Stories of Change: The past, present and future of energy

Blog 15 Aug 2016

Utopia Works – Part 1

Utopia Works. Photo: Gorm Ashurst @gorminator

ENERGY, HACKING

By Julia Udall

On the day we were preparing for Utopia Works Energy Hack at Derby Silk Mill, with partners from across a number of factories along the Derwent and Don Valleys I found myself reflecting upon the notion of hacking, and what it means to me, particularly in relation to my work on Future Works and Stories of Change.

Hacking is the altering of an existing object to meet a new use- sometimes driven by the availability of new materials or technologies, and sometimes by the desire to make something fit a new need, or meet a group of people that didn’t have access to a tool or resource that they need. Like makers’ communities, for many, to hack is a political practice aligned with DIY, sharing as ethics, self-organisation, playfulness, and even subversion. Important and high profile ways in which hacking has become associated with activism are in supporting the fight for privacy against corporate and government surveillance, and in enabling the free sharing of knowledge that has been enclosed by companies for profit.

In thinking about energy, I consider that hacking implies repurposing, modification or challenging assumptions, design or rules, using what’s at hand to alter something to better meet your needs… This could occur at a number of different scales- from that of a boiler, or meter, to a network or complex system. What I find interesting about hacking is it implies the engagement with the issue, the physical things, and developing the skills and know-how to make change- this is not something you hand on to someone else in another place. It requires careful and precise knowledges, which situate you as active rather than passive in relation to what you use and how you use it, and often collaboration and the free sharing of knowledge. Although responding to what is there, hacking needn’t mean minor changes- there may be radical transformation through making something more accessible, sustainable, altering its capacities, or changing the relation to resources, energy, or people. To hack is not just to analyse and critique, but also to propose something new and to figure out how to make it happen.

Hacking can have an important role in terms of climate change, because of its relation to agency- both personal and collective. An example of such hacking that we have encountered in the Future Works strand of Stories of Change includes modifying the design of a rocket stove at Portland Works so that it can successfully run from waste sawdust produced by tenants of the building, or the redesign of machines at Gripple, and manufacturing them in-house to be more efficient, and suited to those who operate them. In each case people have taken something that is existing and modified it to suit their specific needs through a better understanding of the problem and possibilities in this instance. At Portland Works this was possible because there were a number of skilled makers on site, a range of tools that were shared between people, and driven both by limited resources, and an attitude of care, a culture of reuse and experimentation. At Gripple hacking was encouraged by investment in Research and Development and, together with employee ownership take a decision not to give people job titles, but rather to invited them to both find opportunities and take responsibility wherever they could.

Tomorrow will see people, including factory owners, employers and employees, apprentices, volunteers, artists, musicians, architects, curators, academics, and those working in the arts, cultural and heritage sectors come together to hack. We will turn Derby Silk Mill into a factory for the day, which each of us levelled as workers- we hope to critique and to dream together of alternative energy futures together. The question of connecting the user and the maker seems to be an important one for thinking about the future of energy and manufacturing.

View the original post and see more images from the day on the Utopia 500 website.

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