Mixed experience: when 'users' and 'developers' make tools together

Image: http://lgru.net/wp-content/uploads/PLOsystem.png
Brendan Howell, Jon Nordby: software architecture for the Piksels and Lines Orchestra (2013)

Description:
This workshop asks how digital tools can refuse strict separations between 'users' and 'developers', both in the way they are built and how they are put to use. Mixed experience starts from experiments by artists, designers and programmers affiliated with Constant, a Brussels' based association for Arts and Media, and design caravan OSP. Our tools are sometimes built from scratch, and often combine existing packages in ways that allow actual experiences of and with software.

This work is rooted in the culture of Free, Libre and Open Source software. It alloFFFFFws us to critically interrogate how tools condition our practice but above all is an invitation to use, study, distribute and improve software. It inspires us to mix the expertise of 'users' and 'developers' and to work simultaneously on the level of code, structure and design. In order to shift our digital practices away from the pressures of meritocracy and the limits of technocentrism, we need to make tools together.

The workshop consists of a panorama of tool-experiments in the context of the practice of Constant/OSP, followed by a detailed presentation of Visual Culture (a tool to share and publish collaborative design projects), a hands-on experience of several tools that shift the paradigms of practice, and a discussion. Please bring your laptop!

P R O G R A M M E

10:15
Introduction: Mixed experience (Femke Snelting, Constant) [20min]

11:15 
Presentation: Visual culture (OSP) [20min]
OSP (Gijs De Heij and Eric Schrijver) present Visual Culture, a tool to share and publish any (design) project with the possibility to see and retrieve any previous version. Visual Culture provides an archive, a tool to publish and  a tool to collaborate and share based on Git versioning software. Git has been a crucial part in the success of the collaborative open  source culture, being used to develop projects like Linux and Firefox.  Yet the existing interfaces to Git are designed with text files in mind.

11:35
Toolparade intro [60min]

Toolparade is a hands-on excursion through a wunderkammer filled with extraordinary tools for collaboration. We have gathered a set of promiscuous online tools that each have resulted from specific collaborations between users and developers. Telling stories about combined skills, parallel desires and working through constraints, we invite you to experience how each of them conditions how and what we can make together.


12:35
Toolparade [20min]
Each group prepares 10 min presentation/interview of the tools + 30min discussion


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L I N K S

(to be updated/completed)


INTERFACE MANIFESTO

AXES

TENSIONS

USER


THEORETICAL FRAMEWORK

__Commandline poet(h)ics??? florian Cramer
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M I S C E L L A N E O U S  N O T E S

When: 7th November 2014 from 10h to 13h.

Where: Hangar. Carrer Emilia Coranty 18. 08018 Barcelona

Free access with previous registration (limited to 20 seats). Registration
email: formacio@hangar.org

20 persons

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PIPES, Participatory Investigation of Public Engaging Spaces
http://pipes-project.net/about-the-project/
http://pipes.hangar.org/

Based on research questions provided by Laia/PIPES. FS prepares


PIPES invite/questions:
"Regarding  to participatory design an issue that we are interested in is the fact   that participatory interfaces have been designed under a tradition  that  has launched by a strong political motivation to involve users as   active stakeholders in the design process. The interaction between the   users and the interface not just means to achieve a specific result  but  the ability of affect and modify the system and to change the power  relations, leading to unexpected user behaviors. However participatory  interfaces are not always balanced ecosystem, and participation doesn’t  imply that there is a cooperative relation established between the  users."

"PIPES  is an experiment with new models and symbolic means of communication.  Special  focus will be on a cognitive analysis of communication symbols  and  symbolic expressions leading to innovation in dynamic interactive  tools  and scenarios of expression and sharing."

"A  lot of theorists with an impact of today’s social and cultural   sciences criticize that pragmatism and functionalism have taken over  our  way of thinking. Everything that is not to be considered as  predictable  runs the risk to become postmarked as unreasonable.  Communicating  predominantly on a written basis fits perfectly into this  linear  structured thread. Even if you visit an art museum you will  find  explanatory texts next to the artwork. But we have a lot of other   abilities to use than just our rationality. Especially our new   technologies offer us more resources than we actually scoop. PIPES  takes  these critical voices serious and likes to be a door opener for a  more  sensual and creative communication and collaboration."

"The main principle is to put creativity before pragmatism."

"Within  PIPES BCN Hangar aims to generate a common, transversal and critical  state of the art about visual interfaces focusing on three crossed  perspectives: society, design and art. Therefore HANGAR will lead  educational streams and supervise public manifestations and   documentation as well."