

Thoughts on making - kyllikki
http://vincentsanders.blogspot.co.uk/2013/10/if-i-have-style-i-am-not-aware-of-it.html

======
gutnor
I would add to the list - "just do the stuff one damn time".

Everything has been done. There is a better technique and better tool and
reference design for everything you will ever think of.

For amateur, this overload of information can prevent you actually doing
anything, especially in the physical world where anything you do must respect
the laws of physics (varnish needs to dry, cannot just set the boolean to
true).

Talking from my experience in hobby jewellery making. Only read about
something when you fail to do it or after you have done something. Otherwise
you will end up like me, spending my free time watching youtube tutorial after
youtube tutorial and not touching my workbench.

~~~
triplesec
This self-efficacy problem has grown in times of mass media. This is a great
point from experience, thank you, and it rings true with me for certain! It's
a well-researched sociological understanding, that the "perfect" in our mass
media aggregation does often ddispirit the local, craft and beginner in any
field ( for example, think music: it used to be really hard to make anything
that sounded as good as what you had on a record, because there were not the
tools at home). It's only now that I have found friends and a meta-community
who are into making things that I feel enabled again, after years (decades!)
of feeling alone and with way-too-high a mountain to climb.

------
droob
I'd peg them as sophomores -- they know enough of the names and stories to
feel like authorities, but don't have any depth of understanding. The Eames
example is particularly hilarious, since Charles and Ray are pretty famous for
starting with some basic goals, learning everything about the materials at
hand, and figuring out first-hand the best way to use those materials to solve
the problem. They developed techniques for molding plywood in their apartment,
for chrissakes!

------
jonahx
The rebranding of "having a hobby" into "being a maker" \-- there's a blog
post I'd like to read.

~~~
triplesec
I may be mistaking your tone (and if so, sorry for impugning your intent), but
as your post reads to me I'd hate to read an article like that. To encourage
people to make things, we surely ought to be lowering the barriers of entry,
and that includes not raising social barriers of ridicule to new makers,
almost all of whom will start these things out as a hobby. And indeed, a hobby
is a good thing, because it's teaching people to create, think, solve problems
etc. I'd be sad at any article that focused on "maker" being morally superior
to "hobbyist". They are much the same thing.

~~~
jonahx
My tone was partially poking fun and partially genuine interest.

On the one hand, I find the rebranding to be self-aggrandizing and kind of
funny. Your dad went out and worked in the garage just because he wanted some
time alone, and probably enjoyed working with wood, and got some satisfaction
from building something. It seems this narrative is no longer good enough for
us, and the same act elicits a greater investment of one's identity, one that
partakes of the cultural mystique of the artist: One is not merely a hobbyist
furniture maker, or robot builder, or computer programmer -- one is.... A
Maker.

On the other hand, whether you think this is a shift for better or for worse,
I do think it's worth noting and reflecting on. It is recent -- I've only
really been struck by it within the past few years -- and it seems related to
the ever-growing ascendancy of computers and technology within mainstream
culture, and an attendant rise of power for nerd/geek culture.

~~~
MattGrommes
I think you're partly right about it being branding, and I don't think that's
bad. It's okay to put a label on something to make it easier to communicate
the differences. Hobbies can be many things but not all of them involve making
stuff. So a Maker Faire couldn't be Hobby Faire, that's a different event.
Craft Fairs tend not to involve things like electronics or say, fire or
robotics. And if you can hook into the mystique, like you say, to bring more
people in to make new stuff, fine by me.

I personally do cringe a bit at "Maker" the same way I cringe at using
"creative" as a noun but it has value.

------
nnnnni
The best thing that I can say about that is to ignore those pretentious art
school yuppies/hipsters. People like that feel a need to label and analyze
EVERYTHING, even when there's nothing there to analyze.

~~~
waterlion
I agree there's a lot of navel-gazing and self-aggrandizing. It's one of those
regrettable personality traits that comes with the territory, I think.

But this post in particular was a nice contrast with that, a defence of not
having to analyze one's own design influences.

~~~
lmm
To my eyes the whole "maker" concept is exactly that. If you like making
stuff, awesome, but don't pretend it somehow makes you better than people who
don't.

~~~
waterlion
Also massive confirmation bias for people who blog. Who knows what non-
blogger-makers are like.

The novelty of doing something that appears to be 'new' can blind you to the
fact that people have been doing it for millions of years. The only difference
is that you now can blog.

------
waterlion
This contemporary artistic influence is surely one of the components of the
definition of culture. Of course everyone is influenced by all kinds of
things. It's not a crime not being able to trace the lineage though, nor not
to want to. Artists create and their creations enter the societal
consciousness, that's part of the deal.

------
xerophtye
Here's how i see the whole "influences" discussion. What the students did was
the same as you looking at a piece of software and asking what design pattern
was used? Which algorithm? Which Data Structures? How did you go about
building it? Can you show me the Sequence Diagrams, Class Diagrams, ERD? Stuff
like that. An amateur/hobbyist who hasn't had professional training would
probably not be familiar with all this. He might have written a lot of code
and might have done that by reading online tutorials etc etc. He might have
written pretty good code too. But A professional would be abashed if none of
the above were used at all. And they'd feel their moral duty to inform the
person of these things. Is it because the professional is pretentious? Of
course not. But all these things exist for a reason, and it's most useful to
know about them, and apply them.

------
moron4hire
Ahh, you ran into one of my "favorite" types of people to show up to
makerspaces: the self-important art-nerd who thinks s/he knows everything and
is really only looking for a place to show off and find validation.

We had a couple of people like that show up to my old space in Philadelphia
(garsh, I miss it). My favorite was the writer who thought he was liberal
enough to drop the "N"-word ironically.

It's this sort of artist's attitude that was one of the reasons I got out of
fine art in the first place. I never fit in with the other artists because,
for me, the construction of the thing and the experience was reason enough to
do it, not because I had any thing to "say" by the creation of it or the style
I chose.

I suppose it would have been nice to have known where the cultural meme of
flat-pack plywood furniture had come from to influence you to think it was a
cool idea to try it. Or hell, maybe you did come up with the idea in a near-
vacuum: I don't think it's impossible that you could have found yourself in
the same conditions as the Eames' to then come to the same conclusions.

But that's kind of the whole F/OSS point on copyleft and anti-patents. Ideas,
on their own, are almost worthless. The value of a thing is largely in the
execution of it. If the execution of the thing does not lend itself to a lot
of value, then the idea wasn't very valuable to begin with.

These people, who want to nitpick what you do and find any way they can
criticize you (you don't have the right tools, you don't have the right
process, you don't have the right reason), they're doing it out of jealousy.
They have found themselves, for one reason or another, incapable of performing
the way you do. Maybe they can't manage their procrastination and ever get
anything done, or they don't have the patience for detail work and their stuff
comes out crooked, or maybe they _are_ capable, but only after extreme effort.

Never, ever let those people discourage you. Their criticism is their own
insecurity. They see your work and feel it reflects on them and shows them as
a failure. Just ignore them and keep working. Keep making.

~~~
RodericDay
This seems like to broad of an indictment of criticism in general, and
extrapolates way to hard from the original story (which was perfectly
alright).

Stop trying to come up with some general theory about all critics who don't
build. Some of them will be tools, others have a unique skill. A good example
is Pauline Kael, legendary movie critic, who wrote more than a few lines about
the role of her profession not simply as a foil for the artist.

 _It seems to me that the critic 's task should be to help people see more in
the work than they might see without him. That's a modest function, and you
don't need a big theory for it._

There are a million factors that influence execution (luck and randomness are
not insignificant either), and there is no natural reason why the critic and
the executioner need to be the same agent.

~~~
moron4hire
I think I can extrapolate well in this case, because I've been in the exact
same situation, only the geographic location and particular project were
different.

There is a huge difference between a critic and a jerk showing up providing
unsolicited criticism. If you publish a movie to the public, you should expect
to receive criticism. If you're working on something for yourself in your
hackerspace, that's not really an invite to tear you apart.

