User:Queenfeline/What has been done so far

why

Why am I here? Why am i doing, what im doing? Why is it nearly impossible to not drift off into an existential crisis thinking about that?

My motivation hasn't changed since starting this master. I want to experiment, follow my interest and get to the roots of things. I want to use the energy of the group to make things i couldn't do alone. Over the last two terms it has become clear, that my main interest is language. While doing radio, questions like: How is Notation a language we can read, write and understand? and What are the objects of understanding? What gets transported through the radio? How do our voices go through a machine and then materialize in feelings? came to my mind.

Then Doriane came and brought up the topic of the poetic materiality of CSS, and how we write and design through words. They're also called coding languages for a reason, right? Its a language of its own that we can also read, write and understand. And (the crazy part) not only us, but also computers seem to understand what we tell them and execute exactly our commands. So i guess additionally to language its also the understanding that is fascinating. What gets transported? Can computers really understand?

"Words are events, they do things, change things. They transform both speaker and hearer; they feed energy back and forth and amplify it. They feed understanding or emotion back and forth and amplify it."

— Ursula K. Le Guin, The Wave in the Mind: Talks and Essays on the Writer, the Reader and the Imagination

Special Issues

SI 25 – Protocols for collective performance

We made Radio and i feel like y'all already know what happened. I was Part of 3 Radio shows. SI25 Broadcast 4: Protocols to Freestyle, SI25 Broadcast 6: Protocol to Free Britney and the show on the day of the event. That was fun! More reflections on that later!

SI 26

Feels weird to not have a name for this Special Issue. But anyway i thought I'm gonna tell you a bit about that, as you may not really know as much about this one. First of all, Doriane is super cool and its so much fun.

When code (CSS) is a way of designing with language to what extend is it poetry?

Doriane brought up this question and she is doing research on the poetic materiality of CSS and i think that is dope! We literally write words and then they do the design, the colors and the placement.

I should think more about that!

at the same time / during / parallel to

reflections on radio-making

What is the materiality of the difference in what we send through the radio and what the listener hears?
Language is understood only in contextual frameworks. And even these can be shared by people only to a limited extend.
The importance of context to language understanding. Understanding also means classifying it in the already experienced.

understanding: to grasp the reasonableness of []

What happens when we strip away visuals and let sound create meaning on its own? How does voice, noise, silence, distortion, layering, and rhythm impact the way messages are perceived? This also opens up questions about who gets to speak — and who is given the space to be listened to? What role does listening (as an active act) play in storytelling and communication? Did the use of live broadcasting, pre-recorded elements, or digital effects influence how the message was received? How does glitch, interference, and distortion create meaning rather than being seen as "errors"?

I felt a really high performance pressure while doing the radio shows, only after 2 shows i realize that maybe radio is not just about information — it’s also about presence, atmosphere, and emotion. And it showed me that meaning isn’t just about language, but also about texture, rhythm, and atmosphere. While making the radio shows I definitely put more attention on sound in my daily life. As i wear a lot of shoes with heels I still listen very observantly to the sound they make on different floors.

Another thing about sound that is fascination is the fact, that it is temporal. It nearly never really exists. In the moment it is made it disappears simultaneously and then it is gone forever. Even if it's recorded, the act of listening is still bound to time — you can’t perceive all of a soundscape at once, the way you can glance at a full page of text. So sound forces the listener to be present. It demands attention in the moment, more than a text, that you can get back to and read in your own speed.

NOTATION

How is notation a language we can read, write and understand?

What (even) is language?

What is in it that we think we understand?

What are the objects of understanding, what is there to understand?

What does it even mean to understand?

Unlike text, where understanding is often tied to decoding language and extracting meaning, sound operates on multiple levels—physical, emotional, cultural, and conceptual. Understanding a sound isn't just about what it is, but how it is perceived, felt, and contextualized. Before we even “interpret” sound, we experience it. Sound is vibrations moving through air, entering our ears and interacting with our bodies. We don’t just hear sound — we feel it. Sometimes sound is designed to communicate — Experimental sound challenges this: Does sound need to "say" something? Or can pure texture be meaningful? To "understand" a sound might not always mean analyzing it but rather experiencing it, feeling it, and letting it affect you.

I was very intrigued by the many ways of notation and how humans can learn to read them. Thinking about notation further as graphic events made me think: What sound does a square make? In what way is that different to a circle or a triangle? What other ways are possible as a notation system? Thats when i listened to music and started drawing many different ways of how i imagine notation to look.

Just like language, notation is made up of symbols that represent something beyond themselves. These symbols follow rules and structures that allow them to be read and interpreted. When we read words, we translate symbols into spoken or internalized meaning. When we read notation, we often translate it into action or perception — it can be performed, visualized, or enacted.
––– IDEA: Notational symbol system for your computer keyboard. With all the symbols you need for writing notation, ready on the keys. Would that work?

IDIOTICON

Doing a masters program in a different language than your mother tongue is challenging. A lot of new words I never heard are flying through the air and I can not really grasp all of them. It was in that moment i realized i need my own dictionary. A place to put all the words that doesn't make sense to me. Going hand in hand with our Alphabet Soup i quite like the idea, that there is not just one single meaning of a word, but because we're from all over the world, being raised and socialised in different cultures, a word has different meanings and translations for all of us. And there's a value in exactly that.

A funny thing about the name is, that Idioticon is a synonym for dictionary and the definition says: A reference book listing alphabetically terms or names important to a particular subject or activity along with discussion of their meanings and applications. I meaaaaan come on!!! Besser wird's nicht. It is so perfect because it is not just a dry dictionary, it is my personal collection of words. I annotate them and write my thoughts related to them. Some of them are new to me and i didn't knew the meaning so i looked it up. For others i knew one meaning, but another way of interpreting emerged out of reading a text or discussing something in class.

Words are never neutral—they carry histories, biases, and power structures. Having a glossary lets me actively reshape meaning rather than just consume it. I found this often in feminist and queer surroundings, where theorists redefine words like "power," "body," or "gender" in ways that challenge dominant narratives. Plus, critical practices often require new terms to describe things that don’t fit into existing language. And we find quite a lot of them in the different texts we read. Writing definitions for them forces me to question words rather than take them for granted. It helps me notice how language constructs reality — what is emphasized, what is erased, what is assumed and what do i think about them?

So an idioticon isn’t just a dictionary — it’s a playground, a resistance tool, and an evolving experiment. I'm putting new words as they find me. Thinking and annotating. Whenever. Maybe this will become part of my masters, maybe it is its own project and i will make a little booklet out of it. Who knows, but for now this is much fun and i'm looking forward to continue working on that!

personal reader update

I started my personal reader on paper. I feel like the physical act of underlining, circling, or writing notes makes ideas stick better. On paper, all notes remain in sight and where they belong. This kinda creates a visible map of my thought process. I can draw, write in any direction, highlight and put post-its on there. Plus i can read better on paper that on screen.

But the further i go and the more texts we read, the more i see the advantages from doing it digital. As i started my Idioticon, i used the computer while annotating on paper, to put new words in there, I also researched footnotes and all that, resulting in me using paper and pen AND a computer, which was overwhelming. Digital notes can be shared and edited collaboratively in realtime, which is pretty cool and handy. Also the copy and pasting of quotes, words or anything is just way faster.

As in for now, i am using a 2 step method. I first read and annotate the text printed out on paper, helping me to stay focused and make sense of the text. In a next step i'm putting the notes into my wiki. This step makes me come back to the text after a little time has passed, and here I continue the reflecting I did prior. I came to find this step very valuable, because there is so much more connecting and understanding of the text happening.

Fall by the wayside

Documentation

I started a documentation document on the debriefs of our radio shows. Unfortunately somewhere along the way i stopped the process and never looked into that document again. Now i cannot find the pads and all the memories are in the very back of my mind... I'm kinda sad now, that i didn't continued with it! That could've turned out super cool.

What is may take away from that? Well i should definitely document the process better. I think I stopped, because there was so much documentation all around me so i got lazy and thought, well this isn't just my project but everyones... Now I know that this is a stupid thought! Documentation is always worth it and is for me from me. Even more important: what everyone else is doing should not control what i do or not do!

For me creativity often happens in fragments — a fleeting thought, an unexpected connection, a mistake that turns into something useful. Documenting helps me to capture these moments. I feel like normally archiving and documenting is about fixed outcomes but we challenge the idea that something is ever “finished.” Documentation can take on experimental forms itself — becoming part of the work rather than just a record of it. And that is what i think is the interesting part. How can i incorporate the documentation and make it part of the thing?

Protocol for drawing

While working on the Alphabet Soup we had to come up with a lot of protocols. One Idea of mine for a protocols was to imagine a diagram that shows the word in any way possible. It doesn't have to make sense. Charly and I did these two:

• 

  Diagram 1 (by Feline)

• 

  Diagram 2 (by Charlie)

So after that i was intrigued and made a bunch of diagrams for other words of my Idioticon. They look like this now:

I'm not quite sure what to do with them or how to proceed... all i know is, that it was fun drawing these!

Re:Poetry

While browsing through the W3C archived mails i found many funny or weirdly interesting email subjects. I collected a lot of them. I wanna make something with them. Maybe they become a Zine, maybe they get implemented in the timeline? I dont rellay know yet, but I definitely wanna do something with that for the upcoming event! Maybe something people can take with them. yeah i would like that.

the future

Ideas that haven't been brought into existence

Define definition

A website (API?) made from a dictionary. There will only be one sentence on the screen. Starting with the definition of the word definition. Then the definition will use different words, that also needs to be defined. So one can click themselves through the definitions of all the words that are linked to one another. (I would have done that, but i pretty soon noticed, that im not as fit in coding as i though i was. Even though we had a lesson on APIs – without any help, this stays just the idea it is right now.)

Realisation from that: I cannot only follow the tutorial in class and then expect myself to know the whole thing. I need to spend more time following up the thing again to actually understand it.

click and draw

I am really interested in graphic experiments and I'm onto finding a way to let the web help me in the randomizing part of it. As i'm also tattooing, i'm always on the hunt for new designs. I'm always thinking of ways to incoperate the costumer into the design process. What kind of tool can i build for that?

A website where you can press keys and it will display a designated graphic form on a random place and in a random size on the screen. Every key gets its own form. Additionally the mouse will leave a line behind, so one can kinda draw with the mouse.(I'm thinking now, maybe a screenshot button?) I'm hoping for that to create a nice random layout/composition. ( Which then can be tattooed hihi)

loose thoughts

The feministic publishing aspect of the web and how it is a tool for critique, resistance, and change. How can we amplify marginalized voices and open up new spaces for discourse? How can we make information more accessible and inclusive?

Another interest of mine (in what ways connected to the one above?) is how we can connect different disciplines — whether it's graphic design, coding, literature, philosophy, or performance? I am drawn to questioning conventional publishing formats and exploring unconventional and collaborative methods. I really liked the idea from Pippin Barr, that you can only play the MOMA game if the MOMA is actually open. Stuff like that! How can a website change over the course of a day or the seasons? Or in what ways can we let the user change their interface with CSS Layers? I want to learn how to give up control over the layout in the Web (which is sooooo hard coming from a print grafikdesign background).

Why and how do we feel connected through the internet?

human interaction – the www as a tool for (feminist) connection