Why DIY?

The tekhnē project has been conceived around questions about sound, technology, and access. It is inspired by the observation that in a relatively recent history, the advent of electronic instruments has spurred not only a much more diverse group of makers, but also a larger variety of what can be considered to be music and sound art. We might say that the present day form of the sonic arts owes its beginning to a technological shift: the availability and democratisation of a number of tools of sound production and reproduction in the twentieth century. These tools—such as synthesisers, loudspeakers, tape machines, microphones, and computers—were all originally invented for purposes other than music, but were creatively appropriated by artists and developed into the instruments we know today.

Technology has always been a part of the apparatus of music making—think of a piano, a concert hall, or the Pythagorean system of tuning—but the possibility to produce and reproduce sound electronically, which became widely available in the twentieth century, has added a new paradigm. As new technologies have destabilised and pluralised traditional ideas of mastery, they have changed not only what music sounds like, but who it is produced by. This in turn has had enormous implications for where music is heard, how it is used, and what role it plays in society. Feminist and post-humanist theorists such as Donna Haraway, Vinciane Despret and Rosi Braidotti have elaborated ideas on technology as a way to pass beyond the human-nature and mind-over-body biases. In parallel, post-colonial theorists such as Louis Chude-Sokei and Edouard Glissant have demonstrated how even apparently “neutral” technologies are still invested with ideological charge, but also how they might be reclaimed as possible tools for emancipation and the shaping of identity.

Certain dualisms have been persistent in Western traditions; they have all been systemic to the logics and practices of domination of women, people of colour, nature, workers, animals – in short, domination of all constituted as others, whose task is to mirror the self. [...] High-tech culture challenges these dualisms in intriguing ways.
- Donna Haraway

AI, cyborgs, and robotics are almost always produced by state power. They represent corporate capital and the centralisation of knowledge and power. But […] music has always been the space where people who don't necessarily work for centralised state power and authority, get to play with technology, particularly people of colour.
- Louis Chude-Sokei

Taken in its original sense of “tekhnē”, the word technology means the art of craft, and is an ongoing process fuelled by new inventions and discoveries. Such discoveries mostly happen through reuse of the existing in new combinations. In art, the tools largely define the extent of what is possible and thus what is being made. At the same time, artists are constantly refining and redeveloping their tools to achieve ideas that were otherwise impossible. This dynamic of use and creative “misuse” is present in all art forms, and leads regularly to new tools, aesthetics, and takes on the creative process. By actively engaging with their tools artists lead both themselves and their audiences to philosophical and ideological reflections.

In this way, and as history has shown, moments of technological shifts can offer possibilities for social shift. As new tools become available, they destabilise the traditional methods of exclusion from the creative field. Within music and sound art, the last century has afforded numerous examples of previously excluded groups making their way into the field through experimental and innovative approaches to technology. Originally seen as a “merely” executive role, the use of synthesisers in electronic music opened the gates for many female pioneers (such as Eliane Radigue, Daphne Oram, Wendy Carlos, and many more). Later, the appropriation of domestic sound devices such as turntables in hip hop and dance music created the possibility for a generation of Black and working class musicians to generate important cultural influence. Pirate radios, operating outside of official bandwidths, have been an invaluable tool of dissemination for otherwise marginalised groups across Europe and beyond. More recently, an early and active use of the internet has allowed networks of artists and musicians living outside of major cities ways to access and participate in international music making.

What these few examples demonstrate, is that the social and the technological go hand in hand. However, such autonomous and experimental approaches need to be supported and recognised in equally innovative ways. Different modes of making art need different modes of presentation, dissemination, and communication to help move the field of the sonic arts toward a more inclusive and democratic space. What the examples also show, is that the way people use a tool is often completely unforeseeable by those who develop it.

DIY strategies and cultures are fundamental to artistic exploration. These practices play an important role in the appropriation of technologies, the creation of communities, and platforms for learning together. In ‘misusing’ technologies, we make them our own, and in so doing slip from the role of the passive consumer into that of the autonomous user. For tekhnē, the idea of active usership is explicitely extended to current-day digital technologies. As with any technology, being able to use computers and the internet creatively demands some understanding of how they function, bypassing the expected end behaviours of the companies who marketed them.

This issue of the tekhnē journal then dives into the various autonomous and DIY practices circling around musical creation in different regions of the world. Depending on the goal, context, and possibilities at hand, DIY can mean very different things. It can relate to the creation of an idiosyncratic instrumentarium, the setting up of autonomous spaces where to exchange and learn, or the invention of imagined futures. It is however always self-determined, and in this sense autonomous and critical towards mainstream ideologies linked to capitalist production, hierarchic and exclusionist social structures, and the privatisation of the internet.

In the field of music, such ‘hands-on’ strategies have traditionally been treated with condescention. When the model is that of the lone composer/author receiving their music through inspiration and genius, without the help of others, the DIY maker gets dismissed as an unrigorous tinkerer of tools. However, in DIY culture, it is precisely this “connection between hand and word” which is essential, as writer Verena Kuni explains: “The reflexive part has an enormous value in do-it-yourself”. Kuni explains that such practices have an important human component of solidarity and responsibility: “Solidarity means that everyone must move towards each other. And for this, and above all for themselves, each individual is responsible. I would say that the Do It Yourself principle can strengthen the awareness that we are all political people. And that we must also act politically.” DIY has an empowering effect, because “it is self-made all along the way.”

The articles of this journal will guide the reader through various perspectives on DIY practices and cultures, emphasizing the necessary correlation between their political value and artistic agency.

VNS Matrix’s ‘Manifesto’ is a historical text about the future, postulating feminist struggle as a way to create a self-determined culture. Born from the relatively peripheral city of Adelaide, South Australia in the early 1990s, the collective VNS Matrix sought to utilise the reach and utopic potential of the early internet as an open zone for female autonomy (more) free from existing patriarchal structures. In this text, writer Melinda Rackham outlines the groups beginnings, and particularly their “A Cyberfeminist Manifesto for the 21st Century”.

Sholto Dobie, one of the tekhnē artists in residency, offers his specific take on the historicity of technology, linked to his own artistic practice. He speaks about its anthropomorphic aspect, about the role of the bricoleur and their material, and about his approach to performance. Technology for Dobie is imaginative and intuitive, and often accidental.

Giuliano Obici spells out the Brazilian Gambioluthery, a way of re-envisioning musical instruments based on everyday hacking practices; improvising with found material, twisting original functionalities into new vernacular assemblages. A form of technological disobedience present in many Latin American countries.

Indra Menus is elaborating on what DIY cultures can achieve, but also what challenges they face, on the specific example of the Indonesian village Ruang Gulma, where life and music are fundamentally intertwined, and practised by the whole village together.

Celeste Betancur draws a thread through the historical interconnection between technology and style, focusing on the importance of artistic use of programming languages in the digital realm. How does the language of the code define the way of working and vice versa? Celeste is active in the creation of accessible pedagogical tools, seeing the creation of new programming languages as a way to teach new users how to develop their own forms of expression.

Gloria González Fuster offers a legal perspective on the laws around data protection in Europe. In the era of social media and data tracking, the ‘user’ is increasingly understood as a knowable and trackable entity. In her article, González Fuster critically examines the European legal frameworks for user data, looking at the assumptions and implications these laws enact.

Eleni Ikoniadu’s text takes the form of a science fiction governmental report, reading the strategies and politicisation of present day social media use from the future standpoint of 2082. She explores strategies like leaks and “algotraps” as some of the few tools still available to social media users in the increasingly privatised and tightly controlled internet.

Verena Kuni’s contribution marks the beginning of a glossary in progress, based on the content of the tekhne website: a glossary on contemporary art and artistic research exploring creative and critical uses of technology. She questions the concept of objectivity in relation to computer-based methods, combining them with subjective choices.