Radical DIY Computing

January 28, 2017

Radical DIY Computing taught people how to build a simple Linux computer from scratch with the CHIP from Next Thing Co. It included hardware, operating systems, and programs. 

Participants also learned the open-source software movement as an alternative to corporate computing culture and as a tool for self and community-based empowerment. 

The first 20 people who reserved were able to take a handbuilt computer. Others left with a complete guide to building open-source computers for under $50. 

BIO

Lee Tusman is a new media artist and curator interested in the application of the radical ethos of collectives and DIY culture to the creation of, aesthetics, and open-source distribution methods of digital culture. His artistic output includes interactive media, video art, net art, experimental videogames, sound art, websites, Twitter bots, and pirate radio stations. Many of his works feature themes of self-identity, mistranslation, and new methods of communication in contemporary internet culture. In addition to his art practice, Tusman has been a curator for a decade, presenting exhibits and public performance projects at museums, galleries, universities, and alternative venues in Philadelphia, New York, Boston, Toronto, and Los Angeles.

Echo Theohar is a community technologist and artist based in Los Angeles, CA. She currently studies Post-Network Art and Theory as an undergraduate research fellow at UCLA and holds teaching experience in digital media both at UCLA and Digital Dragon Studios in Santa Monica. Her past projects have ranged from curating the feminist/hacktivist exhibition Deep Web Roach Queen to the development of an educational web series on programming with UCLA DMA Faculty Casey Reas. She has also served as an interim guest design consultant of new museum software for LACMA. Her most recent project included authoring research on Perceptual Shifts: Post-Internet Image Culture and Contemporary Media Art Praxis, which she presented at the 2016 UCLA Undergraduate Research Week Conference as a representative of the Design | Media Arts Department.