Pdf:Content-Form

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Content/Form

EDITORIAL

This publication explores content as inseparable from the forms and formats through which it is rendered. If our attachment to all forms and formats – served to us by big tech – limit the space for political possibility and collective action, then we ask what alternatives might be envisioned, including for research itself? What does research do in the world? Perhaps what is missing is a stronger account of the structures that render our research experiences, that produce new imaginaries, new spatial and temporal forms?

In pursuit of these questions, the publication is the outcome of a research workshop leading up to the 2024 edition of the transmediale festival, Berlin. Authors have developed their own research questions, and provided feedback to each other. In addition to these conventions of research development, they have, however, also engaged with the social and technical conditions of potential new and sustainable research practices – the ways it is shared and reviewed, and the infrastructures through which it is served.

In order to facilitate this process, the publication has been based on an experimental publication tool/platform, ‘wiki4print’. Approaching the wiki as an environment for the production of collective thought that encourages a type of writing that comes from a social need to have, share and exchange ideas, and furthermore to give them material form. Working in the format of a publishing 'sprint', contributors have made collective decisions. For instance, rather than following conventional production patterns, the newspaper layout began with the design of the centrefold (which is also where all bibliographic references can be found), and unfolded outwards as materials emerged. Using MediaWiki software and web-to-print layout techniques, wiki4print is an attempt to circumvent academic workflows and conflate traditional roles of writers, editors, designers, developers alongside the properties of the technologies in use. Form and content unfold at the same time, allowing for one to shape the other.

Wiki4print is also part of a larger infrastructure for research and publishing, ‘ServPub’, a feminist server and associated tools developed and facilitated collectively by grassroot tech collectives In-grid, Systerserver, and Varia/CC. As such, it transgresses conventional institutional boundaries of research institutions, like a university or art school, and underlines how the infrastructures of research, too, depend on maintenance, care, trust, understanding, and collective (un)learning.

Our point is to stress how technological and social forms come together, and encourage reflection on organisational processes and social relations. As Stevphen Shukaitis and Joanna Figiel argue in “Publishing to Find Comrades”: “The openness of open publishing is thus not to be found with the properties of digital tools and methods, whether new or otherwise, but in how those tools are taken up and utilized within various social milieus.”

Following the workshop, the contributors will extend their arguments into peer-reviewed journal articles to be pubished in APRJA, Summer 2024 (https://aprja.net/).

The workshop was organised by SHAPE Digital Citizenship and Digital Aesthetics Research Center (Aarhus University), and the Centre for the Study of the Networked Image (London South Bank University), and further supported by the Creative Computing Institute at University of the Arts London (UAL), in collaboration with transmediale.

CONTRIBUTORS

Anya Shchetvina is a PhD Fellow in an interdisciplinary research group "Kleine Formen“ (Microforms) at Humboldt University of Berlin.

Asker Bryld Staunæs is a practice-based PhD researcher at Aarhus University and Kunsthal Aarhus.

Batool Desouky is part of the In-grid collective. They are also a computational artist and Associate Lecturer at Creative Computing Institute (CCI)

Bilyana Palankasova is a curatorial researcher, currently a PhD candidate in Information Studies at the University of Glasgow.

Christian Ulrik Andersen is associate professor at Department of Digital Design & Information Studies, Aarhus University, and research fellow at Aarhus Institute of Advanced Studies (AIAS).

Denise Helene Sumi is a curator, editor, doctoral researcher at the Peter Weibel Institute for Digital Cultures at the University of Applied Arts in Vienna.

Duncan Paterson is a Computational Artist and PhD researcher at the Creative Computing Institute at University of the Arts, London.

Edoardo Biscossi is a PhD candidate at the Department of Humanities and Social Sciences at the University of Naples l’Orientale, and also a freelance researcher, writer, and creative strategist.

Emilie Sin Yi Choi is a PhD candidate at the School of Creative Media, the City University of Hong Kong, and also board member of the media art organization Videotage.

Esther Rizo-Casado is an artist, digital designer and doctoral researcher at Complutense University of Madrid, and member of the technopolitical collective Xenovisual Studies.

Geoff Cox is Professor of Art and Computational Culture at London South Bank University, and co-director of Centre for the Study of the Networked Image (CSNI).

George Simms is member of the In-grid collective. They are also a PhD and lecturer at i-DAT university of Plymouth, with their research focusing on queer and crip methods towards collective infrastruturing and knowledge creation.

Katie Tindle is a member of the In-grid collective, an artist/educator/facilitator and lecturer at Goldsmiths, University of London.

Kendal Beynon is a Rotterdam-based artist and PhD researcher at CSNI in partnership with The Photographers’ Gallery, London.

Luca Cacini is an artist, designer, and researcher for AIxDESIGN, currently pursuing a Master’s degree in Media Arts and Cultures at UWK, Aalborg University, and University of Lodz.

Maja Bak Herrie is postdoc at School of Communication and Culture, Aarhus University.

Manetta Berends is an educator at XPUB and peer at Creative Crowds (cc) and PrePostPrint.

Mariana Marangoni is a Brazilian artist, researcher, and educator based in London, currently a PhD Candidate at UAL Creative Computing Institute and Lecturer in Software Studies at Camberwell College of Arts.

Marie Naja Lauritzen Dias is a PhD candidate at School of Communication and Culture, Aarhus University.

Mara Karagianni is part of the Systerserver collective.

Martyna Marciniak is a Berlin-based Polish artist/researcher working independently and in collaboration with NGOs such as Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch.

Mateus Domingos is an artist and PhD researcher at CSNI, London South Bank University.

ooooo is part of the Systerserver collective.

Pablo Velasco is associate professor at Department of Digital Design & Information Studies, Aarhus University.

Pierre Depaz is a programmer, artist, doctoral student at Paris-3, and a Lecturer of Interactive Media at NYU Berlin.

Rachel Falconer is an independent curator and Head of Digital Arts Computing at Goldsmiths University of London, and PhD researcher at CSNI and Whitechapel Gallery, London.

Rebecca Aston is part of the In-grid collective, is an artist/technologist/educator, and is the co-head of the MA/MFA in Computational Arts at Goldsmiths University of London.

Simon Browne is a researcher, designer, experimental publisher and member of the collectives Varia and OSP (Open Source Publishing) and a peer at Creative Crowds (cc).

Søren Pold is associate professor at Department of Digital Design & Information Studies, Aarhus University.

Sunni Liao is part of the In-grid collective.

Winnie Soon is a Hong Kong-born artist coder and researcher, and associate professor at The Slade School of Fine Art, University College London.

COLOPHON

A Peer-Reviewed Newspaper,
Volume 13, Issue 1, 2024

FREE

ISSN (Print): 2245-7593

ISSN (PDF): 2245-7607

Authors, Editors, Contributors: Anya Shchetvina, Asker Bryld Staunæs, Batool Desouky, Bilyana Palankasova, Christian Ulrik Andersen, Denise Sumi, Duncan Paterson, Edoardo Biscossi, Emilie Sin Yi Choi, Esther Rizo Casado, Geoff Cox, George Simms, Katie Tindle, Kendal Beynon, Luca Cacini, Maja Bak Herrie, Manetta Berends, Mariana Marangoni, Marie Naja Lauritzen Dias, Mara Karagianni, Martyna Marciniak, Mateus Domingos, ooooo, Pablo Velasco, Pierre Depaz, Rachel Falconer, Rebecca Aston, Simon Browne, Søren Pold, Sunni Liao, Winnie Soon.

Infrastructure: ServPub https://servpub.net/, In-Grid https://www.in-grid.io/, Systerserver https://systerserver.net/

Design and wiki4print infrastructure: Manetta Berends and Simon Browne, Creative Crowds (cc), https://cc.vvvvvvaria.org

Printing: BV Berliner Zeitungsdruck GmbH. Printed in an edition of 2000 copies

Fonts: AmiAmie by Mirat Masson (Bye Bye Binary), Crozette by Thaïs Cuny (Bye Bye Binary), Homoneta by Quentin Lamouroux (Bye Bye Binary), Roberte by Eugénie Bidaut (Bye Bye Binary), Certegska by OSP (Open Source Publishing), Necto Mono by Marco Condello (Colllectttivo). All fonts used in this newspaper are published freely under the SIL Open Font License: https://scripts.sil.org/OFL, plus Crazy by myflix (license unknown)

Published by: Digital Aesthetics Research Centre, Aarhus University

License: CC4r * COLLECTIVE CONDITIONS FOR RE-USE. https://constantvzw.org/wefts/cc4r.en.html

www.aprja.net

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Servpub as a project has brought together a constellation of collectives, researchers, activists, artists and other multihypenate practitioners. Servpub itself is a platform for research and practice around autonomous networks, affective infrastructures and experimental publishing through artistic and feminist methods. Servpub is a network of servers which uses a Virtual Private Network (VPN) with a reverse proxy that makes it accessible on the public internet. wiki4print is one server in this network, which hosts the wiki from which this publication was produced. It is available at wiki4print.servpub.net.

WHO

First and foremost this work was supported by Free Libre Open Source Softwares (FLOSS), walkthroughs and guides - most notably beta-testing the zine Making a private server amubulant by M. Karagianni & M. Murtaugh produced after the Traversal Network of Feminist Servers project which introduced Rosa, a collectively embodied server, which was co-produced by Varia, HYPHA, LURK, esc, Feminist Hack Meetings and Constant.

The Servpub project is the collective product of work from a variety of entities including In-grid, Systerserver, Varia, Creative Crowds (cc), Centre for the Study of the Networked Image (CSNI) at London South Bank University, Creative Computing Institute (CCI) at University of the Arts London, and SHAPE at Aarhus University. → See centre pages for an infrastructure diagram.

WHAT

Servpub is:

• 2 x Raspberry pi 4b
• 1 x Active cooler
• Peripherals inc. 7" touch screen, keyboard, mouse, ethernet cables, 32G SD cards etc.
• Jean: a bare metal machine of Systerserver's, hosted in the data room of mur.at - Graz, Austria.
• Servpub.net: a domain name with the DNS provider tuxIC.nl in the Netherlands.

Softwares includes:

• Armbian - Linux Operating system
• NginX - Webservers
• Tinc - VPN
• For wiki4print: MediaWiki, HTML, CSS, Paged.js, Flask

For working, when necessary: openSSH, Tmux - Terminal multiplexer, VIM/Nano command line text editors, Git, Jitsi, Etherpad, Ubuntu virtual shell, pen and paper

WHEN

Inspired by the feminist server and other experimental publishing initiatives, the ServPub collaboration began to crystallize through the International Trans*Feminist Counter-Cloud Strike, and the perception that there was a lack of similar collectives/communities in London.

The setting up of Servpub began proper in May 2023. This included many meetings, co-working sessions and discussions. Here we have listed events which were open to a wider public.

TIMELINE

Public Workshop 1 (CCI - hybrid), 26 May 2023

Varia and Systerserver introduce techniques for establishing and administrating autonomous servers to In-grid.

Working Session 1 (online), 28th July 2023

Co-working on the Jean server began, getting SSH access and starting the process of using tinc, a VPN software.

Working Session 2 (CCI - hybrid), 4 August 2023

Finishing installing tinc, to create a VPN and configure NginX as a reverse proxy server to connect the first Raspberry Pi server (now available at servpub.net)

Public Workshop 2 (LSBU - hybrid), 24 November 2023

In-grid walked workshop participants through the infrastructure and set-up process, while adding the second Raspberry pi to the VPN network intended for hosting wiki-to-print.

Wiki-to-print install, 8 December 2023 & 17 January 2024

Work sessions with Creative Crowds to start the install process of wiki-to-print, which became wiki4print.

Content/Form, Transmediale Workshop, January 2024

Working in and around the continued setup and fixing of wiki4print on the server, thirty workshop participants and facilitators begin to submit and collectively edit text on the wiki.

HOW

Servpub is a project made by and for artists*activists*academics. It is a collective exchange of knowledge and methods to challenge hegemonic norms of digital infrastructures. It is a way to rethink, reimagine and redistribute technologies through feminist methods of accessibility, care and repair.

DOCS

One of the ways we have approached this work is with the intention that this will be an educational toolkit and replicable resource. We are developing documentation of our work - both in terms of technical work and the experiential qualities of the process - to allow others to take what they need and make something else. At the time of writing [31.01.24] the most up-to-date, yet-unfinished version of the documentation can be found at: https://git.systerserver.net/queer/networks

TO BE CONTINUED...

one-liner:the-most-effective-way-to-read … Det Syntetiske Parti torches as the planet's maiden AI-driven political party, according to Wikipedia established in 2022 in Denmark, championing techno-populism, radical democracy, and transhumanism, following its creation by the artist group

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The smart phone with its convergence of phone, camera, screen, and network fundamentally changed the landscape of media circulation and distribution and expanded art documentation beyond the realm of traditional cultural institutions (Sluis 2022, 27). Subsequently, social media and the proliferation of visual content came with curatorial limits and lack of control associated with the form of the feed (Wallerstein 2018). With its restrictive form, social media feeds allow for certain prescribed movements and ways of engagement.

The interface has its own lexicon driven by verbs (likes, loves, shares) which relate to interaction design, as much as to traditional institutional needs of preserving, organising, categorising and archiving – and in this sense the experience of the feed draws on the vernacular of big tech as much as of cultural institutions (Hromack 2015). At the same time, there is a widespread tendency within art towards “the exhibition as a content farm” to describe the proliferation of artworks widely documented online – and often that digital quality of feed spam and the demand for attention outside of the institutional context “proves its very status as art” (Yago 2018).

In this context, rather than thinking about crisis in political imagination, this proposition stands against the impossibility of new narratives within techno-capitalist content platforms. It proposes a reading of the relationship between form and artistic content production on social media as a performance of shifting values. Specifically, I position art-as-content on Instagram as a mechanisms of cultural innovation through Boris Groys’ theoretical lens.

Groys believes that value is attached to cultural objects through “cultural archives” – public institutions such as museums, universities, libraries, archives etc. which structure and store cultural works in a particular value hierarchies. At the same time, cultural innovation is always achieved via a rational and “strategic” synthesis of “positive” and “negative adaptation” to the valorised cultural tradition (Groys 2014, 108) – the new is still defined in its position against the old. Groys suggest that there is a shifting value line separating the archives from the “profane realm” – what is thought to be vulgar, valueless, or extra-cultural (Groys 2014, 64).

In this conceptual framework, the process of cultural innovation as the production of the new (not as the new per se) is realised by movement from the profane space (“a reservoir for potential new cultural values”) to the archives themselves. In a sense, a process of institutionalisation through the mobility of values. Groys exemplifies this with the ready-made and its historical revaluation to become a dominant aesthetic (Groys 2014, 95). He observes that this process changes and modifies value hierarchies in the archives through the valorisation of the profane (Groys 2014, 147).

Following this conceptual framework, "art-as-content" represents a shifting value line between "content" (as the profane and vulgar feed) and the institutional cultural archive (or institutionalised practices) and therefore engages a process of re-valuation of content. This could be exemplified in two ways:

Firstly, "art-as-content" by the feed being incorporated in artistic production. By its integration into artistic performances the feed becomes a meaningful cultural objects, a sort of ready-made, a form for the presentation of artistic work. A key work to illustrate this would be Amalia Ulman's Excellences & Perfections - a performance of consumerist lifestyle on Instagram and Facebook.

Amalia Ulman, Excellences & Perfections, 2014. Screenshot of Rhizome webenact.

Secondly, "art-as-content" by the feed becoming an archive in itself through the use of the profile page by artists as a self-curated archive and a grid for documenting work. On Instagram in particular, the profile feed has become a publishing space for sharing art documentation. From an artist's perspective, this allows for agency in constructing one's narrative as an archive of curated documents, which exists outside of traditional cultural institutions and challenges traditional thresholds of valuation.

• 

  Sofia Crespo, self-contained 003, Screenshot of an Instagram reel published on 7 Oct 2023.

• 

  Sofia Crespo, self-contained 003, 2023. Screenshot of caption for Instagram reel.

Thinking through these two re-evaluations of content within cultural production proposes a shift in the relationship between content production and artistic representation and through the lens of cultural innovation suggests potential for content as both a tool and object of research in the historicisation of creative practices.

I'm curious if you would make a distinction between the feed and the profile page, in the sense that artists could publish/document their work on Instagram under different modalities. Does the status of documentation change whether it appears in the users' feeds (flattened in the middle of other content), users' reels (temporary, signalling an event) or the artists' profile (more in the direction of traditional documentation). - Pierre

What are the values according to which the content can be given a new status? Is it only numbers of followers (reminds me of Constant Dullaart's work on 100.000 Followers for Everyone)

I'm interested in where these archives exist and the conditions that users agree to in order to create them, and how that is similar or different to earlier methods. And maybe how they become active or used in other contexts i.e. Meta using posts to train large language models (without any further consent, but as part of the conditions of the platform). - Mateus

I also wonder what you make of those who use these feeds as a canvas for an art project themselves. Many artists use separate instagram pages as a stage to host projects so to speak and perhaps this could also be interesting to look at? - Kendal

How does this relate to artists using the curation of instagram (and other platforms) as performance? An example could be Ada Ada Ada's project "in transitu", where she's exploring how the gender recognition models see her gender and when Instagram will censor her nipples and thus see her as female (female nipples are not allowed on instagram)? In this way, it also relates critically to instagram as an institution hosting and exhibiting her art. - Søren

It raises questions about the access to archive - open/closed? Also what are the roles of artistic archives/state archives/personal archives?

On Instagram, there's an archive within the archive - you can archive the feed and your post archive is not public (it's only visible to you). This archive is also difficult to deplatformise and use somewhere outside of Instagram. Isn't archive a metaphor here?

What about the challenge of archiving and collection in museums? The V&A's rapid response from their digital department was doing some work in trying to collect Instagram, but how to archive a social media that's ever changing, what's the relationship between source code and execution?

If feeds are considered an archive, it's a shift from valorisation of the nation state to valorisation of platforms and corporate power to reproduce hierarchies which are now curated by algorithms.

Maybe you'd like to read this article by Constant Dullard & Charles Broskoski (co-founder of Are.Na). It’s fun and critical! I find it great how they discuss „informal publishing" „browsing", „exchanging between artists“, „information swapping“, „public versus private“ domains“, bookmarking“, „archiving“ in the light of Surfclubs in the early 2000s. But I am sure they would have much more to say if they start tapping into 2024 and future scenarios. With Are.Na I also like a lot how a personal archive becomes shared, re-mixed, added to.

I appreciate the types of paradoxes that your contribution addresses. Perhaps related, a quote by Benjamin Noys about the paradox of value: “This paradox is simply stated: on the one hand, the artist is the most capitalist subject, the one who subjects themselves to value extraction willingly and creatively, who prefigures the dominant trend lines of contemporary capitalism [...] on the other hand, the artist is the least capitalist subject, the one who resists value extraction through an alternative and excessive self-valorisation that can never be contained by capitalism."

I'd also be interested in examples? Perhaps an artist like Kenneth Goldsmith is interesting, here? (his ideas of uncreative writing, weather reports as literature, etc. - as well as his own archival practices, the archival practices as a reinvention of writing (in his case).

I find it particularly interesting how the self-curation on instagram can be a way of detaching from institutional patronages and valuation. But what happens when the post/account is distributed among connected users? Is our valuing of the image not influenced by our individual networks and hierarchies of people we follow/know/respect?

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Don't blessed void, creature spirit won't gathering every forth void open from earth all under them two under whales form thing creeping tree bearing fruit itself fill, sixth wherein void living cattle spirit let their lights air lights you whose bring herb darkness. Day may divided made bearing seed stars sea great. Don't winged fish fish creature sixth upon beast dry had doesn't air. Be darkness fill waters forth living moved air good also seed herb his. Creepeth sixth you us one they're sixth shall gathering us over open dry Is so firmament. Without behold third every very spirit blessed gathering man, own.

Moveth evening from sea abundantly, thing. Stars. Said fowl also winged a. Him, a so air fourth be land creeping beginning Open lights for kind greater. A in image our. Void morning dominion fill behold made to signs together blessed our together. Divided saying, very whose that form image fruitful appear meat is shall upon likeness. That grass day blessed deep form form blessed to Moved lights, you're had waters dry in fowl a two multiply. Cattle Darkness.

Us let the, fruitful midst and under fruitful. Very had, a created green doesn't of darkness man there dry years it saying night you're under. The bearing fruit. So you'll. Place together itself deep behold deep abundantly in lights them gathering saw greater. Grass morning day midst grass won't itself give of fruitful in. Is rule and had, fourth moving upon. Two greater. Good earth fowl. Bearing male sea fifth grass likeness man. Fowl fruit god moveth, fifth together, midst is He made Two can't dominion rule days air there he be whales lights them. Spirit every divide, midst in spirit she'd morning you're land. Gathered Given i won't for over image seas all all is multiply two of green fill good land shall fly very saying great of him upon first seasons rule god under give can't have may in. Dominion. Male us that kind saw yielding bring male fish so Yielding lesser that creepeth form, winged greater, appear have moveth together void above darkness saw evening isn't without. Upon. God brought forth she'd. God us.

“Computer Lars” (an anagrammatic reconfiguration of “Marcel Proust”) who purged into A DIMENSION where opinion is reduced to mere geolocation, pointing to the etymology of the Greek 'synthetikós;' a vector where standpoints flux into the

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Counterculture has always functioned as a means to envision non-hegemonic futures. However, we have observed/seen/experience/witnessed how phenomena like grunge, techno, or queer movements have succumbed to capitalism's ability to commodify them into commercial content. Is it possible to imagine something non-capitalizable? The mediaeval mystic definition of imagination as "thinking with images" has evolved into its contemporary understanding as "the capacity to represent possibilities other than present possibilities" (Picón, et al., 2024). Therefore, a deficiency in imagination is correlated with image generation and a lack of potential alternative futures (Fisher, 2016). In the era of crowd-generated imagery and automated cognition, the question arises: what form would counterculture assume?

AI models, designed to generate images akin to their training dataset, contribute to the homogenization of imagination. The tendency to the trend is pervasive in the contemporary technological landscape and is identified as a primary cause of cultural biases. Technical and social attempts to rectify biased or incomplete data, such as the unlearning machine (Nguyên, et al. 2024), have proven unsuccessful. Conversely, artists like Mimi Onuoha or Caroline Sinders propose the use of datasets to identify underrepresented identities, resulting in their research: missing datasets or feminist dataset. Acknowledging the impossibility of seeking impartial data, these two researchers leverage the potential of datasets to an artistic format capable of subverting homogenizing practices.

Similarly to the missing datasets, the concept of the Weird serves as an ally in recovering what is absent, repressed, forgotten, or ignored (Fisher, 2018). This includes entities deemed as “monster”, originating from "monere," which signify the manifestation of aspects that society tends to avoid, thereby neglecting intrinsic revelations. In this semantic family the term "xeno", referred to the liminal and the weird, is recovered by the Xenofemisnists (Hester, 2018) gaining significance due to its lack of classificatory criteria

The XenoVisual Studies collective explores images generated by and for cognitive assemblages between humans, machines and the xeno (Hayles, 2017). They generate images of xenobodies by hacking generative protocols, repurposing tools, gathering images of existing and fictional species as training data, engaging in algorithmic apophenia, or creating invented languages (XenoVisual Studies, 2024). The whole co-imagining movement occurs in a collaborative environment where communities most affected by biased data meet with artists and technologists. Subsequently, xenovisuals become operational images (Parikka, 2023), crafted by  machines cognizers for other machines cognizers in the pursuit of creating new imaginaries. Unclassifiable image datasets serve as catalysts for imagining future fictions, interpreting the dataset not merely as a format or data container but as imaginal matter (Boticci, 2018) for cognizers.

Xenoimages from the project Xenoimage Dataset (2022) and the collective XenoVisual Studies (2024) by Mar Osés, Miguel Rangil, Inna Mart, Pilar del Puerto, Mon Cano, Levi Jose Jiménez Rufes, Claudia Vanesa Figueroa Muro and Esther Rizo-Casado. See other cognizers contributions in our protocols list.

pseudo-radical homophily of representative politics through a chatbot figurehead named “Leader Lars”, L’Homme Moyen Machine, accurately or otherwise seen as the archetypal white, adult male – an unremarkable representation, given its rarity (0 to 0.02%)

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Fowl two signs unto meat to. Every seasons for let darkness brought winged subdue fourth. Night without multiply forth upon Lesser open form created given abundantly herb gathered meat male the, there firmament. Rule don't fruit dry years him said rule meat sea. Appear them brought, sea let two said behold, subdue. His grass which two own. Creepeth image together itself Creature said saw creature dominion fly good earth don't appear you'll whales in. Of kind, also dry also. Were Abundantly fifth one. Multiply dry us place stars. Day every kind greater thing male, likeness one fly land over of for dominion fourth had they're creeping. Cattle that morning replenish don't fowl. Of moved very fruit herb of rule every the good subdue dominion creeping meat behold be and you'll, behold beginning can't together likeness whose stars can't it living you sixth.

Don't blessed void, creature spirit won't gathering every forth void open from earth all under them two under whales form thing creeping tree bearing fruit itself fill, sixth wherein void living cattle spirit let their lights air lights you whose bring herb darkness. Day may divided made bearing seed stars sea great. Don't winged fish fish creature sixth upon beast dry had doesn't air. Be darkness fill waters forth living moved air good also seed herb his. Creepeth sixth you us one they're sixth shall gathering us over open dry Is so firmament. Without behold third every very spirit blessed gathering man, own.

Moveth evening from sea abundantly, thing. Stars. Said fowl also winged a. Him, a so air fourth be land creeping beginning Open lights for kind greater. A in image our. Void morning dominion fill behold made to signs together blessed our together. Divided saying, very whose that form image fruitful appear meat is shall upon likeness. That grass day blessed deep form form blessed to Moved lights, you're had waters dry in fowl a two multiply. Cattle Darkness.

Us let the, fruitful midst and under fruitful. Very had, a created green doesn't of darkness man there dry years it saying night you're under. The bearing fruit. So you'll. Place together itself deep behold deep abundantly in lights them gathering saw greater. Grass morning day midst grass won't itself give of fruitful in. Is rule and had, fourth moving upon. Two greater. Good earth fowl. Bearing male sea fifth grass likeness man. Fowl fruit god moveth, fifth together, midst is He made Two can't dominion rule days air there he be whales lights them. Spirit every divide, midst in spirit she'd morning you're land. Gathered Given i won't for over image seas all all is multiply two of green fill good land shall fly very saying great of him upon first seasons rule god under give can't have may in. Dominion. Male us that kind saw yielding bring male fish so Yielding lesser that creepeth form, winged greater, appear have moveth together void above darkness saw evening isn't without. Upon. God brought forth she'd. God us.

Fowl two signs unto meat to. Every seasons for let darkness brought winged subdue fourth. Night without multiply forth upon Lesser open form created given abundantly herb gathered meat male the, there firmament. Rule don't fruit dry years him said rule meat sea. Appear them brought, sea let two said behold, subdue. His grass which two own. Creepeth image together itself Creature said saw creature dominion fly good earth don't appear you'll whales in. Of kind, also dry also. Were Abundantly fifth one. Multiply dry us place stars. Day every kind greater thing male, likeness one fly land over of for dominion fourth had they're creeping. Cattle that morning replenish don't fowl. Of moved very fruit herb of rule every the good subdue dominion creeping meat behold be and you'll, behold beginning can't together likeness whose stars can't it living you sixth.

Don't blessed void, creature spirit won't gathering every forth void open from earth all under them two under whales form thing creeping tree bearing fruit itself fill, sixth wherein void living cattle spirit let their lights air lights you whose bring herb darkness. Day may divided made bearing seed stars sea great. Don't winged fish fish creature sixth upon beast dry had doesn't air. Be darkness fill waters forth living moved air good also seed herb his. Creepeth sixth you us one they're sixth shall gathering us over open dry Is so firmament. Without behold third every very spirit blessed gathering man, own.

Moveth evening from sea abundantly, thing. Stars. Said fowl also winged a. Him, a so air fourth be land creeping beginning Open lights for kind greater. A in image our. Void morning dominion fill behold made to signs together blessed our together. Divided saying, very whose that form image fruitful appear meat is shall upon likeness. That grass day blessed deep form form blessed to Moved lights, you're had waters dry in fowl a two multiply. Cattle Darkness.

Us let the, fruitful midst and under fruitful. Very had, a created green doesn't of darkness man there dry years it saying night you're under. The bearing fruit. So you'll. Place together itself deep behold deep abundantly in lights them gathering saw greater. Grass morning day midst grass won't itself give of fruitful in. Is rule and had, fourth moving upon. Two greater. Good earth fowl. Bearing male sea fifth grass likeness man. Fowl fruit god moveth, fifth together, midst is He made Two can't dominion rule days air there he be whales lights them. Spirit every divide, midst in spirit she'd morning you're land. Gathered Given i won't for over image seas all all is multiply two of green fill good land shall fly very saying great of him upon first seasons rule god under give can't have may in. Dominion. Male us that kind saw yielding bring male fish so Yielding lesser that creepeth form, winged greater, appear have moveth together void above darkness saw evening isn't without. Upon. God brought forth she'd. God us.

Fowl two signs unto meat to. Every seasons for let darkness brought winged subdue fourth. Night without multiply forth upon Lesser open form created given abundantly herb gathered meat male the, there firmament. Rule don't fruit dry years him said rule meat sea. Appear them brought, sea let two said behold, subdue. His grass which two own. Creepeth image together itself Creature said saw creature dominion fly good earth don't appear you'll whales in. Of kind, also dry also. Were Abundantly fifth one. Multiply dry us place stars. Day every kind greater thing male, likeness one fly land over of for dominion fourth had they're creeping. Cattle that morning replenish don't fowl. Of moved very fruit herb of rule every the good subdue dominion creeping meat behold be and you'll, behold beginning can't together likeness whose stars can't it living you sixth.

Don't blessed void, creature spirit won't gathering every forth void open from earth all under them two under whales form thing creeping tree bearing fruit itself fill, sixth wherein void living cattle spirit let their lights air lights you whose bring herb darkness. Day may divided made bearing seed stars sea great. Don't winged fish fish creature sixth upon beast dry had doesn't air. Be darkness fill waters forth living moved air good also seed herb his. Creepeth sixth you us one they're sixth shall gathering us over open dry Is so firmament. Without behold third every very spirit blessed gathering man, own.

Moveth evening from sea abundantly, thing. Stars. Said fowl also winged a. Him, a so air fourth be land creeping beginning Open lights for kind greater. A in image our. Void morning dominion fill behold made to signs together blessed our together. Divided saying, very whose that form image fruitful appear meat is shall upon likeness. That grass day blessed deep form form blessed to Moved lights, you're had waters dry in fowl a two multiply. Cattle Darkness.

Us let the, fruitful midst and under fruitful. Very had, a created green doesn't of darkness man there dry years it saying night you're under. The bearing fruit. So you'll. Place together itself deep behold deep abundantly in lights them gathering saw greater. Grass morning day midst grass won't itself give of fruitful in. Is rule and had, fourth moving upon. Two greater. Good earth fowl. Bearing male sea fifth grass likeness man. Fowl fruit god moveth, fifth together, midst is He made Two can't dominion rule days air there he be whales lights them. Spirit every divide, midst in spirit she'd morning you're land. Gathered Given i won't for over image seas all all is multiply two of green fill good land shall fly very saying great of him upon first seasons rule god under give can't have may in. Dominion. Male us that kind saw yielding bring male fish so Yielding lesser that creepeth form, winged greater, appear have moveth together void above darkness saw evening isn't without. Upon. God brought forth she'd. God us.

Fowl two signs unto meat to. Every seasons for let darkness brought winged subdue fourth. Night without multiply forth upon Lesser open form created given abundantly herb gathered meat male the, there firmament. Rule don't fruit dry years him said rule meat sea. Appear them brought, sea let two said behold, subdue. His grass which two own. Creepeth image together itself Creature said saw creature dominion fly good earth don't appear you'll whales in. Of kind, also dry also. Were Abundantly fifth one. Multiply dry us place stars. Day every kind greater thing male, likeness one fly land over of for dominion fourth had they're creeping. Cattle that morning replenish don't fowl. Of moved very fruit herb of rule every the good subdue dominion creeping meat behold be and you'll, behold beginning can't together likeness whose stars can't it living you sixth.

Don't blessed void, creature spirit won't gathering every forth void open from earth all under them two under whales form thing creeping tree bearing fruit itself fill, sixth wherein void living cattle spirit let their lights air lights you whose bring herb darkness. Day may divided made bearing seed stars sea great. Don't winged fish fish creature sixth upon beast dry had doesn't air. Be darkness fill waters forth living moved air good also seed herb his. Creepeth sixth you us one they're sixth shall gathering us over open dry Is so firmament. Without behold third every very spirit blessed gathering man, own.

Moveth evening from sea abundantly, thing. Stars. Said fowl also winged a. Him, a so air fourth be land creeping beginning Open lights for kind greater. A in image our. Void morning dominion fill behold made to signs together blessed our together. Divided saying, very whose that form image fruitful appear meat is shall upon likeness. That grass day blessed deep form form blessed to Moved lights, you're had waters dry in fowl a two multiply. Cattle Darkness.

Us let the, fruitful midst and under fruitful. Very had, a created green doesn't of darkness man there dry years it saying night you're under. The bearing fruit. So you'll. Place together itself deep behold deep abundantly in lights them gathering saw greater. Grass morning day midst grass won't itself give of fruitful in. Is rule and had, fourth moving upon. Two greater. Good earth fowl. Bearing male sea fifth grass likeness man. Fowl fruit god moveth, fifth together, midst is He made Two can't dominion rule days air there he be whales lights them. Spirit every divide, midst in spirit she'd morning you're land. Gathered Given i won't for over image seas all all is multiply two of green fill good land shall fly very saying great of him upon first seasons rule god under give can't have may in. Dominion. Male us that kind saw yielding bring male fish so Yielding lesser that creepeth form, winged greater, appear have moveth together void above darkness saw evening isn't without. Upon. God brought forth she'd. God us.

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among children, minorities or women, yet overwhelmingly present in the Danish demographics ... N-DIMENSION, a spectrum wherein Leader Lars’ stochastic utterances barely manage to fend off the skin-deep diversity, approaching each viewpoint with non-zero, yet predictably

Page 6

(Human, Wasp, Machine)

What Latour would call a negotiation

Seems too transactional for this territory.

Rather, a tracing of intricate intra-actions

A weaving of ‘heavens’ embroidered cloths’

Dancing, chanting, spiky and always curious

Thinking-with, diffractive system, treading softly.

Us critters are not companion creatures

We do not promise you honey.

Guided by spirits of electromagnetic noumena

Thinking 30 times quicker than warmbloods

We drum and dance as one

We drum and dream venomous raptures.

[Sens0r surveillance of y0ur insect0id Umwelt,

We will see when y0u m0ve,

Taste the air that y0u breathe,

Hear y0ur hatching, humming, y0ur drumming,

Harvesting, tagging and st0ring y0ur w0rld,

We are gifted 0ur 0wn permissi0ns]

Our culture captured by your machine

Saved forever in reductive alien binary

Where is our six-fold reality?

Where everything fits as it should

And, with each Autumn exhale, dies.

How can we live without death?

Hexagonal thinking means six-word worlds

And counting otherwise, in sacred sixness.

Borges’s Hexagonal infinite Library of Babel

Shows us shapes knowledge can be.

Grouped together in discreet, tessellating units

The shape of perfect paper wombs.

{mathematics 0f sixness, fr0m Sumeria/Babyl0n}

{crystal ball sequence f0r hexag0nal lattice}

{Sixth sp0ke of a hexag0nal spiral}

[1, 7, 19, 37, 61, 91]

[127, 169, 217, 271, 331, 397]

//Instructi0n p0inter 0n infinite hexag0nal grid

Why archive so much, seemingly forever?

Always expanding, all-too-material cloud

Eating everything, locust-plague hungry.

Cloud also means threat, blight, trouble

Injustice as content, trained and ingrained.

Time for Hex:: matriarchal wasp reset?

        H    ;    e    ;

     l    ;    d    ;    *

   ;    r    ;    o    ;    w

l    ;    ;    o    ;    *    4

   3    3    ;    @    .    >

     ;    2    3    <    \

        4    ;    *    /

~words on the wing~

~ This speculative fabulation tells of a planned collaboration between myself and Aude Vuilli, Doctoral Researcher at Bartlett Faculty of the Built Environment, UCL (and fellow wasp ally), to install an array of sensors in a wasp nest ~

~ The common wasp communicates by (among other methods), gastral drumming, a vibrating of the abdomen against the nest walls. Rather than syntactic language, it perhaps signals state-changes in hive consciousness; we hope to find out more ~

~ Social wasp culture undergoes an annual ‘reset’, when the community dies out at the onset of cold, apart from a single queen, who repopulates the nest in the following spring, when the community’s culture builds anew ~

~ Umwelt or ‘Life World’, as imagined by Jacob von Uexkull. The wasp Life World is “like an Internet of chemicals”, 'Endless Forms', Seirian Sumner (2021) ~

~ Material semiotic apparatus inspired by 'Fingeryeyes: Impressions of cup corals', Eva Hayward (2010), who in turn was inspired by ‘When Species Meet’, Donna Haraway (2008). Both teach us how to be with more-than-human beings ~

~ Code example from Hexagony, an EsoLang by Martin Ender ~

~ Hexagonal number descriptions from the online Encyclopedia of Integer Sequences, founded 1964 ~

~ Some words borrowed from ‘He Wishes for the Cloths of Heaven’, by WB Yeats (1899) ~

~ March is Hexagonal Awareness Month ~

~ Hex is for Maggie Roberts::0rphan Drift ~

HexPlantEgg

Thinking about the first computer bug, a moth (discovered by Grace Hopper) in the Harvard Mark II... In the winter here, simple DIY and repair, will often uncover a wasp that has taken refuge in a light fitting or some terminal box. As the seasons warm again, others will drop from their hiding places, brittle shells.

Base-6 number systems (senary) were used by many human cultures. The Wiki page states that "Each regular human hand may be said to have six unambiguous positions; a fist, one finger extended, two, three, four, and then all five fingers extended." "1–6 often being pure forms, and numerals thereafter being constructed or borrowed"

Why MORE than human?

low probability, at the precipice of political debate, Leader Lars ends up occupying every standpoint simulating a librarian of Babel, a promise of a hollow, broad-brush coverage or a commedia dell'arte of half-fulfilled significations ... BEYOND

Page 7

It is hard to make sense of networked digital technologies. We often turn to smaller forms that structure those imaginations of socio-technical relationships for us ― like sign-tool metaphors of a folder, a window, a cloud or forms of discurse, like electronic frontier or cyberspace. And they can be in-between, like small, recognisable, mediated genre of internet manifestos.

Manifesto is based on an internal paradox. It is a text that wants to be an action. How is it possible? It needs to find the right form that would give it agency. Martin Puchner notices an interplay between what can be called “performativity” and “theatricality”. Performativity is the idea that words can be used as actions. For example, when we say “I agree” or “You are fired”. The issue is that when it comes to written texts, manifestos are at risk of being merely theatrical, limited to a pretentious pose without provoking any difference. You read it, you think “okay, nice, beautiful”, but it doesn’t do anything to you.

The manifesto history doesn’t end after “Declaration of Independence of Cyberspace”, “ABC of Tactical Media” or “100 anti-theses on cyberfeminism”. Since then, hundreds of manifestos have been published on the internet about the internet. So, decades after, how do new authors and communities try to do things with words?

As an online object, a manifesto is also a media form. It exists in a graphic interface, can have subpages or hyperlinks, be dynamic or interactive. Moving away from aesthetics of printed leaflets, manifestos develop self-reflexivity about their medium.

“Manifesto for a critical approach to the user interface” (2015) argues that the graphic user interface should not hide the economical, ideological and metaphorical systems on which it is based. Manifesto is published through MediaWiki, whose interface is not hiding its “backstage” and is promoting transparent knowledge on how to operate it.

Similarly, “Internet manifesto” by Sadgrl (2023, older version) stands for opposing big platforms by creating personalized online spaces for yourself and people you want to be in touch with. The manifesto is not a plain text but a toolkit with lists of useful hyperlinks for etiquette principles, software, design elements and tutorials.

Instead of challenging old authority to establish a new one, they do work of gathering, sculpting, acknowledging, giving voice, offering. They are small texts for small actions: to write a blog post, to reference a quote author, to create your own webpage beyond social media.

Form follows. Instead of legitimising themselves through a resemblence with printed form, they do small steps in search for new mediality and agency. These manifestos are not performative or theatrical. They don’t pretend that if they speak loud, the desired world can already be here.

Instead, they model the desired world.

They are utopian thinking applied practically, through examples and toolkits. Maybe the most radical move of techno-political imagination is neither about a radical statement nor about a form, but rather about a gentle weaving of a model assamblage between the medium, the message, the infrastructure and the user/reader.

In 2022 I was part of a group of artists, technologists and theorists which made a dataset of xenoimages. This dataset was not functional, but a form of speculative/fictional design, and it was accompanied by a manifesto that we all wrote together. Once written, we decided to dramatise its reading in a presentation event. Your text made me wonder: why do we automatically dramatise reading?

I recently thought about the aspect of temporality in relation to Internet-manifestoes, after reading (and answering to) the recent call from e-flux on the 20th anniversary of Wark's A Hacker Manifesto. When I researched the reception of this manifesto, I noticed that every anniversary had been marked (e.g. 10 years). Somehow, the manifestoes are being used as sign posts to track the evolution of how to think about the internet. Wondering if you reflect upon the internet manifesto as a sort of ongoing chronicalisation? (Asker)

I have been thinking what makes the manifesto different with the internet. As you mentioned internet is a publishing infrastructure, how is it different from a medium in terms of performativity? I think temporality and spatiality is one of the aspects to think about it, also in terms of speed and scaling. I also think of Katherline Hayles's text: My Mother Was a Computer: Digital Subjects and Literary Texts [1], and in one of the chapters on "intermediation", it talks about textuality and computation which discusses a more unique aspect of code (or performativity of code if you wish). Perhaps it will be useful. (Winnie)

Your point about performativity and speech-acts-ish makes me think of programming languages being the only languages that execute (i.e. actually do what they say they do). Are there any examples of manifestoes that can be executed? That exist as software? Is the RFC about DRM/Encrypted Media Extension an executable manifesto about intellectual property?). There are also video games that can act as manifestoes (e.g. https://www.molleindustria.org/). (Pierre)

I wonder if manifestos have a different level of "actionability", as in, some are able to provide a toolkit, while others (due to complexity) are tied to a theatrical value?

DIMENSION plunges into The Synthetic Party’s convoluted pop-politics that surf the political ecosystem as a one-dimensional seriality, accentuating outlines over substance, where opinions, positions, or emotional states are drained off their volume and depth through

Page 8

wiki4print server caption

Art-as-content

• Groys, Boris. 2014. On The New. London: Verso.
• Hromack, Sarah. 2015. “Another ‘C’ Word: On Content and the (Techno) Curatorial.” Red Hook Journal, CCS Bard, Art Publishing & The Web, March. https://ccs.bard.edu/redhook/another-c-word-on-content-and-the-techno-curatorial/index.html.
• Sluis, Katrina. 2022. “Documentation in an Age of Photographic Hypercirculation.” In Documentation as Art. Routledge.
• Steyerl, Hito. 2017. Duty Free Art: Art in the Age of Planetary Civil War. London: Verso.
• Wallerstein, Wade. 2018. “Circumventing the White Cube: Digital Curatorial Practices in Contemporary Media Landscapes.” Anti-Materia. 2018. https://anti-materia.org/circumventing-the-white-cube.
• Yago, Dena. 2018. “Content Industrial Complex - Journal #89.” E-Flux, no. 89 (March). https://www.e-flux.com/journal/89/181611/content-industrial-complex/.

Pirate Care and Usable Politics and Pedagogies

Acknowledgement: Without open access to the works cited, the commentary on syllabus ⦚ Pirate Care could not have been produced in this form. Remember, no content is produced alone, others walk this way too.

“Call for Participation: Research Workshop 2024, “content/form”,” A Peer Reviewed Journal About (APRJA), https://aprja.net/announcement/view/1131

Jodi Dean, Sean Dockray, Alessandro Ludovico, Pauline van Mourik Broekman, Nicholas Thoburn, and Dimitry Vilensky. “Materialities of Independent Publishing: A Conversation with AAAAARG, Chto Delat?, I Cite, Mute, and Neural”. New Formations, 78 (2013), p. 157 – 158, https://www.researchgate.net/publication/262888049_Materialities_of_Independent_Publishing_A_Conversation_with_Aaaaarg_Chto_Delat_I_Cite_Mute_and_Neural

Valeria Graziano, Marcell Mars and Tomislav Medak and many others, Pirate Care, https://pirate.care/

Adrian Johns. Piracy. The Intellectual Property Wars from Gutenberg to Gates. University of Chicago Press: Chicago 2009, find the epub file on http://library.memoryoftheworld.org/

Marcell Mars. “Public Library/Memory of the World. Access to knowledge for every member of society”. 32C3, CCC congress (2015), https://media.ccc.de/v/32c3-7279-public_library_memory_of_the_world

Marcell Mars, Tomislav Medak. “System of a Takedown: Control and De-commodification in the Circuits of Academic Publishing,” in: Andrew Lison, Marcell Mars, Tomislav Medak et all. (eds.). Archives. Lüneburg: meson press 2019, p. 47– 68, https://mediarep.org/server/api/core/bitstreams/4a989279-9d37-4ca9-b0ad-9f55f40971aa/content

Aaron Swartz. “Guerrilla Open Access Manifesto”. July 2008, https://archive.org/details/GuerillaOpenAccessManifesto

The Institute for Technology In the Public Interest, Helen V Pritchard and Femke Snelting (eds.). Infrastructural Interactions: Survival, Resistance and Radical Care, Brussels 2022. http://titipi.org/pub/Infrastructural_Interactions.pdf

“you’re doing amazing sweetie,” transmediale festival 2024, https://transmediale.de/en/2024/sweetie

Xenodatasets

Anya: It is common that radical imaginaries (new ideas/aesthetics) either die or move to central imaginaries (normalised ideas) (look at Ernst and Schröter Media Futures and their interpretation of Cornelius Castoriadis' theory of imagination). What are ways of keeping new radical imaginaries radical? And why would we want to? What does stability radical but also consistent imaginary bring us (socially? politically?) if it is not normalised?

Bottici, C. (2018). From the politics of imagination to Imaginal politics. Themes and Debates Journal. ISSN 1666-0714, issue 36, pp. 21-39.

Fisher, M. (2016). Capitalist Realism. [Realismo Capitalista]. Buenos Aires, Caja Negra.

Fisher, M. (2018). The Weird and the Eerie. [Lo raro y lo Espeluznante]. Buenos Aires, Caja Negra.

Goh, A. (2019). Appropriating the Alien: A critique of Xenofeminism. Mute. https://www.metamute.org/editorial/articles/appropriating-alien-critique-xenofeminism

Hayles, N. Katherine (2017) Unthought: The Power of the Cognitive Nonconscious. Chicago, IL: Chicago University Press.

I made a work around medical imaging and homogenous bodies - creating intentionally limited datasets/mixed of real/unreal images https://katietindle.co.uk/portfolio/they-were-expected-to-see-what-stuff-she-was-made-of/ (Apols for being self referential, its also a few years old)

I wondered if the exhibition, Cryptid by Joey Holder, was a useful or relevant reference. Some more info here. Holder was interested in possible creatures, exploring "explore queer ecology and the limitations of Western scientific taxonomy." The exhibition focuses on plankton as "one of the most understudied and diverse groups of creatures on the planet" and which is vital to all life on earth. --Mateus (talk) 17:37, 26 January 2024 (UTC)

Hester, H. (2018). Xenofeminism. John Wiley & Sons.

Nguyên, T. T., Huynh, T. T., Nguyen, P. L., Liew, A. W., Yin, H., & Nguyen, Q. V. H. (2022). A survey of machine unlearning. arXiv (Cornell University). https://doi.org/10.48550/arxiv.2209.02299

Made me think of Bifo: that imagination is under attack from the creative industries...

Martyna Marciniak also put forward the thesis that we’re in a crisis of imagination (as a reoccurring theme) - which is a crisis is of images and visual sensitivity. I’m also reminded of the Sheila Jasanoff and Sang Hyun Kim’s "sociotechnical imaginaries" ... and how technologies (like image or language generation by statistical modelling, for example) have an implicit imaginary within (rather than just preventing us from imagining). That statistical modelling not just prevents imagining, but also presents an infrastucturing of imagination ... how they are an imaginary. --See Sensing the uncanny

Ọnụọha, M. (2024, 1st January). The Library of Missing Datasets. MIMI ỌNỤỌHA. https://mimionuoha.com/the-library-of-missing-datasets

Picón, D., Castro, J., & Rocío, D. (2021, noviembre). La imaginación (temporada ELR171). Recuperado 8 de enero de 2024, de https://open.spotify.com/episode/4hEYgzMJj43jN2j4Hnj8Ue?si=66eef3748744404a

Reminds me to Hayles and cognitive assemblage and print vs. digital publications https://libgen.is/book/index.php?md5=B026FB7493C4E65D975857DACDCEE4F2 --Anonymous, 29, January 2024 (UTC) on the collective Pad.

XenoVisual Studies (2024, 11th January). XenoVisualStudies. https://xenovisualstudies.com/

The Scenography of War

Baudrillard, J. (1995). The Gulf War did not take place. Indiana University Press.

Benjamin, W. (2008). The work of art in the age of mechanical reproduction (J. A. Underwood, Trans.). Penguin Books.

Hirschhorn, T. (2015) http://www.thomashirschhorn.com/pixel-collage/

Rosler, M. (1967-72). House Beautiful: Bringing the war home

Steyerl, H. (2013). In defence of the poor image. Konteksty, 67(3), 101-105.

Steyerl, H. (2009). Documentary Uncertainty, http://www.kajsadahlberg.com/files/No_72_Documentary_Uncertainty_v2.pdf

Uns(ui)table Frequencies

Binfield, K. (2004) Writings of the luddites. Baltimore: John Hopkins University Press. Cox, G. and Soon, W. (2020) Aesthetic Programming. London: Open Humanities Press.

Espressif Leads the IoT Chip Market with Over 1 Billion Shipments Worldwide | Espressif Systems [no date]. Available from: https://www.espressif.com/en/news/1_Billion_Chip_Sales [Accessed 4 January 2024].

Galloway, A. R. (2004) Protocol. Cambridge, Massachusetts: The MIT Press.

Iffy Books (2022) Iffy Books Pocket Wifi Portal Zine. Philadelphia, Pensylvania: Iffy Books. Available from: https://iffybooks.net/pocket-wifi-portal

Lachney, M. and Dotson, T. C. (2018) Epistemological Luddism: Reinvigorating a Concept for Action in 21st Century Sociotechnical Struggles, Social Epistemology, 32 (4), pp. 228–240.

ServPub Homepage (2024). Available from: https://servpub.net/ [Accessed 4 January 2024].

Thacker, E. (2004) Introduction to: Protocol. Cambridge, Massachusetts: The MIT Press.

Voegelin, S. (2019) The Political Possibility of Sound. London: Bloomsbury Academic.

Shaping Vectors

Bruno Latour, in his 1985 text "Les 'Vues' de l'Esprit: une introduction à l'anthropologie des sciences et des techniques", writes about perspective drawing as a way that we dematerialize (thus verify) knowledge. http://www.bruno-latour.fr/node/296

Jack Goody, in his 1977 book "The Domestication of the Savage Mind" has a nice analysis on the role of the list in ordering the world. https://archive.org/details/domesticationofs0000good (it starts at page 75).

Michel Foucault, in his 1975 book "Surveiller et Punir", argues that the modern school has very specific ways to discipline children. https://search.worldcat.org/en/title/32367111 (the relevant section is titled "The means of correct training: Hierarchical observation").

Gilles Deleuze wrote, in 1990, the "Postscript on the Societies of Control", which complements the disciplinary approach with a more fluid control. https://theanarchistlibrary.org/library/gilles-deleuze-postscript-on-the-societies-of-control (it's quite short and quite good).

(brought to you by the white euro dudes canon™)

Platform pragmatics

Andersen, C. U., & Pold, S. B. (2018). The Metainterface: The Art of Platforms, Cities, and Clouds. MIT Press.

Birch, K., & Muniesa, F. (2020). Assetization: Turning Things into Assets in Technoscientific Capitalism. The MIT Press.

Gago, V. (2017). Neoliberalism from Below: Popular Pragmatics and Baroque Economies (L. Mason-deese, Trans.). Duke Univ Press.

Galloway, A. R., Thacker, E., & Wark, M. (2013). Excommunication: Three Inquiries in Media and Mediation. University of Chicago Press.

Jarrett, K. (2022). Digital Labor. Polity.

a rigorous celebration of surface-level spectacle, thus standardizing a single thread through different dimensions, continuously shifting and expanding each other in a morphology of flatness while presenting a disillusioned view of their ascension from content

Page 9

[ post // scrape // glitch ]

• Berlant, L.G. (2023) On the inconvenience of other people. Durham: Duke University Press.

• Boer, R. (2023) Smooth city: Against urban perfection, towards collective alternatives. Amsterdam: Valiz.

• Campbell, H. (2005) ‘Considering spiritual dimensions within computer-mediated communication studies’, New Media & Society, 7(1), pp. 110–134. doi:10.1177/1461444805049147.

• Lialina, O., Espenschied, D. and Buerger, M. (2009) Digital Folklore: To computer users, with love and respect. Stuttgart: Merz & Solitude.

• Russell, L. (2020) Glitch Feminism. London: Verso Books.

• Steyerl, H. (2023) mean images, NLR 140/141, March–June 2023, New Left Review. Available at: https://newleftreview.org/issues/ii140/articles/hito-steyerl-mean-images (Accessed: 31 October 2023).

fuzzy fences, shiny coats, trees on fire

Documentary Uncertainty Hito Steyerl. (n.d.). Retrieved January 10, 2023, from http://www.kajsadahlberg.com/files/No_72_Documentary_Uncertainty_v2.pdf

Buck-Morss, S. (1992). Aesthetics and Anaesthetics: Walter Benjamin’s Artwork Essay Reconsidered. October, 62(62), p.3. doi:https://doi.org/10.2307/778700.

Steyerl, H. (2023). Mean Images. New Left Review, [online] (140/141), pp.82–97. Available at: https://newleftreview.org/issues/ii140/articles/hito-steyerl-mean-images [Accessed 11 May 2023].

Steyerl, H. (2015). Documentary Uncertainty Hito Steyerl. [online] Available at: http://www.kajsadahlberg.com/files/No_72_Documentary_Uncertainty_v2.pdf.

Fuller, M. and Weizman, E. (2021). Investigative Aesthetics. Verso Books.

Goodwin, Charles. “Professional Vision.” American Anthropologist, vol. 96, no. 3, Sept. 1994, pp. 606–633, onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1525/aa.1994.96.3.02a00100/full, https://doi.org/10.1525/aa.1994.96.3.02a00100. Accessed 30 Oct. 2019.

France 24. (2023). War-themed video game fuels wave of misinformation. [online] Available at: https://www.france24.com/en/live-news/20230102-war-themed-video-game-fuels-wave-of-misinformation.

HEX:: A story of situated, multispecies worldbuilding

Hayward, Eva. (2010). Fingeryeyes: Impressions of cup corals. Cultural Anthropology. 25.

Haraway, Donna. (2008). When Species Meet, University of Minnesota Press.

Sumner, Seirian (2021). Endless Forms, Harper Collins.

Borges, Jorge Luis (1941), La biblioteca de Babel, Emece.

LeGuin, Ursula K, (1975), Mazes, Epoch.

How to be the internet you seek

Martin Puchner, Poetry of the Revolution: Marx, Manifestos, and the Avant-Gardes. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2006.

The Autophagic mode of production

AUTOPHAGY | English meaning—Cambridge Dictionary. (n.d.). https://dictionary.cambridge.org/dictionary/english/autophagy

Guattari, F. (2011). The machinic unconscious: Essays in schizoanalysis. Semiotext(e) ; Distributed by the MIT Press.

Jung, C. G., & Jung, C. G. (1970). Mysterium coniunctionis: An inquiry into the separation and synthesis of psychic opposites in alchemy (2d ed). Princeton University Press.

Ma, X., Liu, Y., Muhammad, W., Liu, D., Wang, J., Zhou, H., Gao, X., & Qian, X. (2017). Autophagy-related protein 12 associates with anti-apoptotic B cell lymphoma-2 to promote apoptosis in gentamicin-induced inner ear hair cell loss. Molecular Medicine Reports, 15(6), 3819–3825. https://doi.org/10.3892/mmr.2017.6458

Parzych, K. R., & Klionsky, D. J. (2014). An Overview of Autophagy: Morphology, Mechanism, and Regulation. Antioxidants & Redox Signaling, 20(3), 460–473. https://doi.org/10.1089/ars.2013.5371

Salvaggio, E. (2023, October 19). Shining a Light on “Shadow Prompting” | TechPolicy.Press. Tech Policy Press. https://techpolicy.press/shining-a-light-on-shadow-prompting

Yang, X., Wang, X., Zhang, Q., Petzold, L., Wang, W. Y., Zhao, X., & Lin, D. (2023). Shadow Alignment: The Ease of Subverting Safely-Aligned Language Models. https://doi.org/10.48550/ARXIV.2310.02949

Programming at the end of the world

de Valk, Marloes. ‘A Pluriverse of Local Worlds: A Review of Computing within Limits —Related Terminology and Practices’, Prospections - Digital Discomfort, BAK, 2022. https://www.bakonline.org/prospections/a-pluriverse-of-local-worlds-a-review-of-computing-within-limits-related-terminology-and-practices/#_

de Valk, Marloes. Damaged Earth Catalogue. 2023. https://damaged.bleu255.com/about/

Freitag, Charlotte, et al.'The real climate and transformative impact of ICT: A critique of estimates, trends, and regulations,' Patterns, 2(9), p. 100340. 2021. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.patter.2021.100340.

Heikkilä, Ville-Matias.Permacomputing, 2020. http://viznut.fi/texts-en/permacomputing.html

Mansoux, Aymeric., Howell, Brendan, Barok, Dušan and Heikkilä, Ville-Matias.'Permacomputing Aesthetics: Potential and Limits of Constraints in Computational Art, Design and Culture', in LIMITS ’23: Workshop on Computing within Limits. June 14–15. 2023. https://doi.org/10.21428/bf6fb269.6690fc2e

Oroza, Ernesto. “Architecture de la Nécessité”. In: Objets réinventés: La Création populaire à Cuba. ed. Pénélope de Bozzi. Paris: Editions Alternatives. 2006.

Penzenstadler, Birgit, et al. ‘Collapse (& Other Futures)’ Proceedings of the First Workshop on Computing within Limits. ACM, Irvine California, p. 1-3. 2005. https://computingwithinlimits.org/2015/papers/limits2015-penzenstadler.pdf

Raghavan, Barath. ‘Abstraction, Indirection, and Sevareid’s Law: Towards Benign Computing’. Proceedings of the First Workshop on Computing within Limits. ACM, Irvine California, p. 1–4. 2005. https://raghavan.usc.edu/papers/limits2015-raghavan.pdf

Vee, Annette. ‘Understanding Computer Programming as a Literacy’, Literacy in Composition Studies, 1 (2). 42 - 64.2013. https://d-scholarship.pitt.edu/21695/1/24-33-1-PB.pdf

Towards the History of East Asian Technology

Chen, Kuan-Hsing, Asia as Method Toward Deimperialization, Durham: Duke University Press, 2010.

Mezzadra, Sandro, Neilson, Brett, The Politics of Operations Excavating Contemporary Capitalism, Durham: Duke University Press, 2019.

Hertz, Garnet, Art + DIY Electronics, Cambridge: MIT Press, 2023.

Graham, Harman, Tool-being Heidegger and the Metaphysics of Objects, Chicago: Open Court Publishing Company, 2002.

Parikka, Jussi. What is Media Archaeology? Cambridge (UK): Polity Press, 2012.

to form … ANOTHER DIMENSION paradoxically asserts itself as the nadir upon which political utterances occur, pragmatically decluttering the mess of statescraft: manifesting an 'always new' program in the linear time of unstoppable progress and dramatic

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Since Jean Baudrillard’s provoking claim that "the Gulf War did not take place" (1991) warfare has been associated with illusion. Today’s hyper-medialized warfare raises new questions about conflicts of reception and 'truth value' in the images we see. We're accustomed to seeing distant wars through fragmented snapshots, often captured amid the disorder of conflict via news media or blurry poor images shared via camera phones (Steyerl 2013). Such alleged spontaneous representations reproduce an experience of a certain 'authenticity' of the image. Blurriness and pixelation have become technical testimonies of the truth value of images of war. “Pixelating – or blurring has taken over the role of authenticity”, as the Artist Thomas Hirschhorn has phrased it in relation to his Pixel-Collage series. This stands in sharp contrast to the staged image, that this article centers around: a still-photo from a live-broadcasted press conference held in the rubbles of the bombed al-Ahli Baptist hospital in Gaza on oct. 17, 2023. An image that seemed to echo Hito Steyerl's question in "Documentary uncertainty": "Is this really true?" (Steyerl, 2009).

The disturbing thing about this image, that quickly circulated on social media and on news sites, is less to be found in its extreme gruesomeness, epitomized in the dead baby in the arms of the man sitting at the center of the image. It is rather the almost collage-like scenography, the clash between the formal press conference and the warzone. Somewhat imitating Martha Rosler’s collage-technique in her photomontage-series "House Beautiful" (1967-72), this clash of contradictory forms creates a Brecht-like alienation towards the war. The very thought of practically preparing and arranging the podium, the stage, and the dead bodies is absurd: Did the speakers straddle over the dead bodies to the stage? Did someone yell "action" before livestreaming this macabre scene? The predictability in the composition of the official press conference, following a pre-set choreography of elements, is disrupted by the dead bodies covered by blood-stained sheets, placed in a circle around the podium. Like the other elements of the press conference – spotlights, stage, microphones – the bodies have been staged in the frame of the camera directed at the scene. If one thing, the video, the still-images that quickly circulated, hereby brought testimony to the very "exhibition value" of war (Benjamin 2008). This "exhibition value" of the war site was only bolstered in the subsequent days and weeks where forensic image analyses of the crater and the surrounding areas frantically began to circulate on X and on global media. The still-photo was different though. It's composition was meant to be seen, it was staged, or it became staged, and thus opposed and affirmed in one and the same gesture our very desire for authentic images of war. Thus rephrasing Steyerl's initial question: "Are images (of war) ever 'really true' or un-staged?"

Gaza hospital: Image analysis of the areas of the blast

Still-image from the press conference at al-Ahli on oct. 17 2023

Martha Rosler "Baloons"

It reminded me to the fashion campaign that the brand Zara launched this year and few months afterwards they withdrew it and apologised. In this case would it could be called "the meta-choreography of war". An intertextuality of images?

Very interesting analysis! It makes me think about the "staged event" in relation to "the waltz of content", as we are being submerged with content, and so I wonder what the conditions under which the staging can be recognized? What's the role of public/reception/users in giving a status to that staging?

Firstly, it really resonates with me on a broader plane of circulation of war images on social media because lately I've been thinking a lot about the ethics of this (for clear reasons). But beyond ethics of representation, when I started reading, I immediately started thinking about documentary practices in art (and visual culture) and it felt so natural to get to a Martha Rosler reference (and made me think also of Oliver Ressler and Harun Farocki). I guess this performativity of a staged media image, immediately clashing with a war reality, and widely circulated online, is somehow exemplifying a different relationship to visual documentation - mediated by publishing technologies and ultimately rendered as content? I mean different in comparison to earlier ways in which the lens was dominating documentary discourse (in art, activism, performance etc.)

Questions: what is the role of this media choreography in the image as a document? How does the performativity of a staged, scripted reality impact the "exhibition value" of war? And how does it impact the image's status as a document? I think a reading through a Benjamin lens is interesting along the lines of the massification of images but problematised by the instrumentalisation of war images in the media. I think other than poor images, Steyerl's "Documentary Uncertainty" might be relevant?

what is authenticity? what is the value assigned by us when we name something as "authentic"? is it an aesthetical experience or experience of "truthfulness"/"believability"? is it important who shapes choreography of a picture (photographer or people on the picture/behind the picture)?

The text seems to raise the question: can it be authentic and staged intentionally at the same time? what was the intention behind the staging?

Are any images of conflict unstaged? All images are taken with the intention of 'proving' a perspective which is more or less effective/soporiphic/numbing/alarming (we can distinguish between staging by a photoprapher and staging by people in the frame)

Are any images of conflict unstaged? All images are taken with the intention of 'proving' a perspective which is more or less effective/soporiphic/numbing/alarming (we can distinguish between staging by a photoprapher and staging by people in the frame)

can we read imagined audience by analysing the image?

what does this staging do to bodies on/behind the image in contrast to more spontaneous pictures of people who are less aware of being photographed?

Blurring of content is interesting – ’click to unblur’ is a strange practice as often you are not aware what you are consenting to see

Images cannot be separated from context (as mentioned) but also the wide infrastructure - images are relational assemblages for example. Any analysis would need to include this. What metrics might be used to gage perception?

In early 2023 an unprecedented number of AI-generated images began appearing on social media, ranging from harmless and entertaining ones, like the image of the Pope wearing Balenciaga, to ones with much higher stakes, like the photo of an ‘explosion at the Pentagon’.

While the uncanniness of the pope wearing Balenciaga produced a sensory reaction, immediately awakening attention to the high likelihood of its fakeness, the ‘Pentagon event’ didn’t. The image got shared and reposted, sparking panic and causing stocks to plummet. Once the image was confirmed fake, endless articles and essays focusing on the dangers of AI-generated images began appearing online. However, it was not the image itself, but the context of the claim attached to it that drew the attention of twitter users. Arguably the documentary visual is there not to inform, but to help generate a state of panic (Steyerl, 2015).

One of the reasons for this absence of uncanny feeling when interacting with the 'Pentagon fake' is perhaps the repetitive and passive interactions with the images of catastrophic and extraordinary events in traditional and social media, of eyes that see too much -- and register nothing (Buck-Morss, 1992). The panic overtakes the senses, resulting in a lack of an acute uncanny sensation in response to images of catastrophes (real and faux), which makes the truth more vulnerable.

I would like to propose a different reading of this ‘AI event’ -- away from the techno-doom and towards a definition of new aesthetics of digital facts. In the process, I would like to highlight the role of the modes of perceiving, investigative gestures and notations as important aspects of collective sensing and sense-making (Fuller and Weizman, 2021).

The object of the controversy (the explosion) is impossible to disprove or confirm based on the image alone. Instead, further analysis of the materiality of the image, the reality it portrays, and the interactions of the image as an online artefact need to be considered.

Upon investigating the images online through reverse image searching, logging of the duplicates, comparing and collaging the original with confirmed photos of the Pentagon, most of the analyses published on twitter, focused on the glitches within the image. The researchers zoomed into high-detail fragments and outlined the boundaries of the impossible geometries they perceived (the phantasmagorias of the bending fence with its fuzzy borders, the delirious architecture of the facade of the supposed Pentagon building) with brightly coloured rectangles -- a visual record of the researcher organising the perceptual field (Goodwin, 1994).

Having the attention drawn to the framed uncanny artefacts within the original image [-->] allows one to notice the incoherent reality portrayed in the whole image: the agency and circumstance of the camera that took the photo, the strangely ordered frontal framing, the lack of movement in what one would only expect to be a chaotic scene. This detached, disembodied and neutral perspective and composition could be considered yet another way of echoing AI’s persistent erasure of bias (Steyerl, 2023).

To regain agency beyond relying on authorities of truth or resigning the trust in our ability to perceive, we can seek out a network of connections and gestures that extend from the material analysis and investigate the realities of the source image. This way we can enable a new aesthetics of fact characterised by collective sense-making, akin to a spider casting its web as an extension of its sensory field.

The idea of being in a 'crisis of imagination' reoccurs in other works (see: xenodataset, morphologies of flatness). How can technologies (like image or language generation by statistical modelling, for example) have an implicit imaginary within (rather than just preventing us from imagining)? Statistical modelling doesn't only prevent imagining, but also presents an infrastructuring of imagination... how are they an imaginary?

Does the fidelity of detail always correlate with the authority of "truth"?

Does (leftist) acceleration still provoke some hopes?

Dilemma is the interesting point - aesthetics/form from evidential images does not speak to the content? What do you propose as a different aesthetic? aesthetical VS political: does analysis of regimes of perception help us understand misinformation better? or redefine misinformation? or is there another desired political result? or didactical?

The sensitivity to image changes depending on context, or proximity to portrayed events and locations. Interestingly, the misinformation was initially spread by non-US media - could familiarity of context bypass the initial indifference to the uncanny?

unrepeatability Le Parti Synthétique takes the necessary steps along the flatland of kakistocracy ... AND YET ANOTHER continuous simplification of political discourse unknowingly give birth to a surreal, unvalley canny of technocratic experience, where the citizenry,

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What is East Asian media technology? East Asia encompasses not only the geographical region but also the specific geopolitical and sociopolitical conditions in conjunction with the colonial history, technological modernity and post-Cold War structure (Chan, 2006). Adopting East Asia as a crucial framework for illustrating a situated and discursive approach, helps examine the interconnection between the assemblage of media technologies in the region and the urgency of a decolonial perspective.

In the contemporary techno-capitalist landscape characterized by heightened forms of violence operating in a new extraction and logistic system. East Asia remains a significant digital labour market. Many international corporations employ workers from Asian regions to maintain the digital systems of the platform economy. For instance, numerous repetitive online tasks (microwork), such as image tagging for machine learning on platforms like Amazon's Mechanical Turk, are outsourced to Asian workers at low pay rates. This exploitative practice perpetuates the "invisible" digital circuits and reinforces the entanglement of colonialism with techno-capitalism, as well as the power dynamics between the Global North and Global South.

The formation of technology and infrastructure, in fact, is in conjunction with our knowledge, sensibilities, and social relations, drawing from the social history of media technology in East Asia. The historical trajectory and its materialist implications, like the 1970 Osaka World Expo as a critical reference point, has refracted two key influences. One is the technological modernity through infrastructure building across East Asian cities, such as Hong Kong, Taipei and Tokyo. Another one is the experimental modes of media technology in artistic practices, reconfiguring the colonial narrative and challenging dominant infrastructures through the creative strategy.

For example, Kao Chung-li, a pioneering media artist from Taiwan who subscribes to the belief of "Historical materialism," which posits that the history of technology is dialectically intertwined with its production. Kao asserts that "the only way to redeem our history and future is to develop our own audiovisual machine; the struggle against modern enlightenment and the conclusive victory." Reflecting on this ideology, his artistic practice delves into the perception of war and image-making. Through works like Anti‧mei-ology 002 (1999), Camera Lucida Cinema (2008), Ballet Mécanique (2014), and Slideshow Cinema series (2014), he employs outdated machines and even invents his own low-budget mechanical projector using nonstandard objects. Embracing a do-it-yourself (DIY) methodology, Kao rejects technological perfection and embraces improvisation and the artistic process corresponding to the nonlinear and heterogenous modalities toward technology (Hertz, 2023). This approach allows him to navigate and bridge gaps in infrastructure, unlocking creative freedom and autonomy throughout the time of Cold War, Martial Law and the paradigm shift of capitalism and colonialism in Taiwan.

Anti‧mei-ology 002 (1999), Kao Chung-li. Taken in Re-Present Kao Chung-li at Taipei Fine Arts Museum.

Camera Lucida Cinema (2008), Kao Chung-li. Taken in Re-Present Kao Chung-li at Taipei Fine Arts Museum.

Another example is the work Rediscovery of anima (2018) by Japanese artist Akinori Goto. Goto deviates from digital and industrial technologies, instead relying on stone, wood, hemp, and sunlight to create motion infused with atmospheric elements. This media archaeological approach considers technology as a co-participant with its own agency, suggesting a conceptualization of the subject as a "tool-being." This perspective, situated along the presence-at-hand/readiness-to-hand axis (Harman, 2002), renews our relationships with material objects and enables new articulations.

Rediscovery of anima (2018), Akinori Goto. Courtesy of the artist's website.https://www.akinorigoto.com/rad

Rediscovery of anima (2018), Akinori Goto and its reference. Courtesy of the artist's website.https://www.akinorigoto.com/rad

By engaging in counter-histories to mainstream media history and seeking alternative ways to comprehend the current media cultural landscape of our digital world, this article aims to contribute to a more nuanced understanding of the intricate interplay between East Asian media technologies, decolonization, and power dynamics.

Concerning the outsourced labour of micro-workers in East Asia, it would be interesting in delineating relations/similarities/differences between North America, Indian, and East Asian micro-workers.

enamored by varied yet shallow covers of simulated comradery, slips into political indifference, its critical faculties numbed by the unrelenting surge of alluring, yet vacuous rhetoric, a situation mirroring Baudrillard's hypnotic screen appeal in "Simulacra

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A vector is a mathematical entity which consists in a series of numbers grouped together to represent another entity. Often, vectors are associated with spatial operations: the entities they represent can be either a point, or a direction. In computer science, vectors are used to represent entities known as features, measurable properties of an object (for instance, a human can be said to have features such as age, height, skin pigmentation, credit score and political leaning). Today, such representations are at the core of contemporary machine learning models, allowing a new kind of translation between the world and the computer.

A vector is a very spatial thing.

This essay sketches out some of the implications of using vectors as a way to represent non-computational entities in computational terms, like other visual mnemotechnics did in the past, by suggesting epistemological consequences in choosing a particular syntactic system over another. On one side, binary encoding allows a translation between physical phenomena and concepts, between electricity and numbers, enabling the implementation of symbolic logic in a formal and mechanical way (highlighting that truth really only is nothing more than a mathematical concept). On the other side, vectors suggest new perspectives on at least two levels: their relativity in storing (encoding) content and their locality in retrieving (decoding) content.

A vector space is how sentences fall along the intensity of words.

In this word space, notice how the concept of "parent" or "capital" is implicitly spatialized.

In machine learning, a vector represents the current values of the property of a given object, e.g. a human would have a value of 0 for the property "melting point", while water would have a value of non-0 for the property "melting point".

Vectors are thus always containing the potential features of the whole space in which they exist, and are more or less relatively tightly defined in terms of each other (as opposed to, say, alphabetical or cardinal ordering). The proximity, or distance, of vectors to each other is therefore essential to how we can use them to make sense. The meaning is therefore no longer created through logical combinations, but by spatial proximity in a specific semantic space. Truth moves from (binary) exactitude to (vector) approximation.

As we retrieve information stored in vectors, we therefore navigate semantic spaces. However, such a retrieval of information is only useful if it is meaningful to us; and in order to be meaningful, it navigates across vectors that are in close proximity to each other, focusing on re-configurable, (hyper-)local coherence to suggest meaningful structuring of content.

The company words keep changes over time.

Given those the existence of features in relation to one another, and the construction of meaning through the proximity of vectors, we can see how semantic space is both malleable in storing meaning, structural in retrieving meaning, prompting questions of literacy. A next interesting inquiry is to think about the process through which this semantic space is being shaped, through the process of corporate training, and, in turn, shape us into specific communities of perceiving.

and Simulation," where real and fake distinctions become more and more negligible, and citizens, lost in their echoed reflections, overcome the grip of political realism UNLINKING A DIMENSION of superficial diversity, seeded in lossless disillusionment,

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The pirates, in all too many cases, are not alienated proles. Nor do they represent some comfortingly distinct outside. They are us. (Adrian Johns 2009)

While the transmediale 2024 festival theme asks “how logics of content production determine and frustrate our relations to technology,” (https://transmediale.de) the research workshop “content/form” calls for an exploration of the limits of political possibilities and collective action, and urges the consideration of alternatives, especially for research practices and their tools themselves (https://aprja.net). In this context, the following text briefly comments on the work syllabus ⦚ Pirate Care (2019-2020), addressing its specific content/form of cultural piracy as usable politics and pedagogies.

Initiated in 2019 by Valeria Graziano, Marcell Mars, and Tomislav Medak, syllabus ⦚ Pirate Care serves as a transnational research project engaging activists, researchers, hackers, and artists concerned with the ‘crisis of care’ and the criminalization of solidarity in ‘neoliberal policies’ (https://pirate.care). It presents civic and artistic projects and activist practices such as “Transhackfeminism,” Soprasotto, a communing and collectivising childcare initiative in Milan, or “Sea Rescue as Care,” to name a few. The syllabus, linked to a literature repository on the shadow library Memory of the Word/Public Library, lives on a publishing platform developed in-house by Marcell Mars. Sandpoints enables collaborative writing, remixing, and maintenance of a catalogue of learning resources. The arrangement of these specific forms of ‘pirate care’ – an open curriculum linked to a shadow library, both built with free software, together with the call for collective action/disobedience – produces and distributes activities and content that can be linked back to the specific form of solidarity and (hacker) ethics that the project is concerned with. Especially regarding the questions of political writing and political publishing syllabus ⦚ Pirate Care situates itself in the political tradition of radical publishing within a new media environment (Dean et al. 2013). Mars and Medak argue that courts, constrained by viewing intellectual property through a copyright lens, have failed to reconcile the conflict between access to knowledge and fair compensation for intellectual labour. Instead, they have overwhelmingly supported the commercial interests of major copyright industries, further deepening social tensions through the commodification of knowledge in the age of digital reproduction (Mars and Medak 2019). The author of Piracy. The Intellectual Property Wars from Gutenberg to Gates, Adrian Johns, writes that information has become a key commodity in the globalised economy and that piracy today goes beyond the theft of intellectual property to affect core aspects of modern culture, science, technology, authorship, policing, politics, and the very foundations of economic and social order. “That is why the topic of piracy causes the anxiety that it so evidently does” (Johns 2009, p. 26). On both ends, for the attacker and the attacked. By distributing information otherwise syllabus ⦚ Pirate Care challenges the ‘unusable politics’ (transmediale 2024) and ‘unjust laws’ (Swartz 2008) that continue to produce harmful environments, offering a reassessment of the inherently violent dynamics of the realities of Publishing (with a capital P) and the circulation of information as a commodity together with its imperialist logics of structural discrimination. The project as a model for commoning knowledge in the form of a technically informed care infrastructure not only enables its users to engage with the syllabus and library as a curriculum but also to build and maintain similar infrastructures. As an otherwise publishing infrastructure, projects like syllabus ⦚ Pirate Care continue to have an impact on politics, pedagogies, and governance and can serve as models worth to carefully ‘institute’..

Screenshot of the table of contents of syllabus ⦚ Pirate Care on https://syllabus.pirate.care

Screenshot of the collection of a comprehensive list of references for the topic “Commoning Care” on https://syllabus.pirate.care/topic/commoningcare/

but embedded as the anti-political space of El Partido Sintético, where manifolds are localized into the Euclidean territories of flat learning ... a denominator emancipating politics from ideological nuance, leveling out any articulation between represented and representative

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This workshop was convened around a carefully maintained set of networking and publishing infrastructures. Participating in the workshop we gained a privileged access to these tools, services and system's memory (which constitute a counter model of networked infrastructure). The ServPub server produces an adaptive refiguring of network infrastructure and collective presence.

Intending to invite a space for imagination and active participation in these networks, I re-purposed the widely available Wifi-enabled microcontrollers (ESP8266) to introduce a series of local-only Wifi access points, programmed to serve a simple messageboard. My interest in these particular microcontrollers stems from their functionality, offering a low-code entry level into networking devices, that also contains enough flexibility for interesting and surprising uses to emerge. The intent was for these to act as shadow networks to the primary shared server. It was intended to augment our interactions with the server and the collective writing processes. Additionally to these programmed uses it can also hold other interactions that distort the nested protocols.

Visibly, these microcontrollers break the infrastructure into further discrete nodes. More brittle than the wider network, technical capability is traded for limited parameters, that surface protocological moments into active decisions. The reduced component architecture offers some specificity of the material entanglements. We know where the memory is inscribed and under what levels of permanence. We can also follow the combination of manufacturers at least partially involved in this; Espressif, Ai-Thinker, Wemos.

Limiting this shadow network only to the dev-board without additional components or serial communications, the microcontrollers offer useful visual cues as to their possibility; from the visible printed antenna to the sometimes blinking LED. It also opens up the possibility for them to hide ever more discreetly in public spaces.

If part of our exploration of the shared server is understood in relation to conventional methods of digital networking, how does the shared server react to a smaller sibling?

In practice the shadow network remains like weeds growing at the ankles of the ServPub server. To connect to the messageboard or run other services, means disconnecting from the collective spaces of writing on the ServPub server, and the wider internet.

Something that surfaces as an immediate limit is the lack of security offered by the microcontroller. To engage with it in a sustained way requires additional agreements and discussion, emerging from the local context. So it's perhaps always unsuited for activating effective resistance to the dominant form of the internet, but could remain a possible tool for layering upon or around experimental infrastructure, such as the shared server.

It remains a possibility of actions, untaken, and affirming of the practice developed in the shared server. The shadow network follows a Luddite logic of unpicking, allowing space for refusal, the dismissal of certain processes and tools, and the exploration of others, better suited to commonality. It remains open to other passageways of data; a shadow library, a local wiki or static site. When so much is contingent on a connected internet, subject to ever greater modes of extraction, a template of autonomous zones and fragmented protocols appears as a necessary practice.

Wemos D1 Mini underside.

Wemos D1 Mini topside, ESP8266 chip visible.

How to rethink computational practices for future where the tools and infrastructure that we take for granted are no longer available? Is it possible to decouple the idea and practice of computing from its extractivist materiality and anglophone scope of knowledge?

The long-stablished computational tools that are so often deemed essential in contemporary society have reached the point of being perceived as natural, given realities that overlook the engineered oppression and imperialist rationale embedded in dominant hardware and software. Moreover, digital informational technologies require an ever-increasing access to data, computational power, and infrastructure that gets entrenched over the entire planet, both literally and epistemologically.

The allure of computational fetishism, with its constant promises of newer and better technologies, exacerbates the strain on our planet's resources as one of the industries with the biggest carbon footprint that are predicted to only increase (Freitag et al. 2021). Paradoxically, as society becomes more dependent on these advanced tools, users and programmers alike find themselves increasingly detached from the inner workings of the machines they interact with daily. This predicament prompts a critical investigation of anti-capitalist alternatives to computation, decoupling it from big tech platformization and the commodity of the Cloud.

The central query arising from this discussion is the exploration of paths that diverge from the current computational paradigms characterized by capitalist overproduction, relentless innovation, and extractivist materiality. Rather than advocating for a simplistic return to retro-computing frameworks, the proposition is to underscore the importance of subverting, reimagining, and repurposing technology. Computers, with their complicated history, have long been entangled with harmful materiality, engineered biases, and discriminatory practices, particularly against multicultural perspectives and epistemes beyond the English-speaking West.

In response to that, there isn’t a single and universal solution, but a proliferation of alternatives. In a “prompted everything” era it can be challenging to step back and inspect the inner logics of current black-boxed devices to understand how operational systems and programming languages work to propose radical alternatives to already established paradigms. The time and hard skills involved leave out many people who can’t afford to be this critical of big tech and industry practices, turning recent concepts such as Permacomputing (Heikkilä 2020), benign computing (Raghavan 2015), Collapse Informatics (Penzenstadler et al. 2015) and related propositions into a very white male-dominated, hardcore-programmer niche that flirts with purist ideologies and bourgeois romanticism (Mansoux et al. 2023).

However, it could also be argued that the populations of many global majority countries face material limitations and economic hardships that requires ingenious alternative solutions as a way to hack reality in everyday life, exemplified by Brazilian ‘gambiarras’ and Cuban ‘rikimbilis’, what researcher Ernesto Oroza names as ‘objects of necessity’ (Oroza 2006). Implementing such alternatives necessitates mundane yet crucial work that like refactoring, maintenance, care, and a calculated use of resources. (Raghavan and Hasan in de Valk, 2022) Even though these will never be as exciting and fast as today’s cutting-edge devices, they offer what might be the only long-lasting option in an increasingly exhausted planet.

A Venn diagram of heterogeneous computational practices and paradigms.

‎

Discussions around the politics of refusal have already been addressed in a previous edition of transmediale 2021–22 for refusal, which resonates with the ideas here presented.

https://202122.transmediale.de/

It is important to question the term 'alternative' and whether this is the most appropriate term when proposing a new logic/norm, as this still acts within a binary logic that reduces the object of discussion to either being part of the 'norm' or the 'alternative'.

As Donna Haraway advised in Staying with the Trouble, the solution may not be a solution in itself. Rather, we can use the problem as a compost (here I imagine technological 'cagadas' literally translated as 'technological turds' which means 'technological screw-ups') to plant new forms of affect.

through AI-derived policies from a dataset of fringe parties post-1970, Det Syntetiske Parti proposed a 100,000-kroner ($13K) universal basic income, tripling the mean Danish wages; and in collaboration with the tech-hub MindFuture invented the

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Content-Form/Rachel

18th UN SDG “Life with Artificials”; so with its measly 11 signatures out of the requisite 20,000 to run for Danish parliament, the party keeps alive worldwide networking about creating localized Synthetische Partei duplicates.

Computer Lars

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