User:Ssstephen/Reading
oh this one?
Scripts, Grooves and Writing Machines, Lisa Gitelman
Print culture and non print media evolve in mutual inextricability. The phonograph and contemporary inscriptive forms were deeply dependent upon reworkings of the social and economic relations of textuality, of print culture and print capitalism. They engaged literacy practices in toto, the cognitive and the somatic, the semiotic and the social. They helped question authors and readers as subjects and modify the experienced subjectivities of speakers, performers, publishers, and literates. In doing so they kept intervening into dynamic constructions of private and public, community and difference. p13
"Our copyright laws urgently need revision. They are imperfect in definition, confused and inconsistent in expression; they omit provision for many articles which, under modern reproductive processes, are entitled to protection; they impose hardships upon the copyright proprietor which are not essential to the fair protection of the public; they are difficult for the courts to interpret and impossible for the Copyright Office to administer with satisfaction to the public." [1]
Calligraphy for Computers, AV Hershey
User:Ssstephen/Reading/Calligraphy for Computers
The power of language in Jewish Kabbalah and magic: how to do and undo things with words, Agata Paluch
Literary Machines, Ted Nelson
(reading method note: read chapters 1 & 2 with no writing/notetaking, now re-scanning and writing these notes)
TN shows a diagram of "Ordinary" Hypertext which he proposes is a simplification of a (his) bigger more unifying idea. But surely there are more "Weird" Hypertexts? "Different" Hypertexts, "Strange" Hypertexts, "Outside" Hypertexts.
Check out Douglas Engelbart's NLS at Stanford Research Institute.
The reason that it (Project Xanadu) has taken so long is that all of its ultimate features are part of the design
Again this seems super prescriptive to me, not sure if I like that. No room for adaptation of structure, this is apparently the ultimate superstructure. ("unified structure to handle it all", "clean design", etc etc words that start warning signals for me)
TN seems to me to have some hidden/unaddressed desires to make this a corporate or commercial structure, in particular on page 0/6 where he compares Xanadu to Xerox Corporation (even the name dude), and page 0/13 where he offers new recruits "a small chance of fame and fortune".
THE BOOK STOPS HERE.
Ex TOT DAG: Expanding Tissue of Text, Data and Graphics (p. 0/9)
And publishing--ah consider what publishing will become
I like the optimistic rhetoric though and definitely exciting to read.
Check out The Problems of Hypertext (Chapter 3 of this book?)
This book too is hardly everybody's cup of tea[quote added], since there is not much choice among its sequences
p.1/14 Note: I added the link, it there a protocol for this? I have adapted the more traditional [emphasis added]
Hypertext referred to as "nonsequence". In my experience it is more a multitude of sequences, this is what I assumed the hyper- part meant. p.1/15
"Colored links" p.1/15: Interesting contrast to my interpretation of p.0/2 "Ordinary" Hypertext as part of a prescriptive system.
"Compound hypertext" p.1/16: In general the tone of this chapter sits with me better. I think TN is presenting the same ideas but without the intense rhetoric of the start.
Pictures and diagrams are intrinsically nonsequential
p.16 (mkay)
Talmud as hypertext p.1/16: a body of accumulated comment and controversy
Admitting hypertext is not from the future, I'm into this.
It is my belief that this new ability to represent ideas in the fullness of their interconnectedness will lead to easier and better writing, easier and better learning, and a far greater ability to share and communicate the interconnections among tomorrows ideas and problems
p.1/19. Again with the uber-optimistic futuristic rhetoric imo. I get this is still chapter one of the book but I see no space in his language for considering the potential issues of this new system. Where's my hoverboard?
Paper Machines, Markus Krajewski
P63 In Praise of the Cross-Reference
Index card system as authors assistant when cross referencing is used, or communication partner
Conscious and unconscious cross referencing
Clarifying creative prompts
Intentional (re conscious unconscious?) incorrect references can stimulate. Like Denis Diderot in Encyclopedia
Index cards as stars
Index cards as neurons
Index cards as stock prices
Index cards as sex in the city characters
Mapping
Scope/accuracy of a reference... Reference to mathematics vs reference to godels incompleteness theorem. Focus
“ Every note is only one element"
Claude Shannon Entropy
Nikolas Luhmann physical index cards in the late twentieth century (Anonymous . 1929c . “ Kartei ” als Warenzeichen gelöscht! Rationelle Betriebsführung, n.p.) ( Vogt , Victor . 1922 . Die Kartei: Ihre Anlage und Führung. Vol. 5 of Orga-Schriften. 2nd edition , revised by Dr. Porstmann. Berlin : Organisation Verlagsanstalt)
n.p.
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P65 On the Gradual Manufacturing of Thoughts in Storage
poetological - to do with the knowledge of creation? Don't have a dictionary right now
Konrad Gessner possible inventor of index cards
"the production of innovations is always based on the fortifi ed recombination of the existing."
Heinrich von Kliest midwifery of thought (On the Gradual Produc-tion of Thoughts Whilst Speaking 1805) borrowed from Kant
analects --- what is this?
Conversation creates ideas
The Text claims index cards are a valid substitute for the new connections and perspectives offered by a human in conversation. To me this implies the humans creativity is the same as the connections offered by the references; surprising, useful, inspiring, but also predetermined?
Index cards as "precise" "infallible", generally true compared to humans but a) has limits and b) has negative results as well as positive
Kliest - knowledge as a "condition" or state rather than a property
Recombinatory power comes from material nature of cards shuffling juxtaposing etc
"born from the spirit of sloth" index cards as laziness
Index cards as boredom
Communicating with Slip Boxes: An Empirical Account, Niklas Luhmann
Thinking of the index cards as someone to be communicated with
"One of the most basic presuppositions of communication is that the partners can mutually surprise each other. "
Information can only be generated through comparison, OR (insert other logical operators here? Combination as information, XOR as information)
Different goals can lead to better mode informative communication
"The fixed filing place needs no system. It is sufficient that we give every slip a number which is easily seen and that we never change this number and thus the fixed place of the slip"
order is a system though, even chronology? Doesn't take relativity into account, implies some observer with a privileged frame of reference
This isn't just a hypothetical or theoretical limit, consider two authors editing the same wiki page
Multiverse library or multiverse wiki - if someone is already editing the page (or the entire wiki) and a second editor appears (or second observer), the new wiki "timeline" splinters from the last. (options in brackets would splinter much more frequently)
How does version history look in this system?
Could be experimented with a small simple system, maybe a single bit of content and two editors, with metadata for edit/version history
Secondary memory
Long term project, how to retain and enable access, preserve information, allow for expansion in future
Order should be purely formal, does this even makes sense? Can form be isolated?
"Every note is only an element which receives its quality only from the network of links and back-links within the system. " One billion Christians can't be wrong, one billion Muslims cant be wrong, one billion hyperlinks can't be wrong
Combination of order and disorder can (?) arise from formally ordered system
Examine supposedly formal orders, my instinct says they're not
Bookmarks
Bookmark sharing, bookmark searching, bookmark exchange, bookmark folders and structuring
Tags vs links, tags offer bidirectionality and multiple end points, links are just vectors while tags are fields
Accidents are the driving force for evolution
"to isolate these two aspects [ order and disorder] from each other is neither possible nor methodologically meaningful" <-- I like this
"tha accidents of reading"
What unread books can teach us, Oliver Burkeman
how to write a thesis don't have internet right now to find a readable version.
how-the-internet-makes-you-think-youre-smarter-than-you-really-are Another One to check out when I get internet connection
"Start with the title, Introduction and table of contents." Useful for reading and writing I think.
"the line wasn’t there" the blank web page, the imagined memory
Fugitive Libraries, Shannon Mattern
Melissa Adler, study of the politics of library classification
Joy Buolamwini, Timnit Gebru, and Safiya Noble
BlackLivesMatter Wikipedia Edit-a-Thon
Should a library be neutral? Neutrality justifies disengagement
Catherine Allen Latimer, Nella Larsen, Regina Anderson Andrews, and Pura Belpré
"Carrollton, Georgia, librarian Edith Foster marked the spines of African-Americans’ books with a triangle, so readers of all races would know which texts were meant for whom"
Patterson Toby Graham, in his history of the struggle to integrate Alabama’s libraries, asks questions that are still pertinent today: “What is the role of a library and a librarian in an intolerant and fearful society? Have librarians been active agents or just passive observers in the ebb and flow of social change and social conscience?”
I am a Strange Loop, Douglas Hofstadter
to varying degrees, we human beings live inside other human beings already, even in a totally nontechnological world. the interpenetration of souls is an inevitable consequence of the power of the representationally universal machines that our brains are. that is the true meaning of the word 'empathy'.
He's not great with words (penetration, universal machines, true) but moving past that this is a beautiful idea. The idea of a soul or identity as distributed and modular. The possibility to at very least simulate eachother. He mentions coarse and fine grained a lot which makes me think of renormalisation, and in a good way. A mathematical approach that doesnt require division to reach truth. Accepting that truth can be found on different scales at different times. The night of the 10th of November 1619.
the myth of watertight boundaries between souls is something whose falsity we all have slight tastes of all the time, but since it is so convenient and so conventional to associate one body with precisely one soul, since it is so deeply tempting and so deeply ingrained to see a body and a soul as being in perfect alignment, we choose to downplay or totally ignored the implications of the everyday manifestations of the [intercirclusion] of souls.
Volumetric Regimes, Possible Bodies
The So-called Lookalike
read it here A letter Manetta Barends wrote as the so-called designer of this book to a designer, such as the designer of the template used for the entire series, and made me think of a conversation we started to have in Methods yesterday about style.
The series editors insisted that we could take the design of the book into our own hands, as long as we would “follow the template”. They did not specify what this would mean exactly, but made clear that it was important for them that we honored the original design.
I am wondering how to reconnect your template and aesthetics to the way this book is being made?
We found a slab serif font that aligned with the one in your template and we figured out how to replicate the layout’s dynamics and overall structuration.
(emphasis added in all three above)
Aligned in what way, and why? As a fun misunderstanding Manetta then starts to talk about the "face on the cover" by which I thought she meant typeface. When she mentioned this slab-serif face I was already thinking about the implications of honouring the design choices in the template, and this made me think about the implications of using faces based on those from the early ninteenth century (in this book but also generally). If the face is aligned with the template, can it also be aligned with the contributors? Does everything have to be lined up? The spanish for 'line them up' is 'alinearlos' which is a useful term to know if you are trying to work with a designer whose communicates in spanish.
Yesterday (20221005) xpub1 were discussing style briefly while working together as a group. Myself and Bobi had attempted to not put our own formatting onto some texts we were comparing ('designing' and 'editing' respectively). But then when discussing the compared texts as a group, Cara immediately noticed them to be "very xpub". Brought up some thoughts about styles emerging from process and tools, individual and collective styles, and the implied next thought for me would be 'so what?', does it have any effect?
We Have Always Been GeoHackers
read it here Weird coincidence that I read this the day before learning to use the 3D printer. Although it first seemed like something not directly relevant some ties came up even in naming (gcode and gplates), but more interesting was looking at their process as a case study. 'Disobedient bug reporting and disobedient action research' seem like useful tools to me, and maybe are also interesting in relation to Manetta's letter above. I thought this was a good critique of a software environment and environment software.
body of the earth
This essay also references 'Yusoff, A Billion Black Anthropocenes or None' a few times which seems worth looking into.
From Work to Text[ to Sound], Roland Barthes
The title makes it clear already that text good work bad no work me text. When i first got a mobile phone it cost 9c to send a text. This steadily grew to 13c, although never cost as much as an MMS (up to 25c). Presumably the multi media message involved more work than the text, and hence the higher cost. Certainly an MMS usually involves the transfer of much more data than an SMS. Nasdaq defines information cost as
Transactions costs that include the assessment of the investment merits of a financial asset. Related: Search costs.
These days texts dont work in the same way as they used to, messaging has become over the top. An internet connection is required to go over the top, although a cellular network is not.
On B-dog's comparisons with music:
"to play" and "to listen" constituted a virtually undifferentiated activity
Barthes maybe saying that listening without playing is passive, spectating society? The text made me think of the word 'action' a lot, until Roro finally offers it in the cadence 'deferred action', the signifier as the beat that never drops. At sonic acts yesterday i found myself listening and also hearing. Trying hard not to see or read, which is difficult but Very Important Participation. Also attempting to keep silent, which is certainly easier but still a challenge (run through a forest with your hair tied in a braid without breaking a single branch). Sound good text bad because a sound is always part of an environment. You can't hear any thing except the mechanotransduction of your hair follicles, which your body is overcoding to stop you from overfalling and to give you spatial orientation. Sound is space or at very least they are signified in the same text.
Exploratory Programming, Nick Montford
1.7 Free Software and No-Cost Software
Free as in free beer, free speech, free love, free money, free palestine, freebird, free education, free ride, freefall, free willy, freesound.org, free facebook, free Tom Mooney, free your mind, free your mind arnhem, free music, free movies, free movies online, free movies watch now.
Further reading from this section: Free Texts Free Verse Free Software Free Software
America, Allen Ginsberg
America why are your libraries full of tears?
I’m addressing you. Are you going to let your emotional life be run by Time Magazine? I’m obsessed by Time Magazine. I read it every week. Its cover stares at me every time I slink past the corner candystore. I read it in the basement of the Berkeley Public Library. It’s always telling me about responsibility. Businessmen are serious. Movie producers are serious. Everybody’s serious but me.
Nuestra Herencia: Senior Legacy Project at El Paseo Community Garden, On the Real Film
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An Invitation for Wildness, Happen Films
Non-action as a forest-gardener, sun tzu sort of thing
As a forest gardener one of the things that you do come to realise is that you're a bit-player, you're not the main driver out there, and that really your responsibility becomes learning more about how that works, stepping back, being a bit more relaxed about the whole thing and just watching those processes. And even changing the way that you think about harvest and about what you eat or what you need from your garden and so your diet could change as ours has, and rather than looking to eat lettuces we might each alexanders or a perrenial french sorrel.
The more intervention you make, the more mistakes you're likely to make
time-code for story about weed management
The opportunities that need people, its the opposite of industrialisation or intensification where you need hardly any people because machines are doing it, herbicides are doing it. Putting people back into an environment, help them to make it worthwhile and healthy
Writing Machines, N. Katherine Hayles
Material Metaphors p18
Research in Experimental Documents (RED) team at Xerox PARC, including Anne Balsamo and Richard Gold.
Where is this https://www.academia.edu/9759064/the_what_of_XFR_eXperiments_in_the_future_of_reading (found this one)
Where is this https://www.academia.edu/9759063/The_methods_of_our_madness_research_on_experimental_documents
It aint what you do it's the way that you do it
Technotexts p25
Further reading mentioned in this:
Dictionary of the Khazars: A Lexicon Novel, Milorad Pavic
Always Coming Home, Ursula LeGuin
High Tension, Paul Zimmerman
Cybertext: Perspectives on Ergodic Literature, Espen Aarseth
Cent Mille Milliards, Raymond Queneau
Afternoon, a story, Michael Joyce (where?)
Hypertext has at a minimum the three characteristics of MULTIPLE READING PATHS, CHUNKED TEXT, and some kind of LINKING MECHANISM
What about a text with only two of these characteristics, or just one? Multiple reading paths and chunked text, but no links? Chunked text and links, but only one reading path? Links without chunked text?
Reflexive Loops
N Kate includes the phrase reflexive loops
in her definition of technotexts which is v interesting. A text that creates a feedback loop by connecting the nodes of materiality and inscribed constructions (avoiding the words form and content? which is great if that's what she's doing) necessarily can achieve more than a text that doesn't. Feedback of information at the moment makes me think of emergent complexity, eg video feedback as described by Douglas Hofstadter in I Am A Strange Loop, example here and here. Or in the audio world, Karplus Strong synthesis or other techniques that use feedback to an extent that the initial inputs become irrelevant, the emergent sound (or video, or text) having its own properties. Also the recording surface of the body without organs. How can the process of recording and inscribing be creative and what is created or emerges from it? Why does a self-referencing iframe not infinitely loop and crash my machine?
The true difference in nature is not between the Symbolic and the Imaginary, but between the real machinic element, which constitutes desiring-production, and the structural whole of the Imaginary and the Symbolic, which merely forms a myth and its variants
Deleuze and Guattari, Anti-Oedipus p.102
The Future of Writing, Vilem Flusser
image
space
linear
the grass
text
[https://www.gutenberg.org/files/1998/1998-h/1998-h.htm#link2H_4_0087 eternal return]
sound
[[#eternalreturn |eternal return]]
‘Well! Once more!’
music
‘Was THAT—life?’ will I say unto death.
[[#eternalreturn |eternal return]]
As We May Think, Vannevar Bush
(from the Life magazine reproduction, September 1945)
- Image: The scientist recording an experiment with a "universal-focus lens" in 1945 was presumably an optimistic or hopeful one, and the title and subtitle seem to follow along with this but for me the idea of "universal-focus" is terrifying and presumably for many people today at least unrealistic. A jpeg (which this article probably isnt, but most likely uses a similar compression format) does not have a universal focus but rather makes compromises (thinking or cognition?) on how much to represent, the resolution and also the frequency of information to represent. Like the human eye it was designed for, the compression algorhythm ignores high frequency data. Alias, the "universal-focus lens" seems to me an unrealistic and unwanted dream.
Witness the humble typewriter, or the movie camera, or the automobile.
Who should witness them? What is witnessing? When you witness a document you write your name on it. "Witness" comes from wit as in knowledge.
Electrical contacts have ceased to stick when thoroughly understood.
Does understanding (observing) affect the world? Is reading a form of writing?
- Image: A scientist smoking a pipe and holding a large cylindrical flask half full of liquid. They are looking into the flask and attempting to keep a serious face while trying desperately to remember if it is the top or the bottom of the meniscus that should be read. The pipe greatly assists in this attempt as it forces the scientist to keep their lips tightly pursed. This image shows, much more clearly that the previous one, the artefacts of fourier space compression; a splash of high frequency here, a dab of low frequency there, the algorithm's fingerprints poured into its work.
Under [Vannevar Bush's] direction 6,000 scientists worked on such projects as the development of radar and the atomic bomb.
Between the original publishing of this article in the Atlantic July 1945 and this version in September 1945 there was one month which was called August 1945 and it had thirty one days including the 6th of August 1945 and the 9th of August 1945. From here Im finished with the opinions of this Little Boy, but I kept reading the images.
- Images: Ex-lax is presented as the goldilocks zone laxative through three images and accompanying text, not like those "fright!" strong laxatives or "sissy" weak laxatives. Just stay centrist and no-one will get spanked!
- Image: The "supersecretary of the coming age" has a big smiley head on it. The line drawing style of the illustration reminds me of operating manuals and assembly instructions. The supersecretary is a tool (hence the big smiley head).
- Image: The Mifflin ad is quite frightening. Perhaps this isnt from the original, but this compressed version of the image looks like the woman has a very intense stare. Maybe this is in relation to the poem she recites to herself (to me?) and her intense body rubbing which seems to contradict the slogan "Rub and relax with Mifflin".
- Image: An eagle in a circle.
- Image: A right foot with three corns.
- Image: Coins I thought but then I read they are awards for watchcraft.
- Image: Sir Walter Raleigh.
- Image: Automobile User's Guide.
- Image: Mechanical pencil.
- Image: Server room with controller which has pressure gauges and VU meters.
- Image: A boy cycles away from his dad, both wave.
- Image: A magazine with a picture of a girl on a bike (the boy's bike?)
- Image: A bag of Richardson's After Dinner Mints.
- Image: Ceci c'est un pipe.
- Image: A girl drinking orange juice, and a bottle of orange juice.
- Image: A tube of paste called Glider.
- Image: A woman smoking indoors.
- Image: A person in their underwear.
- Image: Fudge.
- Image: Robinson Reminders, a pocket memory system (to be used with the mechanical pen?).
- Image: A dog wrappen in a suspender.edit: no a sock garter.
- Image: A shoe that transforms soldiers into businessmen.
- Image: A board game that appears to be a combination of scrabble and pictionary.
- Image: Cute puppies.
- Image: Another woman smoking (location not specified visually).
Near Print and Beyond Paper: Knowing by *.pdf, Lisa Gitelman
PDfs variously partake of the form and fixity of print that other digital text formats frequently do not.
The “look of printedness,” as I have called it, has been separated from paper and mobilized online, even in the process of producing printed books.
[PDFs] render
Its just a normal PDF.
Finally, and at Adobe’s instigation, PDf 1.7 was adopted as an open standard by the International Standards Organization in 2008
This would be interesting to study further as an event, what is the context, who were the actors, what were their motivations.
The fixity of print
the New York Times Information Bank—another fascinating, short-lived experiment—tried the same kind of thing, but fiche retrieval proved so unreliable that eventually “a person wearing white gloves pulled fiche on demand” and positioned it in front of a video camera.
Tabs opened while reading
WYSIWYG WYS>WYG WYS<WYG WYS%WYG WYS&WYG WYS|WYG
folding, smelling, tearing, crumpling, shuffling, and wiping
PDfs are indi-vidually bounded and distinct.
Can a PDF be in itself?
<iframe src="https://pzwiki.wdka.nl/mw-mediadesign/images/9/9b/Response_to_Lisa_Gitelman_Near_Print_and_Beyond_Paper.pdf" />
If it is a common-place today that words and images and sounds are closer together than they have ever been before—now that all of them come as data strings, in bits and bytes—nonetheless there are important ways that “as compu-tational data structures, images differ radically and fundamentally from electronic text.”85 The big difference, as Kirschenbaum explains, is that unlike digital text, “images remain largely opaque to the algorithmic eyes of the machine.”
9 Not quite text (from a reader’s standpoint) and not entirely image (at the scanner), barcodes like these require a fixity that makes them perfect content for PDfs as well as for paper. So the document persists.
What is the difference between "Portable Document Format Reference Manual" by Adobe Systems and "Beyond Paper: The Official Guide to Adobe Acrobat" by Patrick Ames?
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An Archive of Words, Daniel Rosenberg
This reminds me of Vuk Cosic's File Extinguisher (which seems to be most easily accessed through the Internet Archive's Wayback Machine ironically). The File Extinguisher used to also have a map which unfortunately doesn't seem to be archived. The map as an archive is an interesting document as it primarily locates things in relation to eachother. Where do you put something in the archive, what is beside it, what is it far away from?
It will be the foundation for the history of the epistemol-ogy of our contemporary era.
How does "the epistimology of our contemporary era" have a history? I can only understand this as part of a more general history of epistemology, maybe I'm missing the point.
Thomas Aquinas in Roberto Busa Mallet topic modeling software, can this be used to make a Zipfian distribution? Try on John Dee's Liber Loagaeth for example or some of Hildegard's Lingua Ignota
a feeling of and, a feeling of if, a feeling of but, and a feeling of by
the a the a the the the the a the the a a the a a the the a a the a the a a a the the a a the the the the a a a a a the a the a the the a the the the the the a a the a a a a a the a a a the a a the the the a a the a a a the the a a a a a a a the a the a the the the a a a the a a the a a the a a the a a a a a a a a a the a the a a the a a the the the a a a a a a a a the the the a a a the a the a the a the the a a the a a a a the a a a a a a a a the a the a a the a the the the the the a a the a the a a the the a a a a a the the a a the a the the the the the the the a the a a the a a a the the a a a the a the a the the the a a the the the a the a a the a the a a the the the a a the a the a a a a a a a the a a a the the a the a the a the the a a the a a the a the a the the the the a a the the the a the a a a a a a the a the a a a a the a the the the the a the a the a the a the a the a the a the a the a the a the a the a the the the the the a a a the a the a the a the the the a the a a the a the a the the the a the a a the a the the the a a a the the the the a a a a the the the the a the a a a a a a the the a a a a a the the the the a a the a the a the the
the Microfiche Concordance to Old English: The High- Frequency Words.11 This marks a no-table development in the history of computer- generated concordances
No-table lol.
Ability of Google Search et al to understand or interpret natural language is super interesting. A search algorithm doesn't have the same logic of interpretation as a human, it finds meaning in other places and finds other meanings. Presumably corporate aims are to make this logic emulate human meaninging as much as possible to make it an efficient tool, but it's interesting to think about the alternative knowledge a meaning-making machine could find.
Concordance of indeclinables, John of Segovia
It was a forest of words
Strongs Concordance and other concordances of the Bible are aggregated here. A concordance is an external text which creates links within it's target text. This site as an aggregated concordance then creates links between the entries of different concordances, referring to the same target text.
Further reading
Paul Tasman, “Literary Data Processing,” IBM Journal of Research and Development 1, no. 3 1957
Franco Moretti, Distant Reading;
Steven Best and Sharon Marcus, “Surface Reading: An Introduction,” Representations 108, no. 1 (November 1, 2009): 1– 21;
Heather Love, “Close but Not Deep: Literary Ethics and the Descriptive Turn,” New Literary History 41, no. 2 (Spring 2010): 371– 91;
New Ways of Reading
Lev Manovich, “The Database as Symbolic Form,” Convergence5, no. 2 (June 1999): 80– 99;
Geoffrey C. Bowker, Memory Practices in the Sciences (Cam-bridge, MA: MIT Press, 2005)
An Universal History from the Earliest Account of Time to the Present
Barbara Flood, Historical note: The start of a stop list at biological abstracts
Biological Abstracts’ Subject in Context (BASIC) 1961 BASIC (Beginners' All-purpose Symbolic Instruction Code) 1964
The Internet may feel like a universal archive. In fact, it is more like a textual archipelago.
Universality in Elementary Cellular Automata, Matthew Cook
Because a system is universal, some of its properties are undecidable (will it become periodic, will a particular sequence occur)
Because Turing machines are universal, if a compiler exists that can compile any data and program from a turing machine to another computer, then that computer is also universal
Tag systems are universal ACDABBE --> DABBECCDD
Cyclic tag systems can only have a two letter alphabet {Y,N}, but they can emulate tag systems so are also universal.
A glider system (see image) is a system of moving particles called gliders. In the image you can see diagonal lines which interact with vertical lines (the tape head or data) in the centre, emulating a cyclic tag system. The glider system is running an emulation of the cyclic tag system, which is running an emulation of the tag system. In a way this looks like a vector system to me, of interacting vectors rather than flipping bits.
Lastly you run an emulation of the glider system inside rule 110.
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Fabric version of this could be really interesting. If you got a round loom with 14n pins (a flat loom maybe would be more flexible, to decide different sizes), you could knit a hat or sock program. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gOTIAmg0Iow Or does it need to be woven? No idea.
The piece should be a ring so the ends more obviously loop back on themselves. Re: slow computing, computation as labour, This Work of Body / This Body of Work, Meghan Clarke https://www.designacademy.nl/p/study-at-dae/graduation-show/graduation-projects/meghan-clarke Talk to Daniela about double sided knitting, re binary knitting and ternary knitting. So the knitting is the computation; knit the first line of the program then knit further to get the output. A little similar to a quipu, although probably a less efficient system. Are quipus universal?
What can you compute on rule 110 (apart from everything)? Can you write a hello world script on a rule 110 computer? Can you add 2+2? https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QKnSRw_X2w4
First attempts here at coding in the p5.js version of 110 with a few A gliders of increasing widths. Even experimenting on the javascript version of this is so slow, doing this in playing cards or knitting would be incredibly slow. But if it's a statement about computational labour the slowness reveals that.
Stopped at page 13 for now.
The Future Looms, Sadie Plant
Characters in this paper in order of appearance:
- Sadie Plant
- Mallory
- Ada Byron ("the Queen of Engines")
- The Prime Minister
- William Gibson
- Bruce Sterling
- Ada Lovelace ("the Queen of Engines")
- The Difference Engine
- Luce Irigaray
- The computer
- The loom
- The patriarchal present
- The end of human history
- Freud
- Woman
- Man
- Charles Babbage
- Lady Byron ("the Princess of Parallelograms")
- Sophia Frend
- Moore
- Mary Somerville
- Dr Dionysus Lardner
- The Mechanics Institute
- Menabrea
- The Analytical Engine
- That Brain of mine
- William Carpenter
- The Devil
- Babbage's fairy
- Her three children
- Her husband
- Her mother
- A Snail-Shell
- A Molecular Laboratory
- A.K.
- Morrison
- Morrison
- Jacquard
- Jacquard's cards
- the Jacquard loom
- Weaving
- the drawloom
- the China of 1000BC
- the complex designs common in the silks of this period
- one historian
- half the threads of the warp
- the other
- the hands
- the shuttle
- the thread
- the woof
- Fernand Bruadel
- the Middle Ages
- the artificial memories of the printed page
- Basyle Bouchon
- Falcon, inventor of the punch card
- the relentless drive to perfect the punch card system
- the Second World War
- the Allied military machine
- Howard Aiken
- Mark 1 ("the IBM Automatic Sequence Controlled Calculator")
- Konrad Zuse
- the Z-3
- the Z-11
- Captain Grace Murray Hopper ("the 'Ada Lovelace' of Mark 1")
- her husband
- the war
- the first high-computer language COBOL
- the term "bug"
- Norbert Wiener
- the governor
- the cybernetic system
- the Turing Machine
- Turing
- Manuel de Landa
- the decentralized flow of control
- Allan Newell
- "demons"
- "Pandemonium"
- Alan Kay
- Neith, the Egyptian divinity of weaving
- Lucie Lamy
- the fate of cottage industries in the Midlands and North of England
- Lord Byron
- the Frame-Work Bill
- the processes which relocated and redefined control
- Athena
- Isis
- the wife
- her husband
- Margaret Mead
- The disruption of family relations caused by the introduction of mechanics
- the mother
- the strange fluidities of the material
- Marine Lover of Friedrich Nietzsche
- his/the mother
- the appearance and the possibility of simulation
- the screen, the interface, the messenger
- Marshall McLuhan
- Quentin Fiore
- the patrilineal demand for the reproduction of the same
- Thom Jurek
- Larry McCaffrey
- the materiality of the data space
- this actual space
- the disguises
- Neuromancer's cowboy, Case
- a vast thing, beyond knowing
- the mimic
- herself
- the faults of Nature
- her own veils ("her camouflage")
- the terrifying virtuality of the natural
- Michael Heim
- Helsel
- Roth
- the 'subject'
- science, machine, woman
- Misogyny and technophobia
- the end of the twentieth century
- a proliferation of screens, lines of communication, media, interfaces, and simulations
- Cybernetic feminism
- "her own"
- the interface
- another woman
- Darwin
- Footnotes ("the marginal zones")
- "A.A.L."
- the United States Defence Department
- ADA
- her own name
Ada Lovelace often described her strange intimacy with death... it was no wonder that she was so attracted to the unfamiliar expanses of mathematical worlds.
This story starts mostly with a character assessment of Ada Lovelace as sadgirl.
There is no finite line of demarcation which limits the powers of the Analytical Engine. These powers are co-extensive with our knowledge of the laws of analysis itself, and need be bounded only by our acquaintance with the latter.
Quote from Ada Lovelace. Quite utopian, but I see where the excitement comes from. Outside of a mathematical definition of "limits", there are plenty of limits on the Analytical Engine like quantity of punchcards, computation speed, weight, location, networking capabilities, no USB-C ports, it never existed, etc.
the Analytical Engine weaves Agebraical patterns, just as the Jacquard loom weaves flowers and leaves.
Quote from Ada Lovelace. Interesting that she says the Jacquard loom weaves flowers and leaves, as opposed to thread and yarn. Are all machines running simulations? Certainly these two early examples look like they are.
Basyle Bouchon and Jacques de Vaucanson were two other inventors in the 18éme siecle who invented punched paper roll and the lathe and le Canard Digérateur.
the punch card gave the Analytical Engine foresight
the Analytical Engine will possess a library of its own
Grace Hopper introduced the term "bug" after she found a dead moth interrupting the smooth circuits of Mark 1.
Only after the introduction of silicon in the 1960s did the decentralized flow of control become an issue, eventually allowing for systems in which "control is always captured by whatever production happens to have its conditions satisfied by the current workspace contents."
How does this distribution of control work in other situations?
Pandemonium is the realm of the self-organising system, the self-arousing machine: systems of control and synthetic intellegence... only with the cybernetic system does self-control no longer entail being placed beneath or under something: there is no "self" to control man#, machine or any other system... the possibility of activity without centralised control, an acency, of sorts, which has no need of a subject position
I guess that answers my question.
"Mechanisation saves time and labour" how does this relate to the labour (and time) of craft, the labour of decoration re Marian Bantjes and William Morris? If artists are not the decorators, who will they be? Re: crappy print.
Who are the women? Those who weave.
A computer that passes the Turning test is always more than a human intelligence, simulation always takes the mimic over the brink.
permacomputing/ Principles
Available https://permacomputing.net/Principles/
There are a lot of individual principles in this booklet I agree with (shortened below):
- "Avoid pseudosimplicity"
- "Low complexity is beautiful"
- "Abundance thinking". I have some reservations about the post-scarcity reference in this context but mostly this seems like a good spin on that idea.
- "Design for descent". This feels a little like a prepper thing to say, which I think may be veering towards conspiracy theories (and also not in my opinion a healthy attitude towards how to solve urgent existential threats in our ecosystem). On the other hand the anti-economic message this might be suggesting is a great idea, and maybe a more specific idea I would agree with is design for deflation.
- "Keep it flexible". This entire section I agree with strongly. "In an ideal and elegant system, the three factors (smallness, simplicity and flexibility) support each other." This modularity idea is shown best by (some) computer systems, and I think in fact could be implemented in other aspects of society/permaculture to good effect. Of course this also makes we want to make more modular synths.
- "Grow roots to a solid ground". This is a much nicer phrasing than "build on a solid ground", showing the work put in by the organism to reach the solid ground. And also the way it integrates itself into the ecosystem (roots binding the soil are part of what makes the ground solid).
- "Amplify awareness".
- "You dont need to twiddle with everything in order to understand it".
- "Nothing is 'universal'. Even computers, 'universal calculators' that can be readapted to any task, are full of quirks that stem from the cultures that created them. Don't take them as the only way things can be, or as the most 'rational' or 'advanced' way."
- "Strict utilitarianism impoverishes. Uselessness also has an important place, so appreciate it".
- "Think about technology as a rhizome rather than a highway of progress and constant obsolescence".
-
On the other hand I wonder about the overall implication of this shift in approach to computing. Presumably this change in principles is intended to have an effect on computing, the earth and people (the biosphere?). Some of the thoughts in these principles sound anti-progress or anti-learning. Of course a part of this is necessary to achieve sustainability (anti-growth, anti-capitalism, anti-inflation), but to me there also seems to be a risk of stagnation in this idea. "Intelligence amplification was a good goal", are they suggesting we should give up on this goal, that there is enough intelligence in the ecosystem? Or maybe it is not anti-progress but they are suggesting it didnt work? Either way I disagree and think computers have more to offer as intelligence-amplifiers.
-
Some individual principles that may be problematic:
- "Planned longevity". I get that this is as opposed to planned obsolescence, but other things that we have created recently with long life spans (and half-lives) are proving to be quite problematic, so I think this should be approached with caution.
- "Dependencies should be kept low". This is not how an ecosystem works. Maybe a more useful idea would be to keep dependencies small and modular, or to keep dependencies flexible (through standardised interfaces and interactions, and clear, translatable communication).
- "Human scale: A reasonable level of complexity for a computing system is that it can be entirely understood by a single person." This seems like an arbitrary measurement at best, and more likely an applied anthropocentric limit. There are plenty of things in the ecosystem that are too complicated for one human to understand (or care for).
- "Dont take anything for granted. Especially don't expect the infrastructure such as the power grid and global networking to continue working indefinitely." Again sounding a bit like preppers here. I get that the condition of the earth is in decline and on a disastrous course but should there be a space for that thought in a list of principles for permaculture/permacomputing? From another point of view, the idea of not taking anything for granted brings me back to my point about dependencies, surely a healthy ecosystem should be full of them.
Defense of crappy print, Clara Balaguer and Florian Cramer and Marc van Elburg
User:Ssstephen/Reading/Defense of crappy print
Computing is Reading, Daniel Punday
E-books, Libraries and Feelies
Topography and book design in e books. What is currently possible? What should be possible?
Jonathan Franzen claims that if books are not permanent there can be no justice system or responsible self government. This seems like an outrageous claim to me, what does he mean by that? Interested to understand.
"The link between the individual book and the larger body of text": Is this an interface? What connects the book to the larger body? Is it an interspace? What is between books and libraries? What's between a webpage and a website? What's between a codex and the project Xanadu? "books are independent of libraries" how does this relate to their interspace?
Alberto Manguel, a history of reading: "rescue the book from the category to which it has been condemned"
Programming languages depend on their libraries; if they change or disappear the program can become erratic or fail. Does this happen to hypertexts? These dependancies happen whenever the institution or mechanism achieves a critical mass of acceptance.
Is there an argument for discrete autonomous action? Individuality and individuals?
This paper seems to be correlating modular libraries with closed software, that doesn't seem like a necessary path to follow although it does sound like reality.
Robert Filieu ample food for stupid thought: Book as collection of postcards (is this a book or a library?)
The monster at the end of this book - sesame Street as meta fiction
design innovation is not a modernist tangent to the history of the book but rather a fundamental part of publication
"It is the nature of modular libraries to insist on the uniformity of its members" this seems to contracting the image example previously given off iTunes, which clearly shows music, movies, mobile applications, artwork. Do all modular systems insist on uniformity? a modular synthesiser insists on a shared language such as cv or audio, and usually shared physical dimension (eg 3u height in eueorack). But often rules are broken, and modules from one system can even interact with those from another. So if a shared language or methods of interaction can be used, the modules can become more free while retaining the ability to collaborate. Communication allows for the expression (and fulfilment) of needs and desires.
"people who are really serious about software should invent their own hardware" Alan Kay (inventor of the dynabook)
Bandersnatch episode of Black Mirror as an example of the text in collaboration with the modular library: Netflix used additional features not usually seen (were these ever used elsewhere?) to provide a unique experience for a single episode. Are all institutions evil all the time?
Emulation is mentioned as a powerful tool against modular systems becoming redundant: Because it is a system, one emulator can let me play all Nintendo64 games
'reading’— even the reading of a first paragraph—is always reading as
Above quoted from Peter Rabinowitz. I like this term reading as. I think sweet pete means "reading as fiction" or "reading as a magazine", but there is also "reading as a machine", "reading as my mother when she was a young girl" and "reading as sport". But essentially the same thing, how much of the information is in the context, whether it is genre, format or collection (both library categories?) or other implications from systems like assumed or implied intentions of the author, or other extra-textual (extrabiblical? is this still in the text?) information. There is in fact a word for this now that I think about it. Con-text.
In their introduction to Cultures of Collecting, John Elsner and Roger Cardinal assert, “Classification precedes collection.
Is this always true? The opposite seems more obvious to me, collect then classify. Is classifying things you dont have a type of desire? I name it and categorise it in order to objectify it, and ultimately collect it. This sounds a little scary. If you already own things (can people own things?) then it makes more sense to classify them. I classify all my stuff so I can know what is where, it facilitates navigation.
"People want to own their music."
Quote from Steve Jobs. True though, everyone wants to own the music. Who owns Let's Get it On? Who owns chord progressions? Culturally collected knowledge is part of a library which should be accessible to everyone and functional as a reference tool, but that doesn't mean plagiarism is ok (A. Neely, 2022). But is plagiarism ok? Sometimes in music I want you to work out the reference yourself instead of telling you, it's part of the experience. If you told me a joke, explicitly showing the reference might make it not funny anymore. Imagine Gravity's Rainbow had footnotes. Not funny anymore.
But we need to keep alive the ability for books— even in an electronic environment— to break the design rules that the library might impose on them.
I feel that danny boy is implying that this responsibility is on the shoulders of the library designer, the corporation that makes kindles, the software developers. But surely the whole idea of breaking the rules is always something that emerges from the individual? It's the individual book that makes a choice not to follow, not to fit into the library shelves. Otherwise no rules are being broken and that doesn't sound very fun. The system has changed an revolution is no longer possible sounds like an illusion to me. This makes me think of some of the actions published by Vulfpeck against Spotify.
In this model, an e- book would actually be a combination of two different elements: a general data file (say, in the EPub or some other open format) and a designed interface for reading that data file.
This sounds sort of impractical to me. Every book has a "designed interface", but not everyone wants to design an interface for their books. Also the idea that the library structure (eg Kindle) can choose to ignore this interface seems to me to completely negate the point of the interface in the first place, why would Amazon choose to use the interface in that case? There are already more flexible formats (pdf for exaxmple) that Kindles have chosen not to use. Perhaps Dano is thinking of a CSS sort of model, where two things happen: the client device can ignore the stylesheets (and make mistakes) and also media queries allow the server to suggest adaptations for different devices, and also acknowledge that reading situations are different. Sure the author or typographer might have some wild ideas about how to render the text to get the fully integrated experience with layers of meaning, but are they taking into account that one of their readers is a dog with a dot matrix printer? Doom is a great example of this done well, because you can play Doom on anything.
Pearson argues for “books beyond texts”— that is, we should separate the physical object of the book and the text that it contains
Sounds like dreaming of content without form? Is this essay maybe struggling a little with the more abstract forms of digital files? Just because something is on a computer doesn't mean it is possible to extract an essence from it and remove the structures around it. This seems completely impossible to me, and I would question whether there is even such a thing as platonic ideals (no reference given here because I made this up completely by myself).
I see no reason to insist on standardization for the designed elements of reader experience
Ok here are a few reasons of the top of my head:
- to encourage increased legibility and usability for readers with impaired reading abilities (eg NALA Guidelines).
- to avoid harm to readers who could be negatively affected by certain design choices such as those with photosensitive epilepsy (eg The Harding Test)
- to discourage design strategies that are exclusive of or cause damage to (explicitly or otherwise) a specific ethnicity, gender, religion, etc.
Again this line seems to be missing a crucial point for me, you cant separate form from content.
Once libraries lose their connection to these physical objects and the accidental life history that Manguel describes, it may be that the idea of the library itself may cease to have its same cultural meaning.
The library as a trophy. Is a trophy a tool? Some sort of status symbol that perpetuates or maybe even generates power? I understand that this is the use of some library tools but it seems to me that Dan is implying it is the main use. What about research and discovery, and sharing? He also says a (personal) library is for books you have already read. I have never added a book to my library that I have already read, and if someone gave me a book I had already read I would give it away, not add it to my library. Anyway at very least he seems to think this "idea of the library" is possibly doomed, hopefully he is right.
FullControl GCode Designer, Andrew Gleadall
fullcontrolgcode.com main site
and also fullcontrol.xyz parametric models
Python version coming soon too apparently.
In contrast to design approaches that provide design freedom by excluding manufacturing considerations, this study presents a generic framework for users to explore the design space for structures that can only be achieved by coupling the designed geometry with the manufacturing procedure.
This is an interesting philosophy.
the approach presented here is the first generic framework (i.e. it is not limited to a particular type of print-path or print procedure) developed for the unconstrained design of print-paths and associated printing parameters
Well that sounds cool right? Generic framework, small sharp tools? Definitely sounds sharp anyway but will read on and see how small it is.
In the FullControl design approach, a practical framework has been developed which allows the print-path to be explicitly defined along with all parameters for each individual segment of the print-path, including: • Direction • Print speed • Extrusion rate (controlling extrudate height/width) or set as a non-extruding ‘travel’ movement • Material choice (or print head/tool number) • Other relevant parameters (e.g. acceleration/jerk, nozzle temperature, bed temperature, fan speed)
Jerk is a hilarious name for a physical rate. This is the change in acceleration with respect to time, or the third derivative of position (measured in metres per second per second per second). In case anyone is wondering the next three derivatives of position are called snap, crackle and pop. More information on jerk in relation to manufacturing from Wikipedia:
Jerk is an important consideration in manufacturing processes. Rapid changes in acceleration of a cutting tool can lead to premature tool wear and result in uneven cuts; consequently, modern motion controllers include jerk limitation features. In mechanical engineering, jerk, in addition to velocity and acceleration, is considered in the development of cam profiles because of tribological implications and the ability of the actuated body to follow the cam profile without chatter. Jerk is often considered when vibration is a concern. A device that measures jerk is called a "jerkmeter".
Is it possible to define acceleration or jerk in a gcode command? That's cool if true, I thought GCode could only do speed. If the GCode is sending such complicated derivatives, how is the printer converting these to actual movements? I feel like there must be an a2d conversion somewhere.
the potential to also include non-geometric GCode text strings
This paper is so cheeky. What are non-geometric GCode text strings? I have been sucked in to the narrative and am eagerly anticipating its resolution. Does non-geometric mean non-Euclidian? Or just outside the realms of geometry, like nozzle temperature?
The FullControl design approach also enables freedom beyond geometric print-path design. Extrusion rate and speed were continuously varied in a recent study [31] to achieve five different graded lattice geometries for an identical print-path (Figure 1E). In the FullControl design approach, it is also possible to parametrically vary retraction, temperature, acceleration and any other parameter that can be controlled with GCode. The GCode is generated in the same format as that produced by slicers and it is possible including advanced firmware algorithms and associated settings for compatible printers (e.g. by inserting an “M900 K0.18” command to adjust ‘linear advance’ settings).
Wowwahweewah
Stopped at page 5 for today.
Jane Austen on Python, Lacey Williams Henschel
A lot of interesting things in this about writing style. It might be interesting to also compare Robert Bringhurst's 'Elements of Typographic Style' to the English and Python style guides mentioned in this.
Links from this article that seem interesting:
https://peps.python.org/pep-0008/
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Elements_of_Style
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dramatic_structure#Freytag's_pyramid
https://peps.python.org/pep-0257/
https://www.worldshakesbib.org/
https://peps.python.org/pep-0020/
The Shape of Things, Vilém Flusser
The Non-Thing 1 (p85)
immaterial information
Again with the separating content from form, when will you learn? When will you learn that your thoughts have consequences? Lady Anne Conway said (The Principles of the Most Ancient and Modern Philosophy.):
Creatures were in one sence from Eternity, and in another sence not from Eternity
For me it can be useful to think of information on its own but to fundamentally separate it from matter makes no sense imo. I am therefore I think, Plato existed and then thought about things.
This throw-away material, all those lighters, razors, pens, plastic bottles, are not true things; one cannot hold on to them... All things will lose their value, and all values will be transformed into information.
This dismissal of the physical world seems really dangerous to me, and not very realistic. Again makes me think of Anne Conway and the pain she physically felt:
Moreover, Why is the Spirit or Soul so passible in corporal Pains? For if when it is united with the Body, it hath nothing of Corporeity, or a bodily Nature, Why is it grieved or wounded when the Body is wounded, which is quite of a different Nature? For seeing the Soul can so easily penetrate the Body, How can any Corporeal Thing hurt it?
If you keep throwing away all your lighters, razors, pens, plastic bottles, someone is going to get hurt.
The only things left of his hands are the tips of his fingers, which he uses to tap on keys so as to play with symbols. The new human being is not a man of action anymore but a player: homo ludens as opposed to homo faber. Life is no longer a drama for him but a performance.
What is the difference between a drama and a performance? And if you only have fingers what connects them to your wrists?
The Non-Thing 2 (p90)
The liberation of software from hardware
Maybe I need to read Hermann Hesse's Glass Bead Game to understand this, but from my point of view just because you can move software from one piece of hardware to another doesn't mean that software can exist outside of hardware. If the future is full of non-things, what are the humans pressing with their fingertips?
This future everyone keeps talking about sounds incredible.
Carpets (p95)
The cave, the womb of the mountains, is our dwelling.
What troglodytes still believe this nonsense, why is it still in the stories. Linnaeus and his damn categories again. My ancestors lived in tents and sometimes I go to the beach and don't write down anything I did there.
Nothing human is natural. That which is natural about us is inhuman.
Ugg
Knotting itself is not a fluid process but a jerky one
Snap, I thought threads were vector. Just because something has jerk doesnt mean it is discontinuous. The finished carpet has the appearance of edges and boundaries but the knots (and the hidden warp) can still be followed back along their paths. Particles are just a simplified way of explaining the vibration and paths of strings.
The Library of Babel, Jorge Luis Borges
in the Library nonsense is the norm
Also Borges dj name: dhcmrlcht-dj
To speak is to fall into tautology
Vade mecum: (Latin for "go with me") has long been used of manuals or guidebooks sufficiently compact to be carried in a deep pocket, and it would sometimes appear in the title of such works, as with one of the earliest known uses of the phrase in the title of the 1629 volume Vade Mecum: A Manuall of Essayes Morrall, Theologicall. From the beginning, it has also been used for constant companions that are carried about by a person, such as gold, medications, and memorized gems of wisdom. But these days, vade mecum is primarily encountered in reference to works which are intended to serve as one-stop references or guides to a particular subject, whether or not such a work can actually be carried in one's pocket (a moot distinction, perhaps, in an age when such works can easily reside in a smartphone's memory). (Mirriam Webster)
Concrete Poems, Nick Montfort
Why 160 character limit (SMS, Twitter, etc)? Based on 80 column line length of telex, selectrix, vt100, and even 1928 IBM punch cards. Maybe based on the size of the dollar bill in the late 19th century. Tests with postcards also revealed most were within 160 characters.
Why gridded typography? From tabular lining numerals, early 1800s? What about older examples of gridded writing like Liber Loageath in 1583? Sumerian cuneiform often in seperate boxes (not gridded though), possibly relating to enumeration as well?
And the throne of his glory was established in it, this one on which his unrevealable name is inscribed, on the tablet [...] one is the word, the Father of the light of everything, he who came forth from the silence, while he rests in the silence, he whose name is in an invisible symbol. A hidden, invisible mystery came forth: iiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiii EEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE oooooooooooooooooooooo uuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuu eeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaa OOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO
From the Gospel of the Egyptians in Nag Hammadi Library, metaphysical power and mystery of repetition. Nicky credits the typewriter as the most important fixed width type machine or interface, as an influence on the monospace grid on the computer (screen). On proportional type "You could do this in the 15th century, it's not new!".
NM talking about his computer generated poetry:
I think of that text as material, sometimes its an interesting material not just to see and to scroll by, but sometimes its an interesting material to comprehend, to see in a mass, but also to sample and to look at... its not always my goal to create something that's worth reading.
Etymology of the work "Network", Keith Briggs
A work taking the form of a net. A network is a work.
Not anie damzell, which her vaunteth most In skilfull knitting of soft silken twyne; Nor anie skil'd in workmanship embost; Nor anie skil'd in loupes of fingring fine, Might in their diuers cunning euer dare, With this so curious networke to compare.
from Muiopotmos, or The Fate of the Butterflie, by Edmund Spenser
opus reticulatum
Brickwork pattern.
Caliban and the Witch, Silvia Federici
Introduction
Be not afeard; the isle is full of noises Sounds, and sweet airs, that give delight and hurt not. Sometimes a thousand twangling instruments Will hum about mine ears; and sometime voices That, if I then had waked after long sleep, Will make me sleep again; and then in dreaming, The clouds me thought would open, and show riches Ready to drop upon me, that when I waked I cried to dream again.
(Caliban in The Tempest, William Shakespeare)
Obeah: an ancestral, inherited tradition of Akan witches of Ghana, Ivory Coast, and Togo and their descendants in the African diaspora of the Caribbean. (from Wikipedia)
Further reading from this chapter: Women, History, and Theory: The Essays of Joan Kelly The Death of Nature Carolyn Merchant LArcano della Riproduzione Leopoldina Fortunati The moon, the sun and the witches Irene Silverblatt Natural Rebels Hilary Beckles Patriarchy and Accumulation on a world scale Maria Mies
Michel Foucault and the body
To revalorise the body [taking the form of] the quest for non dualistic forms of knowledge
Capitalism, as a social-economic system, is necessarily committed to racism and sexism
If capitalism has been able to reproduce itself it is only because of the web of inequalities that it has built into the body of the world proletariat, and because of its capacity to globalize exploitation.
All the World Needs a Jolt p.13
The manifold, invisible forms of resistance, for which subjugated peasants have been famous in all times and places: 'foot dragging, dissimulation, false compliance, feigned ignorance, desertion, pilfering, smuggling, poaching...'
everyday forms of resistance
‡ This reminds me of the stories of French resistance during WWII, which involved sabotage, strike, and general nuisancery. These form of anti-productive resistance are obviously great tools against economically driven capitalism but in these two instances show they can be used against any power structure controlling (or even benefiting from) production.
The difficulty of enforcing the medieval 'social contract,' and the the variety of battlefields available to a combative tenant or village
The Bare Facts of Ritual, Jonathan Z. Smith
The scholar lives in the void (sic) that the poet, Borges, has described.
My brain misread this because someone gave me "a void" as a christmas present. It should say "world". This plays fun with the Kafka references later though. The world as a void, a random group of events, things, actions, rules occuring with apparent meaning.
The temple serves as a focusing lens, marking and revealing significance.
epiphantic: of or having the character of an epiphany
The ordinary becomes significant, becomes sacred, simply by being there.
.
signals and noise: musical intervals BitSuite Some old questions: Which intervals are musical and which are noise? Is there a line between consnance and dissonance?
ritual is an exercise in the strategy of choice
The coffee ritual: I need my coffee to start the day right. I use ritual tools like a moka pot and specially prepared beans to ground myself before the daily grind. It is a personal ritual where I ignore the coffee farms of Colombia and the aluminium manufacturing in Brescia. I make coffee for me. The beans are already roasted mystically and the focus is on extracting.
the religious symbolism of hunting is that of overcoming the beast who frequently represents either chaos or death.
nature in rituals: nature as chaos
the Fate of Bones:
Bones endure; they are the source of rebirth after death. The bones are a reservoir of life; they require only to be refleshed.
Further reading The Rings of Saturn W. G. Sebald
And we will be required, if society is held to have any sanity at all, to explain it all away.
Or maybe society does not have any sanity at all and that is the explanation? What is sanity? Some sort of objective relationship between thought and the external world, a "correct" way of perceiving nature?
some means of overcoming [the] contradition between 'word and deed.' This, I believe, is one major function of ritual.
Ritual is a means of performing the way things ought to be in conscious tension to the way things are in such a way that this ritualized perfection is recollected in the ordinary, uncontrolled, course of things.
It provides the means for demonstrating that we know what ought to have been done.
These pages are making me think about art (mostly graphic/plastic arts but also performance and music, even writing I suppose) and how they often involve "representations" not of the world as it is but as it could be. For example Malevitch, the idea that pure artistic expression or geometric shapes are somehow more ideal than representation of reality. There's that old ideal/real dualism thing again that keeps getting everyone in trouble. Schoenberg once said "I have made a discovery which will ensure the supremacy of German music for the next hundred years". There seems to be an idea that the world of thought is more ideal than the external world. I have thought this idea myself from time to time, or at least my mind has. I wonder what Spinoza would have thought of serialism?
The order and connection of ideas is the same as the order and connection of things...God’s power of thinking is equal to God’s power of acting.
Spinoza , Ethics II. Pr.7
So if the ritual or art "demonstrates" it is through acting what ought to be the case, acting in the sense of performing, creating, or simply bringing into being. There is no thinking without acting and a ritual is an obvious case of acting according to our thoughts.
Ritual gains its force where incongruency is perceived.
But this article is about the difference between the action of the ritual and actions at other times.
I would also assume that, at some point, he reflects on the difference between his actual killing and the perfection represented by the ceremonial killing.
Why assume that the hunter reflects? Do we reflect on our rituals? Do football fans discuss applying the social relations represented in the match to their own lives as they sit around in the pub afterwards? Do classical music lovers go home from a concert with Beethoven stuck in their head and also the question of why 17th century upper class European music is so globally loved hundreds of years later? People a long time ago were probably just as dumb as people are today.
Further reading James George Frazer (mythology, comparative religion)
The ceremony performed before undertaking an actual hunt demonstrates that the hunter knows full well what ought to transpire if he were in control; the fact that the ceremony is held is eloquent testimony that the hunter knows full well that it will not transpire, that he is not in control.
The phrase "focusing lens" works best for me from this text, the ritual is a perfected version of what will actually happen, an idealised representation of our aspirations for the reality of human life.
Rules of Play: Game Design Fundamentals, Katie Salen and Eric Zimmerman
Chapter 7: Defining Games
formal game, by definition, has a winner; and winning is the "end"... It has an agreed set of equipment and of procedural "rules" by which the equipment is manipulated to produce a winning situation.
From David Parlett, The Oxford History of Board Games. The "rules" and even equipment part of this make sense to me, although sometimes the equipment might be very minimal or nothing (is the 100m sprint a game? or hide and seek?). On the other hand the winner/winning part seems a little constrictive to me. While many games involve (and end with) winning, this seems to be missing the point of most games in a broader sense to me. If only one person or team wins, why would so many people want to play games when the odds of losing are so high? Perhaps the possible reward makes it worthwhile but I suspect in most games there is something else to gain for the players than simply winning. However where Parlett is trying to distinguish games and informal play I think this is a useful point as long as it is not over emphasised in other contexts.
Reduced to its formal essence, a game is an activity among two or more independent decision-makers seeking to achieve their objectives in some limiting context.
From Serious Games, Clark C. Abt. As discussed in this section, this definition allows elections, international relations and arguments to be considered games. I think this is missing the same basic point as Dave's definition in that it assumes the objectives of the game are the players' actual main objectives. "It's just a game", "I'm just playing with you". Gameplay implies on some level this is not real life, this might be consequential but it's not the goal. Serious games do exist but I think there is still an understanding that all games are minigames within life, not the main quest. They may be rewarding or satisfying, but the "end" of the game is not an ultimate end.
[play] promotes the formation of social groupings, which tend to surround themselves with secrecy and to stress their difference from the common world by disguise or other means.
From Homo Ludens, Johann Huizinga. Jo seems to be getting closer to the point than the previous two in my opinion, looking at the important social consequences of play. It is maybe important that he is talking about play, not games. There are other consequences or outcomes to play and games that I think he is not mentioning, play as learning, play for money (eg. gambling and professional sports), and maybe play as personal (non-social) therapy. JHuiz implies games are artificial, but if they have consequences IRL then they must at least relate to real life some how, and in my opinion are a part of it even if they are constructed (it's all a game).
[games are] uncertain: the course of which cannot be determined, nor the result attained beforehand, and some latitude for innovations being left to the player's initiative.
From Man, Play, and Games, Roger Caillois. The uncertainty element seems true to me, and is a good distinction from or comparison to ritual. What happens if you plot different activities/actions on a chart of gameness vs ritualness? Rodge says games are unproductive but I would suggest that they can actually use up resources (especially labour and time), just as rituals often do. "Is there a make-believe element to Tic-Tac-Toe?" Yes of course there is, three x's or o's in a row do not make me win outside of that game, real life is not turn based, etc.
Do all games allow the participants to be playful?
playing a game is the voluntary effort to overcome unnecessary obstacles.
From Grasshopper: Games, Life, and Utopia, Bernard Suits. I think Benny is missing the point that the grasshopper is making in the story. Words like "less efficient" and "unnecessary" seem to be implying there is a more efficient way to achieve what making music achieves, or worse maybe even implies it is not needed at all. Maybe this is true in the sense that life is absurd and nothing happens for a reason re:Camus, but I don't think this is what B is getting at. "Lusory attitude": this is a nice idea. "Suits is actually pointing to the way that games create meaning as players accept these rules, goals, and obstacles in order to play."
The Ants & the Grasshopper One bright day in late autumn a family of Ants were bustling about in the warm sunshine, drying out the grain they had stored up during the summer, when a starving Grasshopper, his fiddle under his arm, came up and humbly begged for a bite to eat. "What!" cried the Ants in surprise, "haven't you stored anything away for the winter? What in the world were you doing all last summer?" "I didn't have time to store up any food," whined the Grasshopper; "I was so busy making music that before I knew it the summer was gone." The Ants shrugged their shoulders in disgust. "Making music, were you?" they cried. "Very well; now dance!" And they turned their backs on the Grasshopper and went on with their work.
From Aesop's Fables.
A game is a closed formal system that subjectively represents a subset of reality. By "closed" I mean that the game is complete and self-sufficient as a structure... A game creates a subjective and deliberately simplified representation of emotional reality... The player is actively pursuing some goal. Obstacles prevent him from easily achieving this goal. Conflict is an intrinsic element of all games... Conflict implies danger; danger means risk of harm; harm is undesirable. Therefore, a game is an artifice for providing the psychological experiences of conflict and danger while excluding their physical realizations.
From The Art of Computer Game Design, Chris Crawford. Mmm complete universal games. The simplified representation of emotional reality is an interesting one especially in relation to music or theater; there is certainly a simplified representation of reality but traditionally people consider these ways to explore emotional truths in ways that "reality" cant. The simplifying of reality can in fact draw attention to certain elements and make them more clearly expressed. Lots of parts of this definition make me think of games and (participatory) art as the same or similar things, eg the contrived conflict and obstacles which are a part of lots of formal artistic systems like western harmony. What happens when games lie to you, when you don't feel safe playing a game?
A game is a form of art in which participants, termed players, make decisions in order to manage resources through game tokens in the pursuit of a goal.
From I Have No Words and I Must Design, Greg Costikyan. I think Greg's throwing around of the a-word is what the other definitions were missing for me, and could be a useful way to explore a game's role for the individuals, groups and societies that play it. This also makes me think of the rules of games in general; when I play a board game I not only follow the rules in the rule book, but also more general rules that I know about board games. When I read the rules for a specific card game, there are plenty of words like "tricks" or "suits", terminology and metarules that I need to know in order to play that specific game.
Games are an exercise of voluntary control systems, in which there is a contest between powers, confined by rules in order to produce a disequilibrial outcome.
From The Study of Games, Elliot Avedon and Brian Sutton-Smith. This definition again is really missing why games are played for me, which is ok I guess but I am really interested in that.
A game is a system in which players engage in an artificial conflict, defined by rules, that results in a quantifiable outcome.
The definition of these authors, sounds pretty good to me except the quantifiable outcome part. I get that games often have a quantifiable outcome but I'm not sure it is an essential part of being a game. The Game with Michael Douglas, what a film. "Conflict is central to games". But sometimes the conflict is so artificial and inconsequential in real life that it does not feel like conflict is the right word at all. Overcooked can be very stressful but that is because of the conflict it creates between players attempting to collaborate, does that fit the way the word is being used here? What is the conflict in solitaire or in Tony Hawk's?
Thinking about a game as a puzzle, a game with a correct answer or set of answers, can be a useful way to frame a game. For example, is your 3D adventure game lacking a sense of play? Perhaps it is too puzzle-like
Nice. What is the difference between an adventure game and an RPG? Whether or not the outcome is an ultimate accomplishment, or a clear end point? Sometimes a game can still be played after you complete it, does it shift mode at that point from adventure to role-play?
The terrain along the borders of more rigid definitions offers fertile ground for insight and investigation. In these playful and liminal spaces, assumptions are challenged, ideas evolve, and definitions change.
Further reading Man, Play, and Games, by Roger Caillois.
Get Lamp, Jason Scott
Typing an adventure game from a program written in a magazine: but you have read the entire thing already this seems so strange! Players drawing maps: rooms and tunnels.
It's like a funhouse ride, youre on rails
The player and the author have an illusion of interacting, it is just an illusion, but when we go to the movies and we watch a movie we dont think we're really in the place the movie was set.
the more I played text adventures the more effective I was at navigating a strange place
Comment from blind player. Text adventure games can (should) be screen scraper friendly. So should websites! Interactive fiction as an educational tool: improves reading comprehension, fluency, and problem solving. Jeremy Douglass (new media). Mary Ann Buckles (video game aesthetics PhD). When you're typing (in a text adventure), the output and input are both words "its the same environment, it's all words, its all thoughts, its all the imagination". Text adventures in the era of ChatGPT: why bother? It can make the world more expansive with less writing. It can leave more elements of the story to "chance". Do I want to play a game written by AI? Is it worth doing?
Can a game look like a text adventure but not be? Could a game be a concrete poetry text adventure? The Hollow by Greg Jackson. This would be such a cool text adventure, a quest that never gets solved. What happens if the text adventure is tiny and leaves questions unanswered.
Puzzles in IF are sort of an outgrowth of previous challenges between people" eg riddles, chess puzzles, crosswords. Systems of thinking that are slightly off from the everyday
For me the ideal IF game is one which is winnable on the first turn but you dont know what the command is to win it until you've gone all the way through the game and solved it
The quest, Gilgamesh Steve Meretzky (Infocom)
Some IF:
Colossal Cave Adventure Zork Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy the game Planetfall Robert Pinsky - Mindwheel
Tools for developing IF:
Build a text adventure in a Telegram bot, or any chat app.
Text adventure games never died
Hardcore never dies. Why do these people talk in the past tense. 17th century "automaton lounges" are mentioned, what is this? The phrase only has four google results.
The xyzzy awards for interactive fiction
And Then You Come to a House Not Unlike the Previous One
The Ruling Class and the Ruling Ideas, Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels
The Ruling Class and the Ruling Ideas: How the Hegelian Conception of the Domination of the Spirit in History Arose.
This essay is an Idea about the primacy of Materialism which is a little ironic. So I think it is important to look at the "material" context this was written in, which is efficient machines and blighted potatoes. There was no food and no work. If these material conditions change, are these ideas still valuable?
In the full title and towards the end of the essay it also claims to be a rebuke of Hegel and German Ideology, in particular the authors seem to be claiming that the domination of the spirit is in fact the domination of the hegemonic ideas of the ruling class, through their presentation as being in the common interest. Does there have to be a common interest?
Also if you do a search for "domination of the spirit" you get lots of interesting results about dominating (evil) spirits. The idea of control in demonology and the history of witches has a lot to say about domination and spirits.
Freedom is the ideal of the free market.
Well Played, Vicky Osterweil
Read it here.
More articles in this series here.
teens doing the floss while they wait at crosswalks
Does this sentence rhyme?
[Video games] have superseded cinema and TV to be the dominant visual medium of our time.
...video games specifically and culture more generally as a reproductive technology. That means that their major role in capitalist society is not simply to produce profit — although of course they must do that — but also to re-create the order required for this society’s perpetuation.
Media as reproductive or re-creative: This article doesn't seem to be concerned with the productive and creative aspects of media, games can create or communicate new or different ideas, and can change the balance or composition of ideology in a society. Ideas need to spread and be talked about or exercised in order to be believed, and media are (in a competely literal sense) the way this is done, they mediate.
Where once perhaps mythology, indigenous relationships to habitat or tightly knit communities provided that rationale, under capitalism, mass media — alongside forms of political participation, law, and ownership — have played the role of legitimation.
Mass media is presented here as separate or different to other forms of cultural reproduction, I don't think this is absolutely the case.
Vic seems to be saying cinema -> tv -> games, as par tof the collapse of the 20th century middle class and the attempt of the modenr worker to "try to stay one step ahead of automation and obsolescence". The word entrepreneur could have evolved differently to mean "undertaker", "under" or "entre" seem to imply that the actor is controlled by the action, they are "under" the domination of the taking.
Video games emerge as workers need to engage creatively in the most mundane of tasks to get an edge over fellow workers, glamorizing the violence of competition and the otherwise mundane process of learning arbitrary information and gestures through play. The arc of most games involves getting better and better at recognizing a particular set of patterns and deploying a particular set of skills — activated by button presses — to the point where the actual controls become second nature and the player experiences the fantasy of seamlessly inhabiting the character or scenario she plays with.
How does this fit with the music of the 21st century? Does it have the same ideals? What about 21st century film/tv shows, art, books? The bit about inhabiting the character is certainly an obviously strong aspect of games that possibly other media dont have. This description really fits speed running. This description really fits learning an instrument or musicking in general. Also learning a sport. In this aspect games seem to be more similar to these actions than the passive media of the 20th century. Was passive media an anomaly, did it exist before the novel?
Workers also need to constantly manage their increasingly anxious and fractured mental health. For this, video games provide a soothing domain of control, power, guaranteed progress, order, and orderly narrative in a world of work and daily life where such guarantees are in short supply.
What about scary games? Or fallout? Maybe they fit this description too I'm not sure.
Video games, then, are the (highly profitable) media of consolation specific to neoliberalism
Media of consolation, nice. If games are all about competition why are there team games, squads? I think the view of capitalism as being synonymous with competition is a bit to simple, there has been competition in plenty of other societies. If the argument is for collaboration over competition (which is a good argument), these might be more useful terms to use directly.
Notes on Deconstructing the Popular, Stuart Hall
The notion of the people as a purely passive, outline force is a deeply unsocialist perspective.
Maybe even the term "the people" is a bit difficult here, even "the masses" is better because it is plural. "The people" is just one thing, sure it's a nice dream to be united but it's not that nice to hide the multiplicity and differences.
the field of culture as a sort of constant battlefield
A battlefield is I think a destructive place where victories are won through defeating and destroying the opposition. Is this what Stu is saying culture is? If you go somewhere expecting a battle it can make it difficult to have a civilised, productive conversation. And if you want to have a revolution maybe skip the battlefield and have a riot in the middle of the city.
provided commercial popular culture
I think it's surprising that this phrase still makes sense 42 years after Stu originally wrote this. Despite lifestyle brands, customisable coca cola bottles, the internet, tv on demand, the dominant culture still overpowers other cultural production, people still watch hollywood films and wear canada goose jackets just like they have done for hundreds of years. I'm not sure if new media which claim to be more personalised have made a major difference in how hegemonised culture is.
Virtually anything which "the people" have ever done can fall into this list [of the popular culture: the cultures, mores, customs and folkways of "the people"]
I see no issue here except with the word popular. Culture is what people do, that makes sense to me. In the sense of a bacterial culture: a growing or a cultivation, it is just what happens when entities live and die together. Popular though, doesnt fit into this definition.
Its main focus of attention is the relations between culture and questions of hegemony
We guessed this third definition pretty well in our radical annotation.
What matters is not the intrinsic or historically fixed objects of culture, but the state of play in cultural relations: to put it bluntly and in an over simplified form - what counts is the class struggle in and over culture.
This seems to be specifically avoiding or understating the role history has to play in cultural relations (and classes are a part of culture if you ask me). When has tradition ever been valued "for its own sake", tradition is always used as a tool in specific cultural actions and items to create and reinforce identity, assert or challenge dominance, and express existing and desired cultural (class) relations.
The capacity to constitute classes and individuals as a popular force - that is the nature of political and cultural struggle.
Yes for sure buuuuuut a very common way to unite people is to give them a common enemy. Redrawing the lines doesn't get rid of the lines. This whole essay makes me think of the (collateral) damage that is bound to happen in a struggle, a battlefield, and wonder if there is another way. Maybe using big categories like "the people" and "the power-bloc" is having consequences for smaller entities in the culture like for example human beings.
The Player’s Power to Change the Game, Anne-Marie Schleiner
Introduction
Further reading:
Report on the Construction of Situations, Guy Debord.
McKenzie Wark, GAM3R 7H30RY 1.1
Play becomes everything to which it was once opposed. It is work, it is serious, it is morality, it is necessity’ (McKenzie Wark).
Play as essentially separate to "real" life. But:
Huizinga’s search for the elements of play in funerary rites, deadly Sanskrit riddles and pre-juridical Arabian contests presupposes that before modernity relegated play to the magic circle, play was on the loose amidst culture, confusing the rational boundaries of life’s necessary activities with the ridiculous, competitive, and flighty contests of the ludic. As gamification and serious games attest to, in the early twenty-first century, we may again be witness to a return to a similar savage confluence of the game with everyday life, a blurring of the boundaries between play and world.
What is the relationship between play and reality, or play and truth? Playing is something you can "really" do, but is at the same time often considered "not real".
[Games are often] not taken seriously enough (even as fiction)
Like fiction, or in particular the novel, games perhaps shouldnt always be taken seriously? Surely there is a scale of what is important, what is urgent, what is relatively inconsequencial and unimportant?
Propaganda 2.0, Christian Fuchs
Read as part of DRUG.
| Dimension | Internet |
|---|---|
| Size, Ownership, Profit Orientation | Concentrated social media markets, concentrated ownership, intransparent and secret algorithms that determine the priorities of how results and news are presented |
| Advertising | Transnational corporations are able to confront users with targeted ads and content;
Native online advertising and branded online content threaten news-media’s-independence; The online advertising-user-spiral increases social media’s power in advertising and as news media and advances monopoly tendencies in the online economy; On social media, users’ digital labour produces a data commodity and is exploited by the platforms in order to sell targeted ad spaces |
| Sourcing | Traditional news organisations are powerful actors in online news;
Online attention as commodity manipulates political communication; Corporations and entertainment dominate social media attention; Political bots distort the political public sphere |
| Flak, Mediated Lobbying | Bots and other tools for automated lobbying;
Social media use by politicians, parties, movements; Online hate speech |
| Ideologies | Ideologies of the internet;
Ideologies on the internet and user-generated ideologies; Algorithmic amplification of online ideologies |
Heretic
A person holding an opinion at odds with what is generally accepted.
This article to me seems to be exaggerating the contrast between 20th century media (newspaper, tv, radio, cinema) and 21st century social media (GAFAM). While the similarities are definitely worth checking before you wrecking, I think a wider context is helpful; from other advertising and propaganda platforms (athletes bodies, city walls, elections, protests, family dinner, conversations over cocktails) and also from the cultural differences between 20th and 21st century (different roles of state and corporation, new types of political structure, different balances in global politics). We talked about the telecom infrastructure that underlies all of this; a site of power but also one of less-constructed mediation, so a good place to attempt to reclaim, while being careful not to lose what we've learnt from the existing layers of systems built on them.
Liber de Compositione Alchimiae, Robert of Chester
I am reading this via Justin Sledge's video essay about it.
It is a translation of an Arabic text by Khalid ibn Yazid (maybe, if he was real) and has some really interesting interpretations of the original text (ie lying). For example it traces a genealogy of alchemy that mostly ignores the Arabic tradition and makes it sound like it was passed from pagan scholars to christian ones.
Corrupt or untranslated Arabic words later gain a mystical power, for example "Azoth", which is a corruption of azoc, being originally derived from the Arabic al-zā'būq "the mercury". In alchemy this became both a sort of universal medication and universal solvent.
Europeans have really no idea what [these words] mean, and they are going to back fill that meaning with all kinds of mystical, supernatural and sometimes even magical storytelling.
Wxtch Craft, Silvia Federici
Targets of the witch hunt often more specifical than just women: healers, queer women; targeting women's power and community. "Gossip" as a term changed from meaning female friendship to meaning idle talk.
When you just make work as a man that is not political you are following a canon, that you didnt have to be aware of because you dont share a struggle around it.
Quote from melanie bonajo on men seeing themslves as neutral.
To change identities you have to begin to change the material condition.
Re: economic devaluation of women's work, despite the fact that procreation is one of the pillars of the capitalist organisation of work. Women's strikes? Happened in the 70s. Dependence of women on the waged worker, dependence of men on wage economy. (Also dependence of children on women/mothers).
The body as a portal and as a tool for resistance. "The first line of resistance is resistance of what is being done to my body". Body as territory (relevant to gender and also slavery abuses). Alienation of women from their own body.
The witchhunt is being thrown into the dustbin of history... The witch has been transformed into a legendary figure... You wouldnt dress up as the prisoner of the Auschwitz camp
Many witchhunts in Africa and India are to do with land dispossession
Pushing women out of the land they have access to, by accusing them of witchcraft. This is a problem today, not in the past. Satanic panic, misfortune is due to the enemy within: often the old woman who lives alone or doesnt want to give up her property/power. The witch-hunt as an object of fantasy (and even tourist attraction) is a dangerous idea.
I think feminists have to protest against that, and against commercialization
The commercialization that has parasitically followed the reclaiming of the image of the witch. Is the witch a good symbol for reclaiming of women's power and rights though? Being a witch historically and in parts of the world today, means being someone who is persecuted.
Witch hunt as relevant to oppression across various dimensions of society:
Nature is seen as opposed to society in capitalism... femininity is women's nature.
Links between feminism and animal rights / climate action.
Ngugi wa Thiong'o Decolonising the Mind. "Attempt to occupy our attention and our mind to prevent critical reflection".
The history of the witch hunt is one of colonisation and slavery
spirituality is a deep need of many communities, if anything the critique needs to be of religious institutions
Wicca and pagan movements as nature oriented movements. But also they do not appeal to witch craft, but rather try to reclaim deeper relationships with the natural world.
I think the magic of the world can be expressed in many ways without taking on a category that has been charged, and that continues to be used [maliciously], lets understand what we are talking about and what is the usefulness of it.
A practice that is associated with killing, destruction and destruction of people's life. Mel notes the difference between the popular belief / symbol and the historically accurate one. Surely this is important? If the popular opinion is historically inaccurate in a way that denies genocide, that seems like an issue?
We need to recuperate other forms of communication. I'm very concerned about the stage in which all the communication that takes place about people, particularly when it comes to organising struggle etc, is through these very public, open spaces that are dominated by companies that are speculating, that are making immense amounts of money on them, and they can be manipulated immensely. So I think we need some protocol for how to use the media so that their usage is not turned against us.
Witches, Witch-Hunting, and Women, Silvia Federici
Introduction
the relation between witch-hunting and the increasing enclosure of the female body through the extension of state control over women’s sexuality and reproductive capacity
Witchcraft as an accusation often involves control of bodies, demonic possession, etc; the relationship between the myths and the facts is interesting.
In Tanzania alone, it is calculated that more than five thousand women a year are murdered as witches, some macheted to death, others buried or burned alive.
oh fuck
In a grotesque fashion these reproduce the very stereotypes that were created by the witch hunters and led to the deaths of thousands of women.
How can these women be reframed? The healers, the alchemists, the gossipers? Women with intense power unimaginable to those in charge: real social power, esoteric knowledge, community with each other and with nature. Is reframing or reclaiming the right thing to do with unacceptable symbols? In reference to "witchy" tourism and commerce in europe, Federici seems to be arguing here that the symbol of the witch should be erased. In her KABK interview she had a related reservation about the category of witch being taken on by 21st century, and absolutely has a point that this is a symbol which caused and causes suffering and death for thousands of people. But is her vision of the merchants simply taking "the ugly, sadistically laughing old witch, off their shelves" the best way to deal with this problem? She also mentions that the massacres that have happened are not well remembered, and the crimes have not been apologised for, so I wonder if it may be too soon for the image to disappear. Re holocaust memorials, slavery reparations and Global Corporation Taxes can something similar be done. Can linguistic/symbolic reappropriation attempts be as effective as these actions? Maybe and maybe, reappropriation as a form of rebellion and self-definition.
Memorial of witch trials in Vardø, Norway. This involves a commemorative flame in the most terrifying way.
One
Early Modern European Witchcraft: Centres and Peripheries, eds. Bengt Ankarloo and Gustav Henningsen
Why Speak of the Witch Hunts Again?
forced them to submit to the patriarchal control of the nuclear family
Re: are Deleuze and Guattari just completely insane? What?
the witch hunt stands at a crossroad of a cluster of social processes that paved the way for the rise of the modern capitalist world.
This was in italics in the original so I assumed it was important. But I do agree actually and think it's important.
Magic and magick: the similarities are important and useful but also they are not the same thing. Art has a (magical) power to enlighten and inform in a way that bare fact cannot. Magick is also about hidden, secret or esoteric knowledge. Forms of knowing and telling and learning that are encoded: why are they encoded? What can they do? Encoding can disguise things and also shows that what is encoded was worth the effort of hiding. Encryption is like ornamentation, Marian Bantjes is a cryptographer. None of this paragraph has anything to do with the text or does it?
Should we not, then, confine ourselves to microhistories that programmatically cut off village events from any links with overarching social structures?
If this conversation is to do with globalisation, then scale seems like it should be an explicit concern. The rhetoric in the quote above implies a binary between looking at the local and global, but in fact to fully understand both and make an informed decision we need an excited zooming in and out repeatedly, crash zoom x10 like in an instagram story.
Isn’t a broader underlying cause called for, connecting and explaining all these different correlations?
Not really! There might just be a buch of stuff happening, but I'll play along. Hopefully Silvia is specifically using this word "correlation" to bait us. But I do feel in general this is the weak point of her argument: she is making a really big claim and that makes it very hard to prove, I want to agree so I do but I dont know if her argument is really convincing.
Witch Hunts, Enclosures, and the Demise of Communal Property Relations
There seems to be, however, a peculiar relationship between the dismantling of communitarian regimes and the demonization of members of the affected communities that makes witch-hunting an effective instrument of economic and social privatization.
Enclosures, Britain (and Ireland)'s obsession with land. "Everyman's right" or freedom to roam is still not a thing in Ireland, the farmers are the backbone of our society. Rack rent: "an extortionate or very high rent, especially an annual rent equivalent to the full value of the property to which it relates". This is some John B Keane shit.
That it was not only the lords but the well-to-do among the peasants who raised the edges (the common form of boundary marking) intensified the hostilities the enclosures produced, as the enclosers and the enclosed knew each other, walked the same paths, and were connected by multiple relations, and the fear that consumed them was fueled by the proximity of their lives and the possibility of retaliation.
If the bad guys were clearly defined we would have eaten them by now.
Older women were most affected by these developments.
Combination of age and gender restrictions: how did it affect older men, younger women? The stereotype of the old female witch seems to be correct from how Federici is describing those affected here, but it would be interesting to expand this to a more full picture. Also the earlier accusations of witch craft, I dont have a reference but I seem to remember a more even gender balance, in particular targeting of politicians? Need to double check.
Religion and the Decline of Magic, Keith Thomas (bad link)
Charter of the Forest is mentioned alongside the Magna Carta as a legal document protecting the rights of widows. Were these documents really used or even imagined the way we picture them now?
Not surprisingly, many so-called witches were poor women
Poor to add to the characteristics of female and elderly (I mean obviously, but just making a note). Although maybe not that obvious because this really confirms that these women were very different from the rich, powerful men accused of witchcraft in earlier times.
at least one-third of the charges recorded by C. L’Estrange Ewen relative to the Home Circuit for the period between 1563 and 1603 were for bewitchment of pigs, cows, horses, geldings, and mares, several to death
The witch is allegedly trying to seize control or power, or at least destroy the power and possessions of others.
women participated in many protests, pulling up the fences that now surrounded the commons. In the witch the authorities simultaneously punished the attack on private property, social insubordination, the propagation of magical beliefs, which presumed the presence of powers they could not control, and the deviation from the sexual norm that now placed sexual behavior and procreation under the rule of the state.
In this sense, we have to think of the enclosures as a broader phenomenon than simply the fencing off of land. We must think of an enclosure of knowledge, of our bodies, and of our relationship to other people and nature.
By the seventeenth century a drastic change was underway, reflected in Descartes’s theory that animals are nonsentient machines. Having companion animals was increasingly treated with suspicion
Really? This makes me think of werewolves also. The reference Federici gives for this paragraph has some really interesting things about trials of a witch, vampire and werewolf, as well as trials of exhumed bodies and bones. Even the 400 year old bones of Thomas à Becket, after being worshiped a s a holy relic, were tried as a traitor by Henry VIII then burned and scattered in the wind.
Witch-Hunting and the Fear of the Power of Women
In europe the first witch (Alice Kyteler 1324?) and the last witch (Helen Duncan 1944?) would be interesting stories to follow and compare.
This involved a historic battle against anything posing a limit to the full exploitation of the laborer, starting with the web of relations that tied the individuals to the natural world, to other people, and to their own bodies. Key to this process was the destruction of the magical conception of the body that had prevailed in the Middle Ages
The magical person, the shaman, the world spirit manifest in the human, vs the beast as nonsentient machine, the brain as computer. Rational and emotional thinking in conflict with each other, separation from nature. Is this in conflict with my eternal struggle against dualism? Not really, it is still possible for everything to be one and for emotion and magic to be part of that one. Just because its magic doesnt mean its supernatural (or extranatural).
precapitalist
Bad word.
Love is the great magician, the demon that unites earth and sky and makes humans so round, so whole in their being, that once united they cannot be defeated.
Maybe a paraphrase from Plato's Symposium. Love as daimon or spirit.
In capitalism, sex can exist but only as a productive force at the service of procreation and the regeneration of the waged/male worker and as a means of social appeasement and compensation for the misery of everyday existence.
How does this translate into modern day capitalism and modern day sexuality? On one side we say we have sexual liberation but on the other side we say we have more repressive and all encompassing forms of capitalism, how do they make sense together?
the courtesans in sixteenth-century Venice who managed to contract marriages with noblemen but were then accused of being witches.
Did capitalism enable social climbing, or did it already exist? If so were these sorts of accusations made in other times? Or did it exist and was accepted?
Then a scary paragraph about torture and public humiliation.
Women were terrorized through fantastic accusations, horrendous torture, and public executions because their social power had to be destroyed
The exaggeration of ‘crimes’ to mythical proportions so as to justify horrendous punishments is an effective means to terrorize a whole society, isolate the victims, discourage resistance, and make masses of people afraid to engage in practices that until then were considered normal.
In relation to McCarthy era anti-commmunism, and the war on terror. What is it that the "terrorists" of the middle east were/are threatening the west with that was so terrifying for them? We are kind of encouraged that it was an excuse to steal oil, but was there something ideological happening as well, a class struggle, an uprising?
On the Meaning of ‘Gossip’
Woo feminist etymological critique time! Honestly one of my favourite times.
a term commonly indicating a close female friend turned into one signifying idle, backbiting talk, that is, talk potentially sowing discord, the opposite of the solidarity that female friendship implies and generates
Attaching a denigrating meaning to the term indicating friendship among women served to destroy the female sociality that had prevailed in the Middle Ages
These two quotes from the first paragraph sum this up pretty neatly, and I think this idea in general works well as a small symbolic idea, so you could just read this and stop. Idea as symbol is really fun, if it is possible for ideas to be symbols can ideas be self referencial symbols? Like the phrase "this word" or actually more like the idea of you (personally) thinking. What about ideas with feedback loops like the idea of you thinking about self referencial symbol-ideas. Anyway, distracting.
They were critical of strong, independent women, and especially of their relations to their husbands, to whom—the accusation went—they preferred their friends.
Oh noooo poor boys the world doesnt revolve around them.
“The tavern,” Wright points out, “was the resort of women of the middle and lower orders who assembled there to drink and gossip.”
Quote from A History of Domestic Manners and Sentiments in England during the Middle Ages, Thomas Wright. The "gossips" are presented in a negative light but even with the more modern meaning of the word the behaviour being described sounds very subjectively bad in the time period, and actually the same behaviour (with the same word?) could still be interpreted as positive, female friendship. Obviously this isnt the way that history played out at the time unfortunately, and the practice of women meeting socially became less acceptable and the word more negative. This is maybe an important detail of how words and norms can subtly shift. Was everyone aware of the shifting perception, was anyone aware of it?
In Italy in the fourteenth century they could still go independently to court to denounce a man if he assaulted or molested them.<pre> Amazing, this is still barely possible today (in some places). The link between social isolation and loss of power (to and far past the point of abuse) seems really obvious, without social connection and solidarity it is much harder to defend rights. Is this social connection available today? In public spaces, the difference between ghetto-ising and allowing spaces for groups to share common concerns is important but maybe harder to understand in digital public spaces. The difference between being included in a unified public space (with questionable freedom of speech), and having a social space where you can voice your concerns safely and where they will be heard. <pre>scold’s bridle or gossip's bridle
Aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaahhhhhhhhhhh terrifying. Also clear links with slavery where the same torture equuipment was used. Eeeugggh really horrifying.
Even when used with the older meaning it displayed new connotations
This, as before relationship of what the word symbolises and how the signified is percieved.
In many parts of the world, women have historically been seen as the weavers of memory... They are also those who hand down acquired knowledges and wisdoms—concerning medical remedies, the problems of the heart, and the understanding of human behavior
Federici seems to be idolising the link between these behaviours and women, and I feel like she is suggesting a return to these sorts of gender roles? Definitely I see the reason to re-empower women and revive the important practices (for example here knowledge sharing) that were lost, but at some point reinstating the gender divide and roles that existed in Europe before capitalism, or that exist outside of capitalism, seems like a bad plan. Just because its not capitalism doesnt mean its good. What does it mean to revive female practices that were repressed in a multigender, post-binary world, surely they need to be broken apart, scavenged, reformed.
But we are regaining our knowledge. As a woman recently put it in a meeting on the meaning of witchcraft, the magic is: “We know that we know.”
xoxo gossip girl
Wages Against Housework, Silvia Federici
But if we take wages for housework as a political perspective, we can see that struggling for it is going to produce a revolution in our lives and in our social power as women. It is also clear that if we think we do not ‘need’ that money, it is because we have accepted the particular forms of prostitution of body and mind by which we get the money to hide that need.
Money is exchanged and the people who have money have power to get what they want, does this mean that giving someone money is giving them power? In exchange for goods / services they can currently give you. So (presumably, maybe) what SiSi is about to get at is that it is important what is exchanged for money, as this determines why the receiver of the money has their power. If I am paid a wage for housework that is very different to being given pocket money by my husband.
The wage gives the impression of a fair deal: you work and you get paid, hence you and your boss are equal; while in reality the wage, rather than paying for the work you do, hides all the unpaid work that goes into profit. But the wage at least recognizes that you are a worker, and you can bargain and struggle around and against the terms and the quantity of that wage, the terms and the quantity of that work.
This argument seems stronger pre-Thatcher, and I wonder if wages for housework is a more useful idea in general in a society where labour unions have more power, the idea of a women's union. In a world where we have covid payments and trial runs of UBI schemes, maybe this doesn't feel as powerful as it might have at the time.
We are seen as nagging bitches, not workers in struggle.
When Queen played "I Want to Break Free" at Rock in Rio, why were people upset? In contrast to what I was getting at a second ago, is the struggle for women's rights seen on the same plane as other power struggles today? Sometimes yes sometimes no I think, certainly it is regularly linked to broader sexual/gender rights and the rights of minorities, but to more economic-based struggles maybe still not enough.
We must admit that capital has been very successful in hiding our work.
Hidden work is an interesting idea.
In the same way as god created Eve to give pleasure to Adam, so did capital create the housewife to service the male worker physically, emotionally and sexually.
This sums it up pretty well. There is a very fine line though, and I wonder (from a privileged position of not being forced into this life) if I would like to be paid to raise my children, feed my family, have sex with my partner. I don't think bringing more of the human sphere of existence under the regulation of money lifts the woman's experience high enough, although it certainly lifts her higher. But mostly it seems to put her in the same struggle as her husband, the solidarity would have benefits and lead to future freedom but this doesn't seem like freedom in itself to me. If I pay a slave, yes they are technically no longer a slave but do they need more autonomy and freedom than that to be an equal?
In a discussion with David Wengrow Silvia mentions how societies in Labrador and Canada had to be taught to beat their children by European invaders, the ideals of tyranny and property that exist within the traditional European family structure are taught and is wages for housework a good way to break these ideals down? Maybe, this article at least shows that they should be broken down somehow. Is making a woman a waged worker giving her more or less autonomy? Feels like a trade of freedoms that is probably a positive over all but the negatives should still be taken into account. Do we all want to be workers?
To ask for wages for housework will by itself undermine the expectations society has of us, since these expectations – the essence of our socialization – are all functional to our wageless condition in the home.
Yes definitely undermines, but is it the best (or a healthy) way to undermine. I'm also not sure about the asking part. You could also undermine societies expectations by demanding diplomatic immunity, acting like you're the president, or registering yourself as a corporation. These all sound like fun things to do actually.
It should be clear, however, that when we struggle for a wage we do not struggle to enter capitalist relations, because we have never been out of them. We struggle to break capital’s plan for women, which is an essential moment of the divisions within the working class, through which capital has been able to maintain its power. Wages for housework, then, is a revolutionary demand not because by itself it destroys capital, but because it forces capital to restructure social relations in terms more favourable to us and consequently more favourable to the unity of the class. In fact, to demand wages for housework does not mean to say that if we are paid we will continue to do it. It means precisely the opposite. To say that we want money for housework is the first step towards refusing to do it, because the demand for a wage makes our work visible, which is the most indispensable condition to begin to struggle against it, both in its immediate aspect as housework and its more insidious character as femininity.
This paragraph answers a lot of the questions I had about this piece so I've copied the whole thing. I am still not sure if "it forces capital to restructure social relations in terms more favourable to us" is completely true, or if this is the best way to achieve that. "Nothing can be more effective than to show that our female virtues have a calculable money value" she says but she hasnt even mentioned any alternatives. What about the Women's Day Off in Iceland and other women's strikes. Making measurable sounds like an effective tactic, but can and should everything be made measurable?
It is one thing to organize communally the way we want to eat (by ourselves, in groups, etc.) and then ask the State to pay for it, and it is the opposite thing to ask the State to organize our meals.
Being paid for something does not equate to giving the thing to the provider of the money? Surely if the state pays for the day care, the food, the sexual reproduction, the state is still in some way controlling these things, maybe Federici is talking about taking an active or vocal role in these decisions as women and as individuals, rather than letting other individuals ("the State") decide? This is presented as if it is a choice, is it? Of course it should be, and maybe she is saying to keep this in mind when proposing struggles like this.
The things we have to prove are our capacity to expose what we are already doing, what capital is doing to us and our power in the struggle against it.
Theorizing the Uncomputable, Alexander Galloway
Further reading:
Ada Dietz: Algebraic Expressions in Handwoven Textiles, 1949
Guy Debord: A Game of War (Le Jeu de la Guerre, 1987)
Asger Jorn, Three sided football
Alexander Galloway: Gaming, Essays on Algorithmic Culture
A Narrative Theory of Games, Espen Aarseth
“Interactive Fiction” by Anthony Niesz and Norman Holland, 1984
McKenzie Wark says (talking about capitalism) that if the word feels like it doesn't fit anymore then it's probably wrong. But putting the word 'narrative' beside 'games' for me gives two results: 'narrative games' and 'game narratives' (of course there are other variations with plurals and singulars, but I'll focus on these two for now).
The first, 'narrative games', is very clearly a category of computer games to me. Breath of the Wild is a narrative game, Worms is not. Things can be on the margin of the category (Is Pacman a narrative game? It has characters and a plot), and the category can be stretched and skewed to prove a point (all games are narrative games is really just word play) but in most cases it makes sense and is seful to say that some games contain narrative elements ('theoretical concepts such as “story”, “fiction”, “character,” “narration” or “rhetoric”') and those games can be referred to as 'narrative games'.
The second combination of the two words is 'game narratives' which again seems to refer to something internal to the game to me, for the moment ignoring more extended narratives of the game world like the story of Half-Life 3 or the Super Mario Bros Movie. Game narratives are the stories (fictions, characters, etc.) within a game. Narrative is an element or group of elements that are within games and can be used to examine certain aspects of them. What narratives are in Fortnite, where is the narrative in Minesweeper. As a characteristic, narrative is a way to look at games.
there is much to gain from a rigorous application of narratology to game studies
But also maybe the interesting thing about computer games is what is left in them after you describe the narrative elements, after you describe the ludic elements. Is there something unique to this medium? The feeling of exploring an open map, being able to fly, being able to skate, there is something about the immersion of a computer game that I don't think you get from other media. Not just immersion but powering-up, in music you can only tell me "Heaven is a Halfpipe" but in a computer game right now on earth I can do jack. There's no way I can know Ash Ketchum's struggle as much through the TV show or the card game as I can through playing his life on the GameBoy (although maybe the cards are not as well executed as the games or the show, but even if they were).
to emphasize the crucial importance of combining the mechanical and the semiotic aspects and to caution against and criticize the uncritical and unqualified application of terms such as “narrative” and “story” to games.
This does not feel like appropriate language to talk about games. I think Aarboy is trying to say something like "it's important to pay attention to the play part of gameplay as well as the stories in the game, because being a player makes you relate to the medium differently than a reader or viewer".
I wish to challenge the recurrent practice of applying the theories of literary criticism to a new empirical field, seemingly without any critical reassessment of the terms and concepts involved. (Aarseth 1997: 14)
The author of this essay has just quoted themself in the third person. Some readers may find this unusual (eg Stephen).
games and stories seem to share a number of elements, namely a world, its agents, objects and events.
Yessss and also (especially in the case of games, but this is useful for other stories) a range of possible actions in the world which are selected not just ideologically but for narrative purposes. Eg. why didnt the eagles fly to Mordor, and other "plotholes" which are choices not available in the narrative, actions you can't take in the game or areas you cant reach.
Whatever the answer, it seems clear that it is not purely a game, but a piece of software that does contain, among other things, a game.
Has anyone done a Clifford Geertz style analysis of games? A thick description, what are the players thinking, what are the game developers thinking, and also who else is involved in the game (the labourers who create and package it, the audience, are there NPC's ouside of the game?).
Ontic
Relating to entities and the facts about them; relating to real as opposed to phenomenal existence.
Multicursal
Of a maze or labyrinth: having more than one possible route between the centre and the outside.
My present approach is to see the ludo-narrative designspace as four independent, ontic dimensions: WORLD, OBJECTS, AGENTS, and EVENTS. Every game (and every story) contains these four elements, but they configure them differently
Yeah cool.
If an(y) interesting experience in a game is an “emergent narrative,” where does it end? And why limit this category to game-based situations? At some point it becomes hard to distinguish narratives from any other type of worldly experience
Well for me it probably ends where a narrative is something created (intentionally or otherwise) and this created story contains elements of the worldview of the creator(s) which it often (again intentionally or not) communicates to the narratee. This is probably not all worldly experience, relax, unless we are living in a simulation.
The story-telling model shown in section four really shows me how much of a traditional narrative model Espy is abandoning. All of his "ontic dimensions" fit into the category of Existents, except for Events, which is right beside them. These all fit in the "story" side of the "story-telling" model which leaves out all of the discourse elements, how the story is told. Hopefully he'll address these anyway.
A kernel is what makes us recognize the story... Satellites are what can be replaced or removed while still keeping the story recognizable, but which defines the discourse; replace the satellites and the discourse is changed.
Kernels/satellites is a nice idea, but Im not sure what EA means by discourse here. In the diagram he implied discourse is the unimportant half, and now he is relegating it to something that does not happen in the kernel of the story. It feels like he is saying there is some essential information in the main plot line that is the "point" of the story, which doesn't seem correct to me.
However, the world presented in a game is not necessarily a game world only. A game can contain two types of space, the ludic and the extra-ludic.
The difference between the playable, explorable 'gameworld' and the (usually larger) fictional world the game is set in.
In a previous paper (Aarseth 2005) I
This is the third time he has quoted himself, baller.
[Objects] are important because they determine the degree of player agency in the game: a game which allows great player freedom in creating or modifying objects will at the same time not be able to afford strong narrative control.
Probably true in most cases but this feels more like a correlation to me than the only cause. A player has agency based on the actions they can take more generally, what other agents can they interact with and how those interactions can play out, how can they explore the world in terms of speed and percieved freedom of movement, do events feel like they are happening to or caused by the player.
It can be claimed that the richness of character is an important authorial tool that characterizes the positive potential of authorship in games, where malleability and user control limit authorial affordances.
This does not fit with for example the characters of Sims, who can become extremely complex mostly due to the player, rather than the "author", assuming EA Games is referring to the game designer here. Unless he's talking about authorship in a more general sense of users creating meaning in which case I totally agree. Anyway yeah Sims, computer game as a toolset or dollhouse for exploring relationships according to the player's will rather than a novel with some exemplar relationships.
In the events section he presents story and game as opposite ends of a spectrum which seems completely unrelated to the rest of the essay. Also the diagram is titled discourse/infuence, in reference to the players influence over the kernel and sattelite narratives, this makes me even more confused about what he means by discourse.
The model in section 9 has lots of useful words/categories in it, but the "narrative pole - ludic pole" axis in it is really not helpful. Luckily Microsoft Paint has a really useful tool for remixing ludonarrative diagrams so I have amended it. He then draws lines through the diagram representing different games, for example Minecraft apparently goes across the bottom of the graph as a "pure game". This really doesn't seem to match up with the more flexible theory presented earlier. In the 'objects' category this gives Minecraft only Inventable objects, while it in fact has all the types listed here, and the graph ignores how different types of object interact. I think he has done a good job of mapping the game space in this diagram but a bad job of charting how individual games move through this space like a discrete linear function, real games are much more interesting and messy than this. I dont think any of the conclusions in this section really follow from really good exploration of what a game is in previous sections.
Base and Superstructure in Marxist Cultural Theory, Raymond Williams
What if the means of production is a superstructural idea and not materialist at all? By letting the people believe they are in control by allowing them access to the means of production, can they still be controlled? Eg through force (or the threat of force), access to society, etc.
Is there a relationship between Calvinist predetermination and Marx's use of the word "determine"? Re Calvinists and the time of the witch trials.
There is, on the one hand, from its theological inheritance, the notion of an external cause which totally predicts or prefigures, indeed totally controls a subsequent activity. But there is also, from the experience of social practice, a notion of determination as setting limits, exerting pressures.
Should have just read one sentence further, this is what I was talking about. I think Ray is saying Marx had a more fluid version of "determine" in mind, one with more feedback and flexibility, as opposed to the set-it-and-forget-it universe the god of the calvinists created. What rituals did the Calvinists have that reinforced this idea of predetermination? Are there rituals that work counter to this? For example fortune telling and looking into the future very much depends on whether you believe the future has already been decided. I'm pretty sure physics allows for an undecidable and unpredictable future, which feels like a more empowering future for individuals whose path seems socially determined (in a bad or controlled way). Maybe some undecidable elements of physics could be incorporated into a freeing ritual. What about chaotic systems in mathematics, and chaos in general as a (often outsider) religious idea? I read the phrase "chaos as oracle" somewhere recently, I think it was in Musimathics chapter 9 have to double check. No it was "Chance as Oracle". Re: chance as cosmic will, John Cage, the I Ching, Jung's synchronicity. Chance in art as allowing the voice of nature to enter instead of emphasising the voice of people. This description, maybe makes chance sound antisocialist? It depends if you are taking the voice of "the people" away or the voice of specific people who are in charge I guess.
the notion of ‘homologous structures’, where there may be no direct or easily apparent similarity, and certainly nothing like reflection or reproduction, between the superstructural process and the reality of the base, but in which there is an essential homology or correspondence of structures, which can be discovered by analysis.
What theory is this in reference to? Or what specific examples? When I search this term I just get references to this essay.
while a particular stage of the development of production can be discovered and made precise by analysis, it is never in practice either uniform or static.
Production is always changing, and ideology is always following it with some lag? Or ideology is attempting to staticify production? If the ideology were really behind (by any significant amount) wouldn't it be more obviously inappropriate and useless? The uselessness of ideas only seems to boil over at certain points in history, 1848, 1989, etc.
we have to revalue ‘the base’ away from the notion of a fixed economic or technological abstraction, and towards the specific activities of men in real social and economic relationships, containing fundamental contradictions and variations and therefore always in a state of dynamic process.
This sounds like a good definition to me. "Social and economic relationships" implies production not just of physical goods but, as he says after, "the primary production of society itself, and of men themselves, material production and reproduction of real life". Productive social forces beyond the economy.
If we come to say that society is composed of a large number of social practices which form a concrete social whole, and if we give to each practice a certain specific recognition, adding only that they interact, relate and combine in very complicated ways, we are at one level much more obviously talking about reality, but we are at another level withdrawing from the claim that there is any process of determination...
Why? Yes it is a more complicated picture and therefore making generalisations and predictions is harder, but maybe the reality is complex and chaotic, and predictions should be hard to make? The difference seems to me to be in the words "determination" and "interact", thinking of other complex systems like the weather this seems like a much more appropriate term. The scale of phenomena needs to be taken into account to understand the degree they can be understood, and maybe society is not a machine with two cogs, one driving the other. It is maybe deceptively messy like a double pendulum. I dont think its even that deceptive though, it seems obviously complex to me.
...And this I, for one, would be very unwilling to do.
Why, you too chicken?
[Hegemony] is a whole body of practices and expectations; our assignments of energy, our ordinary understanding of the nature of man and of his world. It is a set of meanings and values which as they are experienced as practices appear as reciprocally confirming. It thus constitutes a sense of reality for most people in the society.
the selectivity [of tradition and history] is the point; the way in which from a whole possible area of past and present, certain meanings and practices are chosen for emphasis, certain other meanings and practices are neglected and excluded.
Framing and reframing of certain evidence and past practices which furthers the aims of today's hegemony. The celebration (and rejection) of the past is how we define the present and our aspirations for the future.
We have to recognize the alternative meanings and values, the alternative opinions and attitudes, even some alternative senses of the world, which can be accommodated and tolerated within a particular effective and dominant culture.
Hegemony is not a single idea owned by a single class, but the full range of ideologies believed and promoted by all the various agents in society. Does this include non human agents such as corporations, classes or political parties? Is it more useful to think of the ideas of these actors or to focus on a single scale (that of individual humans for example, or the scale of classes), mixing the scales seems useful to me.
Ray suggests the real internal oppositions of things like parliamentary politics 'do not in practice go beyond the limits of the central effective and dominant definitions'. But surely in his previous hegemony-as-multiplicity ideas there would be a more realistic interpretation of the limits of dominant definitions being something more elastic and changing (usually slowly I suppose). In that case I would guess oppositions within society (such as politics) are potential active drivers of these changes in limits, although maybe he is suggesting these oppositions have no real change which certainly seems possible too. If at least the individuals involved in these oppositions didnt desire change to happen (and believe it possible), surely they wouldn't bother with the opposition at all?
Residual and Emergent Cultures
okie, makes sense. Residual exapmples he gives are religious and rural practices and ideas today. The residual culture has to be incorporated into the dominant culture for the latter to make sense. Emergent culture has to be incorporated by the dominant culture too because they are also part of 'effective contemporary practice'. This all makes sense but has a bit of an arrow of time feeling to it that seems wrong, surely cultures can regress and fluctuate between ideas, rather than the new idea always being better? Or even if the new idea is better, it still doesn't mean there will be linear progress.
I am sure it is true of the society that has come into existence since the last war, that progressively, because of developments in the social character of labour, in the social character of communications, and in the social character of decision, it extends much further than ever before in capitalist society into certain hitherto resigned areas of experience and practice and meaning.
Society is more hegemonic than it used to be, seems like a difficult claim to argue but I'm sure historians and anthropologists would have an opinion. But the metrics are so different in a world with NATO, the UN and Big Tech, did these kinds of organisations have analogues in the past? The church, the family, the state seem to have been more powerful? The complexity I think makes it really hard to make big statements like he is doing. This was written in the 70s though maybe it was different then.
In capitalist practice, if the thing is not making a profit, or if it is not being widely circulated, then it can for some time be overlooked.
Can secret subversive ideas spread without detection through disorganisation? For example by appearing multiple, small scale and in conflict with each other, various branches could go unnoticed while actually being part of a bigger whole. Also if things are less obviously oppositional, are they less likely to be quashed or incorporated by the dominant culture. Is this something that would have to happen intentionally, or is it also possible for various supposedly unrelated actors to suddenly discover their shared aims?
It was very evident in the sixties, in some of the emergent arts of performance, that the dominant culture reached out to transform them or seek to transform them. In this process, of course, the dominant culture itself changes, not in its central formation, but in many of its articulated features.
Why does he claim the dominant culture doesn't change in its central formation again? This doesnt make sense to me.
There is no Fifth Symphony, there is no work in the whole area of music and dance and performance, which is an object in any way comparable to those works in the visual arts which have survived.
Unless the definition of 'object' is expanded to include these, which would be helpful for understanding the 'objects' or works of visual arts too. These are not items which arrived to us as if from a time machine from the past and directly from their creator. They are works that are reinterpretted every time they are performed, in a range of active and receptive ways by different participants, just like the musicians and audience of a musical performance. As Christopher Small says in Musicking, 'all art is performance'. Oh this is sort of what he says in the next paragraph never mind, under the name 'notations'.
The relationship between the making of a work of art and the reception of a work of art, is always active, and subject to conventions, which in themselves are forms of social organization and relationship, and this is radically different from the production and consumption of an object.
Again I think he is minimising the word 'object' a bit, but I agree with the general point. There are also complex relationships in the making of other 'objects' like tins of food, scientific theories, smartphones, political ideas, humans: art doesn't seem exceptional here to me.
What this can show us here about the practice of analysis is that we have to break from the notion of isolating the object and then discovering its components. On the contrary we have to discover the nature of a practice and then its conditions.
This makes sense as a conclusion! Good job! Although it seems useful in a lot of situations to examine a practice through the residue of artifacts it leaves behind, so understanding objects has to play a part here somewhere.
I am saying that we should look not for the components of a product but for the conditions of a practice.
Sounds like a good idea. 'A practice' sounds a bit individualistic though, presumably we could also have the practice of punk musicians in 1970s and the practice of schoolboys in Belfast as well as the practice of Stiff Little Fingers.
The irreducibly individual projects that particular works are.
How can you say this after writing all the rest of this essay? Are you implying there is only a practice when objects are taken in relation to each other, and one single object is on its own unique or isolated? I dont think I agree.
what we are actively seeking is the true practice which has been alienated to an object
Sounds like there is a 'correct reading', is this true. A 'true' practice sounds unlikely, maybe a true history would be more useful, but even then that doesn't fully define what something is/means now or what it can do in future. No truth for me thanks anyway.
Six (Difficult and Inconvenient) Values to Reclaim the Future with Old Media, Lori Emerson
I agree with a lot of this but I thought it would be nice to locate the points of tension for me, and try to offer alternative values to address these points.
Slow
Inefficiency and slowness as a way to escape planned obsolescence and "the relentless push toward productivity, consumption, and waste". I like this idea but I wonder if it can ever fall into the category of direct action, as opposed to protest? Is inefficiency a real strategy for an alternative way of living? Slowness absolutely, maybe its just the term inefficient that sits funny with me. Inefficient I assume means complex, having unexpected outputs, accepting unexpected inputs, flexible, adaptive, non goal-oriented, organic. This idea to me is not the opposite of "efficient" but something else, just as slow is not the opposite of fast. Opportunity for more positive definitions again, I will rename this one
Zen
ˢᵐᵃˡˡ
I like small too, but it sometimes sounds like separate to me. Maybe scalable isn't such a bad word, but not the way it is usually meant. Elastic, stretchy, squishy. Systems (networks, machines, ideas) that can adapt to and serve the people, situations and things that compose them. There's always room for one more at the table. It's ok if you need to go. Maybe this one could be called
From each according to his ability, to each according to his needs
Open
"The vast majority of us will never understand how the internet works at the levels of software, hardware, and infrastructure". That's ok. Most of us will never understand dentistry, or group theory, or how to sing baqashot. Some of these things are inaccessible without training and some of these things can only be understood or advanced by larger groups instead of individuals. And some people don't want to hack their roomba, that's also ok. However I do agree with the general point so only a slight change into
Openable
Censorship and accessibility are also in this category which is a related but additional issue, also to do with control. The issue of freedom of speech is a whole can of worms that I dont have time for right now. So I'll just add in a point
Accessible
Cooperative
Cooperative is put here as an opposite to corporate, I dont think this is the first time this has come up? A corporation (according to the other wiki) is "an organization—usually a group of people or a company—authorized by the state to act as a single entity ... and recognized as such in law for certain purposes". This sounds pretty cooperative to me. And as much as we like to say corporate interests don't align with public interests, they are devices created by humans so must at least align with at least one human's interests in some way. Maybe the real issue with corporations is the idea of "limited liability". That is (again from the big wiki) that "a passive shareholder in a corporation will not be personally liable either for contractually agreed obligations of the corporation, or for torts (involuntary harms) committed by the corporation against a third party". Now this is a dangerous idea, and has led to many sad, painful, hurtful decisions being made. In fact it is straight up irresponsible. So why dont we rename this one
Accountable
If you mess up, take responsibility, tell people, we will talk through it and fix it together.
This also avoids the impractical idea that we all want to be involved in running social media platforms, or that the people who run them should be the only ones who can benefit from them. Specialisation is ok, we can still be a team.
Care
I like this term (for a general approach to life) but again am cautious of the way it is posed as an antithesis to "innovate" in the context of machines/networks. Innovate means "make changes in something established, especially by introducing new methods, ideas, or products". Which is pretty good, and even similar to the definition of care provided here. Why maintain when you can improve? Improving does not have to imply, as it currently does, throwaway consumerism, forced obsolescence, bad craftsmanship or blackboxing. For example why dont we improve on these elements themselves? This thing of "they dont make em like they used to" is bollocks, they didnt make iPhones in the 70s, thats why no one has one. Commodore 64s were still made of plastic in big factories with environmentally harmful shipping strategies. If you're drooling its probably fetishisation. But more important than any of this, I don't care about the machine. I care about the people who made it, the people who use it, the people who transport it, and maybe after that the environment and the planet it was made on, sorry for sounding anthropocentric but humans are the significant actors in this production. So just to be contentious I would like to call this one
Innovative
Failure
I'm not sure if I see anything wrong with this one. But it does make me think, when failure happens what should you do? Try again? Give up? Either can be logical steps after accepting the failure in some way, accepting in the former as in acknowledging, learning, and trying again; or accepting in the latter as in understanding, learning, and adapting goals and ways of being. Maybe this just depends on the situation. In this situation I hoped to rewrite the name of each value:
Failure
The Matrix, N.H. Pritchard; and Charles Olson Reading at Berkeley
I made a mistake re-read here
Technology & Ethos, Imamu Amiri Baraka
If I invented a word placing machine, an “expression-scriber,” if you will, then I would have a kind of instrument into which I could step & sit or sprawl or hang & use not only my fingers to make words express feelings but elbows, feet, head, behind, and all the sounds I wanted, screams, grunts, taps, itches
Yes for sure but also the body writes, the body reads, another approach is to reveal the technology that is already there as something real in the world, that can really be touched. It is touched through a narrow predefined route but this route can be carved out (maybe easier than creating a completely new route).
we must be “free from the oppressor’s spirit,” as well.
This is a good goal but he keeps defining us in opposition to Western, so it sounds like it is still a few steps away. For now (forever?) we have to navigate the world as it exists to be able to create the world as it should be.
See everything fresh and “without form”–then make forms that will express us truthfully and totally and by this certainly free us eventually.
I agree, but this can be painful and insensitive to people, is it right to see a bomb as a potential firework? Is it good to look for constructive power or beauty in evil or danger? What can we make out of NFTs? What can we make out of corporate space races? If we keep putting flowers in guns what will happen?
The technology itself must represent human striving. It must represent at each point the temporary perfection of the evolutional man. And be obsolete only because nothing is ever perfect, the only constant is change
This has always been our goal, we will keep making mistakes, we will keep improving? This sounds really optimistic and reckless I dunno.
The "Moralities" of Poaching. Manufacturing personal artefacts on the factory floor, Anteby, M.
'serious leisure'
How is it leisure if it is during work hours, and creating something you need?
The activity also creates new social ties and obligations [as does gift-giving more generally]
The cost or exchange system of gifts is something to explore more. Rejecting commerce doesn't mean there is no longer a system through which goods and services flow, and that alternative system is often less obvious. Read Graeber.
because supervisors are involved, and uses these points to suggest that poaching is not just about worker resistance
Do people still believe that managers aren't workers?
This morality is never properly defined, but is enforced by the community of poachers.
This can be a positive, a system based not on rules but continuous assessment by the community on a case by case basis. More about juries than laws, the people at the time have more power than the tradition. Although laws, maxims or even documented precedent can be useful for people attempting to navigate the system, to understand what is allowed and expected.
Notes on: De Certeau, M.(1984) The Practice of Everyday Life, Dave Harris
'ordinary man' [usual apologies for the gendered terminology], who existed before texts and any attempt to represent him or his activities, especially in the form of numbers. Everyday practices are to be foregrounded and articulated. This is not an analysis of individuals, since social relations are always involved: indeed, the 'individual' is but a plurality of these relations.
how individual sentences are constructed on the basis of shared vocabulary and syntax
Systems/networks exist to be used just like all other technology. But they also restrict and confine, just like all other technology.
which networks and resources help people resist and evade the discipline offered by institutions?
Can the same networks not afford resistance and evasion, the institutions are emergent properties of the network rather than controllers of the other actors in it? The people navigate the network and so do the institutions, although with different amounts of power and influence.
erratic 'trajectories', 'unforeseeable sentences, partly unreadable paths'. These cannot be described by formal analysis, including statistics. They feature bricolage and discursivenss, and lack the homogeneity required by analysis.
Again this applies to non-human actors in the network too, including the institutions it is implied these tactics are used against. Oh the whole next paragraph disagrees with what I am saying, lovely. Strategies are tactics, they are the same.
Reading, for example, looks passive, but it is an activity, a 'silent production', involving improvisation, the use of memory to connect elements from other texts, or activities such as skipping. The world of the author is really only 'rented' by readers (xxi). Reading is as mobile as conversation.
Is conversation mobile? Does consciousness emerge only through dialogue? Can you know something without talking about it, or reading about it? Can you know something by cooking it for someone else? Can you know something through dance? By her clothes? By his smell? By looking at each other? Is there ever a time when another human isn't involved?
Science also offers combinations of formal discourses and 'ancient tricks', masquerading as methods -- these are tactical too.
Fuck you, science.
The Man Without Qualities, Robert Musil
there is always a network of writings, and influences are not easily accessed
And these influences aren't always the same ones the reader notices, like did the author want me to think of Earle Brown now? And David Arden? And the cast of Brooklyn 99? Where does discourse stop and the real world of everything that is happening begin? Zora sent me a link to a Stormzy song. Irmak said something in Turkish. The discourse, if it is part of everyday life, is part of a network.
In sociology, habitus (/ˈhæbɪtəs/) is the way that people perceive and respond to the social world they inhabit, by way of their personal habits, skills, and disposition of character.
Van wikipedia.
Bourdieu manages to deny both sociological determinism and the idea of a calculating subject, so he has to revert to mechanisms in the sociology of education to explain how structures actually work -- through knowledge acquisition, the interiorisation of structures, and then the exteriorisation of the results of learning in the habitus.
How is this not sociological determinism? I dont get teh difference between structure and habitus.
Tactics proliferate and resist classification. They are singular and unconscious.
I dunno. Just because it's complex doesn't mean its unknowable. Just because it's vague doesnt mean it hasnt happened before. Also there is a practical reason to acknowledge tactics as classifiable, to allow unified resistance.
Marx never visited a factory
Ha! Wanker. Is this true? Dr. Evert Gummesson and Paul Johnson are the people who claim this, but a quick search online gives mixed opinions about it. Engels was a capitalist, in the textile industry. Did Hegel ever have an actual conversation with anyone? Definitely the overall point that philosophers and theorists are toolbags seems true.
The key technique to manage and domesticate is narrative, which once led to the dominance of literary knowledge as the key to understanding.
How to escape this though? Even that question is just part of a narrative?
aesthetics has slowly become isolated and codified, and the discipline gradually becomes a matter of relating theory to practice... the last stage is to try and develop a theory of practice
Isn't all theory "of practice"? Theories only exist to attempt to explain the world? Sometimes this feels uselessly looped up to me.
Narrations therefore are never just descriptive, but involve the creation of 'fictional space', which helps people escape from, and 'balance with' the present.
Of course, nothing should be "taken literally", the map is not the territory. A narrative can attempt to be descriptive, but it is only creating a fictional space. Sometimes this space's relationship with (a percieved) reality can make it useful to the writer/reader. And how does this apply to less obviously discursive practices? A cookbook is full of errors. Maybe the glance was just a glance.
Reading Guide to: Lyotard, J - F (1986) The Post - Modern Condition: A Report on Knowledge
memory can alter space, and destabilize equilibrium. Memory can disestablish order, since it is invisible and thus escapes power.
Can, but also it can be used for the exact opposite purposes as well of course, it can be used to maintain stable equilibrium, and to establish and sustain order. It doesnt escape power but rather is a tool of power which can counteract dominant narratives as much as support them.
story tellers can gain authority even though they have no power
No, to have someone listening to your stories is a form of power, and if they believe them the storyteller clearly has even more power.
Tactical moves of this kind display:... alteration, singularity, mobility
What are we really talking about?
The pedestrians on the streets down below read the city as a text, but, crucially they also write it.
Its a good job this sentence says "down below" or else I would almost believe it. It actually makes this whole section hard to read, the flaneur vibe feels gross. Although I also have to admit to relating to these "readings" of the city. Two days ago I was playing the game where I work out the polyrhythm of the length pf my steps to the length of the slabs in the path; 5:2 this time. A major tenth. I heard a song with the same interval and thought I would like to make something similar. Then I forgot about both things until now. Are these thoughts "natural" or even "everyday"? For me they feel like both but how do you generalise this sort of stuff. I remember talking to Steve Ryan about the steps thing and even he thought it was weird.
This sort of self centred and often unconscious process of significations can be displaced and condensed, as in dreams.
Is the point of putting this at the end a kind of defeatism, or acceptance of intangibility?
Walking is a kind of 'story', composed of 'debris... leftovers... fragments of scattered semantic places... combined with things extra and other'
Ok all activity, all stories, on this level are the same they are messy and the mess is inescapable I can live with that (sometimes).
These interrupt the accepted framework and order, which 'leaks... meaning: it is a sieve order'