Many artists and DIY makers try to do their own engineering in an ad hoc way where the poetry becomes caged rather than trellised by the technology. That's partially due to lack of engineering — not merely technical knowledge but judgment. A competent engineer solves particular problems efficiently using the entire spectrum of contemporary techniques, a wise engineer thinks reuse while solving problems. We need wise engineering. AME has several faculty and staff who embody such combination of technical know-how and judgment. The maker / DIY attitude is also a consequence of a "truth-in-materials," making-based studio art practice, that in turn was a political reaction against the extreme conceptualism in Euro-American art institutionalized in the first half of the 20c. This maker-turn is healthy ab ovo, but too quickly becomes dogmatic and self-disempowering when mixed with naive anti-intellectualism.
So much new media, intermedia, makerbot, and DIY tech art feels like the creative flame is encased in some mechanical exoskeleton. On the other hand, the answer is not simply throw away with structured knowledge and produce shapeless blobs of stuff — “jellyfish" art. I hope we see more work with bones and ligaments and movement continually made afresh adeptly and deeply informed by technicity (borrowing Simondon). Art by small mammals in the age of dinosaurs.