What happens when users look under the hood of the technologies that surround them and get their hands dirty with hardware and electronics?

This research project investigates the possible impact of the democratization of technical knowledge on the fields of consumer electronics. What kind of new approaches, products and models could emerge from a wide-spread movement of more and more people doing-it-themselves? What would be the consequences to the world of design and interactive creation?
In an attempt to contribute to the raise of overall electronic literacy amongst non-technical people, the series of objects I made (ranging from music player to USB charger) explores and refines a methodology of electronic crafts based on practices similar to what is thought at ITP and spreading trough already emerging open source hardware information networks.

What can a craftsmenship approach bring to the future of new technologies?

Walking into my first physical computing class, i had absolutely no knowledge of anything related to electronics or hardware and had no idea I was going to learn to program small micro-controllers (I’m not sure what I thought i was going to do, now that I think of it). Then I discovered the junk shelf, the soldering iron, the PIC, hardware hacking, toy bending, chairs that spoke to radios, fishes that made music and the possibilities that lay ahead an absolute amateur like me. {I think I had the instinct for this, as I could never throw a broken speaker, a dead printer or a broken clock, now I might finally have uses for them.}

Technological devices are taking more and more space in our lives; they are becoming a part of who we are and how we behave. Yet they are still being designed and engineered with a top down approach: created by experts imposing usages and behaviors, denying users the right to access this expert knowledge and avoiding a collective dialogue about the fate of technological innovation.
I am sending an open invitation to reclaim technology and re-appropriate it in more diverse ways; to subvert it’s objects and devices and make them truly useful -or truly useless. I am fascinated by what can happen when more users, creators, designers and artists starts looking at technology in a light that allows them to express themselves or enhance things and lives around them. I hope to question some of the mainstream practices in the world of design and technology and will examine the possible impact of the democratization of innovation. As a user, I want to understand the objects and things that surround me, what I’m doing with these and the impact they can have on the world. I also thrive for some meaning or some poetry around me. As a designer, I want to create alternative propositions and explore opportunities for new approaches in the conception and creation of technology {i know this is very general….} .

Hand made things and the general concept of DIY has been appropriated by the home renovation / popular science world and brought into the mainstream with kits and self-assembly packages and products. However, it is possible to trace a history of DIY that tells a story of talent, skill, imagination, vision and necessity.

A loosly knit history of DIY based mostly on things i have found to be of inspiration could be something like this:
First, the early 20th century arts and crafts movement grew as a reaction against industrialization, against everything being made by machine. It's main call was for bringing the designer, the creator back in control of all the process of “making things”.
“Arts and Crafts: A movement that sought to restore the medieval tradition of handicraft in reaction to the spread of mass production, originating in late 19th century Great Britain. Designs were based on simple forms and natural materials, as much for purposes of social refrom as for aesthetic reasons.”

Then came Bahaus and the ideas that, even though machine made thing where no longer in question, the entire way everything was made needed to be reconsidered in the lights of the wars and inhumanities the world had seen.
“To restore to the designer the experience of direct experience of a medium, is, I think, the task today. Here is, as I see it, a justification for crafts today. For it means taking, for instance, the working material into the hand, learning by working it of its obedience and its resistance, its potency and its weakness, its charn and dullness. The material itself is full of suggestions for its use if we approach it unaggressively, receptively. It is a source of unending stimulation and advises us in most unexpected way.”
Anni Albers Design: Anonymous & Timeless 1947

Crafts or DIY also emerges from a tradition not only to make things but also to popularize all things technical and to make specilised information accessible to the lay people (Encylcopedie to the 60’s Whole world catalag... and Internet).
“We are as gods and might as well get good at it. So far, remotely done power and glory - as via government, big business, formal education, church — has succeeded to the point where gross defects obscure actual gains. In response to this dilemma and to these gains a realm of intimate, personal power is developing — power of the individual to conduct his own education, find his own inspiration, shape his own environment, and share his adventure with whoever is interested. Tools that aid this process are sought and promoted by the WHOLE EARTH CATALOG.”

Other background and inspirations include:
Open source software, new environmentalists and cradle to cradle, 90's DIY Brit culture, Hobby Princess's Draft Craft Manifesto, Instructables.org and all people doing all sorts of things, starting of course at ITP.

Designers and technology users in general.
In the context of the show, i would like anyone who owns a portable music player, a PDA or a camera (...) to think about what the possibilities (and consequences) would be if they started making these devices themselves.

The showcase part of Electronic Crafts consists of 4 hand made/modified consumer electronic objects (mp3 player, charger, bedside light) that i build during my research. They are meant to be hooks to attract people and inspire them to think about the technology they consume in a different light. The choice of objects (re)created was done in order to re-introduce the core of the physical computing work done at ITP through the vehicule of everyday /easily accessible expressions of technologies... And maybe this showcase will invite users to get their hands dirty and start building or modifying their own electronic devices once they leave the show.
The idea scene looks like this:
User sees colorfull display from far, comes closer, sees a few strangly familiar (but not identified yet) objects that they pick up. Connection occurs whithin seconds: "It's an mp3 player in a sock!". They have a closer look at each object and realise the instructions on how to make them are easy and accessible, just like flipping through a bright and colorfull cook book. Maybe they have their own idea about what kind of device they would like to have and make. They can leave with a card that leads them to the electroniccrafts.org site (wiki) where they will find the instructions to these objects (and more) readily available for them to start practicing their electronic craft skills.

I would like to setup a large poster on the wall about 5 feet wide and mounted on a thick foam core.
4 small shelves will be build into the poster and each one of the shelf will present one object. Above each shelf, detailled step by step visual instructions will indicate how the object was created and invite viewers to do the same. The detail size and shape of this setup can be retro-fitted to any space.