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2017

Scholarly Communication Lecture Series- Johanna Drucker

Text on Method

Previous Project

An improvised generative musical instrument.

For trimester 2 project with dePlayer, we investigated the idea of a "score". What a score has been; and how it could be interpreted today.

As the project was with a well established experimental music institution many of us took to making musical representations of this idea.

From having previous experience with music performance, theory and composition, I decided to continue to explore themes that I had previously been investigating. This primarily being improvisation.

My challenge was to somehow combine technology and musical creativity without there being an apparent interface. I also wanted to there to be "traditional" musical qualities to the instrument, rather than it being a noise instrument.

My project was successful in some areas but my fundamental goals of avoiding an explicit mechanical interface did not totally succeed. While the instrument did generate relatively musical sounds; it was either not apparent whether my interaction was making intentional changes.

The end result was a problematic, generative, chaotic improvisation machine. Its score, a mash of software and numbers, humanly unintelligible, and musically irreproducible.

Interfacing the Law

In preparation for the third special issue, I have wanted to find a relevant topic that interests me. After our preliminary meeting with Femke Snelting, previous topics of interest have resurfaced.

The freedom of knowledge, and it as a basic human right seems an obvious thing. But the complexity of systems have abstracted this right away from individuals. Law and economy/capitalism has convoluted the pathway to knowledge and designated it as a luxury for the select.

It is a theme that the ideas of structural complexity vs functional complexity reappears.

Inter-Project Similarities

Creating interfaces to creativity is a difficult thing to attain. Whether this be due to technical or systematic constraints.

Creating functionally complex systems that expand a user/creator's view on the world is often impeded by one of the two aforementioned problems.

It seems that in both projects, the task of circumnavigating this issue is important to me. Using methodologies and ideologies encouraged in our day to day learning, the possibility of this seems attainable if not without its challenges.

It is these challenges however that allow us evermore agency when engaging with, or pushing back against these systems.

Inter-Projects Differences

Music has always had, for me, a difficulty to allow for critical reflection on the world it exists in. More often than not it is pure emotional expression as expressed by an individual or group. In the case of my chaotic musical machine for dePlayer, it is this fact that placed it apart from the rest of our work and research at Piet Zwart.

The excitement was not as intense for me in the production due to its lack of relevant conceptual relationships to the outside world. This current project of interfacing the law is a welcome return to more challenging conceptual ideas.

What was interesting during the dePlayer project, was the challenge of building a technically, and conceptually functional object within limited constraints. These skills will be applicable to future projects.

Help

Difficulty to understand and apply conceptual ideas into my work is something that I frequently experience. I want to make it my goal to enhance my critical reading, writing and research methods. I want to do this more, and seek critical responses to this. Steve and Florian are both primary resources to further this.

Further I want to know more about the methodologies and ideologies employed by OSP and Constant, as their method and conceptual motivations seem inherently intertwined. As much as I have been aware of the conceptual framework they situate themselves in (i.e. Open-Source tools and philosophies), its application has been difficult to imagine.

>>> FUTURE >>>

In the future I hope to make more physical work with strong conceptual foundations. U hope to be able to do this collaboratively with differently skilled, but equally motivated peers. furthermore I would like to make work that neither depends upon closed, proprietary systems and in turn critique their existence and affect they have on different parts of our society.

I hope that these qualities will be applicable to my Passports Project. It will an exciting experiment to see how my skills develop, technically, conceptually and ideologically.

Passports Essay

Passports Writing

Passport Research Notes

Suggestions from peers : Czech Republic : Velvet Revolution - When the Czech republic separated from Slovakia. Side notes read "Progressive" and "Manacle"

Whare are general passport application processes. The case where it was easier and cheaper to change your name by depol, get a new passport than to purchase a new ticket with Ryanair.

Suggestion to create a subjective archive of my family movement. Look at my family's history in relationship to world history specifically in regards to mobility and national diplomacies.

Infinite Citizenship : Giuditta Vendrame

Identity and Control : Harrison C. White

Essay Research Suggestions 2

Max: I have been reading a short introduction to Foucault. It is relevant because we talk about control and disciplinary society in this class. Thought it would be handy to look at these in terms of passports. His life is very interesting he didn’t want to be tied down to one definition; opens up to reading F’s life from different perspectives. Archeologist of knowledge. Rather than looking at what a work says and placing it in its context you situate it in its time in order to understand the concepts. [discourse] The technology of language, interpreting it in our time in terms of just the words of that are written […unpack]. This is interesting in relation to the mobility and passport project; identity, classification; Historical thing:

What have you done since last time?

Text: reading F Book, also had a follow up group meeting. Would like to finish the book, re-read it; go back to the history of passports and visas. Take it from a personal place, where I am allowed passage within the work; for my family down 3 generations; to map out their journey. At the time; my gp’s movement during the war; and my greatgarnadp’s escaped the Russian revolution. Seeing what it would have been like for my grandfather to change his nationality. [Karina] You could update this […] in Holland… Where will you be: writing something down: questions I want to address.

Outside:

coding and playing music: both with varying degrees of success. Hopefully with the sound project. Euclidian time – translated into 1 & 0s [explains]. Then you play it like . Euclidian rhythms are currently popular and from these patterns you get polyrhythms, which come from human culture. One can generate African rhythms, for instance. This could be (possibly) performed for DePlayer project. Like the idea of improvising music, to make the score in parallel or after the fact.

CONTROL and DISCIPLINE SOCIETY : https://libcom.org/library/postscript-on-the-societies-of-control-gilles-deleuze

Essay Research Suggestions 1

https://pad.bleu255.com/p/rwrm_notes_06-01-17

started of with passports and identity evolved into idea of national identity, mobility institutionalised

Passports, indentity which evolved into the idea of national identity, mobility,

need to find history of passports phylosophy of identity. movement through World of the family. Political environment.

need to look at a personal point of view look at family and their movement

what information is needed case study on 'nationally diverse' family

where do you come from? is it relevant to make that destinction?

Trump Tolling http://everysecondcounts.eu/

Taiye Selasi: Don't ask where I'm from, ask where I'm a local https://www.ted.com/talks/taiye_selasi_don_t_ask_where_i_m_from_ask_where_i_m_a_local?utm_source=tedcomshare&utm_medium=referral&utm_campaign=tedspread

dna test momondo https://www.momondo.nl/letsopenourworld/ Is your DNA a more genuine distinction of your "nationalities". Is ethnicity related to nationality. Is culture related to nationality?

Ethnocentrism

Overview Effect - seeing the world from outer space https://vimeo.com/55073825

The Space Between Us http://www.imdb.com/title/tt3922818/

Why a passport identity exists? which are the reasons they exists? do they identify us?

Can you look at yourself / your personality and find something 'typically' Australian, South African, Belgian? How family culture can get into your identity?

Italian travelled to Argentina. He felt at home there because of similar culture (many Italians there)

What defines a culture?

Language How does language shape cultural identity? It's also a specific tool. In some countries it's easier to explain food, weather, nature, technology

What was the reason we started having passports? History of passports

History of the visa - started in 1958

Costs of visas Compare difficulties / process of getting a visa Look into reasons why you do / do not need a visa Poland doesn't need a visa to China because they think Poland is still communistic

Immigration and Naturalisation Service (IND) https://ind.nl

Facebook Tracking

http://dataselfie.it/#/

2016

Essay

Essay : The Silver Bullet

Reading Notes

Collection of notes on things I'm reading/read.

Citizen Lobby : Olsen

Vilém FLUSSER

Talking at the Osnabrück, European Media Art Festival, 1988

POST-HISTORICAL STRUCTURAL TRADITION

Our current form of literacy is no longer sufficient to communicate current concepts concerning our world. To more precisely reflect on our world we are not solely able to explain it with language, neither written or spoken. To understand the world, we are no longer able to rely solely on words, it is necessary to calculate the world.

Vilém Flusser suggests that the only way we are able to reflect on our current existence is through synthetic images. He describes the language of science and mathematics is a visual language of thought through numbers, giving the example of the number two as the representation of a couple or pair. From this he goes on to suggest that the most appropriate tool to facilitate this realisation of synthetic images is through computing. At the time of this interview Flusser claimed that he had not yet seen any examples of this and suggests that we do not know how to yet manipulate the technology.

Flusser explains that before the alphabet images were used to represent the world. Images served to represent non linear mythical thought, a projection of understanding upon the world tied into past present and future. At the invention of the alphabet this non-linear representation of the world gave way to a linear, historically causal and critical method. Now linear, historical thought has been disrupted by a calculative method of thinking, which Flusser likes to call a systemic or structural way of thinking.

Our current revolution can be likened to the revolution that gave us the origin to history. One that returns to a non-linear, image based narrative, that likens to a pre-historical way of thinking. We are now in the process of developing a post-historical structural way of thinking.

Historically the philosophy of image cast a mostly negative opinion of 'the image'. Greek and Jewish (Christian) philosophy and thought considered images either only a copy or simulation of thought and so we have been conditioned to distrust images. However now images should be considered articulations of thought, not mere copies by projection or models. Flusser calls for a new conversation around images.

STRUCTURAL v FUNCTIONAL COMPLEXITY

Systems can be considered complex in 2 ways. Systems with structural complexity and systems with functional complexity. Structurally complex systems are ones that are complex in their construction, or operation but not in their interaction or output. Functionally complex systems are systems can be used in many different ways or has a functional nuance without necessarily being structurally complex.

Flusser gives the comparison between TV (structurally complex) and Chess (functionally complex). The television a technologically complex electronic device that decodes data into visual moving image and sound that is broadcast live to the viewer, is very simple to interact with or manipulate within its set parameters. Chess, a game made up of solely physical objects can be played 100 different ways and have many different outcomes.

As things are being designed more structurally complex without being necessarily functionally complex leads us to become intellectually, aesthetically and ethical less active or even able. It is Flussers analysis that it is not the fault of the systems themselves, but rather the responsibility on the users of the systems to find functional complexity in structurally complex systems.

The importance in doing this is because functionally complex systems encourage creative thought (arguably a calculative way to look at our world) whereas structurally complex systems currently allow us to stagnate in thought.

@@ Line 4: / Line 4: @@
 == Text on Method ==
-'''Title
+=== Previous Project ===
-Abstract: what is this document?; what do you want the reader to get from this text? (50 words)
+An improvised generative musical instrument.
-Introduction: Give outline of the text and make the points you want to get across clear. (200 words)
+For trimester 2 project with dePlayer, we investigated the idea of a &quot;score&quot;. What a score has been; and how it could be interpreted today.
-'''
+As the project was with a well established experimental music institution many of us took to making musical representations of this idea.
-Current Practice (resource: here you can use the text made in the last session, interview...)
-What are you working on now?; (200)
+From having previous experience with music performance, theory and composition, I decided to continue to explore themes that I had previously been investigating. This primarily being improvisation.
-what do you want to work on? (200)
+My challenge was to somehow combine technology and musical creativity without there being an apparent interface. I also wanted to there to be &quot;traditional&quot; musical qualities to the instrument, rather than it being a noise instrument.
-Who can help you and how? (50)
+My project was successful in some areas but my fundamental goals of avoiding an explicit mechanical interface did not totally succeed. While the instrument did generate relatively musical sounds; it was either not apparent whether my interaction was making intentional changes.
-'''Relation to previous practice'''
+The end result was a problematic, generative, chaotic improvisation machine. Its score, a mash of software and numbers, humanly unintelligible, and musically irreproducible.
-How does your current work connect to previous projects you have done? (resource: here you can use the descriptions made in the first sessions) (200)
+=== Interfacing the Law ===
-Who helped you and how?
+In preparation for the third special issue, I have wanted to find a relevant topic that interests me. After our preliminary meeting with Femke Snelting, previous topics of interest have resurfaced.
-'''Relation to a larger context'''
+The freedom of knowledge, and it as a basic human right seems an obvious thing. But the complexity of systems have abstracted this right away from individuals. Law and economy/capitalism has convoluted the pathway to knowledge and designated it as a luxury for the select.
-Outline practices or ideas that go beyond the scope of your personal work. Write briefly about other projects or theoretical material which share an affinity with your project. It is simply about showing an awareness of a broader context, which you will later build upon in your project proposal and writing component in the second year (you may have covered some of this in your interview) (200) [what is annotation, in this case: what do you mean by this? S]
+It is a theme that the ideas of structural complexity vs functional complexity reappears.
-'''Research strands'''
+=== Inter-Project Similarities ===
-Consider the possibilities open to you and where you would take your work in the near future. Don't just give a list of book titles or works but outline in your own words what issues are at stake (200)
+Creating interfaces to creativity is a difficult thing to attain. Whether this be due to technical or systematic constraints.
+Creating functionally complex systems that expand a user/creator's view on the world is often impeded by one of the two aforementioned problems.
-General note= consider the role of images and links to video (if you want your proposal to take the form of a wiki/web page)
+It seems that in both projects, the task of circumnavigating this issue is important to me. Using methodologies and ideologies encouraged in our day to day learning, the possibility of this seems attainable if not without its challenges.
-'''Bibliography
+It is these challenges however that allow us evermore agency when engaging with, or pushing back against these systems.
-'''
+=== Inter-Projects Differences ===
+Music has always had, for me, a difficulty to allow for critical reflection on the world it exists in. More often than not it is pure emotional expression as expressed by an individual or group. In the case of my chaotic musical machine for dePlayer, it is this fact that placed it apart from the rest of our work and research at Piet Zwart.
+The excitement was not as intense for me in the production due to its lack of relevant conceptual relationships to the outside world. This current project of interfacing the law is a welcome return to more challenging conceptual ideas.
+What was interesting during the dePlayer project, was the challenge of building a technically, and conceptually functional object within limited constraints. These skills will be applicable to future projects.
+=== Help ===
+Difficulty to understand and apply conceptual ideas into my work is something that I frequently experience. I want to make it my goal to enhance my critical reading, writing and research methods. I want to do this more, and seek critical responses to this. Steve and Florian are both primary resources to further this.
+Further I want to know more about the methodologies and ideologies employed by OSP and Constant, as their method and conceptual motivations seem inherently intertwined. As much as I have been aware of the conceptual framework they situate themselves in (i.e. Open-Source tools and philosophies), its application has been difficult to imagine.
+=== ''&gt;&gt;&gt; FUTURE &gt;&gt;&gt;'' ===
+In the future I hope to make more physical work with strong conceptual foundations. U hope to be able to do this collaboratively with differently skilled, but equally motivated peers. furthermore I would like to make work that neither depends upon closed, proprietary systems and in turn critique their existence and affect they have on different parts of our society.
+I hope that these qualities will be applicable to my Passports Project. It will an exciting experiment to see how my skills develop, technically, conceptually and ideologically.
 == Passports Essay ==