User:Kiara/Second Assessment

Past

Special Issue 25: Sounds of Making

Context

In collaboration with Radio WORM we hosted radio shows for 2 months and crafted projects relating to sound.

One of the shows I took part in was Lost Music; together with Chrissy, Charlie, Tessa and Imina we collected songs from our classmates, following different instructions. We decided to burn CDs with the songs on them and to make a website to allow people to download the songs without needing any music-streaming platform. The whole project took great visual inspiration in late 90s - early 2000s aesthetics. The website itself is inspired by tumblr blogs that allowed autoplay music when anyone would enter the website.

Lost in Narration is the final project I took part in, where we put together a looping chain of discourse:

(2 narrators) write the script 
                 ↓ 
(2 speakers) read the script into microphones 
                 ↓
read material is captured by a speech-to-text python script 
+ printed by a receipt printer
+ simultaneously transformed into sound, captured by VCV Rack 2

The idea was to have a never-stopping live scripting, that acts as a (fictional) archive of the Special Issue's public event and to play with language as a material.

Key concepts I take from it

• small web/indie web (hand coded),
• open access, piracy as a sharing method
• connection between the body and the machine and their placement in a determined space
• failure as a creative material: the python script doesn't fully recognises the words, depending on accent, dictation, etc.
• language intricacies, interpretation, translation, intention: what you mean is not necessarily what will be understood

Links: Lost_in_Narration --- SI 25 website --- https://hub.xpub.nl/cerealbox/~kiara/lost-music/

Special Issue 26: Display & Position

Context

in collaboration with artist and researcher Doriane Timmermans, we spent 3 months working on CSS manipulation, with a specific focus on the display and position properties. This Special Issue was integrated as part of her https://declarations.style research project, focusing on the materiality and poetry of the CSS language.

Key concepts I take from it

• CSS as a language, before being a programming language --> syntax, meaning, vocabulary, etc.
• Writing websites <> writing poetry/fiction/...
• Web programming as a craft
• Interpretation, subjectivity

Links: User:Kiara/Special_Issue_26 --- Specific Lens: browser extension --- Supervisual Hyperzine: an archive of SI26 --- https://declarations.style

External works

My own practice of web crafting

Since 5 years now I have been playing around with web languages, mostly HTML and CSS, to create web material but also printed objects. I learn constantly, as it is an ever-evolving practice.

Looking back at my own work, some key concepts keep being present:

• playfulness
• puzzle/enigma aspect
• language

So I safely assume that they will also exist in the project I am now working on...

Present

Starting point
I started by considering working on topics revolving around community, collaboration and such, but this axis was missing something. It was at the same time too broad and hard to narrow down and to restrictive. It was lacking the things that drive me as a person: language and magic.

Key concepts I'm investigating

1. What do I mean by magic

Magic is a concept that has been present in my life for as long as I can remember. From a childhood passion for magical girls, witches and fairies to a deeper understanding of what magic implies in a broader sense. From all that personal experience, I outline my own definition of magic:

It all starts with intuition: that feeling we have deep inside that makes us say "it does (not) feel right". That intuition, that also involves hunches or déjà-vu sensations roots within our inner self, the understanding of our feelings and emotions and how we relate and deal with them.
What we do with this intuition leads to the second key aspect of magic: intention. Where you place intention, and if you place it, in order to (in)validate your intuition. Do you listen to that little voice telling you something has to be dug out there? Do you follow it? What paths do you take to follow it? Obviously, magic is highly subjective, it relates strongly to our individuality and how we choose to express it. This is also part of what makes it appear so ungraspable and mystical. Magic lies in the in-betweens, those places we cannot fully reach or make sense of, but are actually existing. We can feel their existence. It is what you cannot touch but can only sense.
So far, that definition is very mental, very inwards-focused. Let me elaborate on the physical side of it, as it cannot be separated since we are both body and mind.
Magic in a western-oriented imaginary will induce pictures of spell-casting, magic wands, potion making and such practices that involve, require even, a body interaction. I said before that magic is what you cannot touch, but everything happens through physical channels. As intention cannot be expressed without action, we somehow have to "perform" magic. Here, I do not want to focus on occult and mystique practices, but more on the mundane actions we take.
It is those actions that bring the magic forward: how we decide to create something, care for it, share it to others, how we interact with others. Through actions, gesture, body expression, we influence the world around us as much as we get influenced by it. By shaping the world, we shape ourselves, and vice-versa.
To tie a more precise connection between the spiritual and the physical aspect of that definition, I invoke the ritual: a practice that is shaped both in the physical (ritual dances, sacrifices, (magic) circles, etc.) and in the spiritual (writings such as spells or chants, sigils, etc.)

<references>

Future

The ideal project:

The ideal thesis: