Objects in Flux - RMIT Research Repository - RMIT University

Objects in Flux
wiki-based knowledge-sharing projects ix to gue-
rilla gardening (Reynolds, 2008). These practices
often challenge dominant commercial structures
and institutionalised logic.
Although receiving feedback from people who
have completed or extended a project is highly
valued by practitioners, providing this feedback
is not an essential part of modification prac-
tices. In establishing an open approach towards
knowledge sharing, practices of object modifica-
tion exist in an environment where permission
to copy a project need not be sought from the
project’s author. As such, practices may use and
build on existing material without any direct
contact between the individual practitioners.
There is, however, a strong belief (often forma-
lised within copyleft licence agreements) that
practitioners should acknowledge their sources.
Online project documentation therefore rarely
exists in isolation and the referencing of source
material has become an important mechanism
through which practitioners build social con-
nections and participate within an extended
community. In practice, project documentation
generally does not reference every piece of re-
lated information; How-Tos surveyed by Torrey
et al. present a maximum of five outbound links
per project. x
The extensive use of external reference material
in developing a project is, in part, a condition
x. By contrast, the Cylindric Ultrasonic Bat
Detector text contains 18 outbound links. This
high number of references may be attributed to
the academic context in which I am operating,
which encouraged an accurate account of every
resource used during project development and
documentation.
86
[Figure 5-9]
Assembling the components, 2005.
I also installed a second switch in the circuit: a mini slide
switch. Both switches can be seen in the above image. The
micro switch is a momentary type and is designed for handheld
operation of the detector. The slide switch is an on-off
switch that provides for hands-free operation (i.e. when the
detector is sitting on a table).
When I started the mod I decided that I didn’t want to damage
any of the existing components (in case I ever wanted to
return the lighter to its former glory). This placed some interesting
constraints on the mod. I wanted the bat detector to
have: an exposed ultrasonic transducer, a headphone socket,
a volume control, an on-off switch and a power indicator
LED. Locating this functionality within Rams’ minimal
interface design was at times quite a challenge.
[Figure 5-10]
Fitting the ultrasonic transducer, 2005.
Yet at other times it wasn’t. The installation of the ultrasonic
transducer was totally straightforward: the existing flame