Discussion prompt sheets for upcoming workshop in Gothenburg, Sweden ~ thanks to Anna Busdiecker for printing help

Next week, I am presenting in Gothenburg, Sweden. I am facilitating a participatory ethnographic workshop at “Technologies and Improvisation: Tools and theories for uncertain futures,” a symposium hosted by the Cybioses: Shaping Human-Technology Futures Group of the Nordic Summer University, together with the Department of Computer Science and Engineering and the Department of Philosophy, Linguistics and Theory of Science, at University of Gothenburg.

My proposal:

Love Tinkering?

How does making explicit the relations of love in tinkering and creation change imagining technological futures? I propose a twenty-minute interactive structured conversation session exploring love in creative and technical tinkering. The loving impulse of creativity, crafting and engineering is under-theorized. Often, there is an aspect to creation or engineering that includes a loving relation with the materials, problem or things being created. Creators and makers often have affectionate interests in their projects and, perhaps, sometimes feel reciprocal affection from them. This session will use small groups and guiding conversation questions to gather ethnographic data and invite potential collaborators in researching the ways of loving material relations in technological improvisations. This session is part of a multidisciplinary project considering; what if love is a primary mode of relation between humans and the material world?

Unfortunately the session is quite short, only 20 minutes. These are the discussion prompts:

In your small group please consider and discuss the following questions (or any other reactions to this session);

1. Share and discuss any situations where engineers, makers, creators or hackers are/were in love with their work. How does the love of the work change how it is done? Can it change the results?

2. Share and discuss; situations or times where engineers, makers, creators or hackers love the materials they work with and/or the things they make.

3. Have you or have you ever heard of engineers, makers, creators or hackers talking as if or feeling like they are loved by their creations or by the materials or systems they work with?

4. What disagreements and reservations do you have with this theoretical enquiry or this exercise?