project is a website and series of gallery installations where they create assignments for others to do. There is no culminating objective for the exercises. They are simply to help people explore themselves.
http://www.klutz.com/
Klutz is a publishing house that creates activity books for children that are pretty phenomenal. They are short colorful books that mostly come with everything you need included in a tidy little kits. They are for the junior DIY in all of us. The cover arts & crafts as well as science – including a little book on Battery Science. The easy access to just making things is something I admire.
http://stage.itp.nyu.edu/~cm1002/Sum03_codeandme/
I tool Amit Pitaru’s class in the Summer of 2003. The class description started with “The goal of this course is to have each student find a comfortable zone for developing and harnessing their ability to code.” I have taken a number of wonderful classes at ITP, but I have to give credit to Amit for trying to approach the process of learning how to code squarely from the point of view of what you are trying to express with it, rather than syntax lessons.
http://www.designboom.com/aerobics/transformer.html
http://www.designboom.com/aerobics/
Design boom is an Italian eZine on design with short, inexpensive, instructor led, online classes. Their ethos here is that design is process that must be kept up. One must keep your hand in the game or it wears out. The classes are on designing things like cutlery, lamps and chairs. I am not planning to really instruct or charge, but I like their style!