Introduction

“It was not reason but a man-made instrument, the telescope, which actually changed the physical world view; it was not contemplation, observation, and speculation which led to the new knowledge, but the active stepping in of homo faber, of making and fabricating.” Hannah Arendt, The Human Condition (1958, p.274)

Hacking has nothing to do with breaking into computer systems. Hacking, in its original meaning, refers to the practice of creating furniture with an axe and, since the nineteen fifties, to exploring the capabilities of computer systems with the purpose of: “Making a system, program or piece of hardware do something that it was not designed to do.”

Hacking is a peculiar results-oriented activity that uses methods and tactics that can either be very precise and methodical, or brutal and relentless, unprofessional even. It is a working process that can be typified as "serious play" and "playful seriousness" or as Stephen Levy in his book "Hackers" calls it "wild pleasure".

Traditionally hackers hack computer systems, which are universal machines (using the Turing definition) and, therefore, through recoding are able to become any other system. The same machine can become a radically different machine that in some cases can be the exact opposite of its original purpose. Because of this alienation of original purpose, hackers (just like artists) have grown to become sensitive to ambiguous and contradictory notions embedded in systems and this has become part of their explorative tactics. Exploration is not just a way to get to know a system, but also to consciously introduce disorientations to direct the system in new directions.

This alienation of original purpose has parallels in the détournement tactic of the 1950s artist group the Situationist International, where on purpose the meaning of artworks or images is twisted or bent to (radically) change their meaning. Society and culture are systems that can be hacked or decoded, encoded and recoded to change their directions and meanings. This activity is called cultural hacking.

In this class we will explore hacking as a phenomenon beyond computers. What if the hacking methodology of transcoding is applied to politics, art, education perhaps? The students participating in this class are challenged to come up with the most daring and imaginative ways of hacking. Is there anything that can't be hacked?