It is that the alternative to making is usually not doing nothing — it is nearly always doing things for and with other people
Debbie Chachra, “Beyond Making,” in Making Things and Drawing Boundaries: Experiments in the Digital Humanities, ed. Jentry Sayers, Debates in the Digital Humanities (University of Minnesota Press, 2017).
The passage that stood out to me the most from this week’s readings was Debbie Chachra’s chapter “Beyond Making” in Making Things and Drawing Boundaries: Experiments in the Digital Humanities. I thought it was interesting because there is often an assumption that making something tangible is the most valuable form of work. Chachra challenges this idea by explaining that the alternative to making is doing things “for and with other people”. This made me think about all the different forms of work that can contribute to a project without necessarily producing a physical or digital object,
This idea reminded me of some of my previous experiences in CAMS classes working with media. In those classes I spent time analyzing film and sound, which involes paying close attention to how different elements work together to create meaning. I was not always creating a digital product, but I was still actively engaging with technology and media through observation, interpretation, and experimentation. Chachra’s arguement helped me see that these activites can also be part of Digital Humanities. The process of analyzing and understanding media can be just as important as creating something new.
At the same time, the readings have made me more interested in actually making things as a way to explore humanities questions. Burdick et al. explain how digital tools can change the ways humanitites scholars investigate and communicate ideas. I think it would be interesting to experiment with digital media, sound, visualization, and interactive storytelling. I feel that these methods are interesting ways to communicate ideas that might be different to express through traditonal writing alone.
The way in which these approaches are evolving through the use of AI is another subject in which I am interested. The approach of critical making discussed by Johnson and Salter made me reflect on the distinction between using a tool to make something and knowing how that process works behind the making of the thing itself. This issue is of importance especially because AI can generate content such as writing or imagery instantaneously.