Entrevista en we-make-money-not-art al artista y diseñador industrial Yury Gitman. Su último proyecto, My Beating Blog es una particular “performance” que mezcla computación ubícua y fisiología a modo de manual de auto-ayuda. La entrevista toca muchos temas y son especialmente interesantes las ideas de Gitman sobre las relaciones y fronteras entre arte y diseño. Nos quedamos aquí con un comentario sobre la naturaleza más mundana, y por eso más útil, del open source. El código abierto puede convertir lo difícil en sencillo al hacer transparentes los múltiples detalles insignificantes que complican el desarrollo de cualqueir proyecto:
You're also teaching at Parsons. Can you tell us what you tried to achieve with the Making Toys workshop?
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Also, I'm trying to take a stab at developing an "open courseware" type site that teaches people (outside my class) how to make toys. It's a far cry from being very useful open courseware but it's a step in the right direction.
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Part of the reason for making open courseware is to show people how simple toy hardware and software is [by "software" I mean fabric and stitching]. The toy industry is a funny thing. The technology in toys for the most part [a handful of companies not withstanding] is fairly simple. Middle- and high-school students can go into Radio Shack, and with proper instruction, remake 90 percent of the electronics inside today's toys. It's just all a big secret. Where do you source your parts? Where do you source your fabric? How do you sew a switch into a toy? Where do you sew batteries in? Where do you get that annoying sound-box that repeats the same thing over and over until you have nightmares about it? Everyone hides their sources and their processes, secret, secret, secret. It's sad. As a small business owner I understand the importance of all this. So I don't want to say trade-secrets are a bad thing unequivocally. Trade-secrets can be practical for a healthy business. But the basic stuff shouldn't be a secret.I'm an internet kid. I think viewing the source code of html is still one of the coolest things about the internet. So I'm kinda trying to bring the more enlightened aspects of the internet into the art and craft of toy design. In the class the students first homework assignment is to buy a battery operated stuffed animal. The following class we carefully take it apart and photograph everything. They post it all on the blog and we review. It's a great learning experience. They blog the insides and outsides of all their homework and I try to make the class as well documented as possible on the blog.
