Experimenting and documenting low tech

Abstract

ABSTRACT How are low techs experimented with and how are they documented? Based on a study of the Low-tech Lab, this paper shows that documentation mobilises different practices and various formats: tutorials that present ‘cookbook recipes’ for low techs, reports that assess experimentations in a scientific way, and videos that stage low techs as key actors in ecological lifestyles and part of modern adventures. The paper shows that documents not only record how low techs are experimented with, but that they also demonstrate that they are worth living with. It describes how literary technologies are entangled with technologies of affect, thereby positioning low techs at once as doable, reasonable and desirable.