User:Bnstlv/specialissue-20

back to home

01 Kick-off: Candles Tarot Joysticks

Pad: Intro to the SI20

Tea ritual

We had a brief intro session where we talked about our relationship to (video) games and rituals. Shared memories and thoughts about those two things. I remembered a couple of the rituals performed in Bulgaria (it is common in Greece too):

The first one is called Nestinarstvo, traditional barefoot fire-walking ritual:Visual documentatrion

The second one is Kukeri, elaborately costumed men (masks, clothes, bells, etc.), who perform traditional rituals intended to scare away evil spirits. Visual documentation

---

Next, in pairs of two, we read, annotated and later discussed a chapter from "The Bare Facts of Ritual" about elements of rituals described which we thought were particularly insightful.

The author talked about rituals and bears (bare <-> bear). While reading, again I recalled a memory from my childhood where there were (usually) Roma people walking around towns and villages with a chained brown bear, or as they called them "Dancing Bears". Basically, once the bears learn to obey, the next step is to teach them to "dance". Then, the Roma person (aka gypsy master) would play music on the gadulka or another traditional instrument. In case you're interested, watch this video.

---

Steve suggested watching "White Noise" (movie on Netflix) which I'm going to do tonight.

 
ONE SENTENCE RITUAL TASK: Every week to write down a ritual. Next, one of the rituals from the list will be performed or assigned to a person. Make them thematic, reflecting the content of the week.

---

Week 02, Jan 16: Rituals

Pad: Rituals VS Games

Aglaia's ritual

Our collaborative drawing

Morning | Aglaia's ritual: coffee fortunetelling
An intriguing discussion on the nature of rituals was sparked by Aglaia's coffee fortune-telling ritual. I was fortunate enough to have my future revealed by a former professional fortune-teller. hehe

Afternoon | Mapping out common characteristics and differences between games and rituals
We divided into two groups of three and engaged in a discussion about the similarities and differences between rituals and games. Aglaia, Irmak, and I had a productive conversation and compiled a comprehensive list of observations. Here is the list.

---

Week 03, Jan 23: Reproductive technologies

Pad: Games and rituals as reproductive technologies

Modes of production

Morning | Ritual
Stephen's ritual - "Hard Drive Purification", a ceremonial cleansing of not only our browser history and cookies but also the trash or recycle bin. This is an ecumenical (?) service, all operating systems are welcome.

Stephen's Ritual

After that, we talked about the 'Superstructure-Base' visualization that Steve showed us last week. We ended up drawing a few new versions of it because most of us had a different view.

Afternoon | Exercise
Stephen and I worked together on reading and annotating Stuart Hall's 'Notes on Deconstructing The Popular'. We extracted the first and last sentence of each paragraph from Hall's original version and, without reading his content, composed our own paragraphs in between. The process of connecting the sentences was at times deliberate and at other times influenced by subconscious forces.

Screen of a pad next to a page scan

---

Week 04, Jan 30: Fan fictions

Pad: Writing Fan fictions

Leftovers of birthday cake

Ada's cute jellies

Cake & Jellies

Last week Aglaia had a birthday and this Monday was my turn to perform some form of ritual. So I thought it would be great if we have a ritual that involves food and eating, so I baked a cake (Ada also made jellies) and brought it this morning so we all can enjoy it and wish Aglaia a happy birthday. I called it "The Cake of Birth" ritual.

Next, we begin writing fan fiction. Ada and I teamed up again and started working on the Papa Louie: When Pizza Attack online game. Ada's favourite when she was a kid. We agreed on a new concept in which there is no need to fight the pizza monsters. We are creating a whole new story around Papa Louie, the prequel let's say, that revolves around rituals, and we are also building a Wiki HOW page. TBC next week.

Side note, MYTH OF THEUTH - a media-philosophical board game developed by the Austrian art collective qujOchÖ. Smartphones, newspapers, Lego bricks, sleeping masks, stamps, liqueur and other media are used through twelve unique stations. You can purchase the game from here.

---

Week 05, Feb 6: Quizes and Maps

Pad: Putting everything on the table

Morning | Individual tutorials
We started the day with short 15-minute discussions about the direction or focus we would be interested in exploring further; how we feel about working towards making a playable oracle deck as the format of the SI; and whether or not we are experiencing any particular difficulties. Having such moments is great because we can reflect on what has been going on and where we are heading.

Afternoon | Ada's ritual
Ada's ritual was about tarot reading of the faith of SI20. The cards have spoken:

- Embrace creativity and lose the reins of control of the Special issue, it's about rituals (traditions)

After this, we spent the rest of the day creating contact points between rituals & video games as a collective. Basically, we put every single topic we have discussed in class so far and connected most of them through straight lines, curved lines, dashed lines, and even portals. It looks messy.

contact points between rituals & video games

---

Week 06, Feb 13: Witchcraft

Pad: Witch-hunt, Oracle decks, Tarot cards

Morning | Ritual by Cara & Intro to witch-hunt
Cara's ritual was very relaxing. It was a 15min long guided meditation of Cara reading a few short excerpts from books while listening to the sounds of Rotterdam she had recorded herself. After that, we talked about the origin of the witchhunt and its link with the development of capitalism, while also referring to Silvia Federici's work and sharing some critical notes on her radical views about erasing certain historical records.

Afternoon | Intro to oracle decks and group work
After the break, we looked through some oracle decks Lidia and Ada brought. The games covered a vast range of topics - classic tarot, one centred around plants, and another about self-care. Lidia and Artemis then asked us to modify an oracle deck to our liking. Cara and I developed an idea about holographic oracle deck that plays around crystals as energy-storing materials in an attempt to address the global energy crisis we now face. The idea would be for it to be an educational experience, and for the prism and visuals to serve as an immersive environment to learn.

Links we referred to during class: 
* Woodcuts and Witches, The Public Domain Review - a not-for-profit project "dedicated to the exploration of curious and compelling works from the history of art, literature, and ideas"...

---

Week 07, Feb 20: Summary

Pad: Wishes, ideas, and LSD

Morning | Irmak's ritual
Irmak's ritual was about how to ease our worries. We wrote down our worries on a pink piece of paper and we shared them with a super cute, hand-made tiny doll, Irmak brought. Secretly.

Irmak's ritual, easing worries

Afternoon | Summarising and Planning
The rest of the day went really fast and we had very productive conversations. There's nothing more to add at this point. Everything is on the pad.

Prototyping a holographic oracle deck!
Sooo, I finished the aquamarine x LNG example on which I was working on Wednesday. Made a very basic website to illustrate the idea of making a digital deck of cards. 

Here are a few links that were helpful for me during the process: 
* Nice library of videos about crystals
- https://www.superbminerals.us/products/483-carat-multi-terminated-aquamarine 
* App that makes holograms from videos and images
* Text-to-speech generator 

youtube channel about crystals, messmerising!

---

Week 08-09, Mar 06: What? we have

Pad: Getting things movin'

Sadly, I had to skip this class but the rest made such great progress on the format and content of the SI20.

 ~*~* Ultimate interactive 1001 Items of Agony - Collectors edition *~*~

---

Week 10, Mar 13: Production Mode ON

Pad: Production mode & More Rituals

Morning | Full On Production Mode
We talked about the contents of the box and what are the next steps needed to make prototypes asap. We split in preliminary teams to work on different elements of the publication (art direction, booklet, website, event, etc.)

Noon | Lunch Ritual
We had lunch together (XPUB 1+2) and it was super nice. Artemis won the egg game.

• 
• 

Afternoon | Food coma and Chae's ritual
Unfortunately, I didn't take any photos of Chae's ritual but it was really nice and touching (literally).

At the end of the day, I knew that I'd like to keep the analogue-digital experience of the prism prototype Cara and I worked on. I had an idea of (re)publishing something but with a twist. I thought of making a website where people could use photo slides to answer a vast range of questions popping up on the screen. The questions could relate to one's past, present, and/or future. Initially, my idea was that one receives an answer by putting a slide on the screen of one's phone or laptop.

 Hybrid oracle deck with photo slides. Alternatively, old analogue photos.

Some additions to go inside the box:

• Candles
• Matchstick box
• Teabag
• Coffee beans
• Tiny notebook and a pen/pencil

---

Week 11, Mar 20: Production Mode ON

Pad: Production mode & Shana Moulton

Morning | Items in the box, roles and deadlines
In the first half of the day, we split into groups of two to discuss publication ideas. We agreed on the format of this SI: a container with a collection of different items inside, each focusing on 'power healing' and coping with loss. Later, we updated the calendar to define preliminary-ish the final deadlines in Excalidraw.

 Possible things to go inside the container (console): instruction booklet, cards, games, text, qr codes?

• 
• 
• 
• 

Afternoon | The Wheel
After discussing the idea of using slides and questionnaires, I decided to give it a try and talked to Joseph about how can we make it possible. The wheel of fortune is a self-inquiry exercise mediated by a website and a deck of 10-20 photo slides. After spinning the wheel you are prompted with a question. The idea of having slides is that slides help you answer the question. Needs to be tested tho.

 What's needed:
 *website
 *20 slides p/box
 *notebook and pen

• 
• 
• 

Meeting Shana Moulton
After class, we met with artist Shana Moulton, based in California. Her work is predominantly video collages and performances. We saw her alter ego, Cynthia, also playing around with rituals and magic.

---

Week 12, Mar 27-31: Paaaaaaaanic time

Pad: The birth of a booklet

Mon-Wed | Trying to print the booklet
Together with Lidia and Artemis, we did one final proofreading of the booklet. We started thinking of the materials needed for printing the book. I went paper hunting and found very nice lilac and grey paper that we all loved! I learned a lot about paper, different textures, grams and sheet sizes.

Also, we were done with the SIXX license. It was helpful to dive into different licensing options and decide which one to choose. We decided to make our own license that is based on a Copyleft license with light (fun) variations here and there. As I mentioned somewhere in this pad, to me licencing feels more like a shared responsibility towards the readers (audience), us (the makers) and the people who would like to use our work or amplify it.

On Tuesday evening (and Steve's birthday) we started varnishing the lids. Such a pleasant thing to do!

• 
• 
• 
• 

Wed-Fri | Producing and Testing out with XPUB2
It was very helpful to show our (almost ready) ideas to XPUB2, Michael, Manetta, Joseph and Steve. The feedback they gave me was really helpful and allowed me to step back a little and observe how people react to the situation and what they are doing and thinking about the Wheel. Joseph borrowed us this photo slide machine which looks super cute and our guests love it so much!

We continued working on the production of the book. Sadly, I couldn't help with the laser cutting or silk printing but it was nice to see the final results. Definitely will try to produce something next trimester using these two techniques.

Apart from this, I was mostly busy making the box, cutting the inlets for the lids, varnishing and glueing the boxes. I also helped with printing and making the booklet. Using the brand new glueing machine was very fun and super interesting. I learned how to use it well so there are no glue leftovers on the book cover and what was the best technique to take the glued book out of the machine. After glueing, I helped Steve to cut the booklet into the right size with the guillotine machine, scary but also very satisfying. Then, we all sat down to glue the hardcovers onto the booklet and put the books in the press to rest for a while.

• 
• 
• 
• 
• 
• 

On Friday, Irmak also bought me 200+ photo slides from Scrap and we started assembling the boxes while the book was resting in the press. Putting everything we made in the 20+ boxes and finally seeing Console complete was a very rewarding experience and I felt super proud of all of us! On Friday evening, we celebrated the release of SI20 at Page Not Found, Den Haag.

---

Week 12, Mar 31: SI20 Release

 ℭ𝔬𝔫𝔰𝔬𝔩𝔢 is an oracle; an emotional first aid kit that helps you help yourself.
 ℭ𝔬𝔫𝔰𝔬𝔩𝔢 invites you to open the box and discover ways of healing;
 ℭ𝔬𝔫𝔰𝔬𝔩𝔢 provides shelter for your dreams, memories and worries.
 Face the past and encounter your fortune.
 ℭ𝔬𝔫𝔰𝔬𝔩𝔢 gives you a new vantage point; a set of rituals and practices that help you cope and care;
 ℭ𝔬𝔫𝔰𝔬𝔩𝔢 asks everyday questions that give magical answers.
 This trimester’s programme and the Special Issue were co-developed and co-published by Page Not Found.
 Special Issue #20 is created by Irmak Ertaş, Stephen Kerr, Aglaia Petta, Boyana Stoilova, Ada, and Cara Mayer. 

• 
• 
• 
• 

---

SI20 Debrief with Michael, Artemis and Lidia.