DIY Culture
June 4, 2009
DIY Culture or Do It Yourself is a non-mainstream culture that can be seen across many industries particularly the arts. The American DIY culture is said to have began in the 1940s as a cheep effective way to campaign radical political movements. In the UK it formed in the late 1960s as the free festival movement and adapted through the punk sub culture. Brisbane itself saw the development of the DIY culture in the 1970s around student right to broadcast, and public oppression during the Joh Bjelke Peterson era. This culture also developed along side of the punk and radical activist cultures.
When we look at DIY culture and new media it can be seen how far this culture has developed since the early days of activism to a means of Produsage that is productive for those using new media. Social Networks and site such as Wikipedia are examples of DIY culture and how individuals can now have full creative control within networks in relation to content and even program development. The online gaming industry has people from around the world creating new avatars, props, backgrounds, debuggers, patches and much more to help improve game quality. Not having to rely of distributors to maintain and update software and information as proven more constructive and in most cases generates high quality products.
The music industry is no stranger to DIY culture as mentioned above. The punk sub-culture developed around the ideologies of DIY culture with many independent record labels created outside of mainstream control. Many of these proved successful and this culture was slowly adapted across all genres of music to the point where social networking sites are now created so that musicians have a place to work on a store the music or label that they create. Collaborating DIY Culture in this way has been termed as DIT culture (Do It Together) by Seb Chan on his blog at http://www.powerhousemuseum.com/dmsblog/index.php/2005/12/26/diy-culture/. The interactive nature of this culture can be seen on such music social networks as sterofame.com or Reverb Nation where individuals emersed in DIY culture are encouraged to interact with others to improve their own success with their projects.
As productive and rewarding as DIY culture can be for an individual or greater community there are also limitations that hinder the success of ones project or work. Expenses are a major factor as all costs fall onto the individual as well as time limitations.
DIY culture has become a valuable aspect of new media as it has been for the music industry and many others as well. Individuals operating outside of mainstream limitations have produced constructive new media that has changed they was in which people are interacting online.
