Critical Making as Materializing the Politics of Design |
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| Authors: | Carl DiSalvo |
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| Institution: | School of Literature, Media, and Communication, Georgia Institute of Technology , Atlanta , Georgia , USA |
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| Abstract: | The notion of “critical making” suggests a new form of design, through which the political qualities of an issue are materialized by participatory means. In this essay I trace and describe this process through the Growbot Garden project—a design project directed at reimagining agricultural technologies to support small-scale agriculture. Through a discussion of this project I draw out the ways that politics were actively projected onto and through artifacts by the participants. In effect, these artifacts were a material expression of their desires and commitments. By creating these artifacts, the participants enacted a novel mode of “doing” political design as a collaborative and public endeavor of articulation. |
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| Keywords: | critical making design politics |
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