User:Thijshijsijsjss/Notes on SI23

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Pre-SI

Before the launch of Special Issue 23 -- the wiki has been teasing me -- we have a Week of Workshops. I've heard the timing of these has been the point of much discussion over the years. Personally I appreciate them being scheduled after the December break. We've already worked together intensly. More importantly, we've not seen each other in a month. It's nice to start of with a personal touch before jumping into the SI.

Workshop: Creatives with Unseen Disabilities (CUD)

Karina Dukalska came in to give a workshop. I was pretty excited for this event, not only...

for its relevance within xpub,

the insights it might yield to better facilitate our group conversations (remember: emotional labour)

and its relation with the response some of us had after the SI22 release event at Worm,

but also

for its connections to GMT and interaction technology as a whole

(multimodal interaction, controller design, serious games, designing for disabilities)

and

because I must be confronted with an personal internal conflict I have not been acknowledging.

I am reminded that I once advised myself to always have a book of Elaine Aron on sensory processing sensitivity on my shelf. It is not there. Lately (lately) I have been dreading the unescapability of constant sensory overload more and more, not just mental, but physical, too, my eyes receive so much light, why won't my calves untense? At the start of the day, we were asked to express our needs at that moment in a subgroup. I was unable to. It's maybe my main takeaway of today:

Noticing a feeling, an obstacle or uncomfortableness is very different from noticing, formulating and voicing a need.

These seem to represent the bounds within which my whole spectrum of inexpertise is situated.

We were divided into subgroups once more, to discuss specific technologies and create the beginnings of templates to be used to facilitate certain needs when using these technologies. I had the pleasure of working with Chae! But there was so much to discuss.

100% accessibility does not exist.

After the workshop, I asked Karina about her feelings on AI. I've found myself to be hopeful once more. 100% accessibility does not exist... if there is a human design bottleneck. An AI powered service could tailor to an individual's needs with much more rigour, without it potentially being incompatible with another individual's needs.

Once again, I feel insecure about my wiki. What am I saying? Where's the poetry?

Workshop: Owning our Shit and Making it Together!

Figurative tension

A two day workshop by Nor. The first morning, we were invited to discuss one particular question in pairs: are you achieving professional success? Of all the questions to discuss -- and I did appreciate the moment for an intimate conversation greatly -- this was one I found myself surprisingly apathetic towards, maybe in contrast to previous years. I want to allow myself this apathy. But, with all the pathia I posses, let me examine why this is.

Professional success is an odd metric, for it is no metric at all. Tell me, o Muse, the math of many devices:
*d ( x , x ) = 0
*If  x ≠ y , then  d ( x , y ) > 0 (Positivity) 
*d ( x , y ) = d ( y , x ) (Symmetry)
*d ( x , z ) ≤ d ( x , y ) + d ( y , z ) (Triangle Inequality)
For any binary function d presenting the difference in professional success in instances x and y, one needs only inspect the property of symmetry to find that it is no metric. It is the individuality of instances x and y, their temporality, that prevents comparability. Hence, it is a function of both time and person, how to assess success.

All my previous so-called metrics have been turned into swines. 
I must now ignore temporality once more.
And I'm doing lots of stuff. New stuff.
In that sense, yes, I am achieving definition. Blow me away, Aeolus.

Finally, I may listen.

I did feel powerful Friday when walking back to Rotterdam Central Station. Maria, you might wonder, I called by mother that evening.

Week 3

SI23 Kickoff

A week that...
    has a very appealing off button
    does not know when to be silent
    might be convincing to bread hungry seagulls feasting on your evenings
    is looking for a room

This trimester we will follow a structure that is more customary for the Special Issues: Monday => SI with guest editors Cristina and Alice, Tuesday => Prototyping with Manetta and Joseph, Wednesday => Methods with Lídia and or Steve and or Marloes. I've noticed the nervosity I observed last week has persisted -- it must be my general state of mind these days -- and there was no Aglaia this time to introduce me.

That said, I also feel excitement for the new project. The self-contained, intimate sociality of the web quilt speaks to me (amidst the evergrowing confining openness of modern day digital culture). On a meta level, I have a feeling it will nicely continue the ongoing examination of collaborative versus distributive. I expect the readings and mon-technical conversations surrounding this topic to be wholly new to me though. I must remind myself that there is no expectation to talk.

Chopchop's reign / the domain it must serve

Git commit -m "Feed me paper"

Prototyping mini session and regularly sized session

But for now, we started with yes-technical conversation in a prototyping mini session.

cd ~/.ssh/
ssh-keygen -t ed25519
ssh-copy-id thijsoid@145.24.139.16

+--[ED25519 256]--+    proxy jumping --->    ost xvm_jump
|       =++o++    |                          User jump
|      @++ B=..   |                          Hostname 194.61.65.6
|     Xo= * o=.   |                          Port 2501
|    o =o= ...+   |                          Identityfile ~/.ssh/jump
|     .o=S+ . .E  | <--- My ssh keychain            
|     .  = B .    |                          Host chopchop
|         B o     |                          Hostname 10.0.0.16
|        . +      |                          User USERNAME
|         .       |                          ProxyJump xvm_jump
+----[SHA256]-----+                          Identityfile ~/.ssh/id_ed25519

https://git.xpub.nl/XPUB/SI23
├── README.md                  
├── .gitignore                 
└── web                        
    ├── index.html             
    └── quilt                  
        ├── quilt.css          
        ├── quilt.html         
        └── quilt.js           

Immediately we started with populating the webquilt. See here:

• The webquilt
• The table
• My userpage

I then had to disappear for a while (which upon reflection really helped my energy levels for the day). I returned to a state of commotion. In response to the famous Hungarian folk dance quicksort video, we were doing a human computing exercise, in which a pair played the role of a Git repo, and the others could pull and push. It was amazing. For all the times I've had the pleasure to be introduced to Git, this one had the liveliness all the others lacked. Polite pulling was a practise I hope we do not carry over to digital Git.

---

yay Lídia and Steve are back and hi Marloes has joined us

Editorial team 2, space, flooded, caretaker, did not do a good job

is chopchop a space or a place?

---

misc: left laptop, good result (walking) no wiki edits outside of school hours on school days Message to Manetta

Methods

Wednesday, we got an introduction to Wordquilt and were divided into three editorial groups. We chose the keyword 'space' to discuss today.

I did not pull my weight during this class. Not only was I unable to contribute meaningful connections to the conversation, I also feel like I failed my voluntarily self-appointed role of caretaker. I felt uncomfortable and have been embarrassed all weekend. Was my head flooded at the time, and was faalangst kicking in with this 'new group'? Sure, but that's no excuse. Even though there's emotional labour to do in a group, there's also similar labour to be done by yourself beforehand, so that you're able to dedicate yourself to the groupwork. I have been failing these preparatory steps.

Throughout the weekend I've wondered: should I discuss this with my editorial group, or not? Is it my professional responsibility to do so, or is it my professional responsibility to deal with this outside of class?

Groeiende niet helder omlijnde onzekerheid

Hoewel ik in dit wikidagboek open en eerlijk poog te zijn, behoud ik normaliter een afstand (noem het een poging tot professionaliteit) tussen daadwerkelijke gedachten en gevoelens ontstaan rondom xpub, en de alomvattende cycli die je hoofd zo kunnen consumeren, maar een oorsprong hebben in een fundamenteler stukje mentale gezondheid. Ik merk dat dit steeds moeilijker wordt. Wederom voel ik een tweestrijd: ben ik 'verantwoordelijk' dit voor mezelf te laten, of juist om het hier toe te voegen (waarbij de verantwoordelijkheid vooral tegenover mijzelf is). Alles voelt als falen en het enige dat ik wil is vervagen. Ik weet dat dit voorkomt uit gewik en geweeg met mijn mentale gezondheid op een ander, meer uitgestrekt vlak. Maar het onderscheid maken wordt steeds moeilijker.

Week 4

Monday

A loaded day. Reading Cloud Cosmogram with Editorial group. A talk by Marloes.

Go Away Green, Bye Bye Blue (wiki), Dim Dim Thijs. I really, really can't do this.

Tuesday -- E-reader hacking; no appetite for destruction; appretite for plotting

Butter setup. Etherpads. Hosting my own wiki?? After class I talked to Joseph about the broken E-reader (Kobo Glo HD) I brought to the studio. I seems to be possible to put a Linux distro on it. The screen is borken, but we want to connect it to the digital price tags. Joseph shared these links:

• Inkbox standard and rooted kernel.
• Inkbox boot flags
• Inkbox installation instructions

Continuing our fantasies of striking against the cloud, we are tasked this week with adding a website to the quilt that should aim to use many resources, and should ideally break the internet. I have talked alot (with other classmates, with Michael, within internal monologue) about the wonderful similarities in character in our group. However, this appetite for destruction, I don't seem to possess.

The quilt is exciting to me as a playground for microprojects. I should. I'm so clouded. Maybe birthday countdown site.

Pen Plotter Party Prep Party

Victor, Joseph and Manetta got together to discuss a dedicated pen plotter party ([plotter-party pad]). This will be held Febuary 12th! Todos:

• Design, plot and distribute flyers
• Update Plotter main wiki page: explicit links (for printed zine), more projects and imagery.
• Finish Plothatching workflow page: add steps for crosshatching, inkscape and ideally Victor's HPGL export and Chiplotle workflow.
• Consider making another zine: maybe the plothatching workflow (requires explicit links), maybe with showcase of penplots, maybe something else
• 3d print some more alignment tools and custom pen holders.
• Order and solder some more connectors.
• Finish the plotter station: create the lower shelf, setup a computer (butter?, running Inkscape and Chiplotle) connected to a plotter.

In the following days I was approached by Anita and Chae to help out. Nice! We'll need to do some thinking about the activities also. What has been mentioned so far:

• Twitch plays Plotter
• Worksheet (aking to the mazes)
• Plotter workshop (bring your own images)

Seamfulness

I am a big enthusiast of seamful living -- the explicit show of attention, the intimacy of transparancy. [TODO photo of pants patches] How does it relate to self-documentation? And to self-actualisation? In that regard, I am inspired by DIY extremists like Van Neistat (e.g. todo lists and tiny shelves. This flavor of awareness is important to me. This weekend, I was talking to my mother and reflected on a period ~1,5 years ago in which I was trying out a particular medication. In retrospect, it seems I was able to do things in this period that I would otherwise struggle with to an extreme extent. There was a 'smoothness' to this period, allowed by a 'smoothness' in my brain as a result of this medication. Yet, I remember feeling frustrated in this period, and feeling lost and full of questions about identity and meaning. This smoothness prevented me from accessing the regular lanes of thinking I would normally cruise to process decisions and experiences. This inhibition, the removal of this processing step, made things seamless on the surface, sure. But it appears that in those seams is where I find meaning (or a chuck of it). The struggle of these imperfections is exactly the challenging joy of being.

I feel the need to exercise the muscles used in detecting seams, and impose a challenge on myself to find some in my life this weekend. Some immediate questions while writing this: seamfulness in my wiki entries? The dread of maybe moving -- why is the seamfulness the most exciting part?

These thoughts were sparked, indirectly, by the methods classes this Wednesday and last week. Also:

• Molleindustria (I still need to contact Lídia to chat about games some time)
• I was reminded of the Facebook Labor Union, a project by WdKA alumnus Jeroen Icks, who I met the day I got introduced to xpub.

Week 5

Every Monday I feel like I'm failing.

In the checkin today I was asked 'have you found any seams yet?' and I wasn't able / didn't dare to answer. Failing.

Three accounts of fiction:

• Documenting through Dialogue [I have scoured the pad but cannot find the pdf with the evil librarian and the user! Investigation continues...] Update: Christina helped me find it: https://www.metamute.org/sites/www.metamute.org/files/pml/irational-orgs-traum.pdf/
• Map is the territory, a digital zine intended as an introduction to the command line in wizardly fashion.
• The chopchop oracle: presenting a welcome message randomly selected from a pool of diverse samples.

I feel very much inspired by these ways of bringing concepts that are typically thought of as formal and archaic to live. It might seem natural or maybe even trivial to some, but this is so far removed from the way information has been presented to me in previous academic endeavours.

Tuesday

Michael thaught prototyping today to introduce us to Jupyter Notebooks (my Python contains multitudes, it is a mess), invite us to play with ImageMagick (), and discuss an an essay by him. This latter part in particular was great -- it might have been the most suggestive / provocative class yet. I will maybe add a reflection on the text here.

BREAKING NEWS It is offical: I am moving to Rotterdam. Op dit moment zie ik alleen angst en zorgen en vind ik het helemaal niet leuk. Het maakt me verdrietig. Maar mensen, waaronder een eerdere ik, hebben me verteld dat dit een goede keuze is.

Wednesday

A difficult day.

How can we help each other reading through these texts? When does editing (accidentally) become formative? Brush stroke editing, structural edting, line editing.

Week 6

A check-in with check-ins

[I intend to elaborate on this section later, currently the spark is not quite there]

+ Updating eachother and tutors

+ Communicating with tutors what would be useful for us to get out of this class

+ Moment to have opened your mouth

- moment to perform (for me, sets the tone of failing)

- sometimes a moment to express, not necessarily to be heard (by the whole group) (to get stuff off your mind to be fresh for the group convo)

Brief Diary entries

Monday

We started (after the check-in -- I mentioned the postcard project) with a discussion on the word 'host': a radio host, the host of a parasite, the host of a dinner party, but what does it mean to be a guest? (We read an excerpt of a text by Derrida, who was uncannily namedropped in the book I was reading this weekend -- the quilt of my life is showing its seams) In the concept of Bleja I have found a deep resonance. How often do I wish for a human relationship like the one I have with my cat?

The afternoon was spend with playing this terminal game: https://github.com/veltman/clmystery. This was a surprising direction for me, but a welcome one. As stated, the different forms of 'fictionalization' have been very inspiring to me. Games are a powerful way to introduce playfulness. To me, it is also a way of seamfulness, in the sense that the experience is given to a player, and only through their personal experience seams will emerge.

This partuclar game was nice, though mechanically not super inspiring. Senka and I worked on our own terminal game. I was keen to (1) explore how to achieve a (minimal) sense of immersion through a terminal interface, (2) make it simple, i.e. a limited set of actions, (3) make it polished, or the 1-hour equivalent of that (yes, I felt a pressure because I have voiced that this is both an interest of mine as well as a practice I've had previous experience in, but also I was decently confident in the feasibility of this. This was a rare moment of confidence in the SI, and I'm happy to have noticed it).

• I felt inspired by https://huienlin.itch.io/fruit-am-i
• Currently the game can be found on chopchop in home/senak/electrifying. Run cat README.md

Tuesday: twitch plays plotter!

Wednesday: CoC

Week 7

Monday: playing games, checkins, reading beautiful seams text, discussing consent in (re)desinging chopchop, physical quilting, talking about the upcoming publication.

Pen Plotting Party.

Tuesday: I had not been feeling well the past few days, and the pen plotting party was the final nail in the coffin. I successfully skipped class. I have tried this once before, but did not succeed that time and went to school anyway around 12:00. I am divided into three parts: 1 good on me for claiming agency over my self care needs, 2 but this class sounded so interesting (text adventures with Manetta), 3 but I have been informed that the actual activities were intro level Python, which I am not sad to have missed.

Wednesday: not very CoC action with editorial group. Mid trimester group convo (online). Games games games.

Misc: I feel like this page is not getting the love and attention it deserves. I don't think this is because I have successfully found a cure for obsessive documentation -- in fact this week I have been feeling fondly about documenting as an artistic practice -- but rather that the feelings of failing are seeping into this space too.

Week 8: BREAK

everybody's moving
everybody's moving
everybody's moving
please don't leave me to remain
in the waiting room

Week 9

Monday

Confident? Communication group QnA with Mica

Quilting

In this section, I will present an overview of some of the quilt pages I contributed to. To make a page part of the webquilt, first add these innter lines to the head of your page:

<head>
    <script src="https://issue.xpub.nl/23/quilt/quilt.js" data-cutfilename="false"></script>
    <link rel="stylesheet" type="text/css" href="https://issue.xpub.nl/23/quilt/quilt.css">
</head>

Next, add the public url to https://issue.xpub.nl/23/quilt/quilt.html. When this table is full and you want to create more space, be careful: apparantly it is crucial that there are an equal number of rows and columns.

User Page

Volume Plotting

A website with the volume to HPGL functionalities that I made during zinecamp.

• Find it on the quilt here
• Dedicated wiki page

Random Page

Birthday Countdown

Velourian Library

^ click the header for a link to the velourian library