We Make Money Not Art features images and text from “”Gambiólogos – Kludging in a Digital Era,” a Brazilian art show (“Gambiologia” is a Brazilian term for kludgey fixes and bodges). The show features art inspired by these makeshifts, as well as some of the makeshifts themselves. I’m fond of this replacement automotive side-mirror.
Gambiologia is something like “The science of gambiarra”, which is a Brazilian cultural practice of solving problems creatively in alternative ways with low cost and lots of spontaneity, or giving unusual functions to everyday life objects. There is no exact translation for ‘gambiarra’ so we initially used kludge which means (from Wikipedia): ‘a workaround, a quick-and-dirty solution, a clumsy or inelegant, yet effective, solution to a problem, typically using parts that are cobbled together’. In the US they’d call it makeshift. Gambiologia is the study of ‘gambiarra’ in a technological context.
We actually stopped translating Gambiologia at all :^)
I ‘d say it is a specific kind of hacking – it’s the proposal of hacking not only electronics or codes, but objects as well. It’s about using things (or bits, maybe) in functions they were not initially proposed to. Modify them or join them in improvised and creative ways so they’ll not accomplish the original task anymore. Using parts that were not supposed to be together to create a distressing whole. In our case it’s also deeply linked to Brazilian folk culture.