Overview #

During the first week of HTMAA, I tried to get my bearings and figure and think through a final project. This course is about how to make almost anything, and although it seems this class has the tendency to focus on small objects, I’ve been wondering how ‘making’ can apply to a larger scale. As in, how to make a city?

What parts of a city can still be ‘made’? How can elements of the city be designed in such as way so that they can be tinkered with? How might a city be more modular so that people can actively engage with their surroundings and leave their mark? How can cities be How might ‘making’ the city help me to feel closer to it and more empowered? Who gets to make the city and how could this be expanded?

Are there systems that might allow for these changes? Could there be an City Department of Beauty and Maintenance so that there are people dedicated to making subtle but important improvement? How could our set of values shift to really see beauty as important, and connected to our health.

I’ve also been wondering at what point a thing becomes a place. Is a city a thing, or is it a place? Does a collection of things make a place? How can I reimagine this class as how to make almost anywhere?

Based on some of these questions, I am thinking that for my final project I would like to build a street brick with embedded electronics. Ideally, this false brick will be able to replace sidewalk bricks/paver, and with an e-ink display, will provide information. I don’t know exactly what I want the brick to show but I like the idea of it either being useful or playful information. I’ve also been thinking it would be cool to build a brick that has a pressure or motion sensor so that it lights when you step on it or get close.

Notes from class: #

Git = version control and helps to avoid renaming files a bunch of times, which im am quite guilty of

–> they keep using an acronym called GUI (which i looked up and it means graphical user interface) and it made me think of society of spectacle. Are we also living vicariously through GUIs?