Seth Keen

‘Ass backwards’ is quoted from a lecture given by Professor Stuart Moulthrop here in Melbourne recently. (Public Lecture 10th October, 2011, State Library of Victoria) Abstract from the lecture publicity:

Make a Better Door: Or, How Does Digital Humanism Humanize? An interesting image for 2011. A player/character in the most recent Portal game is literally locked out of her workplace and replaced by a pair of robots. From this resonant image of the human-computer interface a discussion will emerge to do with broader understandings of the digital humanities, media scholarship, and electronic literature. The focus for this approach will be the question famously posed by Richard Lanham’s: “how do the humanities humanize?”

‘Ass backward’ referred to a Lip Dub video Shoreward Lip Dub – YouTube as part of a discussion around reverse engineering in reference to open source and Richard Stallman. In this video clip the singer is recorded lip synching in reverse which is then played forwards. An interesting point with this video clip is the idea that the use of technology is reduced to the use of choreography and non-professional video. No post-production in this work. This idea interested me in relation to online video aesthetics. Using performance as the major part of an online video work. The connection between performing in reverse and reverse engineering needs more exploration on my part.

But, I like the idea of analysing an artifact in practice-based research using a reverse engineering approach. From wikipedia:

Reverse engineering is the process of discovering the technological principles of a device, object, or system through analysis of its structure, function, and operation. It often involves taking something (e.g., a mechanical device, electronic component, software program, or biological, chemical, or organic matter) apart and analyzing its workings in detail to be used in maintenance, or to try to make a new device or program that does the same thing without using or simply duplicating (without understanding) the original.

Quotes:

“Steve Jobs invented the user’ – reference to quote by Belinda Barnet
“Anxious elites” – referring to academics, scholars
“Inverse videographers”
“Information resists information”
Circular reasoning – “Consumer driven reverse engineering”
Network driven research – Google driven writing (I had a thought this could be wikipedia driven writing)

Terms:
Nodal Screen – Darren Toft’s introduction
Electric Literature Pioneer – reference to Stuart Moulthrop
Gibson Phrase ‘the colour of television…’ – The sky above the port was the color of television, tuned to a dead channel.

References:
Laws of Cool: Knowledge Work and the Culture of Information, Alan Liu
Portal 2 - video game
Reverse engineering - Richard Stallman, Open Source
Douglas Hofstadter writing (I made a connection here with the idea of connecting sci-fi fiction with theoretical writing like Steven Shaviro, Connected for example)
THE ANALOG EXPERIENCE OF DIGITAL CULTURE, Stuart Moulthrop (pdf), article

Fibreculture journal Issue 18 has been published. There is a few things to look at in this issue including Fenwick McKelvey’s ‘A Programmable Platform? Drupal, Modularity, and the Future of the Web’. Journal abstract:

It is now perhaps a commonplace that digital, networked and informational media are extremely transient. They diversify in form and function at a dizzying rate. At the same time, they transit and fuse “social” and “natural” differences in a manner which reconfigures all the worlds involved. It is also perhaps a commonplace to suggest that some established powers have found it difficult to come to grips with this (although this is perhaps beginning to change). For many, from seriously challenged newspaper proprietors to established media disciplines, it might be time to pause for breath, if only for a moment—to regroup and adapt established practices and ideas, to count the survivors from among the old media worlds of just a few years ago.

Just caught up on few more tips on endnote:

edit – paste special changes a pasted font into the font of the reference a new reference

Amalgamating documents with separate bibliographies:

1. Have one endnote library for all
2. make a back up copy of the documents
3. open all the ones to be brought together
4. unformat from the toolbar all the documents (make sure the cursor in is on a neutral space so that all the references are unformatted)
5. cut n paste the chapters chronologically into a master document
5a. Format bibliography on master doc in toolbar
6. Checks for double references in library (these can be removed in the body of text using reference ‘record no’ added to the library interface) preferences > display field > record no (you trace each individually if needed…

pdf with more detail

Submitting

A bibliography/style can be edited (customised) i.e. edit > output styles > bibliography > author lists
(a customised version is changed to a copy of the original and needs to be selected as the new style)

note: check evernote on iphone

I was browsing through the Sydney Biennale 2008 catalogue (p.110) and was intrigued by Jaques Lacan’s notion of the ‘le petit objet‘ which on the surface got me thinking about the idea in terms of my own research, that the representation of reality can be revealed through what is not there, what is absent.

Dora Garcia

Rene Magritte, L’Homme du journal

I am in the process of drafting my exegesis at the moment (in the quiet time that is the beginning of the year) The introduction is drafted and now I am moving onto summarising the research methods, which is useful as this will set up a clearer framework for reflecting on the projects. At the moment aspects of action research seem to be where things fit into place, looking back at the process retrospectively. I started with AM‘s summary on the Labsome wiki. This led to an excellent article titled ‘Understanding Action Research’. In this article there are a number of valuable points like:

The best question is the one that will lead you to look at your practice deeply and engage in cycles of continuous learning from your everyday practice of your craft. These questions come from a desire to have practice align with values and beliefs. Exploring these questions helps the researcher to be progressively more effective in reaching their personal goals and developing professional expertise.

Also, these notes for the reader in the introduction are useful:

The reader needs to be invited to think about the problem at the widest level. This should answer the question –Why should a read this, why should I care about this study? This is not about the context but about the problem and how it is linked to your visions for a different future.

In terms of evaluation and reflection there are these pointers:

EVALUATION: How will you/did you evaluate the outcomes of your action?…..(Indicate your plans for your analysis in a paragraph or two).

REFLECTION: Looking back on my action with the benefit of data, I now think… and if I were to do this again I would have…. The thing that worked best was… What most surprised me from the data was…

With a overarching reflection as part of extended and detailed overview:

FINAL REFLECTION: This is where the action research really takes stock of what was learned. It might be helpful to think of a reflection as a set of connections between the past, present and future. If this section is only a summary of what was happened, it will fail as a reflection. A reflection provides a deep understanding of why things happened as they did and how those outcomes help you address your overarching question. At the end of writing a good reflection, you will know more than you did when you started it. If you haven’t gained some new insights about the problem and your actions to solve it, it is likely that you are only summarizing what happened. Reflection is a powerful learning experience. It is an essential part of action research.

The point about knowing more than when you started is important!

Another part of this evaluation is revisiting notes on the UTS Creativity and Cognition website and the section on Practice Based Research (PBR) which have been updated since my last visit including the PBR bibliography which has action research links.

There is also some useful notes on reflection in varying places. In the Questions and Answers section notes from Ross Gibson:

Ross Gibson’s view is ‘the text is not an explanation of the artwork; rather, the text is an explicit, word-specific representation of processes that occur during the iterative art-making routine, processes of gradual, cyclical speculation, realisation or revelation leading to momentary, contingent degrees of understanding. To this extent the text that one produces is a kind of narrative about the flux of perception-cognition-intuition. The text accounts for the iterative process that carries on until the artist decrees that the artwork is complete and available for critique, ‘appreciation’, interpretation, description, evaluation. All these particular practices can entail other particular texts.’

I like the “narrative” angle here. In this FAQ a number of question are posed as part of the reflective process:

Good questions to ask yourself are

I learnt about the The ADA Digital Arts Network from Janine Randerson from the master class run at Melbourne University by Geert Lovink. Janine’s video work on engage media. About ADA:

Aotearoa Digital Arts is New Zealand/Aotearoa’s only digital artists’ network, The list was launched in 2003 by Stella Brennan and Sean Cubitt during Brennan’s stint as inaugural Digital Artist in Residence at Waikato University’s Screen and Media Department. ADA was born of the observation that although new media artists were often highly networked in terms of both their own practice and their professional relationships, there was no national organization drawing together those with a common interest in digital art. This recognition suggested the irreversible importance of place against the frictionless communication enabled, in theory, by network technologies.

AM sent a link to some Select Bibliography for Practice as Research in Performance (last updated 23 March 2005) PARIP Practice as Research in Performance, University of Bristol. The peformance angle also appeared recently in this other UK call for essay posted earlier emphermal online video.

And the local, The Speculation and Innovation (SPIN) conference was held in April 2005 and hosted by the Creative Industries Faculty, Queensland University of Technology. – abstracts
Themes: 1. Embedded knowledge 2. Knowledge impact 3. Knowledge relationships

Including the section details on Embedded Knowledge:

Discusses knowledge generation such as new discoveries; knowledge manifestation as exemplified by various types of outputs (exhibitions, performance, etc), embodied knowledge and the nature and authority of the knowledge claims that are inextricably linked to practice-based research.

Nate just sent me Lev’s latest book Software Takes Command which you can downoad as pdf or doc. It is licensed under CC and the book takes on some of the characteristics of software (from the opening page):

One of the advantages of online distribution which I can control is that I don’t have to permanently fix the book’s contents. Like contemporary software and web services, the book can change as often as I like, with new “features” and “big fixes” added periodically. I plan to take advantage of these possibilities. From time to time, I will be adding new material and making changes and corrections to the text.

So, like an rss feed I will need to go back for updates.

From the Resource Center for Cyberculture Studies and the book review section where authors reply to reviews.

Wired Shut: Copyright and the Shape of Digital Culture
Author: Tarleton Gillespie
Publisher: Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 2007

From a recent Leonardo Books review, October 2008.

Two Bits: The Cultural Significance of Free Software
by Christopher M. Kelty
Duke University Press, Durham and London, USA/UK, 2008
ISBN 0-8223-0-8223; ISBN: 0-8223-0-8223.

Sean sent across the new book by David Weinberger, Everything is Miscellaneous: The Power of the Digital Disorder. The summary from Amazon Books:

In Everything Is Miscellaneous, David Weinberger charts the new principles of digital order that are remaking business, education, politics, science, and culture. In his rollicking tour of the rise of the miscellaneous, he examines why the Dewey decimal system is stretched to the breaking point, how Rand McNally decides what information not to include in a physical map (and why Google Earth is winning that battle), how Staples stores emulate online shopping to increase sales, why your children’s teachers will stop having them memorize facts, and how the shift to digital music stands as the model for the future in virtually every industry. Finally, he shows how by “going miscellaneous,” anyone can reap rewards from the deluge of information in modern work and life.