User:Markvandenheuvel/research

explorations

First thoughts and notes

What am I truly interested in? What makes my heart beat faster?

"When (obsolete) low-tech is being reinvented and placed in a current technological context"

• When it functions together (compliments or critiques)
• remixing/reintroducing Low-tech & high-tech tools
• How we can use it within today's technological frameworks?
• Low tech: what we can open up and understand (?)
• historic methods to distribute/spread information and media (sneakernets, DIY publishing, zines, piracy)

I am interested in how to think about obsolete tech otherwise and reflect on how we use technology today and how it affects us.

ultimate reference: Tristan Perich - 1-bit Symphony https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XZEXX9Yezjw

side thoughts & notes:

• I am more interested in re-use instead of hacking: amateur, don't have to be an expert electronics (a matter of accessibility)
• what can you do with it? how to approach it in a different way that was intended?
• 'process emulation/simulation: affordances of using hardware creates unexpected

Why?

Interests:

• chipmusic (production, performing, publishing)
• lo-fi / lo-tech systems
• working with (and embrace) limitations
• sharing & teaching "adaptive mentalities" instead of blindly using what is
• rethinking the potential of low-tech (obsolete consumer electronics and media devices)
• experimental (post-digital) publishing formats and media carriers

Research: starting point

Mapping of overlapping theme's

Low-tech: insight in inner workings

• current black boxes are hard to comprehend and create a distance to understanding technology (agency, autonomy)?
• Blackbox: inner workings and information technology concealed as a result of technological progress
• insight reflects on how we use and technology today
• the meaning beyond nostalgia: exposing the inner workings and potential to re-appropriate
• rethink somethings potential in the context of today's
• teaching/sharing: developing adaptive mentalities
• 'anachronisms'

http://www.lwlvl.com/manifesto

hardware vs emulating/simulating?

• lo-fi: experiencing imperfection (materiality / texture / )
• lo-fi aesthetics: flaws
• working with limitations: why?
• experiencing materiality!
• How can we use the experience to reflect on our own workflows?
• affordances?
  • dub music emerges from discarded equipment
  • electronic music that and technical limitations

Media Archeology / Zombie media

• Zombie media: living dead of discarded electronic waste (re-use)
• Artistic method: DIY culture, circuit bending, harweare hacking
• out-of use (waste, consumed): resurrected to new uses contexts and adaptations

• Zombie Media
• chipmusic as a subculture: (This movement is about a return to the roots of the digital culture and an idea of the authentic.' )
• giambare
• tape, videotape, digital camera's, gaming consoles, media players, calculators, etc

hacking (breaking in) a certain regulated/prevailign system

• concept of T.A.Z
• emerging from a (political) urgency ( see the pirate book)
• 'piracy' music industry

A Dying Colonialism - Frantz Fanon (Algerian Radio Hack)

Publishing: the meaning of physical media formats and materiality

• DIY publishing
• experimental formats
• excitement of receiving and sharing
• networks and interaction that are created due to (physical) sharing (political climate, no technological infrastructure in the past )
• history of underground DIY (music) publishing (sneakernets, LA hardcore scene, zines etc.)
• manuals, instructions, zines, floppy's, p2p, etc.
• post-digital publishing: why!

The Pirate Book

Aspen Magazine

technological sovereignty

• craftsmanship and custom workflows
• outside big tech & commercial tools (mac with adobe &
• open source
• art & technology: made their own tools
• anti-consumerism
• How (commercial) software works and shaped our thinking!
• autonomy: how does software shape my artistic work?
• critical: why do we think users care?

economy: technological developments (materiality)

• fully explore something's potential instead of discarding it as waste
• capitalism / tech consumerism addiction
• creating a necessity to look back instead of always look what's next
• electronic waste: consumer electronics (most toxic portion)
• planned obsolesces: artificially decreasing life-span (black box, not engineered to fix)
• conflict: old/collectible tech sold as retro/vintage when it's re-used for DIY purposes
• conflict: old tech sold as retro/vintage when it's re-used for DIY purposes (privileged)

the materiality of (digital) information technology and media cultural objects

• code, data needs a physical material as a carrier
• ecological consequences: materials, chemicals, etc
• digital networks are related to soil, air
• "tech perpetual innovation vs perpetual destruction"

design education

• creating adaptive mentalities and autonomous
  • bottom-up: (user approach: what do we need and how can we create that)
  • top-down: "power users" for Google and Adobe
  • feminist technological approach: we need other terminology, etc

first notes and comments

notes from Aymeric:

• Jussi Parikka - Zombie Media (appendix)
• circuit as score (Derec Holzer)
• circular economy!
• trap! We are benefiting from big tech!?
• hobby can be a privilege (leftist privilege)

notes from Michael:

• talk about digital media is physical (it's just boxed away)
• make digital media more physical
• affordances!
• critical of technology (agency, how much control)
• excitement of mail and physical carriers zines

possible outcome: > "a living, an evolving collection of knowledge, practices, objects, publications, and performances" -prototype / workflow -performance: create sound pieces/instruments and perform together -publication

references

Books & papers

• Zombie Media - Garnet Hertz & Jussi Parikka addresses the living deads of media culture (appendix in A GEOLOGY OF MEDIA)
• The Pirate Book - Nicolas Maigret & Maria Roszkowska broad view on media piracy as well as a variety of comparative perspectives
• Hakim Bey - Temporary Autonomous Zone 'ontological anarchy poetic terrorism'
• Technological Souvereignty - Margarita Padilla
• The Aesthetics of Failure: “Post-Digital” Tendencies in Contemporary Computer Music - Kim Cascone

Secondary:

• Here and Now - Explorations on Urgent Publishing urgent publishing workflows
• The responsible object - Marjanne van Helvert A History of Design Ideology for the Future
• Post Digital Print - Alessandro Ludovico meaning of print as a medium today

Articles & manifesto's

Obsolete tech

• Five Principles of Zombie Media | by Garnet Hertz & Jussi Parikka
• Low Level Festival Manifesto low-tech beyond retro aesthetics
• gwEm's statement after alleged "misrepresentation of the micro-music scene by Malcolm McLaren [1] and [2]

Economics

• tiqqun: The Cybernetic Hypothesis | annotations

Sustainability & materiality

• Viznut - Permacomputing - how to give computers a meaningful and sustainable place in human civilization that has a meaningful and sustainable place in the planetary biosphere.
• Digital Materialisms: Frameworks for Digital Media Studies - Nathalie Casemajor "all things in the world are tied to physical processes and matter"

workflow & music production

• How Has The Recording Studio Affected The Ways In Which Music Is Created? Techniques, material, studio as an instrument
• Holzer - Schematic as Score Uses and Abuses of the (In)Deterministic Possibilities of Sound Technology”

lectures & podcasts

• The Real World of Technology:https://archive.org/details/the-real-world-of-technology/part-1.mp3

documentaries

• Tristan Perich - Mind the Machine https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rIEcVbiLVCs
• The 1-Bit Art of Tristan Perich https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XmwA0YtA60E

works & artistic practice

• Tristan Perich 1-bit sound pieces, installations, publications, compositions
• Viznut - Algorithmic symphonies from one line of code' C64 Demo
• FormaFantasma on electronic waste, materiality & ecological impact
• Derek Holzer audiovisual artist, researcher, lecturer, and electronic instrument creator based

artistic publications

• Tristan Perich - 1-bit symphony

• Aspen Magazine https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aspen_(magazine)