Assessment 1

An Ode to XPub

The definition of An Ode: a poem expressing the writer's thoughts and feelings about a particular person or subject, usually written to that person or subject

Relations, as a concept has been guiding my life since I started writing my theses two years ago. I decided to apply to Xpub (partially) because of its collaborative structure, I wrote about my obsession with relations in my motivation letter, and in my first conversation with you, during the interview I went back to relations time after time.

As I am a part of this course now, I have a confession to make, there have been instances beyond count in which I questioned my place here, and whether I should just quit or not. There are multiple reasons for it, one of which is the cold sweats I would feel each morning before prototyping sessions when I would need additional help (sometimes to even open the terminal). What led me to keep on coming every week, how I am sitting in front of you right now, maybe reading these lines directly because looking at your faces is too much, has been the people.

Their dedication on learning, teaching, celebrating and holding space for not only me but for one another.

I am a slow learner within this programme, but I have to admit, I have learned so much since last September.

People have inspired me on many occasions, and this page will go over only a few.

SP25

Radio Shows

Field Recordings (an Ode to Rotterdam)

This was not a radio show I was a part of, it was one of the first shows and they decided to go through the city of Rotterdam, recording sounds that they ran into, I found this so very interesting and exciting and wanted to join in on their little recording tour.

Walking around the city was beautiful, the more we let our ears lead the way the more I realized this was just a different way of experiencing my surroundings. I had never let the sounds direct my movements, I have never chased one singular sense for so long with so much affection. The city became completely different when it was guided by sounds.

Listening, became deliberate and meanings started being attached to it. (Later on this experience will guide me in Urban Small Talk)

Water (an Ode to Claudio)

How shall water flow?

For the radio show we decided we wanted our overarching theme to be water, Claudio and the TouchDesigner, the Sunday before the radio show I played around for hours within the system and wrote down how I would love to structure the show, based on the sensation of first encounter with the water, slowly getting in, all the chaos within and again going back out to the surface. Mixed and matched with the responses to What is experimental? What is protocol?

Obviously the radio show did not follow through the structure I came up with, part of collective nature of everything, part of how beautifully unpredictable radio has been, it is still I skill trying to learn on how not to lose my mind in the lack of control.

Protocols to Free Britney

Loads of new finding on the past and history of Copyright, (it first started as a censoring for print houses), complications with the mics, and the laptops, a lot lot lot lot lot lot lot lot lot lot of Gimme more.

Here is the script if you are curious.

In cultures with oral history, folklore is how information is passed down, by elders after dinner surrounded by people drinking tea. The stories of creation, war love and redemption pass like biscuits shared and bitten. They mark the identity of the people, not only their victory and loses but their morals, virtues and those that are valued. They didn't belong to anyone but the people, they weren't a property to be owned or created, they were neither original not unique. Identity can never be fixed, will never sit still, it is made and remade with every second, every new information every instant of a new encounter. As the identity of the culture changes so does the stories, as the myths are told and retold new customs enter in between speeches, the values pick from the hands of the heroes and reshapes their journey. The transformative nature of folklore grants cultures control over their identity. One such encounter that shaped and reshaped the stories of the old were religion. As Christianity spread the story of Eve, a women's first action became sin, the consequence pain and suffering. As Islam started mingling with Dede Korkut, the women who took arms and fought on horseback turned into damsels to be saved or disappeared all together. Change is the only constant, transformation can sometimes means censor.

Copyright was first borne from the need of censoring dangerous information spreading. Printed work had to be licensed by those chosen by the rulers. The license gave the print-houses the right to copy. The licenses were granted not to the authors, but to print-houses and publishers. It was meant to stop the spread of those ideas deemed dangerous, not to protect the rights of their creator. In time our understanding of copyright changed, and was adjusted, now it needs the creation to be fixed and stable.

To be transformed into a saying, even at the price of her/his life. To lose the chance to transform by becoming writing, writing that remains folklore changes with the culture, doesn't stay constant, it is allowed to live and breath and go through its own journey. However the record of what was will be lost. Immortality of a singular moment a specific arrangement of words speech flies, writing remains if you are defined by your work, do you chose remembrance over transformation to turn yourself into a statue to be consumed for recognition "active invisibility to provide the freedom of not being tied to your creations" forced visibility, being made a property, held responsible with no decision making power. being immortalized in your imprisonment. It's Britney Bitch.

Can I steal what has never been yours? play with it? Burn it, shuffle, sample, elongate? can I make it mine (ours), color the walls of your cell? Steal your voice, use your name? Take your story from online sources, and rewrite it myself

Its never about my own position to reclaim my name, but always about my name being reclaimed by the agenda of the people that I'm associating with I am sorry Britney, I can't free you, I couldn't even steal your name, song or story since none belonged to you, but hey, maybe your name can free me?

Some Class Activities

Piezo Mic

I tried soldering for the first time, (this day led to the field recordings)

Graphviz (an Ode to Michael)

some graphviz trials that are now lost

I tried using it to visualize a project I had been working on;

How to use the Circular Economy model to demonstrate the ways in which Capitalism reinvents itself through the various crises it goes through.

This proved to be very very very difficult because, well the terms are connected to one an other from multiple side in multiple configurations and graphviz has a mind of its own, it looked messy,

conversation with Micheal, I suppose I have to accept that this part of my academic journey is asking me to embrace the messy and let the constraints that come along the way also sway me to new directions, I didn't even know existed. (this reminds me of the field recordings and being pulled by different sounds)

Protocols for Collective Performance

Urban Small Talk (an Ode to The Situationist International)

some people even responded :)

questions;

• What would happen if Rotterdam heard you?
• Would the city change?
• Would your existence in it change?
• Does Rotterdam hear you? How can you tell?
• If so, where are you heard?
• If not, where would you want to be heard?
• If you could speak with Rotterdam, how would the conversation go?
• Do you make the city yours by recording it?
• When have the city recorded you?
• If you can't communicate with sound, how else can you?
• Does Rotterdam understand you/Where does Rotterdam understand you?
• Do you understand Rotterdam/Where do you understand Rotterdam?
• How do you defy the city?
• How does the city defy you?

Sounds of Marmalade (an Ode to Zeynep, Omar and later on Joseph)

this looks like the fifth trial

After using a soldering machine for one(1) time, I decided to go through with supplying us with piezo mics, at the end of the day that I finished four after hours, when I tested them out only a slight sounds was coming from one of them and the others were radio silent, again taught me a lot about patience and things taking time, and learning through doing, there were small parts that I needed further instruction with, and after the magical help of Joseph we had enough mics for the jam sessions.

Special Issue 26

Some Class Activities

Companion

notes from companion

my companion

"the notes I took in class" was a different experience because I had ideas I wanted to try, and I could follow the entire class without cold sweats running through my back ( we will come back to the cold sweats)(or have we already passed that stage)(what is order) but was quite inspirational none the less.

Learning through all the little websites my friends were making felt beautiful, led me to take a lof of notes (what you see is only a part of it). But this was most likely the first time I actually finished a project with having it look the way I had hoped for it to look. A particularly significant part of the journey of aiding me to keep on coming.

Poem

we can make code write poems????? (the code for the poem) some examples, pretty pretty

from random import choice

being = ['melancholy', 'love', 'lust', 'grief', 'mischief', 'familiarity', 'comfort', 'power', 'the mundane', 'courage', 'cowardice', 'time', 'translation', 'myself', 'the jokes', 'the crowd', 'in a map']

some_people = ['myself', 'the sea', 'elders', 'children', 'family', 'Jesus', 'God', '', 'all whom I loved', 'those who I forgot', 'memories', 'the howling wind', 'the person I had hoped to become', 'the person that used to be me', 'curiosity', 'disdain', 'library books and old receipts', 'a family recepie', 'serenity', 'stars laying dead, dull and motionless', 'grains of sand reminiscing the mountains', 'regrets of the holy spirit', 'the concrete jungle', 'the dance of drops of water']

verb = ['running from', 'loving', 'hoping for', 'dreaming of', 'ruminating', 'forgetting', 'remembering', 'recollecting', 'reconciling', 'trembling through', 'walking over', 'drowning in']

noun = ['my name', 'the past', 'lost lovers', 'long evenings and none existant mornings', 'the birth of the sun', 'echoes of regrets, mine or not', 'misremembered mistakes', 'chests filled with forgotten pasts and unlived futures', 'lonely longings', 'unsent letters', 'typewriters with missing buttons', 'the laugh of a stranger', 'a warm evening calling out you into existance', 'people I have yet to meet, love and leave', 'a little girls birthday gift', 'lips sworn shut, eyes that never stop speaking', 'an overcrowded party', 'Life in his arrogant smile, and Death in a beautiful gown', 'borders drawn by hand']

print('')
print('Lost in  ' + choice(being))
print('    surrounded by  ' + choice(some_people))
print(choice(verb) + ' ' + choice(noun))
print('')

And I will also post some of the poems that came out because why not:

Lost in  cowardice

    surrounded by  regrets of the holy spirit

forgetting borders drawn by hand

Lost in  comfort

    surrounded by  God

trembling through lonely longings

Lost in  translation

    surrounded by  the dance of drops of water

forgetting a warm evening calling out you into existance

Lost in  the mundane

    surrounded by  regrets of the holy spirit

forgetting typewriters with missing buttons

Dot Matrix Printer

dot matrix printer notes

Sevgi showed me how it was working, okay from this point onward it will be an ode to a friend. I decided to keep the last comment, because here I decided to restructure this page for the assessment, dedicating it to all that has touched me one way or another through this journey.

the truth is, I came here today, sat on that chair (I assume the assessments take place in the aquarium so I can point to it) right after the companion page class, with some hope and hoped to latch myself onto an unsuspecting student to learn from them, ask them questions, write it all down, and as if Sevgi had woken up with the same idea but reversed, she let me in without even the need of asking.

Of course after months here I should not have been surprised, everyone had been so enthusiastic to share all their beautiful nerdy projects, sources, thoughts and assistance, but somehow it still made me very emotional.

A Dao Of Web Design

The idea came from our discussions on A Dao of Web Design (no thanks to the author).

Arising from the idiom "Give a man a fish and he is fed for a day, teach him how to fish and he is fed for life." we decided to ask the question "But who makes the fishhook?"

This led us into conversations around the special issue and of CSS, which finally led to ....

A CSS Who Done It

HTML

there are at least 25 screenshots similar to these on my desktop

I can finally say I understand it, not from writing it, or creating beautiful websites but only from reading it through in so many spec sheets for the code.

JS

I prefer it soooo much more than CSS actually. I do not like declarative languages turns out.

try {
    let specType = $("time").first().prev().text();
    //https://www.w3.org/TR/2025/WD-css-position-3-20250311/
    //    console.log(specType);
    if (specType && await checkSpecType(specType, sheet) != "Failed") {
      return checkSpecType(specType, sheet);
    }
    if (!specType) {
      specType = $("#suptitle").children().first().text();
      if (specType && await checkSpecType(specType, sheet) != "Failed") {
        console.log("2");
        return checkSpecType(specType, sheet);
      }
    }
	if (!specType) {
        // https://www.w3.org/TR/2012/WD-css3-grid-layout-20121106/ 
        const specTypeString = $("h1").next().text().replace("W3C", "");
		console.log("Im here");
        specType = specTypeString.split(/\d/)[0].trim();
        if (specType && await checkSpecType(specType, sheet) != "Failed") {
          return checkSpecType(specType, sheet);
        }
      }
    if (!specType) {
      //https://www.w3.org/TR/css-tables-3/
      const specTypeString = $("h2.no-num.no-toc").text().replace("W3C","");
      const specTypeWithAddOn = specTypeString.split(/\d/)[0];
      const specTypeWithBreak = specTypeWithAddOn.replace(/(\r\n|\n|\r)/gm, "").replace(
        ",",
        "",
      );
	  specType = specTypeWithBreak.replace(/\s+/g, " ").trim();
  if (specType && await checkSpecType(specType, sheet) != "Failed") {
        return checkSpecType(specType, sheet);
      }
	  
      logError("specType", sheet);
      return undefined;
    }} catch {
    logError("Type", sheet);
    return undefined;
  }
};

Output/ASCII

date: 2002-08-02 type: working draft

properties: appearance, box-sizing, content, cursor, display, font, icon, key-equivalent, list-style-type, nav-index, nav-up, nav-right, nav-down, nav-left, outline, outline-color, outline-offset, outline-style, outline-width, overflow, overflow-x, overflow-y, resizer

Name: Tantek Çelik[#] Organization: Microsoft[#]

Personal Research

Ideas

Combining what I have learned during DDW, some form of curriculum(?) to combine the practical and theoretical. Well at least I have a good example right in front of me to learn from.

Books Reading Currently (or on the immediate reading list)

• The Real World of Technology
• 100 Years of Solitude
• Parable of the Sower
• Designs for the Pluriverse
• Computer Power and Human Reason
• Poetics of Relation
• Pedagogy of the Oppressed
• After Virtue a Study in Moral Theory
• Making Social Science Matter
• Exploratory Programming for the Arts and Humanities

Dutch Design Week

The Cycles intertwined

Poetry with Music

https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=W63FgTBXPFs&pp=0gcJCdgAo7VqN5tD