2025 Theme – electronics faire

Low Tech

Low Tech follows the spirit of the low fidelity (lofi), low-tech, minimal computing, handmade, craft, and DIY movements and genres. Low Tech can be a bounded technical designation (adjacent to technical prefixes like smart or super), and/or an abstracted aesthetic practice. Low Tech is not synonymous with analog: there are myriad examples of digital, low-tech networks, protocols, and objects. The prefix “low” can be applied to other technical designations including but not limited to things like low-power electronics and electronics that make use of low-level programming languages. Low Tech might be a process of looking through the history of technology to find something new in that which is old. As a methodology, a low tech essay could examine fundamental logics of circuit design and prototyping, electronic component manufacturing (from the handmade to the industrial), and counting and computation. As a practice, Low Tech could be something like weaving or drawing to explain a low-level programming concept, taking electronics apart, growing crystals at home, making ascii art, circuit bending to make music, breaking electronic parts (on purpose or on accident), salvaging electronic parts, making art with simple machines, powering electronics through something like the sun, winding a lever, or riding a bike. We welcome myriad interpretations and meditations on this theme.

Keynote: Lori Emerson

Lori Emerson is Associate Professor of Media Studies; Director of the Intermedia Arts, Writing, and Performance Program; and Associate Chair of Graduate Studies at the University of Colorado Boulder. She is also Founding Director of the Media Archaeology Lab. Emerson writes about the history of telecommunications networks, the history of computing, media archaeology, materialist media studies, laboratories, and digital humanities. She is currently working on a cluster of research projects she calls “Other Networks” or histories of telecommunications networks that existed before or outside of the Internet. Emerson is author of the forthcoming Other Networks: A Radical Technology Sourcebook (Anthology Editions, 2025), co-author of THE LAB BOOK: Situated Practices in Media Studies (University of Minnesota Press, 2022), author of Reading Writing Interfaces: From the Digital to the Bookbound (University of Minnesota Press, 2014), and editor of numerous collections.