Dear (Dis)Assembler

Exercise	(Dis)Assembling
Coach	Soldering Iron
Assistant Coach	DIY Soldering Kits/Circuits
Training objective	Build/take apart/fix/break your own tools
Do this (if you want to)	1. Put together or take apart an object 2. Find out what you want to do next as you go
Potential application in [graphic design]	Use “Inspect” or “View Page Source” as a way to learn how web design/development works in your own way/pace, or to understand why the dev team requests specific requirements for assets from you but doesn’t explain why.

DIYry

No.	Category	Entry
1	General	DIY soldering kits: My way into the world of DIY electronics was through DIY soldering kits. I knew that this way of learning through buying kits would be unsustainable in the long run, especially when I had already noticed the red flags but still struggled to find a solution. So, what happens when you fall under this category of a consumer? You’re an adult beginner who relates to the accessible language of kits made for kids. You’re curious about components and circuits that are considered to be more complex, and are limited by what the kit manufacturer decides is beginner-friendly enough. You can’t relate to the projects that are expected to be built with the kits, but still go through it anyway because you enjoy and learn from the building process. Answer: you end up with projects that get piled up in a box that you don’t open again, because as much as you want to hack or circuit bend them, you don’t have the technical knowledge or resources to do so. Below are the takeaways from my attempts to learn about electronics through DIY soldering kits that trapped me in this loop that I found myself in, and am still finding it hard to exit it:
2	Kit	Junior Theremin by MadLab: The first and most exciting and promising moment in any building process starts with an LED that lights up. Except when the LED is the only thing that lights up and everything else is broken, and most of the time, they still remain broken because you can’t find out what’s wrong. In this case, it was a sound device that made no sound, but turned on an LED.
3	Kit	Makerbuino by Circuitmess: In the building process of this DIY game console, checkpoints were provided in the assembly guide to make sure that I was on the right track, which I failed to pass as my screen didn’t light up when it should. My initial solution was to contact the company for help, and as expected, was told to fix the soldering joints. Even so, it didn’t solve the problem, and I sought out further help from the school’s Interaction Station. The mystery continued until Danny van der Kleij helped me find out that the problem was actually with the drained battery all this time. The debugging process was a whole journey in itself, but one thing to remember: always use the multimeter.
4	Kit	I observed a common pattern in the kits that I worked on: they all have a sound component. I decided that it was time to learn through the more challenging teachers, where the finished product would be something I was actually interested in and could make use of, and I found them through DIY kits specific to electronic instruments: Soldering Kits No. Kit Manufacturer Entry Entry 1 Kastle v1.5 BASTL Instruments The first problem that I ran into was the final step of the assembly when I had to snap the instrument casing together. Because the instrument wasn’t securely snapped, it created a rocky and frustrating user experience. It allowed me to come up with ways to not only unprofessionally and temporarily fix the instrument (for instance: using it without the front panel, tying it with a rubber band) but also to come up with alternative, peculiar ways to interact with it, which in turn made the instrument produce sounds it might not produce if it were perfectly assembled. 2 Another struggle: understanding what each cable connection does and what sound it makes. As a way to understand this, I created a static ‘workbook’ using basic HTML as a way to remember what each patch does. I shared this with my peers, and that was the beginning of the Workbook. 3 DIWOry Steep learning curve of an instrument led to creating a collaborative learning environment which encouraged new ways of learning through learning making with others. 4 Collaborative tool: After sharing my ‘workbook’ mockup with my peers, Kamo (Francesco Luzzana) suggested that it could be made interactive. We ended up collaborating to create an interactive version of the Workbook. 5 Collaborative performance: Through RE#SISTER at the Radio WORM Expanded performance with Ål Nik (Alexandra Nikolova) and Mitsa Chaida, I had the opportunity to use the instrument in the context of a jam facilitated by Ål Nik. I felt the urgency to find a way to understand and be more in one with the instrument somehow, and attempted to “tame” it by creating specific constraints of using only a select number of cables as a way to tame it. It led me to an important realization that the instrument was now controlling the user, and I discovered the urge to be able to create my own instruments. 6 Soundwich Landscape I received precaution about the challenge of surface mount soldering, since it’s an uncommon soldering method especially in beginner kits. As it turned out, I learned that it was actually an enjoyable process, where I recognized the similar extreme focus and attention required to solder was similar to one that I need to align pixels while designing on the screen.
Circuits
5	Workshop	Sizzling Semiconductors by Ivona Vreme Moser, Nø School Nevers: 06/08/22 - After traveling back home with this instrument, some of the components fell off from the circuit board and needed to be soldered back on. I attempted to fix this at home, where the setup of my “workbench” was on the floor in my apartment, with a soldering iron plugged to the power strip next to me. Through this attempt of repair, I discovered unexpected ways to interact with the instrument through the use of a soldering iron: Once the component was soldered back on, the instrument somehow didn’t sound the same. I didn’t understand why, but the fact that it was half-working made it produce sounds I never heard when it was functioning normally. When the heated iron made contact with one of the pads where the leg of a component was connected to, the instrument started producing an oscillating sound. It was as if the iron acted like a switch. Feeling accomplished and empowered from my first attempt of repair, I turned off the power strip, only to find out that the instrument was no longer working. This was bizarre considering the instrument operates on a battery. Was it the soldering iron and the power strip that were “playing” the instrument all this time?
6	Workshop	Centre for Networked Intimacy by Dasha Ilina, iMAL - The Cookery: 24/01/23 - In this workshop, we built circuits that were meant to record sounds, but the one that I built ended up producing sounds. While it was unfortunate, I also saw it as a fortunate event because it produced a particular sound that I wouldn’t know how to replicate. Even though it wasn’t working as it was intended to, it’s an organic result of and a reflection of the making process/the sound of a potential short circuit.
7	Takeaways	1 There are many levels of beginners, and some beginners are already limited by what the manufacturer determines as “beginner” 2 The learning experience has a lot of gaps in it. Even when you think you know that something is wrong with the circuit that you’re building, you still don’t really know what you’re doing and what’s actually happening, but that’s the very thing that makes the learning process fun. It’s like trying to solve a puzzle where you not only have to figure out what goes where with the pieces that were provided, but also at some point create your own pieces in your own way to solve a problem that also wasn’t warned. In other words, having gaps in the learning experience is supposed to be there so that there is room for you to make discoveries. 3 You can learn by trying to fix something: when you’re trying to come up with solutions to a specific problem, you learn about other problems that were caused by a particular solution. 4 You can learn something else by not trying to fix something: when you know that a circuit is supposed to behave in a certain way, but something went wrong in the building process and produced an unintended result, you’re suddenly on a mission to find out what happened. If, while on your mission, something interesting happens, abort the initial mission.