- For the Amon Tobin
Amon Adonai Santos de Araújo Tobin , better known as Amon Tobin, is a Brazilian electronic musician and DJ. He is best known for his use of sampling. Tobin is also credited with helping to create the emerging "trip hop" genre in the late 1990s...
album with this name, see Bricolage (album)Bricolage became the first release for Amon Tobin, who was now recording under his own name and on the label Ninja Tune in 1997. The album was a departure from his last effort, Adventures in Foam , incorporating a heavier blend of jazz melodies and intense jungle rhythms...
. For the content management systemA content management system such as a document management system is a computer application used to manage work flow needed to collaboratively create, edit, review, index, search, publish and archive various kinds of digital media and electronic text.CMSs are frequently used for storing,...
, see Bricolage (software)Bricolage is a content management system written in the Perl programming language.Bricolage has been described as an Enterprise Class CMS, competitive in features and capability to high end, high cost proprietary products...
.
Bricolage, is a term used in several disciplines, among them the
visual artsThe visual arts are art forms that focus on the creation of works which are primarily visual in nature, such as traditional plastic arts , modern visual arts , and design and crafts...
and
literatureLiterature is the art of written works. Literally translated, the word means "acquaintance with letters" , and therefore the academic study of literature is known as Letters...
, to refer to the construction or creation of a work from a diverse range of things which happen to be available, or a work created by such a process. The term is borrowed from the
FrenchFrench is a Romance language globally spoken by about 65 million people as a first language , by 50 million as a second language, and by about another 200 million people as an acquired foreign language, with significant speakers in 57 countries. Most native speakers of the language live in France,...
word
bricolage, from the verb
bricoler – the core meaning in French being, "fiddle, tinker" and, by extension, "make creative and resourceful use of whatever materials are to hand (regardless of their original purpose)"; in contemporary French the word is the equivalent of the English
do it yourselfDo it yourself is a term used to describe the creation, alteration or reparation of something without the aid of experts or professionals...
, and seen on large shed retail outlets all over France. A person who engages in bricolage is a
bricoleur.
Music
Instrumental bricolage in music includes the use of found objects as instruments, such as in the cases of:
- Irish
Ireland is the third-largest island in Europe and the twentieth-largest island in the world. It lies to the north-west of continental Europe and is surrounded by hundreds of islands and islets. To the east of Ireland, separated by the Irish Sea, is the island of Great Britain...
Spoons
- Australian slap bass
In music, the term slapping is often used to refer to two different playing techniques used on the double bass and on the bass guitar.-Double bass:...
made from a tea chest
- comb and wax paper for humming through
- gumleaf
Eucalyptus is a diverse genus of flowering trees in the myrtle family, Myrtaceae. Members of the genus dominate the tree flora of Australia. There are more than 700 species of Eucalyptus, mostly native to Australia, and a very small number are found in adjacent parts of New Guinea and Indonesia...
humming
- Largophone (made from a stick and bottle tops)
- Trinidadian
The Republic of Trinidad and Tobago is an archipelagic state in the southern Caribbean, lying northeast of the South American country of Venezuela and south of Grenada in the Lesser Antilles. It shares maritime boundaries with other nations including Barbados to the northeast, Guyana to the...
Steel drumsSteelpans is a musical instrument and a form of music originating from Trinidad...
(made from industrial storage drums)
- African drums and thumb piano
The African thumb piano is a musical instrument that is a type of plucked idiophone common throughout Sub-Saharan Africa. Thumb pianos traditionally consist of a wooden board to which metal tines of varying lengths are affixed. The longest tines are typically in the center, with shorter tines...
s made from recycled pots and pans.
- American super instruments made from recorders and bicycle bells or metal rods and keys
- Stomp (dance troupe)
Stomp is a non-traditional dance troupe that uses the body and ordinary objects to create a physical theatre performance....
is an example of the use of bricolage in music and dance. They utilize everyday objects, such as trash cans and broom sticks, to produce music.
Stylistic bricolage is the inclusion of common musical devices with new uses. Shuker writes "Punk best emphasized such stylistic bricolage".
Musical Bricolage flourishes in music of sub-cultures where:
- experimentation is part of daily life (pioneers, immigrants, artistic communities),
- access to resources is limited (such as in remote, discriminated or financially disconnected sub-cultures) which limits commercial influence (eg. acoustic performers, gypsies, ghetto music, hippie, folk or traditional musicians) and
- there is a political or social drive to seek individuality (eg. Rap music, peace-drives, drummers circles)
Unlike other bricolage fields the intimate knowledge of resources is not necessary. Many punk musicians, for instance, are not msically trained, since training can discourage creativity in preference for accuracy. Also, careful observation and listening is not necessary, it is common in spontaneous music to welcome 'errors' and disharmony. Like other bricolage fields, Bricolage music still values trusting one's ideas and self-correcting structures such as targeted audiences.
Visual art
In art, bricolage is a technique where works are constructed from various materials available or on hand, and is seen as a characteristic of postmodern works.
These materials may be mass-produced or "junk". See also:
MerzKurt Hermann Eduard Karl Julius Schwitters was a German painter who was born in Hanover, Germany. Schwitters worked in several genres and media, including Dada, Constructivism, Surrealism, poetry, sound, painting, sculpture, graphic design, typography and what came to be known as...
,
polystylismPolystylism is the use of multiple styles or techniques in literature, art, film, or, especially, music, and is a postmodern characteristic.Some prominent contemporary polystylist composers include Peter Maxwell Davies, Michael Colgrass, Ciarán Farrell, Lera Auerbach, Yitzhak Yedid, Sofia...
,
collageA collage is a work of formal art, primarily in the visual arts, made from an assemblage of different forms, thus creating a new whole....
,
assemblageAn assemblage is an archaeological term meaning a group of different artifacts found in association with one another, that is, in the same context. According to Renfrew and Bahn An assemblage is an archaeological term meaning a group of different artifacts found in association with one another,...
.
Bricolage can also be applied to theatrical form of improvisation. More commonly known as
ImprovImprov may refer to:* Misspelling of Improve* Improvisation, an act of spontaneous invention* Musical improvisation* Improvisational theatre* The Improv, a chain of U.S. comedy clubs* Lotus Improv, a spreadsheet program...
. The idea of using one's environment and materials which are at hand is the main goal in Improv. The environment is the stage and the materials are often pantomimed. The use of the stage and the imaginary materials are all made up on the spot so the materials which are at hand ar actually things that the players know from past experiences. (i.e. an improvisation of ordering fast food: One player would start with the common phrase "How May I help You").
Bricolage is also applied in interior design, through blending styles and accessorizing spaces with what is "on hand". Many designers use bricolage to come up with innovative and unique ideas.
Cultural studies
In
cultural studiesCultural studies is an academic field which combines political economy, communication, sociology, social theory, literary theory, media theory, film/video studies, cultural anthropology, philosophy, museum studies and art history/criticism to study cultural phenomena in various societies...
bricolage is used to mean the processes by which people acquire objects from across social divisions to create new cultural identities. In particular, it is a feature of
subcultureIn sociology, anthropology and cultural studies, a subculture is a group of people with a culture which differentiates them from the larger culture to which they belong...
s such as, for example, the
punkThe punk subculture is a subculture based around punk rock. It includes music, ideologies, fashion, visual art, dance, literature and film. The punk scene is composed of an assortment of smaller factions that distinguish themselves from one another through unique variations...
movement. Here, objects that possess one meaning (or no meaning) in the dominant culture are acquired and given a new, often subversive meaning. For example, the
safety pinA safety pin is a simple fastening device, a variation of the regular pin which includes a simple spring mechanism and a clasp. The clasp serves two purposes: to form a closed loop thereby properly fastening the pin to whatever it is applied to, and to cover the end of the pin to protect the user...
became a form of decoration in punk culture.
Philosophy
In his book The Savage Mind
(1962, English translation 1966), French anthropologist Claude Lévi-StraussClaude Lévi-Strauss is a French-Jewish anthropologist.-Biography:Claude Lévi-Strauss, born in Brussels, grew up in Paris, living in a street of the 16th arrondissement named after the artist Claude Lorrain, whose work he later admired and wrote about...
used the word bricolage to describe any spontaneous action, further extending this to include the characteristic patterns of mythological thought. The reasoning here being that, since mythological thought is all generated by human imagination, it is based on personal experience, and so the images and entities generated through 'mythological thought' rise from pre-existing things in the imaginer's mind.
Jacques DerridaJacques Derrida was a French philosopher born in Algeria, who is known as the founder of deconstruction. His voluminous work had a profound impact upon literary theory and continental philosophy...
extends this notion to any discourse. "If one calls bricolage the necessity of borrowing one's concept from the text of a heritage which is more or less coherent or ruined, it must be said that every discourse is bricoleur."
Gilles DeleuzeGilles Deleuze , was a French philosopher of the late 20th century. From the early 1960s until his death, Deleuze wrote many influential works on philosophy, literature, film, and fine art...
and
Félix GuattariPierre-Félix Guattari was a French militant, institutional psychotherapist and philosopher, a founder of both schizoanalysis and ecosophy...
, in their 1972 book
Anti-OedipusAnti-Œdipus is a book by the French philosopher Gilles Deleuze and psychoanalyst Félix Guattari. It is the first volume of Capitalism and Schizophrenia, the second volume being A Thousand Plateaus...
, identify bricolage
as the characteristic mode of productionIn the writings of Karl Marx and the Marxist theory of historical materialism, a mode of production is a specific combination of:...
of the schizophrenicSchizophrenia , from the Greek roots skhizein and phrēn, phren- is a psychiatric diagnosis that describes a mental disorder characterized by abnormalities in the perception or expression of reality...
producer.
Biology
In biologyBiology is the natural science concerned with the study of life and living organisms, including their structure, function, growth, origin, evolution, distribution, and taxonomy...
the biologistA biologist is a scientist devoted to and producing results in biology through the study of life.Typically biologists study organisms and their relationship to their environment. Biologists involved in basic research attempt to discover underlying mechanisms that govern how organisms work...
François JacobFrançois Jacob is a French biologist who, together with Jacques Monod, originated the idea that control of enzyme levels in all cells occurs through feedback on transcription. He shared the 1965 Nobel Prize in Medicine with Jacques Monod and André Lwoff.-Childhood and education:François Jacob is...
uses the term bricolage to describe the apparently cobbled-together character of much biological structure, and views it as a consequence of the
evolutionIn biology, evolution is change in the genetic material of a population of organisms from one generation to the next. Though changes produced in any one generation are normally small, differences accumulate with each generation and can, over time, cause substantial changes in the population, a...
ary history of the organism.
Education
In the discussion of
constructionismConstructionism may refer to* Social constructionism* Strict constructionism - a term referring to a conservative type of legal or constitutional interpretation.* Constructionist learning - An educational philosophy developed by Seymour Papert....
,
Seymour PapertSeymour Papert is an MIT mathematician, computer scientist, and educator. He is one of the pioneers of artificial intelligence, as well as an inventor of the Logo programming language....
discusses two styles of solving problems. Contrary to the analytical style of solving problems he describes bricolage as a way to learn and solve problems by trying, testing, playing around.
Joe L. KincheloeJoe Lyons Kincheloe, , was a professor and Canada Research Chair at the Faculty of Education, McGill University in Montreal, Quebec, Canada. He died of coronary artery disease on December 19, 2008 in Kingston, Jamaica...
has used the term bricolage in educational research to denote the use of multiperspectival research methods. In Kincheloe's conception of the research bricolage, diverse theoretical traditions are employed in a broader critical theoretical/critical pedagogical context to lay the foundation for a transformative mode of multimethodological inquiry. Using these multiple frameworks and methodologies researchers are empowered to produce more rigorous and praxiological insights into socio-political and educational phenomena. Kincheloe theorizes a critical multilogical epistemology and critical connected ontology to ground the research bricolage. These philosophical notions provide the research bricolage with a sophisticated understanding of the complexity of knowledge production and the interrelated complexity of both researcher positionality and phenomena in the world. Such complexity demands a more rigorous mode of research that is capable of dealing with the complications of socio-educational experience. Such a critical form of rigor avoids the reductionism of many monological, mimetic research orientations (see Kincheloe, 2001, 2005; Kincheloe & Berry, 2004).
Fashion
In his essay "Subculture: The Meaning of Style", Dick Hebdige discusses how an individual can be identified as a bricoleur when they "appropriated another range of commodities by placing them in a symbolic ensemble which served to erase or subvert their original straight meanings". The fashion industry uses bricolage-like styles by incorporating items typically utilized for other purposes. For example, candy wrappers are woven together to produce a
purse. The movie
ZoolanderZoolander is a 2001 comedy film directed by Ben Stiller. The films concept is based on the Bret Easton Ellis book Glamorama, with elements from a pair of short films directed by Russell Bates and written by Drake Sather and Stiller for the VH1 Fashion Awards television specials in 1996 and 1997....
parodies this interesting concept with Mugatu's Derelicte, a line of clothing made from trash.
Television
MacGyverMacGyver is an American action/adventure television series created by Lee David Zlotoff and executively produced by Henry Winkler and John Rich that aired on ABC. Seven seasons were produced, all of which were broadcast by American Broadcasting Company Network in the United States and various...
is a television series in which the protagonist is the paragon of a bricoleur, creating solutions for the problem to be solved out of immediately available found objects.
The A-TeamThe A-Team is an American action adventure television series about a fictional group of ex-United States Army Special Forces who work as soldiers of fortune while being on the run from the military for a "crime they didn't commit". The A-Team was created by writers and producers Frank Lupo and...
is another example of bricoleur, with the team often finding themselves in situation which required creating, mainly weapons, out of any objects available.
The WomblesThe Wombles are pointy-nosed, furry creatures that live in burrows, where they help the environment by collecting and recycling rubbish in useful and ingenious ways. Wombles were created by author Elisabeth Beresford, originally appearing in a series of children's novels from 1968...
a childrens programme based on creatures living Wimbledon Common is also a fine example of bricoleour. In the theme sone composed by
Mike BattMike Batt is a British based songwriter, musician, producer and Deputy Chairman of the British Phonographic Industry...
they lyrics include "making good use of the things that they find, things that the everyday folk leave behind".
Information systems
In
information systemsIn a broad sense, the term Information Systems refers to the interaction between people, processes, and technology. This interaction can occur within or across organizational boundaries...
, bricolage is used by
Claudio CiborraClaudio Ciborra was a professor of Information Systems and PWC Chair in Risk Management in the London School of Economics.- Main research interests :...
to describe the way in which
strategic information systemA Strategic Information System is a system to manage information and assist in strategic decision making. A strategic information system has been defined as, "The information system to support or change enterprise's strategy."...
s (SIS) can be built in order to maintain successful competitive advantage over a longer period of time than standard SIS. By valuing tinkering and allowing SIS to evolve from the bottom-up, rather than implementing it from the top-down, the firm will end up with something that is deeply rooted in the organisational culture that is specific to that firm and is much less easily imitated.
There is also a
content management systemA content management system such as a document management system is a computer application used to manage work flow needed to collaboratively create, edit, review, index, search, publish and archive various kinds of digital media and electronic text.CMSs are frequently used for storing,...
called
BricolageBricolage is a content management system written in the Perl programming language.Bricolage has been described as an Enterprise Class CMS, competitive in features and capability to high end, high cost proprietary products...
.
Internet
In her book Life on the Screen (1995),
Sherry TurkleSherry Turkle is Abby Rockefeller Mauze Professor of the Social Studies of Science and Technology at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and a sociologist...
discusses the concept of bricolage as it applies to problem solving in code projects and workspace productivity. She advocates the "bricoleur style" of programming as a valid and underexamined alternative to what she describes as the conventional structured "planner" approach. In this style of coding, the programmer works without an exhaustive preliminary specification, opting instead for a step-by-step growth and re-evaluation process. In her essay
Epistemological Pluralism, Turkle writes: "The bricoleur resembles the painter who stands back between brushstrokes, looks at the canvas, and only after this contemplation, decides what to do next."
Organization and management
Karl WeickKarl E. Weick is an American organizational theorist who is noted for introducing the notions of "loose coupling", "mindfulness", and "sensemaking" into organizational studies...
identifies the following requirements for successful bricolage in organizations.
- intimate knowledge of resources
- careful observation and listening
- trusting one's ideas
- self-correcting structures, with feedback
Everyday life
Life itself is a bricolage of bricolages, meaning you never know what you are going to get the next day. You must use whatever resources available to survive, which essentially defines bricolage in the words of Levi-Strauss.
Household Items
A paperclip is an item than can be seen almost anywhere. Even though it's supposed to be used to hold papers together, it can be turned into a sculpture of some kind, or even a tool for carving/etching into things. One can even hook paperclips together to make chains or bracelets. Therefore, the paperclip is an evident example of bricolage.
Cooking
Cooking is an example of bricolage in our everyday life. Amateur cooks often improvise new recipes when key ingredients are scarce.
Construction of a Child's Fort
An example of bricolage in a child's every day life is a fort made of many different random objects found in one's environment including pillows, couch coushins, sheets, toys, hangers, shoe boxes, etc. A fort can be made with just about anything, regardless of its original purpose or use. This is the definition of bricolage, and is therefore evident in this example.
Foods
A well known example of bricolage may be the banana. While it does provide an excellent source of nutrition, it can also calm stomach aches, or help to moisturize the face when made into a mask. The banana peel can be used to buff shoes, polish silverware, and promote the healing of warts, scratches, and minor cuts.
The lime is a perfect example of bricolage. Although it is commonly used for cooking and adding flavor to foods, it is also used for cleaning. People have used it to clean pots and pans, it is an ingredient used in bathroom and glass cleaning supplies. Another interesting way it is used is as a hair product. Many people use it as a substitute for hair gel and hair spray.