Eleanorg/Thematic1.1/Queering programming
We like tight pants and mathematics queering up programming culture
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http://ericschrijver.nl/assets/selfconstruction_01 http://vimeo.com/21128026
Involved in.... http://schr.fr/ http://klepas.org/openbaskerville/ Open Source publishing: (uses FLOSS but also open licensing & posting process on blog, making sources available etc) http://ospublish.constantvzw.org/ http://ospublish.constantvzw.org/news/warming-up-the-house http://libregraphicsmag.com/ (1.3)
visual art
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~lonely~
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people :: design theatre :: people
related to todays subject:
PROGRAMMING
Programming (Boring connotations!), or software development as a friend suggested I’d call it—is one of the major languages shaping our time. We interact with our friends and love interests through a web tool that was hacked together by a kid who knew how to program. Open source software development offers new radical modes of collaboration and production. Who would not want to be a part of all that?
Not everybody, apparently, and especially not people in art and design and what might be called the humanities. To understand why, we have to take a closer look at what it takes to get into programming. Programming as a practice is not just about loops and variables. Programming has been conceived and continues to be practiced in a cultural context: programming culture.
To get into programming, one firstly has to come to terms with the stereotypes held about programming as an introverted, male, “geeky” endavour. Percieved as "that's for a certain kind of people, and that's not my kind of people"
Secondly, one has to deal with the image of the programmer that is held within the programmer community itself, which is less derogative but has its own biases towards gender and class. Finally, there’s the reality of people actually practicing programming, which is more varied then any stereotype but still shows for example a gender makeup that is hugely imbalanced towards men.
SUBCULTURE
What is programming culture—of course there is not one programming culture: it’s a patchwork of different scenes and tools and people, and there’s no definite place where programming stops and other fields begin.
Charting all these diverse cultural constellations is part of getting to know programming. But for the sake of argument, let’s treat programming culture as one subculture. In our age, with a culture of subcultures, it is a desirable skill to swiftly adapt yourself to the requirements of different fields and to move from one to the other.
Graphic designers might define themselves as designers by using a Mac, and by knowing how to discern between a dumb quote and a typographically correct quotation mark.
" is not “
(This also goes to show how these properties change over time: 25 years ago the Mac was just arriving on the scene.)
A practice can also be negatively defined. Not being technical might be part of the self-identity of the humanities. That is, by defining yourself as in the humanities you define yourself as outside of technology. At the performance studies international conference, the stage manager says to the technician: oh, we’re all a-technical here! To which I reply: speak for yourself.
Licenses: GPL -> http://www.gnu.org/copyleft/gpl.html ) BSD -> http://www.linfo.org/bsdlicense.html ) MIT -> http://www.opensource.org/licenses/mit-license.php ) CC -> http://creativecommons.org/ )
Relationships with our "machines" Love/hate - using computer as a tool, as a partner Childhood interest in computer programming vs passive use of computers (n00bs)
NB: Tell potential partners you're a mathematician, not a programmer/artist/graphic designer/. however he/she need to belong to the art crowd! NEVER TELL YOU ARE A PROGRAMMER! (what if you are a girl? is that cool? or no?) No, it is not. Yes, it is. YES :) supply n demand... like the artist at the mathematicians conf.
BECOME A LURKER
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lurker
A difference between programming culture and other subculture is how much of it takes place online. Two years ago I conducted an experiment: from a design showcase book I looked up the 8 designers I liked most. Only 2 had a web presence. Apparently, prestige is still made largely offline (though I think this will shift, when the boundaries between design and software development get less defined.) In contemporary programming culture, the discourse takes place via mailing lists, blog posts, irc channels and through open source code, all available through the internet. This makes it so, that for an outsider it is relatively easy to get to know more about programming culture. You can become, what on forums and mailing lists is know as a ‘lurker’: someone who reads and absorbs without taking part in the discussions themselves.
CODING AUTOBIOGRAPHY
I loose interest in computers as a teenager (as a kid I would do BASIC programming etc.). Just as I loose interest in most other ‘geeky’ things. This I see with many of my peers: as it becomes more important to be attractive, your focus shifts to ‘cool’ activities like music, art, culture.
I go to art school and not to technical university because I figure technical university is for nerds.
My interest in programmer culture reemerges in the 2000’s when I come across a really well designed technical blog while trying to work around some bug in my e-mail program.
Well designed blogs and computer technology—to my mind it’s a strange combination. It messes with my preconceptions.
But it is no coincidence. It is the programmers who first manage to master CSS, a web-native styling technology. CSS, as a concept, is rooted in programming culture. It’s supposed to be simple, but it is only simple when you are already comfortable with the idea of writing codes in text files to accomplish something.
Then at some point around the “Ruby on Rails” software it becomes fashionable to talk about beauty in the context of programming. A programmer talks about a JavaScript framework: ‘What makes [Mootools] remain my choice is the artistic elegance of the code itself and the design aesthetic that shapes its development.’ This has triggered me into paying more attention to programming culture—I’ve been a lurker ever since this moment.
SCARED OF NERDS
Making the move to actually being at a conference with software was hugely scary. I can’t be the only one scared of nerds.
So I overcompensate.
Spandex <Brian Eno ca. 1973> what about sunglasses? -> mandatory
Find the differences: 
http://ericschrijver.nl/assets/brussels_libre_graphics_train http://vimeo.com/15617301
WHY IS IT BETTER TO OPERATE WITHIN THE CONTEXT PROGRAMMER
Because your work can be taken up. It goes beyond the “experiment” at the point it is taken up. Because, by being you, you can change the image of programming to the outside world and make for a more diverse programming community.
WHAT I THINK IS A GOOD IDEA
To give programming a productive place in your arts and design practice, you need to get to know programming culture, and, ideally, take part in (re)shaping it. To feel comfortable with being a programmer, you might want to change what a programmer is. With queering up I am not referring to homosexuality, but rather to an approach that undermines existing masculine, heteronormative ideals. An historical example would be Glam rock’s appropriation of the traditional ‘earnest’ masculine rock musician into the polysexual identity mirror palace created by musicians as David Bowie and Freddy Mercury.
Wikipedia says: "Queerness becomes a way to simultaneously make a political move against heteronormativity while simultaneously refusing to engage in traditional essentialist identity politics"
A SHORT INTRODUCTION TO PROGRAMMING CULTURE
A contemporary developer might answer code questions on http://stackoverflow.com/ might store her/his code on https://github.com/ and stay up to date with http://news.ycombinator.com/
But to have some focused entry points, here are some links related to gender:
Gay people come to rails http://gilesbowkett.blogspot.com/2009/03/gay-people-come-to-rails.html
Deploy like a pr0n star http://www.linux-magazine.com/w3/issue/105/094-095_projects.pdf http://geekfeminism.wikia.com/wiki/CouchDB_talk
A PDF of the presentation: http://ompldr.org/vNWNrNg/gogaruco-couchdb-090418194027-phpapp02.pdf
Also see 2010 ApacheCon assault incident: http://geekfeminism.wikia.com/wiki/Noirin_Shirley_ApacheCon_incident
Brogramming https://www.facebook.com/getwiththebrogram?ref=ts
Im not a developer. Through my art practice I work with them. I have mainly mucked around in PD and produce spaghetti that someone else could later 'fix' or worked together with a developer which would specially modify a library for example to fit the needs of a specific piece. I am able to get most information through the software (sometimes devel) mailing lists or the IRC channels for more immediate questions. The jargon can be daunting at first but I have found that responses are generous and usually patient. Devel lists are a good resource though quite high volume and reccomended if you are 'really' getting involved...
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I keep track of various blogs on the topics of programming and diy audio/instruments etc I also post occasionally on forums asking/answering questions that Silvio asks. My role in programming culture? Lurker, occasionally leaping out of the shadows of the interwebz to say something vaguely useful or ask an obscure question. I would like to engage with programmers more often in real life rather than online (lets have coffee - hurray, a new friend xXx :D ), in order to make software-development a more direct and social action for me, rather than trawling through forgotten forum posts from 2003 at 1am on a Friday night*.
- a 'joke'
I once met a guy (Italian, not Silvio) who mispronounced the word "geek" - he said it as if it rhymes with "chic" (as in stylish). Perhaps we can claim that as a word for hip geek and challenge the stereotype of bleary-eyed keyboard warrior? :P ghic? Yes, with a soft 'g' sound :) It's how you say 'thanks' in czech! kthnx :)
let me know about this PD thing. (amy)
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I'm not particularly involved in developing culture. Unlike Henry_Ford<random int here>, my involvement is basically passive (passive involvement? interesting... lurker again?): I look for programming solutions on random blogs. In the last week I ended up very often on http://www.linuxquestions.org/. What do I consider fascinating of this subculture? The fact that apparently it is driven by collaborative practice and by constant sharing of knowledge and expertise. What about my role? I'd like to remain an outsider and occasionally "import" modes of production in my own field, which apparently is graphic design.
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Back in the days when Flash was still cool I used to read and ask a lot on FlashFocus, a Dutch Flash community website. After a while I stopped asking questions and started answering the questions other users posted. Until I got fed up with the same questions over and over again. In the end Flash got too bloated and anoying anyway and I dropped it entirely. When I need anything for the scripting languages I now use I go to Google to find the right blog / forum / whatever.
Now I just check whatever blog I come across and like. There aren't really any websites I check each day, except for tweakers.net for general tech news. I would like to get more involved with other developers creative coders, but preferably in a more direct way (irl, like through workshops or self initiated projects) instead of only online.
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Contact w/ open source via anarcho activist scene; became more interested in the tech side later. Hanging out with the guys who run http://ox4.org/ / Indymedia / UK Hacktionlab and becoming a Drupal junkie. (Interesting that Eric comes from being a geek and travelling to a point of being ok with that. My experience is from the opposite direction: of wanting to participate but being in the process of overcoming very high barriers to entry. At what point is it legitimate to identify as a geek?)
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I am not participating the programming world yet. and i also do not know if i ever will be part of it. it still scares me a bit. but to see how you can think in a different way is something that interests me also to have a choice how to use a computer
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so. i have no experience in the programming culture, what so ever. this is all very new to me. i still have to find my own place in it. for start i would like to implement it into my graphic design practice and see where it leads me (if anywhere). i would also like to see how these new opportunities and limitations can influence my expression. yes. i'm a dummie noobie. 2!
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To be brutually honest, i don't feel like i'm involved with any community, let alone the software development community. In the past year however, i was toying with PD and found it very interesting. I guess one of the main reason is that it was less abstract and easier to understand visually the process of inputs and outputs. oh and i've played around with hotglue.me, an open-source cms platform that ex-piet zwart students developed. i've experienced some limitations when you desire more advanced things, but nonetheless SUPER easy and user-friendly for the geek newbies.
interesting that elenor speaks of the high walls to enter into this 'clique'...i've also experienced it in various way in the past year.
was going to add that maybe it could've been my own rejection out of protection....dont want to go too psychoanalytical but yea, personally i feel that there is a certain threshold
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Have been a lurker of supercollider and mingling with its community members from time to time. A few times have answered some simple questions on the mailing-list, but in a very uneven relation to my own questions In the future would like to be active in facilitating first contact from others with code and FLOSS tools
It makes me think of the differences of learning to program on your own and to learning next to other people, at least you get coffe and cookies
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Google-reader to keep track of developments within programming, around 200+ sites about everything from css to everything else. Mostly in a problem-solving type of way or discover new fancy stuff. G+/Twitter is the biggest active network for following discussions, sometimes irc for direct solutions to annoying problems. I feel i follow the bigger discussions once they surface, but more as a passive user however sometimes i like to add a snarky comment/contribution in the end.
http://stackoverflow.com/users/529392/jonas problem solving https://github.com/jonaslund issue reporting
lurkin-links http://www.readwriteweb.com/ http://meyerweb.com/eric/thoughts/ (master of the css-reset) http://www.yuiblog.com/blog/ js-videos + http://www.zeldman.com/ grandfather of web-standards http://paulirish.com/ chrome dev-theme, html5boilerplate http://www.marco.org/ ex-tumblr now instapaper http://www.informationarchitects.jp/en/ etc..
full list available here:
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