Prototyping

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2024-2025

The tools we will work with during prototyping [1] are hard to access for some. They come from contexts that are often far away from us, such as the tech industry, academic projects or large non-profit organisations; are often made in the US or Europe; are often written and documented in English; and are often made years or decades ago. We as prototypers need to bridge these gaps and work at understanding it from our own contexts [2]. This bridging work is not the same for everyone. The tools will not be equally accessible to everyone in the group. Acknowledging this and helping each other with this work of bridging is important. You don't have to do this alone and struggling with it is not a personal failure nor an individual burden. The goals of this year's prototyping sessions are (a) to explore many different (free software) tools and (b) to do this together.

The feeling of 'not getting it' is valuable. Many of the tools we will work with are documented, but the language and style in which this documentation is written is often very hard to read and based on assumptions that you are already familiar with code. Feel entitled to be upset about this! Even if the makers of the tool didn't make them for us here at XPUB in 2024/2025 specifically, with a group of people from different ages, cultural backgrounds and speaking different languages. The XPUB prototyping staff is asking you to explore these tools, asking you to learn something from it, not to torture you but because we feel there is something very promising in them.

You are very much encouraged to engage with the tools on this level, on the level of you not understanding it and how upsetting and tiring this can be, because it demands more work from you than from others. It's important to acknowledge these frictions as your entry point to these tools. Facing this struggle of 'monsters in borderlands' [3] and lived experience and situated knowledge [4] are at the heart of knowledge building. This class is not about outsmarting each other, it is about learning something together. We are a small enough community of practice [5] to hear each other, to make room for this and to respond to such struggles. We can 'stretch out to affiliate with multiplicity and tend to how we hear each other as a matter of “listening forth” from silence, an active listening' (Star, 1994). Freely translated that means being mindful of things lost in translation and doing the work of figuring out what it all means to us, together [6].

[1] Which will include the command line interface, Python, HTML, CSS, Javascript, VCV rack, analog radio, Arduino, Pandoc, Weasyprint, SVG, Inkscape, pen plotters, dot matrix printers, other printers, ... and more!
[2] This relates to what Raymond Williams described in his introduction to Keywords as an inquiry into a vocabulary, figuring out the development of the way a certain word is understood historically and in times of cultural shifts, when meanings become 'brittle'.
[3] Haraway, D. (1992). The Promises of Monsters: A Regenerative Politics for Inappropriate/d Others. [online] Available at: http://www.zbi.ee/~kalevi/monsters.html
[4] Haraway, D. (1988). Situated Knowledges: The Science Question in Feminism and the Privilege of Partial Perspective.
[5] Star, S. L. (1994). Misplaced Concretism and Concrete Situations: Feminism, Method, and Information Technology. In: Bowker, G. et al. (eds) Boundary objects and beyond: working with Leigh Star. Cambridge, Massachusetts: The MIT Press
[6] All this on a wiki page, a naturalized object in the XPUB community of practice. We use it for everything, course syllabi, assessments presentations, notes, archives, the calendar.

This text is a translation from methods to prototyping of Marloes' introduction to Susan Leigh Star's text ''Misplaced Concretism and Concrete Situations: Feminism, Method, and Information Technology'', written during SI23 Quilting Infrastructures. https://pad.xpub.nl/p/si23-310124

2023-2024

T3: April - June 2024

XPUB1: This trimester the prototyping sessions are incorporated into the Special Issue 24: ON LOITERING and other forms of in-situ computation

T1: September - December 2023

XPUB1: This trimester the prototyping sessions are incorporated into the Special Issue 22: Radio Worm: Protocols for an Active Archive

XPUB2: Prototyping/2023-2024/XPUB2

Prototyping booklets

2022-2023

T3: April - June 2023

XPUB1: This trimester the prototyping sessions are incorporated into the Special Issue: TTY

XPUB2: Prototyping/2022-2023/XPUB2

T2: January - March 2023

XPUB1: This trimester the prototyping sessions are incorporated into the Special Issue: Candles Tarot Joysticks

XPUB2: Prototyping/2022-2023/XPUB2

T1: September - December 2022

XPUB1: This trimester the prototyping sessions are incorporated into the Special Issue: How Do We Library That?

XPUB2: Prototyping/2022-2023/XPUB2

Prototyping booklets

+ https://git.xpub.nl/manetta/notebooks-in-the-room

2021-2022

April - June 2022

XPUB1: Prototypology during Category:Implicancies

January - March 2022

XPUB1: Prototyping/2021-2022/T2 during Category:Productive_Play

September - December 2021

XPUB1: Prototyping/2021-2022/T1 during Special Issue #16: Vernacular Language Processing

XPUB2: Prototyping/2021-2022/XPUB2

Prototyping booklets

+ https://git.xpub.nl/manetta/notebooks-in-the-room

2020-2021

Prototyping/2020-2021/T1 during Special Issue #13: Words for the Future

Prototyping/2020-2021/T2/Prototyping Times during Category:Situationist_Times

2019-2020

Prototyping 2019/2020

2018-2019

Trimester 2:


# Trimester 1:

2015/2016

For this year's prototyping, see Prototyping 2015/2016.

Prototyping is about conducting research through an iterative process of making, communicating & testing, and reflection. Prototyping asks you to combine practical technical knowledge with your own research questions linked to the thematic projects, and encourages producing designs that "work" not only in terms of the technology, but on a communicative level to explore particular ideas.

Through prototyping, fundamental concepts of programming will be explored in the context of tools and methods familiar to those with a design background. Graphical interfaces will be contrasted with command-line interfaces as a means of going beyond traditional "iconic" and "user-friendly" ways of working - for example with Graphical User Interfaces and What You See Is What You Get tools - toward the procedural and text-based . Effort will be placed at finding ways to bridge traditional top-down design tools with a code-oriented approach. You do not need to have a particular level of technical experience. What is expected of you is an active engagement with and willingness to explore networked digital media technology. Students of all levels and previous experience will be encouraged to stretch their ways of working and knowledge to hopefully explore previously unknown or uncomfortable territory and broaden their palette of tools.

During the prototyping sessions, you will develop skills in being able to demonstrate and communicate your work to different kinds of audiences and in a variety of situations (online, installation, writing, in-person). To achieve this you will be required to work on different stage of prototyping from proof-of-concepts works to fully functional objects. While the prototyping sessions will allow you to explore the different stage of technical production and communication, you should keep in mind that prototype works are not sufficient to pass a thematic project. See the thematic project section for the requirements.

Archive

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