Today

• How is desktop fabrication relevant to digital humanities?
• What are its research implications?
• From the field, what are some example projects and initiatives?

Slides Online

• View in HTML: bit.ly/fabdh2013
• Fork in GitHub: bit.ly/forkfabdh2013
• All images care of our labs, with permission from those photographed

Defining Desktop Fabrication

• Digitizing analog manufacturing techniques

Defining Desktop Fabrication

• Digitizing analog manufacturing techniques
• Affording the output of digital content in physical form

Defining Desktop Fabrication

• Digitizing analog manufacturing techniques
• Affording the output of digital content in physical form
• Personalizing production process

Defining Desktop Fabrication

• Digitizing analog manufacturing techniques
• Affording the output of digital content in physical form
• Personalizing production process
• Prototyping, replicating, and refashioning solid objects

Defining Desktop Fabrication

• Digitizing analog manufacturing techniques
• Affording the output of digital content in physical form
• Personalizing production process
• Prototyping, replicating, and refashioning solid objects
• Using 3D printers, milling machines, and laser cutters

“Personal fabrication will bring the programmability of digital worlds we've invented to the physical world we inhabit.” –Neil Gershenfeld

Maker Lab: Kits for Cultural History

• Collaboration with the Lab for Humanistic Fabrication
• Supported by the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada
• Open-source, physical kits
• Inspired by the Fluxkits (1960s-1970s)
• Learn more: maker.uvic.ca/kitsposter/

Maker Lab: "Telescribe Kit" (1914)

• Original scholarship on the device (essay)
• Documentation of visual culture (image files)
• Sound transduction tutorial (electronics)
• Fabricated mechanisms (OBJ files and ABS prints)
• Packaging appropriate for the time period

Maker Lab: "Flash Jewellery Kit" (1884)

• Original scholarship on the device (essay)
• Documentation of visual culture (image files)
• Light sensing and expression tutorial (electronics)
• Fabricated mechanisms (OBJ files and ABS prints)
• Packaging appropriate for the time period

Maker Lab: Implications of the Kits

• Applied media history / STS (Ratto, Turkel)
• Material particulars of old technologies (Gitelman, Kirschenbaum)
• Inscription and transduction studies (Chun, Sterne, Vismann)
• Tacit knowledge (Balsamo, Nowviskie, Woodward)
• Sense history / ethnography (Crary, Macpherson, E. Thompson)

Maker Lab: Z-Axis Research

• Printing 3D data visualizations
• Subjective elements of humanities research "fall on the z-axis"
• Prints afford concrete engagement with screen-based, graphical expression
• Difficult to persuasively express data by hand
• Learn more: maker.uvic.ca/zposter/

Lab for Humanistic Fabrication: Public History

• Coursework
• Galleries, Libraries, Archives and Museums
• Tools, supplies, resources are at-hand
• Research

Lab for Humanistic Fabrication: Drawings and Plans

• Incomplete sources
• Accuracy and reliability
• Tacit knowledge and implicit assumptions

Lab for Humanistic Fabrication: Models
Made

• What works and what doesn't?
• Context, conditions, affordances
• Materiality

Next Steps + Needs

• Infrastructure appropriate for physical computing and fabrication
• Shared spaces for collaborative research and experimentation
• Literacy in 3D modeling and post-production
• Best practices for the Internet of Things (Sterling)
• More attention to eco-friendly manufacturing
• Combinations of comparative media studies/STS and DH (Liu, Losh, Macpherson)
• Recommended: Matt Ratto and Robert Ree (2012)

Thank You

• Jentery Sayers (U. of Victoria | Maker Lab in the Humanities | @jenterysayers)
• Jeremy Boggs (U. of Virginia | Scholars' Lab | @clioweb)
• Devon Elliott (Western U. | Lab for Humanistic Fabrication | @devonelliott)

Fork this: bit.ly/forkfabdh2013