Making Trouble: Design and Material Activism

Making hacks into reality. It engages matter in ways that trespass the boundaries between the civic realm and the state—assigned laws. Even with primitive tools and skills, designing and making can break open and repurpose arrangements of power. The proof is that some crafts are so controversial—lock—picking, moonshining, shoplifting, smuggling, sabotage—that they need to be controlled or even outlawed. When designers and makers touch on these contested realms, they run into trouble. This h...