Stupid Hackathon website

Excerpt of the VICE article by Cecilia D’Anastasio pasted below. You may also be interested in the article by Arwa Mahdawi at The Guardian about the Stupid Hackathon as well.

“Featuring hacks like 3Cheese Printer, a 3D printer using Cheez-Whiz as ink, and NonAd Block, a Chrome extension that blocks all non-ad content, the New York-based Stupid Hackathon is disrupting hackathon culture. While other hackathons churn out useless projects in earnest, the Stupid Hackathon strips pretension away from tech developers' money-backed scramble to satisfy every human need. Satirizing the hackathon community's naive goals for techno-utopianism, co-organizers Sam Lavigne and Amelia Winger-Bearskin solicit projects that use tech to critique tech culture.

"Is a need being filled or is the need manufactured and then constantly reinforced?" Lavigne asked. "The Stupid Hackathon is the perfect framework for satirizing the whole tech community."

Three Stupid Hackathon teams set out to create wearables that detect boners. Categories for hacks included "edible electronics," "commodities to end climate change" and "Ayn Rand." Participants, in general, ignored them. Lavigne and Winger-Bearskin, who met at the Interactive Telecommunications Program (ITP) at NYU, became disenchanted with hackathons when they noticed that many aimed to "hack" world hunger or income inequality in one weekend. As a student at ITP, Winger-Bearskin, now director of the DBRS Innovation Lab, applied to participate in a hackathon on the theme of love hosted at ITP but was rejected.

"I couldn't even eat the food that was on the table next to me," she said, referring to the free food often provided for hackathon participants. "And I couldn't hack about love!" Lavigne has never attended another hackathon.

Co-organizers Sam Lavigne and Amelia Winger-Bearskin solicit projects that use tech to critique tech culture

Winger-Bearskin's most recent Stupid Hackathon project was "Drone Doula" (NSFW), a drone with a claw that facilitates child delivery. A video of a live birth concluded her hackathon explainer, which, she reflects proudly, horrified the whole audience.

Over the last few years, fans have spread the Stupid Hackathon to Europe, San Francisco and Canada.”

Stupid Hackathon Promo Videos

by Amelia Winger-Bearskin and Sam Lavigne

 
Previous
Previous

Decentralized Storytelling

Next
Next

No-Funding.com