Introduction. Everything started with pioneers

I am Serena Cangiano, senior research associate at SUPSI University and head of the Digital Fabrication Lab. When I introduce myself I typically prefer to use an artwork I have affect for that is the glowing rabbit by Edoard Kac GFP Bunny (Kac 2000). A genetic modfied rabbit that glows when it darks. Besides the real intention of the athuro of this amazing piece of transgenic art, I have kept useing this symbol to represent my professional profile as a hybrid background and mixed interests and questions. is the glowing rabbit still a rabbit when the gentics has been modified by technological and human intervention?

Starting from BA and MA studies I have been fascinated by how pioneers in digital art and design become the main generator of a real digital culture, namely the exploration of dgital technologies as means of expresion and interfaces with no disciplinary bondoures and beyond the use of tools. That was what I have learned by buolding up an archive of a digital art festival in the early 2000 and when I discovered the beaufitful work by Ariella Vidach and Claudio Prati who explored the history of technology by creating dance performances and investigating the relation with the human bodies. The two are 65 and 72 and they are still producing performances by hacking any kind of new technologies becoming digitally autonomous artists in this case with the meaning of being able to use available technologies for building their creation and create other artistic products not as the technology was initially intended for.

AiEP Avventure in Elicottero Prodotti - EXP Performance 1996

2. Interaction Design as the design practice that open technologies

In the field of Interaction Design, opening technologies has always been a favored approach because it is one of the youngest design practices wherein creators realized the importance of sketching projects directly with hardware and software, not just with a pencil. From Arduino to Processing and several graphic programming environments, the interaction design community has explored all kinds of tools for creating products, installations, and sentient environments. In doing so, it also focuses on opening the black box of technology through onboarding interfaces.

Designing interactions often involves opening up technologies and making it easier for non-experts to “control” it, sometimes by immersing them in a compelling story. Through buttons, graphical user interfaces, and interactive projects, complex technological concepts have always been unboxed by creating experiences accessible to the masses. If you look at the history of the interfaces, you could see the effort in enabling more and more non expert users in controlling a computer from text based interfaces to the mouse.

Starting working to design and implementation of programs for creatives and designers : In 2010, we ran a series of workshops at SUPSI to teach designers Arduino. These weren't technical training sessions—they were about empowering designers to prototype their own interactive systems, to sketch with electronics, to open up the technology and make it their own design material. Designers learned to create responsive objects, interactive installations, and smart prototypes not by becoming engineers, but by gaining enough technological autonomy to translate their design vision directly into working artifacts.

3. Makers, Hackers, Fabbers. Movements for the technology autonomy.

DO not forget that DIY and design we have Victor Papanek. Make as way of become autonmous from a system

then we have the Makerls Biil of Rights related to repairabilitsy If you can’t open it, you don’t own it. Mister Jalopy proposed an Owner’s Bill of Rights, a maker’s memorandum requesting repairability for the products around us. It became a manifesto for the maker community, a modus operandi for open sourcers and forward-thinking manufacturers. https://jamesprovost.com/makers-bill-of-rights/

recente hacking for creativity, the wii mote and the xbox

https://www.cs.cmu.edu/~15-821/assets/READINGS/PAPERS/lee2008.pdf https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Jd3-eiid-Uw

What if you want to make medical devices, then fabbers could certify their products. Wheel chair for example.

The open source medical devices.

4. From Digital Skills to Computational Thinking

Starting working to design and implementation of a