User:Francg/expub/media-writing/draft-10May

Draft 2 - drafting a guide

This text hopes to developing a clear perspective on media design practices, as well as defining those stimulating aspects from my previous and current practical experience studying the Master of Experimental Publishing,

involving a variety of subjects, ranging from environmental issues (scarcity of resources), audio programming languages (concerning the merging/interaction of mankind with technology) and digital libraries (related to the legality of public spaces).

I am currently working on creating a digital platform/data base with Max and Giulia, which will work as a digital archive/library for the Poortgebouw building [what does the building do? a local support centre, helping with...(youth, publications add to list)]. The Poortgebouw project gives public access to specific knowledge in form of digitalized documents concerning the legality of this historical urban space, from 1980 to today.

Our project will make accessible information such as letters from the previous owners, town hall and other institutions, files from different cultural centers or existent communities in Rotterdam (these documents are previously and/or nowadays active. The files supported the initiative of having an alternative space to help the youth, schedules, news leaflets or handwritten letters designed from previous inhabitants, architectural maps of the building’s refurbishment, etc.

We are building an office on the ground floor of the building; setting up printers, scanners, monitors and computer towers that were left over untested. The archiving system we are working on, has bigger social implications and dimensions that extend beyond a work-in-progress of this course.

This may not only inspire the current inhabitants to engage more actively to social projects, but to external institutions such as the Het Nieuwe Instituut to contribute to the support of the archive. With regards to technical aspects, it contemplates the possibility of recording live footage, so that further material related to the current legal status of the building can be stored.

We are also learning to transform digital images such as jpeg, tif or pdf documents containing text, whether in English or Dutch, into editable (translated) text files using an OCR program.

Further tweaking and editing will be necessary in order to ensure a correct format transition. Eventually, we will need to build a graphic interface that will display and dynamically update all this data into this online/offline library.

I am personally interested in creating an interactive digital platform that may continuously generate new data, which could work as a cross over experiment within different creative practices. [start a new sentence] eing an archive itself, exploring on how to efficiently use sensor technologies connected to different video inputs simultaneously on specific urban environments, further exploring audio environments, combining printed matter.

[ maybe unpack this how is it post human: the way we change ourselves, how does the technology within the building effect those living there? How can you go with archiving a space? : contemplating the idea of the “posthuman” in the current and future technological era.]-

This connects to the projects we’ve been working on this year, specially for reading methodologies as we will need to go through written communication. We have to read a lot and also read over; summarize. We may need to use Dutch-native speakers and editors

May the fact of being able to diy our own devices such as scanners, powerful computers, speakers or create editorial objects/books exposing unique material, makes our digitally oriented path to become a more crafted technologically based work, something in between unconventional non-standardized home made art and a science laboratory. [<please make this clearer]

As the book from Naomi S. Baron “Always on...” says; “The challenge is not words but technologies and the systems we build upon them for communicating with one another.” The interest here remains in the combination of power between technology and language, as Kathy Acker’s real email correspondence in her book “I’m very into you”.

In Eli Pariser’s “The Filter Bubble”, it is investigated what does technology hides from us and questions our awareness to daily used technologies, which is quite significant to the idea of hiding knowledge and the existing pirate libraries striving for the freedom of information.

Media object:

What is the specificity of this object?
This is an A6 format notebook, which I use either for taking notes at school, writing thoughts, contacts, scheduling tasks or drawing what my mind brings up in no specific situation. It is an archived memory which can be cryptographically interpreted as no specific data format is applied to the typology of this object.

Unchanging object.
The very openness of the system makes transgression very difficult.

Talk about our personal take in the object.
Why is it different from other medias?