Instructions

Inspired by Shaun’s post on instruction manuals, our motive has been to not only define each component of the circuit, but to also simplify and give context for every step (graphically, wherever possible) in the most persuasive way. Our intent is that, through the kits, people will gain a foundational understanding of not just how a speaker works; they will also develop a sense of how circuits are designed and, more importantly, how and why each part of the structure is deemed optimal for the desired output (in this case, sound). Our hope is that people will be prompted to create their own circuit designs and question, complicate, or improve upon the principles outlined in the kits. Resonating in part with the aesthetic of Forrest Mims, this platform allows a given researcher to acquire an in-depth understanding of the principles of electronics and accompanying mechanisms. It also demands embodied activities that are difficult (if not impossible) to enact through screen-based interactions or symbolic logic alone.

Why a Speaker?

A speaker is an interesting subject for this kit for a few reasons, predominantly its simple analog composition. This territory was a good starting point for humanities scholars interested in circuit building. Some analog components of technology outlast digitization, whereas most have been gutted from contemporary electronic objects. Given that analog components are necessary to bridge the gap between humans and computers, they tend to remain on the outermost casing of technological objects. A speaker is one of those lasting analog components, as the functions of analog components have been reduced to human-computer translators. These are components that simulate and synthesize the human senses for the purposes of computation. For example, aside from speakers, consider the ubiquity of buttons and LED indicators in present day technologies. The simplified DIY nature of our speaker, which includes no pre-fabricated elements, allows people to not only participate in the build, but also—through a kit, its materials, and its inevitable limitations—fail, struggle, or get frustrated with the stuff at hand. This failure (or threat of failure), as well as the understanding that parts (not wholes) ultimately comprise the technological sphere, allows us to dismantle the assumptions at work in “black boxing” technologies.

The Amplifier

The amplifier was not included in our initial kit design, but its incorporation does two important things. First, it serves as a visible transition between the digital input of the audio signal (e.g., from an MP3 player) to the handmade speaker, and thus encourages a better understanding of the transfer of energy within a circuit. Second, it allows the participant to partake in physically building a multi-component circuit. It inevitably incorporates the principles of electricity, such as flow, resistance, electrostatic storage, magnetic fields, integrated circuits, voltage input, etc. The amplifier also introduces a less abstract approach to circuitry than the speaker in that it closely resembles the guts of electronic objects familiar to most people, solidifying (or so we hope) the link between themselves and the manufacturers of technological objects. Moreover, the kit allows people to play music from practically any audio player they have at hand, thereby acknowledging that circuit-building occupies a significant place in our day-to-day lives. This element of the kit urges participants to retroactively consider circuit-building when, say, plugging a pair of headphones into an iPod or iPhone. In this way, we build upon—and even intervene in—people’s already congealed understanding of electronics, including their perceptions of how technologies influence their everyday life.

Further Questions

We understand that in order to be useful to academics, the kits must help people envision the ways that circuit-building could augment research. As such, through kits like our “Introduction to Circuits,” we are blending tacit knowledge with theoretical work drawn from comparative media studies and STS (among others). We are also emphasizing the adaptability and simplicity of seemingly complex applications like sound, with the aim of prompting applied approaches to humanities methods. The following questions are considered while designing the kit for such purposes:

How does the language of human-computer interaction (or network interactions) influence what tasks we delegate, or want to delegate, to electronics?
How have our needs and desires shaped the development of this language and culture?
How do the limits of materials demand adaptation?
How has this adaptation affected the history of computing, the interoperability of electronic parts, and the ostensible obsolescence of technologies?

Post by Katie McQueston, attached to the KitsForCulture category, with the physcomp tag. Images for this post care of Katie McQueston.

Trouvé apparently sought out a watchmaker to create the small operating mechanism that operates the jaw. This historical detail is interesting because watchmaking is a trade that has adapted to and been threatened by the battery (Trouvé’s own invention), not to mention digitization and, more recently, the demand for smart watches. Put differently, the makeup of Trouvé’s stick-pin is embedded in a long history of techniques used to express and understand time. Although neither the pin nor the project is really about watches or temporality during the Victorian period, the component parts we’re using correspond with keeping time during the late nineteenth century as well as skilled trades and analog manufacturing processes routinely subjected to obsolescence.

By redesigning Trouvé’s stick-pin, we are thus adhering to traditional gear systems while also maintaining a cultural perspective premised on the contingencies of interpretation. This approach is conducive to triangulating nineteenth-century objects and labour practices with their theoretical or socio-political coordinates.

To be sure, there’s a bit of irony here: the same technology that affords us a better understanding of objects and labour also risks mystifying manufacturing processes and their histories. 3D printing not only allows us to make more and sometimes better things; it also changes why and how we make them. That is, it changes the relationships we have with the very objects we create. If the production of an object is—in a WYSIWYG fashion—independent from many skills used to build it, then making things arguably becomes more about processing and production than, say, attaining manual skills or tactically solving problems.

In this way, a gain for academics, hobbyists, and makerspaces could be a loss for skilled trades and working classes. As such, throughout this project I have been considering this question: How can 3D printing be transformed by people who are antagonized by it? Alternatively, how can skilled trades and maker cultures encourage such transformations? In the spirit of art movements that have perverted their own mediums in response to emerging worldviews and technologies (e.g., the introduction of abstract painting alongside the development of photography), how can we foster cultures that resist the logic of obsolescence and instead favour hybrid practices?

Post by Katie McQueston, in the KitsForCulture category, with the fabrication tag. Images for this post care of Katie McQueston.

Early Wearables

Trouvé’s nineteenth-century wearables are influential because of their scientific achievements as well as how they welded technological innovation to social life, everyday practice, and people’s bodies through the use of jewelry and other accessories. Inspired by Nina’s research, in the lab Zaqir, Shaun, and I found it extremely important to express the intimacy of early wearables with and through our kit. So I decided to build a handmade period jewelry box (see sketch above), which is similar to what wearers of Trouvé’s pieces might have had in their bedrooms. Through the work of contextualizing these pieces as jewelry, I also asked myself if there were other early instances of wearable electronics that were not marketed as fashion accessories (e.g., mining hats and other electronics worn on bodies for industrial use). This comparative approach no doubt enriched the design process, not to mention our understanding of material history.

Tennis for Two

The materials for this kit design were also motivated by packaging’s historical contexts. Tennis for Two was an early DIY game that relied in part on equipment and materials used for military applications. Alex, Shaun, Jon, and I found the narratives between gaming and military technologies to be provocative subjects—topics we want to unfold through the kit. For instance, placing the Tennis for Two components in a mid-twentieth-century ammo box (see example image above) is a way to reference these narratives without making the kit too muddled or ornate.

But will using evocative objects as cases for kits help us or our audiences better situate a kit within a specific historical context or critical paradigm? At this point, we’re not exactly sure. However, in this early stage of kits design, we are experimenting with evocative objects in order to invite the overlap of otherwise parallel histories (i.e., domestic, military, industrial, social, and cultural) through intimate engagements with materials. Is it possible that, by removing ourselves from more consumer-oriented design (e.g., the traditional cardboard box), we forfeit the ability to clearly speak to a participant’s desire to pick up and play with a kit? Or will these material juxtapositions—which communicate intuitively rather than didactically (much the same way that Dada and Surrealism used absurdity and dreamscapes as forms of protest against logical and insensitive scientific thought)—enable us to successfully engage audiences through tacit approaches to historical technocultures? On this front, more from us soon.

Post by Kaitlynn McQueston, attached to KitsForCulture, with the fabrication tag. Featured images on this post care of Kaitlynn McQueston and INCH Survival.