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Maker Culture and DiY technologies: re-functioning as a Techno-Animist practice

Abstract The emergence of ‘Maker Culture’ and ‘Maker Spaces’ within formal (and informal) learning environments around the world can be seen as part of a wider shift in consciousness regarding the relationship between human and the material environment. This is reflected in theoretical and academic movements such as the ‘material turn’: where concepts such as Jane Bennett’s ‘vibrant matter’ and Karen Barad’s ‘intra-activity’ have begun to displace human intention as the exclusive centre of agency. In this article, an engagement with DiY (Do-it-Yourself) technologies is explored through an observation of the workshop environment of a single practitioner: uncovering strategies which allow material agency to re-function simple technologies into forms which would be difficult to reproduce using exclusively human intention. Deviating from the role of technology as an invisibly functioning tool, material media is defined as an approach to technologies which incorporates materials as active agents in the creative process of making of cultural artefacts. Through the use of redundant and discarded materials, the DiY practitioner examined in this article is seen to follow a Techno-Animist approach to media technologies: acknowledging the qualities of ‘vibrant matter’ as an active component of agency; re-situating the human in relation to the material environment.