Monthly Maker Challenge?

On a recent webinar, I saw a great monthly maker challenge run by the Olathe KS library makerspace. Each month, they’d spin the wheels and pick what to make and what material to use, giving their employees and users the month to individually create a project.

I think we should try this in May, and see if we can get some excitement each month for the Maker Challenge! I’m not sure if I can find a sponsor to donate a gift card as a prize, but maybe in future months we can get a giveaway to go with.

What ideas do you have for materials or themes we could randomly select from? My ideas are…

MATERIALS:

  • Wood
  • Repurposed/upcycled materials
  • Scraps in your shop
  • Fabric
  • Yarn
  • Paper
  • Metal

THEME:

  • Toys
  • Literature
  • Misproportioned (larger or smaller than normal)
  • Keychain
  • Wearable
  • Light Up
  • Paperweight

(Tagging the @coreteam for their ideas)

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Other ideas for a monthly challenge from Make Santa Fe: Introducing Monthly Maker Challenges! - Make Santa Fe : Make Santa Fe

Misproportioned (larger or smaller than normal)

That’s a great theme! Here are a few other theme ideas:

  • loud objects / sound-making contraptions
  • Aeolian harps / wind-powered resonators (might be hard with some materials!)
  • elaborate & (mostly) useless (eg Nirav Patel’s manually-controlled 3d printer, Rube Goldberg devices, NASA)
  • non-book books / sequential intermedia
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Great ideas @erik - I especially love the ideas of sound and “useless” being themes! Useless boxes/switches are a long tradition with the modern maker movement :slight_smile:

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@erik I’ve never heard of sequential intermedia - do you have an example?

I don’t know if it’s a term people use, I’m borrowing the sequential bit from comics, and intermedia from Dick Higgins. :slight_smile: Higgins coined intermedia before multimedia came into mainstream use IIRC, and they once meant similar things: works made across different media types, incorporating multiple types of media into one intermedia work.

The term sequential that some comic artists use (I’m just learning about comics recently, it’s a fascinating medium!) is neat way of distinguishing itself from other linear fixed media work, like a video or music recording. A comic can also be non-linear because of the way your eye can move across the field of the page or a spread of pages, it is something some artists take advantage of, and is a really unique feature of the medium. This book goes into it: Understanding Comics: The Invisible Art : Scott McCloud : Free Download, Borrow, and Streaming : Internet Archive (and maybe coined the term sequential art? I’m not sure! it’s where I learned it)

An example of sequential intermedia could be the Bugs Bunny moon rocket read-along 7" record and storybook I had as a kid, which was pretty linear, but each page turn is kind of a new landscape, mediated through the text of the story, the non-linear images in the book, and the sometimes asymmetric soundtrack.

Here are some fun ideas (I could go forever on this):

Make:

  • An animal
  • A scene
  • A winterscape
  • An Orchestra
  • The tiniest thing
  • An homage to food
  • A circus
  • A story
  • Food into something else
  • An art installation
  • A bridge
  • A song
  • Something abstract

Inspired By:

  • Nature
  • Your favorite song
  • The way light reflected off of something
  • Time
  • A piece in a museum
  • An artist on social media
  • A friend or family member
  • Another culture
  • Your emotions
  • A stranger you saw yesterday
  • Machines
  • A movie you watched when you were a kid
  • Mythology

Using Secret Ingredient:

  • Fabric scraps
  • Something you were going to throw away
  • Glitter
  • A repetitive material that is small and many (like pop tabs, or buttons)
  • Children’s toys
  • A rummage sale find
  • A new material you’ve never tried before
  • Something you bought, but then never used
  • A material you used to love using, but haven’t in a long while
  • Something that reminds you of someone you love
  • Something that was given to you
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