User:Miriam

About

𝑀𝓎 𝓁𝒾𝒻𝑒'𝓈 𝒶 𝒿𝑜𝓀𝑒

I have a weird obsession with pop-culture and entertainment, advertising strategies, internet humour, reenactment, as well as infiltrating (hacking) systems.

Artistic statement

Miriam Schöb is an expert in humour.

Miriam Schöb is Miriam Schöb but Miriam Schöb is also an Alter Ego.

Miriam Schöb can be everything and everywhere.

Miriam Schöb thinks of public spaces as stages.

Miriam Schöb infiltrates already existing systems, spaces, concepts, supermarkets, federal offices and objects.

Action, baby.

Miriam Schöb doesn‘t separate the object from the subject anymore but she separates her trash.

Miriam Schöb is the judge when action and reaction collide.

Miriam Schöb imperceptibly invades the social daily life.

Brain vandalism.

Miriam Schöb is the interface between art, cabaret, media, children falling over on streets and timetable changes of public transport.

Miriam Schöb is social policy.

Miriam Schöb loses control.

Miriam Schöb stages, produces and manages.

Miriam Schöb is a machine.

XPUB memes

XPUB meme page: https://www.instagram.com/xpubmemes/

HOW COOL IS INTERNET HUMOUR? I just think it's extremely fascinating how people with different cultural, ethnical, religious, economical, etc. backgrounds from all over the world build this collective humour through looking at/responding to images, gifs, videos and text and how we learn to READ these images through repetition in a different way.

I am obsessed with memes. Sometimes I even think in memes. I want to give birth to memes. Kiss them. Hold them tight. Is this text gonna become a meme? You never know. Everything is a potential meme if you think about it.

So I started an XPUB instagram meme account.

Check out @xpubmemes on instagram for more memes! Like! Follow! Slide in my dm's! Laugh your ass off! Print out the memes! Hang them over your bed! Tell me how funny I am!

Prototyping notes

Workshop with Nor

Special Issue 16

Research phase

Experiments

Here some experiments I did during the SI16 research phase...

Very important rules

Good news only

SI16 proposal: Creating a news website that gathers news from real news websites (with rss feeds) but modifies them so there are only good news. Highly cynical and satirical. Self care!

Experimenting with rss feeds

Scraping images

Scraping images from the website of Albert Heijn:

Scraping images from the subreddit r/catsareassholes:

   from urllib.request import urlopen
   import html5lib
   from IPython.display import Image, display
   from xml.etree import ElementTree as ET
   url = "website link"
   html = urlopen(url).read()
   document = html5lib.parse(html, namespaceHTMLElements=False)
   for img in document.findall(".//img"):
       print (ET.tostring(img).decode())
       alt = img.attrib.get("alt")
       src = img.attrib.get("src")
       print (alt, src)
   for img in document.findall(".//img"):
       # print (ET.tostring(img).decode())
       src = img.attrib.get("src")
       srcset = img.attrib.get("srcset")
       alt = img.attrib.get("alt")
       if alt and not src.startswith("data:"):
           if srcset:
               bigsrc = srcset.split()[-2]
               print ("HAVE BIGSRC!")
               print (alt)
               display(Image(url=bigsrc))
               print ()
           else:
               print ("NO BIGSRC")
               print (alt)
               display(Image(url=src))
               print()

Scraping images from the piet zwart website:

Rejection

During the first special issue, a lot of people (including me) didn't have a long-term apartment to live in, yet. While talking about vernacular language, I constantly had to think of the language that was used in the rejection messages that I got daily stating that I didn't get the room/apartment that I was hoping to get. Since we were all experiencing the same thing, I thought that we maybe could work with the topic of rejection. One idea I had was to play around with these texts, make postcards out of it and send them to Mark Rutte (since he's (among other people) responsible for the housing crisis).

Video subtitles

While experimenting with rss feeds and scraping images, I got the idea of extracting auto-generated subtitles from Youtube. In Switzerland, the biggest political party is the SVP (Schweizerische Volkspartei) which is extremely right-wing and racist. The founder of this party is a billionaire, so they have the financial means to produce a lot of fascist propaganda. From time to time, they publish extremely cringy but high-quality videos with paid actors to address their political topics (E.g.: How Swiss families become poor because refugees take all our money *ugh*). Since there is no grammar for Swiss German, the auto-generated subtitles for these youtube videos are very random but still, they make more sense than what the people in these videos actually say. So when they will drop their next horrible video, I am gonna make a zine with the auto-generated subtitles. WORK IN PROGRESS

Final subgroup project

...and I wish that your question has been answered. https://hub.xpub.nl/soupboat/si16/projects/and-i-wish-that-your-question-has-been-answered/

This project is an act of persistent resistance. We created a few functions to facilitate an iterative process of refusal towards PM Kryakos Mitsotakis and PM Mark Rutte's answers during a Press Conference and any of their possible versions. We invite you to play as much as you want with these functions and create your own answers as counter-reaction to Mark Rutte's final sentence: "So this is my answer and I wish that your question has been answered". Every new answer, every new iteration, can be submitted to our Archive of Repetitive Answers. Although they will never be good enough, nor shall they be accepted as exhaustive, we consider the modified answers as a trigger for a never-ending dialogue.

Our tool is a filter to process and alter texts. By targeting specific words and replacing them, either for another word, for specific characters or for blank spaces, the reader or user of the tool can change the text in many ways. The tool includes three functions The function “respell” receives as input a text (string type) and substitute all the occurrences of a target word with a replacement chosen by the user. The function “stitch” is very similar to the previous one but replaces all the occurrences of a target word with a single character (it can also be a blank space) that is repeated as many times as the length of the target. The third function “reveal” also works very similar but deletes all input text except the target word(s) and replaces the deleted text with blank spaces.

Final project

Learning How To Walk While Catwalking

https://issue.xpub.nl/16/index.html

My role

• Worked with my subgroup on the code for the language filter of "...and I wish that your question has been answered."
• Creating altered versions of our origin text
• Printing and binding of the "...and I wish that your question has been answered." zines
• Organisation and set up of the launch with the launch event team
• Proof-reading publication texts

What I want to continue with

• Scraping and RSS feeds
• Vernacular language (see project idea video subtitles)

Special Issue 17

Research phase

Experiments

Here some experiments I did during the SI17 research phase...

Fan Fiction Exercise

Game: https://www.silvergames.com/de/love-me

I always played this online game as a kid. It's called "Flirting on School" and you have to make guys fall in love with you with your laser eyes and competing against other girls. Patriarchy and Heteronormativity at its best.

So Alex, Jian and I modified the game description. Now the game is about consent and friendship.

https://pad.xpub.nl/p/fanfiction_jian_al_miri

Direct comparison of old and new rules:

☁ old: Flirt with boys, outwit rival girls, avoid mean teachers and collect hearts in this fun Flirting on School game!

☀ new: The more we depict consent, the more normal it becomes. The more we practice consent, the less awkward it feels. Practice consent in this fun Enjoy the School game! Approach your crush(es), talk to your friends, debate with humans, say hi to your teachers and make friends in this fun game!

☁ old: Unfortunately, your time is limited, so you should hurry, because the more guys fall in love with you, the more points you get.

☀ new: Fortunately, you have all the time, so you shouldn´t hurry, because the more respectful you behave around your classmates, the more points you get.

☁ old: Click on the guys who cross your path to make them join the long line of your suitors.

☀ new: Wave at the people who cross your path to invite them to join your conversation.

☁ old: Go up and down the stairs and find every single boy in your school.

☀ new: Go up and down the stairs to look for more students in your school.

☁ old: Sometimes you have to try a little harder and click on them as fast as you can to make them fall in love with you.

☀ new: Sometimes people aren't interested in talking to you. You shouldn't try harder and click on them as fast as you can because they will feel uncomfortable or even harassed.

☁ old: Just ignore the other girls and collect the guys like diamonds so that in the end they accompany you to the altar.

☀ new: There's no point in seeing the other students as rivals, you don't need to collect people like diamonds because your ultimate goal is not the altar. Instead you should try to build meaningful relationships and a community where everyone feels safe.

☁ old: Can you find all the boys in your school and make them only have eyes for you?

☀ new: No pressure! Walk around and meet new people because everyone knows: A stranger is just a friend you haven't met yet! But remember: connect only with the ones who are interested in the conversation.

☁ old: Find out and have fun with Flirting on School, a free online game on Silvergames.com! Control: mouse

☀ new: Find out and have fun with Enjoy the School, a free online game on consciousgames.com! Control: heart and mind

Card game "Miri the Leader"

"Miri the Leader" is a quartets card game that I created as an experiment.

I got the title of "Miri the Leader" by saying in an online meeting that before starting XPUB, I always thought that I am kind of a leader type of person in groups. After having started this master course, I noticed that I was not. Nevertheless, it became a running gag and I noticed that I actually enjoy it more to be a satirical leader instead of a real one. So I created this card game as a joke. It includes motivational and inspiring (and very questionable) leader quotes. The quotes have four card values: Motivation, empathy, vision and positivity.

Rules: Quartets is a card game with the object to collect 4 cards in a series. Each pack originally contained 32 cards, divided into 8 groups of 4 cards, unlike a normal 52 pack of playing cards, but the number of groups changed from company to company. It is played with three or more players, with the aim to win all the quartets (sets of four). Each card usually has a number and letter (1A, 1B, 1C, 1D, 2A, 2B etc. ) in the top right or left corner of the card.

The cards are shuffled and dealt evenly between all the players and the cards get held face up in a player's hand. The player to the dealer's left starts by asking another player if they had a certain card (example, card 4C) which would help the player create a quartet. If the player does have the card, then they hand it over. If the player doesn't, then it becomes her or his turn to ask. You can also play it with categories. Then you pick a category on your first card and ask the other player the value of their card in this specific category. The player with the highest category value gets the card of the other player that they competed against. When a quartet is created, or a complete quartet was dealt, then the cards creating the quartet are placed in front of the player. If someone loses all his cards in the game, that player loses.

The game ends when all the quartets have been created. The winner is the person with the most quartets.

An altered version of this game (named "The Leader") was part of the content of the SI17 loot box.

Life hacks

One text that really got stuck in my mind is "Well played" by Vicky Osterweil. She describes how video games are nothing but a mirror of our capitalist and neoliberal society. Video games are highly competitive, repetitive, they're about order and control and about getting better and achieving more skills.

"Video games, then, are the (highly profitable) media of consolation specific to neoliberalism. They reinforce a vision of a world entirely grounded in competition, and they provide the gratification of experiencing that framework as satisfying, just — we get to win with it, we get to escape through it, we get to experience a sense of mastery even as our lives are even more shaped by larger and larger forces and increasingly unfathomable networks." (Vicky Osterweil)

While brainstorming about our loot box content, I had to think of life hacks. Life hacks to me are also just a product of capitalism and neoliberalism. Like: It's your responsibility to keep up with our fast society so here are some life hacks to make your life easier and more efficient! Also the gamification factor of life hacks is high. Life hacks claim to achieve better things in a playful and practical manner. Mostly, they are useless though (just like the content of loot boxes!). Because of all these parallels, this is why I proposed to make this special issue about life hacks. We did find another solution for our loot box content in the end but you can still find my life hacks in the post-its.

Loot box prototype:

Final project

This box found your for a reason

https://issue.xpub.nl/17/index.html

Fage Not Pound Fage Not Pound is a timezone Kimberley, Emma, Chae and me created for the launch event of SI17.

see Fage Not Pound

Loot Box Reveal

I made an audio track for the loot box reveal: File:Loot Box Reveal (online-audio-converter.com).mp3

My role

• Taking care of the SI17 finances
• Creating a card game as well as a collection of life hacks for the loot box content
• Creating the loot box reveal audio track
• Making a game music playlist for the launch
• Organisation and set up of the launch

What I want to continue with

• Modding

I was really inspired when we talked about video game modding because I am interested in infiltrating already existing systems.

Other projects

Schild mit Lohn

https://www.instagram.com/schildmitlohn/

Soupboat experiments

Trying out some very basic stuff with python, html and css...

CSS

body { font-family: "Lucida Console", "Courier New", monospace; font-size: 33px;

   color: yellow;
   background-image: url("");
   background-attachment: fixed;
   background-position: center;

}

h1 { text-align: center;

   padding: 10px;
   text-shadow: 2px 2px black;
   background-color: lightblue

}

h2 {

   text-align: center;
   font-size: 25px;
   color: lightblue;
   text-shadow: 2px 2px black;
   padding: 10px;
   background-color: pink

}

h3 { text-align: left;

   font-size: 20px;
   padding: 10px;
   background-color: pink;
   text-shadow: 2px 2px black;

}

img {

   position: centre;
   display: block;
   margin-left: auto;
   margin-right: auto;
   width: 50%;

}

img:hover {

 /* Start the shake animation and make the animation last for 0.5 seconds */
 animation: shake 0.5s;

 /* When the animation is finished, start again */
 animation-iteration-count: infinite;

}

@keyframes shake {

 0% { transform: translate(1px, 1px) rotate(0deg); }
 10% { transform: translate(-1px, -2px) rotate(-1deg); }
 20% { transform: translate(-3px, 0px) rotate(1deg); }
 30% { transform: translate(3px, 2px) rotate(0deg); }
 40% { transform: translate(1px, -1px) rotate(1deg); }
 50% { transform: translate(-1px, 2px) rotate(-1deg); }
 60% { transform: translate(-3px, 1px) rotate(0deg); }
 70% { transform: translate(3px, 1px) rotate(-1deg); }
 80% { transform: translate(-1px, -1px) rotate(1deg); }
 90% { transform: translate(1px, 2px) rotate(0deg); }
 100% { transform: translate(1px, -2px) rotate(-1deg); }

}

HTML

🅷🅴🆁🅴'🆂 🆃🅷🅴 🅷🆃🅼🅻 ----------------------------------->

...

If you have read until here...

• I once accidentally burnt my tongue from drinking hot soup, then wanted to cool it by licking the inside of a freezer, then my tongue got stuck on the frozen surface and I had to rip it off
• Tried to improvise at a spoken word performance and ended up trying to imitate cheese that fell on the floor and it was the most unfunny thing ever
• I once ate instant noodles for three days straight and got constipated afterwards
• I met a person that kinda looked familiar and I asked her if she's the cousin of my father (that I never met in real life) and she said yes because she thought I was joking and I didn't get the joke and addressed her as a "family member" for the rest of the evening and she didn't correct me because she thought I'm being ironic, so I ended up thinking that a complete stranger is related to me
• Went to the school psychologist because I thought "Hey, it's for free, maybe I'll find out something funny about myself" and ended up being transferred to a neurologist for an ADHD diagnosis
• I had an appendicitis when I was 7 years old and when I had to go to the hospital, I brought an empty jar with me and I asked the doctors whether they could put my appendix in the empty jar so I could have a look at it after the operation
• Worked as a student at a restaurant next to a store that sells massage chairs and I'd regularly go in and tell them that I have chronic back pain and rich parents that are considering buying me a massage chair because I thought they would not let me try the massage chairs if I didn't make up that story and I am a 100% sure they knew I lied
• As a kid I thought that Anne Hathaway in Princess Diaries had the most beautiful smile ever so I tried to smile like her all the time and now my smile looks super stiff and creepy on all the pictures taken during my childhood
• I love going to the dentist, the warm light almost always makes me super sleepy and relaxed