"The Field Guide to Hacking" Book

My friend Michelle Poon was working on a book and mentioned to me that I should share some recent works with her. I mentioned the work I did mentoring a group of students from the AA (Architecture Association” Summer School at City U and a recent experiment of replacing the coral mapping device called the quadrat by a laser replacement. Si here it is: the book "The Field Guide to Hacking" Michelle Poon, Foreword by Mitch Altman. ISBN 9789887871309

Hacking, as we define it, is the intellectual challenge to creatively overcome, circumvent, deconstruct or otherwise “hack” the limitations, capabilities, purposes, forms, etc. of virtually anything—or in other words: to mess around with [anything] for fun.

In The Field Guide to Hacking, the practises and protocols of hacking is defined by notions of peer production, self-organised communities, and the intellectual exercises of exploring anything beyond its intended purpose. Demonstrated by way of Dim Sum Labs hackerspace and its surrounding community, this collection of snapshots is of the work generated from an organic nebula, culled from an overarching theme of exploration, curiosity, and output.

This book reveals a range of techniques of both physical and digital, documented as project case studies. It also features contributions by researchers, artists, and scientists from prominent institutions to offer their perspectives on what it means to hack. Altogether, a manual to overcome the limitations of traditional methods of production.

Within _TFGTH, there is a collection of projects, instructions, and code, that is ordered into six(ish) sections, each prefaced by essays written by some very smart people who can explain peripheral topics of hacking far better than I could, as well as providing some respite from the sea of projects; a gesture to those who would like to know more about hacking, but perhaps not actually participate in it, physically.

It attempts to demonstrate the spectrum of activity that occurs within our community; the pragmatic, the useless, the altruistic, the political, the social, the scientific, the artistic, the speculative, and the deliberate.

https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/40724498-the-field-guide-to-hacking