Makers/Making

Gauntlett: “Il movimento maker è maturo. Fare e condividere cambieranno l’economia”

(originally created and posted on CheFuturo) Chi è stato alla Maker Faire di Roma, chi se l’è sentita raccontare perché non ci è potuto essere, chi ci è stato un giorno solo e quelli che invece l’hanno costruita lungo tutta la settimana hanno provato una sensazione comune: Sono stati travolti da un’energia trasformativa straordinaria fatta di progetti ma soprattutto di persone. Ancora non riusciamo a spiegarci esattamente qual’è stata la ricetta che ha portato a tale risultato. Ma alcune considerazioni possiamo farle specialmente insieme a qualcuno, come David Gauntlett, che negli ultimi due anni ha riflettuto su alcuni temi che sono al centro della Maker Faire dal suo inizio. Pochi sanno, per esempio, che la Maker Faire di Roma è stata sí una fiera ma con un format particolare, mai collaudato in Italia in questo ambito, e che la avvicina più al modo in cui si organizzano le mostre d’arte rispetto alle fiere commerciali. Nata nel 2006 negli Stati Uniti

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A documentary on Making, living and sharing by Jens Dyvik

For two years Jens Dyvik travelled around the globe visiting more than 25 fablabs, makerspaces, hackerspaces looking for answers to crucial questions like: How can I support people in creating their own products? If I share my design with the world, how can I still make a living? How can we achieve global collaboration and local manufacturing? One of my fav sentences of the movie:  “simply put: personal manufacturing is a way of filling your world with more meaningful things.” (Il video è corredato di sottotitoli in italiano grazie al supporto di Massimo Menichinelli)

Afroditi experiments with embroidery, soft circuits and diy electronics

(originally created and posted on Arduino blog) The work of Afroditi Psarra includes experimentation with embroidery, soft circuit and diy electronics. I got in touch with her after discovering she was holding a workshop in Barcelona around sound performances using Lilypad Arduino along with a really cool embroidered synthesizer (…and also submitting her project to Maker Faire Rome !). Even if her background is in fine arts, as a little girl she got interested in creative ways of expression: on one side she was lucky enough to have all sorts of after-school activities that included painting, theater games and learning but also how to program using LOGO and QBasic. That was in the days of black-and-white terminals and MS-DOS commands: I still remember the excitement of not knowing what to expect at the opposite side of the screen. So for me, technology has always been a major part of my life.

Knitic project, or how to give a new brain to knitting machines

  (originally created and posted on Arduino blog) Knitic is an open source project which controls electronic knitting machines via Arduino. To be more precise, Knitic is like a new ‘brain’ for the Brother knitting machines allowing people to create any pattern and modify them on the fly. Knitic kit is composed by an Arduino Due, a diy printed circuit board on top of it, connected to the electronic parts of the original machine, (like end-of-line sensors, encoder, and 16 solenoids) and a software to control the needles real-time. In the past days I interviewed Varvara & Mar, the duo who developed the project. They’ve been working together as artists since 2009 and their artistic practices lay at the intersection between art, technology, and science. When I run into their project I immediately liked their approach as they see knitting machines as the first real domestic fabrication tool, that has been  overlooked in the age of digital fabrication. Check the

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