{"id":1583,"date":"2021-10-15T16:18:20","date_gmt":"2021-10-15T20:18:20","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/blog.richmond.edu\/writing\/?p=1583"},"modified":"2021-10-20T09:27:43","modified_gmt":"2021-10-20T13:27:43","slug":"word-of-the-week-bricolage","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blog.richmond.edu\/writing\/2021\/10\/15\/word-of-the-week-bricolage\/","title":{"rendered":"Word of the Week! Bricolage"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"<\/a>Professor Joe Hoyle in our Business School often sends me words. This one comes from a known wordsmith, songwriter Bruce Springsteen, who in his memoir\u00a0 Born to Run<\/em> writes “This concept of bricolage–that less is more, the best solution is the most elegant.”<\/p>\n

The Boss has a definition not far off that of the OED<\/a>, which notes that such art emerges by “appropriating a diverse miscellany of existing materials or sources.” The term is modern, only cropping up in the 1960s.<\/p>\n

The OED’s and Springsteen’s definitions remind me of some 1990s discussions about the early developments of hypertext, both pre-Web and afterward, by authors such as Michael Joyce, Carolyn Guyer, and Ed Falco. It was a heady time, though short-lived. We imagined an online utopia of free content, international connection, and endless horizons. Partly, we got it, as well as darker things.<\/p>\n

I well recall Joyce proclaiming ominously at a conference that .com sites had just outnumbered all other sites, as if that were not inevitable. In any case, the term “bricoleur” got bandied about quite a bit by us, the digital hipsters and fans of Cyberpunk in the late 80s and early 90s.<\/p>\n

What makes bricolage so different from collage, such as those created by my friend, artist Eric Knight<\/a>?<\/p>\n

My sense is that collage is purely visual and made with images and words on paper, rather than the multimedia, often found-object approach of bricolage.<\/p>\n

I enjoy both techniques.<\/p>\n

If you have a word or metaphor you enjoy, send them by e-mail (jessid -at- richmond -dot- edu) or leaving a comment below.<\/p>\n

See all of our Metaphors of the Month\u00a0here<\/a>\u00a0and Words of the Week\u00a0here<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Image of maker space full of bricolage materials courtesy of Wikipedia.<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Professor Joe Hoyle in our Business School often sends me words. This one comes from a known wordsmith, songwriter Bruce Springsteen, who in his memoir\u00a0 Born to Run writes “This concept of bricolage–that less is more, the best solution is the most elegant.” The Boss has a definition not far off that of the OED, … Continue reading Word of the Week! Bricolage<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":589,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[2516,1027,40197],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1583","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-academic-writing","category-technoculture","category-vocabulary"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/pcsCNV-px","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.richmond.edu\/writing\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1583","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.richmond.edu\/writing\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.richmond.edu\/writing\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.richmond.edu\/writing\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/589"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.richmond.edu\/writing\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1583"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/blog.richmond.edu\/writing\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1583\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1586,"href":"https:\/\/blog.richmond.edu\/writing\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1583\/revisions\/1586"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.richmond.edu\/writing\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1583"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.richmond.edu\/writing\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1583"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.richmond.edu\/writing\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1583"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}