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...