When I was a young, angsty teen, I read a lot of Rolling Stone and discovered punk rock.

With this newfound sense of rebellion, my opportunities were endless.

Did I pierce my nostrils with rusty safety pins?
Did I start my own all-girl band and scream angry, angry songs about politics, the status quo of feminism or how much boys suck?
Did I spray paint anarchy signs all over the city and spit in the face of police officers?

No, not really, I just read a lot. I learnt that a huge driving force behind punk rock is DIY.

Although DIY has been around since man first picked up a hammer and renovated his bathroom, I mainly associate the term with the punk rock movement – particularly zines. The term “Punk” initially came from a zine of the same name. Similarly, in the 1990s, the term “grunge” to describe alternative rock music at the time came from a zine review.

These words are now staple genres of the music industry, proving how powerful an influence zines have.

A zine is basically a homemade magazine. Without publishers and editors, the discerning zine maker creates their publications and distributes them personally to the public. Professional-looking or just a cut ‘n paste job, the whole concept of a zine is to convey independent idea and thought. You can still buy them at places like RockingHorse Records.

According to Stephen Perkins on his webpage about Punk Zines, the zine movement came about from a lack of alternative media.

“The initial vacuum caused by punk’s lack of empathetic coverage in the established music press, combined with its antipathy to the whole industry, opened up a new and exciting space for a homegrown or ‘insider’ coverage of this rebel music.”

Punk DIY is still very much alive today, but instead of paper zines, people are turning to the internet to publicise their creative work.

Author of Blogs, Wikipedia, Second Life, and Beyond: From Production to Produsage and our very own New Media lecturer, Axel Bruns, took notes at a conference called Prosumer Revisited in Frankfurt.

On the topic of “From Prosumption to DIY Culture”, Bruns notes that the movement that started off as some kids cutting and pasting bits of paper together to make a zine is now “a brand in its own right. And this ‘DIY brand’ may be the most important brand of the 21st century.”

It’s everywhere. Blogging, citizen journalism, t-shirt customisation, and even the relative ease of making your own website is rooted in the concept of DIY. The difference is that in the technology age, more people than the punk kids hanging out at RockingHorse can access it.

Another major aspect of DIY culture is customisation.

In the New Media age, we can see this through open source software projects.

“Another example for such trends is hacking, of course – not hacking as computer hacking in a narrow sense, but the user modification of products such as the iPhone, for example. This is a kind of deliberate misuse of products that vastly improves the usability and use range of such products.”

To find out more, I had a chat to Ili Tulloch who hosts “Paper Scissors Glue” on community radio station 4ZZZ (102.1 FM) – a show all about living by DIY. Listeners can hear about the finer tips of dumpster diving, bicycle repair, clothing alterations and more.

What is DIY?

For me I like to think of it as subverting consumerism while being fun and creative… It’s about doin’ it yourself…  as most underground culture is. DIY has evolved in the last few years and is now a craft movement, but really stems from the punk ethos of questioning the supposed uniqueness of an ‘expert’s’ skills, and promotes the ability of the ordinary person to learn to do more than he or she thought was possible.

I think the DIY craft movement has opened up the possibility of making money from your art, so making something useful out of recycled and junk materials, then selling them to people in order not to have to work a boring office job, and you’re using your artistic practice for something much more.

What potential does the internet/new media/Web 2.0 have for people passionate about DIY?

Blogging! Everybody has rad blogs. Photoshop is awesome for making posters and cool zine pages… email, forums, facebook and twitter are ramping up self-promo possibilities, and also the ability to go global aka Microcosm Publishing, etsy.com…

An awesome thing people are doing now is organising their own world tours. Zinester David Roche just visited Brisbane a couple of months ago. He got in touch with us via the net, and we set up some zine readings for him, he stayed at our house and we showed him koalas. We know a Brissy guy Jeremy Staples (Bizoo), who is doing the same thing and is off on the VansWarped tour. It’s just awesome all the shit you can do..

And there’s also the great DIY tech-heads who are creating free-ware versions of everything so those with less money can still participate online, like hosting sites, neooffice, gimp, etc…

Has the introduction of this new technology changed the face of DIY?

To a certain extent yes, in that it’s easier to do some self-promotion, and networking – there’s a new and somewhat awesome opportunity to make some money to survive with… I think this is a challenge to old DIY ideals that you don’t need money.

The reality is, people will make money off your ideas if you don’t figure out how to do it first, and the internet is helping people step up and accept their art has real value.

But, at the same time, I can’t help but hold on to the ideal that the really fun stuff is still happening in bins out the back of supermarkets, under houses and in squats with stolen paints, homebrew and some really dedicated activists, musicians and artists.

On a personal note, I’m all for DIY. As I mentioned in my previous entry, I’m working on my own website to publish my own work and get my name out there. You can check it out now but it’s still in its very early stages yet.

I also helped set up the MySpace page for my boyfriend’s band, Crystal Stairway [/shameless plug], using some basic layout coding trickery, adding photos and a bunch of local music contacts I know, for the purposes of networking and publicity. Rolling Stone may not know who they are yet, but maybe they’ll be able to get a few gigs from it. There’s a lot of potential.