ENGFLM 0712 - CRITICAL MAKING

Minimum Credits: 3
Maximum Credits: 3
The Maker movement is an emerging social and media form that is at once highly networked and post-digital. Making is situated at the intersection of social media, the online gift economy, and a participatory, interventionist engagement with one’s physical environment. Drawing on open source ideals and innovation structures -the free sharing of code to enable collaborative development - making has become an attempt to democratize material culture through networked access to tools. MakerSpaces and MakerHubs have become critical nodes in efforts to materialize the virtual gift economy of the Internet. In this course we will engage the intellectual and practical roots of this new medial and social form and engage in our own critical making projects, utilizing scanning, modeling, and 3D printing technologies. We will begin by looking at the history and philosophy of open source software development, and then the political, social, cultural, and technological developments that have together given rise to critical maker culture. We will then learn some of the basic tools of scanning, modeling, and 3D printing. After initial modeling and printing assignments, students will form groups and develop collaborative final projects that involve materializing complex conceptual relationships from a topic of your choice and in a medium of your choice. The aim of this course is to “close the circuit” between creative conceptual production, social networking, and materialized object relationships. Critical making is about critically engaging and creatively remaking the world around us. By the end of the semester, you will become a critical maker! This is a Critical Studies course with Production elements and counts for Category III towards the Film and Media Studies major and minor.
Academic Career: Undergraduate
Course Component: Lecture
Grade Component: LG/SNC Elective Basis
Course Attributes: DSAS Creative Work General Ed. Requirement, Film Studies, SCI Polymathic Contexts: Humanistic GE. Req., Writing Intensive Course (WRIT)

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