In the practical arts and the fine arts, bricolage is the construction or creation of a work
from a diverse range of things that happen to be available, or a work created by such
a process.
The term bricolage has also been used in many other fields, including critical theory, education,
computer software, and business.
The arts Music
Instrumental bricolage in music includes the use of found objects as instruments, such
as: Spoons
Australasian slap bass made from a tea chest Comb and wax paper for humming through
Gumleaf humming Lagerphone
Trinidadian steel drums African drums and thumb pianos made from recycled
pots and pans.
American super instruments made from recorders and bicycle bells or metal rods and keys
Stomp dancing is an example of the use of bricolage in music and dance, utilizing everyday
objects, such as trash cans and broom sticks, to produce music.
Many of the musical instruments created by American composer Harry Partch utilize unusual
items, such as automotive hubcaps and pyrex carboys.
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, access to resources is limited which limits
commercial influence, and there is a political or social drive to seek
individuality Unlike other bricolage fields, the intimate
knowledge of resources is not necessary.
Many punk musicians, for instance, are not musically trained, because they believe 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 many postmodern works.
These materials may be mass-produced or "junk".
See also: Merz, polystylism, collage, assemblage.
Bricolage can also be applied to theatrical forms of improvisation, more commonly known
as Improv.
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 are actually things that the players know from past experiences.
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.
Architecture Bricolage is considered the jumbled effect
produced by the close proximity of buildings from different periods and in different architectural
styles.
It is also a term that is admiringly applied to the architectural work of Le Corbusier,
by Colin Rowe and Fred Koetter in their book Collage City, suggesting that he assembled
ideas from found objects of the history of architecture.
This, in contrast to someone like Mies Van der Rohe, whom they called a "hedgehog", for
being overly focused on a narrow concept.
Academics Literature
In literature, bricolage is affected by intertextuality, the shaping of a text's meanings by reference
to other texts.
Cultural studies In cultural studies 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 subcultures such as, for example, the punk movement.
Here, objects that possess one meaning in the dominant culture are acquired and given
a new, often subversive meaning.
For example, the safety pin became a form of decoration in punk culture.
Social psychology The term "psychological bricolage" is used
to explain the mental processes through which an individual develops novel solutions to
problems by making use of using previously unrelated knowledge or ideas they already
possess.
The term, introduced by Jeffrey Sanchez-Burks, Matthew J. Karlesky and Fiona Lee of the University
of Michigan, draws from two separate disciplines.
The first, “social bricolage,” was introduced by cultural anthropologist Claude Lévi-Strauss
in 1962.
Lévi-Strauss was interested in how societies create novel solutions by using resources
that already exist in the collective social consciousness.
The second, "creative cognition,” is an intra-psychic approach to studying how individuals
retrieve and recombine knowledge in new ways.
Psychological bricolage, therefore, refers to the cognitive processes that enable individuals
to retrieve and recombine previously unrelated knowledge they already possess.
Psychological bricolage is an intra-individual process akin to Karl E. Weick’s notion of
bricolage in organizations, which is akin to Lévi-Strauss', notion of bricolage in
societies.
Philosophy In his book The Savage Mind, French anthropologist
Claude Lévi-Strauss used "bricolage" to describe the characteristic patterns of mythological
thought.
In his description it is opposed to the engineers' creative thinking, which proceeds from goals
to means.
Mythical thought, according to Lévi-Strauss, attempts to re-use available materials in
order to solve new problems.
Jacques Derrida 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 Deleuze and Félix Guattari, in their 1972 book Anti-Oedipus, identify bricolage
as the characteristic mode of production of the schizophrenic producer.
Education In the discussion of constructionism, Seymour
Papert 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. Kincheloe 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.
Information technology Information systems
In information systems, bricolage is used by Claudio Ciborra to describe the way in
which strategic information systems 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 system called Bricolage.
Internet In her book Life on the Screen, Sherry Turkle
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."
Business The visual arts is a field in which individuals
often integrate a variety of knowledge sets in order to produce inventive work.
To reach this stage, artists read print materials across a wide array of disciplines, as well
as information from their own social identities.
For instance, the artist Shirin Neshat has integrated her identities as an Iranian exile
and a woman in order to make complex, creative and critical bodies of work.
This willingness to integrate diverse knowledge sets enables artists with multiple identities
to fully leverage their knowledge sets.
This is demonstrated by Jeffrey Sanchez-Burks, Chi-Ying Chen and Fiona Lee, who found that
individuals were shown to exhibit greater levels of innovation in tasks related to their
cultural identities when they successfully integrated those identities.
Karl Weick 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
In popular culture 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 Zoolander parodies this concept with "Derelicte", a line of clothing made
from trash.
Television MacGyver 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 Wombles, a children's program based on creatures living in Wimbledon Common, is also
a fine example of bricolage.
In the theme song composed by Mike Batt, the lyrics include "making good use of the things
that they find, things that the everyday folk leave behind".
iCarly, a Nickelodeon television series, in which Carly's brother, Spencer, is a bricolage
artist.
See also
References
External links