SLSL Intro "Junkshop or Randomly Assembled Quality"

[Dave Monroe]

   "I was to get even worse at this, as is evident
from the junkshop or randomly assembled quality to
many of the scenes in 'The Secret Integration.'" (SL,
"Intro," p. 20)


"The 'bricoleur' is adept at performing a large number
of diverse tasks; but, unlike the engineer, he does
not subordinate each of them to the availability of
raw materials and tools conceived and procured for the
purpose of the project. His universe of instruments is
closed and the rules of his game are always to make do
with 'whatever is at hand', that is to say with a set
of tools and materials which is always finite and is
also heterogeneous because what it contains bears no
relation to the current project, or indeed to any
particular project, but is the contingent result of
all the occasions there have been to renew or enrich
the stock or to maintain it with the remains of
previous constructions or destructions. The set of the
'bricoleur's' means cannot therefore be defined in
terms of a project (which would presuppose besides,
that, as in the case of the engineer, there were, at
least in theory, as many sets of tools and materials
or 'instrumental sets', as there are different kinds
of projects). It is to be defined only by its
potential use or, putting this another way and in the
language of the 'bricoleur' himself, because the
elements are collected or retained on the principle
that 'they may always come in handy'. Such elements
are specialized up to a point, sufficiently for the
'bricoleur' not to need the equipment and knowledge of
all trades and professions, but not enough for each of
them to have only one definite and determinate use.
They each represent a set of actual and possible
relations; they are 'operators' but they can be used
for any operations of the same type."

--Claude Levi-Strauss, The Savage Mind (1962)

http://varenne.tc.columbia.edu/bib/info/levstcld066savamind.html

And see as well, e.g., ...

http://www.aber.ac.uk/media/Documents/S4B/sem09.html

http://www.lclark.edu/~soan370/glossary/bricintro.html

http://www.france.sk/culturel/pedagbricolage.htm

Barthes, Roland.  Mythologies.  Trans. Annette
   Lavers.  New York: Hill and Wang, 1984 [1970]. 

http://www.sunderland.ac.uk/~os0tmc/culture/myth1.htm


Assemblage.

Art form in which natural and manufactured,
traditionally non-artistic, materials and objets
trouvés are assembled into three-dimensional
structures. As such it is closely related to COLLAGE,
and like collage it is associated with Cubism,
although its origins can be traced back beyond this.
As much as by the materials used, it can be
characterized by the way in which they are treated. In
an assemblage the banal, often tawdry materials retain
their individual physical and functional identity,
despite artistic manipulation. The term was coined by
Jean Dubuffet in 1953 ....

http://www.artnet.com/library/00/0046/T004631.ASP

And see as well, e.g., ...

Seitz, William C.  The Art of Assemblage.
   New York: MOMA, 1961.

http://collageart.org/books/


"The street finds its own use for things." --William
Gibson, as quoted in Bruce Sterling, "Preface,"
Mirrorshades: A Cyberpunk Anthology (1986)

http://www.streettech.com/bcp/BCPtext/Manifestos/Cut&Paste.html

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