Tooling

Situating 'tools' within the collective practice of Hackers & Designers

In the context of Hackers & Designers, ‘tools’ can mean several things, for instance pedagogical tools and tools for collaboration that enable critical engagement with, and through, technology. 'Tools' may refer to digital tools, software or hardware that we, as designers, artists, technologists and organizers interact with, on a daily basis.

H&D tends toward free/libre and open-source tools. In H&D workshops, the accessibility of source code offers possibilities for using, copying, studying and changing, thus learning from and with technology. In contrast to the restrictions of using, sharing and modifying proprietary software, free and open-source principles derive from software development practices where technical objects “are made publicly and freely available.” According to the Free Software Foundation, ‘free’ is defined as liberty, as “free from restriction, not as ‘free of charge.’” The collective aspects of free and open-source software are expressed through particular modes of licensing and the practice of documentation and publication of source code on platforms for distributed version control and source code management such as Github and Gitlab. In the context of H&D, these principles are explored in and outside of the domain of computer programming. Such principles are nurtured through a shared understanding that nothing is really made from scratch, and that the software and hardware we are working with, have been passed through many hands.

There are certain open-source tools that H&D accumulated around organizational activities, such as the web spreadsheet tool Ethercalc to create overviews for budgets and plans or the real-time collaborative note taking tool Etherpad. As free and open-source projects, these tools are used by many collectives and individuals who put them into practice across various contexts. For H&D, such tools are enmeshed with organizational routines, with other technical systems and are also connected to other communities of toolmakers and users.

Furthermore, H&D builds and works with digital tools that are situated in the realm of experimental publishing and graphic design. These include self-made publishing tools such as ChattyPub, Momentary Zine, and the Heartbeat-to-print tool. In experimenting with design and publishing tools, H&D draws inspiration from other collectives and individuals, such as the Brussels-based collective Open Source Publishing and ‘Constant Association for Art & Media’, the Rotterdam-based collective Varia, the Amsterdam-based collective fanfare, the publishing practice of Vienna-based artist Eva Weinmayr, or the embodied publishing practices of Rotterdam-based designers Amy Suo Wu and Clara Balaguer. In addition, the knowledge and practices evolving from educational environments are encapsulated by the student-led interdepartmental initiative PUB at the Sandberg Instituut Amsterdam or the experimental publishing program XPUB at Piet Zwart Institute in Rotterdam,16 as well as the digitaland hybrid publishing research groups of the Institute of Network Cultures.

At H&D, such tools are often activated through workshops and are used to design small edition self-published printed matter. H&D’s experiments with design tools have challenged my design routines, more specifically the relationships I have built with design software, the tools I have become used to since my design education. In the context of H&D, publishing tools are not replacements but function in parallel to proprietary tools. They are indicative of an attempt to envision a process of designing a publication differently than it would be conventionally done. The practical and experimental approach to conceptualizing and building design and organizational tools differently has allowed me to test out other scenarios for tool-designer relationships and interactions.

Furthermore, H&D’s hands-on workshops bring together people and tools, in a temporary, focused environment. Such workshops feed off and nurture communities of tool users and makers who consider it relevant to expand the conception of tools and tool-building processes, to learn about the ways in which tools are constructed in a hands-on, practical and often playful manner. In all instances it seems to me that people involved with H&D ascribe a certain value to toolmaking.

Yet, it also seems as if the shared enthusiasm for experimenting with tools cannot be located within the tool itself, nor in the products or outcomes these self-made tools produce. The appreciation for such self-made tools seems to lie in the process of building tools. In my experience of experimenting with tools in the context of H&D, there is a common understanding that tools are not mere instruments but that, as tool-users and makers, we are implicated in them, in ways that go beyond their immediately evident utility or the products they may produce.