User:Golubjevaite/hackpact

PROJECT PROPOSAL

what do you want to make?

WRITER OR(IS) A READER OR(IS) A WRITER

> I want to investigate the topic of alternative reading, writing & publishing.
> What I mean with alternative here in this case is mainly alternative to printed r,w&p as well as what is considered a linear storytelling.
> My main goal with my project would be to develop a series of prototypes (tools) that would help me to research (through critical making) and experiment with a concept of a narrative.
> I would describe myself as a maker first of all and I usually think and come to conclusions through a making process. That is why I cannot give you a full and concrete description of what the end result exactly will be. What I have now is a goal (idea) and an interest (topic) and a starting point ( current process). I like to work this way because it helps me to discover more as I go along the way, which is also how I want users to experience my work.
> The prototype I am currently working on is text to web-content tool.
> Basically a tool that will take text as an input and will output an ongoing story on a webpage, where a reader will be able to further configure/manipulate the content of the story.
> So far I am dividing the current idea into 3 main parts: input/ output / input2

          
                           (input)        |-------------------output-------------------|     (input2)                     
                            TEXT          |                TEXT2WEBCONTENT             |   CONFIGURATION    
                                          |           (img, sound, txt, video)         |
               WRITER --->---->---->----> | DATABASE ---> ----> -----> ---> WEBPAGE    |<--<--<--->-->--> READER is a WRITER2
               Python                     |(DuckDuckGo)                   (Html/Css/   |                      Browser
              IRC chat                    | (WikI)                        Javascript)  |
                                          |--------------------------------------------|
                                                              |
                                                              |
                                                              |
                                                          (input 3?)
                                                        READER/WRITER
                                                            (???)

[input]
> How could computation help to develop new ways of telling a narrative?
> The idea is that any type of text can be the input. It can be something similar to a poem, a caption, a tweet, a code, a conversation, depends how a user or multiple users (writers) want to use it and what story they want to tell and/or what language they are comfortable using. The input text could be 1500 words and the output may be just 1 image. The other way around as well. The content on the webpage will update as long as there will be new text coming in.

[output]
> I am interested in what it means to read in post-digital and what I mean by reading is perceiving information. Since we already are practicing new behaviors of reading when we scan the content browsing the internet, I am interested in these new habits and how our cognitive abilities like memory are effected by it.
> I am curious about how it influences our sense of intuition and how could we read without it being spelled out to us? How far could we push the poetic abstraction (within computation) and in fact if it could communicate anything?

[input2]
> I want to challenge the relationship between a writer and a reader.
> As you can see from the diagram sketch above, I want a user on the browser side (a reader) to have the power to affect the story that he/she is reading and therefore become what I call a WRITER2.

////
> At the moment I am working on this for my own purposes, but I would be happy to share my (final) project results and perhaps collaborate further with people who are interested in similar topics and questions after my graduation.

how do you plan to make it?

TO DO

• Make an IRC_bot & make it "listen" to the input text
• Research on different data storages (Wikidata, archive.org, etc.)
• Explore internet search engines & possibility to download web-content with a help of a bot (Python / bash)
• Look into other Python/ Bash tools to grab/download content (youtube-dl/videogrep/pytube etc.)
• other Python libraries for manipulating and editing img, sound, video, txt (imagemagick, pillow, ffmpeg, nltk, webvtt, etc.)
• Install a MediaWiki and upload the personally collected AV material on it + connect it to the bot
• Look into live editing the webpage/ content manipulation tools/ RGB split etc.
• Test the prototypes with a help of other people and gather some feedback / XPUB & friends, and using Mastodon perhaps to find people outside my circle (as Marloes suggested).

////
A more detailed description:
> A single or multiple users will have the possibility to join an IRC chatroom and contribute (to write) some text (narrative). An IRC_bot [link] joins a dedicated IRC channel and "listens" - collects the text.
> Then I want to try out 2 ways of providing content for the website:
a. After the bot gets some input it runs a search on the internet for some content material and downloads it to a folder, dedicated to the webpage. For now I worked with DuckDuckGo / link for images, which worked pretty well, but I want to explore other possibilities for other type of content.
b. I want to install a MediaWiki and create a personal database with my own collection of AV material. Then connect the bot with the API, so it retrieves the content from the Wiki.
> There will be other Python scripts that will help to manipulate the downloaded material into a final visible content, that will then appear on a webpage to view (to read).
> Apart from that I want there to be some additional tools (probably made with Javascript) in the front end of the webpage for the viewer (a reader) to manipulate (to write) the content (narrative) further. I want a single or multiple users have the possibility to browse the website and manipulate the content.
> The final presentation of this project as I see it now would be in a performative & interactive way - showcasing the prototypes live. People will be able to visit the webpage as well as to join inside a dedicated IRC chat room.

what is your timetable?

oct - nov:
1 . find a topic of interest
2. first hackpacts
3. write the project proposal + thesis outline
4. begin IRC_bot making
5. looking into Python libraries/ basics
6. search engines (DuckDuckGo)
7. look into ppl that could help me with my project

dec - jan
1. thesis first chapter + continue research/reading
2. pyratechnic workshop
3. continue with bot experiments
4. continue with Python libraries
5. start with webpage development

feb
1. thesis writing
2. install MediaWiki + upload personal collection
3. MediaWiki API
4. look into javascript possibilities for the webpage/ basics
5. have some test & feedback sessions with ppl

march - april
1. Finish writing thesis
2. Make further decisions/ changes/ improvements / remix on the prototypes according to the feedback & personal observations
3. Further webpage development/ configuration options / javascript
4. Test again

may
1. Wrap it up & make it presentable for the graduation
2. Share on Git(?)

why do you want to make it? & relation to previous practice

"the type of experiences you can have from books, do not have to be delivered by books" - John Cayley 

> The motivation comes from a personal frustration of dealing with traditional literature. I have never been "good" at reading & writing, specifically in academic circumstances, it has always caused me alot of boredom and anxiety. I can be very easily interested in language structures and grammar etc, but when it comes to actual literally content it takes me a lot of effort to concentrate and read a piece of text. I often prefer listening to people talk instead (video or audio). I find a combination of various media forms effective on me as well.
> I personally miss a more urban and novel ways of working with literature, something that would authentically represent the current time and my own generation as well as people with different cognitive capabilities. Most probably there are people working with this already but I just haven’t come across it yet, at least not in the way I imagine it. That is why I want to do some research about it + contribute with my own experiments.
> What I am interested here is not the ways we can replace books/print, but more to create and establish different standards of publishing that would serve people with different needs and for these standards to be excepted as valid and not only as experiments. 

//////

> My works are often process-based. Different day calls for a different result and a version. Frequent recycling/ remixing/ modifying/ updating of the projects is important part of my artistic practice. I often build up my projects by shifting between mediums while focused on specific topics. I am interested in how by taking a different form the language of the form is affected. How a deformed original shape deforms its speech with it and if it does. How the first shape influence the further one and so on. A certain phase of a constant metamorphosis - hybrid. The fragile aspect of relevance is important to me, to feel that the work is living its proper time.
> While I was doing my bachelor studies I "discovered" a way in which I felt comfortable expressing myself in text. I often call it poetry as I think the type of writing that I do is closest to that genre, but I also do not consider it to be strictly poetry as I don’t really know much about written poetry, and often prefer spoken word. 
> After 4 years of studies I had a collection of texts that I wanted to publish but it felt inappropriate to do it in print form , even though I tried. It just lost that live element and voice that I had while making it in the first place. Apart from that my writing was also influenced a lot by the apps and software I was using at the time. So eventually I decided I should publish it in the form of a website [> wblg.com <] , because that way I could also use audio recordings, visual material and add other dynamic functionalities to my publication, that would let a reader to interact with the poetics.
> Similarly last year while working on Special Issue 10 and my module SEVEN['7'] / link I wanted to experiment with a different notion of reading in a sense of getting impulses and bits of a narrative instead of a fully arranged and linear story. One of the reasons was because in the past whenever I was making my poems I had to adjust them in a certain order to submit or/and publish (print) it. That did not make sense to me because it was not the way I wrote them in a first place. The making happened in a performative way, in an oral way even when it was inside my head, so how do I publish it in the same way?
> The prototypes that I want to make this year are a continuation of these past explorations I did with wblg.com & SEVEN['7'].

relation to a larger context

>> John Cayley: The Future of Language / video link
A few interesting points from this talk, that I connect with:
> our relationship with language is changed not only by photography and film (as stated by Flusser) but also by computation (as added by Cayley himself).
> the relationship of language and symbolic practice to images has changed
> there is always a relationship with orality for humans as you read
> memory is non linear

>> Electronic Literature and Future Books / video link
Presentations and a discussion between Katherine Hayles, Rita Raley & Nick Montfort 
A few questions and points that have been addressed in this talk, that are of the same interest as mine:
> how the process of writing have been affected by computation & networks?
> "Distracted reading is now becoming not just a reading practice but cultural practice to which writers are responding." - K. Hayles
> " Talan Memmott / LEXIA TO PERPLEXIA link which makes normative, makes the standard, the state of perplexity so in other words rather than thinking about a kind of deviation from long forms of narrative, deviation from sustained practices of attention, it makes disorientation the standard from which one would have to imagine that a shift back to what we now regard as traditional forms of reading would be the deviation" - R. Raley
> Electronic Literature Collection / link

>> Death Grips - I've Seen Footage (Official Video) / link
< caution - video contains flashing images >
Absolutely accidentally I remembered this Death Grips video - composed completely out of images, which I think relates a lot to my project and the questions I have related to human cognitive skills.

>> Critical Making / link
Matt Ratto coined the term in 2008. I cannot directly relate to the works of Ratto or other makers in the movement, but I can certainly connect with some of its ideology:
"The quality of a critical making lab is evaluated based on the physical "making" process, regardless of quality of the final material production. Prior studies have noted the separation between critical thinking and physical "making". Specifically, experts in technology lack a knowledge of art, and vice versa."

who can help you and how?

not sure yet, but will research asap.
Marloes thinks that perhaps Michael and Manetta.

bibliography

Hayles, N., 2010. Electronic Literature. Notre Dame, Ind: University of Notre Dame.
Krysa, J., Parikka, J., Kurenniemi, E. and Huhtamo, E., 2015. Writing And Unwriting (Media) Art History. Cambridge (Massachusetts): The MIT Press, pp.97-107.
Aarseth, E. J. (1997). Cybertext: Perspectives on Ergodic Literature. Baltimore, MD: Johns Hopkins University Press.
Ludovico, A. (2013). Post-Digital Print: The mutation of publishing since 1894. Onomatopee.
Cramer, F., 2005. Words Made Flesh. Rotterdam: Piet Zwart Institute.

HACKPACT

starting point

getUserMedia

> Webcam filters
> Take photo button + clear button
> Canvas
> rgbSplit
> Javascript
> navigator.mediaDevices.getUserMedia() / link

// Get media stream
navigator.mediaDevices.getUserMedia({video: true, audio: false})

File:Webfilter1.jpeg File:Webfilter2.gif

IRC bot

> Using Michaels reverse bot as a base / link

import irc.bot

> Downloading an img from a url into a folder

import requests # to get image from the web
import shutil # to save it locally
import re

image blend with PIL

# alpha-blend the images with varying values of alpha
alphaBlended1 = Image.blend(image5, image6, alpha=.8)
alphaBlended2 = Image.blend(image5, image6, alpha=.2)