Critical Making is an academic form of social critique which, as its name suggests, blends critical thinking with the act of making. I appreciate the underwhelming functionality of this definition, as well as its blandness as an introduction. However, Critical Making’s etymological simplicity perfectly advertises its most important aspect: the duality of its critique.
Leaving Marcel O’Gorman’s presentation last week, I wondered how Critical Making truly combines its two primary, seemingly contrarian, fields. The abstract academic reasoning of the humanities alongside the more grounded process of “making.” I wasn’t sure how compatible the two were as a method of technological criticism. Dr. O’Gorman spoke about the application of the humanities in contemporary critique of “technoculture.” Most importantly, he spoke about how we needed to evolve our academic consideration of this topic. Due to the frankly frightening pace with which modern technoculture is capable of inventing and reinventing itself, many critiques become redundant by the time they’ve cleared traditional academic routes and standards. Contemporary culture simply moves too fast. In reaction to this, Critical Making places more of an emphasis on the process itself (the actual making), in order to create a more impactful statement, a point reiterated by Dr. Matt Ratto, one of Critical Making’s original proponents: “Critical making emphasizes the shared acts of making rather than the evocative object. The final prototypes are not intended to be displayed and to speak for themselves.”
In order to understand the reasoning behind Critical Making’s unconventional emphasis on the process of making, we firstly must understand the perceived threat of “technoculture.”
Promoting cold, maximalist systems of overworking, overproducing, and overconsuming, modern society has been slowly drained of its human-orientated values. Millions of years of evolution subverted and rewired at a blistering pace. Embodied by our technology, we struggle with consciously stepping back and evaluating our place within the culture. I’m trying to avoid sounding conspiratorial, Critical Making isn’t a damning statement of technological development in and of itself, but it does offer an opportunity to break this cycle and assess ourselves. It’s an extended critique of the truly bizarre place we’ve ended up as a society. This is why the final piece isn’t really important and why Critical Making’s duality of the humanities and the act of “making” separates it from other critiques. Avoiding the restriction of traditional systems, these pieces are free to traverse new concepts and spaces, addressing and criticising modernity in its own language, so to speak. In order to subvert and critique a constantly evolving system, we need to evolve our methods alongside it, otherwise any meaning will inevitably be lost. Dr. O’Gorman considered how the humanities can adapt to these new conditions, shaping the influence of technoculture, rather than just critiquing it after the fact. Conceptually and mechanically, Critical Making not only differs from contemporary social critiques, but offers an alternative, a progression. Its importance isn’t the final statement, it’s in the making of that statement, questioning when we’ll finally start paying attention.
