Nettrice Gaskins’s talk was very interesting and informative. I learned many things that I have never heard about. I have heard of STEAM but I got a better understanding of it through her talk. She expresses her want for more students especially young girls, and minorities to have access to space, materials, and time to make and tinker. She uses the word tinker when defining improvisation which she says is the spontaneous and inventive use of materials. She brought up failure when discussing tinkering to not see something as a failure but to improve the next version (prototype).
Gaskins also talks about remixing, which is the activity of taking parts of pre-existing materials to combine them with others, into new forms. She uses Grandmaster Flash as an example for remixing, which I thought was good to use a figure in a different area (music) to show students how technology can be represented in many aspects of life. She talks about he created the “quick mix theory” and how people think he is known for inventing the crossfader but really he remixed it and made improvements.
I enjoyed it when she was talking about Black Panther and Afrofuturism because I learned a lot. I have seen the film but have never learned about it in the way she was describing. She talks about the character Shuri who is very engaged in science and technology and in the film you can see her constantly tinkering in a lab. I was fascinated by the technology that was done for the film. Gaskins then talked about the Dora Milaje Tabi boot which they recreated using digital fabrication, creating the boot with fabric and adding technology to it. She uses Shuri as a role model for young females to look up to.