Loose Writing on Suburbia, Computing, Design, and a Lack of Variance
“Eighty percent of everthing ever built in America has been built in the last fifty years, and most of it is depressing, brutal, ugly, unhealthy, and spiritually degrading” James Howard Kunstler
What are hackerspaces? I don’t mean in terms of physical location, but in terms of what societal function do they have? Deyan Sudjic’s new book, “The Language of Things” proposes that design is trying to become more interesting, higher up the cultural chain, now that the process of manufacture is so mechanised. Does the existence of playful venues for the exploration of computer technologies point to a similar attempt at cultural evolution? Or, are these venues part of the same upward motion from those involved with design?
The quote at the top of this post by Kunstler is a similar attitude, but this time focused towards the great suburbs of America. These vast non-spaces have been more fully explored in literature by writers such as J. G. Ballard and Douglas Coupland, who have come to the conclusion that their existence shows a flattening of culture and physical location. Where Foucault claimed that our contemporary existence would become an “epoch of space”, Virilio points out that space (as in the place one mile above us) is merely another theatre of war to the ruling classes of the military/industrial complex.
These are all reductionist theories – from Sudjic to Ballard to Virilio, all convinced that the contemporary movement of society is towards a levelling and a widespread homogeneity of variance. Whilst this might be true in some regards (notice the lack of subcultural movements now that the internet is part of the mainstream) there is a barrier of knowledge that stops those involved with Hackerspaces becoming entirely subsumed by fashion. Hackerspaces (and the like, of which more later) are frequented by a type of individual who has a number of unusual skills, and the venue operates as a place where those skills can be celebrated.
Whilst they might be venues that allow for the infiltration of design-led ideas into “High Art”, as positied by Sudjic, most of the artifacts created are either too ephemeral (code-based) or bespoke to enter into a fashion-driven mainstream culture. They might function as early detection centres for work that might go on to be more influential, in the way that the Homebrew Computer Club helped to give birth to modern computing, or they might be another part in an increasing homogenisation of creativity, where even the strangest forms of art are disseminated and discussed.
