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--- on_hammers_and_sandcastles [2025/04/16 13:19] – swrs
+++ on_hammers_and_sandcastles [2025/06/25 13:19] (current) – A User Not Logged in
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 ====== On hammers and sandcastles ======
+We build a [[skrammellegepladsen|sandcastle]]. Patiently trenching the ground dry then moist, lifting a cupped hand, drizzling sand, a flick of the wrist, and pat, pat, patting the walls into shape. Oh, enchanting sandcastle, here you are, as if you had always been there. But… , sandcastle, what are you [[made]] of? Are you [[made]] of our imagination or just grains of sand? Like computers. Are you a computer? and what does software eat?, sand? No answers and soon the castle's foundations wash away with the rising tide.
-We build a sandcastle. Patiently trenching the ground dry then moist, lifting a cupped hand, drizzling sand, a flick of the wrist, and pat, pat, patting the walls into shape. Oh, enchanting sandcastle, here you are, as if you had always been there. But… , sandcastle, what are you made of? Are you made of our imagination or just grains of sand? Like computers. Are you a computer? and what does software eat?, sand? No answers and soon the castle's foundations wash away with the rising tide.
+Humans consider themselves unique for their use of so-called //[[tool|tools]]//. Tools are objects in innumerable shapes and here to help accomplish particular tasks, extending humans' physical abilities, outsourcing their mental capacities or modifiying their surrounding: lengthening the reach of an arm, accelerating the speed of travel, communicating on long-distance, recording ideas, keeping warm. These tools ought to be at one's unconditional command, but there is a law that questions the power structure between a tool and its operator, called the law of the instrument. This law states that making use of a tool we “tend to formulate our problems in such a way that the solutions to those problems demand precisely what we already happen to have at hand.” In other words, we tend to overly rely on a tool we know and are familiar with. Yes, it is tempting, if the only tool you have is a hammer, to treat everything as if it were a [[constructions with nails|nail]]. So, who is operating who? Is it the hand gripping the hammer? or, is the wooden stick swinging the hand?
-Humans consider themselves unique for their use of so-called //[[tool|tools]]//. Tools are objects in innumerable shapes and here to help accomplish particular tasks, extending humans' physical abilities, outsourcing their mental capacities or modifiying their surrounding: lengthening the reach of an arm, accelerating the speed of travel, communicating on long-distance, recording ideas, keeping warm. These tools ought to be at one's unconditional command, but there is a law that questions the power structure between a tool and its operator, called the //[[law of the instrument]]//. This law states that making use of a tool we "tend to formulate our problems in such a way that the solutions to those problems demand precisely what we already happen to have at hand." In other words, we tend to overly rely on a tool we know and are familiar with. Yes, it is tempting, if the only tool you have is a hammer, to treat everything as if it were a nail.
+For the seminar //On hammers and sandcastles// we will consider tools in their broadest sense;
-So, who is operating who? Is it the hand gripping the hammer? or, is the wooden stick swinging the hand?
+simple hardware, a hammer, a broom, a pencil;\\
+complex machines, a bike a plotter, a car, an electronic circuit board;\\
+tangible structures, a chair, a building, a road;\\
+or intangible structures, language and words, software, an educational institution.
-Throughout the seminar //On hammers and sandcastles// we will conduct experimental research on tools, their ways of being employed and ways of employing us. There won't be any professional and we will look for questions, rather than answers. At best, this seminar will be a [[skrammellegepladsen|junk playground]], designed by autonomous work, leaving practical and impractical objects to the disposal of future students.
+Who are they?, how do we use and misuse them?, how do they master us?
-There won't be any boundaries to the fields of graphic or product design and the term //tool// should be understood in its broadest sense and can include: \\
+{{:there-is-no-spoon_3m8j6w8vi61b1-4162455174_01.gif?400 |}}{{:there-is-no-spoon_3m8j6w8vi61b1-4162455174_02.gif?400|}}
-  * simple hardware, a hammer, broom, or pencil; \\
+On the seminar days we will [[trepalium|work]] together through conversations, exercises, punctual screenings, a shared wiki, and woodwork; creating our own hammer handles, possibly a sound workshop, and hopefully a common physical structures.
-  * complex machines, a bike, plotter, printer, car, or electronic circuit boards; \\
-  * tangible structures, a chair, building, or roads; \\
-  * and intangible structures, language, software, educational institutions, or political systems.
-And, what is an experimental research?
+Next to the collective seminar days and throughout the semester each participant will conduct experimental research on a tool of choice. First, get to know your tool by investigating any mode of operation possible. Then, take it to pieces, bend and modify, or create from scratch.
-An experiment is an experience (//to find out about//). It can be used in two ways to //proof//, or to //try//…
+For the outcome of this seminar there is no given shape but one restriction: work towards an object that will stay at the HfG for the use of your future fellow students. It can be a tool itself, a manual for using or misusing an existing structure, a report, practical, impractical, related to any so-called discipline, located in a classrom, the drawer of a workshop, the toilets, at a staircase, or, …, wherever.
-… to support or to refute a behaviour of something we expect, …\\
+"Play has something to do with attacking life in an unconventional manner." There won't be any professionals in this seminar, we will question rather than answer, and at best, it will be a junk playground, designed by our autonomous work.
-… or to determine the result of something previously untried.
-In this seminar we will go both ways. In a first part, you will choose one or several existing tools and investigate them. Where do they come from?, what do they do?, how do we use them?, how do they use us? Take those tools to pieces.
+You can find the seminar's [[dates|program outline here]].
-In the second part, you choose a tool and modify it, or create a new one, from scratch; and work towards something that will stay at the [[HfG Karlsruhe]] for the use of its future students. It can be a tool itself, a manual for using or misusing an existing structure, a report, practical, impractical, related to any so-called discipline, located in a classrom, the drawer of a workshop, the toilets, at a staircase, or, …, wherever.
-During the seminar days we will exchange about our research, there will be punctual exercises, screenings and thoughts. There is also a collective wiki for everyone to read, write and override on [[start|this skrammelWiki]].
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