Projects SI 28/The Metathinking Metamachine
Author: Tommi
Description
Humanity is immensely lucky to inhabit a planet that provides many tools to help people solve all their problems. Tools are ubiquitous yet paradoxically invisible. Nevertheless, some gifted, wise, and mighty men take care about making and maintaining them for the rest of the World.
The Magical Metamorphic Metathinking Metamachine is the ultimate tool to transcend to the next level of humanity, the tool that can liberate ourselves from all tools. Take part in this unprecedented event, and in a handful of seconds you will finally become proficient at coding in Rust, self-host your Linux server, enhance your digital self through note-taking, and more!
Context and Background
Since the very moment I started XPUB I have been (over)thinking, possibly obsessing, about the making of Pöuli, and of the (currently very incomplete) website for the Special Issue 28. Wholly absorbed by my tooling hyperfocus, I lost track of time. All collective conversations passed through me. Before I could realize it, people were forming groups and started working on their project for the main event at Ubik.
So Tommi, what are you going to do?
Ehm…
…
…
…
…
I will build The Metathinking Metamachine!
I genuinely had no idea about what that meant. In my head, I could not picture anything beyond the face of Niklas Luhmann, the inventor of the prodigious Zettelkasten system.
The intention was to address the theme of the 28th special issue in relation with my own obsessions:
- A Metamachine: a machine about machines, a software made to solve problems, and interact with, other software.
- Metathinking: the process of thinking about thinking, better explained in the linked article.
At that point, conceptualizing, preparing, and enacting anything that would actually do something useful, or produce a meaningful outcome was unfeasible and idealistic. So what?
Thanks to Manetta’s and Marloes’ guidance and suggestions, I decided to base everything on irony and satire.
The one thing I was sure of was that I intended on focusing on a pseudo-spiritual and grotesque setting. I based all the performance on a spiritual seance to connect with the Gods of Tooling. Furthermore, while sharing my anxiety and my doubts about the performance with Martina and Claudio, I got to the conclusion that the whole performance should have been fun: I got very excited of performing some sort of nerd stand-up comedy.
Preparation
Performance
The performance, of course, starts with a strong meta factor: I share that I really wanted to create the incredible Metathinking Metamachine, but I was too late to actually make it. While overthinking this, I suddenly receive a physical letter from the mysterious Gods of Tooling, giving me the actual source code of the ultimate software I would ever need.
Materials and Media
xpub-plotter-4, 841×1000mm paper, Tommi’s laptop, HP-GL, Python, Chiplotle, uv, terminal