Casey A. Gollan: Notes + Links

Weeks 12, 13, and almost 14

Thu, 03 May 2012 05:27:43 -0400

I’ve been reading Literary Machines slowly, whenever I find a blank spot of time. On Saturday I sat outside with coffee and Sneezeburg and re-read Vannevar Bush’s As We May Think, which Nelson transcludes in a lo-fi way into his own book. I took an Instagram of a passage about progress in photography to give everyone who ever wrote about progress in photography a spin in their grave.

Nelson and Bush seem to get pretty hung up on technical (or even mechanical) hurdles rather than conceptual ones. There’s a lot of fussing about, in Bush’s case, how to shuffle microfilm around quickly, or in Nelson’s case, complicated server configurations. It reminds me of how characters in sci-fi movies park their hovercars to go use a payphone. These inventors are willing to imagine radically different worlds but can’t let go of the most banal limitations. And the things they lamented not having are no longer pipe dreams! Reading their texts in 2012, there appears to be no reason why a Memex or Xanadu can’t exist, other than that they just don’t.

It seems like Nelson specficially, who I guess is still working, is too smart for his own good. Too wrapped up in the details of his obsessions. “It seemed so simple and clear to me then. It still does,” he writes, “But…I mistook a clear view for a short distance.” If perfectionism can be said to plague Nelson’s projects, it must also be acknowledged that it’s his philosophy of choice. I was shocked to read his justification for why Xanadu must be built from scratch, completely and perfectly: “Existing systems do not combine well; hooking them together creates something like the New York subway system.”

The New York Subway system?!

In my System Design class, we lauded this as one of the most functional examples of emergent design ever. New York could’ve suffered from some clunky, overdetermined, shortsighted, top-down transportation plan. Instead, a number of transportation companies competed to get the people where they needed to go. Competition between companies and the lack of an overall design vision led to a shift in emphasis: not what makes sense, but what works well. Perhaps the problems that bogged Nelson down indefinitely only reveal themselves in time, but I wonder if somebody with more distance or a less stubborn idea of the right way to build things could actually build the thing — even if it isn’t perfect.

I also never realized that Bush thought a lot more about interfaces than Nelson, who basically rejected them entirely (at least as far as I’ve read):

How you will look at this world when it is spreadeagled on your screen is your own business: you control it by your choice of screen hardware, by your choice of viewing program, by what you do as you watch, but the structure of the world—the system of interconnections of its stored materials—is the same from screen to screen, no matter how a given screen may show it.

I think a lot about the ability to have my choice of interfaces to the same materials, which is something users and readers are too often denied these days, as the interface and materials have become intertwined under the ownership of the publisher.

Things like RSS feeds, news APIs, and open content sets give me hope. There’s also the whole pop-up industry of Read Later tools, whose dirty work it is to boil down webpages to their content and repurpose it for easy reading. It has proven proven easier, in lieu of a perfect system, to ask for forgiveness rather than cooperation in separating content from presentation and bringing it into your own territory.

iPad magazine apps reside at the other end of the spectrum. While they’re an additional, native interface that is sometimes exciting, they present a sort of glum vision: impenetrable, redundant, expensive, flashy, proprietary.

Nelson’s decoupling of backend and frontend is pretty profound. It underscores the base-ness of his ideas: he’s talking about different structures for writing and thinking, not just presenting plain old content in a style that evokes structure. There is not necessarily a visual difference between these two things but conceptually it is huge.

Even if the real problems lie in data structures, I can’t help but gravitate towards the descriptive aspects and imagine tools I’d want to use. I love Nelson’s vision of computers as “a waterworks for the mind”:

Your computer screen will be the spigot—or shower nozzle—that dispenses what you need when you turn the handle. But that system must be based on the fluidity of thought—not just its crystallized and static form, which, like water’s, is hard and cold and goes nowhere.

Two days later, Max started a Google Doc amongst a bunch of people who are normally bantering on Twitter about reading, writing, and tools for thinking. His title is so good: “Let us not be an enemy to beginning.” I don’t know where to jump in yet, but found myself doing little interface experiments.

These are little prototypes of picking things up and moving them around. When they’re being dragged they lift up, or the perspective shifts a little. I wasn’t even sure what it’s for, only that I enjoy fiddling with how it should feel to pick up information from one spot and plunk it down in another.

I played a little with a force-directed graph but didn’t get very far into understanding how it works.

Two days later I was noodling again. I did some drawings in Paper (that slick new iPad sketch app that has everybody going bonkers over its super gestural interface).

In the first frame two things start to bleed into eachother as they’re brought close together.

When one thing is dropped onto another, the tool shows a dialogue with its best guess about how to combine the two things into one. You can edit it and then either merge or cancel.

If you want to seperate things out rather than merge them together, you can pull sentences apart at their punctuation. (Which would feel springy…imagine doing that with a pinch.)

The previous things were all coded prototypes. I managed to implement dragging and dropping (which, these days, just means including “draggable” in the element tag) and collision detection (using a plugin that I realized was written by a professor at Cooper). When I started to think about how to program the blocks to be combinable and splittable I got overwhelmed and chickened out. I did arrive at a sort of working page that watches a textbox as you type and splits up sentences into draggable elements. Okay, well, it only kind of worked.

All of these experiments felt a little silly because the dragging and dropping and merging is perhaps slower and clunkier than just using a text editor to write. In the past few years I’ve gone back and forth manically on believing that better tools will make much of a difference. Can you get more powerful and open-ended that a blank sheet of paper or TextEdit window?

But I’ve recently come to see the “tools make work better or worse” as a false dichotomy: different tools just make working different, in a way that hopefully exists outside of quantification. Increasing power or efficiency is a lot less interesting to me than inventing a game you play with yourself to change the way you think.

You can do everything in the sketches above with a text-editor: collecting, typing, dragging and dropping to reorder, merging and splitting sentences. But a different interface would encourage a different mindset. Different relationships. Different ways of describing what you’re doing, like maybe: growing a text instead of writing it. They key actions being: arranging things on a 2D canvas for consideration, and combining related things.

It’s almost an architectural conceit: altering the way you can move through a certain space, and trusting that one’s environment has a huge impact on everything you do. It’s not a question of allowing you to do something magical that didn’t exist before, so much as knocking down a few walls and building a swimming pool, to make one’s environment feel more conducive to thinking.

Who knows if it would be helpful or frustrating, or if I would ever actually use it, but it’s a way of working that has sat in the back of my mind for a long time and has even surfaced in analog form. When I wrote a long essay for Pool last summer, I actually cut the whole thing up (with scissors!!) and pasted it back together at the last minute.

This would be a digital environment that allows for that type of scatterbrained writingediting.

I came across these GIFs by DVDP that capture a really exciting kind of physics. I’d be interested to see how I work in the atmosphere of a game, as opposed to something like Google Docs, reminiscent of a utilitarian cubicle farm with floppy disks and manilla folders.

Collecting:

Connecting:

Lasso-ing:

Turning pages:

Apple gets this right a lot of the time, think: coverflow, iPhone physics. When I saw the sander on a sheet of paper, it reminded me of how the tools I use should feel: badass! I don’t care how, it just has to be.

That’s all I’ve got on that, for now. Now, back to our regularly scheduled chronology.

Sunday I changed my avatar, which is silly but always feels like a big deal. I’ve stepped out of the shadows to reveal longer hair and different glasses. Less smiley, more judgey. Felt like I was living a lie.

Walked Sneezeburg over the bridge.

Hung out on the stoop at school and read.

Got Pizza with Aaron and let Sneezeburg have his way with the box.

Walked over the bridge again, home. It’s electrifying.

On Monday a Muybridge popped up on 20x200, and I remembered that I had an old gift certificate lying around, so I used it up on that.

And pulled my Rebecca Solnit book off the shelf to look through again. God she’s good:

In the spring of 1872 a man photographed a horse. With the motion studies that resulted it was as though he were returning bodies themselves to those who craved them—not bodies as they might daily be experienced, bodies as senstations of gravity, fatigue, strength, pleasure, but bodies become weightless images, bodies dissected and reconstructed by light and machine and fantasy.

…

Through the new technologies—the train to the landscape, the camera to the spectacle—the Victorians were trying to find their way back, but where they had lost the old and familiar things they recovered exotic new ones. What they had lost was solid; what they had gained was made out of air. That exotic new world of images speeding by would become the true home of those who spent their Saturdays watching images beamed across the darkness of the movie theater, then their evening watching images beamed through the atmosphere and brought home into a box like a camera obscura or a crystal ball, then their waking hours surfing the internet wired like the old telegraph system. Muybridge was a doorway, a pivot between that old world and ours, and to follow his is to follow the choices that got us here.

Gratutious Sneezeburg pic (Sneezeburg x Metahaven!):

Then I registered for classes, which will be superawesome: Performance, Projects (for which you just have to have some sort of long-term project going on—I listed mine as “Hypertext”…hmm.), Open Studio (that is sort of a sculpture class?), Visiting Designers, and History of Industrial Design. Open ended, lots of great professors.

Alan’s Fake Cooper Website made in onto Gothamist. Really good.

Tuesday morning I had coffee and breakfast with Mom in Brooklyn, and said goodbye to Sneezeburg :’-(

Went to school and people were picketing!

Don’t remember what happened in photo, but we didn’t stay long. Don’t know what I want to do. There is a scientific photography class in the School of Engineering that I should probably have been in instead. They are making holographs. HOLOGRAPHS!

Remembered that I was supposed to give a presentation to my Censorship class about my paper, which was overdue two-weeks and I hadn’t even started. Had a fun time putting it together: videos of Bjork, burning cars, nerdy quotes:

Wednesday, met up with Jen’s friend Sally, who is visiting from Sweden, for coffee. She studied art history and is going into the curating program that Jen is about to graduate from, so it was interesting to talk with her. We talked for a long time and then I showed her around school.

Futzed with ideas for my final book for Publication Design. Brought in hardly any design, but printouts of Temple Grandin and Ted Nelson and other things vaguely along the lines of “people who make systems or tools for themselves.” Or structures of problem solving? Business strategies? I was calling it Workflow. None of the pieces fit together right, though it was potentially interesting. The challenge is to do the content and design in a matter of a few weeks with a ton of other shit swirling around too. Not easy. Need to be less open ended. Perhaps picking a stupid idea and running with it. Ugh.

Stayed up really late tinkering with the code for my new website, which has come a long way since I started it over spring break.

It’s now running on Stacey and has a ton of sloppy, kooky javascript that draws connections between projects when you hover over tags and click on them. It’s not the most functional way to accomplish sorting, which might not even be an important use case for a portfolio site, but it’s another weird way to channel my mania for lines and nodes. Between this and the interface experiments, I’ve been thinking a lot about the aesthetics of this kind of mapping. Something to think more about. Excited to launch this soon.

Thursday, skipped art history. Felt weirdly blue. Maybe it was because I missed Sneezeburg. Apparently he was missing me too:

Walked over the bridge, and stumbled into the Storefront for Art & Architecture, where they had a forest of zine trees. The director, who is in that picture, was there gviing a tour, which was neat. Kind of useful to browse a bunch of avant garde publications. There is no shortage of people with things to say and ways to say them:

When I got to school there was a fire drill. I went outside and randomly bumped into Cari, who I haven’t seen since high school, on the street! And she is moving to Ohio in a week! Then, a few minutes later, Max walked into my classroom. The smallest world.

Don’t remember sculpture. Had a weird dinner at Grand Sichuan composed of 80% spicy peppers. Tasted like acid and had the consistency of cardboard. Watched the first two parts of All Watched Over By Machines Of Loving Grace. Pretty crazy. Really excited to finish it and learn more about his work. Made me think about people with grand unified theories. Specious!

Friday, met Santi in the East Village and headed up to our Megabus to Baltimore. The bus left an hour late. On the last bus ride I had gotten a lot of work done, but this time it was dark and cold, and a strange hour, conducive neither to neither work nor sleep. When we arrived it was past midnight. And we were in a parking lot 30 minutes outside the city. In choosing Megabus over Bolt due to timing, we hadn’t bothered to check where the drop off was. Luckily there were two of us to split the $50 cab ride (grrrr). Always great to see Natalie and Zoe. Hung out for a bit while Santi made endless quesadillas and then went to bed.

Saturday we had breakfast with Natalie’s mom and sis, and then tagged along while she got ready to put on her show. Santi did makeup and I sat around pretending to work on my essay.

Natalie’s collection is reallly good. So happy to have made it to the show.

Santi made desperate attempts at cancelling Megabus by phone to no avail, then I tweeted at them and they called back with a refund in minutes. The internet is magic.

Got Afghani food with Santi, Lauren, and Frankie, and went back to Natalie’s where we watched Illuminati videos.

Sunday morning we got standby tickets on a random Bolt Bus, which took us back to NY, except by way of NJ. But I had nowhere to be anyway, and there was this short news segment about cats who make art on iPads playing on the PATH TV screens, so it was okay.

I tried to buy toilet paper and ice cream (ha) on the way home and my card wasn’t working. Tried it again at an ATM and still didn’t work. Tried again later and when it still didn’t work I called Chase, who informed me that there was a fruad alert on my account. Had I spent $100 at the Apple Store? Yes. (Lost my charger.) Had I spent another $100 at a Kmart in Virginia? Nooooooo. The card was still in my posession so it was just the number that migrated, I tried to think but couldn’t imagine when/where/how. Anyway, keep it classy, fraudsters!

On Monday I walked to the bank to get a replacement card. “You’ll be amazed at the places your card will go.” she told me.

Don’t remember what else happened that day.

At the grocery store the pettiest thief in the world attempted to steal gum.

I made a little user stylesheet to show images from brown cardigan to show a full screen random funny thing every 6 seconds on our wall!!! That was rewarding.

I started making a presentation for photography. Well, only one slide of some sad ass sensitive photos:

I’ve been thinking about how I’ve done so much nothing — or a lot of thinking and railing against things that people make (sort of shitty of me in a school context) — but the attitude of the nothingness has changed over time. Maybe I should stop calling it nothing. Anyway, I used to be a lot more mad at photography and now I am weirdly more empathetic and apathetic at the same time. I find a lot of it boring but no longer wish to destroy it, like I actually did a year ago. I want to compile all the things I’ve seen that excite me, but I don’t even have them in organized groupings of bookmarks. Photo as a technology is a much stronger draw for me than roadtrip photography.

On Tuesday, the New York Times broke the news that Cooper will charge tuition to undergrads. WHAT? I was furious.

It was Alex’s birthday and I wanted to be happy but I couldn’t even laugh at jokes.

I received a school-wide email from President Bharucha at 12:14pm. The New York Times ran their story at 12:22pm. It clearly wasn’t written in that 8 minute gap. Which means the administration once again talked to the papers about their plan before even telling the students. Fuckers.

There was already a walkout scheduled for Wednesday, so I made a sign in light of the day’s news:

Put up maybe 40 around the school, then gave a bunch to some friends and then I went to my Censorship class. When I got out there were signs plastering every surface of the path towards the auditorium where a TEDx event was being hosted (Ran into Emily there!). Ha.

Aaron took this photo of me:

Went to The Scratcher for Alex’s birthday.

On Wednesday morning I was offered my iced coffee in a mason jar instead of a plastic cup. In case you were unsure as to whether or not I live in Brooklyn.

By the time I got to school the Cooper Walkout was in full swing!!!!

In the morning tried skyping with Jen but wifi was flaky:

People marched in circles with great big signs. Jesse Kreuzer got up on the Peter Cooper statue and danced.

Read a few lines in a play that some people put together about how stupid the trustees are, and then we circled the school, chased by a giant head of the Chairman of the Board.

Went up to Union Square where we watched this choir perform. That was funny. And saw some speeches.

This lady’s sign was my favorite. It has shredded student loans as confetti.

David Graeber spoke. I want to read his book to understand more about the whole situation, because it’s kind of wild watching people burn their debts. Everything is fucked up.

Followed the march back to school, where everyone stopped for a minute to hear about Cooper. And left the cops swarming our block as they tried to get Jesse down.

Sarah Abruña was arrested for what appears to be basically no reason.

Here I am hanging off the building in somebody’s photo.

I was quoted in Gallerist NY and New School Free Press. But WYNC got the story best, I think.

Didn’t work on design. And then met with Warren for a scheduled one-on-one, after I had been screaming my head off for ten hours. Decided to do weeknotes book. Partially because I am running out of time, but also seeing how many bad artist statements I came across recently reference an interest in cabinets of curisoity I want to take more time to connect or tease out all those weird things instead of just throwing them into a book stew. It’s not actually about that. Warren is smart. His class has been, totally unexpectedly, the best one of my semester.

Thursday our Art History class met at the American Museum of Natural History for a field trip. We talked about the racist statue out front, and how the horse has gigantic balls. Then we explicated the gender/cultural norms in a bunch of dioramas. A really creative, fun fieldtrip. Though it made me think there’s potential to kickstart a Post-Gender Museum of Natural History. Lolol.

The museum becomes a diorama of museums too. Certain galleries that were last refurbished in the 70’s would need nothing more than a sheet of glass placed over their entrances to become compelling meta-exhibits.

Read an article by Felix Salmon: “Why Cooper Union can’t be trusted.” From the title it seems disheartening but is actually in support of the community, and our efforts to clean up the school’s act.

Skipped sculpture to go to the Cooper Community Summit, which was really good.

Friday, it was decided that the plan is to walk out every day. So I brought my laptop outside and spent all day writing.

Lunch was served and people discussed a proposal to give away all the works in the end of the year show with Saskia.

Kept writing all day and into the night. Finally published this in desperation, an hour before the place we were going for dinner was closing: Two Apologies President Bharucha Must Make.

Ate Thai food! Then watched every movie trailer from A - Z. The kind of fun that feels like being tortured. I made it to L before falling asleep, but Aaron and Alex made it through.

Saturday, Bruce High Quality put on a play called Animal Farm in the Great Hall. I don’t remember anything else.

Sunday, met Niki at Grand Central. Had lunch at Ippudo with Dad and Niki. Made a silly gift for Granny and Grandpa’s 50th(!) anniversary and sent it to them.

Max started blogging again!

Stalked Pentametron for a while. This Gawker article is good.

Worked on the freelance project for a while and got a lot done.

After sending that off sat down (er, kept on sitting) to put the finishing touches on the new Pool.

I had sent Louis a kind-of rude message in December saying: “The collection of writing/readings/people is good and Rasmus’s pdfs are clever but I’m always confused by how crappy/default the actual site design is.” So it’s exciting to have finally channeled my random frustration into a new site: even more austere, more readable, simplest permalinks ever, potential for bigger images, got rid of the previously confusing concept of issues/archives while highlighting Rasmus’s awesome PDFs,

Monday, walked to Greenpoint with Alex. Got sandwiches. Worked at Grumpy but didn’t get very much done at all.

Finally moved my domain off GoDaddy.

Skipped what sounded like a good lecture by James Gleick, whose book Chaos I’ve read and The Information I’ve been meaning to read forever. Heard there were good meetings about the state of the school, which is increasingly dire.

Turned in 5 pages by midnight, then took a 5-Hour energy for no real reason. Managed to take naps and eventually fall asleep after staying up too late and not getting work done.

Tuesday was Mayday. Critted a bunch of peoples’ work in photo, which was good, conversationally, but not great. As good as it will get. Walked up to Union Square after with Tyler but we couldn’t even get into the center. It was slow and loud and there seemed to be one cop for every two protestors. Walked back towards school with the march and peeled off to go to the openings. Blacked out in the hammock in Aaron’s studio and woke up at midnight. The train took an hour to get from Manhattan to Brooklyn, so I read almost all of The Way Forward. It’s really good.

Today I worked on this weeknote at home and then school, amid distractions like this Vice article that reminded me I don’t actually hate art. At least not as much as I hate Vice.

I am constantly wanting to refer to that meme: Pop Music: forcing you to defend something terrible because it’s being criticized so poorly. I should just make it myself, since I can never find it.

When I wait too long to put this together it ends up taking up a whole day, or even days. Jesus christ. This one started out so strong and has really petered out by this ending.

Asked the library for sheet music for the Alma Mater song so I can make a dubstep remix, but they claimed not to have it. Will have to bug the office people in external affairs.

Louis bought me dinner as a thanks for Pool and we hung out, which was nice.

I won’t have a sculpture by my final class tonight. So what’s left to do at a minimum is: censorship essay, publication weeknotes book, publication diaries, photo presentation, freelance project, Jen’s thesis website, art history midterm (heh), final, and horrible theory annotations. There are six days remaining. It will be necessary to go a little crazy.

Languages, global and universal

Mon, 30 Apr 2012 13:55:50 -0400

Global Recordings Network, founded in Los Angeles in 1939, has produced audio versions of Bible stories in over 5,500 languages, and aims to record in every language on earth. They distribute the recordings, along with ultra-low-tech hand-wind players, in isolated regions and among displaced migrant workers. GRN calls their target audience “the tailenders” because they are the last to be reached by worldwide evangelism. Filmed in the Solomon Islands, Mexico, India and the United States, “The Tailenders” is an unusual filmic essay that examines the missionaries strategic use of media and the intersection of missionary activity and global capitalism.

The Universal Language is a new documentary from Academy Award-nominated director Sam Green (The Weather Underground). This 30-minute film traces the history of Esperanto, an artificial language that was created in the late 1800s by a Polish eye doctor who believed that if everyone in the world spoke a common tongue, humanity could overcome racism and war. Fittingly, the word “Esperanto” means “one who hopes.”

During the early 20th century, hundreds of thousands of people around the world spoke Esperanto and believed in its ideals. Today, surprisingly, a vibrant Esperanto movement still exists. In this first-ever documentary about Esperanto, Green creates a portrait of the language and those who speak it today that is at once humorous, poignant, stirring, and ultimately hopeful.

COOPER UNION WALK OUT/WORK OUT, PROTEST, OWS STUDENT DEBT $1T MARCH, NYPD AT COOPER

Fri, 27 Apr 2012 11:05:45 -0400

COOPER UNION WALK OUT/WORK OUT, PROTEST, OWS STUDENT DEBT $1T MARCH, NYPD AT COOPER:

Photos by Pete Halupka:

STUDENTS DRAPED FOUR RED BANNERS OUT OF THE FOURTH FLOOR WINDOWS. MAINTENANCE SOON CUT THEM. IN RESPONSE, WE MARCHED WITH EACH 100 FOOT BANNER THROUGH THE ENTIRETY OF THE NEW BUILDING AND FOUNDATION BUILDING.

THE FIRST TIME JESSE WAS ON THE…

More after the jump…!!

Weeks 10 & 11

Fri, 13 Apr 2012 05:30:06 -0400

On Thursday I showed SweatyTube again, this time to my sculpture class, kind of with Aaron (except he didn’t say a word). It was a totally different vibe than the first time around in Christine’s photo class. Mostly, I think, because Bea had brought more than enough wine, pop rocks, and rock candy for the entire class — leftovers from her show — and I went last. So the lights went down, a bootyshake video went on…on a sweater, and people laughed. Instead of babbling I kept my mouth shut and people threw out suggestions for the next video. Again we talked about the limits of memes: you get it or don’t and laugh for a sec and then it’s over. How they’re the sort of thing that doesn’t go very far and you don’t return to. Keep thinking about a thing Tyler said in photo that I might’ve twisted, but: part of why they’re funny is because the joke refuses to end. But people also looked closer than in my photo class: Maddy brought up how compositional everything looks, which I think is a big part of it too: generated but compositional. Niki wanted to know if I am swimming with a rubber ducky floatie in a sea of nihlism. Or what the internet means to me. I didn’t answer right then except to mumble that it definitely isn’t just a sea of nihlism for me.

Just salty water.

Friday morning we grabbed just out of the oven Calzone things from Napoli bakery on Metropolitan Ave., which were unreal. And then we headed over to catch the Boltbus to Baltimore. We were bored so we all trolled Boltbus on Twitter. I am happy they chose not to respond. I have still never been on a plane where I have wifi, but can you imagine how passive agressive you could be?? The sky is the limit, as they say.

Also got a ton of sort-of-overdue work done on The Freelance Project and sent off a slowly uploading comp just as we hit B-more. It’s very helpful to be trapped in a seat with slow internet for a few hours.

This was my second time coming to Baltimore. But even when I’ve passed by on Amtrak towards Granny and Grandpa’s in Virginia there’s the same horrible emptiness. So much built up unoccupied space. Disorienting, coming from New York. You can see how Baltimore was glamorous in a past life.

Natalie met us at the bridge where Boltbus drops off. YAY. Running hug. And then we walked to meet some of her friends and get sandwiches. Then off to a mall, which I guess is pretty Baltimore, but also pretty much everywhere-except-New-York-City. So that was nice. I also had about $10 in my bank account, not enough to widthdraw cash and scarily low to use a card, but was owed a back amount of utilities and split dinners and whatever, so I was hitting up the bank of Aaron and Alex all weekend. Half funny and half a hassle for all involved. Alex bought me those weird awesome mall pretzel bites. Went to two openings that were kind of whatever but interesting to check out the scene.

Saturday morning we snuck into MICA’s dining hall for breakfast, which felt awesome because I’m so horrible at playing it cool. Ate weird gross dining hall food and debated whether they put laxatives in it. Hitched a ride to Value Village, where Bank of Alex bought me a ridiculous shirt and cap. Aaron got a nice shirt for his opening. Alex got his typical horrible things. Walked around MICA for a bit and then headed downtown where we ended up at…another mall. The South Street Seaport of Baltimore, basically. Got burgers and fries at Five Guys and sat by the water.

Then hobbled to the other side of the water and onto a hill. Then walked down into a different area of Baltimore that felt kind of like a college town or something. Feel asleep on the bus on the way back to Natalie’s. She took a picture and bedazzled it on some amazing iPhone app that is like Pika Pika.

Aaron’s opening at Nudashank was cool. His work looked good:

And I liked these videos by Alan Resnick:

This girl sitting outside was, like, blogging IRL in a Moleskine about the show. Don’t think it was a piece.

Went back to Natalie’s and watched Mariah Carey’s cribs episode. Which is just really worth a few minutes of your life.

Then went to a party that turned out to be some freaky, fratty no-pants thing. So instead we sat outside. I would be fucking terrible at being a college student, if that’s what it’s supposed to be like. Ran into Suzy from back in RISD days.

Sunday Morning grabbed a bite to eat and got on the bus to New York. Walked up to dad’s, showered for the first time in a few days, which was awesome. Took a cab in the rain down to Nom Wah Tea Parlor. Dad and Niki were mad at me for dragging them out in the rain but then we all had fun. Niki started crying when I brought up college. Forgot how much high school sucks and how stressful that whole situation was.

Survived April Fools Day with no pranks. Didn’t even really notice any online ones.

Don’t really remember Monday, except that I did a bunch of Reading online.

Tuesday pretty much everyone showed up a few hours early to Photo to look at and talk about work, which was okay.

Then we headed down the the Municipal Archives. The building itself is worth a visit, just to see the marble lobby. I feel like they used to design building interiors darker. I can’t think of dark modern architecture…it’s almost like architects don’t consider darkness an option today.

Michael Lorenzini, the photo curator there, gave us an overview of what kinds of things they have in their (gigantic) collection. They get each mayor’s things after they leave office, so there are a lot of photographs touting improvements around the city. His speciality is this one photographer, Eugene de Salignac, who single-handedly documented a lot of city maintenance and construction — bridges in particular — but had a much sharper eye than straight record keeping calls for. They’re publishing a book of his work with Aperture that looks really good.

Other highlights of the collection are two huge sweeps of New York intending to capture every single tax lot. Effectively Google Street View before there was such a thing. A massive undertaking with bulky old cameras. Apparently they are gearing up to do it again? Seems kind of unnecessary when those images basically exist. Made me excited for when street view will not only allow you to navigate space but also time. It’s potentially already possible with the documents in the Municipal Archive, it would just need to be hooked up!

Another amazing part of their collection is the NYPD’s archive of crime scene photographs. Tons of fascinating gruesome shit:

The crime scene photos are an interesting resource because in the margins of their primary subject (dead bodies!) are a glimpse at the interiors of crime scenes: New York’s shady, rundown underground. Places too poor to be recorded for their own posterity.

Then we went down into the conservation lab, a clean but dingy basement in this impossibly lavish old building. We met a lady trying, with a scalpel, to finagle open a document stuck to itself. Michael and some colleagues showed us old negatives in various states of decay. They handled things a bit less gingerly than I experienced on our trip to the NYPL archives and also seemed a little less stuffy in general. A really fun group of archivists to hang out with.

Skipped Censorship for real this time, since it was cancelled last week and I still hadn’t written my draft. Went to openings and then worked in the computer lab until late on Infinite Scroll.

Woke up on Wednesday, got to school at a reasonable hour and hustled on design. Bought a bunch of speckled paper from the copy shop. Got a velour paper and a metallic cardstock from NY Central. Worked until class just on putting together more pages.

Pretending they had no idea what the magazine was already about (even after weeks of group crit) Warren asked the class to say what they each magazine is about and why. Which turned out to be more helpful than I thought it would, because it made clear which parts of the design telegraph certain aspects of what it’s about. It also kind of helped pin down what the content comes across as being, which was pretty much what I wanted: an academic design journal crashing into internet art and culture.

It’s far from done, even as far as the class assignment goes, let alone the whole magazine (not required but now I’m kind of into it). Not to mention the content is basically being ripped from people I have followed and bookmarked without any sort of consent, some headlines refer to things that don’t even exist, and editorially things could stand to be clarified. Not sure what some of the things I wrote down on the cover actually are, or if these things benefit from being hypothetically packaged together. Also, showing progress with iPhone snaps is kind of pathetic because a big part of it was dealing with the physicality of a magazine: so speckled papers, acetate overlays, waxed pages, velour, and metallics don’t come across well.

Talked with Ioana after class about how much work it is to accomplish so little with publications. Especially working solo. But I like it. Then went straight home, exhausted but excited. Did nothing but couldn’t fall asleep until really late.

So, Thursday I overslept Weinstein. Mom showed up to drop of Sneezeburg before her and Niki headed to Florida to look at colleges and beaches. But first found outdoor seating in Brooklyn and had Mexican food with mom and pup. Walked Sneeze over the bridge and to school. Tried walking in with him and was stopped by a guard. Tried to sneak him in inside a bag but the guards were on to me so I just sat outside. Missed Niki’s class but chatted with her outside after class was over about ways to sneak him in. She’s really good at that.

Friday stayed home and worked next to the world’s laziest dog, which made me feel productive. I’ve wanted a new, more comprehensive website for a while, since mine is really out of date at this point and just feels wrong. So I built a new Stacey template, did major data entry to get updated project information into it, and worked on the styling. Also figured out a way to manage revisions of writing and projects, which is super exciting. Want to add back in some of the crazy tag filtering and connector line things I was working on over the break, take a final pass at content, then this is ready to go.

The other nice part about having a dog around is that it forces me to take walks. Walked by this weird futuristic medical storefront that seems like it’s from Eternal Sunshine or Being John Malkovich.

Worked on The Freelance Project late into the night, extending the mockups made on the way to Baltimore to a few more pages and then jumping right into a coded prototype covering most of the site.

Saturday, walked Sneezeburg up to Greenpoint. Got coffee and a bagel. He got really tired because the walk was so long, and I think I’ve been keeping him a lot more active than he is in the suburbs, so I had to carry him home the last couple blocks!

Finally sent essay proposals to Joanne. They’re a mess but it’s a huge relief to have sent something…anything out. Already thinking of revisions, additions, clarifications, where before there was just procrastination. Some 3500 words on social network parasites, sinister computer vision, tools for forgetting, github, skeuomorphism, curator’s code and xanadu, and frictionlessness.

Really good call about The Freelance Project. Soon it will be an actual website and I can talk about it by its name. Excited for the project in general, as it’s a cool idea, so I’m happy to have a hand in launching it. Going to try some more exciting or avant-garde design ideas, since I kept these versions pretty Dribbble-y. Stay tuned for more on that.

Had interesting Twitter banter about Ted Nelson with @AlexisMadrigal, @Litherland, @ftrain, and @tealtan. It basically led to writing down the Bobst call number for Literary Machines and watching this video in horror.

Went to a fun party hosted by some architects with Alex. Danced all crazy and jumped on their couch, etc. and so on until late.

Sunday, napped all day with Sneeze. Read a good thing clarifying the history of paid education at Cooper Union:

It appears that the original [paid] amateur classes were less about creating access for the poor than they were about allowing access for the wealthy, who were not held to the same rigorous standards as the students who attended for free.

Pretty much debunks one of the ways that President Bharucha has weaponized the school’s history against its own ideals!

Finally read Bruce Sterling on The New Aesthetic. Really good. Though nothing could prepare me for the borderline annoying onslaught of New Aesthetic stuff in the coming week.

Jessia lent me The Poetics of Space and The Arcades Project came from Amazon. Overwhelmed by big dense books. Tried to read Poetics of Space twice and got through three pages each time before drifting back into a nap.

Watched Why Are You Weird with Alex on the projector he got. (Yay!) It’s funny if you have a love/hate relationship with art school.

Monday, walked across the bridge with Sneeze and Alex. Got Literary Machines from Bobst! One of three copies in NYC, which I have until June. Sat outside all day and read slowly and distractedly. (Though the book is supposedly non-linear.)

Played with Sneeze and he made a lot of friends. Didn’t have a phone or computer all day, and then returned home to find out about Instagram’s billion dollar acquisition wwhhaatt. Went and got Crispy Duck! with Aaron.

Tuesday, worked on coding the front-end for Pool. Louis figured out a design he likes that’s super austere, so I started implementing it and it actually looks awesome on iPhones and iPads. My first time doing a site “mobile-first” and I’m really happy with how easy that approach makes certain design decisions. The complexities of a layout can grow out of its simplest possible instantiation, rather than being compacted if working the opposite way.

Tried writing my essay on the projector at home. Sort of as a joke. Didn’t get anything done.

Went to photo. We always start to have interesting discussions about photography as a medium and all the problems. Christine always wants to talk about archives. But people don’t seem to really be pursuing those ideas in their work agressively enough to excite me. Most of the stuff we look at is just boring, the biggest problem being: would I even stop to look at this? Maybe that’s stupid. Half the class is also extremely quiet, so the dynamic feels off between me, a few other loud people, and the mum half. In talking about work it’s usually a very nod and smile kind of conversation, which really makes me antsy.

Walked to Economy Candy with Aaron and bought sour straws and chocolate instead of writing my essay. Censorship was boringinteresting. We watched Godzilla’s American and Japanese versions. I made this amazing sling out of my sweater and slept through most of that. Exhaustion, boredom, sugar crash.

Had a wild conversation on Twitter with a bunch of people about Pinboard, Findings, Reading and Readmill. Love the brains of that bunch. Allen Storified it nicely. And Henrik from Readmill wants to meet up in June and talk, which is exciting.

Max uses DMs like IMs, which I’ve never done with anyone else. But we had a really exciting conversation about futures. Felt less scared about my (lack of) summer plans after talking to him.

Spent Wednesday bouncing between trying to write the Censorship essay, procrastinating, and reading about desconstruction for Pub Design. Deconstruction sort of makes me eyes glaze over, even though it’s exciting in a boringinteresting way.

Had a really good exchange with @litherland about criticism. She pointed me to this article by Cary Wood that I wish was written less specifically about web design because it so applies to everything. Was thinking both about my frustrations with the quiet class that would rather nod and smile than stir up trouble. But also about how social networks enforce a kind of positive “Like” and “+1” but also just the idea of networking, which makes it hard to be critical towards sensitive people. Anyway, that article zapped a frantic feeling I didn’t know I was having. Grateful for that.

Publication design was good. I am so, so surprised that I am finding it to be my favorite class this semester. I have never really liked a design class, but Warren is tough, smart, and funny. Had a good discussion about DeconstructionNnNN. Then talked about our ideas for the final project. I’m giving mine the tentative title of “Workflow.” In a broader scope than the magazine, which inevstigates software design, this is about machines and systems people invent to adapt to the world. Some examples: Ted Nelson inventing hypertext for his hummingbird mind, Temple Grandin calming herself down with a cow squeezer. Those are famous examples, but everyone has their own things that they do. Still need to work on understanding what these interests are about and how they fit together.

Finished my candy. Tried to stay up late and write my essay but…fell asleep.

Today worked on my Censorship essay while in Western Theories. Otherwise zoned out or worked on giving myself water poisoning to escape to the bathroom and not have to deal with such a dangerously boring conversation. I like Weinstein, which is the weird part, but can’t stomach the class at all. I think the one time he called one me I was like: I hate all these theorists. All of them. Not going to talk about Rosalind Krauss. And he kind of moved on. I feel bad that I don’t feel bad about being so inattentive, but my attention span was wickedly short today and it feels dangerous to know this stuff too well. It trips my bullshit detector. I’d learn it at a different time in a different place, but can’t do it now. Hoping I can pass it, at this point. Ate noodles with Aaron then ran back to Brooklyn to walk Sneezeburg. Worked on this weeknote and then zipped back to school for sculpture. Sculpture was good but, again, no focus today. Was basically on my phone for one entire crit and then climbing up the walls for the next. I feel like an asshole, as Aaron pointed out, I was being one. I would hate having myself in class a lot of the time. That criticism discussion also reminds me of ways that I want to be a better classmate.

Week 9

Thu, 29 Mar 2012 17:03:56 -0400

Tuesday night we went to Ippudo for dinner, which was awesome, and then Aaron took over my Facebook for an hour when we got home. I watched in horror and amazement:

Wednesday was weird. After writing the previous weeknote I spent all day not doing my design homework, which was to make a magazine. It’s not like I don’t think about this all the time. Maybe I think about it too much. Instead of working on it, though, I was having pretty interesting Twitter banter with @dvsch about Khoi’s latest post on digital magazines and reading Robin Sloan’s latest: a “tap essay” which is, of course, smart. I don’t know why I get so procrastinate-y about design homework but I think I was annoyed at having to think about and work with print (which is like SooOOoO obsolete—jk, maybe), and apathetic about having to come up with a themed interest and do things a certain way. Design assignments and I do not get along. Went to Baoguette with Alex and got a sandwich with Thai chilis so spicy I almost blacked out, then showed up to Warren’s class at 6pm with nothing for the second week in a row. And the worst part was that I felt…serial killer calm. Pretty sure the appropriate response in a situation like that is to be freaking out. Felt like I shouldn’t talk because I talk too much anyway and I brought nothing to the table so I was a little quiet, but got a lot out of seeing other people’s progress.

Thursday is hard to remember. Had a decent art history class in the morning. Then just kind of looked at the internet for a long time:

This interface and Jeff Atwood’s post I discovered it via blew my mind:

Browsing aside, I think my biggest accomplishment was responding in center-aligned emoji poetry to an email from Youngna about how well things are going with Girl Walk and passing along some thanks for the website.

Had the first really good sculpture class in a while, interesting discussions and lots of work to talk about from people. Got a milkshake, bought groceries, and went home.

Friday: did laundry, then walked over the bridge with Alex, then finally turned in a proposal for my Censorship term paper. I’m actually pretty excited about it because I can just babble about computers:

I propose writing my final paper on bias in computer systems, or the (many) problems with how computers affect access to information. This is a logical continuation of my first essay, which unpacked money’s role as a form of information and the potential for it to therefore become “censored.” Computer bias, which still on the fringes of traditional censorship studies, has amassed a good amount of academic sources, and there are, of course, many familiar and historical points of entry: from the subtly biased interface design of the Sabre electronic airline ticketing system popularized in the 80’s which caused profits within an industry to shift overnight, to the currently unknown long-term effects of today’s sudden proliferation of recommendation algorithms for all aspects of life: from dating to movie watching. The paper hinges on quiet forms of censorship which can be hard to detect and are sometimes unintentional,. After preliminary research, I have come to the conclusion that the two best way to grapple with this problem are educating designers to be aware of computer bias, and educating users to approach computers more critically. While honing in on specific examples such as the Sabre system, Netflix, and OkCupid, I hope to touch broadly on interface design, algorithms, history, and education.

Saturday was back in Rye for a quick doctor’s appointment and grabbing all my clothes which I forgot at home after break. I noticed a tweet from one of my childhood BFFs about Metro-North when I was on the train, and then we realized we were on the same train!! But we somehow missed each other at Grand Central.

Saw this mushy Occupy tag on Metro-North. Bleh!

Went to school and climbed on the building because the weather was nice. Everett took this from afar, lolol:

Kengoe and Bryson came over and we all hung out and screamed Bieber late into the night.

Was introduced to Katy Perry’s new video, which is offensive/horrifying(/possibly brilliant?):

I can’t tell if the military thing is just like a really stupid metaphor but it seems really zeitgeisty. What war is that?? Normandy?? Just creepy and insulting to women (she joined the Marines because of a breakup??), but I would totally put this in a history book. Did the military pay for this shit??

Sunday went out with Alex to get new shoes, since my boots no longer had laces at all and the weather is getting all summery! Ended up walking around for hours, going into every shoe store and a bunch of fancy stores. Stopped for a really good lobster role, because soho was getting to my head, and then got a sort of ridiculous pair of white shoes at David Z. that look like something a Euro person would wear to a nightclub or golf club in 2004. Whutevs.

Read the internet a lot again:

So much of my work recently has involved writing things on screen, and it’s made me feel exhausted, distracted, and strained, so Monday morning I bought a pack of loose-leaf and some pens, and laid out five different projects on my desk.

Despite setting up a structure that I thought would be conducive to ADD, jumping between tabs, in a way, I ended up focusing on design and got almost totally caught up on my responses to our class readings so far. Also got a lot done in terms of figuring out what I want to make a magazine about.

Kept writing for a while:

Then took a nap, and was awoken from a nap with a rant streaming in over DMs about Curator’s Code—which was awesome. Somebody reads this shit? And they want me to expand on something? Done. More on this soon.

Back to work: what was freaking me out was that I thought we had to make a whole magazine, when in reality we only have to do a few spreads to demonstrate the execution as a kind of portfolio piece. Part of me has a hard time designing something if I have to fake it and the only content is Lipsum text, but another part of me also has a hard time finishing things. When I reframed the assignment as a project I was allowed to start and not finish I suddenly had terrific momentum. Reading all our class readings about “designers as authors” and how desktop publishing and the internet are changing design, I started trying to articulate what a magazine could still provide in a world where the tools to do everything as individuals and the networks to effortlessly distribute things to people are at our fingertips. So the form should deal with this meta-concern about publishing. In terms of content: one of the strongest threads throughout the things I read and think about is the design of what goes on screens. Left to my own devices (pun) I’ll sit around all day fiddling with new things and breaking them. My roommates make fun of me for being a paid spokesperson in disguise, like in the Truman Show:

Part of the reason I like Wilson Miner’s talk Why We Build is because it finally armed me with a defense against that joke. He asks: “What is your time-to-screen in the morning? 5 seconds? 30 seconds? We’re not just making pretty interfaces, we’re in the process of building an environment where we’ll spend most of our time for the rest of our lives. What do we want that environment to feel like? What do we want to feel like?” Designing for the screen, and poking around on it all day, can sometimes feel like just pushing pixels or being part of Facebook’s evil plan, but I believe this actually is the world we inhabit. Maybe that’s a fucked up thing to think, but everyone I ask about their time-to-screen has said five seconds or less.

So: a journal of screen architectures. Boom. I started culling and collating the best things I had read online recently about designing screens and imagined inviting the authors to expand beyond blogposts. Now this became something I REALLY WANT TO DO. Here are a bunch of leads pulled from my Pinboard to flesh out the first issue: Kevin Kelly wants to pay you to read his next book, Why haven’t we seen a picture of the whole ~~earth~~ internet yet?, Stephen Wolfram’s over-examined life, Robin Sloan on constellational thinking (these are some of the best ideas I know of out there, but the posts actually leave something to be desired…here is where expansion and editing could come in), Mandy Brown on Deploying content, The Social Graph is Neither by Maciej Ceglowski, the image object post-internet by artie vierkant, my mother was a computer by n. katherine hayles, charlie lloyd’s angry reverie on software.

Additionally, I started thinking about weird formats and strategies for making print content out of screens. What would it be like to publish a week of BERG London’s mailing lists, from which they generate their amazing link posts? I want to see people go through and annotate their recent linkroll (I’ve been enjoying @rogre’s, mostly for the insane tagging), what about some kind of collaborative/track changes authorship (though I’m depressed by the outcome of that instantiation…)? How could trolling be an editorial strategy? As I’ve enjoyed the light trolling of Curator’s Code, recently.

Got sushi and went to bed, but didn’t fall asleep until late.

Tuesday morning ran into Joanne on the subway, which was like a sign from the universe (and her) that I should wrap up those essay ideas and send them her way.

Then had photo. Christine started class by saying she felt super weird about last week’s crit. After some probing from a few people in class she kinda turned to me and was like, “your work really threw me off. We should talk.” So that was nerve-wracking, but also felt kind of exciting. She told me that she knew taste shouldn’t be a part of it but she really didn’t like my work. I told her that I was kind of pulling a cop-out by showing SweatyTube, which was never supposed to be a “piece,” though I still feel it’s closer to my interests in photography than wandering the streets with a black and white camera in search of moments or whatever. We talked through a lot of stuff for half an hour, outside in the sunshine.

Christine felt too like it might’ve been a mismatch of audience for an inside joke, which I agreed with. She said she felt like I have to guide the viewer a little more, and that I wasn’t really in it at all. Which I disagreed with. I told her about the funny comparison between a hyper-fabricated minimalist cube and a website that people can’t grasp the process or authorship of. Impenetrable! I had achieved Larry Bell-dom, and all I felt was confused. Again, a weird conversation because SweatyTube really might not have that much to it.

It was kind of scary and exciting when Christine mentioned not being in the work because I’ve been dealing literally with that phrase for a long time.

When I started giving myself a harder time, getting in the way of my work, or lacking narrative/heartstrings/touch was when shit started getting REALLY interesting for me. Work before I started questioning work was a totally different kind of naive. Since then it’s been a majorly recurring and strengthening theme for me. Christine was like, you know why writers drink so much right? Because it feels horrible to sit alone in a room and put yourself out there. (This completes the trifecta of all three of my studio teachers being like, you should drink! see also: “if you’re stuck on a design, print it out, have a drink and take another look” and “you don’t need an excuse to drink in sculpture class!” Oh, art school.)

After having sooooo many conversations about this with every class and teacher I’ve had in the past few years I totally see how the work I make (when I manage to make it) and questions I ask come across as cynical, removed prototypical defensive mechanisms. The work gets mixed in with the defense mechanisms for me, but I can’t help hovering in this meta-space. I hope it’s not purely some immaturity that I get over when I’m 30, like Christine and others have suggested. I’ll be pissed if there isn’t something here. Professors who claim to love failure and then wonder if I’m getting in the way of myself? Hello, I fail HARD. But maybe slow and quietly. It’s not something to intervene in, it’s something to push.

I still get all confused.

But I could say with more confidence this time that the problem is the content. The systems and structures and platforms and archetypes are what I’m interested in prodding at. Even Kevin and I butted heads about this, when he insisted that the way to sell people a system was by telling a story about it. It’s just not how I think. And while Christine is apparently “flatlining”(!) when she sees the lack of something in my work, I sort of flatline when I see horrible ideas executed brilliantly. A straightforward series of big beautiful portraits just isn’t that interesting to me in terms of problems I hope to push at, even if the human gaze is the most complex thing in the world, or whatever.

I felt unresolved and pried open in a good way. It feels like we leveled out in a helpful way to each other, and perhaps the most interesting thing I took away was the possibility of working in every direction at once. If sensitive photographs or boring portraits make me want to gouge my eye out, maybe instead of running away from or attacking them, I should actually be tearing in their direction, too. To get a better understanding, firsthand.

I kind of felt like these pugs:

And then I was thinking about negotiating these long running threads in my work as knocking antlers with myself. A slow fight.

This too:

I skipped Censorship, because I hadn’t gotten around to extending that proposal into a draft and we were going to be workshopping. Miraculously it was cancelled! Hanna Exel showed up to openings, was great to see her and her family for a few moments. Hung out for a long time in the studio with Tyler and xD.

Wednesday morning I grabbed a stack of looseleaf, sat down with a coffee, and drafted an editorial statement for Infinite Scroll, which is what I’m thinking of calling that magazine. Still very in the works. And it’s not much of a strategy to republish other people’s blog posts, so there’s a lot of work ahead:

Each new medium becomes a container for all the media that have come before it.
Google Books realizes the dream of a total library. Total access. Yet who has actually read a book on it? It’s for search and research. Not going to pull a Franzen and say these things acn’t be done on screen, which would be like saying you can’t look at a picture of a book on a screen. Of course you can. But the reasons are different. So, what does a print magazine about screen architectures afford?
There is something frighteningly seductive about the screen! People reported having “more fun” readings classics on screen versus in print.
Is there such thing as being offline today? My first social network: AIM, required a slow and loud [Log-On] as the modem dialed up a connection. When I was done I had to [Log-Off] or my family wouldn’t be able to make phonecalls.
Today, Facebook and Google talk to eachother so that between the two of them I am always lgoged in. In addition to actually “logging out” (which I don’t do unless I’m on a shared computer, and computers are less shared than ever before) I can [Go Invisible], allowing me to simulate the now obsolete peace and quiet of disconnection.
Path, a social networking app, has buttons for both [Go to Sleep] and [Wake Up]. This isn’t just semantics, it’s a fundamental shift in our relationship to technology. We have been drawn closer and zipped in.
In _Why We Build_ (p. ##), Wilson Miner, formerly a designer at Apple, asks “What is your time-to-screen in the morning? 5 seconds? 30 seconds?” For me, it’s more like zero seconds. When we design for the screen, Miner notes, “We’re not just making pretty interfaces, we’re in the process of building an environment where we’ll spend most of our time for the rest of our lives. What do we want that environment to feel like? What do we want to feel like?”
Charlie Lloyd’s _Angry Reverie on Software_ (p. ##) notes that people grapple with technology in ways that are completely their own: ” I know someone who lives in a mossy cabin in the woods and loves watching Mythbusters on their iPhone, and I know a programmer who wants to colonize Mars but thinks phones are dehumanizing, and these are not exceptions. Almost everyone is complicated.”
Just recently, with the proliferation of high pixel density displays, branded by Apple as “Retina,” we’ve seen advances in screens. Early reports show that typefaces feel at once beautiful and unsettling, as they never been seen in such sharp detail‚Äîmoreso even than print. It has been suggested that designers might have to add imperfections in at random, or somehow file down the edges, or risk falling into a typographic uncanny valley. Or, more likely, it is us who will adapt to this sharpness, as the first film audiences ran out of the theatre screaming, for fear of being hit by an oncoming train. At some point too, I seemed to notice airsickness bags disappear from airplans‚Äîor be featured less prominently, as humans are perhaps evlolving to stomach being shot through the air at over a thousand miles per hour.
## Beyond screens
As evidenced by Greenfield’s _Everyware_, these revolutions in technology may be more cyclical than linear, but their way the form and content of Infinite Scroll have expiration dates built in. We will move beyond screens, or they will become so ubiquitous that we will stop being able to differentiate worlds on and off screen. But the methods exist outside of any particular time: questioning media, aggregating opinions, collating discussions, running experiments. And the qualities of a print magazine rather compliment life on screen: rigorous editing and illuminating design provide a respite from screens.
For future-proofing, a text and media archive will be made available for download. Access to raw content will hopefully underscore the role that a printed magazine can actually play in harboring this discussion.
Infinite Scroll refers to a common design pattern found in screen design today: when you reach the end, a loading indicator spins up for a moment before

Still very scattered, yes. But I kind of powered through a first iteration of design. Here are Dribbble sized peeks:

I started thinking about qualities of screens or opposites. If screens are glassy and light emitting, maybe the magazine should be printed on soft, light-absorbent BLACK VELVET. Maybe I’m going crazy. Still haven’t landed on whether or not it makes sense to imitate/mimic screens or complement them by opposing them, but I’m having fun. Excited to work more on this, actually. Right now it pretty instantly telegraphs a computer-y shlockiness with a little bit of what somebody described as “how-do-you-stomach-that-irony.” But I like that. There is a goddamn pop up ad on the cover! Going to play more and then Kickstart this shit lolol.

Again, went to bed right after class, beat. This week has really been super successful in terms of putting my head down and digging myself out of the bit of a hole I was in. And projects are moving along with gusto on all fronts! So lots on my plate but no complaints.

Tonight will be co-showing SweatyTube again in sculpture, this time with Aaron. Who knows how that will go, it’s a very different group dynamic.

Then knocking items off my to-do list before bussing down to Baltimore this weekend with the roommates, where Aaron has a show opening and we will get to tromp around with Natalie! Yay.

Weeks 7, 8, 8.5

Wed, 21 Mar 2012 12:19:00 -0400

Good morning.

Yesterday morning I got up a few hours before usual, before most of New York even, to do work. But it turned out that Avery, who I hadn’t seen since middle school, was passing through town. So we had coffee for a few hours and caught up because she doesn’t have a Facebook, so I didn’t even have vague notions about what her life is like. That was cool to hear about. It’s insane to talk to people who knew you well when you were a lot younger. Really checks any current attitudes and how things have changed.

Two people recently told me something to the effect of “it’s cool how you do what you want.” A nice complement. BUT it’s funny because my version of “doing what I want” is more like “not doing what I don’t want.” (A fancy term for procrastination.) Which I’m usually actively anxious about! So: looks like an attitude, feels like a disability, Jonah Lehrer could probably write an article about why it’s a superpower ugh.

Showed SweatyTube in photo, which was pretty much a cop out on my part. Though a meme generator is closer to my interest in photo than straight photography. The conversations were all pretty short but it might’ve started to get heated if I talked less and it went on longer. I had some misunderstandings corrected and noted that it’s hard, or just weird, to show a website to people who don’t necessarily know how to make one. They don’t know what kind of work goes into it, they don’t know what part you made. It just looks like a thing. I should be happy about this! Like really happy. Since I’m always bitching about sculptors getting away with crappy ideas and nice craftsmanship. Computer things that people don’t fully understand are the perfectly fabricated objects I’ve always been envious of.

Still haven’t turned in a proposal for censorship even though I was/am brimming with ideas. Just laziness. I think about procrastination as reverse-magnetism all the time.

In other news, I am fucking tired of looking at and working on a draft of this 2.5 weeknote. I have shit to do. A hole to dig myself out of in the next six hours. Two older, unfinished attempts at weeknoting follow. Beware of splintered sentences and malformed opinions. Good riddance.

Here’s what I wrote in the car on the way back to Brooklyn from Rye:

Spring Break

Have been on SpRiNg BrEaK this week, so at home in the suburbs. Arrived home with my parade of devices, a bag of laundry, and a big to-do list. And didn’t really accomplish any of it. Which is okay. Since it was a break. But this week will be difficult — and the catchup may be impossible — because many of those things were overdue tasks from last week.

I don’t have a problem starting new projects, from adding something to my to-do list to getting a good portion of it done. The problem is that if I don’t send something off into the world after a few sittings it tends to get stuck in a loop of unfinishability, where I either don’t want to look at it until it slips out the back of my mind OR it sucks up unwarranted amounts of time and energy until it makes it out of the gauntlet of perfectionism. For example, I’ve been writing and rewriting a bunch of essay proposals for multiple weeks when it probably should’ve taken a day at most. Or maybe an hour a day across a week. They’re just proposals! Need to get better at pushing things to good enough and then letting them go. Could use the extra brainspace. Doesn’t matter if things are in pieces. Weeknotes are sort of part of that, but most of this weeknote has sat in my drafts for a week. Grr.

That said, did work on non-work during the break. (Which is maybe how it should be.) Pulled together updated projects for my website, which is pretty out of date at the moment, and started building a new interface: a filterable grid of tagged projects that maps connections between things when you hover. The whole thing is a series of toggles, so you can toggle between a list and a grid, toggle tags on and off, toggle projects open and closed, and toggle images regular to zoomed. Maybe too much clicking, but the whole thing was mostly an excuse to teach myself more about Javascript/jQuery and canvas. Finally felt Javascript click for the first time. Still a lot of bugs to squash and details to figure out. How can I save this the unfinishable loop?? Gah.

Between making little improvements to SweatyTube and my new site, I basically became nocturnal and almost died of prolonged-staring-at-screen-sickness, like Marie Curie handling too much radioactive stuff. It reminded me, though, that I haven’t had uninterrupted work periods like when I am at my computer in the middle of the night, for way too long. Maybe I need more of that, minus the insanity and grumpiness.

There was one day where friends came from the city and we took Sneezeburg to the beach, played a boring game of monopoly, and ate dinner outside. That was really fun. And I went on a few nice walks with Niki and Sneeze.

Here’s what I wrote a week ago:

Trying something a little different this week. Instead of the laborious day-by-day-log, I am pulling out things-that-happened.

Met the internet at Max’s

Sunday walked up to Max’s in Greenpoint. Don’t usually walk that far north, so enjoyed looking around the neighborhood. Met a lot of people who I have known only on Twitter: @tcarmody, @kissane, @meetar, @stuntbox, @tealtan. Now just Tim, Erin, Peter, David, Allen. Also Marcy and Other Max. Old friends showed up too: David and Sara. Somehow we ended up talking for a little while about how awkward it is to meet people you admire, which was funny for me because Twitter people and other random internet folks are my celebrities. If only because I have chosen to have my head filled with tabloid-level mundane details of these smart people’s lives. Thanks, Twitter. Did I mention being in a room with people whose blogs I read? Okay. So, I hovered on the edge of blacking out of overwhelmedness for a few hours while we all hung out and ate lobster rolls(!) and then walked home. It was fun. I have such a small, insular circle of people whom I’m ridiculously comfortable around at school and home, so every meet-the-internet-IRL situation I’ve ever been in has felt nerve-wracking. A couple of months ago I started to think about all the people I know online who live in New York and how silly it is that we never meet. Started imagining structures for meeting them, along the lines of “conversations I want to have”. But Max is just a gracious host and that’s all there is to it. Doh.

It’s a very different pace hanging out with older people. That doesn’t sound like a compliment to them! But it is. I am glad I have gotten to see my older friends recently and make new ones. A reality-check and college brain bubble bursting and hope for the near future type of deal.

Systems / Angry Reverie On Software

I joked with David that I was sitting by my inbox all week hitting refresh, waiting to hear from Kevin about the Systems essays. I didn’t really want to share the page before hearing from him but figured there was no sense in keeping secrets from my weeknotes about what I had been working on. So I basically just buried the lede, passing over it like any other thing that had happened that week. But The Internet picked it right out and started talking(!), which was totally unexpected and exciting.

Peter linked me to Charlie Loyd’s beautiful rant on software and other related topics, which rocked my world. I mean, just read this, it’s so GOOD:

‎”If you see computers with an idea of what they could be, most of what they are is confusing. Here is this gorgeous medium, this trail into the sunny uplands, this multitool for brains, this sampo for science and empowerment, liberation, and we end up with hundreds of millions of people spending their days at keyboards, mice, windows, and Windows®, doing drudge work, clicking rude and semiliterate dialog boxes – and billions of people carrying amazing computers that charade as a slight step up from rotary telephones.

Triple ugh.

I would like more people to see how much of a disaster this is. I think some competent software people are alert, although obviously not enough to make usable bookmark managers or ATMs that don’t put a twitch in my eyelid. What worries me most today is that users (a word for victims of things like heroin and tobacco but here meaning people who consume but do not produce software) are just going to get more alienated from it. “Computers” will become inexplicable things, Other things, inhuman things, irresistible and noncontingent and unreasonable, absurd, meaningless, ahistoric interlopers in culture, boring at best.

I found it funny to learn, after messaging him, that he has a hard time reading back over it, because I do with mine too. Yet we apparently like eachother’s things. A reminder that everyone should probably just get over their stupid embarrassment about things they make.

Kevin’s response finally arrived and it was tough love, as expected. He wants me to get out of my head which, I was going to write is something scary for me to think about, but actually is something I should just not think about at all because that is some circular ass bullshit. Lukas told me last week that Sarah was describing people as having either their head, their eyes, or their feet in their mouths — an interesting metaphor — and I was her example of head in mouth. It’s tricky to be at Cooper, which as a visual arts program is very eye-in-mouth-y and be head-in-mouth-y.

We’ll make plans to meet soon and talk about going beyond just synthesis and reflection. That’s really exciting.

Social Practice Douchebaggery / A Talk With Kaila

On Monday evening we all met again to decide what should become of Work Makes Work. Everyone still seemed burned out. It basically came down to leaving the space as is or clearing out the space, and then maybe playing a game of soccer in either of those configurations. We talked in circles and made jokes. As a strange twist, Porter, Kaila’s boyfriend and a member of Group 2, came to kind of observe and participate in the meeting because he had caught wind of our plan to “do nothing” and was concerned by it. It changed the passionless dynamic because he showed up with hurt feelings about the whole thing. That happened to remind me why I was angry. The group was sort of split on whether or not somebody’s feelings should be a deciding factor in making decisions about what we do. I don’t want to hurt people’s feelings, but I made it clear that I don’t believe they should be a consideration. Shit’s complicated and people hopefully get attached to things and it’s okay to feel feelings but when it comes to talking about and critiquing art, fear of hurting the artist’s feelings should not get in the way, in my opinion. Especially if you are part of an ostensibly open and participatory (and problematic!) structure they set up for you to “collaborate” within. Porter and I eventually just respectfully agreed that we don’t see eye to eye on things. It felt horribly and weirdly like a breakup.

The next day nobody from the group did anything. But to my surprise Kaila and Porter did. They erased the chalkboards, laid them on the floor, and scattered the red flags that had been attached to the previous iteration’s artworks. On the wall there was a note: “Thanks —WMW”. I felt disappointed at having a sweet and tidy ending thrust upon us.

Kaila and I rode and elevator together more silently than usual and then the next time we bumped she asked to talk about the whole thing, to which I agreed. We sat outside in the sun, this was on Wednesday, and talked about the whole thing for a long time. Her biggest issue was that she had worked hard to put this together and she felt I was being mean in the way I was talking, writing, and participating in the show, without being smart of critical. I admitted that I had posted some bitchy things here and in email threads, but that I didn’t do it to hurt the feelings of a friend, and I hope that fear of causing negative feelings can be kept out of making and talking about work.

[Just re-read this two weeks later and I hate how standoffish the tone is. Ew, me. Sorry Kaila. Didn’t finish what I wanted to say at the time, either.]

Comparing social practice to douchebags. I think this video is a metaphor. I still don’t know if it’s worth making fun of. I think I just have to. But ultimately that’s not where kaila was coming from at all and I feel sorry for having aggressively redirected her well-intentioned project.

Sweatytube

We must’ve been sitting around the apartment dicking around on the internet as usual when Aaron said something about how cool it would be if you could watch videos on sweaters. Like, I need a new sweater, let me go watch some videos on YouTube. And then you could print any moment of any video onto a sweater. There’s your hipster startup idea.

Alex became kind of a big deal for photoshopping things onto sweaters on his Tumblr Bad Smelling Boy. He is sort-of-unbelievably credited as the inventor of this trend on Know Your Meme.

But later that night I had a prototype of a translucent sweater PNG overlaying a YouTube player up and running. Aaron tweaked Alex’s sweater graphic for maximum see-through effect while I ironed out bugs and added features. Wednesday I was so entranced by sweater videos that I couldn’t focus on my homework. EVERYTHING LOOKS SO GOOD ON A SWEATER. It adds a weird layer of meaning/meaninglessness that makes me laugh and induces self-loathing.

I showed up to design 15 minutes late and literally empty handed. But Bad Smelling Tube (as we were calling it) was cross-browser compatible and had grown a fancy slide-in (all CSS animated) form that accepts any variation of YouTube URL as an input (PHP regex) and displays leaderboards of recent and popular videos on the site (with no backed or database, thanks to the Clicky stats API). Within the next day or two I grabbed the domains SweatyTube.com, fixed bugs with liking and tweeting, and integrated the bit.ly API to auto generate sweatytu.be short URLs for sharing. It was fun to hack a stupid idea into a real thing in almost no time.

A few good and weird Sweaty Tubes: 100 Most Viewed Videos in 200 Seconds Koyaanisqatsi Fast Car by Tracy Chapman The Sweater Song Marina Abramovic JFK Assassination Me at the Zoo (The First YouTube Video Ever)

While it wasn’t viral like we had built ourselves up to think it would be as we were putting it together, it satisfyingly puts a bad joke to rest by opening it up. Anyone can put anything on a sweater, it no longer even request opening photoshop. A meme masquerading as something more was cut back down to its rightful place by an automatic generator.

___ Days Since Accident

Speaking of my design class to which I showed up empty handed. Uh oh. I am in a dangerous place, I was told by Warren. In my head I have a mental counter, like the ones at construction sites that say “___ days since accident”, except mine has to do with professors being like “what the fuck are you DOING?!” So, as Warren and I talked briefly after class I was flipping that number back to 0 in my head. Oops.

However, I am glad I went to class because it is helpful to hear about what other people are working on.

I have some overly-heady/abstract ideas about what I want to work on. Maybe an evolution of Process, and the way that dealt with raw, transcribed conversations and printed whispers of hypertext. I’ve also been thinking about my own cynicism and perfectionism. Claire Bishop’s rejection of affirmative criticism. A place where people write about what bothers them until they get to the core of it. Maybe structures for understanding too, like 5 Whys, or back and forth.

Combinatorial Creativity / Curator’s Code / Xanadu / Workflow

Everyone already wrote about this but still want to.

Onward

badsmellingboy: NEXT GOD DAMN LEVEL GAME CHANGER NO SLEEP TIL...

Mon, 12 Mar 2012 16:32:08 -0400

badsmellingboy:

NEXT GOD DAMN LEVEL

GAME CHANGER

NO SLEEP TIL VIRAL.

Week 5, 6, and then some.

Sun, 04 Mar 2012 14:57:33 -0500

It is spring, dammit. And the past two weeks of my life have been like an ad for New York state. Last Thursday I was on the beach (which is what threw off my regularly scheduled weeknote, as I normally use that chunk of time to pull it together), on Friday I was skiing(!!!) on a mountain(!!) to celebrate mom’s birthday, and in between there was the city.

It’s very typical of my way of getting things done (or, rather, not done) that I fuck up “routines” almost instantaneously and then push work out indefinitely as it accrues into unmanageable sized tasks. Like this one-and-something week overdue post, for example.

So, I can’t even remember most days, especially the ones I have to myself, and on top of that decided not to check-in or send emails or leave followable traces. Freaky how that happens. Having botched my routine of laying out ideas on a regular interval for myself to refer back to, I’ve also found myself falling into the trap of telling myself (and others), “I haven’t been thinking or working on anything!” Oh god.

Memory is fallible, but mine (in the short term) is just busted.

Hummingbird mind.

I’m tired of the chronological log but too weary to replace what’s already written.

Last Thursday night I met up with Tori, my design TA from a bunch of years ago at a RISD summer program, and her girlfriend Whitney, for dinner. Really fun to hear about life after school. Also, buying a student a good dinner is pretty much the best thing you can do as a person ever, in my book.

Friday, walked across the bridge with Aaron and Alex and got a doughnut from Doughnut Plant! That is all I remember about this day. The doughnut was just okay??

Saturday morning I was browsing around and somehow landed on the Amazon page for N. Katherine Hayles’ My Mother Was a Computer, which I’ve been wanting to read and was on sale for $5, so I bought that and started reading it.

She gave a lecture at Cooper a while back and it is just hilariously unexpected to watch somebody who looks like my granny use the word “gigabyte”. But she knows more about this than I ever will.

Kindles have all sorts of funny typographic bugs that look a lot like the way letters wiggle around on a letterpress when they’re not locked up tightly enough. Maybe this book is just really poorly formatted, because it’s also ridden with hyphens in the middle of lines. I hate how most publishers don’t even seem to give their e-books a once-over.

Headed up to MoMA with Aaron to see some sort of presentation on interactive something. But the subway broke down and basically dumped us in Times Square, where it seems like I end up a lot these days. This is a bus full of turistas who were sitting sideways facing the window and ROCKING OUT.

We literally sprinted through Times Square up to 53rd st but by the time we reached MoMA tickets for our event were already sold out. Instead we grabbed tickets to Ivan and Ivana by Jeff Silva and checked out the galleries a little. Spent a little more time in the Sharon Hayes & co. 9 Scripts for a Nation at War, a really well done show, and also jogged through In Print In (or Print Out? I forget), which I think wasn’t even open when I was here last week. Sat for a while with a piece by Simon Fujiwara where you kneel on a tatami mat and watch a fictionalized interview with the artist in which he puts on a thick Japanese accent and pretends his formative years hinged on Huckleberry Finn. Liked that a lot.

Ivan and Ivana was really good. While in Kosovo filming for another project, he met this couple and decided to make a documentary about them. There is a whole political conflict going on there that caused them to leave, but the movie basically takes place in suburban California, where they try to live the American-dream-or-whatever. It was really meandering, but I’ve always wished for more movies where nothing really happens, without such a distinct plot. It was interesting to hear Jeff talk about how he decided to end the movie. There was a sort of turning point for the characters but he mostly just thought it wouldn’t go anywhere if he kept filming. Starting and ending it where he did were really well made intuitive decisions. Over the course of filming they became his best friends and that intimacy is really apparent in the movie.

The audience at MoMA was OUT OF CONTROL HORRIBLE. A group of old people behind us didn’t really stop talking loudly for the entire time despite glares from multiple people in the audience. They even kept talking through the Q&A, and just as I decided to shush them (which I hate doing) they were like, “let’s get outta here!” Then a lady asked what the director makes of Ivan’s sense of entitlement, after he had just told us they’re his best friends. He was like, I don’t really think he has a sense of entitlement. And then she kept talking to herself for a few minutes while he answered other questions. All the while, people kept getting up and leaving in droves every couple of minutes. Jeff was like, “uhh…it looks like you guys are tired so I’ll just take one more question.” So embarrasing it was almost surreal. Stupid rude old people.

Sunday met Mom and Niki for lunch at Ippudo, which was amazing, as always. There must’ve been a tear in the fabric of the universe because we got a table in 5 minutes. Then we walked down to Chinatown, got bubble tea, and ducked in and out of different places looking for someone who would repair Niki’s cracked iPhone screen. Everybody was watching basketball on laptops, in restaurants, through store windows. Finally dropped Niki’s phone off with some guy who said he’d fix it in two hours for $30. Then walked through a cool underground mall. Tried to get Niki and Mom to walk over the bridge with me because I had to go home and do work and they had time to kill, but they were tired (people don’t walk in the suburbs), hungry, cold, and didn’t want to leave the area. Sort of a crappy goodbye, for which we both apologized quickly, but it was fun to see them. Turns out that the guy wanted $130, so they made him put the broken screen back on.

The bridge was awesome!

Got a coffee at Blue Bottle and pulled out my laptop (which always feels like a crime, there) to work on the systems rants I posted last week. Went to Best Pizza for the first time and really liked it. The crust!

Monday, walked up into Greenpoint. Had a crazy good egg bagel at Baker’s Dozen. Worked outside on a bench in the sun for a while at Cafe Grumpy, then got another coffee and walked home to work on systems. Today was the deadline I had set with Kevin for re-evaluating my grade from last semester — in the process I have been building a coffee tower in my room — but I am mostly just excited to talk more with him about systems than to get a better grade.

Systems stuff has been consuming my mind.

listening to @britneyspears, writing essays about the terror of systems
— Casey A. Gollan (@CaseyG) February 21, 2012

Built a web template for the four sort-of-essays, but wasn’t done midnight, so I sent Kevin and email saying STAY TUNED. Worked until 4am before stopping to briefly rest my eyes. But accidentally passed out…

Tuesday morning I was racing to finish the systems page. Got to photo after 2, a little late and very bleary-eyed. We learned how to use an Imacon scanner, which is like a $20,000 monolith from 2001: A Space Odyssey, that turns film into super high quality digital files. We got out pretty early and I pinched myself for not really making progress on photo since last week, or even the week before. Got EVThai with Aaron (so good) and then finished the page in my studio and sent it to Kevin!! Here’s the first screen:

And here’s a really zoomed out view, since it’s 32,767 pixels long:

Here it is. I have no idea what to think of it for a while. Or if it’s enough. Mostly need some time away away away from this.

Went home, rocked out to all the international versions of Avril Lavigne’s Girlfriend with Alex and Aaron — which is just such an awesomely fucked up example of globalization at work — and then blacked out from exhaustion.

Wednesday morning I woke up early, got coffee, and headed to school attempting to work on Publication Design. Saw a limo parked outside McDonalds! I think there were people in the limo who made their driver go in for them.

I have no idea what it feels like to give birth but I felt like I had the day before, to the systems thing, and today I felt — pardon this horrible extended metaphor — saggy.

We had two weeks to do this portion of design work, but again I didn’t start until the day it was due (IDIOT) and this morning I was particularly distracted. Couldn’t bring myself to touch the work. Mostly because I REALLY don’t want to be working on a coffee table book about peoples’ bitchy second-homes in the Hudson Valley. So, went out and got a sandwich and another coffee, and did the reading assignment, which was Designer as Author by Michael Rock. Also read his essay Fuck Content. Still didn’t do the work.

Instead of working composed elaborate emoji tweets:

Then, at the point where it became clear I wasn’t going to even start the work in time for class, Alex and I went and got oysters(!) and burgers at Balthazar. BAD LIFE CHOICES! But SUCH GOOD ONES! WAH HA!

Skipped class and went to go see the Work Makes Work opening. There was hardly any art there. Bread with nothing on it and oversteeped tea was served. It was bad. Don’t feel like talking about it anymore after already spending so many words on something not worth criticizing.

Thursday morning had Western Theories. Didn’t do the readings. Daydreamed about napping on a beach, and when I was called on to answer some questions I was like, “Hmmmmm…I don’t know!” But I don’t hate that class because I like Weinstein so much. There is too much reading. This is the one class where I wish the teacher would talk AT us more, since he’s so smart and the class usually has nothing to contribute or it takes a long time.

The weather was incredible. Incredible! So lots of people were outside playing soccer and I was climbing and stretching on the building.

Then we actually decided to go to the beach since nobody had class until 6. Jumped on the R and soon enough we were at Coney Island, which felt like a world away. Got corndogs and cheese fries at Nathans (which felt weirdly like the best party ever, because of their music that was blasting) and then headed towards the beach.

I don’t even remember sculpture. It was whatever.

Don’t remember Friday, except slopping through Times Square to Dad’s in the rain. Ordered Daisy May’s and Dad and Niki didn’t love it. (I was surprised, even though it was less good than I remembered, too.) But roommates were excited about the leftovers.

Went to the suburbs on Saturday for a doctor’s appointment and spent the day at home.

Last time I saw Sara I (awkwardly) didn’t really stop because we were on the bridge and I had momentum and a spat of faceblindness. So we arranged to get coffee on Saturday but I bumped into her in the morning, which was funny. Aren’t there supposed to be like 7 zillion people in this city?

Discovered Amarin thai in Greenpoint, which was one of those moments like, how long have I been alive with this so close by and not known about it? Happens the most with food and books. Then walked over to Bakeri, stopping first at that uglygorgeous little beach:

Had a really great funny long conversation with Sara about art, life, and everything else. Have had lots of talks with older people recently and it’s exciting to get that kind of perspective. Left feeling really happy. Could’ve written more about it right after the fact but now it’s just fuzzy happiness.

Monday worked on some essay proposals and made lots of progress on the freelance web project I’m working on.

trying to draw like buttons but they’re turning out like dicks ugh twitter.com/CaseyG/status/…
— Casey A. Gollan (@CaseyG) February 27, 2012

Seems like fun was had at school but glad to have finally gotten some work done. Let it go down in history that Alex and shawn started wearing their wigs today. A joke that won’t end.

Deploy by Mandy Brown stole Monday’s internet.

On Tuesday, had photo and censorship. Still haven’t really moved forward with photo. Yikes. That evening I stumbled onto the final group trying to shift the Work Makes Work show, whichhas bothered my thoughts an embarrasing amount, and sort of joined their group. Things were written on chalkboards.

Jokes, insults, and thoughts were thrown around in a fiery way for two hours, then everyone departed, I think exhausted. Hate the show but like the group. Question my involvement as a (recovering?/unrelenting?) troll and ability to be a good participant in group work.

Spent all of Wednesday catching up on Publication Design. Can’t say I enjoyed it but got mostly out of my pit of undone work. Took a break to have ice cream w/ Kris Gibbs, who was in town briefly from Philly. Nice to see her so often, she talks the fastest and loudest. Interesting how different PAFA is. Made a note to make it down there in May for her end of year show and a trip to the Barnes collection. Later had a WMW meeting and everyone was hungover in the sense of ideas. Apathy ran wild. It felt crappy.

Thursday had a great class with Weinstein. Don’t remember what I did all day. Left sculpture after 10 minutes to go home because I felt drained.

Friday morning got an early start and drove(!) upstate to ski as a fun trip to celebrate mom’s birthday.

It was great. Followed by the world’s largest kaleidoscope? Upstate hippies are weird.

Headed back to Brooklyn. Took a cab in the rain with the roommates to a fun party where I danced hard. Like everybody, myself included, getting grossed out about how much I was sweating, hard. Took a cab back to BK late with Alex. Hung out at home for a little while and then walked over to the diner with Aaron in the middle of the night. Of course, in New York, it is full. And a fist fight breaks out. And the girl sitting alone reading and eating disco fries at the table across throws a sugar packet at us as a joke and says “all hell is going to break loose!” And I’m like, “don’t try and start shit!” And then she plops over to our table and introduces herself as Lady Valtronic. And we talk about insomnia and mexican sorcery and lucid dreaming for a few hours. New friends:

Sometimes the city is wild in the best possible way. Got home and fell asleep at 6am.

Saturday, got coffee and a bagel and headed up to the Whitney (in a roundabout way, thanks to the broken L) where I met Mom, Niki and Suzy. We looked at the Biennial, which felt small, but I don’t know what I was expecting. It’s a tiny building, and I’m sasd that they’ll be leaving it. I’m kind of in love with brutalist architecture!!

Sat at the “portal” to some old guy who is in a band (Red Crayons?) while he skyped with museum visitors as he was driving around. It was pretty pretty banal, fun, awkward, lame, fun. There was a gigantic sketchbook there and on the first page all the VIPs had signed “Jerry Saltz” “Paddy Johnson Art Fag City” and it got more freeform after that. Some people drew him or wrote little notes, there were a good number of trolling comments like this one:

I was grateful to sit and close my eyes for a while in the Werner Herzog video room, to the music of Ernst Reisjiegr. Mom got really into the open studio thing and started talking a lot to the artist. The artist was acting really earnest and excited. Despite attempts to invite the audience in, most stood against the wall of the hallway. Her studio looked like a studio. I guess I could go back and spend more time but I wonder if it’s worth $12. I forgot to ask her if she is getting paid or if this is like a residency. I feel like it would be stupid to think too hard about it because the whole thing is so simple. It made me realize how hard I think or overthink things. This is just her piece in the museum. So simple I almost don’t get it.

Walked back to Cooper from The Whitney (like 70 blocks!) and fell asleep in my studio for 20 minutes. Had a Work Makes Work meeting with Kristi, Moriah, and Audrey that was sort of bleh. The jokes are so good, though.

Thought I would have dinner with Dad so waited around in my studio, but he fell asleep with his phone under a pillow and wasn’t getting my calls until a lot later. Grabbed curry and walked to the L before realizing it wasn’t working. Maybe about to collapse of hunger and tired-ness, grabbed a cab back to BK. I will regret my cab spending soon enough.

Watched the Bieber movie, did a round of DIY Karaoke, and went to bed.

Good riddance with this recap. Now off to see Max!

Week 4

Fri, 17 Feb 2012 04:50:00 -0500

Last week I totally forgot to write about an amazing part of Wednesday: the wreath laying ceremony to celebrate Peter Cooper’s birthday. In protest of how much Jamshed sucks Kylie and Rachel were going to put a plexiglass box around the Peter statue, blocking him from the stupid ceremonial wreath laying. But that didn’t work out because the scepter sticks out diagonally.

I passive-agressively put post-it letters on the event sign:

(they were taken down so fast)

Lena and Jasmine took off their shirts!

(via Friends of Cooper Union)

The administration was pretty effectively made uncomfortable. Apparently they cut the alma mater song (that this guy was singing) short a few verses to get it over with and say goodbye to everyone.

Maybe Jambashed will be the solution to Cooper’s financial problems?

On Friday morning I sent off a paper proposal for censorship about how money has essentially been dematerialized into form of centrally held information that can be censored. Not exactly censorship…but excited to try connecting The Handmaid’s Tale with ubiquitous computing forewarnings from Adam Greenfield’s Everyware.

Walked up to Madison Square Park for lunch at Shake Shack with David, which was delicious. We shouted in catch-up-y excitement about monomania and all or something projects and New York Startups™. He told me about how things work infrastructurally in India vs. the US (rearchitecting vs. bandaids) which sounds like insanity.

Afterwards walked up to MoMA. Normally don’t sit through videos (especially on loops) but watched a good amount of Godard’s Historie(s) du cinéma.

Ate a Félix González-Torres candy, while is always a strange relief when museum-fatigued. There is a DRONE in the rotating contemporary art section. Noticed they are installing Rikrit’s annoying curry thing in a big way. Loved these video pedestals from 9 Scripts from a Nation at War (Sharon Hayes and co.) because they feel almost exactly like sitting at a computer alone at night.

Walked(!) back to school. (That’s like 8 miles in one day! But who’s counting? Fitness is kind of my new thing.) A flyer-person in the gold-buying-district(?) practically shouted me down about how his gold buying establishment will fill my pockets with so much money I won’t even know what to do with myself. Goofy. Had a great call about a freelance web project I’m excited to be starting. Headed back into the city and played video games with friends into the night. Not as good as I remember myself to be from growing up. In fact, I am terrible. But the city is a bigger pond.

Saturday headed home for a doctor’s appointment. Finished a final round of tweaks on the Girl Walk site. Watched South Park with Niki. Woke up just as I was falling asleep and scribbled things down, a little bit about photography and a lot about systems (for which my grade re-evaluation presentation is fast approaching).

Sunday, pulled together a cover letter, updated résumé, and references for a summer internship at the Berkman Center for Internet & Society at Harvard!! Already wishing I could rewrite the cover letter because I could so do a better job and I REALLY hope I get this. Would be incredible to spend a summer at metaLab (their research areas map uncannily to my obsessions) or the Youth and Media lab.

Then went out to a too-expensive dinner at Porsena with Alex and he talked to me about painting. Which must’ve been like trying to explain to an alien how to open a door knob.

Monday morning I got coffee and perused the internet for a long time:

Kelli’s TEDx Talk:

Timehop makes you want to use social media more.

Surrealist politics by Sexpigeon (which is maybe the best website): “It is predicted that total spending on television advertising in the Presidential race will reach two billion dollars. Two billion dollars! Do you know what you could do with that kind of money? Abort every fetus, embryo, and zygote in the nation AND marry every gay person in the United States AND still have $4 million left over.”

Tumblr’s architecture, which I only understand a little bit, makes my head spin. In other NYC Startup Hubris news, DY is the winner of captioning this photo of David Karp: “I’m King of Midtown!”

Also via DY, the seed of a really important convo on Flickr.

I must’ve subscribed to Cornell’s robotics lab on YouTube a while ago, because I received this incredible video in my inbox.

The internet, interface design, and social networks were on my mind. Left a long comment on Brad’s post and kind of felt like my work for the day was done.

Walked to school over the bridge and asked lots of questions at an informal Work Makes Work meeting. Tried to finish a proposal for Triple Canopy based on long-unresolved Notes on Forgetting, Archiving, Existing on the Internet, but ADD’d out, deciding instead to walk over the bridge (again!), home, with Alex, which was worth it. Anyway, I wasn’t totally sure if the notes made sense or how to pitch it as an essay proposal (with a budget, etc?!) at the last minute (obviously). But loooord knows an editor (ideally following me around all day) would help. Regardless, the deadline proved to be a helpful reminder to work on this.

Tuesday, Shakira got attacked by a sea lion. I, on the other hand, sort of merged the Forgetting notes in my head with thinking for Systems about the social network as a future city, and the speculative fictional plot to assassinate Zuckerberg upon his appointment as president of the US. (Maybe a stretch? Though I think if I were Zuckerberg, I would be driven to kill myself from the pressure of being that rich and powerful.) Jaron Lanier writes: “[Technologists] tinker with your philosophy by direct manipulation of your cognitive experience, not indirectly, through argument. It takes only a tiny group of engineers to create technology that can shape the entire future of human experience with incredible speed. Therefore, crucial arguments about the human relationship with technology should take place between developers and users before such direct manipulations are designed.”

I re-read Zuckerberg’s post-IPO Letter and found a lot of the bits about “a social mission — to make the world more open and connected” to be pretty specious, considering it was originally a version of Hot-or-Not. And still, essentially, is.

Downloaded b-roll and saved news clippings. Learned that Facebook flies the flags of state, country, and social network. Can’t help but imagining them merge… (via wired)

Facebook’s internal tools are interesting. Engineers have “push karma” which starts at 4 stars on their first day of work and can only go down if their code breaks things. If an engineer has low push karma their work is scrutinized much more carefully before being allowed to go into the daily pushes (Monday, Wednesday, Friday) and especially the big weekly push (Tuesday), which includes thousands of changes. Check out that dislike button!

Stumbled on some ADHD self-help from an old notebook (lol):

And experimented with Pomodoro, an app that mandates 25 minute timed and named sprints of focused work with 5 minutes breaks. It plays a ticking clock sound too. While it’s kind of helpful to do a Pomodoro if I’m sitting on my ass, I kept putting off starting the next one because it’s kind of a displeasurable way of working for me, so didn’t even manage to do two sprints in a row.

Grabbed spicy noodles at Szechuan Gourmet, then wandered around the NYPL’s gorgeous Schwarzman Building before meeting Christine’s class there to look at a history of photo prints. The library collects a ton and is happy to show them to the public if you ask nicely and arrange ahead of time. Definitely going back.

Walked back to school! And surfed the internet for a while.

Cowbird, which just became an official company instead of just a side-project, is so well designed. The interface feels really springy and just fun to interact with. The site also manages to make the complications of linked data seem ridiculously friendly and intuitive. Jonathan Harris is talented. While the tools are incredible and they’re doing a good job cultivating a specific kind of community, I’m not terribly interested in most of the content that’s there so far.

The site is also full of great little moments, like this from their FAQ:

Finally got around to finishing the readings Christine gave me, though I have to take a closer look at them. This is Gustave Flaubert in 1881:

“ART It makes you ill. What use is it? since it can be replaced by machines that do it better and faster.

ARTISTS You have to laugh at everything they say. All jokers. Boast about their disinterestedness. Are astonished that they are dressed like everyone else. Earn ridiculous amounts of money, but throw it all away. What they do can’t be called ‘working’. Often invited out to dinner.”

Maybe a predecessor to this. (via Sofia Leiby)

Later had Censorship, which was good. We read Howl by Ginsburg and excerpts of the trial, all of which I loved. We were then subjected to Franco’s embarrasing film adaptation. It wasn’t so bad, but the animation sequences were a little barf-inducing. All in all it does a disservice to the writing, I’d say.

Next week we are moving on to Mapplethorpe and visual art, which is exciting:

It was Valentines day:

But, far from playing some suave move, I basically declared Words bankruptcy:

Hung out at home and went to bed early but woke up and scribbled, photoshopped, and wrote from 2am to sunrise.

The rant below, based on this strange graphic I threw together during Systems last semester is meant to be recited in a screaming voice, in protest:

I am not a vessel for genetic information.

Saying that you don’t believe in genetics is like saying that you don’t believe in dinosaurs. But maybe I don’t.

Which came first: the chicken or the egg? It doesn’t matter, writes Richard Dawkins, eggs are raw genetic information, genetic information simply wants to multiply, and chickens are a means to make more eggs. Humans, he writes, are also just vessels for genetic information. Maybe he doesn’t say “just” but you’re being a softie if you don’t reduce his arguments to this purpose, the multiplication of genetic information. At some point we became sentient blah blah and here we are.

I’m sick and tired of things so vast I can’t understand them. Genetics. Capitalism. International relations.

Fucking is comedic on a grand level because it starts to look like a multiplication sign.

Where did this growth curve come from?

We are going to wipe ourselves out and there was never any reason we had to be sentient to worry about it anyway.

What we’ve uncovered is a problem of language. We have no words to describe intention without mind.

Genius, in an earlier time, was thought to be external. It descended from the heavens and passed through our bodies. We could inhale it and hold it inside of us momentarily at most.

Today genius is internalized, inseparable from persons.

Everything in my experience confirms that I am here. I stretch almost compulsively, feeling out my body’s physicality.

Pass the torch to the next generation. None of this matters so I’m going to light up a candy cigarette.

In between the people who don’t believe in dinosaurs and Richard Dawkins there are interventionists. Those who know that the world probably isn’t in God’s hands, but it also probably isn’t a meaningless void.

I can fuck with this abstraction.

I’m against thinking that these abstractions are real. I want to drop out of the race for power. Blow up the exponential curve. Because its just an idea we invented. Studying ourselves. Is the stupidest thing. I don’t want to settle into some benign role on the spectrum, and I don’t want to rule the world. A healthy but not megalomaniacal appetite. It’s functionally incompatible. Our realities. (I don’t believe in God or god.)

It’s existential!

Something sweet and funny about wanting to validate ones existence. Why am I doing this? I want to connect with people. I want to advance ideas.

If there is a primal instinct I’m a poor genetic specimen. So far I have not managed to reproduce. I would apologize but to whom?

Somehow I have landed in a nunnery. Dedicated the the advancement of science and art. There should just be a fucking school, where people go to learn multiplication in the reproductive sense.

We are the scum of the earth. The thought leaders. There is some debauchery, but in comparison this is a place of rigor. Home of chaste workers.

What’s disturbing is that the educated go out and control the world. I met a consultant who has broken trust down to a science, which she sells to corporations. Trust, she says, is good for business. And what about business? What’s that good for? I asked her. She smiled smart-but-dead-like and said, you have to believe that growing the economy is good for the world. Consulting is a desired job — maybe the quintessential job — of the educated class.

The world, as seen by consultants, is represented by metaphors or graphs. Broken down into her science or spun into his story. And then we ask, how can we make tomorrow better for our children! I’m inclined to say that genetic information doesn’t give a fuck about the human race. It has no fucks to give. But if we allocate our resources: food, violence, sex, ideas, ego, entertainment, correctly we may be able to stall the implosion of the human species.

I have to ask if smarter DNA is better DNA. Perhaps the meta cognizant come more tightly coiled. If I am wrong, then I surrender. I want to know the most efficient expression. I want to know the end but I don’t think this has one because it’s not a story with a plot, it’s a system. A line with an arrow indicating up up up up up up up…

Thes a sick quantification in all of this. I want to question the quality of the information on which systemic decisions are based. In Points at Which to Intervene in a System Donella Meadows describes a spectrum. From adjusting the levers of a faucet to showing the pipe

The first time Kevin diagrammed a system on the board: inputs, outputs, I was blown away. But what started to sicken me is that this isn’t some game. This is how people in charge make choices?!

After I took a class on color theory I could never do my laundry the same way again. Stacking shirts became an exercise of hue and value relationships.

In my systems class I received a D for not turning in work (this protest is part of making amends before the grade adjustment period is over) but I couldn’t bring myself to make a move all semester. I was struck by paralysis, which I’m just now coming to terms with. A heightened experience of color is cool but a heightened experience of systems is TERRIFYING.

There are different ways to depict a system, for example, Pirates in Somalia. One is long-form journalism that runs through the economic reasoning tied in with narrative. Another emerging form is something called a newsgame. It doesn’t tell the story or even necessarily explain itself, but leaves the player with a simulated first-hand understanding of the dynamics of Somali piracy: input, output, risk, strategy, conditions of chance, loops. A kind of understanding that transcends content.

What follows is my TOTALLY FICTIONAL (was scared to put this on dropbox for a minute while I was writing in case they are scanning for crazies) future Zuckerberg assassination. It’s embarrasing stuff, at this point.

Mark Zuckerberg, founder and CEO of Facebook, was assasinated on Tuesday near his home in Palo Alto. He was out walking his dog, Beast, when he was hit with a single bullet. Neighbors, who heard the shot, alerted the police. He will be succeeded at the company by Chief Operating Officer Sheryl Sandberg.

Anchor 1:

Mark Zuckerberg, founder and CEO of the ubiquitous social networking website Facebook, was found dead last Tuesday at his home in Palo Alto. While the exact nature of the death has yet to be disclosed, the county coroner has ruled it a suicide. This news comes shortly on the eve of Facebook’s multi-billion dollar IPO, entering the company into public trading, and making Zuckerburg one of the world’s richest and most powerful political figures. Political Figure isn’t the job title you expect to hear for a college dropout who founded a social network, but Facebook’s political presence became undeniable.

The capital was relocated to Palo Alto, with additional political offices at the company’s data center in Prineville, Oregon.

Shortly after their Initial Public Offering in 2012, Facebook updated politics. In early forms of theocratic government, belief in God’s word was used by political leaders for undisputed control. Secular-ish democracy enforced order with trust in the government and punishment by the justice system. Government 3.0 is more insidious because it exists inside your head.

In his 2012 State of the Union address, President Obama spoke of “cyber threats.” He was likely referring to hacking from China or terrorism in the form of disabling network infrastructure so critical to the functioning of today’s world, but little did he know that the hearts and minds of American citizens (and others around the globe — though less so) were already enlisted in a nation called Facebook.

Activism was replaced by Liketivism. Or as some old-timers in the transition period disparagingly referred to it, “Slacktivism.” (These comments were hidden from Top News via an upgrade to the Edge-Rank algorithm in late 2012.)

Cities were replaced by information-space, which in the latest Facebook release, argued Zuckerberg, finally enabled communication which surpassed physical f2f (face-to-face) interaction. Those who were born “before” seemed to remember something else, though it was a vague feeling and no tagged photos, posts, or pages for this idea could be located. Historians looking at the state’s formation criticized Zuckerberg’s valiant statements about improving communication, waving disintegrating paper documents — olde inkjet printouts of a conversation scraped off of the Internet (as they used to call it) where Zuckerberg calls the site’s first users quote “suckers” end quote. A testimony from someone who was ostensibly in the dorm room at Old Harvard in the early days (who can know if it’s true) claimed that Facebook was first invented to compare women. Yet technological innovation has consistently trickled from the porn industry or the military — and by extension technological means for sex or violence. What was only beginning to be predicted was technology’s close pairing with control. Zuckerberg’s role at the center of all this was, perhaps, foreshadowed by investor Warren Buffet, who came closest to Facebook’s present scope of info-power in the naughts (00-09) when he was widely known to have better, more realtime information than the government itself, thanks to stakes at leading corporations in nearly every industry. His genius, it was seen, was connecting otherwise privileged data from trains, planes, and ships with otherwise privileged data from energy companies, with otherwise privileged data from the financial sector into some throbbing graph of unprecedented accuracy, timeliness, and fidelity. The map of the world that came closest (in its time) to approaching the size of the world itself, yet fit in the palm of a hand. It was Zuckerberg who applied this same panoptic form of infopower to everyday life, and therefore citizenry. Users became subjects. A social network became the first social government.

And then there’s this, sort of riffing on the sketch of alternative interfaces and channeling the heavy-handed internet-y aesthetic:

Like I said, EMBARRASING STUFF. Like, seriously just bad. But at least fast moving, at this point.

Wednesday all my classes were cancelled and I had stayed up late, so I did a little bit of work on the freelance project in the morning and then basically read the internet for the rest of the day.

LOTS OF ROBOTS:

Look, I love small businesses. And I prefer to do business with them. But the sad fact is that when it comes to data, your information is likely more secure in the hands of a giant MegaCorp than with an individual. Because, after all, what happens if that individual goes away? Who will protect your data? The internet is simply a way to connect people. But what happens when a person, who forms a vital link in that chain, disconnects? Im about to find out. Im hoping my host will pop back up. That hes simply going to pay to renew his registration, and that all of this will go away. But in the meantime, Im backing up all my data and shopping for a new host. One with a staff. And robots. Lots of robots. Because human beings tend to fail.

Fuck content. Another surprisingly awesome tangentially required reading for Publication Design. I’m still not working hard enough for that class.

An e-cigarette explodes in somebody’s mouth! (via david carr)

Cartographies of time (now in paperback, on my list to-buy):

Twinkie Circuitry, apropos all these speculative futures:

A picture of swimsuit models ringing a bell so that a bunch of computers can start trading autonomously in empty rooms. (via Kevin):

I’ve always had a sneaking feeling that I hate the PDF file format, but never had a good reason. THIS. This means war:

An alternative way to punish companies sucking up all your iOS contacts: (via)

Be angry now (via austin kleon):

Awesome early Mac OS graphics (via David Cole):

and Raul

And, well, this is TERRIFYING. A day after I wrote my terrible screed about Facebook as a future government, Facebook is launching verified accounts, for which they are collecting scans of government-issed photo IDs. (via)

Walked to school and home again over the bridge. Is it possible to be addicted to a bridge?? Also, there is a Momofuku Milk Bar between home and school, at which I get cookies. That might be part of it. But the bridge is even better than nature, I think. Reminds me of why living in a city is so badass. Some days I listen to Philip Glass and other days I listen to Britney Spears, both excellent choices of bridge music.

Thursday, today. Western Theories was good, although I sort of zoned out after a little while. Short attention span really takes a toll on me in theoretical situations.

Milled around, scanned notes, and strung links together for this weeknote for a few hours. Got drinks with Aaron and Alex and then went to sculpture. Testing this theory although I consider Jonah Lehrer a hack. Sculpture class has been consistently bad this semester with a lack of work — especially work that requires or demands conversation, but Niki is hilarious so it’s just disappointing not painful. Had a great studio visit with her after where we talked about almost everything I’m working on and mad about and scared about and she joked that the workmakeswork show is “like santa’s factory” (which kind of says it all), and I went home confused and excited about making things. Tempted to walk the bridge but took the subway.

On deck (yes I am one of the a-holes using that amazing new to-do list app):

I weep for us all. “an amazing new app for list-keeping that is unbelievably simple, quick and satisfying to use”
— Ian Bogost (@ibogost) February 16, 2012

Bonus pic from the future:

Week 3

Fri, 10 Feb 2012 00:19:00 -0500

Had lots of fun this week(!) but it was lousy work-wise. A getting-sick mixed with spring-fever-y lull to last week’s mania.

Thursday I was tired and in a weird mood from staying up all night. Didn’t really manage to read Kant or Hegel so that was a painful Western Theories of Art class discussion. Sculpture was okay, flapped my gums without saying anything smart about the work.

Audrey linked me to this great essay by Joe Scanlan on social space and relational aesthetics.

Relational aesthetics set out to tap the creative potential of social space. But now—more than ever—social space is responsible for suppressing most of what is worthwhile about making art in the first place: Narcissism. Solipsism. Delusion. Perversion. Dedication. Fantasy. Absurdity. And while relational aesthetics might have changed the kinds of conversations we have about art, to include questions such as what an artwork might be made of, who could be involved, or where it might begin and end, rarely have these ideas been acute enough in practice to overcome common decency. And that’s a shame. Because if there’s one thing we need less of in the United States right now, it’s common decency—or at least Bill Frist’s idea of common decency. These days, both politically and aesthetically, I prefer to adhere to Martin Kippenberger’s creed: “Keiner hilft keinem.” Every man for himself. For better and worse, Kippy’s iconoclasm affords a greater range of expression than tacit collaboration ever could. What’s more, it just feels better. For all relational aesthetics’ claims to utopia and tomorrow being another fine day, an aesthetic that can’t allow anything bad to happen sounds more like anesthesia to me.

But I sort of lost steam on whatever I was mad about last week regarding social practice and that-kaila-show.

Friday went to Chelsea for the first time in maybe a year. Aaron picked up a Pwr Paper at Printed Matter then we went to wait in line for Doug Wheeler. Spent maybe 45 minutes waiting outside the gallery. It was cold. Aaron had to leave for class before we even got in (ha), but I sat there and sat there and sat there. The two sort of old ladies in front of me were funny because one was really calm and the other one kept saying things like, “if I wanted to see a blank room I could just go into my bathroom!” After getting inside there was another hour of waiting but I finished The Handmaid’s Tale, which I had to read for school that weekend anyway. The waiting room scene was as much of a spectacle as the thing itself. A group of school kids who waited more patiently than I would’ve been able to at that age. Listening to the gallerina repeat instructions to everyone. She asked the kids not to run up the curved wall. Some of the kids came out like OMG and others were like WASTE OF TIME. I stayed in for just over a full cycle, taking my glasses off and putting them on, walking around and standing still, noticing dust or flaws in the paint and spacing out, trying to remember if my eyes were open or closed. It was pretty similar to seeing this Olafur piece at SF MOMA a few years ago. The weirdest part was that I couldn’t stop thinking about how much I wanted to clip my eyelashes. They were causing vignetting!

Walked back to school and then met Niki in Chinatown for porkbuns, bubble tea, and Xi’an, but I was too exhausted (maybe from having my eyes/brain blasted with light) and made for bad company. Went to a fun party later.

Saturday did nothing but take a walk and make the best ravioli ever, which we bought from some ludicrously authentic smoky garage.

Saw a wheelchair dog!

Saw the Rite Aid in Greenpoint that used to be some kind of roller disco and still has a disco ball! (Highly recommended.)

Sunday did the superbowl thing and that was fun. Not sure why the ads were so bad this year or how they turned the entire field into a screen in 10 minutes but it looked awesome. Especially when they dropped Madonna in a hole and flashed this message out of nowhere:

Sunday was also my one year anniversary of following myself-a-year-ago on various social networks (weird!) thanks to twitshift and more recently timehop. It’s always crazy seeing what was going on a year ago. And I love rediscovering old gems like this:

I’m jealous of people that can write computer code and chicas with no cellulite.What u jealous of?
— Tyra Banks (@tyrabanks) January 9, 2011

Monday I bought a giant pad of newsprint and screwed it into the wall of my studio, but have yet to write on it. Sort of like buying a too-nice notebook. Filed under: failed motivational techniques. Rejiggered the Girl Walk events page for them before they head out to the west coast. Still some work to do on that site. Had a good burrito.

Tuesday had five minutes of photo because Christine was doing studio visits for the next two days. Censorship was good, although I felt the pain of having to repeat a lower-level class when sitting through a lesson on how to use academic databases and cite your sources. Sort of blacked out on my desk and the librarian lecturing us publicly shamed me. Cool. Went home feeling sick, took NyQuil, fell asleep.

The highlight of a rather slooow and braindead week was a studio visit with Christine on Wednesday. She showed up with readings and questions based on the introduce-yourselves-survey we had taken on the first day. It’s exciting to take such a structure-less class where the teacher’s only agenda is to help you move your work forward. Words I scribbled down in my notebook: whimsy, (dark) humor, telling a joke until it’s no longer funny, people who hang on to youth culture until they’re 70, discomfort, photo archive, if I went blind, the problem is the content.

Other than that spent all of Wednesday doing my Publication Design homework that I didn’t get around to doing. Mad at myself for waiting until the day it was due to start. That shouldn’t happen. That class makes me feel REALLY BAD at design, in a good way. It feels a lot like having a graphic design job (which is annoying) but I can tell I’m getting better faster than I was at work. He’s a great teacher.

We had to read + respond to Jeff Keedy’s The Rules of Typography According to ~~Crackpots~~ Experts in which he quotes Beatrice Warde’s famous crystal goblet:

Imagine that you have before you a flagon of wine. You may choose your own favourite vintage for this imaginary demonstration, so that it be a deep shimmering crimson in colour. You have two goblets before you. One is of solid gold, wrought in the most exquisite patterns. The other is of crystal-clear glass, thin as a bubble, and as transparent. Pour and drink; and according to your choice of goblet, I shall know whether or not you are a connoisseur of wine. For if you have no feelings about wine one way or the other, you will want the sensation of drinking the stuff out of a vessel that may have cost thousands of pounds; but if you are a member of that vanishing tribe, the amateurs of fine vintages, you will choose the crystal, because everything about it is calculated to reveal rather than to hide the beautiful thing which it was meant to contain… Now the man who first chose glass instead of clay or metal to hold his wine was a “modernist” in the sense in which I am going to use the term. That is, the first thing he asked of this particular object was not “How should it look?” but “What must it do?” and to that extent all good typography is modernist.

But then Keedy is all like, “Beatrice Warde did not imagine her crystal goblet would contain PEPSI-COLA, but some vessel has to do it.” It’s a liberating read, sticking it to stodgy old typographers. His golden rule is: pay attention. (The opposite of following or reacting to rules.) For the illustration portion of my response I photographed this horrendously cheesy goblet of alphabet soup.

I have a hard time getting excited and feeling good about graphic design. I pretty much always want to be like I DIDN’T MAKE THAT. There’s a better way, which I need to figure out, that’s not just getting it done.

This morning I gave a nervous little presentation on Riegel’s history of ornament and we talked about that and Wolflinn. It was better than last week but by the end I was still writhing in my seat with spring fever!!!! Went outside for a long time and stretched and climbed on the building like a maniac until a security guard came outside and was like STOP. It was really fun. Sculpture was just-okay. Had a funny conversation about a boring piece. Tried to remember other times where we had good conversations about bad work, it’s possible but today sucked.

If I had my way I would just play outside all day. Christine joked that people think of art school as this place where people are drugged out and painting with tempera but it’s really rigorous and hard. Tons of self-motivation required. Spartan work ethics! Which most of the time is hard to pull off. I have a bunch of Writer windows open on my computer of things that need to get written, sent, done. Hoping for a few quiet, productive days. And not getting sicker. Going to manage my huge amounts of time better and stop waiting for the mood to strike to do work. In conclusion: ice cream, NyQuil, goodnight.

Weeknote 2.428571429

Thu, 02 Feb 2012 06:44:00 -0500

(a.k.a. week-and-almost-a-half note)

Basically too tired to write this, want to keep putting it off, but the longer I wait the harder it gets to remember what I even did all day on those glorious fridays and mondays off. It wasn’t nothing.

Tuesday had our first class for photo. Christine is great. We talked for a while and she gave us some readings and a pep-talk about failure. (Everyone wants to give us that, Niki’s was about how Cooper students aren’t lazy, like some people — cough visiting artists cough — think, but that there’s this intense anxiety about what to do next. I will accept all pep-talks. They help.)

Then Global Censorship, which is a lower-level class I have to take because I failed my Beckett class for not turning in essays. (Beckett would be proud?) Anyway the Beckett class sucked and Censorship turns out to be the class I wanted all along! It’s fascinating to think about, especially in the hyper-expanded definition of censorship that we’re working with. Some examples that came to mind were Julian Assange’s ideas for using cryptographic hashes to combat internet censorship, how censorship is built into products and toys (like life-like dolls for children that are programmed to shut off rather than cry, when they are being hit or turned upside down), how the best way to communicate to people 100,000 years in the future not to dig up our nuclear waste might not be to educate them but to erase its very existence from cultural memory, the relationship between censorship (in the sense of content) and bias in computer systems. Excited to explore all this more. Have been eye-ing Berkman summer internships for Internet research.

Wednesday had art issues and publication design. Art issues was bad, we talked about signs, signifiers, and other bullshit that no one cares about and may actually bear no relation to art. Publication design is dry but good, luckily Warren is hilarious. Design classes feel like a struggle to believe in graphic design and keep myself interested. I have so much to learn but the sharpening that happens in design classes feels so disconnected from everything else. And the work gives me office flashbacks. Don’t even feel like writing about it here.

Thursday had art history and sculpture. Skimmed Plato, Aristotle, and Kant.

I need to get used to reading old things and dry things, not just stoopid blog posts. While I was reading Kant I couldn’t help pausing to tweet a pic:

LUCKY! RT @youngna: @CaseyG Twitpic definitely didn’t exist when I was forced to read Kant.
— Casey A. Gollan (@CaseyG) January 24, 2012

But I actually want to read all of it more closely after our class discussion. Weinstein is a great teacher.

In sculpture Aaron was the only one who showed. It was this and one other thing:

People said it looked like it was made for the internet, and here it is on Flickr a few days later with likes and comments. I’m scared for the world after school because we can spend an hour picking something apart and the same thing goes down so smoothly on the internet. We need to do better.

I started to write a response to Louis’s essay on Likes a while ago that really boils down to this: mythical future interfaces, better tools for which you (and I) can “offer no concretized” vision, will not solve uncriticality and info-consumerism online. Aaron, the day before, said something like, “nobody switches to less addictive tools, you have to destroy what’s out there.”

On the Facebook IPO, Alex Galloway wrote (on Facebook!!):

“The basic question: Is Facebook more like a newspaper or more like a factory? The liberal answer: it’s a newspaper in that it gathers stories about people and circulates those stories back to its readers while leveraging reader attention for advertising dollars. Profit flows in from advertisers and the value of the company is determined by the marketplace. The progressive answer: it’s a factory in that it demands unpaid micro labor from its users, extracting surplus value from such labor. Profit flows from commons-based peer production and thus value is ultimately produced by users (making the ads merely the “last mile” of valorization). NYT claims the former, obviously. But it’s very important that we understand FB as a factory, not just another form of mass media.”

On Friday I went home for the weekend, pushed pixels around trying to actually act on my complaint to Louis about how annoying I find the pool website. Launching something improved still feels far off, and made of a lot of small tweaks re: annoyances, but I had fun playing with CSS transforms. Doodling in HTML.

Saturday and Sunday I read half of The Handmaid’s Tale by Margaret Atwood, for Censorship. Experimented with tracking my reading of a printed book with this fancy little app and Readmill, which gave me funny little estimates about how many more time’s I’d need to sit down and read to finish the book. Cumbersome and novel. I like new stuff. Dystopian books fuck with my emotions because I A) start to confuse books with reality, always (did that happen in the book or IRL!?) and B) just kind of get sad and contemplative if that’s what the characters are up to. Fixed that by playing Kirby with Niki for a little!

Returned to Brooklyn on Sunday night and made smores at a bonfire! In Brooklyn! Backyard fires in the city always feel illegal. Somebody threw in an old lacquered chair and other random crap from the backyard and the fire basically exploded.

Monday (maybe getting the order wrong here) watched a few bits from this talk at DLD on post-internet art, and Aaron and I got talking REALLY INTENSELY:

This youtube comment makes me embarrassed to think about it. Good job, troll.

Karen seemed really nervous giving her introduction (but, jesus, I would be too). I wonder if I will ever be able to speak in front of people without losing my shit.

Haven’t watched it all, but it was pretty exciting when Daniel Keller went on (at 37 minutes in) and reminded everyone that animated gifs run on burnt coal and computers are built by slaves! Read this article about Apple and outsourcing of manufacturing. Maybe silly but I made this my phone background after hearing about somebody who received their phone with pictures from the factory left on it. Insane reminder that humans put these things together halfway across the world, also just a great photo.

Looked at a little of Daniel Keller/Aids-3D’s work after the talk:

Berserker

Styrofoam, acrylic, USB memory stick with 3D file

A Von Neumann probe arrives on an alien world from earth with a single message —Reproduce me. It appears to be some sort of idol. It’s image is its form, Its word is its flesh, its seed is information on a solid-state universal serial bus memory stick, It’s essence encoded in binary. Is it an emissary of peace or a mindless virus programmed to dominate its surroundings?

It reminded me of Talk to Me / my systems class with Kevin / design-y art crossover shit (but A3D is way more on the art side, aesthetically…it just looks like art) / social practice.

There isn’t a hard line between (for lack of a better term) a “traditional studio practice” — visual artists thinking primarily about things like composition and pushing around forms in space (which seems like the way Aaron was working on that wheatpasted piece of furniture) and all of the above. The offshoots or bastard children of research-based conceptual art, advertising, product design aren’t just noodling with materials, they’re intent on communicating something. There’s something exciting and essential! about this, how these people are dealing directly with the world: e.g. reality check on you people who are obsessed with immateriality because it’s abstract and these things are very real and vast and powerful and (in my opinion) totally fucking terrifying! (sublime?! lol).

commercial break, this again:

BUT there’s something that is deeply unsatisfying about this kind of work. It’s too clever. It’s a good illustration for some essay but doesn’t open up. Leaves me cold. I feel like I have almost no relationship with making the noodly material work but can’t articulate why I hate the clever stuff so much. (Talk to Me left me DEPRESSED.) You could talk about the A3D alien the way we talk about sculptures built in the shop, but it almost seems to be asking to backburner that discussion. After all, there is a coal burning slave factory churning out iPads somewhere. A world to attend to! This is product design not sculpture.

Started to collect drafts, thoughts, and ideas to flesh out: forgetting.info, a Field Guide to Skeueomorphism (if only for myself, to collate my obsessive collection), post-internet antagonism (why won’t people be ~~mean to~~ “CRITICAL of” eachother online (hai claire bishop), something about robot teachers, something about that crazy discussion I can’t even fully recollect about capitalism and computing old art and new art. Github, most important startup of 2011, examples of it used for things besides coding.

A few weeks ago Kaila sent around a ridiculously open yet specific call for ~collaborations~ that quickly morphed into an “experimental” social practicey event thing with a student run coffee bar, radio station, newspaper published form within, chalkboards, someone planning to camp out, etc and so on ad infinitum.

I’m a jerk so I replied-all:

But a week later stayed up all night / woke up in a fever about the show. Those things all seem to parody themselves. I started to sketch out an identical exhibition (in form) that is somehow a joke, even borrowing the same coffee stand (if possible!). Sketchup is fun, it’s kind of like shopping.

It’s not done but you can download the show here. Their proposed title is WORK MAKES WORK, a sort of collaborative studio space, but the word on the tip of my tongue is IDEA ECONOMY. A sort of retro (peaked in 1995?) term calling into play both this bullshit: “The primary product of the Idea Economy is ideas. You and I can and must produce ideas just as those who prospered in previous economies had to produce crops, manufactured goods, and most recently, services.” but also the tone of economy, as in economical (cut-rate), efficient (factory!) is kind of a sad undertone. A collaborative workspace/group under the pretense of an exhibition is encumbered! Precious!

Photo, on Tuesday, was great. We talked about a reading on ruins that reminded me of these [1, 2, 3]. Everybody showed old things and talked about where they’re coming from / at / going. Starting with my psychotic breakdown last time I took a photo class:

Dawit wasn’t interested in ideas. Only pretty projects. And I was thinking big and scary.

Then decided to go after sensitive photographers, many of whom are friends. It wasn’t the things in books that angered me, it was the people around me.

Took the sexy studio art portraits, resulting in a D and an admonishment to be compassionate, constructive, and ethical:

Decent advice but that group needed to be shaken up much more than I was able to.

Told a story about the two sides of my family. On my dad’s side and back a few generations they were prolific recreational photographers. I found a box of beautiful glass negatives at granny & grandpas.

Family (dad’s side) with guns:

One night at dinner my mom was telling me about her grandmother with long silver hair and bright blue eyes. I said I had never seen a picture of her. That’s because, I learned, she considered photography to be a SIN. A SIN! So she was never photographed. I was overjoyed when I heard that. It made sense in some weird hereditary-we-take-issue-with-this way. ME. TOO. GRANNY.

Photograph of my great grandma (mom’s side):

Anyway, the stories are fun, but most people are more interesting than their work, said Christine. The goal, I think, this time around — going forward — is to do something with all these problems that isn’t so much of a direct reaction or disparaging to a certain group. Even if I’m saying the same thing essentially, Dawit’s little trio of advice still makes me wrinkle my nose because it’s about being nice in all the wrong (fake!) ways.

Wednesday I had a conversation with Troy pegging the current internet-y aesthetic to dutch typography.

I sat through half of my Contemporary Art Issues class, grumbling and glaring at people for all the bullshit that was being spouted. It seems like not even the teacher (a nice guy!) wants to talk about art in these shitty, shitty LOVELESS words.

When I was a freshman I had another run-in with Rosalind Krauss. When I told Martha I was no longer going to make things, she made me look at the expanded field diagram and attend a lecture-y symposium thing at The New School with her on UN-UN-sculpture vs. NOT-NOT-sculpture. Both of us were skin-crawling-ly ready to get the hell out of that room after about 10 minutes, after which I promised her I would never think again.

There’s something interesting but MEH about it all, theory. During break from Art Issues, in a Rosalind-Krauss-induced stabby panic I sprinted across the street to the office and dropped the class. It even cost $25 to drop (since the ARBITRARY free period ended on Monday) but it is well worth it to not sit through that. I ran back in, grabbed my bag, and walked straight out of the room. I was all like:

Except totally silent. I sat in the sunshine(!) had a conversation with Kaila about the show and why I hate it, and finished my design homework. Pub design was excellent.

I am grateful for a schedule that allows for me to totally mess up my sleeping patterns (or lack thereof) for a few late night and early nights. This week: still thinking about those systems projects (keep not doing that) but made headway on explaining what I don’t like, publication design homework (I have a lot to learn), freelance design work dealings, thinking about a cover letter for the Berkman internship (though I might have to stay in New York and do summer classes as a consequence for dropping art issues, ha), reading hegel by 10am, thinking about kailas show and my own (sculpture?), lots of reading, and fleshing out some of those draft ideas mentioned above to keep myself writing.

In conclusion, this weird song by Laurie Anderson that I want to hate but looove where she raps about bailouts and Oprah.

Subway at a US Military Base in Iraq

Thu, 02 Feb 2012 01:49:00 -0500

Tue, 31 Jan 2012 01:51:59 -0500

Weeknotesandlinks 1

Mon, 23 Jan 2012 20:54:33 -0500

I’ve always wanted to keep weeknotes like Berg London. Snarkmarket once posted about why they’re so great. I guess I am late to writing this, my first weeknote, not just because it’s the 4th week of the year, but it’s also a Monday, not a Friday. However my schedule is a little kooky this semester: Mondays and Fridays off(!!!) so I’m disoriented about what constitutes a “week” or the end of one.

Monday was MLK day, so we had no school. Aaron and I came across two apartments in the same glass building projecting blond ladies on their wall:

And watched a talk by Lawrence Lessig:

Tuesday was rescheduled to have Monday classes for some reason so I was off again. Went to school and felt butterflies and excitement. Ate at Japadog (finally open on St. Marks!) which was a lifechanging experience. Later we bought mousetraps for our house mouse. There were a few different brands at the dollar store, each with their own morose cartoon of a crying mouse.

On second thought, buying the cheapest traps (4 for $1!) might’ve been a stupid idea because no mouse has been stupid enough to step into them yet and I failed to think about what happens after the mouse gets stuck. Kelli informs me that you can just put some vegetable oil on the adhesive to release the poor thing…once you figure out how to take it outside. In all likelihood this will end up going down like the David Sedaris story where he drowns a rat in his bathtub with a spray bottle of Windex.

Wednesday I went to the SOPA/PIPA protest with Alex. My phone was dead which felt so wrong at an internet rally. Joel Spolsky said it best:

The internet seems to ignore legislation until somebody tries to take something away from us… then we carefully defend that one thing and never counter-attack. Then the other side says, “OK, compromise,” and gets half of what they want. That’s not the way to win… that’s the way to see a steady and continuous erosion of rights online. The solution is to start lobbying for our own laws. It’s time to go on the offensive if we want to preserve what we’ve got. Let’s force the RIAA and MPAA to use up all their political clout just protecting what they have. Here are some ideas we should be pushing for: * Elimination of software patents * Legal fees paid by the loser in patent cases; non-practicing entities must post bond before they can file fishing expedition lawsuits * Roll back length of copyright protection to the minimum necessary “to promote the useful arts.” Maybe 10 years? * Create a legal doctrine that merely linking is protected free speech * And ponies. We want ponies. We don’t have to get all this stuff. We merely have to tie them up fighting it, and re-center the “compromise” position.

My art issues class was cancelled because the teacher was unexpectedly out of the country(?). It wasn’t so bad because we all hung out for an hour and ate free cake that was auspiciously available in the building. The class was supposed to be taught by Litia Perta, of Why Cooper Matters fame, but she (understandably) backed out after this administrative bullshit happened:

I was hired to teach at Cooper in 2006 when I was a doctoral candidate and my semester’s fee for 14 weeks was $4,500. Sometime later, after completing my Ph.D. and spending a year as a post-doctoral fellow at the Center for the Humanities at Wesleyan University, I returned to Cooper Union. It was the fall of 2009 and I was re-hired by the college’s dean of the humanities at the exact same rate I was paid in 2006. I was told at the time that the budget could not accommodate any fee increase for having received my Ph.D., nor could it afford paying any increase for the standard annual rates of inflation. That same year, the dean who hired me received a compensation package valued at $239,724.

Instead I sat in on a performance class with Emily Roysdon which was fun. We listed all sorts of words that relate to performance: presence, time, etc…I said that I like how HOKEY performance is but it didn’t even make the board. Hokey is in fact a real word, according to the OED:

And not only is it a word, it is the PERFECT WORD. This reading was given to us from Peformance: a critical introduction by Marvin Carlson:

As it turns out, I can’t even be in this performance class anyway because it conflicts with art issues.

Wednesday night I had a short introduction to my Publication Design class, where I learned we would be dealing exclusively with print. Working on assignments based on designing coffee table books and commercial magazines feels like barking up a dying tree, but the class is supposed to be amazing and I know there’s a lot of skills to be developed in working with printed matter that aren’t necessarily locked in to the collapse of that industry.

Thursday had an excellent art history class, which will actually be about Western Theories of Art. Meta! Sculpture in the evening with Niki was great as always.

Friday was a makeup class for art issues, which was alright. Too much theory makes Jack a dull boy.

On Saturday I was served this suspiciously well-targeted ad while watching a Beyonce video…

…and read this amazing article by Matthew Battles on the fallacy of Apple’s iPad textbooks actually reinventing education.

As Schiller ticked down the list, for feature after feature — portability, durability, interactivity, searchability, and currency — the book earned a big red X.

but!

Interactivity doesn’t exist. More properly, everything is interactive. We use the catch-all term “interactivity” to brand as novel the qualities exhibited by digital objects striving to be like real-world objects. But chairs, raindrops, sandwiches, and envelopes are also interactive — in their own evolved ways. Books in fact exhibit rich interactive habits, evolved to engage us in peculiar ways (and increasingly, these very features are counted as bugs).

The whole Niemanlab site is awesome, never really poked around there before, but their projects like Fuego (a twitter link aggregator) and Encyclo (a wiki for the future of journalism) are great resources.

Sunday was an amazing food day. Had lunch at The Meatball Shop and dinner at Daisy’s BBQ, with coffee at Blue Bottle in between over which I met Louis Doulas IRL and we talked about redesigning Pool. Read a great article about Danah Boyd that makes me want to finish Sherry Turkle’s Alone Together (a little over halfway through). I can’t shake this one particular interview from my head of some teens who call adolescence “the years of profile writing.” So freaky.

I watched a lot of weird robot videos this week. Incredibly creepy and kind of funny. They’re getting so much better but also not at all.

I want to see this movie, Robot and Frank:

From the director:

I suppose it’s possible that some actors might have had trouble working against a robot, but to some degree all those ideas are built into the script. We purposefully designed the robot to be faceless, so that it could appear either creepy or cute, depending on what point we were at in the film. Any discomfort Frank might have felt could only help that early awkward part of their relationship. Getting the emotional connection that develops to feel honest is probably a lot harder, and something that very few other actors could pull off.

Can’t wait until this is a thing:

A good interview with Zoe Strauss, who is keeping office hours at her show in Philadelphia. The people she photographs can’t afford to see her work, though.

Despite all the good that comes out of it, I have a morbid obsession with failed Kickstarter projects and the limitations of the site’s populism. Matt Haughey has a good writeup of one such horror story. Marco Arment, another.

Best/worst article title of the week award goes to The Rattomorphism of Gamification. In plainspeak, gamification turns users into rats. Interesting psychological take on why gamification will eventually fail:

the logic of gamification is the logic of corrosion…over the long run operant conditioning saps and undermines any intrinsic motivation a person has. It is this intrinsic motivation that gamification seeks to engage (or exploit) and which operant conditioning seems to activate in the short term, but this game apparently doesn’t end well….the design techniques that are appropriated by gamification will become objects of resentment given their omnipresence in the new media ecology. Game designers would be forced innovate, rejecting the rattomorphism they inadvertently inspired.

Brent Simmons wrote a great thing on gamification and Lukas Mathis reponds:

There are many problems with «gamification», but I don’t think [manipulation] is one of them. Essentially, all UI design is about manipulating users, whether you’re coming up with the most easily understood button labels that will get people to click on the correct button, the most readable typeface that will get people to read your essay, or design ideas taken from videogames. The goal of UI design is to get people to use our products successfully. That’s «manipulating people». I suspect that «gamification» makes people uncomfortable because it’s associated with Skinner box type games like FarmVille and World of Warcraft, games that can be actively harmful to their players, and manipulate them into doing things that go against their own best interests. But the idea of taking design hints from games itself is value-neutral.

Enjoyed Ben Jackson’s excerpt from his upcoming essay of game ethics in Distance. And of course there’s the great Wired piece on Ian Bogost and Cow Clicker. “It is very interesting, clicking nothing. We were clicking nothing the whole time. It just looked like cows.”

Three best things about MegaUpload (I didn’t even know the site by name before it was taken down):

1 — KIM KARDASHIAN?

2 — Kim Dotcom’s lifestyle: “Kim Dotcom has a car with the license plate: “GUILTY”. He also had a Rolls Royce with the license plate: “GOD”. Other luxury cars have plates that say: “MAFIA,” “EVIL,” and “STONED.”“

3 — The landing page that the U.S. district court replaced MegaUpload.com with:

Finally, my first post for Rhizome hit the internet today! So excited to be writing for them. I reviewed Wendy Chun’s mindboggling book Programmed Visions: Software and Memory.

On deck this week? Fixing bugs and moving things around on the Girl Walk site before they hit the road for a massive west coast dance tour. Thinking about systems (binary, genetics, the city) for some projects I failed to get done last semester and still have to turn in!! Readings lots of theory. Doing research for a coffee table book on the Hudson Valley. Thinking about sculptures. Mocking up ideas for Pool. Sending New Years cards that I letterpressed, wrote, and completely failed to send at the start of 2011.

Anne Trubek on how Twitter works as a new literary form...

Sun, 22 Jan 2012 11:20:00 -0500

Anne Trubek on how Twitter works as a new literary form (Associative, not narrative. Helps resist the curse of paragraphism.):

Twitter may have some odd analogy to a compositor’s stick. Compositors would select type and put letters in their stick, upside down and backwards, before laying them on a galley. The average length of the type in a stick before laying down (or “publishing”) is not too far from 140 characters.

(via ★tcarmody, img)

Iranian State radio stated on Tuesday that it will send a model...

Tue, 17 Jan 2012 19:29:00 -0500

Iranian State radio stated on Tuesday that it will send a model of the Beast of Kandahar that dropped into their lap last month. They will also create 70,000 copies of the model to be sold in Iran for around $4 or 70,000 rials. The miniature of the RQ-170 Sentinel stealth drone will be sent to the Obama administration in response to a formal request from Washington last month asking Tehran to return the aircraft that went down over Iran in December.

Oof.

(via new-aesthetic, sUAS News)

"Zugzwang (German for “compulsion to move”, pronounced [ˈtsuːktsvaŋ]) is a term usually used in chess..."

Sat, 14 Jan 2012 21:08:29 -0500

“

Zugzwang (German for “compulsion to move”, pronounced [ˈtsuːktsvaŋ]) is a term usually used in chess which also applies to various other games. The term finds its formal definition in combinatorial game theory, and it describes a situation where one player is put at a disadvantage because he has to make a move when he would prefer to pass and make no move. The fact that the player must make a move means that his position will be significantly weaker than the hypothetical one in which it was his opponent’s turn to move.

In game theory, it specifically means that it directly changes the outcome of the game from a win to a loss. The term is used less precisely in games such as chess; i.e., the game theory definition is not necessarily used in chess. For instance, it may be defined loosely as “a player to move cannot do anything without making an important concession”. Putting the opponent in zugzwang is a common way to help the superior side win a game. In some cases it is necessary to make the win possible.

”

- Caterina.net » Blog Archive » Zugzwang

"The present becomes intelligible as it is aligned with a past moment with which it has a secret..."

Mon, 09 Jan 2012 04:04:38 -0500

“The present becomes intelligible as it is aligned with a past moment with which it has a secret affinity. There is a simultaneity not only across space, but across time as well. The Roman Republic and the French Revolution, though nearly two millennia apart, are more closely linked than 1788 and 1789, separated by only a year…History works not in a solely linear way but by being arranged into various constellations.”

- John Durham Peters, Speaking Into the Air (pg. 3)

Reblogging this from a year ago because history works not in a solely linear way but by being arranged into various constellations.

TorrentFreak: YouHaveDownloaded is a new Russian-based...

Sat, 10 Dec 2011 21:37:05 -0500

TorrentFreak:

YouHaveDownloaded is a new Russian-based service that claims to track about 20 percent of all public BitTorrent downloads. However, they go a step further than just collecting IP-addresses and file-names by exposing all the harvested information to the public on their website…The Russian developers created the site partly as a wake-up call. Those who don’t want this kind of information to be public should take steps to anonymize their traffic, and do that right. This message is also reflected in the site’s ‘privacy policy‘.

“Baby, this is the Internet. There is no such thing as privacy around here. You are sitting in the privacy of your own house, clicking links, reading stuff, watching movies. It may seem like you are pretty much alone, but smart nerds are watching you. They watch your every move. You are not human to them. You are a target — a consumer,” it reads.

"On YouTube’s support forums, there’s rampant confusion over what copyright is. People..."

Sat, 10 Dec 2011 11:04:50 -0500

“

On YouTube’s support forums, there’s rampant confusion over what copyright is. People genuinely confused that their videos were blocked even with a disclosure, confused that audio was removed even though there was no “intentional copyright infringement.” Some ask for the best wording of a disclaimer, not knowing that virtually all video is blocked without human intervention using ContentID.

…

Here’s a thought experiment: Everyone over age 12 when YouTube launched in 2005 is now able to vote.

What happens when — and this is inevitable — a generation completely comfortable with remix culture becomes a majority of the electorate, instead of the fringe youth? What happens when they start getting elected to office? (Maybe “I downloaded but didn’t share” will be the new “I smoked, but didn’t inhale.”)