User:Bricolab

The person

• I live in Tokyo and online, collect questionable qualifications and advertising tissues and have worked as a toilet cleaner, university lecturer, bookseller, teacher, gardener and in a host of other wonder professions.

• Previous research has engaged with Matt Hills' and Henry Jenkins' work on participatory culture, fan culture and cult media in a study of the internet Anti-Fan; in the diverse and fascinating adult uses of children's culture; and in surrealist and situationist inflected discourse in the new media, technology and videogame press.

• Current work centres around the use of constructionist, media studies inflected methodologies in teaching english as a second language (ESL) to Japanese students, with cultural and personal identity at the core of our efforts, and exploration of fansub and scanlation communities.

• I am beginning preparation for a phD/Dphil proposal and hope to commence studies in 2007, upon return to dear old Blighty.

• I am interested in, far from exclusively, and in no particularly order:

• media audience research Who/we/see/do
• web studies Click/click
• constructionist learning Do/think
• The DIY ethic Bodge it, bash it out, pass it on
• Participatory culture The audience is dead. Long live the participant.
• open source Information wants to be FREE
• Fansub Grab, sub, give
• Scanlation Found in translation
• Psychogeography Meandering through ambience storms in the megopolis
• situationism Under the paving stones, the beach
• apple Computers for people like pretty things but don't like spyware
• identity Who/me?
• applied linguistics Language vigorously applied, as in sun tan lotion
• Japaneseおれはおばかです
• stop motion Click and move
• Umezu Kazuo Children. Scissors. Ouch- Japan's finest horror manga-ka
• Suehiro Maruo Deco monstrosities
• Aya Takano Pop girls in bubble space
• Shunga Naughty comics from ancient Japan
• Ukiyo-e The floating world
• collage Cut, paste, comment
• mobile technologies Connect, transform
• Foucault The Kojak of philosophy
• Deleuze Virtually here
• Brickmation Lego+Stop motion= Brickmation
• Children's culture and adults uses of it
• ludology Play theory
• Anti-essentialism Dissolving borders
• Ubiquitous computing - Your computer wants letting out of its box
• Mind maps - So do your thoughts

The project

Bricolab is an amalgamated word. It is even more compacted than the foodstuffs in Elvis's colon. If we explode it, in the manner of a naughty terrorist, or a UN smart bomb, we find the following words come running for cover:

• Bricolage - Grab, slap together, marvel at the new combination.
• Brick - Click, clunk, the lego revolution.
• Collaboration - Open source being. Forging connections. Wikiworld.
• Laboratory - Experimentation in the playground of identity.

As a staunch constructionist I leave the rest to your imagination. For now.

Bricolab is coming to a website near you. Soon.

Contributions to date

Pretty lame at present:

• Constructionist learning - Learning the hands on way
• Seymour Papert - MIT Arch-Constructionist (pretty, oversized pic is mine)
• Advertising tissues - Tokyo's favourite meme spreader (Version 2- V1 ruthlessly deleted for less than sombre treatment of subject matter)
• Brickmation - lego meets stop motion online
• Minifigs - Lego's block headed, jaundiced chappies
• Minor contributions to stop motion
• Children's culture - Started a very brief article