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Laine Nooney, what's next?, and Giorgia Lupi
We started off the afternoon with an artist talk by Laine Nooney called the ‘Domestic History of Computing’. She had an article published in the Atlantic yesterday about the first erotic computer game. Her talk focused mostly on the life of Roberta Williams, the first female computer designer in the United States, and Sierra Entertainment/Online Systems (her and her husband’s company). She used Roberta’s story as a case study into how computers focused in a domestic setting: how they were introduced, why they felt accessible, etc. It was a super intersting and extremely detailed perspective into an area of computer history that I had never really even thought about. She revealed how a chronological timeline wasn’t really best for her exploration as much of Roberta’s story is not well known in computer history. Instead she focused on organizing history by theme rather than time and getting history ‘more’ rather than getting history right.
After her talk, a few of us met to have a conversation about what’s next for us after SFPC. We’ve all really enjoyed our time here and have been feeling anxious about how to continue doing what we’re passionate about - finding time, motivation, a good process, accountability, and a way to sustain ourselves all at the same time. We spent some time reflecting two questions that sparked a lot of conversation: ‘what do we not want to do? and ‘what do we want to do?’ I’ve never thought about asking myself what I don’t want to do before and it felt like a strange question at first, but it was nice to think about what I don’t want to do so that I could feel like I’ve cleared some sort of path for something that I do want to do. There’s been a lot of anxiety for me about being exposed to so much, and this helped curb it a little. As for the what do I want to do question - I’m still figuring this out, and so are a lot of other students. It was nice to hear that a lot of them are having similar anxieties and concerns as me though. It sounds like everyone wants to continue to keep in touch as a means for motivation, accountability, and a safe place for sharing, conversation, and questions which I’m really happy about.
Later, Giorgia Lupi visited for her artist talk which I’ve been really excited for for a long time. Her talk at Eyeo was one of my all time favorites. I just really love the style of the visualizations that Accurat creates and I really hope one day that something I make will look like that as well! It was nice to hear her reiterate her design process of drawing, because I really enjoy drawing, but its something that I’ve been taking for granted lately. It gives me inspiration to get back into it. You should also check out Accurat’s friends in space project which is so so cool!
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Fan-girling and reflections
We started today with a checkin with Taeyoon and Ida where they introduced us to the plans for the final wrap up session. I can tell they’ve both put a lot of thought into giving us the most out of our time here and come up with a pretty awesome experience for us. They’ve curated a list of amazing people to serve as mentors for us to meet with and discuss any questions we have about ideas, direction of work, or career. The day will consist of two mentoring sessions with a few mixer/coffee breaks in between so that we can speak with any mentors we didn’t have a chance to talk to more closely. After seeing the list of mentors I’m pretty much freaking out. They’re all so incredible and I’m really excited and anxious to be able to get their feedback.
I spent the rest of the day working on an SFPC learning report that we’ve been asked to complete in preparation for our mentoring sessions. It will be given to the mentors beforehand so that they can learn a little more about what we’ve been thinking about and working on during our time at SFPC. Working on the report has been a lot harder than expected, but I’m really getting a lot out of reflecting on my time here. (It also makes me super thankful that I’ve been keeping up this blog!)
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More grammars and an introduction to wearable technology
Today we went over some more grammars in Ramsey’s class involving some more complex abstract syntax trees. He also shed some light on how languages are written in themselves, like C being written in C, and how that process works. Basically, you do always some start with some host language that is different and then write a grammar/parser and other more complex logic in the host language to create a net new language that is turing complete. From there, since your new language is turing complete, you can rewrite some of the more high level concepts from your new language in itself, and then feed it back in. At this point, the host language sort of disappears from the workflow. Your net new language would be compiled into the original host language though. Pretty crazy…I never thought there’d be a point in my life where I actually had an idea about how C was written in C. He also introduced us to quines, programs whose outputs are its own source code. If you want your mind blown, check out the quine relay project.
Later in the day, Zan invited some of her friends over to the school and faciliated a conversation about wearable technology. David Jay is part of a team at the Samsung accelerator working on smartwatches and Maddy Maxey is the CTO at The Crated which focuses on the wearable tech space as well. I really enjoyed the conversation - I felt like it gave me inspiration for a space where my skills and enjoyment in sewing and fashion can meet technology. I’m still not sold on smartwatches though…
Franc did share a pretty nice idea with us for a project he was thinking about starting called Trainfuck. This is a new programming language inspired by the esoteric programming language called Brainfuck. The concept is that the language is built by subway transit, so riding trains in a certain way will create/execute the program. He’s planning to execute Hello World this weekend on the trains. It’s a really clever idea and I’m excited to learn more about its development.
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Political Change and Riots [CTOT]
This week we had a reading about political change and riots. Here are my thoughts from chapter two of the ‘Critical Art Ensemble’: ‘The Mythology of Terrorism on the Net’:
‘The total collection of records on an individual is h/er or her data body—a state-and-corporate-controlled doppelgänger. What is most unfortunate about this development is that the data body not only claims to have ontological privilege, but actually does have it. What your data body says about you is more real than what you say about yourself. The data body is the body by which you are judged in society, and the body that dictates your status in the social world. What we are witnessing at this point in time is the triumph of representation over being. The electronic file has conquered self-aware consciousness.’
- This is an interesting contrast to how we think about data in terms of surveillance. There was a lot of talk around the issues in collecting large amounts of data, and how sometimes it can tell a lot about you, but sometimes the important bits get lost in the masses - when we search for things that may not be there. This excerpt definitely touches on how your data lets you fit in socially, and what its simple existence means, rather than its content.
‘Herein lies a substantial clue as to why some people fear the disruption of cyberspace. While the organic body may not be in danger, the electronic body could be threatened. Should the electronic body be disrupted, immobilized, or (heaven forbid) deleted, one’s existence in the realm of the social could be drastically effected.’
- I don’t know if I totally agree with this, but I think this will be the case pretty soon in the future (I’m mostly focusing on the social media data body). There are still a good amount of individuals who choose not to participate in social media who do okay. I’m sure they miss things, but nothing that couldn’t be compensated elsewhere.
‘Once we moved CD [civil disobediance] out of the realm of the physical, where disruption is localized and avoidable for those who accept their data body as their superior, we were suggesting their erasure as a consequence of political objection. What is frightening to CAE about this scenario is that electronic erasure is perceived as equivalent to being killed in a bomb explosion. Now the perception exists that the absence of electronic recognition equals death.’
- What I’m taking from this is don’t let your life be determined, dictated, consumed, defined by your online self.
‘If the virtual functions and is perceived as a superior form of being, it becomes a monstrous mechanism of control for the class that regulates access to it and mobility within it.’
- Hence defining its erasure as death…hopefully we can move away from this.
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Dan Shiffman visits
Today is the day before Thanksgiving and also the day Dan Shiffman visits! Many of us have been waiting for quite a while for him to come. We’ve all become pretty close with his ‘Nature of Code’ Processing book. I’ve also heard a lot about his instructional videos that go along with the book, so I’m super excited to see him speak in person. He spent most of the time talking about how he developed the book, all the work and struggles that come with publishing, and what his hopes were for the future in developing the book even further. It was really interesting to see how much work went into the book - not that I thought it was a breeze, but I guess I took a lot for granted. He also shared a little about his teaching and research in teaching. His latest work includes creating a system to easily tape a lecture by yourself. At the end of the talk, he talked a little about the genetic algorithm section of the ‘Nature of Code’. It was pretty amazing, and gives me even more motivation to make it to the end of the book so that I can explore it! He introduced us to BoxCar2D which is so so amazing. BoxCar2D is a system that uses shapes to randomly create different car configurations. The success of the configuration seems to be based on how far the car can make it on the specified course without falling apart. Each new generation tries to learn from the last so that as it continues to run, the car that’s created becomes ‘better and better’.
After Dan’s talk, we had Allison’s last CTOT class where the topic was political change and riots. We spent time talking about political activism on the web and how it may or may not be different from political activism in our physical environment, and even what’s considered political activism in each space. As always, it was super interesting and leaves me with a lot to think about.