At Fabricatorz Foundation, our mission has always centered on cultural preservation, open hardware, and sustaining the archives of experimental art and technology. A vital piece of that ecosystem is SCALE Publishing, an imprint dedicated to producing knowledge for a world of limited resources.
We are excited to share that SCALE has completely refreshed its History and Editors records. By mining the Fabricatorz archives, Clément Renaud’s public writings, and Christopher Adams’s portfolio, the SCALE catalog now reads as one continuous, interconnected story—stretching from early days at UCSD through the foundational years of Qi Hardware, all the way to today’s active publishing house.
Connecting the Dots: What’s New in the SCALE History
The scattered threads of this community’s journey are now documented in a single, cohesive timeline on SCALE’s updated history page. Key eras and milestones now fully archived include:
- The Evolutionary Arc: Tracing the lineage from OpenMoko to Qi Hardware, leading to the 2019 weekly program relaunch at scale.qihardware.org.
- Cryptology (January 2020): Documenting the critical Shenzhen workshop and public exhibition marking Qi Hardware’s ten-year milestone, featuring seminal works like Matt Hope’s Miner Arch right on the runway to the global pandemic.
- Qiware and the Book Era: Preserving the history of the February 2020 Wuhan open call, anthology designs, and the publication of Multiplier and Sensorium.
- The Modern Imprint Split (June 2024): Formalizing the ecosystem structure where Qi Hardware and Qiware were granted to Phi, while SCALE Publishing remains proudly hosted and sustained here at the Fabricatorz Foundation.
A dedicated new subsection explicitly frames this history through the lens of Fabricatorz’s role as host—tying SCALE directly to our broader creative preservation initiatives, including Openclipart, the Libre Graphics Meeting, Artifaq, and the Art Crimes (graffiti.org) archive.
Expanding the Editors Network
The update also brings expanded, SCALE-specific context to the backgrounds of the core editorial network, mapping how their independent creative practices converge under the imprint:
- Jonathan Phillips: Grounding his trajectory from the 2004 founding, through the 2019 weekly relaunch, the Cryptology exhibition, and navigating the strategic Phi/Fabricatorz split.
- Clément Renaud: Highlighting his deep focus on computers as writing systems, his extensive practice in China since 2008, and his vital co-editing work with Dino Ge Zhang during the 2020 Wuhan open call.
- Christopher Adams: Mapping his art production and coding work in Taipei, his CC0 design framework for the landmark Wuhan anthology (2021), his contributions to Multiplier, and his archival work protecting the Art Crimes graffiti legacy under the Fabricatorz umbrella.
Help Us Fill the Gaps
While this update brings massive clarity to the timeline, an archival project is never truly finished. The history page still features a “What’s Missing?” section. The ambition remains to map the timeline month by month, filling the gaps left between 2005 and 2018, as well as unrecovered weeks from 2019.
If you hold records, PDFs, newsletters, or correspondence from these eras, we want to hear from you. Help us feed this publishing house together by reaching out directly to the editorial team at up@scalepublishing.com.