User:C3/XPUB2/Project proposal 2

6. Relation to previous practice

SI26 3DS zine

#repurposing #old-devices #tactics #strategies #media-archeology #occupy

During SI26 we explored web-making as a craft (by working with html and css) and media archeology (by working with HPGL, Postscript, pen plotters and dot matrix printers).

Together with Charlie, Tessa and Eleni we overlapped these two topics for the SI project by focusing on a forgotten device from our past, the nintendo 3DS. We made a work on it by taking advantage of some outdated web-standards to show/hide information from other devices making our publication/puzzle/game solvable only through the use of the nintendo 3DS (important: we did not rely on emulation for the realization of the project, we just used simple HTML, CSS and vanilla JS).

The making of this work was a whole learning process. We had to get engaged with both hardware and software, this involved a lot of trail and error that culminated in a collection of strategies we wrote to make what we had in mind visible on the 3ds, but not on any other device.

It was a project about working within the limits, by occupying this object (like we did with the dot matrixes and plotters) we wanted to show that the devices that are catching dust at the corners of our lives are potentially interesting to work within, we wanted to invite people to get actively involved with things!

SI27 Terms of servers

#read-write-execute #servers #terminal #distribution

Terms Of Servers is a terminal based publication that runs on a temporary, communal server called cerealbox.

Working with the server for the first year of our studies evoked questions of its materiality and reliability...

...

...what we did not have time to solve is the way we could distribute our work, as the terminal is our main mode of interfacing with the server, we were wondering what would it mean to occupy this technical space to distribute our writing work (that is not just text it included some live commands).

4. Why do you want to make it? 

Cheatsheets are compact and lightweight, easy to jump in, they are interesting to me because they are a conduit to transfer "knowledge"(clarify knowledge), they travel a lot trough time as well because they constantly get duplicated, rewritten, screenshotted, redesigned etc.

During my first year I learned a lot of things that I wanted to engage with for a long time (mostly bash and python scripting and the general programming concepts). It was a long repetitive and iterative process and it was, for the most part, solitary...

I expressed interest in distributing and sharing knowledge, at the start of last year I envisioned the server as a potential social space for collective reading and writing and sharing or tools, but this did not turn out to be the case due to everyone's set of diverse interests.

My fascination with executable text is pretty dependent on my background studies so I think that...

...

...

...

...

...My approach to programming is by creating small tools, sometimes with some (diaristic) elements, an approach that I feel keeps people loose this approach, diaristic and playful over time so it is nice that I keep that. You can do things 100 times, but you can also find new ways in which this amount does not become boring or meaningfull but still remains playful.

Alexandria also said that the way I write into programs makes her think that this is what VIBE coding could and should be if it was awesome.

cheatsheets, documentation, aimed at people who still learn something, but already are using it. they are mented to be used, encyclopedia vs biology/physics/chemestry summary book

surface level, connected to action.

Of course cheatsheets can refer to a specific context by impling it, so the goal is not only to have these cheatsheets consumed by also inspire others to make their own and make them for others, hoping this sort of system can propagate like a virus.

1. What do you want to make?

Cheatsheets as documentation and sharing practice.

A series of activities/workshops.

learning tool - the cheatsheet is a learning tool.

chossing your own limit, share this as a methodolofy not as a content, do cheating practice

2. How do you plan to make it?

Via tought experiments connected to puzzles, drawings, annotating, mapping and distribution.

3. What is your timetable?

Nov/Dec: asking people around what is a cheatsheet or a cheat for them, I am interested in the technical one but it could also be more broad in general, to really go through the method rather than the content.

5. Who can help you and how?

7. Relation to a larger context

If you can cheat at something it means that there are some rules in place, and that there is a "proper" preferred way to do something. By cheating at those rules you can show that alternatives exist.

This reminds me of the online speedrunning community, various groups of people that gather around ways of completing a game as fast as possible.

This is made possible by discovering and sharing tactics and glitches that allow to jump around entire sections of a videogame (or skipping them entirely), breaking the overall programmed linearity/order/structure of the software (ex. by accomplishing some actions before the time they are supposed to happen).

Generally speaking this is a form of competition, ultimately people aim to break or keep their own records, but what I find interesting is that this process revolves around cheating and sharing cheats(methods) for others to see and replicate. https://wikispeedruns.com/

8 References/bibliography