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Revision as of 14:49, 25 April 2024
A gossamery glossary cemetery, parce que 解読 est un cadeau wanneer je het liebst / lebst.
La Musée Bibliotheque
Annotations
A History of Play in Print: Board Games from the Renaissance to Milton Bradley, Kelli Wood
- Read on 2024-01-30
- Read it here.
Color lithography; combining lithos; Francesco Berni (1526):
He who knows without the use of a compass, that nature, fortune, and skill make up the parts of [~ Primiera ~] And if you look closely part by part There are things there you will not find elsewhere. If you want a hundred thousand cards. Things useful, beautiful, and new. Things to take up in the summer, and the winter. The night and day, when it is sunny and when it rains.”
English translator and poet Charles Cotton wrote The compleat gamester [...] in 1674, which became a hallmark work describing the rules of games for polite British society [...].
The life of men is like the game of dice: If the throw you need does not happen, Then that which has happened through fate, you must correct through skill.
In the 16th century, concerns over such gambling games started to arise. Of course excused for nobility -- '"it [gambling] can be a virtuous act" if it is done in moderation by those who do not undertake it to earn money'
Buoninsegni also situates the role of chance in gambling games as guided by ‘infallible providence of God’ and ‘divine will,’ excusing another problematic aspect of printed games- the act of telling the future [...].
'Fortune Book games', interweaving divinity, chance and play. Wheel of fortune representing player turns. Game of Goose as a metaphor for reincarnation
Other printed game boards of the late 16th century also visually evoke these earlier fortune book games, sharing their structure of a central image surrounded by an outward radiating wheel of symbols and text with directions for the player [...].
the kabalistic number 63, the final space, represented the number of years of human life, and the space of death near the end, which sends the player back to the beginning of the game.
Board game names used to be really uninspiring. The New Game of Honor, The New Game of Human Life. Path racing with vices and virtues. Later used in Milton Bradley's Chackered Game of Life, reproducing Victorian middle class values:
ruin and poverty -> caused by gambling and intemperance wealth and happiness -> caused by industry, honor, and bravery.
In newer games of life, morality slowly being replaced by material goals. Allocation of wealth not solely based on fate anymore, but also by player actions, reflecting American 20th century capitalism. Obligatory John Green video on the history of Monopoly.
(Summarize a bit; talk about eurogames and amerigames; Catan; typical moral themes; link to video games)
Ccru Writings 1997-2003
I was interested to read up on Fiction Theory, after I heard about its connection to modal logic. In particular, to Kripke's application of modal logic to semantics, something I'm vaguely familiar with from previous (intuistionistic) endeavors into the foundations of mathematics.
This is how I stumbled upon the Ccru Writings (1997-2003). Upon looking for some context, it seems to be ununtangleably intertwined with the radicalization of some of its members, Nick Land in particular. (Is this the material I was looking for...?)
The Ccru does not, has not, and will never exist
Reminiscent of Smalfilm, the second song from Spinvis's excellent 2002 debut album.
The Gag of Realism: Nathan for You
- Read on 2024-01-25, 2024-03-23
- Read it here
An essay on Nathan for You S3E5 Smokers Allowed, written by Nathan Fielder's The Curse co-writer Benny Safdie, that I encountered when watching a Thomas Flight video.
Nathan for You is a show for which the driving force is the continuous ambiguity of what is real and what is fake. Media with this ambiguity seems to fascinate me (see also my notes on this episode of 60 Songs that Explain the 90s). This element of intrigue is even more present in Fielder's The Rehearsal, where it is even explicitly acknowledged and used as a narrative device.
In Smokers Allowed, Nathan helps a bar that is supposedly struggling to get customers due to anti-smoking laws. It turns out you can smoke inside such a venue in California if and only if it is part of a theatrical production. So Nathan arranges for two big chairs and gives two tickets away to a play 'Smokers Allowed'. The visitors, unaware that what they're seeing is scripted nor acted, turn out to love the 'show' for its sense of realism and avant-garde nature. Nathan then tries, mistakingly attributing the play's success not to its concept but to its content, to recreate the performance to the T. The scenario is then shown to another audience, yet this time it is completely scripted. Meanwhile, we are meta-observers through the show's airing lens, seeing both plays as results of production, and seeing both audiences with a sense of wider-scoped understanding.
I recall watching this episode, and The Rehearsal alike, thinking: I know this is, to an extent, the magic of production. I know there is design and intent and, ultimately, fakery. But I don't really care, I am willing to commit and to believe. Willing, because even in it's potential 'fakeness', it's telling something that is 'true', that holds meaning.
Of an earlier Nathan for You project, Dumb Starbucks, Safdie notes:
[...] Fielder is not playing it for parody. He even says, “This is no bit or joke, this is a real business I plan to get rich from.” By playing it for realism and not flinching, it’s so much funnier. He created something genuinely fake.
Maybe it is not a question of real versus fake, but rather one of genuinity.
Profielen ingezonden brief: Laptops drie jaar gebruiken is niet genoeg!
- Read on: 2024-02-28, 2024-03-09
- Read it here (English version)
Joseph sent out a Zulip message linking to a published letter of his. I was curious (1) because Joseph has interesting, passionate takes, and (2) because the title suggest a kind of connection to the current Special Issue (23). Indeed:
Anjo [van Kerckhoven, IT-manager van de WdKA] oppert: ‘Het is onprettig als een apparaat begint te storen wanneer je net een college of presentatie wilt geven. Daarom vervangen we preventief.’
This feminist server manifesto ends with:
[A feminist server t]ries hard not to apologize when she is sometimes not available.
All in all, this manifesto advocates for a seamful technology. Van Kerckhoven's argument raises a question about to what extend we can show seams, without them inhibiting the technology's function so fundamentally that it would be better to not use it anymore. In our SI conversations on seams, we have mainly focussed on 'manageably sized' communities surrounding particular technology. The second bullet in the manifesto reads:
[A feminist server i]s run for and by a community that cares enough for her in order to make her exist
How does this translate to communities that are not formed by or centered around on a technology, but still rely on it one way or the other? Just like with the these seams (?) in movies, there's a factor of a community embracing seams to recognize, acknowledge and appreciate a craft. It is self-reflective in that sense. In some instances, this might require a level of technical savvyness to appreciate, something that should not be a responsibility for any and all people in one of these communities. What value does a seamful approach bring then?
(Note that this is a different discussion from software naturalization and obscolence, as rightfully noted in the letter. These are problems with different seams and different attributions of responsibility.)
After reading this, I feel vindicated for carrying an external keyboard alongside my laptop for the last 4 years.
Volumetric Regimes
Exploring a new umbrella of literature is a concious effort. I've been trying to look for some work in the intersection of the academic, scientific texts I would read at M/CS and GMT, and sources I'm exposed to at xpub. I found Volumetric Regimes through Stephen's readings list, where Manetta's name caught my eye.
Volumetric Regimes emerges from Possible Bodies, a collaborative, multi-local and polyphonic project situated on the intersection of artistic and academic research, developing alongside an inventory of cases through writing, workshops, visual essays and performances.
The So-called Lookalike
We’re working with a self-hosted MediaWiki platform, a wiki in short, that we as editors and designer can use to edit and structure the materials. From this wiki, we download and reformat everything into a single webpage, which becomes the main document that will be styled and turned into a layout using CSS3 paged media standards. We use the Javascript library Paged.js to paginate this layout in the browser and render it as a PDF. The designer and editors both have access to this rendering process, which allows us to approach the editing and design as one continuous process.
Very much applicable to our work in xpub so far. In particular conversations we've had with Steve concerning the Wordhole Glossary.
Also reminds me that I'm -- aside from being passively interested in web-to-print -- intrigued by print-to-web exploration.
[...] the assumptions of optimisation, agility and efficacy as editorial values [...]
The curious dynamic of editor and designer.
I decided to write you a letter as a way to reflect on this strangeness [...]
In the 3 months I have been able to wikify myself -- and read others' wikifications -- I've come to find it as a very honest medium. But my relationship with it is ever evolving, and I feel a tug of war between this honesty and some kind of curated abstraction. Sometimes I need a reminder that honesty in itself is a valuable and worthy medium.
Podcasts
Without much conscious effort, I've found myself listening to podcast increasingly frequently over the past few years. I will use this space to make some notes and gather some references for those podcast moments that I have found relevant to the course, or to other wikified discourse.
60 Songs That Explain the 90s
In the ever droughtful search for podcasts, I stumbled upon 60 Songs That Explain the 90s.
108: Portishead, Glory Box
- Listened to on 2024-02-15
- Listen to it here
To try out this podcast, I decided to listen to the episode on Dummy semi randomly. Portishead has made some really great music, naturally, and they reside in an area of music history that I'm familiar with, but not super deep into. It is a rich area tough, so I thought this would be a good one to try out. In short: I was very positively surprised!
A meandering opening is held together by an anecdote of the narrator: while attending Portishead's 1997 concert in the Roseland Ballroom (NYC), they got so annoyed with a cheering crowdmember, that they beat them up using the saladbar nearby. The anecdote is in and out of focus during this 30 minute introduction, setting the stage of the time with related acts, the personal experiences of the narrator, and their relationship with Portishead's music. We are fed little audo snippets of the event, accompanying little snippets of the anecdote. We learn that the narrator was never there. But still, they were there and they beat up this audience member. It sounds gruesome, but it is told is such a caring manner. More and more, we learn that this all just a fiction. And then, the episode gets introduced and the intro is over.
I was in awe. The extent to which the narrator developed this fiction, only set the scene. The storytelling, masterfully interwoven with audio segments, making for a seamless* podcast experience.
In Special Issue 23, I have become increasingly interested in the power of fictionalization. Examples seen in this SI include:
- Documenting through Dialogue https://www.metamute.org/sites/www.metamute.org/files/pml/irational-orgs-traum.pdf/
- Map is the territory, a digital zine intended as an introduction to the command line in wizardly fashion.
- The chopchop oracle: presenting a welcome message randomly selected from a pool of diverse samples.
This podcast episode reinforced this already growing interest and fascination. I guess you start to notice more examples, when you start to look for them. Having a character share their name with a book's author, for example, a decently 'common' technique in literature (and in my experience especially in Dutch literature (e.g. Blauwe Maandagen, Grand Hotel Europa, Hedonia, ..., but also Everything Is Illuminated)). Film can do this too (e.g. Curb your Enthusiasm). For a seemingly small thing, this carries a tremendous power in engaging the consumer. What is real and what is fiction? Embracing this ambiguity primes the consumer for a real engaged connection.
103: Fugazi, Merchandise
- Listened to on 2024-02-17
- Listen to it here
It's August 2023 and I'm in Samara, Costa Rica, on the phone with my good friend Mats who has been researching cyberpunk as an aesthetic, a medium and a vision. He asks: 'beschouw jij jezelf punk?'
XPUB has some very obvious connections to punk (the DIY mindset and the critical stance towards big corp), and I have found an exploration of punk movements to be very insightful for the course. This podcast episode is about Fugazi. Many anecdotes serve as a reality check, for example their policy of self-distribution, $5 concert tickets and no merchandise (see even the bootleg library), which are policies easily translatable to publishing and design practises (e.g. self-publishing, pay-what-you-can rates, and the tension of creating cutesy stickers to make up for any missed revenue streams). But at the same time, it reminds me of the continued relevance of why these policies are in place. And while a self-published product can sometimes feel small, it is exciting and empowering that I -- a person of a different generation, a different country, a different context all araound -- can find meaning in products that found their existance in a similar way, with similar intent, 40 years later.
In the current special issue, we have taken an unexpected turn into game development. In this project, I am reminded again why this is so interesting to me. After listening to this episode and returning to class, I am for the first time trying to apply view the (indie) game industry through the lenses of these mentalities. I absolutely dare not fantasize about graduation projects yet (but there is some potential there...).
Film
Citizen Kane (trailer)
- Watched: 2024-03-29
- Watch it here on Wikipedia or on this page -->
In light of the upcoming T2 assessments and my role in the SI23 launch event (e.g. this and this), and amidst my evolving practises in and around XPUB, the I've been thinking more and more about documentation. Non-reactionary documentation, the connection between documentation and invisible labour, fictionalization in documentation, documentation as a communicative practise. The list goes on.
Orson Welles's work has already shown his influence on me in last trimester's The Hitchhiker's Guide to an Active Archive, taken inspiration from War of the Worlds (1938). Researching documenting practises, I once again stumble upon Welles, this time for Citizin Kane. Instead of showing footage from the story, this films trailer is a 4 minute documentary that shines light on its production. How hopeful, documentation as a tool for engagement, as promotional material even.
The Institute
- Watched: 2024-04-25
- Watch it here
The Institute is a 2012 documentary directed by Spencer McCall on the alternate reality 'Game of Nonchalance' initiated by Jell Hull that was ran from 2008 to 2011 in San Fransisco. This game featured a story centering around the concept of 'socio-reengineering', and focussed on shifting a the participants' perspectives on the everyday cityscape with a 'hidden-in-plain-sight wonderland'. The documentary is told as a retrospective, combining interviews from participants and creators with archival footage and new reconstructions. In particular, just like the game's ambiguous veracity, the film is created in such a way that the viewer can question how truthful its contents are. In fact, not having been part of this experience, the whole documentary could be a fabricated story.
This documentary was shared by Louisa as an extension to what we had been discussing during the SI24 prototyping classes. SI24 (on loitering and other forms of in-situ computation) focusses on activating the city, challenges our perception of our environment, and tries to critically reflect on the ways urban and social infrastructures influence each other. This very much resonates with The Institute. In my personal practise, I am very interested in bringing interaction to static media, which is also much involved with changing perspective. Also using gaming and narrative devices.
One particularly exciting technique that was briefly shown in the documentary, was using a flyer / postcard to overlay with the city, highlighting a certain buyilding (see photo, compare to Viewfinder). This has the potential more much more applications, e.g. providing an alternative view on the postcard. I have been playing around with this idea for a while, for example in a game prototype I made that uses different shaders to reveal different parts of a landscape (left). In the 2024-05-07 Prototyping class, in which we made an small alternate reality game in a single day, I explored this technique with Michel (right).
Relevant links:
- Wikipedia pages on The Jejune Institute and the documentary
- The Letterboxd page
- Rosa shared a link to this HKU 2008 graduation project in response to The institute
- Louisa shared a link to this project in response to Rosa's link.