200 Points of Light - an incredible HyperCard Stack developed by Maya.
Found via an interesting post by Jer Thorpe here: creativeapplications.net
Who I actually remember speaking about HyperCard cicra 2010 at Flash on the Beach, saying it was the program that inspired him to get into computers and programming. Grant Skinner also mentioned HyperCard last year at Reasons to be Creative, showing examples of some early HyperCard games he'd made as a kid.
Anyhow, mild digressions aside, what I find so extraordinary about 200 Points is that it completely by-passes the linear, screen filling 'one card at a time' convention you so often see with HyperCard. Indeed working with HyperCard does tend to dictate this format I've discovered, which is a little difficult to get away from - a reason I find 200 Points so fascinating, not to mention the handy HyperTalk functionality for slicing and dicing database content - great! Described as a 'three dimensional interface paradigm', it reminds me very much of the kinds of ideas Ted Nelson cites in Dream Machines...
A summary of interesting points Jer makes in his post:
The game Myst started off as a HyperCard stack
The Beatles had an official 'A Hard Days Night' stack
XCMD's & XFCN's were a collection of external commands for HyperCard, a pre cursor to the modern plug-in
HyperCard could be connected to an ADBY box (developed by Beehive Technology) - the Arduino controller of its time
HyperCard is an intuitive tool that let the average computer user build their own tools - using a pre-built UI, drag-and-drop features and scripts written 'in English'
Some good points for development - in relation to my own research:
HyperCard fits well with Alan Kay's ideas for accessible OOP environments that are extendable and have stages of complexity
It is not a hypertext program per say, but rather a 'Software erector set' (bill Atkinson) and as such fits well with models of non linear thinking/ thought processing and Bricolage?
The existence of the ADBY box points to the existence of maker style communities gathered around HyperCard (added to those already in existence, which traded useful stacks) - points to communities of craft and worth further investigation.
To follow up:
Themes related to computational thinking/ subjectivity - Papert. S, 'Images of the Learning Society' in Mindstorms. Children, Computers and Powerful Ideas'
In Practice:
I have decided to focus more specifically on HyperCard and more advanced scripting in it. Squeak, is great but a bit too involved for this stage of my research, and therefore can wait til later...
With this in mind, a search of archive.org revealed this book by Danny Goodman - so far excellent, very thorough, with plenty on HyperTalk.
archive.org - the complete hyperCard handbook
Friday, 25 April 2014
Monday, 24 February 2014
Creating PCT images & Editing in HyperCard
I've been looking into converting current formats like .jpg into .PCT format to import into HyperCard to be manipulated or drawn onto and made into icons for buttons etc.
A bit of a meandering process that turned out to be much easier than I expected. Reading info on the web gave me the impression that converting file formats to or from .PCT would be difficult - turns out you can use GraphicConverter to do this in no time at all. I remember GraphicConverter from years ago (though not as 'front line' graphics software) - something I hadn't considered using. Whats nice is it happens to be another historic piece of software for me to look at. Anyway, some examples:
Using the paint tools in HyperCard takes a little getting used to, as they're similar to what you find in Photoshop these days but selections and layers (there are only two) work quite differently...This means you find yourself un-doing things a lot because you undertake tasks as you would in Photoshop only to find yourself in a cul-de-sac. There are also some extinct niceties to take advantage of in HypwerCard - the above used the 'lightening' and 'trace outline' commands on the PCT once it was pasted into HC.
Creating and editing icons isn't headlined in the 'getting started' info all that well. The above uses a 40x40px PCT as reference, edited with the Icon Editor - a pencil to go DOT DOT DOT with...
A bit of a meandering process that turned out to be much easier than I expected. Reading info on the web gave me the impression that converting file formats to or from .PCT would be difficult - turns out you can use GraphicConverter to do this in no time at all. I remember GraphicConverter from years ago (though not as 'front line' graphics software) - something I hadn't considered using. Whats nice is it happens to be another historic piece of software for me to look at. Anyway, some examples:
Using the paint tools in HyperCard takes a little getting used to, as they're similar to what you find in Photoshop these days but selections and layers (there are only two) work quite differently...This means you find yourself un-doing things a lot because you undertake tasks as you would in Photoshop only to find yourself in a cul-de-sac. There are also some extinct niceties to take advantage of in HypwerCard - the above used the 'lightening' and 'trace outline' commands on the PCT once it was pasted into HC.
Creating and editing icons isn't headlined in the 'getting started' info all that well. The above uses a 40x40px PCT as reference, edited with the Icon Editor - a pencil to go DOT DOT DOT with...
Tuesday, 11 February 2014
HyperCard - Automator
Have been looking into HyperCard (HC) - specifically finding about HyperTalk and how to program HC using it.
HyperTalk is very accessible. Some tutorials for writing functions etc. here: http://folkstream.com/muse/teachhc/index.html
Interesting thread emerging:
1. Scripts vs programming - syntax (write like you speak e.g ApplScript) and attaching scripts to graphical objects (as you would in HC and others).
2. Options for programming by typing, using a GUI or recording a script - HC enables you to write scripts directly, 'click and select' functions via a panel or record actions to script.
3. Wider functions and historical influences - HyperTalk's similarity to AppleScript (AS), the ability to interface with AS to control system functions and the development of AS from the time of HC to its current uses and related software e.g. Automator and AppleScript Editor.
The following came up whilst looking for downloadable HC Stacks...I found many sites dedicated to HC and featuring 'downloadable stacks', the majority of which are sadly not maintained anymore, so predominantly featured dead links/ 404's etc.
1. hypercard.org
2. stacksmith.org/index.htm
3. hammer-language.com
4. Automator - Apple Support
5. Mac Automation Made Simple (Podcast - iTunes)
Not sure about Hammer, needs looking at further I think, as it seems to be an attempt to faithfully revive HC. Most intriguing is the following quoted in the Hammer Mission Statement.
"And maybe — just maybe — a programming language with a text editor is the completely wrong approach, and this should be a learning 'action recorder' a la Automator meets AppleScript Recording."
Recording Scripts: I came across the Action Recorder in HC before seeing Hammer and did think it was a worthwhile feature (I've yet to try it out)
There are good current examples of this type of coding in Software environments (not necessarily action recorded but 'script-attach-object' type processes) - Unity being one. As well as some examples that have recently been consigned to history, such as Flash (AS 2) and Director... It seems to me on first glance that HC functionality and the 'things' it enabled users to do so well now exists within OSX as a combination of Automator and AppleScript Editor and so reviving HC faithfully is a bit of a (?). *Note question of making GUI type 'apps' currently still to be looked at - you could do this in HC and I have seen it done with a combination of AppeScript and realBASIC...mmm more thought and looking required.
A foot note to all of this: Apple are beginning to cut support for AppleScript functionality/ making API's available for certain apps (Pages & Numbers being two examples)...here we go again.
Ben Waldie states in the podcast listed below that the Apple reason for doing this is to focus providing a unified user experience across all Apple platforms for users and that giving them access to scripting/ API's to enhance functionality using AppleScript (mainly in OSX) is not a priority - a retrograde step IMHO. Seems OSX/ ios convergence is driving this scaling back, with ios framework dominating (link to podcast below - no. 60 in the list).
Mac Voices - Ben Waldie
Interesting thread emerging:
1. Scripts vs programming - syntax (write like you speak e.g ApplScript) and attaching scripts to graphical objects (as you would in HC and others).
2. Options for programming by typing, using a GUI or recording a script - HC enables you to write scripts directly, 'click and select' functions via a panel or record actions to script.
3. Wider functions and historical influences - HyperTalk's similarity to AppleScript (AS), the ability to interface with AS to control system functions and the development of AS from the time of HC to its current uses and related software e.g. Automator and AppleScript Editor.
 |
| AppleScript Reference: Statements |
 | |||||
| AppleScript Ref: Objects - as graphics & code - early OOO |
1. hypercard.org
2. stacksmith.org/index.htm
3. hammer-language.com
4. Automator - Apple Support
5. Mac Automation Made Simple (Podcast - iTunes)
Not sure about Hammer, needs looking at further I think, as it seems to be an attempt to faithfully revive HC. Most intriguing is the following quoted in the Hammer Mission Statement.
"And maybe — just maybe — a programming language with a text editor is the completely wrong approach, and this should be a learning 'action recorder' a la Automator meets AppleScript Recording."
Recording Scripts: I came across the Action Recorder in HC before seeing Hammer and did think it was a worthwhile feature (I've yet to try it out)
There are good current examples of this type of coding in Software environments (not necessarily action recorded but 'script-attach-object' type processes) - Unity being one. As well as some examples that have recently been consigned to history, such as Flash (AS 2) and Director... It seems to me on first glance that HC functionality and the 'things' it enabled users to do so well now exists within OSX as a combination of Automator and AppleScript Editor and so reviving HC faithfully is a bit of a (?). *Note question of making GUI type 'apps' currently still to be looked at - you could do this in HC and I have seen it done with a combination of AppeScript and realBASIC...mmm more thought and looking required.
A foot note to all of this: Apple are beginning to cut support for AppleScript functionality/ making API's available for certain apps (Pages & Numbers being two examples)...here we go again.
Ben Waldie states in the podcast listed below that the Apple reason for doing this is to focus providing a unified user experience across all Apple platforms for users and that giving them access to scripting/ API's to enhance functionality using AppleScript (mainly in OSX) is not a priority - a retrograde step IMHO. Seems OSX/ ios convergence is driving this scaling back, with ios framework dominating (link to podcast below - no. 60 in the list).
Mac Voices - Ben Waldie
Thursday, 1 August 2013
Manifesto for a Theory of the New Aesthetic - Cloninger, C (Mute 3 No.4)
Outline
The New Aethetic (NA) is not new - it has just reached a 'gee-whiz' level of (general) enthusiasm or tipping point. It is interesting though and should be pursued but with more critical and contextual rigour ('A theory') - concept such as, Latour (ANT), Heidegger (Present at Hand) and Deleuze are aligned. Key point: although computers function without us and are intrinsic in construction the NA it means nothing without 'us' i.e we 'suss' NA and are inextricably entangled within technology and therefore NA's construction - "Down with Pan-Psychism".
Headings
What is the New Aesthetic
A Process without a Singular 'Aesthetic' Intentionality
New Aesthetic Images are Affectively Sussed by Humans not by Things
Down with Pan-Psychism!
Up with Pan-Experietialism!
New Aesthetic Images: The Uncanny, the Present-at-Hand, the Sublime
Four Summaries, Three Quotations and a Closing Exhortation
Summary/Quotes
"If, according to Debord, ‘the spectacle is capital accumulated to such a degree that it becomes an image’, then the New Aesthetic is technology accumulated to such a degree that it becomes an image. The New Aesthetic (NA) image is a special kind of image – an image which is bodily, affectively sussable by humans. The NA image is not merely (or even) an image to be intellectually pondered by humans. You ‘get it’ before you understand it (if you ever even come to understand it)."
NA is not a single aesthetic - Drone tech, Google Maps, Generative Processing across various media/ algorithms produce their own visual aesthetics.
"The term ‘New Aesthetic’ is similar to the term ‘New Media’. When your descriptive adjective is as vague as ‘new’ (or ‘modern’ or ‘contemporary’), then all ontological constraints are off."
"Those less theoretically inclined might argue that since the New Aesthetic begins with an affectively intuited image, that's where it should end.."
"The New Aesthetic is not a new flavour of aesthetics. At best, and properly understood, it is a new way of understanding aesthetics altogether, one that renegotiates the relationship between human-subject and non-human-object. Perhaps we need a less historically-encrusted word for this ‘new’ relationship than ‘aesthetic’."
"The New Aesthetic is indifferent to mimesis. The NA image is not the re-presentation of an object. The NA image is the incidental visual residue of the performance or enactment of a process. The process never intentionally alters itself in order to achieve the ‘goal’ of the NA image. The NA image is a trace, a remnant, a remainder, a residue, a (potential) clue."
"NA images are not produced solely by randomness, nor are they produced in order to conform to a pre-conceived human aesthetic. NA images are produced by entangled nature/culture systems. Thus, human will is always partially involved in their production, but it is rarely an aesthetic will heading toward the production of NA images."
"To fetishise the NA image as a mere ‘aesthetic’ object is to conveniently ignore the ethical ways in which we are implicit in its production. To fetishistically credit ‘machines’ as the primary agents behind the production of NA images is to conveniently ignore the ethical ways in which we are implicit in their production."
NA images in stasis are kind of cool but are more interesting in what they reveal about the "historical forces that came together to produce it in 'stasis'" better still NA images reveal:
" how things are currently coming together in process; and how things may possibly come together in the near future [..] they are the actual traces and residues of processes and relationships"
"New Aesthetic images can teach us humans a New Aesthetic. But as we listen to this New Aesthetic, what we are hearing is neither the pure voice of nature nor the adulterated voice of machines. We are listening to systems in the world – a world that we are co-creating, a world of which we are always already a part (never apart)."
"Pan-psychism is the idea that all things in the world (rocks, animals, predator drones, weather systems, Hello Kitty lunchboxes) have consciousness. " don't fall for it, it's a trap "Just because we've finally come to recognise that things and systems have their own agency and are not merely passive and inert, this doesn't mean that things and systems have consciousness." As humans we are 'speciest' and it is not enough that we we seek elevate things to our level; we feel we must ourselves to thing level
"As a result, we humans are hubristically tempted to attribute the uncanniness of New Aesthetic images to the pan-psychic agency of AI technology. ‘Gee, these systems must be sentient (in a way that we humans are sentient), because we humans sure didn't invent these crazy new images.’ "
Up with Pan-existentialism - the idea that all things experience 'being' over time. Experience isn't always tethered to (conscious) thought:
"experience is the base of all being; consciousness is the apex of all being. So although rocks don't think like humans (indeed, rocks don't think at all), at some base level of being, humans and rocks both experience."(Alfred North-Whitehead)
"We need to understand things as vector forces enacting within networks, not as anthropomorphised objects. Yes, thing have agency, but their agency is altogether thingy. Emergent systems (a.k.a. things made up of things) exercise all sorts of funky agency: flocking behaviours, attraction to strange attractors, radical modulations at state-change thresholds. Yes, non-inert behaviours; but not sentient behaviours. A painter enters into a kind of pragmatic dialogue with the viscous and luminous behaviours of her paint. She need not speculate about its withdrawn essence."
New Aesthetic Images: The Uncanny, the Present-at-Hand, the Sublime - NB:"Aesthetics are related to both experience and consciousness. Aesthetics are born in experience and arrive at consciousness. No consciousness at which to arrive, no aesthetics. So when we talk about aesthetics, we're mostly talking about humans."
1. For Freud NA images are 'uncanny'. NA images are not totally familiar to us (family photos) or totally alien (white noise) instead they fall within the Uncanny Valley - something non-human that is almost human enough to seem human.
2. Harman ref Heidegger's 'Presence-at-hand' NA is an eruption of the thing out of its normal function in the world (readiness-to-hand).
"New Aesthetic visuals don't necessarily ‘reveal’ a hidden ‘truth’. It's not as if readiness-to-hand is false and presence-at-hand is true, or vice versa. They are just two simultaneous ways of being in the world. (Heidegger's genius – his ‘sleight of hand’ – was to draw our attention to readiness-to-hand without turning it into presence-at-hand.)"
3. Latour - our systems have proliferated & hybridised beyond our range of knowledge and sight to strange and complex degrees - NA images "strike at the heart of the modernist myth that man is master and measure of all things"
"NA images are neither human ‘art’ nor non-human ‘nature’. They were not created to address a static conception of human nature, nor to dialectically overcome preconceived contradictory drives within human nature. Neither were they created by extra-human forces in order to provide human ‘subjects’ with ‘natural’ objects for aesthetic contemplation. Instead, NA images are residues that result from current ways of being in the world, entangled ways in which humans are ‘always already’ implicated. At their best, NA images challenge humans to re-imagine ‘humanness’ ‘being’ and ‘the world’ altogether."
Four Summaries, Three Quotations and a Closing Exhortation - "Indeed, according to Heidegger, things in relationship with other things make up ‘the world’. No things; no ‘world’. Things don’t consciously ‘know stuff’ about the world, but... things behave in ways derived from their history in the world and from their current entanglements with the world. Things are caught up in the world (of other things), and the world is caught up in things."
"‘What might things make of the New Aesthetic?’ is not a very useful question. ‘What might humans make of the New Aesthetic once we realise that we have been entangled with things all along?’ is a more useful question." - opens out onto Latour
"Probably, we should spend some time figuring out how these systems flow and function so we can more effectively modulate them (or sabotage them), hopefully for reasons other than making more money."
"All of this stuff is cool. Does it mean that objects have souls, psyches, withdrawn essences, or intelligences? No. Does it mean that humans are merely one thing among many things, no more or less endowed with agency? No."
"It does mean that humans are recursively entangled with things and forces in increasingly problematic ways (Bruno Latour told us this in 1991.) Furthermore, it means that humans affectively experience all sorts of things in the world prior to (and often without ever) cognitively becoming aware of these experiences; it means that things also affectively ‘experience’ forces in the world; and it means that systems, ideas, networks, entanglements, forces, events, technologies, animals, humans and objects are all ‘things’ in ‘the world’. (Whitehead told us this in 1927. His word for ‘things’ is ‘entities.’) The fact that a bunch of people are currently talking about all this stuff online simply means that our technology has accumulated to such a degree that it has become an image"
Thoughts:
Agree strongly with views relating to experience of NA by non-humans - OOO is difficult to envisage. My view tends more towards the author and Latour - Objects are filled with people (even if they have evolved beyond our knowledge & sight).
Interesting contextual relations relating to Heidegger and Latour - similarities between 'exhaust gas'/ traces of computational process (and their entanglement with humans) and Latours 'chains of association'/ proliferation of hybrids etc. As well as the eruption of the thing and Heidegger etc.
Pan-existentialism is worth pursuing as well as phenomenological aspects of aesthetics.
Cloninger Q's worth developing:
The NA image reveals how things are currently coming together in process - and how things might possibly come together in the near future (define and try to envision?) try to map these 'processes?'
Explore themes relating to the things own agency (non-psychic!)? Thinking here of generative / data objects. Could relate to ideas raised by Berry relating to types of code?
Experience of aesthetics (not consciously thought) is interesting - relates to some developments in (critical) design practice and "Technology as Experience' text by Wright & McCarthy.
Could be interesting to investigate (different) 'algorithmic aesthetics' not as images but as code.
Investigate links between NA and Process Art - as art retro-engineered and incorporating computation.
These residues/ vectors can be traced back / investigated as an archeology - data as vapour trail
www.metamute.org/editorial/articles/manifesto-theory-%E2%80%98new-aesthetic%E2%80%99
The New Aethetic (NA) is not new - it has just reached a 'gee-whiz' level of (general) enthusiasm or tipping point. It is interesting though and should be pursued but with more critical and contextual rigour ('A theory') - concept such as, Latour (ANT), Heidegger (Present at Hand) and Deleuze are aligned. Key point: although computers function without us and are intrinsic in construction the NA it means nothing without 'us' i.e we 'suss' NA and are inextricably entangled within technology and therefore NA's construction - "Down with Pan-Psychism".
Headings
What is the New Aesthetic
A Process without a Singular 'Aesthetic' Intentionality
New Aesthetic Images are Affectively Sussed by Humans not by Things
Down with Pan-Psychism!
Up with Pan-Experietialism!
New Aesthetic Images: The Uncanny, the Present-at-Hand, the Sublime
Four Summaries, Three Quotations and a Closing Exhortation
Summary/Quotes
"If, according to Debord, ‘the spectacle is capital accumulated to such a degree that it becomes an image’, then the New Aesthetic is technology accumulated to such a degree that it becomes an image. The New Aesthetic (NA) image is a special kind of image – an image which is bodily, affectively sussable by humans. The NA image is not merely (or even) an image to be intellectually pondered by humans. You ‘get it’ before you understand it (if you ever even come to understand it)."
NA is not a single aesthetic - Drone tech, Google Maps, Generative Processing across various media/ algorithms produce their own visual aesthetics.
"The term ‘New Aesthetic’ is similar to the term ‘New Media’. When your descriptive adjective is as vague as ‘new’ (or ‘modern’ or ‘contemporary’), then all ontological constraints are off."
"Those less theoretically inclined might argue that since the New Aesthetic begins with an affectively intuited image, that's where it should end.."
"The New Aesthetic is not a new flavour of aesthetics. At best, and properly understood, it is a new way of understanding aesthetics altogether, one that renegotiates the relationship between human-subject and non-human-object. Perhaps we need a less historically-encrusted word for this ‘new’ relationship than ‘aesthetic’."
"The New Aesthetic is indifferent to mimesis. The NA image is not the re-presentation of an object. The NA image is the incidental visual residue of the performance or enactment of a process. The process never intentionally alters itself in order to achieve the ‘goal’ of the NA image. The NA image is a trace, a remnant, a remainder, a residue, a (potential) clue."
"NA images are not produced solely by randomness, nor are they produced in order to conform to a pre-conceived human aesthetic. NA images are produced by entangled nature/culture systems. Thus, human will is always partially involved in their production, but it is rarely an aesthetic will heading toward the production of NA images."
"To fetishise the NA image as a mere ‘aesthetic’ object is to conveniently ignore the ethical ways in which we are implicit in its production. To fetishistically credit ‘machines’ as the primary agents behind the production of NA images is to conveniently ignore the ethical ways in which we are implicit in their production."
NA images in stasis are kind of cool but are more interesting in what they reveal about the "historical forces that came together to produce it in 'stasis'" better still NA images reveal:
" how things are currently coming together in process; and how things may possibly come together in the near future [..] they are the actual traces and residues of processes and relationships"
"New Aesthetic images can teach us humans a New Aesthetic. But as we listen to this New Aesthetic, what we are hearing is neither the pure voice of nature nor the adulterated voice of machines. We are listening to systems in the world – a world that we are co-creating, a world of which we are always already a part (never apart)."
"Pan-psychism is the idea that all things in the world (rocks, animals, predator drones, weather systems, Hello Kitty lunchboxes) have consciousness. " don't fall for it, it's a trap "Just because we've finally come to recognise that things and systems have their own agency and are not merely passive and inert, this doesn't mean that things and systems have consciousness." As humans we are 'speciest' and it is not enough that we we seek elevate things to our level; we feel we must ourselves to thing level
"As a result, we humans are hubristically tempted to attribute the uncanniness of New Aesthetic images to the pan-psychic agency of AI technology. ‘Gee, these systems must be sentient (in a way that we humans are sentient), because we humans sure didn't invent these crazy new images.’ "
Up with Pan-existentialism - the idea that all things experience 'being' over time. Experience isn't always tethered to (conscious) thought:
"experience is the base of all being; consciousness is the apex of all being. So although rocks don't think like humans (indeed, rocks don't think at all), at some base level of being, humans and rocks both experience."(Alfred North-Whitehead)
"We need to understand things as vector forces enacting within networks, not as anthropomorphised objects. Yes, thing have agency, but their agency is altogether thingy. Emergent systems (a.k.a. things made up of things) exercise all sorts of funky agency: flocking behaviours, attraction to strange attractors, radical modulations at state-change thresholds. Yes, non-inert behaviours; but not sentient behaviours. A painter enters into a kind of pragmatic dialogue with the viscous and luminous behaviours of her paint. She need not speculate about its withdrawn essence."
New Aesthetic Images: The Uncanny, the Present-at-Hand, the Sublime - NB:"Aesthetics are related to both experience and consciousness. Aesthetics are born in experience and arrive at consciousness. No consciousness at which to arrive, no aesthetics. So when we talk about aesthetics, we're mostly talking about humans."
1. For Freud NA images are 'uncanny'. NA images are not totally familiar to us (family photos) or totally alien (white noise) instead they fall within the Uncanny Valley - something non-human that is almost human enough to seem human.
2. Harman ref Heidegger's 'Presence-at-hand' NA is an eruption of the thing out of its normal function in the world (readiness-to-hand).
"New Aesthetic visuals don't necessarily ‘reveal’ a hidden ‘truth’. It's not as if readiness-to-hand is false and presence-at-hand is true, or vice versa. They are just two simultaneous ways of being in the world. (Heidegger's genius – his ‘sleight of hand’ – was to draw our attention to readiness-to-hand without turning it into presence-at-hand.)"
3. Latour - our systems have proliferated & hybridised beyond our range of knowledge and sight to strange and complex degrees - NA images "strike at the heart of the modernist myth that man is master and measure of all things"
"NA images are neither human ‘art’ nor non-human ‘nature’. They were not created to address a static conception of human nature, nor to dialectically overcome preconceived contradictory drives within human nature. Neither were they created by extra-human forces in order to provide human ‘subjects’ with ‘natural’ objects for aesthetic contemplation. Instead, NA images are residues that result from current ways of being in the world, entangled ways in which humans are ‘always already’ implicated. At their best, NA images challenge humans to re-imagine ‘humanness’ ‘being’ and ‘the world’ altogether."
Four Summaries, Three Quotations and a Closing Exhortation - "Indeed, according to Heidegger, things in relationship with other things make up ‘the world’. No things; no ‘world’. Things don’t consciously ‘know stuff’ about the world, but... things behave in ways derived from their history in the world and from their current entanglements with the world. Things are caught up in the world (of other things), and the world is caught up in things."
"‘What might things make of the New Aesthetic?’ is not a very useful question. ‘What might humans make of the New Aesthetic once we realise that we have been entangled with things all along?’ is a more useful question." - opens out onto Latour
"Probably, we should spend some time figuring out how these systems flow and function so we can more effectively modulate them (or sabotage them), hopefully for reasons other than making more money."
"All of this stuff is cool. Does it mean that objects have souls, psyches, withdrawn essences, or intelligences? No. Does it mean that humans are merely one thing among many things, no more or less endowed with agency? No."
"It does mean that humans are recursively entangled with things and forces in increasingly problematic ways (Bruno Latour told us this in 1991.) Furthermore, it means that humans affectively experience all sorts of things in the world prior to (and often without ever) cognitively becoming aware of these experiences; it means that things also affectively ‘experience’ forces in the world; and it means that systems, ideas, networks, entanglements, forces, events, technologies, animals, humans and objects are all ‘things’ in ‘the world’. (Whitehead told us this in 1927. His word for ‘things’ is ‘entities.’) The fact that a bunch of people are currently talking about all this stuff online simply means that our technology has accumulated to such a degree that it has become an image"
Thoughts:
Agree strongly with views relating to experience of NA by non-humans - OOO is difficult to envisage. My view tends more towards the author and Latour - Objects are filled with people (even if they have evolved beyond our knowledge & sight).
Interesting contextual relations relating to Heidegger and Latour - similarities between 'exhaust gas'/ traces of computational process (and their entanglement with humans) and Latours 'chains of association'/ proliferation of hybrids etc. As well as the eruption of the thing and Heidegger etc.
Pan-existentialism is worth pursuing as well as phenomenological aspects of aesthetics.
Cloninger Q's worth developing:
The NA image reveals how things are currently coming together in process - and how things might possibly come together in the near future (define and try to envision?) try to map these 'processes?'
Explore themes relating to the things own agency (non-psychic!)? Thinking here of generative / data objects. Could relate to ideas raised by Berry relating to types of code?
Experience of aesthetics (not consciously thought) is interesting - relates to some developments in (critical) design practice and "Technology as Experience' text by Wright & McCarthy.
Could be interesting to investigate (different) 'algorithmic aesthetics' not as images but as code.
Investigate links between NA and Process Art - as art retro-engineered and incorporating computation.
These residues/ vectors can be traced back / investigated as an archeology - data as vapour trail
www.metamute.org/editorial/articles/manifesto-theory-%E2%80%98new-aesthetic%E2%80%99
Tuesday, 23 July 2013
The New Aesthetic Needs to get Weirder (Bogost. I). Notes
Outline
(All quotes by Bogost unless otherwise stated):
The 'aims' of the New Aesthetic (NA) need to be more focused/ rigorous; "A heap of eye-catching curiosities don't constitute a world view" (Stirling). The NA should be about more than the idea of 'seeing like devices' and factoring our relationship with computers into this imagery. NA could consider the ontology of objects in themselves i.e aesthetics as non human centered. Bogost introduces Object-orientated Ontology (OOO) concepts and strategy to develop the NA theme.
Headings
Look beyond humans and computers
Take the experience of objects seriously
Make collecting an aesthetic strategy
Make things for understanding things, not just for human use.
Summary/ Quotes
NA does not have individual effects but aggregated ones.
Greg Borenstein: "I believe that the New Aesthetic is actually striving towards a fundamentally new way of imagining the relations between things in the world". This is only part right at present according to Bogost as its human centered
On things & OOO in relation to the NA Bogost writes:
"If ontology is the philosophical study of existence, then Object-orientated ontology puts things at the center of being. We humans are elements but the sole elements of philosophical interest. OOO contends that nothing has special status but everything exists equally[..] OOO steers a path between scientific naturalism and social relativism, drawing attention to things at all scales and pondering their nature and relations with one another as much as ourselves."
Central question - what is it like to be a thing? Philosophical problem: even when we refer to otherness (things that are alien to us) 'alien is assumed to be a human-legible intersubjectivity.
"[..]the true alien might be unrecognizable; it might not have an intelligence akin to our intelligence, or even one we could recognize as intelligence. Rather than wondering if alien beings exist in the cosmos, let's assume that they are all around us, everywhere, at all scales. Everything is an alien to everything else. It is ultimately impossible for one thing to understand the experience of another, but we can speculate about the withdrawn, inner experience of things based on a combination of evidence--the exhaust they leave behind--and poetics--the speculative work we do to characterize that experience."
Look beyond humans and computers - the NA is exclusively interested in computers on the one hand and humans on the other.
It "revels in seeing the grain of computation," (Berry, D) the exhaust of computer activity that courses through the non-computational world. Some of these examples are created by humans and others are not (satellite imagery).
Computers are important but they are just one thing among many - airports, kolas, toaster pastries etc.
Take the experience of objects seriously - The NA is still primarily interested in human experience i.e the New Aesthetics are human aesthetics. Computers are never our friends (Stirling) - we will never understand them on their own terms (clarification by Bogost).
"Being withdraws from access. There is always something left in reserve, in a thing. The best we can do as humans is to respect the hidden mystery of the experience of things, and speculate metaphorically about how an object like a computer or a pound cake encounters the world."
Make collecting an aesthetic strategy - "The New Aesthetic embraces an unusual creative technique: aggregation. It rejects the demands of the manifesto in favor of the indiscriminateness of the collection.[..]
Merely collecting things isn't aesthetics, its just avarice."
Consider; compendium as opposed to aggregate: "A list of things is most useful when it is large enough to show diversity and juxtaposition, but small enough to provide coherence: a tiny bestiary, not an infinite zoo."
Bogost suggests term 'ontography' - an aesthetics set theory, which can take the form of lists, photographs, collections, even Tumblrs.
Make things for understanding things, not just for human use - Most example NA showcases are made intentionally/ New Aestheticians are most interested in the way computational objects impact our lived experience.
"They want to know what CCTV means for social networks, what book scanning means for iOS apps, and what face detection means for fashion." (Borenstein) In short CCTV for social networks for people.
Bogost - a way to challenge this stance for NA is to pay attention to the secret lives of things and resist the temptation to conclude that they exist for our benefit even if we ourselves created them.
Note: NA's arbitrary focus on computational systems is to blame.
The experience of other entities is beyond our grasp yet is:
"available to speculation thanks to evidence that emanates from their withdrawn cores like radiation around the event horizon of a black hole. The aesthetics of other beings remain likewise inaccessible to knowledge, but not to speculation--even to art"
Cited 'Tableau machine'
Concluding quote:
"Is such a question even answerable? If so, this Alien Aesthetics would not try to satisfy our human drive for art and design, but to fashion design fictions that speculate about the aesthetic judgments of objects."
Thoughts:
Borgost questions whether 'digital' & 'physical' are logical spheres for inquiry or whether they repeat the nature/ culture divide. This is interesting as it bears similarities with Latours Actors and networks + chains of association - does OOO trace one half of Latours theory to their terminal conclusion?
Agency is not mentioned - why? Computer objectsmaybe connected and communicating but is this overly meaningful without some sense of agency?
'Computers as arbitrary in NA' - I don't think they are, the examination of the outcomes is just not focused enough. Agreed that there s a tendency to relate to 'human aesthetics' but 'object aesthetics' is difficult to apply properly. Computers are objects and may be arbitrary but code is not - material nature and instantiations are interesting.
Questions of how and where aesthetic 'judgement' takes place could be interestingly developed (experiential corporeal or a combination) - opens out onto phenomenology and Heidegger? OR aesthetics vs phenomenology
Original Article: www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2012/04/the-new-aesthetic-needs-to-get-weirder/255838
Article as PDF: Bogost-Ian-The-New-Aesthetic-Needs-to-Get-Weirder-The-Atlantic
(All quotes by Bogost unless otherwise stated):
The 'aims' of the New Aesthetic (NA) need to be more focused/ rigorous; "A heap of eye-catching curiosities don't constitute a world view" (Stirling). The NA should be about more than the idea of 'seeing like devices' and factoring our relationship with computers into this imagery. NA could consider the ontology of objects in themselves i.e aesthetics as non human centered. Bogost introduces Object-orientated Ontology (OOO) concepts and strategy to develop the NA theme.
Headings
Look beyond humans and computers
Take the experience of objects seriously
Make collecting an aesthetic strategy
Make things for understanding things, not just for human use.
Summary/ Quotes
NA does not have individual effects but aggregated ones.
Greg Borenstein: "I believe that the New Aesthetic is actually striving towards a fundamentally new way of imagining the relations between things in the world". This is only part right at present according to Bogost as its human centered
On things & OOO in relation to the NA Bogost writes:
"If ontology is the philosophical study of existence, then Object-orientated ontology puts things at the center of being. We humans are elements but the sole elements of philosophical interest. OOO contends that nothing has special status but everything exists equally[..] OOO steers a path between scientific naturalism and social relativism, drawing attention to things at all scales and pondering their nature and relations with one another as much as ourselves."
Central question - what is it like to be a thing? Philosophical problem: even when we refer to otherness (things that are alien to us) 'alien is assumed to be a human-legible intersubjectivity.
"[..]the true alien might be unrecognizable; it might not have an intelligence akin to our intelligence, or even one we could recognize as intelligence. Rather than wondering if alien beings exist in the cosmos, let's assume that they are all around us, everywhere, at all scales. Everything is an alien to everything else. It is ultimately impossible for one thing to understand the experience of another, but we can speculate about the withdrawn, inner experience of things based on a combination of evidence--the exhaust they leave behind--and poetics--the speculative work we do to characterize that experience."
Look beyond humans and computers - the NA is exclusively interested in computers on the one hand and humans on the other.
It "revels in seeing the grain of computation," (Berry, D) the exhaust of computer activity that courses through the non-computational world. Some of these examples are created by humans and others are not (satellite imagery).
Computers are important but they are just one thing among many - airports, kolas, toaster pastries etc.
Take the experience of objects seriously - The NA is still primarily interested in human experience i.e the New Aesthetics are human aesthetics. Computers are never our friends (Stirling) - we will never understand them on their own terms (clarification by Bogost).
"Being withdraws from access. There is always something left in reserve, in a thing. The best we can do as humans is to respect the hidden mystery of the experience of things, and speculate metaphorically about how an object like a computer or a pound cake encounters the world."
Make collecting an aesthetic strategy - "The New Aesthetic embraces an unusual creative technique: aggregation. It rejects the demands of the manifesto in favor of the indiscriminateness of the collection.[..]
Merely collecting things isn't aesthetics, its just avarice."
Consider; compendium as opposed to aggregate: "A list of things is most useful when it is large enough to show diversity and juxtaposition, but small enough to provide coherence: a tiny bestiary, not an infinite zoo."
Bogost suggests term 'ontography' - an aesthetics set theory, which can take the form of lists, photographs, collections, even Tumblrs.
Make things for understanding things, not just for human use - Most example NA showcases are made intentionally/ New Aestheticians are most interested in the way computational objects impact our lived experience.
"They want to know what CCTV means for social networks, what book scanning means for iOS apps, and what face detection means for fashion." (Borenstein) In short CCTV for social networks for people.
Bogost - a way to challenge this stance for NA is to pay attention to the secret lives of things and resist the temptation to conclude that they exist for our benefit even if we ourselves created them.
Note: NA's arbitrary focus on computational systems is to blame.
The experience of other entities is beyond our grasp yet is:
"available to speculation thanks to evidence that emanates from their withdrawn cores like radiation around the event horizon of a black hole. The aesthetics of other beings remain likewise inaccessible to knowledge, but not to speculation--even to art"
Cited 'Tableau machine'
Concluding quote:
"Is such a question even answerable? If so, this Alien Aesthetics would not try to satisfy our human drive for art and design, but to fashion design fictions that speculate about the aesthetic judgments of objects."
Thoughts:
Borgost questions whether 'digital' & 'physical' are logical spheres for inquiry or whether they repeat the nature/ culture divide. This is interesting as it bears similarities with Latours Actors and networks + chains of association - does OOO trace one half of Latours theory to their terminal conclusion?
Agency is not mentioned - why? Computer objectsmaybe connected and communicating but is this overly meaningful without some sense of agency?
'Computers as arbitrary in NA' - I don't think they are, the examination of the outcomes is just not focused enough. Agreed that there s a tendency to relate to 'human aesthetics' but 'object aesthetics' is difficult to apply properly. Computers are objects and may be arbitrary but code is not - material nature and instantiations are interesting.
Questions of how and where aesthetic 'judgement' takes place could be interestingly developed (experiential corporeal or a combination) - opens out onto phenomenology and Heidegger? OR aesthetics vs phenomenology
Original Article: www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2012/04/the-new-aesthetic-needs-to-get-weirder/255838
Article as PDF: Bogost-Ian-The-New-Aesthetic-Needs-to-Get-Weirder-The-Atlantic
Thursday, 21 March 2013
Collected - to develop #2
More - a collection of software and code related things.
Software environments
Blocky by Google
ModKit
Scratch
Learn Scratch
Live Code by runrev
ifttt
Lego Mindstormers
Video about Hypercard archive.org video
Hypercard.org Great Hypercard resource inc. additional stacks
Code - how to, resources and other
Code Academy
Golan Courses - on github
Python.org wiki
Paul Dourish Goodies - see Manifesto for Futurist Programmers & the Original Jargon file
Learnable Programming - Bret Victor
Worrydream.com - Bret Victor
Inventing on Principle (video) Bret Victor
Software environments
Blocky by Google
ModKit
Scratch
Learn Scratch
Live Code by runrev
ifttt
Lego Mindstormers
Video about Hypercard archive.org video
Hypercard.org Great Hypercard resource inc. additional stacks
Code - how to, resources and other
Code Academy
Golan Courses - on github
Python.org wiki
Paul Dourish Goodies - see Manifesto for Futurist Programmers & the Original Jargon file
Learnable Programming - Bret Victor
Worrydream.com - Bret Victor
Inventing on Principle (video) Bret Victor
Collected - to develop #1
Just a few things I've traversed in the last day or two (in no particular order). It's been fun following links and threads and I'm hoping to spend more time reading, thinking and doing in relation to them..
Banff Centre
Euphoria and Dystopia by Cook and Graham (Banff Pub.)
runme.org
readme100 book
Computer Lib/ Dream Machines by Ted Nelson
Computer Lib book sample
Project Xanadu by Ted Nelson
Project Xanadu - Wikipedia
Whole Earth Catalogue - Wikipedia by Stewart Brand
Simon Penny Website - Thanks Ian!
Posthumanist Performativity: Toward an Understanding of
How Matter Comes to Matter by Karen Barad
Hype Cycles
Perl, the first post modern computer language by Larry Wall
Larry Wall about page
NewMediaReader Chapters
NewMediaReader site + extras
technological debris conference
Banff Centre
Euphoria and Dystopia by Cook and Graham (Banff Pub.)
runme.org
readme100 book
Computer Lib/ Dream Machines by Ted Nelson
Computer Lib book sample
Project Xanadu by Ted Nelson
Project Xanadu - Wikipedia
Whole Earth Catalogue - Wikipedia by Stewart Brand
Simon Penny Website - Thanks Ian!
Posthumanist Performativity: Toward an Understanding of
How Matter Comes to Matter by Karen Barad
Hype Cycles
Perl, the first post modern computer language by Larry Wall
Larry Wall about page
NewMediaReader Chapters
NewMediaReader site + extras
technological debris conference
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