T E X T S

15 January: Text processing
WYSIWG, ascii, writing/language/code, markup, keyboards
Invitation: https://apass.be/textprocessing/
Notes: https://pad.constantvzw.org/p/apass.textprocessing
Download texts: https://cloud.constantvzw.org/s/eGmApCmrlAWSA2l


5 February: (Local) server
Hosting, local networks, maintenance, infrastructure
Invitation: https://apass.be/localserver
Notes: https://pad.constantvzw.org/p/apass.localserver
Download texts: https://cloud.constantvzw.org/s/eGmApCmrlAWSA2l


26 February: Encoding + compression
Video/sound, efficiency, translation, files, containers, vectors
Invitation: https://apass.be/compression
Notes: https://pad.constantvzw.org/p/apass.compression
Download texts: https://cloud.constantvzw.org/s/eGmApCmrlAWSA2l


19 March: Key cards
Access, movement, time, security, smartness
Invitation: https://apass.be/keycards
Download texts: https://cloud.constantvzw.org/s/eGmApCmrlAWSA2l
https://pad.constantvzw.org/p/apass.keycards


16 April: Databases
Stickyness, stopping points, consistency, routines, mnemosyne, library and information sciences
Invitation: https://apass.be/databases
Download texts (+ databases): https://cloud.constantvzw.org/s/eGmApCmrlAWSA2l
https://pad.constantvzw.org/p/apass.databases

site: http://possiblebodies.constantvzw.org/mondayreading/
database: http://possiblebodies.constantvzw.org/phpmyadmin    user: possiblebodies    pass: ay9VTGn1uf3Urtxr
decoder: https://www.web2generators.com/html-based-tools/online-html-entities-encoder-and-decoder


16 June: Streaming media
Invitation: https://apass.be/streaming
Download texts: https://cloud.constantvzw.org/s/eGmApCmrlAWSA2l
https://pad.constantvzw.org/p/apass.streaming


Other sources + readings

Bibliography "Boundaries do not sit still" https://apass.be/boundaries-do-not-sit-still/

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P R E P A R A T I O N S

user space / privilege.
separations, maintenance, responsibility
computers as servers and servers as hosts
ip - localisation
uploading images

off-line internet

experiencing cloud
local cloud / distributed cloud

designed to have most complex as the most simple

terms of use, what is the service, who owns the infrastructure

- your own machine
- a.pass NAS server
- home-brew server
- a.pass hosted server
- google drive
- domainepublic server https://www.domainepublic.net/Charte.html


-----

In the lexicon of networks, any computer connected to the Internet is called a *host*. This means that _all_ computers connected to the network have the ability to host content. But in the current paradigm of the Internet, some hosts are designated to be _serving content_ (servers), and other hosts are _to be served_ (clients). For most activities on the Internet (email, web pages, social media applications and so on ...) users act as clients to servers, delegating more and more of their content to the "cloud". To understand the implications of this delegation of hosting, we will look together at different computers that act as servers, talk about where they are located, who maintains them, and why this all matters.

This Monday Reading will be dedicated to *hosting*.

Martino 28/01/2018

Local / remote

> One thing we mentioned was to try and approach what a server is.. so
> showing the way our computers are servers (maybe with the
> pythonsimpleserver.. try open each other's folders or something..?) and
> also the way our servers are computers (ssh and some basic commands..?)
> One thing is, could you ask the IT person to be allowed to use ssh? Cos
> right now it is a ssh/sftp port, but only allows ftp usage. which I
> think is exactly the separation we are talking about hehe..
> Not sure we should do a terminal server tour, but just in case..

Infrastructure

> Or if it's about the local infrastructure, observe the network of the
> building? like look at the apass router, go to look at where the
> different cablings of the building are switched..?

Apasscloud

> I am also quite interested about this device that does the 'apasscloud'
> just looked a bit into it, it uses a bunch of messy windows software
> ('quickconnect', 'EZ-Internet' :D ) to allow access to it as a networked
> storage..

Martino + Femke, 08/01/2018

Format and forces/norms. Problems with proprietary formats.
Ending: transformation of datastructures. Mental images transform into information. Data arrangements in the brain?!
Speaking in terms of control, violence, constraints ... 

[translate to 'artistic research questions']. Legacies, institutional critique

Martino looking at Simondon on maintenance: past alienation. Human acting as a technical individual; substituted by non-human technical. Loss of role. 
individual -- participating in ensembles. Human starts acting as a gear in the machine or the director. Alienation arrives through separation.
(Simondon does not express if substitution ... is a determinism?)

Martino + Femke, 04/01/2018

Intro: temp (Text processing is its own automation.)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nN9wNvEnn-Q

Exercises:

Notes: Ultimately all computing is text processing, from the self-compiling textual characters of an assembler, through the automated programming language generated to handle a blob of graphical data, and finally to the metacharacters of regular expressions which groom existing text documents. 

Femke + Sina, 04/01/2018

Reading now: http://libgen.io/_ads/3C98B629EA51E1D4A6B5465DDF7B432A
i am looking at it

i was thinking about "Memory Practices in the Sciences" by Geoffrey Bowker
Nice. It is a book, right? 
yes. chapter one. 12pages
we can look inside other chapters too
ok, i'll read it - have worked with it a while ago, will start at that chapter!

Moving up the notes on texts ...

ahhh that sounds good?! Have been discussing with Jara a lot on Mestizo tech super

(i was thinking to read something from Scout Calvert. maybe:) I don't know it! she is about library discourse, Logics of Classification Interesting!! Is there a specific text you are interested in? (we can change our minds later, ofcourse:
Also, databases seem a good thing to look at, right? We can see about the wordpress database or maybe we find other ones. we can get our hands dirty on database landscape of programming It would be great to think about an exercise we can do together, make a copy of the wordpress and then start to interfere with it via phpmyadmin or commandline interface ... yess. SQL
yess

so ... title wise, i am going to start with the Mestiza text :-)
great. we can both look at it and descuss 
i can start now? the work of bowker i know well through Sorting things out, mainly his work with Susan Leigh Starr (we invited him for this: http://constantvzw.org/site/Discrimination-Big-Data.html -- with Seda Guerses moderating) ahhh thanks for the link. i am really into his work. he is also a good speaker .

? have you read: Susan Leigh Star's infrastructure ethnography
yes! ok. we can have it as an option.

I can look at the Mestiza text now and come back to you in an hour or so? I think we need to pick one of these three, right? ok. let's do it today.
btw, bowker is doing a book on databases as a culture at the moment, should be out by now? let me check. ah i didn't know.

hmm nothing there yet it seems, finding this tribute book looking interesting: https://mitpress.mit.edu/books/boundary-objects-and-beyond
remembering his text 'all knowledge is local' now. not bad either, bridging from key cards to databases? yess. let me take a look. i have it.

i emailed you the pdfs
thank you!! 
I am trying to compile a proper reader this weekend. I think 2-3 texts per session is max; or maybe 2 per session and some to be added to the general pile? yes Leigh Star might be good to add

Maybe Susan leigh starr can go to the 2nd session; in this way we create some continuity? Just trying to not overdo it on the STS texts ... 
oh wow, did not realise ... this text already 19 years old!!! wow
regarding Haraway, i was tinking maybe her modest witness is more fitting the whole discussions. not sure.
hmm am slightly concerned about the age of most texts, i think we cannot stay with too many pre-2010 writings. Something is really changing with cloud infrastructure, machine learning, agile programming that we cannot ignore. It has an impact on how to critique tech and also knowledge production. :) i see

shall we read, and come back here in an hour?
ok good!! so ... my 09:45 is your 11:15 ? pffff always confused with timezones
yes. add two and half hours to your time. let's come back at 09:45 (your time)

BACK!
me too. 
let's have the Calvert's text. it is rich with vocab. i mean the Mestiza.
ok, read two of them -- which one are you proposing? Mestiza 
Liking that one too, just not sure about what to do with the examples she writes against/on (it is a catalog text it seems?) -- I cannot find these works back, no archives :-P and no clear reference ...

yes. we have to bring its objects/references to the reading session.
ok, this can be helpful for the morning exercise? did you see/look at these works? not yet.
alright, let's look for it later. ok

about the Bowker's book. i was looking at The Mnemonic Deep: The Importance of an Unruly Past
not sure yet. i see it as way to open a way to encourage thinking about memory.
ok, just started the first chapter again .. somehow to bring TIME to the discussion, I find interesting. Also like his first example, the rock as an object and as a document.totally. i was cough by that too (time).

we can also have a "furthur reading" thing, or, a kind of list of other texts and ideas, for a virtual "later"
yes, see above ... a longer list?
i read a report of a workshop by Calvert, like what we are doing, Bowker and many others were involved. "Intellectual Frameworks and Research Challenges". it is a dry pdf read:
"Report of a workshop sponsored by the National Science Foundation and the Sloan Foundation University of Michigan School of Information, 25-28 May 2012"
Report Authors:
Paul N. Edwards, University of Michigan and SciencesPo, Paris
Steven J. Jackson, Cornell University
Melissa K. Chalmers, University of Michigan
Geofrey C. Bowker, University of California, Irvine
Christine L. Borgman, University of California, Los Angeles and Oxford University, UK
David Ribes, Georgetown University
Matt Burton, University of Michigan
Scout Calvert, University of California, Irvine

OK, Edwards I've read ... 
[hahah like the 'virtual later']
:)

shall we go for the Mestiza and Bowker's book, for now.
when do you wanted to publish details?

I am trying to compile the list today, and finish the reader on Sunday so it can start to circulate Monday latest; also this is when the new block starts.
ok. i like to spend some hours with the Bowker's book. before finilzing a chapter choice.
(i will add some more items to the additional reading list)
of course! is sunday enough time? yess
but to know it will be something related to his work om memory is good to know, so i can start tuning the other one. You'll see, Seda is argueing that databases are somehow overruled by more agile data structures, like in machine learning. I am curious how she will discuss
aha. good. yes. i think i will work on those links. mnemonic systems and practices in established insitutional cultures.
ok, so  will be on this pad all day -- discussing with P Rubio later, and then completing reading list with Martino.
i have to go for a while now. will be back.

Femke + Sina, 28 Decemper 2017

fundamental transformations in knowledge infrastructures changing the ways we create, share, and dispute  knowledge

Sina is for infrastructural thinking, and particular orientation towards cosmology
infrastructures are ecologies of complex adaptive systems, mess of multi-layered systems, each with unique origins and goals
(that is the opposite of 'system thinking,' as fully coherent and deliberately engineered)

what are a.pass "stopping points"? (books, printed matters, fixed products)
within the perceptually fluid knowledge of the world today

a.pass is made of: education, libraries, publishing industry, intellectual property, global flow, knowledge politics, as well as: artifacts, people, affects, percepts

two axes that we can rotate around thinking a.pass:
1- their technical systems and standards (Steven, Google, building, sockets)
2- their modes of analyzing it ---(their social organization)

we are talking about:
-institutional memory practice
-technologies for virtual witnessing

keywords:
infrastructure, memory, bibliography, tool,

two meta data: charisma, beauty

two tools: import, zoom
(import function, knowledge zoom lens. how apass is performing it? what are our qualitative evidence.)

I M A G E S

https://butdoesitfloat.com/If-you-gaze-too-long-into-the-abyss-the-abyss-will-gaze-into-you
http://nicolasbaier.com/pages/Prehension_2.html
https://www.fose1.plymouth.ac.uk/fatiguefracture/tutorials/FailureAnalysis/Images/Fractography/Fatigue_Beachmarks4.JPG
https://www.fose1.plymouth.ac.uk/fatiguefracture/tutorials/FailureAnalysis/Fractography/Rope12.gif
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Endoplasmic_reticulum#/media/File:Clara_cell_lung_-_TEM.jpg

-----

On Thursday 25 November 2016, at The Artist Commoner: Public Meeting [1], a.pass publicly read the following mythological Statement of commitment:
“a.pass commits to aligning its computational infrastructure with the radical subjectivities that are summoned by the commons. Today a.pass celebrates the continued transition of its tools, platforms, communications and digital archives into adventurous ways of adminstering, making and performing digital protocols together. In a.pass, computational devices have been unstated for too long so it is urgent to name and consider them, and to develop sensitivies to their material presences. We understand that this might mean a conversion from Google Docs to radically different ways of producing spreadsheets, schedules and documents, of performing the task. We are aware that someones have to take care of this process. And sustain it. On Friday 25 November 2016 we celebrate the opportunity, and the beginning of a transition towards new infrastructures of people, tools, protocols, platforms, and practices.” [2]

As a response to the observation that tech giants currently dominate all forms of digital communication, from cloud-storage to production tools and archiving systems, Kate Rich, Magdalena Tyzlik-Carver and myself organised a day of conversations with a.pass staff. For cultural institutions like a.pass and many kindred spirit organisations, it seems there is potential for other relations to making, distribution and communication. But how to break the spell of this paralysing digital regime? How to shift that relationship from efficiency to curiosity; from scarcity to multiplicity and from solution to possibility?
For this reason I would like to experiment with a series of ‘Monday Readings’, five one day sessions that bring specific tool-situations apparent in a.pass in conversation with theoretical and political thinking on articulation and the perfomance of boundaries. This small suite of non-spectacular activities are opportunities to collectively ‘read’ into daily tools for internal communication, file-sharing and networked documents useful to a.pass.

The Monday Readings are an attempt to develop further connection between artistic research and techno-political practices such as software-as-critique, active archives and collaborative on-line work.  
The sessions are prepared in collaboration with invited guests, who are all interested in different ways to read across technical tools and theoretical instruments. Tools will be selected in discussion with Steven Jouwersma (technical support). Texts and tools are made available from January onwards in an on-line repository to which we will gradually add documentation of the sessions. This material forms the basis of a small edition that I would like to produce and distribute in fall 2018. The sessions will be first of all oriented towards the associated researchers and staff, but are open to block participants and other interested readers.  
        
[1] https://apass.be/common-conference/
[2] http://pad.constantvzw.org/p/apass.transition







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