Field Guide for Public Works

The Field Guide for Public Works Vol. 1:
Instructors: Andy Bichlbaum, James Powderly, Evan Roth

Shared resources and public spaces, like our cities, the Internet and the media, are increasingly under attack from the forces of privatization, excess commercialization, censorship, bias and authoritarian control. To offset the inequalities caused by these forces, ordinary citizens are turning to humorous and socially provocative pranks, hacks, infiltration, urban modification and other disturbances to get their voices heard in public and the mass media. The Field Guide for Public Works will be an illustrated instructional guide designed to show citizens how to make tools and use techniques employed by artists and activists to express unpopular and marginalized “truths” and perspectives in the public sphere. Subjects and technologies covered in the Field Guide may include both social and physical engineering, like: corporate infiltration, mobile broadcasting, contagious media, hacking urban systems, on-line satire, ad busting, self publishing and more. From concept to implementation, students will work together with their instructors and peers to create all aspects of the Field Guide using open source software. Over the course of the semester, students will also work in small teams to create, execute and document their own public interventions with voluntary participation from the class and others. The Field Guide will also be an experiment in creating a “print on demand” book and releasing work into the public domain.