Special issue 19
garden leeszaal
was a momentary snapshot of the state of a library seen through the metaphor of gardening; pruning, gleaning, growing, grafting and harvesting. garden leeszaal was an open conversation; a collective writing tool, a cooperative collage and an archive. we asked participants to think of the library as a garden. for us, being a gardener meant caring; caring for the people and books that form this space.
π pad collection
β one: tasks of the contingent librarian
π¬ special issue
dear diary, today we took some notes on notes. i take notes on my phones notes, notion, and my own personal groupchat i have on whatsapp with myself. we talked about libraries as ideology, as a verb. we picked cards from tasks of the contingent librarian that resonated with us. then talked about them, then walked about what we talked about and transcribed what we heard.
me and irmak: a reader who downloads is a passive reader, we related to the idea of multiplying form, people annotating on things also adds to a text. Also the idea of open-sourcing, assuming that knowledge is private property. It's not going to be the same things when you share you notes with me because I'm a different person, it's not that, knowledge is fluid. Skimming/scanning: what's the difference?
π¬ prototyping
breadcube setup, keywords: sandbox, raspberry pi, server, unix-like software, post-PRISM age (surveillance program). Sandbox:
- Spaces for testing and prototyping software and describe how users and processes can be isolated for security purposes.
- Debian = OP most often used for servers, or computer without a graphic interaction (only terminal). UTF8 = character encoding
ssh ada @145.24.139.110
wall message
pwd (home)
ls (listing command)
apt intall nginx(install engine sever to access files from the server)
cd var/www/html
nano ada.html
(exit cntrl x)
http://145.24.139.110/ada.html
<a href="suzan.html".suzan,/a>
(to write)
figlet -f /usr/share/figlet/script.flf MESSAGE
ls /usr/share/figlet/
figlet -f shadow ada
- Root = main user
- Pseudo but not root: pseudoappinstall (will work if ur not root)
π¬ methods
ursula le guin, read in class. crazy read, been reading her fantasy work for years but never saw this.
- she unnames them = the process of naming in the text as gifting and unnaming as giving back a "useful gift" that does not serve something/someone well anymore. the agency of naming oneself, how giving yourself a name can be empowering like the yaks named themselves and how it became so redundant.
- the author of the acacia seeds = the scientists in the text being referred to as linguists and literary experts rather than translators and interpreters, removing the human layer of meaning from animal language.
- the carrier bag theory of fiction = If it is a human thing to do to put something you want, because it's useful, edible, or beautiful, into a bag, or a basket, or a bit of rolled bark or leaf, or a net woven of your own hair, or what have you, and then take it home with you, home being another, larger kind of pouch or bag, a container for people, and then later on you take it out and eat it or share it or store it up for winter in a solider container or put it in the medicine bundle or the shrine or the museum, the holy place, the area that contains what is sacred, and then next day you probably do much the same again--if to do that is human, if that's what it takes, then I am a human being after all. Fully, freely, gladly, for the first time.
- carrier bag library: A bag where people add as much as take away, where the mastery of knowledge is less important than the sharing of information, mutual knowledge, Leeszaal (no checkout, relationship built on trust and knowledge not seen as private propriety) Within a society of surplus, book donation makes sense
β two: print screen
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relflections on the carrier library, index cards making and opening up texts: i make card for labelling. we annotate again. i hate transcribing. we annotated a video. much nicer not literal.
then we go to XML and bootleg library to find text, make notes, read them out loud, record audio, run vosk-transcriber on it and make plain text.
π¬ prototyping
Hub: https://pzwiki.wdka.nl/mediadesign/HUB
Hidden network main notes: xvm(xpub virtual machine) is the only publicly reachable server on the network (so if u need to see a page like from the bootleg library, you ask for the bl server to serve the main page of the software used). Basically the request goes from a laptop to
laptopβ> xvm β> bootleg β> xvmββ laptop
- XVM is the only one that has a domain name (xpub.nl, the rest is unreachable without xvm)
Tinc
- Software that makes these hidden networks
- Installing to add breadcube to the HUB
Shell Cheat Sheet
β three: text, TBC
π¬ special issue
visit to the research station and kunstkelder @ Wdka with Wilma Knol, the atlas of new librarianship(expressing social roles of libraries and librarians in diagrams of data triples). bootleg library provides texts thank you bootleg library. we go to the kunst kelder, record the interview and take notes.
π¬ prototyping
jupyter & hypertext HTML&CSS editing
- hyperworld hypertext edit
HTML details about header, title and language processing
<!DOCTYPE html> tells me it's html
<html>
<head>
<title> needs to be in head not body
<style>
h1{
color: red;
}
</style> css is in the head for everything or can be used for specific parts
<h1 class="" style="color:blue;">text</h1> this way it's both the whole text and h1
π¬ methods
we use the section of wilma's audio recording about the box with the garden inside and make the recording legible in groups. me and cara make a website with one card. half of it is text i selected and half audio of the spaces between her words. i made the website. here it is ------>
β four: scribes getting personal
π¬ special issue
a day at varia = midwifery of thought, communication tools (for boxes of cards), me and cara take the digital hypertext approach. why gardening? how can we plant the text from wilma at varia? how to nurture seeds for a new environment. using pandoc and weasyprint to make cards! very fun!!
(permacomputing)
mkdir pandoc && cd pandoc
touch foo.html
touch style.css
touch makecards.sh
#! /bin/sh
pandoc --pdf-engine=weasyprint -c style.css -s foo.html -o foo.pdf
chmod a+x makecards.sh
./makecards.sh
-------------
new commands we saw today: touch,create a file chmodchange mode (set permissions for users, groups) to make files readable (r), writeable (w) or executable (x)
π¬ prototyping
SVG, CSS and HTML continued
Making cards, how to have a different web and print page
@media screen{
body{
background-color:beige;
}
section{
display: flex;
flex-flow: wrap row;
}
div.card{
flex: 1 200px;
background-color: beige;
border: 3px solid white;
margin: 10px;
padding: 10px;
}
div.card:nth-of-type(3n) {
flex: 2 300px;
background-color: darkseagreen;
}
div.card:hover{
background-color: cornflowerblue;
}
}
@media print{
@page{
size: A5 landscape;
margin: 10mm 25mm;
}
h1{
display: none;
}
div.card{
color:blueviolet;
page-break-after: always;
}
}
β five: gardening the library
π¬ special issue
a day at varia with simon: seeds, seeds as heritage; regenerative; libraries as a community garden; seeds as a way to cultivate your homeland elsewhere; seeds are coming home...; seeds as generation... re-generation; ancestral seeds-food archaeology. gardening the library = proof of concepts, materialise. one game using playing cards? defining concepts (cutting, fermenting, growing, weeding). differently.
π¬ prototyping
hello python! house of dust and generating HTML cards.
house of dust is a computer generated poem by alison knowles. introduction to python and then making our own version of her artwork. introduction to git. don't get git, python is very satisfying but scary. i love it.
π¬ methods
tex ritter, the dec of cards. we talk about the book utopia, about languages, belief systems. the catalogue of shipwrecked books. take snippets of text and use python to generate a template for them, html and css were made too.
β πππ
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β six: paper machines
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it is halloween, we talk about cards and game and fermenting and composting rooms. what could our cards do? a non destructive game, learning possibilities. we make cards using the script we made before, filled in with all our definitions we came up with in varia. object of game = cultivate your own garden of knowledge.
π¬ prototyping
git cheatsheet, more git work. talking about subversion apache, the craftsman by sennet. i have made a python script of rules for how to garden. it used the concept of the house of dust script filling in new concepts.midpointmeeting!!! - so far: creating a workshop/game/experience. still working with the gardening metaphor mostly in form of verbs, used to make permuted actions(in a python script that can be performed or explored in a library). lesszaal.
π¬ methods
we try to garden the library for the first time, the XML library. we used the cards we had, turned one in the middle and performed that action. we spent a long time discussing what actions meant. didn't really work super well as we thought it, cards can be a system to explore the library without other structure. we find out we can't answer the question 'how do we library that'.
β seven: a textile, a framework
π¬ special issue
i am sick, i do not leave my bed. the other breadcubies go to the social practice library and have loads of fun weaving cybernetics.methods, system. librarying.
π¬ prototyping
strachey love letter algorithm, permutations. cards to small python scripts. we make a new repository on git to put our rules. stephen makes a script to give random combinations of the game and the rules. he commits. we pull. i made a spaceRemover function and use string multiplication to clean up the output. we make a quantifier function too for the script.
π¬ methods
we made synopsies (a word?) of the project. A set of cards, garden-themed actions you can take to library content. A set of rules, maybe like we have generated yesterday on python, telling people ways to nurture and approach a collection. With a text-based end result, a catalog or garden of a collection. You have gardened your way into a meaningful and personal selection of content? If there was more free will maybe people produce a catalog of what the library is to them? (hypotheses)
How does HDWLT work ?
A system, a tool, an approach. A means to an end: the end is still open, what is the produced text?
Maybe then we have a system, a set of actions or rules to take to produce what I have so far thought of as a catalog of sorts for lack of other ideas. A way to make the communityβs vision of a library known and written (leeszaal for example does not have any written reflection of what it is and what it does). A community-first system to remember, to archive a collection.
a library collage.
β eight: permutations
π¬ special issue
generating rules for generating rules. If you have a garden in your/and a library you have everything you need.
verbs, nouns
love letter
- Invitation, informing, greeting (manifesto, letter, print/digital)
- Workshop (map, intro booklet), Game (cards)
- Sharing (the people who played the game share what happened by writing on a website or handwriting)
have instructions (tell people how to interact with the computer)
4. Documenting (print/screen-ing, amazing result)
5. Experience (presentation, booklet = publication, 1st release, amazement)
π¬ prototyping
pen plotters! chiplotle installing
install Chiplotle (Mac)
python3.9 -m pip install -r requirements.txt
python3.9 -m pip install numpy
sudo python3.9 setup.py install
π¬ methods
The concept so far: last Wednesday we discussed what games mean for us, what a game is, what a workshop is, and how our thinking of it is similar. We decided maybe what we are creating is a workshop/game/experience. Still working with the gardening metaphor mostly in the form of the verbs, which are being used to make different permuted actions (in a python script) that can be performed or explored in a library (for example on the 6th of Dec but there could be multiple versions of this game/experience).
Thinking about specificity and how can this happen at Leeszaal. An introduction to the space, naming the areas in the space. "Ferment 5 books in the childrens section" is getting a level of specificity that works.
Also taking input from people who are participating, in the form of reflection.
β nine: materialising the metaphor
π¬ special issue
people develop their own sections, i still have a python script that generates rules for cards. making sentences with relative clauses, printing definitions of the other side of cards. mini libraries = mini exhibitions with selections from people?
toolsheds! one for each of us? archivial purpose. the rules of the rules.
π¬ prototyping
we talk about the tools in the toolsheds, penplotters, flatbed scanners, barcode scanner, matrix printer, carbon paper, scissors, glue. i don't have a shed yet. scanning:
$ sudo apt install sane-utils
$ scanimage
$ scanimage -L
$ scanimage --help -d 'fujitsu:ScanSnap S1500:2314'
$ scanimage -d 'fujitsu:ScanSnap S1500:2314' --resolution 300 --mode gray
$ scanimage --resolution 300 --mode gray
π¬ methods
we talk about our toolsheds, go over the workflow. i express my wish to archive and make a product at the end of the night, a catalogue. we come up with the harvesting table, where a pranner will live to archive what is made in the rest of the toolsheds. I make a poster. "How do we library that?" invites visitors to collectively discover what a library offers through a collection of "unwanted books"; an exploration of networks of humans and texts, their contexts and modes of operation.
β ten: title goes here
π¬ special issue
a chance to cut is a chance to cure. schedule of the event, practical planning. "the bin books" ... where do they go? tools for grafting, pruning, growing, harvesting etc, action list to apply to the unwanted books in the "compost". triying to have personal questions: what book would your mother love/hate.
- Harvesting
Printer, Scanner, USB cable, computer, paper, things to bind with (TBC)
π¬ prototyping
me and manetta work on making the printer-scanner work.
CLI printing on the laser printerFirst you need to install the printer to your system.
Add the HP2055dn printer to your system
(use the cups web interface on port 631!)
Scan for installed printers
$ lpstat -p -d
Set a default printer
$ lpoptions -d printer
Print a file
$ lp filename
β eleven: a release
eventing 11:00-12:00 Meet in WdKA collect gear
12:00-13:00 Arrive in Leeszaal moving furniture
13:00-14:00 simon comes bearing food
14:00-15:00 setting machines up
15:00-17:00 testing machines and hanging cards
17:00-17:59 hour of screaming panic
17:59-18:00 happy little dance
18:00 doors open
20:30 harvesting moment
21:00 kick everyone out
21:00 Pack up. Leave everything in a box in Leeszaal (possible?)
during the workshop i used the scanner and printer to scan all the work that the librarians did on the bin books, based on the cards and the other sheds. at the end of the night we bound the copies into one book. later a copy was made of this fragile book.
