Interactive Timeline of Do-It-Yourself Movements

Website, 2007

Collaboration with Ben Chang

An interactive timeline for the exhibition Pass It On! Connecting Contemporary Do-It-Yourself Culture at the A+D Gallery, Columbia College, Chicago, curated by Anne Dorothee Boehme, Lindsay Bosch, and Kevin Henry.  This exhibition brought together a wide range of activities and ideas in contemporary culture around the concept of “DIY,” from music and art to publishing and political activism. The DIY TimeLine traces the interconnected histories of DIY culture, from the Women’s Suffrage movement to punk rock to Open Source Software. 

The “timeline” originated as a central feature of the exhibition, as a table running the length of the gallery with index cards for significant events and people.  In addition to the database collected by the curators, visitors to the exhibition could add their own cards, helping to fill in these different histories.  The website draws from the same database, to help visualize connections and parallels.