User:Robin

(would like) to do's

Struggle

(would like) to do before end SI28

- edit personal reader, add notes from notebook, relate to course material. - reflect on new laptop set-up + connecting to Null's server ( learned about networking, internet protocols, etc. )
- reflect on open-source font library on Null's server ( learned about open licenses and practices )
- reflect on web-to-print techniques
- reflect on html / css course w/ class :)
- maybe list of tools / sources worth exploring..

wishes during holiday
- web-to-print set-up for freelance work
- learn python
- re-visit course material
- font encoding w/ fontforge (maybe for freelance assignment)

- lookup applictions for summer residencies

SI28

SIL Language Technologies, the organization behind the SIL Open Font License

[ -> research documentation ]

After setting-up my new laptop, I contacted my friend to connect to his self-hosted server, which I refer to as the Big Black Box. Then, got to re-downloading all the fonts I had lost. I wanted to make it into a little Open Font Library on the Big Black Box so everyone from their art collective with access to it could make use of it. Then, I wanted to include an overview .txt file for those less familiar with type-related stuff, which got me interested in adding a small guide to open licenses and practices (as I am learning about them myself).

While looking into different types of open licenses, I came across the Open Font License website. The SIL Open Font License, developed by SIL Language Technologies, turns out to be a license, dedicated to the 'open development of the languages of the world', and is an American Evangelical Christian Missionary non-profit organization. That info had an uncomfortable flavor to it... Why is open language development promoted by an organization that in their mission statement describes their objective is to "Bring the word of God to all the languages in the world?" And not even as a side-note, but as the central aim to their efforts!

From there, I digressed from the Open Font Library description and started diving deeper into the politics of language technologies. My discomfort lies in the huge contrast between the ideals of Open Source Communities that I started learning about and the messaging of this organization, especially how that would influence technological development and inform visibility of language diversity. Writing for the Open Font Library, I highlighted the work of Bye Bye Binary in queer language encoding. Reading about this, I felt like a huge step was being made in the visibility of post-binary language, because they made it possible to use Open Type features to write gender-inclusive language with fonts that support it! Made possible by their Queer Unicode Initiative. Queer language encoding means that gender-inclusive ways of writing are now included in the systems of Standards that make it possible to write digitally in the first place!

I was not at all unaware of the colonial/racial charges within the development of language technologies. Still, instinctively, this felt like a huge win for language inclusivity to me. Or at least for a partial recognition for ways of expression through language that fall outside established use. That, combined with Bye Bye Binaries dedication to open-source practices, that prioritize collective ownership and creation over claiming 'intellectual property' over their typefaces, make their efforts a strong anti-colonial / queer-feminist practice. And they are not foreign to a critique of colonial implications in the technologies, licenses and practices that type development depend on. There is no such thing as operating completely independently of these forces. Still, given how heavily open-source typefaces depend on the SIL Open Font License, made want to know more to what extend they still shape language technology development today. So I did some digging into the organization behind the SIL Language Technology.

Zine idea for Extraterrestrial Publishing Fair

A few times throughout the trimester, I was reminded of Butler's Essay 'Imitation and Gender Insubordination'. Where they use the figure-of-speech of a 'copy without an original' to talk about their unease with the category of lesbian as something that should supposedly be equal to the 'I' it encloses. They proceed to deconstruct the binary notion of gender identity / sexuality, where the 'gay' category is supposedly understood as a derivative of a 'straight' original. I have to confess I could relate a lot to their explanation of their unease in this understanding. I think I unknowingly held this notion for a long time. Coming to terms with my own gender-expression has involved coming to terms with the idea that I'm not trying 'pretending' to be a gender that I am not, but I didn't really know how to express this in words.

This essay has helped me a lot in that regard. Especially when they talk about drag, not as imitating, performing, a pre-existing gender, but rather, as exposing the fact that all gender is a performance. One that only gains the understanding of a fixed identity through it's repetition.

That the semblance of fixity relies on constant repetition, especially since they relay it in this speech of a 'copy without original', made me wonder about the role of media in this construction. I imagined a copy machine that did not make use of an 'original' to create it's copies from. How would the process of making a publication look if you tried to only make copies from other copies. Every individual zine would be unidentical from all others. That would go against the intended use of the medium of a copy machine, at least partially. But hopefully would make a meaningful point about how media re-produce an idea of identicality where in reality none exists.

Bonus: If I'd use cut-ups from the essay, could that be the content and a techno-text at the same time? This figure-of-speech could also explain how the publication was made, so reflecting on it's own material condition. Wooooowww...

Fast-forward to SI29, We're reading Keywords for Radicals with Marloes. The introduction carries quite some resemblance to Butler's essay. In both 'Keywords for Radicals' and Butler's 'Imitation and Gender Insubordination' struggle comes back as a way to relate to what is being studied. What is being studied is language, or the use of definitions or categories. And the 'struggle' in both is the rejection of the idea that such definitions or categories are supposed to set anything in stone, or refusing to accept that definitions could be fixed or pre-given. For Butler, this started with their discomfort with the category of 'lesbian'. Not because they are not one, or don't want to be one, but because there is a contradiction in the category that they want to expose. The one of both being one and acting like one at the same time. They reject that the category as such preceded them and they happen to be an 'instance' of that category, so to say. And point out instead, that the category only derives it's meaning from being done/embodied/performed/repeated. As they say, there is nothing lesbians could be said to have in common. And if the category was fixed somehow, that should be the case. In Keywords for Radicals, they start the question of struggle with the implication that the radical effort is not completed with assigning 'true names' as in calling power out on it's bs. Using 'the fable of the emperer's new clothes' to make the point, even after the king is called out, the fact he's not wearing any clothes exposed, he will carry on as if nothing ever happened because he is already too invested. The stakes are too high. There is actually a line to be drawn here with Butler as well. As they show, the straight 'norm' somehow needs or uses the visibility of queerness as the 'other' to constantly re-establish itself as that normative position. And at the same time, the visibility of queerness poses a thread, as it exposes the possibility of that seemingly fixed reality-of straightness as norm and as true-to be inherently unstable. So for Butler, the site of struggle is to move beyond the fixity of names, categories, realities, and finding new meaning in them, not to discredit them, but to have a new stance towards them. One that can actually challenge the very oppressive systems that uses them, and needs them, in order to keep up it's semblance of naturality. In Keywords, this reads as 'words do not merely describe a given reality but also play a key role in helping to produce it. Though the focus is more on how language, how definitions change over time, and their struggle interpreted from seeing their historical context, seeing the pattern, the repetition is still the new way to approach reality-formation. Through repetition (in language) reality is actively being produced.

Deconstructing LCD screens

[ -> experiment documentation ]

In my bachelor's graduation work, I used prysm sheets from old LCD screens as pages in a book. It was the start of an interest in how media shape social/political life. And part of it was to literally take apart these screens, learn about how they work. Though the project itself was a photo book with street photography, I am starting to realize now my interest was maybe not so much in the images, but in the media itself.

Having read about media-specific analysis during the first semester gave me a way to better contextualize this. And I went back to the LCD screens to do some more experiments with them. ( and I also keep collecting them to make business cards out of them ).