User:)biyibiyibiyi(/RW&RM 04

Session 1 12_09_19

PREPARATION FOR THE FIRST SESSION

Be prepared to give an account of where you are at with your self-directed research and talk about what you want to achieve this year. Think concretely about what you want to make, how you are going to make it and why you are going to make it. Consider: What possibilities are open to you? (It is understood that making a final project is a process and things will change as you work on it)

an account of self-directed research and what I want to achieve this year

ACCOUNT: I will start my account of self-directed research by reinterpreting the thematics from Special Issues last year. SI1, Entreprecariat: Start Up, Burn Out provided a observation of and empathyization towards global work culture in context of rising digital economy. It's an observation because we held a distance towards these phenomenons, the distance in a school building; but it's a course of emphatization because we are enveloped under these situations, contexts and environments. The publication produced in last October Ten Theses on Life Hacks is an outcome our emphatization. In the publication we delineated ten theses on life hacks. Last December we launched IRIS 0.5 which is a speculative smart agent placed in a office work environment. In parallel to the SI, I become interested in topics of digital embodiment and perception within this larger context. In SI2 we had hands on approach to DIY networking and decentralized infrastructure. In retrospect, decentralization echoed with the entreprecariat-self. How to interpret the relationship between the two? acts of decentralization are atomized selves on hold, with resistances, in doubt, in speculation, in contemplation. In SI3 we are exposed to the landscapes of collective "resistant" practices further, in context of knowledge privatization and shadow libraries. We were exposed to issues of taxonomy of knowledge, (?)legal spaces, organizations of activities (how to run workshops in context, for instance). The excursions to Rietveld Library, workshops and lectures from external guests (Eva Weinmayr, Dubravka Sekulic, Marcell Mars, Dusan Barok, Bodo Balasz, and in representatives of active organizations - The Piracy Project of AND publishing, Monoskop, aaaaarg,) greatly exposed us to how thing are operating in practicality and larger contexts (Eastern Europe, for example, which entangled different historical implications than Western Europe)

ACHIEVE: I want to weave the thematics organically to provide the backdrop for outlining the upcoming thesis and prototyping graduation project this year. I am also interested in media archeology, which can find shared threads with the upper mentioned Special Issues. To name a few: advent of personal computing and DIY culture in 1960s; advent of APRANET (which have facets of decentralization/centralization worth unravelling); sequential to advent of APRANET is World Wide Web, hyperlinks, and derivatives of hyperlinks such as hyper-literature. (which, then at the time, are instances that provides for decentralizing potentials.)

Against the backdrop of these research I would like to frame a context, build a practice that's conducted with speculative/fictional/playful/convivial/ decentralization.

what I want to make, how I am going to make it, why I am going to make it

continued from above: Against the backdrop of these research I would like to frame a context, build a practice that's conducted with speculative/fictional/playful/convivial/ decentralization.

which consists of from now: concerns to household electronics, infrastructural networking device (so far router, server, vpn; but to say infrastructural doesn't only refer to information infrastructure but much more), publishing (web publishing, hyper-publishing, zine making) as a gesture of voicing the self, gaining presence of unauthorized peripheries.

how am I going to make it? does this how mean how practically?

what possibilities are open to me

What material from the 'text on method' you wrote last trimester could be useful for the proposal?

What material have you written (descriptions of work , assignments for last year's methods class, the methods of annotation you developed &c) which you can use? Review the written feedback from tutors you got from previous assessments and have it available for reference during the first session

exercize warm up: what how why

questioner, note taker, interviewee, three roles rotates

writing proposal in two hours

What do you want to make a start?

Before making, I would like to pave contexts. I find themed, contextualized projects a comprehensive way to situate practices, which can include multifarious forms of practical outcome, for example publications, exhibitions, and workshops.

I would like to contextualize my projects in relevance to DIY hacktivism, zine culture, network theory, interface studies, and media archeology. These contexts shed important lights on my current practices for the following reasons: 1. The current dialog of network/infrastructure decentralization find roots in the advent of World Wide Web, which is sequential to APRANET, a early prototype of modern internet first tested in U.S. military; 2. zine making, compared to authorized, centralized forms of publishing, allow more immediate, convivial forms of expression. Its immediacy and conviviality foster dialogs and proximities within communities of (un)likeminded people. Zine making also found antecedents in early network/mail art. 3. research into network theory (cybernetics) and media archeology shed light upon present technological phenomenons we witness. 4. the fields of interest entangles each other. For example, the studies of smart cities interpret city spaces as interface that extract information and form feedback loops. This observation reveal relevancy in subset fields of media archeology, interface studies, and network theory/cybernetics. 5. hacktivism and DIY culture is a way to counter centralization.

To get my practice on wheels, my prototypes will include contents and tools in hybrid publishing. The contents can be manifestos, user manuals, interviews, and archives; the tools I hope to develop are to facilitate the content. It also had relevancy to open source culture, which adopts more transparent, modular methods of developing tools. Few examples I am interested about publishing tools include, 1. command line tool to generate layout for zines; 2. hosting websites on git, which offer unique advantages - commits from group authors, show projects in their development, transparency about project components 3. bash script to generate a folder of photos to a html webpage 4. script to do imposition, to generate folder of photos to pdf.

Prior to starting the semester I initiated a project called Contextual Electronics, which take form in a web publication and zine and travel in conferences. It's a starting point of trying to develop discrete yet connected forms of output under an umbrella of themed, contextualized project.

How do you plan to make it?

Describe how you will go about conducting your research through reading, writing and practice. In other words, through a combination of these approaches, you will explore questions or interests you have laid out in your general introduction. In this section you can help us understand how your project will come together on a practical level and talk about possible outcome(s). Of course, the outcome(s) may change as your research evolves, but it's important at this stage to have some concrete idea of how your project could come together as a whole.

I will conduct research in DIY hacktivism, zine culture, network theory, interface studies, and media archeology. The reading list will compose of literature from correspondent resources. As for writing, there are several layers of writing I employ. The Wiki is a good to to quickly take notes of news and literature which I found relevant, often coming from the browser. I write small comments underneath it such as how may the literature inform prototype experiments; I frequently archive web pages for reading in the browser, which compose a significant source of input information; As I dwell further to the topic, I print the literature in copies and annotate as I read along. As I become more lucid about the relationships between the entangling fields of research, I would like to curate/archive readers for each subset field to aid theoretical research.

The practice involves a significant portion of prototyping, which will happen in individual tinkering and tutorials from prototyping course. From prototyping courses last year, we passed a learning threshold and are able to, to a basic extent, work independently; if not, at least identify problems, realize realistically the scope of a project in mind, in difficulty, feasibility - how long will it take, what are the skills needed, who to ask for help, etc.

What is your timetable?

Before September 20th, which is the Our Networks conference, I would like to publish content that's planned for exhibition. Before the end of the month of September, I would like to publish my website, which will serve as a curating site and archive depot for past and upcoming projects. Before October 1st I would like to decide if I apply for participation in worm zine camp 2019. It's a good opportunity to fine tune my projects for exhibition. Amongst that I am mostly interested in pushing myself for 1. public speaking outside the school 2. try to contextualize my project in relation to zine making culture.

Meanwhile I would like to constantly gather literature and information which doesn't have a particular deadline.

In October I hope to succeed in producing some small prototypes, can be a DIY router, a publishing script.

Why do you want to make it?

because, to decentralize is to 1. collaborate 2. offer porosity 3. corroborate 4. stanch 5. speculate 6. combat imperialism 7. combat orientalism 8. expose 9.localize 10. contextualize 11. play 12. temporalize

Who can help you and how?

The Wiki is a valuable source. I often look up on the Wiki and found literature of somebody have done this, and follow the thread. It can be a good clue for finding help.

One of the scripts I mentioned, bash script to generate PDF, is from Michael (one from class and one from his website). He is very helpful in answering questions in relation to publishing interface.

I don't have very exact, determined names to pinpoint, and determined ways of receiving help. I was helped, in a way, by participating in gathers such as relearn, which I learned about the server with an attitude. Perhaps further looks into this project will reveal ways of how to identify who to receive help and how. (during relearn session this year in Rotterdam I participated in reviewing the feminist server manifesto, which inspired me to think of manifesto as a tool to develop reflective writing ).

Relation to previous practice

How does your research connect to previous projects you have done? Here you can use the descriptions you made during the Methods seminar or make new descriptions. Your Text on Method will also be useful in completing this section.

Relation to a larger context

Meaning practices or ideas that go beyond the scope of your personal work. Write briefly about other projects or theoretical material which share an affinity with your project. For example, if you are researching urban interventions, you might want to research about Situationist approaches to psychogeography, urban tactical media and activist strategies of reclaiming the streets. Or, if you want to explore the way data is tracked, you might touch upon the politics of data mining by referencing concerns laid out by the Electronic Frontier or highlight theoretical questions raised by Wendy Chun or others. (Keep in mind that we are *not* expecting well formulated conclusions or persuasive arguments in the proposal phase. At this juncture, it's simply about showing an awareness of a broader context, which you will later build upon as your research progresses.)

References

A list of references (Remember that dictionaries, encyclopedias and wikipedia are not references to be listed. These are starting points which should lead to more substantial texts and practices.) As with your previous essays, the references need to be formatted according to the Harvard method.)

Feel free to include any visual material to substantiate, illustrate or elucidate your proposal. For example use images to reference your work or that of others.

Back to Main Project Seminar:

http://pzwiki.wdka.nl/mw-mediadesign/index.php?title=Graduate_Seminar_2019-2020