User:Alessia/special issue xxiii

Notes Leigh Star to clean

Misplaces Concretism and Concrete Situations: Feminism, Method, and Information Technology (S. Leight Star)

misplaced concretism concept from John Dewey
A manifesto for Cyborgs Haraway

grounded theory=paradigma interpretativo

The marginal person who doesn't fit in a social/racial category falls as an outsider in a so called "residual category". Residal categories are omnipresent in all working classification systems (none of the above, not otherwise specified, other...) and they show how within the descriptive nature of reality something always escapes formal description (Gödel, Wittgenstein, Bateson, Dewey...)
Residual categories existence add a new point of view were an individual or group classed as "other" becomes a new category, a new lived residual category.
As the world expands it gets more difficult to define universal ideas about representation or information, while aknowledge how much the boundaries are becoming blurred.

All things inhabit some-one’s residual category in some category system

"just don’t kill us"

Among other things, we took the misplaced concretism of sex and re-situated it within the concrete experience of gender and relationships

Our sons of lesbian mothers was only one of dozens of contradictions and complexities that we have articulated and survived. deconstruction of gender, the centering of gender/sexual ambiguity and multiplicity, the fight for erasure of gender differences under some circumstances, the interlocking nature of race, class, and gender oppres-sion, and the honoring of historical and cultural traditions of masculinity and feminin-ity in various ethnic cultures: all at once.
method vs methodology

method not as position, system or artifact. its nature is complex, it is a way to survive experience

Any transmission of information involves encoding and decoding. Information becomes valuable when it exists in multiple context. To make sense, different contexts must be connected through some form of comparison? Information is only information when there are multiple interpretations.

Computer-supported cooperative work (CSCW), a research field devoted to understanding cooperative work practices to improve the development of collaborative computing, that is computing technologies that mediates people interdependent activities.

We lack good relational language here. There is a permanent tension between the formal and the empirical, the local/situated and attempts to represent information across localities. It is this tension itself which is underexplored and undertheorized; it is not just a set of interesting metaphysical observations, but also a pragmatic unit of analysis. How can something be simultaneously concrete and abstract? The same and yet different? We are not used to thinking in this fashion in science, although it is more common in art and literature, especially in surrealist art and Bakhtinian aspects of the novel—and in feminism.

The medium of an information system is not just wires and plugs, bits and bytes, but also conventions of representation, information both formal and empirical. A system becomes a system in design and use, not the one without the other. The medium is the message, certainly, and it is also the case that the medium is a political creation.

This reminded me about a nice conversation I had with Thijs, we were analysing Wes Anderson obsession with a medium-driven/focused style.
When we talk about people and things existing in different situations, and when information systems try to share information across these situations, we need a way to represent everything involved. This includes people, objects, how we show them, and details about how the system is set up. One solution has always been standardization (interfaces, formats...), but standards are not monolites, they can change.

ecological relations: Social ecology is the study of how individuals interact with and respond to the environment around them, and how these interactions affect society and the environment as a whole.

Lave and Wenger (1992 ) have called such contexts “communities of practice,” a term which I like because it emphasizes the ways in which people work together and act together to form communities, not just traditional orga-nizational forms and boundaries "object" as stuff, thing, tool and techniques, story and memory, parts that are treated as things by community members? Used in the service of an action. "naturalization" is what happens when an object becomes a seamless part of the community. Naturalized objects lose the sense of being unique or strange, they become so integrated that community members forget their local and specific meaningsm, they not question it existence (example, electricity we take for granted), this way the object sink into the community's infrastructure.

In a community of practice, people come together based on shared interests and activities. The key element is the shared use of certain things or tools, as all activities involve using some objects. When someone new joins, their connection to the community is mainly about how they engage with these shared objects, not necessarily about direct interactions with people. Being accepted or considered legitimate in the community comes from how familiar the newcomer becomes with the actions involving these shared objects.

Membership can be described individually as the experience of encountering objects, and increasingly being in a naturalized relationship with them

Humanisation of technology + biases (draft)

Let’s try to make the inhuman more human

Humanisation within the context of technology is a really interesting concept tied to tech humanism, a philosophical and ethical approach to technology’s role into our human-centred society.
“Humanising" is a word that directly strikes that insecurity: the fear of losing our humanity in the face of rapid technological advancement. So we must do something, something extremely powerful to ensure that humanity will be saved, so the best thing is try to change our own perception on technology.
There's a desire to make technology more relatable and understandable, as if giving it a human touch would help us maintain control over it.

Women are objects

Do you want to argue it?
Why do most virtual assistants have female voices and names?

There's a biological aspect to it: humans seem to prefer the soothing and calming tones of female voices. We're familiar with them from the womb, with our mother's voice often being the first that we perceive, that’s the first human connection there.

Female voices are often considered easier to hear and distinguish due to their higher pitches. That’s a myth, a myth that still influences our perception on the matter.
Historically, female voices have been prevalent in technological applications. From Emma Nutt, the famous telephone operator whose voice became the standard in the late 1800s, to "Sexy Sally," a voice that was tape recorded by singer Joan Elms, used in aeroplane cockpits during World War II, which was believed to be more attention-grabbing to young men.
In the 1980s, Nissan introduced a voice warnings system for their cars. This system utilised a female voice to alert drivers about various issues such as lights being on or the left door being open. Nissan named this system the "Talking Lady."
Over time, text-to-speech systems have mainly been trained on female voices due to the availability of extensive data. Why even care about collecting male voices recordings if you have so many ready made female voice recordings? Siri, Alexa, Cortana, Sophia, I feel there might be gender bias in the house of virtual assistants.
Let’s take Alexa, the developers had to activate a “disengage mode” after the AI was constantly sexually harassed, and was responding to the offences in the flirtiest way ever. Movements had to burst asking to reprogram the assistants to let them push back sexual harassment. So now Alexa will not respond flirty after being insulted, she will just say “I don’t know how to answer that”. Surely my favourite one is Cortana, that after being sexually harassed will search for the “Pussy song” video directly.
This brings to the surface the problem with programmed passivity, as when we apply human voices to assistants then directly people (I don’t wanna say men, I don’t wanna say men) men, not just men, will get the feeling they have a right to abuse AI, then it will be robots, then human-like robots and then it will be someone’s daughter, mother, sister (that already happens, the circle closes!). I already imagine that time when a woman will be beaten and the abuser will just say “oh I thought it was a robot”, it feels like a future that is fastly approaching and too much to bear.

measures of perceived humanness

Femininity is injected in our own perception of caring and hosting, on serving.
Femininity as warmth, as emotions, nice caresses, cute politeness, what a great benevolent sexism.
So women are considered more human than men.
That’s nothing new.

When feminine traits are used to make objects seem more human, then maybe we could ask ourselves if by portraying women as objects or tools designed solely for fulfilling others' needs in technology, we are reinforcing the harmful notion that women are mere objects rather than individuals with their own agency. This could contribute to further objectification and dehumanisation of women in real life. At the same time, making AI objects seem more human makes them more acceptable by the public.

Is chopchop a woman??

It was very interesting to talk all together about this cultural tendency to directly associate assistive technology with femininity. So if serving is a female characteristic, then I guess chopchop could be a female? If we are getting to the humanisation of chopchop then we MUST find a way to give it a gender, OR NOT? 
I guess not, and the discussion in class seemed to be focused on the idea that a server should be nonbinary. 

Mind you as long as it is a virtual assistant it can even work, but if it is a human being, a woman let’s say, you can expect experience, fastness, but not expertise, it will never be enough. And this remains so deeply embedded in our brain that it still complex to eradicate the germ of a toxic influence that unconsciously this concept still often permeates our lives.
This conversation raises several questions, including linguistic ones, that animate the fervent global discussion, as well as new forms of grammatical gender neutrality and other form of linguistic inclusive expressions.
In Italian, a server is considered male, the artificial assistant female, a rock male, the moon female, meme is quite problematic because I say it female and people bully me because it should be male, they say. This to ask, are these linguistic issues grounded in gender prejudices as well? How much should we dig deeply to get to the roots here? It feels like a long story, but it should bother anyone, even if English is the leading language at least here at this moment, but everyone in their own brain have probably different languages as the main ones, and it is interesting to know more about all the linguistic differences that we may encounter during the analysis of issues that may be rooted dramatically in cultural differences as well.

How to build an ethical AI that doesn’t reinforce stereotypes?

AI and voice assistants, like other technologies, are increasingly embedded in our daily lives. However, there are currently no existing guidelines focused on how to humanise AI the right way, despite its growing importance in shaping human everyday interactions with technology.
It’s not just about women, it’s about any community. Let’s take the Midjourney case, if you ask to generate a terrorist then it will create a middle eastern terrorist, who knows why. AIs are still taking gender and racial disparities to the extremes.
Exactly what is happening to most of the companies that have been developing voice assistants: they still rely on female voices and/or female names, which may re-enforce the general gender cliché that women are here to serve others. If a human can be biassed, an AI could even be worse.
There are some experiments going on, after some nice media pressure. Google tried the default gender voice to its Google Assistant, that had both male and female voices included. Female voices still performed better as the algorithm was better trained. Google decided to not really engage much in the creation of a male voice assistant, as it seemed much more difficult to gain data for it, and as users still prefer female one so much. During 2017 the damn tech giant worked on Wave Net, an algorithm that helped develop more natural female and male voices to add to their assistants. Let’s acknowledge at least that Google Assistant comes now programmed with 11 different voices, even with different accents, that surely will help to make the product as inclusive as possible and pave the way for the future of virtual, more inclusive, assistants.
Still I feel it’s not the product problem we are talking about now, it just has moved from being a human society issue much naturalised to becoming a new technology problem. A problem that feels ancient and new at the same time.
We shall talk more about how gender is portrayed throughout AI, creating new industry standards.
Some researches are already going on where the sound of "female," "male," "neutral," and "nonbinary" human voices are being analysed. A research that is not freed of new biases and prejudices.
It is crucial to examine who shapes the algorithms and guidance of artificial intelligence, as the technologies are often a product of the biases and opinions of their creators. It is important to address misrepresentation as well, as the field of artificial intelligence lacks diversity, especially in terms of involvement of different communities.

references

https://review42.com/resources/voice-search-stats/
https://time.com/4011936/emma-nutt/
https://www.warhistoryonline.com/war-articles/sexy-sally-aircraft-voice-based-warning-systems-history.html
https://cloud.google.com/text-to-speech/docs/voice-types
https://www.bloomberg.com/graphics/2023-generative-ai-bias/

Homo Ludens, ritual and play

What the author goes on to address is the idea that play is for many people of biological origin, thus:
-a way of imitating one's instincts
-need to relax, calm down
-exercising one's desire for dominance and competition, or freeing oneself from violent impulses

rant about play

It is always interesting to observe how play is interpreted in humans in a practical sense while in animals as an instinctual response.

We can talk about the little miniature kitchens, baby dolls to take care of, coloured plastic carpenter sets, these toys reflect a child's exploration of their future roles within society, mimicking adult behaviours and social interactions. To train oneself to be the grown-ups, to behave like the grown-ups, it is normal for that to happen, to reject that and to try to distort the game itself as just manipulation goes to failing to analyse the very heart of what it actually means to play, to what might be its real utility, which always turns out to be only social. Play is always social, and when a person plays alone it always goes to recreate situations of artificial sociality. A child who plays with a doll imagine it as alive, a man who inserts a coin into the slot machine relishes the idea that by becoming rich he will inevitably improve his life, and except in rare cases it is always about improving one's life in the eyes of others and to improve one's relationship with others.
It all sounds trivial to say, in the end as social creatures we are inclined to be like that, loneliness leads the game to become a distraction overcoming that conception of didacticism. To waste time, not to think.

Reflecting on my own understanding of playing with dolls, at 23 years old, I don't think I will play with them anymore (that's right, I would never admit it anyway). My play is pastime, with friends, to exercise sociability to the point of colliding with unsociability, or waste of time, and there I try not to fall into the trap as it is definitely part of a system that constantly reminds you how time is of the essence, it's all about money, money is important, I don't need I guess to say more, we're all in the same stifling situation. Then you try to play and make the game useful, coscently, while at an early age you are not aware of how much your playing affects your personality. I want to improve my knowledge of Dutch, to become a better person, understand people better, I play duolingo. I want to learn programming, I play mime. I create games by myself to force myself to wash dishes, get up in the morning. To block intrusive thoughts I create a thousand different games.

It is good to see how creativity itself is a coping mechanism. Could it be? Creativity seems intrinsic, we simply cannot escape it. In a world brimming with stimuli and hyperconnectivity, the sense of overwhelm amplifies. There is no end to it, it is an abyss, loneliness expands in such a world, loneliness leads to confusion, boredom. Play is the most straightforward instinctual way to evade the awareness of that abyss.

I watched a classic MrBeast's video where he locked himself in a room for a week without any stimulation from the outside world and resolved, after losing track of time, to count the grains of rice on his plate, and then at some point he stopped. There is no more utility in the game the moment there is no more stimulation to deal with.
Right now I'm reading this book, I'm reading it because I like to read, I love to analyse things, talking about it with Thijs makes the game more interesting, I'm putting myself out there trying then to describe what I've figured out, asking for his opinion, meanwhile another layer of the game is added, we're creating this messaging platform with wiki pages, I'm reading to not think, to block out the realisation maybe that this doesn't make sense anyway, all the result of a combined obsession between my and Thijs's personality. Would I be reading this book without this game? No, I would be playing other games. You never play alone even when you claim to be.

What even is a pen plotter???

by Alessia
🔙back to menu🔙
Personal essay evolved after a sudden presentation about pen plotting to some unsuspecting friends (> their random comments here included), inspired by zulip messages and insomnia

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What even is a pen plotter?

> Can I say that it sounds funny as a name? plotter
> Oh wait I saw them on tiktok there are plenty of videos of these m a c h i n e r i e s
> Yes, kinda trending

They are iconic devices, magical pioneers of digital graphic reproduction, machines that left an indelible mark in the history of visual art + computer graphics and in each of our hearts. Even if sadly pen plotters were replaced by large format inkjet printers, we are now experiencing a new renaissance for them, even outside the xpub bubble. With such nostalgic appeal they attract even more. Artists from all over the world acclaim them again as their new favourite tools, to be safeguarded, cherished, resurrected.

Modern digital plotters, which are still in use today, evolved from analog XY writer plotters that operated along two axes of motion. They were the most efficient way to draw vector graphics, rather than raster images, making them ideal for tasks like drafting blueprints, graphing data, and producing large-format maps.

> I don’t understand, weren't you doing things with the radio?
> pen plotters look even scarier than computers I swear

Now some historical facts! 🖼

One of the earliest plotters was Konrad Zuse's Graphomat Z64 in 1958, a punch card controlled plotter, driven by two gears. Frieder Nake, THE Algorist (along with Vera Molnar, Georg Nees, A. Michael Noll, and Manfred Mohr) used this machine, for which he developed a software for his experimentations. One of the first mechanical and commercial plotters was the CalComp 565, from 1966, a drum plotter that worked by placing the paper over a roller that moved the paper back and forth along the X axis and the pen moved back and forth along the Y axis.

> luckily you are showing images I wouldn’t understand a thing without them
> damn diabolic m a c h i n e r i e s

The progress of plotter technology was a key part for the development of CAD (Computer Aided-Design, software used by designers and engineers to create detailed digital drawings and models of objects or structures). The Computervision's Interact I plotter, was designed to be a combination of a digitiser and a plotter, serving as an interactive terminal. Users could copy a sketch, see it on a screen, edit it, and then print out the changes.
The great change for pen plotters arrived with the crafting of the flatbed plotter. As the name suggests, the surface to be drawn on was laid out flat, different from before, as paper was rolled up on a drum. HP was the big guy for commercial plotters. HP's first plotter was the 9125A flatbed plotter, introduced in 1968. Again HP, the HP 7470, born in the 80s, introduced the grit wheel mechanism: rollers pressing at opposite edges of the sheet to control movement. The pen is mounted on a carriage that moves back and forth in a line between the grit wheels. Plotters were also used in Create-A-Card kiosks, to make little postcards, that were available for a while in supermarkets. They used the HP 7475A six-pen plotter.

The most used modern pen plotters at the moment are the one from AXidraw by Evil Mad Scientist Labs, their firmware is open source: https://github.com/evil-mad/axidraw.

> I’ll still use my hp printer
> I don’t understand how this is connected to the radio

I am done, done, let's speak about art c’mooonn.
Firstly, pen plotter art: is it really art?
There isn’t much about plotter art in general, in books or on the internet. Grouping people together is always a way to ghettoise them, what does it even mean to be a pen plotter artist? Is there any kind of typical philosophy that is embedded to practising art through this kind of machine in particular? Each artist brings their unique perspective and creative approach to the intersection of art and technology. Art romantically is creativity, but in the real world art is money. We saw this in the fascinating rise of NTF that stained pen plotter art as well :)  

> NFTs are still a thing?

I got to discover (from an Interview with Frieder Nake by ‍Mark Amerika) that THE algorists, even if they were programmers, still had people writing codes for them. This made me smile, remembering all those great personalities, those artists whose names are printed into history books, whose real artistic production is reduced to the bone, maybe even less. Who knows how many works of art have been created with the creator, to whom these works are attributed, moving their brilliant hand just to sign them, while studio cadets sweated over fresh canvases? Or in this case: over keyboards.

> uuh we are getting into the social critique part now. spicy.
> like my internship you mean. I feel this.
> Idk, maybe they were paid this time, not enslaved like renaissance boys

I had prepared a very long list of names, all contemporary artists, as I wanted to find mainly artists that are still involved in the art scene, who have jumped from the bank of computer science to the bank of visual art, falling into exhibitions, museums, glossy newspapers superficial interviews. I don’t really want to show it anymore (hahaha no it's here actually list pen plotter artists ). It is a very different world from our studio and perhaps from those who see pen plotters in a more sincere, curious, way of rediscovering forgotten tools. I also wonder how much my own gaze is directed at the art industry more than at the creative act itself, there would be too much to say. I will not tell you about this whole list, just some hints.

> but can the plotter do other stuff other than plotting?
> maybe make food? Sing a song?
> what’s the point of making something do what it is expected to do?

Generative art! Talking about pen plotter art without mentioning computer and generative art is impossible. Pen plotters undeniably played an important role in the evolution of both of these art movements, as they were among the earliest digital tools available to mathematicians, scientists, and programmers to push that immaterial boundary between art and science.

Mafred Mohr, Vera Molnar Frieder Nake, George Ness, Herbert W. Franke, are all great science-computer-artists that experimented with generative art and visualised their ideas through pen plotting. It’s interesting to see how pen plotting built a bridge between new digital computer technologies and traditional printmaking techniques. I am speaking about dirty hands, acids, and staining inks that were at some point being linked to the cold grey plastic reality of computer hardwares. A whole new world.

Pen plotters, as computers, weren’t really naturalised, common to have around, Mohr had to use the ones from the Paris Institut Météorologique. I imagine what the guys there would have thought about this person using their machinery, for art??? Other remarkable pioneers of pen plotter art still included under the generative art umbrella are: Harold Cohen, Mark Wilson, Peter Beyls, Roman Verostko, Jean-Pierre Hébert, Casey Reas.

A lot of exhibitions, a lot of thirst for recognition. I get the feeling that all these artists have only attempted to create randomness and chaos, without actually creating it. Some sort of extreme quest of control over that human desire for chaotic disorder. Randomness by computer is still perceived as the total antithesis of randomness by humans, but is this really so? it's not that we really know where randomness originates and develops in the human mind, it might be more logical than we think.

> that’s too philosophical, show us some weird things

Artists that use pen plotters as mediums, that are mainly involved in the generative art movement, explore human-machine interactions (Sougwen Chun), even seeing them even as conversational (LIA), focusing on dynamic-fluid-esoteric forms and structures to get over the feeling of rigidity and inflexibility of the pen plotter involvement (Alida Sun). They let plotters be performative devices and storyteller, creating spaces that aim to even just enhance human interactions (Jürg Lehni-Jessica In), creating illusory fake organic structures, playing between harmony and chaos (Tyler Hobbs - Zancan), self-building frankenstein punk machines with paintball guns (Antigoon), working on data visualisation and sound design (Peco). There are so many artists out there that are involved in the pen plotter art, but, if I may, in a quite superficial way. The machine is the machine and it will draw the generated artwork. But isn’t there something more?

It’s somehow sad that plotters have been regarded merely as tools, peripheral tools. Yet, how wonderful the moment when a symbiotic relationship is built between the materials involved and the human action of letting the machine be a companion more than a device. Boundaries blur, and the machine assumes a quasi-autonomous presence in the artistic process. A dynamic of interplay, welcoming complexities and material vulnerabilities that working with this kind of machines introduces. Maybe even embracing the unexpected as a sort of performative act. Could this be seen as fetishization? Probably.

Anyway, it was Nake who was one of the first to sign his works with NAKE/ER56/Z64, acknowledging the computer system and plotter as integral collaborators in his artworks. The discussion about the legitimacy of recognizing hardware/software as authors, giving them a characteristic of humanity, is still very much open, now even more so than before. If it is the machine that produces the artwork, does that make it the only legitimate author?
It seems that James Pyle, from CalComp, thought so, when he held an international art competition in which plotters had to be the main tools used. Most of the art pieces didn’t have any attribution to the human artist involved in the creation of the pieces, just to CalComp :)




There is something mystical, enigmatic, about how pen plotting challenges what is the conventional notion of what drawing as an act is.
Drawing is viewed as an inherently human process, we are quite proud of it. Art history is based on that epic moment when some person decided to draw scenes of hunting and drugged shaman dances inside caves. We glorify the act of visual creation. The endlessly repeating of that act by the plotter alters that sense of sacredness that arises from the artist's personal touch, it makes some existential insecurities emerge.
Let’s embrace this! Let’s embrace a vision of the plotter as a machine that disrupts, add that transgressive element into the artistic process that is so much needed.

Is it still ok to go on? Usually, it is the end part, in a presentation of this type, that tries to be all nice and pompous and glossy. It is the grand finale, so get to the end.
After having conversations about pen plotting with both Thijs and Manetta, who I thank deeply, I would say that I may have gotten a little bit entangled in my typical flat bullet point fine art analysis, like I would speak about established art movements (even if art is not established at all, movements don’t even exist in the real sense of things). I would say xpub experimentations got over my head while I was exploring all those polished generative art online exhibitions. I should speak more about what pen plotting is for us as a community of students, and what might be. Indeed, pen plotting has been a great community tool shaping for us. It became the glue that let us stick together more in the studio and let us know more about each other, how cheesy!
As we are all from different backgrounds, we let machines be our companions in what is our own personal digging into experimental publishing, media archeology, skill building, tool making, performing acts, all done collectively. A plotter culture is emerging, it surely is.
For so long, I tried to destroy the wall between me and pen plotting as a technical tool, and only thanks to the skills and energy of my classmates did I succeed partially. Perhaps my role is to silently rant, more or less, about the techno-philosophical-exciting aspects of (lovely) metal boxes.

As I believe our xpub bubble is a bubble but still influenced by the outside world, I am looking forward to connecting with other bubbles, conquering the world together or something. There must be life out there!



(*ˊᗜˋ*)/ Thanks to:
Stefano, Edoardo, Thijs, Manetta

Reference Links:
https://www.hpmuseum.net/exhibit.php?class=4&cat=24
https://www.rightclicksave.com/article/an-interview-with-frieder-nake
https://computerhistory.org/
https://monoskop.org/images/7/7b/Noll_A_Michael_1967_The_digital_computer_as_a_creative_medium.pdf
https://ethw.org/First-Hand:Howard_Wise_Gallery_Show_of_Digital_Art_and_Patterns_(1965):_A_50th_Anniversary_Memoir (Computer Program for Artists: ART 1 Katherine Nash, Richard H. Williams)

https://www.jstor.org/stable/1572264
https://www.shapr3d.com/history-of-cad/computervision
https://medium.com/nightingale/pen-plotters-are-the-perfect-tool-for-data-storytelling-b05c71ceadd5
https://www.generativehut.com/
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16495236

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