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.
Low-Tech Bibliography and Inspiration:
How To Get What You Want Hannah Perner-Wilson
Out of Power Tower and Postnaturalia Kristof Kintera
Sizzling Semiconductors Ioana Vreme Moser
Tupperware Electronic Instruments ADACHI Tomomi
Drift Mine Satellite Everest Pipkin
Āmantēcayōtl: And When it Disappears, it is Said, the Moon has Died, Fernando Palma Rodríguez
How to Build a Digital Brick Wall Allan Wexler
Solar Server for Video Games Kara Stone
Textile Instruments Agente Cosura / Lisa Simpson
Lubricate Coil Engine Tabita Rezaire
The New Way Things Work David Macaulay
Code Switch: Distributing Blackness, Reprogramming Internet Art Organized by Legacy Russell
Neo-Luddite Reading Groups
Imaginary Landscape No. 4 John Cage
Queer Connections Faith Holland
Vape Synth David Rios, Kari Love, Shuang Cai, and Becky Stern
How to Do Things with Sensors Jennifer Gabrys
Painting Machines Lolo y Sosaku
Handmade Electronic Music Nicholas Collins
Dark Matter Objects Zine Neta Bomani
Super Mario Clouds Cory Archangel
Low Power Electronics
Case Mod by Janne Schimmel
Uncomputable Ephemera Alex Galloway
Handmade Computers Taeyoon Choi
Bread Symphony Katya Rozanova, Ashley Jane Lewis, and Max Horwich
Circuit Experiments Michelle Temple
Tiny Internet Spencer Chang
Open Garden Alice Yuan Zhang
Minimal Computing and Ontologies Erik Radio
Two Person Operating System Type 2 Martha Friedman and Susan Marshall
Alt-Text as Poetry Finnegan and Bojana
Towards a Folk Computer Cristóbal Sciutto
Materiality and Matter and Stuff: What Electronic Texts Are Made Of Matthew G. Kirschenbaum