User:C3/XPUB2/Project proposal 4

"The 100^th time" (working title)

1. What do you want to make?

"The 100^th time" is a project that explores alternative learning methods trough annotation in the forms of cheatsheets.

I want to use cheatsheet-making as a way to document and share learning processes.

This will consist in a series cheatsheets that I will make, and a series of activities that I will organize to facilitate cheatsheet making (group annotation sessions).

The cheatsheets and the activities will make use different tones (playful, personal, mock, dry etc.) and formats (small puzzles, drawings, annotating, mapping) trough their iterations, in order to open up a space of play aimed at exploration.

2. How do you plan to make it?

▪ In the beginning I plan to select some of the notes that I took last year and make them into a cheatsheet format.

▪ Afterwards, I will start to distribute them around the 1st and 2nd years (as most of them come from the situated context of our course).

▪ I will start using the cheatsheets that I made as a part of some workshops.

▪ As I would like to appeal to a broader audience outside of the course, I will try to open the activities up and organize them outside of the school.

▪ Based on the success/failures and observations gathered from the previous points, adjust the overall trajectory of my project.

3. What is your timetable?

Nov/Dec:

▪ Process some of my notes into prototype cheatsheets examples that I want to share

(wiki lurking, lost in the terminal...)

▪ Interview people around what is a cheatsheet for them and what is their view at

cheating. I generally use and like technical cheatsheets, but I think they are a broad

format that can be applied to many things.

My aim is to explore more the format rather than focusing on a specific content that I am used to see.

Dec:

Prototype and try out at least two activities with both XPUB2 and XPUB1, start looking for other spaces to hold some tryouts outside of xpub. (ex. Varia, Klankschool).

Jan/Feb:

Two activites or more involving a place outside of XPUB and figure out in which way I will document the project.

Feb/March:

Work on the documentation of the project so far and continue to organize activities.

4. Why do you want to make it?

Cheatsheets are compact and lightweight, easy to jump in, they are interesting to me because they transfer knowledge by travelling a lot trough different channels of communication by being duplicated, rewritten, screenshotted etc.

They are a form of documentation that can be aimed at people who are still in the process of learning something, they are meant to be used more frequently rather than manuals and encyclopedias, which, to me, means that they are connected to usage and action even if they are surface level in terms of content.

In my first year I expressed an interest in sharing knowledge, which was something that I envisioned achieving trough the use of our server as a potential social space for collective reading and writing (of notes and little tools) between students. This did not turn out to be the case in the end due to everyone's set of diverse interests.

Despite this, during the last year, every time I dealt with a new topic I instictively started to collected a number of notes and prototypes that note down the steps that it took me to become accostumed with the topic. I also included some diaristic elements, making my documentation more playful (by addressing a potential reader or by cracking a little joke) with the idea in mind that at some point I would have made them public.

Paying more attention to this learning side and trying to capture it is my intention during this second year and is what I'd like to share as a methodology.

• 

  An example of some notes I took on pdf tools.

• 

  The help section of a script I made.

• 

  A small program to convert inches into cm.

• 

  An old visualization of a cheatsheet program to make onto the server.

My aim is to use the known form of the cheatsheet as an excuse to not only share some know-hows, but also as a learning device that would jump start and support others unique learning processes. I don't see the ones that I will make and share myself as an end goal, nor as something to simply skip time, but as an example and an inspiration to have others make their own, listening and noting down their own learning processes. I will try to share a methodology that then can be appropriated and modified.

5. Who can help you and how?

▪ Pippin Barr

An experimental game maker who expands the use of code documentation for his projects including journaling and sketching. I see a potential affinity with his expanded approach of documentation in relation to my approach of transforming notes into cheatsheets.

▪ Aymeric Mansoux

Discussion about FreLibreOpenSouceSoftware and the barriers that surrounds it and a discussion of the element of play not as a gamification element but as a door to exploration.

▪ XPUB tutors

Methods tutors with annotation exercises experience and prototyping tutors with their experience in teaching tech skills (and the hurdles that come with them).

6. Relation to previous practice

My previous practice consists in repurposing of old tech devices, media archeology and coding.

the start menu

A picture of people playing the game in our cozy setup at varia

SI26 3DS zine A web game publication tailored to be played with a forgotten device of our past, the Nintendo 3DS game console. We (Charlie, Tessa, Eleni and I) took advantage of outdated web-standards to show/hide information from other devices, making our puzzle game solvable only through the use of the Nintendo 3DS. It was a project about working withing the limits and showing the possibilities that lie within them. Trought trial and error we noted a collection of strategies we used to make our project work. In the final outcome this part got a bit lost and I think the documentation and distribution of these tactics remained an unresolved topic for me, so I see the cheatsheets as a potential method to address both topics.

close-up of the installation at the Rotterdam telecom museum

SI27 Terms of servers

Terms Of Servers is a terminal based publication that runs on our communal sandbox server (cerealbox). Working with the server for the first year of our studies evoked questions of its materiality and reliability. Together with Kim we wrote a python script that cycles through a text we wrote together over time, as a way to share our reflections on these two topics.

What we tried to do with our project was to include an audience into the dialogue we had ourselves, showing our how we used simple commands to ask some of the questions we had to the tools we used, retrieving information and using it to continue our discussion. I feel this is the part that relates to what I've been interested lately, shining a light on the process of putting something together, in this case, the text we wrote. Including reflections in the work itself, as a metalanguage layer is something that I would like to test out within the cheatsheets.

the current state of the project is that the tic-tac-toe part works :)

Tic-tac-toernament

Tic-tac-toernament is an unfinished text based (terminal) 1v1 tic tac toe program that prints out the board, the moves, a generated commentary and a leaderboard on either a dot matrix printer or a receipt printer. I wanted to explore "what is a game" through the repurpose of old technology, inspired by a work Joseph made called Pen Snake.

What was interesting to me when I tought of this work was the possibility to print the history of the matches, playing with some simple text formatting, collecting usernames, commentary and messages left on the scoreboard. I wanted to document/record the whole process of playing together, rather than thinking of a single big scoreboard that collects only who won in the end. I feel this example is interesting conceptually for its playful tone.

Overall, I see the cheatsheets as being an evolution/annex of my previous works, into a direction of documenting and distributing the processes that lie behind these and all of my projects. Most of these started as something that was not clear and that required observation to learn how to make possible, I feel like this method is something that is not tied to a medium in particular and that my aim of sharing mine is to also shine light on how might recognize their inner way of learning and listen to it by trying to bring it out.

7. Relation to a larger context

I generally see the cheatsheet as a form that I can use (and expand) to try to form alternative methodology of distributing knowledge. Some examples I know of knowledge sharing that are inspiring for my project:

Wizard zines, a project by Julia Evans that consists in informative zines and cheatsheet about computation, inclusive of opinionated comic illustrations that bring humor and frustruation around the use of tech tools to the foreground.

howspot by Doriane Timmermans, a series of situated pedagogic moments organized to share knowledge about everyday technology aimed at a broader audience, exploring the participant's experiences with daily technology.

"The Skill Issue, or: How I Learned I Could Learn, and So Can You!", a video essay that unpacks the topic of talent and learning processes starting from the situated context of his upbringing into his family.

Speedrunning, a videogame practice that revolves around discovering and performing tactics and glitches that allow to jump entire sections of a videogame, breaking the overall programmed linear structure of the software (ex. by accomplishing actions or reaching some goals before the time they are supposed to happen) with the goal of completing a game as fast as possible.

Even if the overall purpose is competition, I consider this as a community practice, as various groups of people gather around sharing methods for others to see and replicate, which causes new methods and tactics to form by other, that then get, again, shared and reproduced in a repeating cycle.

Imre (current XPUB2) held a workshop called "Creations Relations" during class where we all explored the relationship between creation (object, etc.) and creator, by writing letters from the point of view of either these two figures. This activity was very compelling and inspirational to lean more towards social activities with physical objects.

8. References/bibliography

• Ampatzidou, C. et al., (2020), Here and Now? Explorations in Urgent Publishing, Amsterdam, Institute of Network Cultures
• Evans, J., (2025), wizard zines, Available at: https://wizardzines.com/comics/. (Accessed 10 Oct. 2025)
• Knierzinger, J. (2025), Pen tron or Pen snake, Available at: https://joak.nospace.at/works/pen-tron-or-pen-snake/. (Accessed: 10 Oct. 2025)

• Office of Strategic Services, (1944), Simple Sabotage Field Manual, Washington D.C
• @SaneRetry, (2024, The Skill Issue, or: How I Learned I Could Learn, and So Can You. 16 Dec. Available at: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PSmgNgsW3io. (Accessed: 5 Sept 2025).
• Timmermans, D. (2025), Howspot, Available at : https://howspot.ungual.digital/. (Accessed: 10 Oct. 2025)
• Wikipedia, (2022), Speedrunning, [online], Available at: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Speedrunning. (Accessed: 10 Oct. 2025)