Inventors, tinkerers and tech junkies of all stripes can get their fix and indulge their creative spirit at the 2012 Maker Carnival.
The carnival, which kicked off at the China Millennium Monument Museum of Digital Arts last week, is China’s first global mass creation and open-source technology fair.
Fans can flock to play Angry Birds on a 1-meter-long multi-touch table, shoot a video game duck using an umbrella as a weapon or see the miniature robots from the movie Real Steel.
Fifty international inventors, referred to as chuangke, or makers, are displaying their bizarre creations at the exhibition, which lasts until May 12.
"Creation is our DNA and blood," says Mitch Altman, a 55-year-old San Francisco-based hacker and inventor. " The Maker Godfather" is his fitting sobriquet.
Altman travels the globe promoting Arduino, the open-source single-board microcontroller that is used in most of the carnival’s creations.
"We are lucky to express our creativity in different forms. This is a community where people share resources, and it is a place for them to explore and do what they love."
Creativity, and the ability to actually produce, is no longer the preserve of a few, according to one leading expert.
"Creation used to be the privilege of people with years of experience, relevant knowledge and a professional background," said Wang Lan, an associate professor of arts at Macao University of Science and Technology. " But now the general public can create something fantastic thanks to rapidly developing technology."
That view was echoed by Xiao Wenpeng who introduced Arduino to China and co-founded Beijing Maker Space.
"We have ideas and we are able turn them into reality, even products."
However, concerns have been expressed about a patent system that can protect the creative works.
"The current system of intellectual property rights has led to the monopoly of big corporations, and individuals are too weak to compete with them," said David Ben Kay, who runs Yuanfen Flow, a Beijing-based business incubator for technology, arts and design.
Kay said companies use patent law as a cudgel against competitors.
Nevertheless, Kay suggested the best way for makers to protect their own rights is to record the development process in detail.
"The range of intellectual property has been too narrow. A system that once encouraged creativity has fallen behind the needs of individual creativity."
There seems to be a consensus among the makers.
"It has prevented the flow of knowledge … and we makers, who create together, need a more flexible system," said Wang Shenglin, one of Xiao’s colleagues and the main organizer of the carnival.
"We often have to develop other people’s ideas. The whole process reflects collective wisdom. "
Xiao jokes that the country’s myriad knock-off cell phone manufacturers provide a good example.
"Many factories share the same design charts among themselves, but they won't share resources with us outsiders," Xiao said.
"The notion of 'some rights reserved' could be a possible way to solve our problem."
Xiao said the Creative Commons (CC) licensing system has become more and more popular among the makers.
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