Need Some Maker Inspiration? Time for 'Barb Makes Things'

On the door of maker hangout Crash Space in Culver City, California, it says Allow YOUR GEEK SHINE—and 70+ members do only that, making stuff with other like-minded people, including Affront Noren, who gave me a recent tour.

In one case inside, it's hard to know where to look first. At that place's a skull acting as a bookend between a bunch of programming manuals, a model rocket launcher and a CSI box gear up. A My Footling Pony has been modded to include a working soldering iron (this is Sparkles, the Crash Space mascot). Drill bits in cases sit on top of metallic filing cabinets total of resistors, integrated circuits, goose egg ties, and sticky backs. In one room a row of oscilloscopes look electrical testing duty.

Crash Space

In the back are the hefty machinery rooms: CNC, a laser cutter, and 3D printers. Diverse notices taped up on flat surfaces caution everyone: "please don't gear up yourselves on fire, give thanks y'all for your cooperation."

Barb Noren got her start every bit a sound editor on Repo Men, the 2005 Dukes of Hazzard reboot, and Friday Night Lights. Now she's a full-fourth dimension STEAM instructor and posts popular how-to videos on her YouTube channel, Affront Makes Things. We'll let her explain how she made the transition.

Firstly, I have to enquire what the glowing orb is on the wall?
When one of the Crash Infinite members comes in, we push that button, and it changes the Real Time Open Status online, then people know they can drop by. It's only open when one of us is here. Crash Space orb

Good to know. It was freaking me out a bit; idea it was a seismic activity indicator, you never know in Fifty.A. So how long have you been making stuff?
Forever, basically. I made things as a kid, as my mom, who is an creative person, encouraged that. Whenever I got interested in something new she'd say: "Hither are the materials—go ahead and try it," which was cool. My dad was a estimator geek, and then I got my interest in that from him. He was a systems engineer and is now a data scientist. Then, in 2022, during hiatus between sound editing jobs—

—Which I'k going to ask you about adjacent, but delight keep.
[Laughs] OK. Well, back then, I discovered Make Magazine, got myself an Arduino, started playing around with that and saw a tweet well-nigh Maker Ed'due south Maker Corps program. It appealed to me because it involved education, making stuff—and information technology was a bit more than agile than my usual routine, which involved sitting at an editing bay. And so I retrained, taught after-schoolhouse classes and summertime camps at a kids' makerspace called The Exploratory. At present I'thou Lead Tinkering Facilitator at the reDiscover Center, which promotes resource conservation, creativity, and customs appointment through tinkering and material reuse. We do camps, classes, and workshops, for both adults and children, educational activity them to use ability tools and how to make things, then they come with their individual projects and build them.

How does Crash Space fit into all this?
I was working at an Intel pop-up holiday space, every bit a "tech disruptor" with Carlyn Maw, one of the founders of Crash Space and she said: "Yous demand to come hither." And so I did and thought: "These are my people." I tin can talk geek here, and I fit in perfectly. There are 70+ members and many of us hang out here three or four nights a week, making stuff, ordering in pizza, talking, that sort of thing.

Crash Space

Permit's dorsum up a bit, to your entertainment career. Wasn't your background in audio composition, originally?
Yes. Well, initially, I studied music at University of California, Irvine—flute, figurer music, and composition. Then, I read an commodity nigh sound post-production and I thought, "That's what I want to do." And so I then joined the Media Arts and Technology program at University of California, Santa Barbara, which was a more technical and interdisciplinary course, involving computer science, electronic music, engineering, and theory. I was particularly inspired past my mentor there, Dr. JoAnn Kuchera-Morin [who gave a TED Talk on information visualization].

How did you go into the audio effects industry?
My first gig was equally a sound production banana on the Fri Night Lights movie [in 2004], and then I was a dialogue editor on the Television receiver show of the same name from 2006 to 2022.

Were you lot freelance, or based inside an furnishings facilities firm?
Mostly based at what used to exist chosen Audio Dogs, in the San Fernando Valley, and is now King Soundworks. They work with a lot of the studios, big production companies, and streaming services.

So, after yous transitioned out of Hollywood and into the maker motion and became a STEAM educator, you also gear up up your own YouTube channel: Barb Makes Things.
Education making doesn't necessarily include a lot of making things yourself, and I wanted something that would push me to be creative and let me share what I'd made with a larger audience. I've been posting how-to videos and thoughts about the maker movement every week for near ii years, and at present have over 100 up at that place.

What's your shoot/edit setup?
I shoot using a Sony Alpha 5000, which I won in a competition on Instructables, and I edit in iMovie mostly. I practise accept Pro Tools besides, but iMovie does what I demand it to do.

I love the Hackerspace Board Game how-to video.
The maker movement is a collaborative thing, and so I wanted to build a board game where people could work together on projects, bring in their unique skills.

You got a lot of views with your Game Spinners one and, in a render to your musical roots, The Hexachord, which you exhibited at the Bay Area Maker Faire. That'due south a circuitous project; practise you have favorite tools you use fourth dimension and fourth dimension again?
I'thou a generalist so I like a whole lot of things, but the tool that I come back to a lot is a Dremel rotary tool, because information technology has a whole agglomeration of attachments like a sanding drum, y'all can adjust just about anything, and their mounted vice attachment opened upwards all new worlds of existence able to manipulate things.

Final question: can you describe the changes you've seen over the past few years in the maker movement in 50.A.?
I'thou seeing more than and more kids existence exposed to maker education as an offshoot to more traditional education methods, which is great, because it develops dust, which I only did a video about, and teaches them how to deal with failure, and develop their creativity. The way the maker motility will grow strong is if kids are given tools, and have a framework, just build the stuff they desire to build. It's not virtually following rules, or instructions but having the tools at their disposal and having the qualities, like grit, to figure it out.

Fantabulous bespeak. What'south side by side for you and Crash Space?
I'm just about to shoot a how-to video on revamping reDiscover Centre's behemothic marble run wall. And, if whatsoever PCMag readers are in the L.A. surface area on Tuesday, Oct. 10, Crash Space has a members coming together and open up house, where nosotros get together and talk almost the latest events and projects by Crash members and the maker community as a whole.