User:Kim/Assessment 2 (T4)
year 1
Tracing Networks Backwards
Tracing Networks Backwards is a (browser) game based on mediawiki. Its interface displays all wiki page titles (circle) that link towards the currently open one (center). Playing the game, the user can recursively visit wiki pages and output their traced path into a graph.
Key: what happens when we render more / different information visible, than usually prescribed in user interfaces?
browser version
installation at ubik for SI25
graph printout after 4h of tracing networks backwards
links: browser version, project documentation, project process
Browser Extensions
Layer is a browser extension surfacing source code elements which by default are not part of a websites (or browsers) visible interface.
Annual rings is a browser extension which gets a websites age and grows a ring for each year the site is old.
Key: continuing with the question of making visible, but here leaving the 'original' interface as a starting point, deconstructing it is part of the users operation
annual rings browser extension
layer browser extension
layer browser extension
links: Layer (repository), annual rings (repository), project process
Terms of Servers
Terms of servers is a terminal based publication that runs on a temporary, communal server called Cerealbox. Working with the server for almost a year now evoked questions around its materiality and reliability. Together with Claudio, we discuss these questions among us, the users, but also direct them towards Cerealbox itself. Terms of servers' form is malleable, it can be read in a computer shell or as printed text.
Key: the collaborative writing process with Claudio on an etherpad that records the 'actual text' and conversation and feedback on the emerging text and navigating process at at the same time, making use of the malleability of markdown files
Technical: exercising python, bash scripting
terminal publication
printed output
links: project documentation, project process, directory on cerealbox
Personal Reader
In the first year of XPUB, every student is asked to start a personal reader. Mine is a git repository that has grown into a container for mapping reading progress, notes and outlines, planning reading and sorting read texts.
Key: (after trying out multiple forms: wiki, websites, a mix of both or more local approaches like zotero) found an interest in about mis-/ reusing the metadata for a non-technical, non-optimization purposes but rather as textual layer
Technical: git
links: repository on gitlab, previous reader on wiki
Fediverse Instance
We (Kiara, Eleni, Claudio, and I) with support of Manetta, started installing a Mastodon Fork 'Glitch Sok' on Debby, an XPUB server, in order to create our own instance.
Key: it wasn't easy. we navigated the process in a group (which is usually done by an individual) involved different protocols, documentation, discussion (written and spoken), side research. frustration with existing documentation that assumes a lot of previous knowledge and installations
technical: ... (debugging? dare to change code or settings you dont fully understand)
links: Fediverse/Installation documentation
project proposal
what
Gitpub is a tool to create a printed or web-based publication from a git repository including repository metadata. This tool is not bound to any specific environment yet, but could have different interfaces such as a website or a terminal program.
although we might all familiar with git I'll briefly contextualize it:
git is a software that helps you keep track of changes made in a file and lets you collaborate with others on the same files. The softwares means of collaboration and version control produce a vast amount of metadata to the code (or text) files that are contained inside a git repository. Yet this metadata is either neglected or exploited to reinforce hypercapitalist modes of production.
At this point i was asked to say a bit more about metadata:
Historically metadata was used to index books in library catalogs. With increasing digitisation, these were turned into databases. Not only books contain metadata, but basically everything we want to index or process by a computer.
Today metadata is deeply embedded in search-engine optimisation through expansion driven big tech companies that control digital platforms, data, and online markets. In that, (digital cataloging) metadata not only feeds into e-commerce but reinforces proprietary modes of knowledge production and circulation.
gitpub is only one part of the project proposal:
while in the first part I am writing scripts (programming) its relevant to look at the (social, technological) scripts we follow when writing. here is why...
We use software such as git or etherpad to collaborate on a text. In the development of such software, acts of collaboration are anticipated and inscribed into these tools - think of version control, merging, branching or comments (see _metadata_). Those features influence how we use tools and thereby prescribe processes of writing together. In that a software becomes a model that tries to solve human communication and interaction through computer engineering.
tools are built for efficiency, writing a tool or script is a process of making things work. This leaves little to no space for the actual work that people do when they write collaboratively. The actual work that is messy, full of variation and discussion (see articulation work).
I would not like to separate above processes but ask how a script (which which forms the technical basis of the tool) and collaborative writing work (that we today look at through specific scores) can inform each other?
prototypes
why
gitpub metadata is part of not only the process, means to an end of production, but integral part of the text / publication.
(why gitpub and why make metadata visible) The following points outline my motivation for making gitpub and what possibilities I see in making metadata visible.
the software as part of the writing the software as part of culture / community the writing exercises make apparent that there is a need for communication (additional text) alongside the shared process, this is where metadata comes in metadata as possible space for showing / navigating articulation work
how
- iterate on writing exercises in different contexts (possible further inquiries: look at distribution of roles, methods for personal reflection in the exercise process)
- further prototypes of the gitpub script (use for thesis writing / making)
- early gitpub testing with peers (xpub, varia) (february) to iterate on feedback
- implement minimal viable features to the script in a back and forth with writing exercises
- make gitpub self contained (e.g. python project)
- presentation (graduate show) and documentation