http://pad.constantvzw.org/p/documentation
++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
Transcription interview Phil Langley http://pad.constantvzw.org/p/flightcafe
Text for Interface Manifesto (under construction) http://interfacemanifesto.hangar.org/index.php/The_MakeHuman_bugreport_v0.2
Notes for a follow up exhibition http://pad.constantvzw.org/p/possiblebodies
Patient information leaflet (with Jara Rocha) http://snelting.domainepublic.net/affiliation-cat/the-makehuman-bugreport/user-info
Proposal for Post-human glossary (with Jara Rocha) https://jara.titanpad.com/otherwiseembodiedothers?
U N R U L Y B O D I E S [ F O R P U B L I C A T I O N I N P R O G R A M ]
The MakeHuman bugreport
MakeHuman is a popular open source computer graphics software for the modelling of 3-Dimensional humanoid characters. It is developed by a community of programmers, modellers and academics. Our interest in MakeHuman was triggered during GenderBlending, an event organised by Constant. Participants from various backgrounds experimented at the contact zones of gender and technology.
A signature feature of the MakeHuman interface is a set of horizontal sliders, suggesting that by interpolating settings for gender, race, weight and age, any 'human' representation can be 'made'. While the neat arrangements of parameters for operating on uncomparable properties is already troubling, further inspection reveals an extremely limited topology. Rendering the promise of infinite possibillities a mere illusion, expectations defined by hegemonic, capitalist and colonialist forces are reiterated.
g
The use of 'biologically accurate' data suggests that the generated imagery is true to nature, but the principle of 3D mesh topology relies on a trick of averaging, a type of mathematical calculation that has little to do with what bodies could be like. Despite the suggestion that the digital dis-burdens bodies from normative parameters, software like MakeHuman actually operates on problematic categorical divisions that are all-too familiar.
Aiming to address concerns and insights regarding the way the body and the human being are being co-constructed through technology, we have started to formulate a bugreport, a type of formatted feedback used in collaborative software development. In the context of Unruly Bodies we will deliver the bugreport in the form of a performative lecture, a ‘report on the report’.
Arriving from different backgrounds (media-design, animation-art and dance and choreography), our respective inquiries about the relationship between body and technology meet at times through practices and perspectives. For The MakeHuman bugreport we will combine those to not only convey words, but actions and images as well.
Adva Zakai
Femke Snelting (Artist, designer, member of Constant, association for art and media, Brussels)Xavier Gorgol
MakeHuman is a popular open source computer graphics software for the modelling of 3-Dimensional humanoid characters. Our interest in MakeHuman was triggered during GenderBlending, an event organised by Constant. Participants from various backgrounds experimented at the contact zones of gender and technology.
A signature feature of the MakeHuman interface is a set of horizontal sliders, suggesting that by interpolating settings for gender, race, weight and age, any 'human' representation can be 'made'. The use of 'biologically accurate' data suggests that the generated imagery is true to nature, but the principle of 3D mesh topology relies on a trick of averaging, a type of mathematical calculation that has little to do with what bodies could be like. Despite the suggestion that the digital dis-burdens bodies from normative parameters, software like MakeHuman actually operates on problematic categorical divisions that are all-too familiar. While rendering the promise of infinite possibillities a mere illusion expectations defined by hegemonic, capitalist and colonialist forces are reiterated.
Aiming to address concerns and insights regarding the way the body and the human being are being co-constructed through technology, we have started to formulate a bugreport, a type of formatted feedback used in collaborative software development. In the context of Unruly Bodies we will deliver the bugreport in the form of a performative lecture, a ‘report on the report’.
Arriving from different backgrounds (media-design, animation-art and dance and choreography), our respective inquiries about the relationship between body and technology meet at times through practices and perspectives. For The MakeHuman bugreport we will combine those to not only convey words, but actions and images as well.
Adva Zakai (Choreographer)
Femke Snelting (Artist, designer)
Xavier Gorgol (Animator)
D A E M O N S & S H E L L S C R I P T S
http://www.ooooo.be/daemonsshellscripts/
The MakeHuman bugreport
Adva Zakai, Xavier Gorgol, Femke Snelting
MakeHuman is a popular open source 3D computer graphics middleware for the modelling of 3-Dimensional humanoid characters. The software is developed by a community of programmers, modellers and academics. Our interest in MakeHuman was triggered during GenderBlending, an event where a participants from various backgrounds experimented at the contact zones of gender and technology.
A signature feature of the MakeHuman interface is a set of horizontal sliders, suggesting that by interpolating settings for gender, race, weight and age, any 'human' representation can be 'made'. While the neat arrangements of parameters for operating on uncomparable and interconnected properties is already troubling in itself, further inspection reveals an extremely limited topology, rendering the promise of infinite possibillities a mere illusion.
Despite the suggestion that the digital dis-burdens bodies from normative parameters, software like MakeHuman actually operates on problematic categorical divisions that are all-too familiar.
Aiming to address concerns and insights regarding the way the body and the human being are being co-constructed through technology, we have started to formulate a bugreport. In the context of Daemons & Shellscripts we would like to test out and discuss a performative lecture in the making, a ‘report on the report’.
Coming from different backgrounds - Femke from media-design, Xavier from animation-art and Adva from dance and choreography -, our respective inquiries about the relationship between body and technology meet at times through our practices and perspectives. For The MakeHuman bugreport we will combine those to not only convey words, but actions and images as well.
N O T E S
mainstream digital interfaces are the product of reiterating expectations defined by hegemonic, capitalist and colonialist powerstructures
visibility, inspectability, interrogability, hackability
http://amormundi.blogspot.com.es/2014/12/the-inevitable-cruelty-of-algorithmic.html?m=1
P R O P O S A L F O R U N R U L Y B O D I E S
Call: http://www.sophia.be/app/webroot/files/UnrulyBodiesinscriptionform.doc
First name and surname
Adva Zakai
Femke Snelting
Institution/organisation (optional)
Constant
Address
Fortstraat 5
1060 Brussels
Telephone number
02 5392467
E-mail address
femke@constantvzw.org
Any adaptations needed in terms of accessibility
n/a
I will present in:
English
Dutch
French
I have a good passive and/or active command of
English
Dutch
French
If my text is selected for publication, I would prefer to edit it in
English
Dutch
French
Title of the presentation
The MakeHuman bugreport: A performative lecture
Abstract (300 words max) or description of your artwork/performance
In November 2014 Constant invited body hackers, 3D theorists, game activists, queer designers, artists, and software feminists to challenge typical digital representations of the body. Using 3D-animation software, bodyscanners and 3D-printers, participants experimented at the contact zones of gender and technology. [http://genderblending.constantvzw.org] GenderBlending was also an occasion to have a closer look at the Open Source software MakeHuman, a 'free, innovative and professional software for the modelling of 3-Dimensional humanoid characters'. [http://www.makehuman.org] We were troubled by the MakeHuman interface which consists of a set of sliders, suggesting that by simpiply interpolating settings for gender, race, weight and age, digital bodies can be created. While the neat presentation of parameters split across uncomparable and interconnected properties is already problematic in itself, further inspection revealed an extremely limited topology and moreover that the promise of infinite possibillities was a mere illusion. We discovered what was somehow to be expected: despite the suggestion that the digital dis-burdens bodies from normative parameters, software like MakeHuman actually operates on problematic categorical divisions that are all-too familiar from non-digital, social, and political spheres.
At Unruly Bodies we would like to report on the 'bugreport' that participants in GenderBlending started to formulate in response to these findings. A bugreport is a type of feedback used in collaborative software development, where users formulate often technical, but seldomly philosophical or political problems, to a development team.
Coming from different backgrounds - Femke from art and media-design and Adva from dance and choreography -, our respective inquiries about the relationship between body and technology meet at times through our practices and perspectives. For The MakeHuman bugreport we will combine those to not only convey words, but actions and images as well. Our performative lecture is a ‘report on the report’, aiming to address concerns and insights regarding the way the body and the human being is co-constructed through technology.
biographies added for reference:
Adva Zakai was born in Israel, is living in Europe. During the past years Adva Zakai has been exploring various performance formats where she has acted as a choreographer, a performer or a curator. Her choreographic works explore often how body and language are perceived through each other, and evoke an experience that can be grasped through multiple perspectives. Her work is presented in theatres, museums, galleries and apartments. During 2010, she obtained an artistic research grant, in the framework of the post master program a.pass in Antwerp, in which she researched the influence of a curatorial approach on the development of new performance formats. She pursued dance education in Israel followed by studies at the Mime School, Amsterdam (2000-2002). Her practice involves collaborations with other artists on participative projects, conferences and festivals. She is teaching performance practice in art academy Kask in Gent, Belgium, as well as leading workshops in art and dance academies.
Femke Snelting is an artist and designer, investigating interrelations between digital tools and creative practice, Femke develops projects at the intersection of design, feminism and free software. She is a core member of the Brussels based association for arts and media Constant, co-initiated the design/research team Open Source Publishing (OSP) and coordinated the Libre Graphics Research Unit. Femke teaches at The Piet Zwart Institute (Media Design and Communication, Rotterdam, NL) and ecole de recherche graphique (Brussels, BE). She is currently resident fellow at Akademie Schloss Solitude (Stuttgart, DE).
--------------------------------------
[SORRY ADVA WANTED TO PASTE YOUR ORIGINAL PROPOSAL HERE FOR REFERENCE BUT MADE A MISTAKE AND LOST IT] PASTED IT BACK!
Background
In November 2014 Constant organized a workshop in Brussels called Gender Blending, in which body hackers, 3D theorists, game activists, queer designers, artists and software feminists gathered around the table to challenge typical digital representations of the body, bending the rules of both gender and software. Using 3D animation software Blender, medical bodyscanners and 3D-printers, the participants experimented at the contact zones of gender and technology.
A close look at the software Makehuman, which promotes itself as a free, innovative and professional software for the modelling of 3-Dimensional humanoid characters, showed what was somehow expected – despite the freedom the software seems to allow in creating a profile of a human disburdened from normative parameters which define gender and race, its actually often based on categorical divisions familiar to us from the non-digital, social and political spheres.
During the workshop participants tried to confront Makehuman with contradicting actions such as creating a woman with male genitals and mixing races. By using the 3D animation ‘female’ movements were coupled with male armature and… (MORE EXEMPLES?). Most of these attempts resulted in disfigured shapes and errors.
At the end of the workshop, after looking into the codes and learning the software, a bugreport of Makehuman was created by one of the participants. The report pointed out programming glitches and slips that put the promise of Makehuman - you can put as many combined transformations in them as you want - in question.
A proposition for Unruly bodies:
We would like to ‘report the report’. Through presenting the different discoveries of the Bugreport, we aim to address concerns and insights regarding the way the body and the human are perceived through technology, and the roll the digital environment have in determining norms and conventions in the actual world.
Coming from different backgrounds, Femke of art and design and Adva from dance and choreography, our enquiries about the relation between body and technology meet at times and depart again away from each other through our practices. We will combine perspectives and practices and will look together for a performative form in which our talk would not only convey words, but actions and images as well.
A proposition for Unruly bodies:
MakeHuman is a popular open source 3D computer graphics middleware, designed for the prototyping of photorealistic humanoids. It is developed by a community of programmers, modellers and academics.
GenderBlending: Used it with design students, experimented with different genders, looked at the code, seen it in use in scientific context.
The bug report as a techno-cultural format; Free Software invitation to reflect, comment, make better [AGPL3 license]
After a more general analysis of problems inherent to the construction of body images in 3D space, this report will look into three main issues:
*Parametric bodies: the problem of presenting gender, race, weight, ... as interconnected sliders
*Precision vs. guessing: features that make this software unique include a new, highly intuitive GUI and a high quality mesh, optimized to work in subdivision surface mode (for example, Zbrush).
*Internal vs external mesh: genitals as external elements
Explain format: Performative lecture: including interview fragments, video material, visuals and other media
[not sure we should do bios]
Adva Zakai
Born in Israel, living in Europe. During the past years Adva Zakai has been exploring various performance formats where she has acted as a choreographer, a performer or a curator. Her choreographic works explore often how body and language are perceived through each other, and evoke an experience that can be grasped through multiple perspectives. Her work is presented in theatres, museums, galleries and apartments. During 2010, she obtained an artistic research grant, in the framework of the post master program a.pass in Antwerp, in which she researched the influence of a curatorial approach on the development of new performance formats. She pursued dance education in Israel followed by studies at the Mime School, Amsterdam (2000-2002). Her practice involves collaborations with other artists on participative projects, conferences and festivals. She is teaching performance practice in art academy Kask in Gent, Belgium, as well as leading workshops in art and dance academies.
Femke Snelting is an artist and designer, investigating interrelations between digital tools and creative practice, Femke develops projects at the intersection of design, feminism and free software. She is a core member of the Brussels based association for arts and media Constant, co-initiated the design/research team Open Source Publishing (OSP) and coordinated the Libre Graphics Research Unit. Femke teaches at The Piet Zwart Institute (Media Design and Communication, Rotterdam, NL) and ecole de recherche graphique (Brussels, BE). She is currently resident fellow at Akademie Schloss Solitude (Stuttgart, DE).
----------------
Dæmons & Shell Scripts: Marte Van Dessel / Bolwerk
http://www.ooooo.be/daemonsshellscripts/
19 June
25 June
27 June
28 June
----------------
Re: Topological subjectivities?
In terms of the body, there are well established (in western science) topologies - the nervous system as a network for example - that contribute to an understanding of the 'materiality' of the body and the way in which it functions. But these interpretations and descriptions of 'body topologies' are in actually not fixed. Earlier medical understanding of the way the brain works did not account for the wider significance of, for example, the spinal cord, and current discussions in the field surround whether or not the brain really does represent the 'centre' of the network, or if its capability is in fact distributed across the system. Body topologies are very often organised around a network - blood circulation, skeleton, muscles, digestion, nervous system, respiratory system, reproductive system etc etc. You can say that the descriptions of the function of these networks contains some 'facts' e.g. blood contains cells that supply oxygen to the body. But it is not 'fact' that the blood cell is part of the circulatory system - the place of a blood cell in any system is subjective (topologically so)...
So, to quote Kathryn Hayles (talking about Latour), “...the objects of scientific research are at once discursively constructed, socially produced and materially real...”
A network is only one type of a topology (specifically describing connectivity between nodes) - but there are others topologies too. From mathematics, 'set theory' is the crucial approach to thinking about topology. you could have a set (or group) that contains "all things that are red" and you can have a set that contains "all things that are round" - the sets are not mutually exclusive and any single item can be in one, both or neither set. So set theory is about properties and classification, which we might normally think of as bad things to use to organize our thoughts, as it appears to be a return to essentialist approaches. However, in topological thinking there is no problem because both the 'property' (or attribute) and the classification (i.e the set) are not fixed. The real difficulty I have with classification as an approach is not the urge to classify per se, but the compulsion to be rigid about what those classifications are and what properties contribute to their definition (this is particularly evident when talking about, say, species or gender definitions in biological sciences). Topological approaches allow for multiplicities - in property and set - without 'fixity, and are by definition 'unstable'. What I also like is that it provides a non-hierarchical view and there is no need for a 'contest' between the objective and the subjective.
SIDE NOTE....
As part of this<http://www.topologicalatlas.net/bordertopologies.html>conference at Sheffield University, the keynote speaker, Celia Lury (one of the foremost thinkers on topology) gave a great paper about the disappearance of the Malaysia airlines flight last year (the video should be here<https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLCy91qoZuSoWvawrGsi-HqtSf7hWVJW5M>i think- i cant check as youtube is banned here!). Celia used a great phrase to describe why the plane could not be found, despite the huge amount of effort and technology that was used in the search - it was something like "the aircraft fell of the edge of a surface of visibility". I think this is a great way to talk about topological subjectivities.
Anyway - i hope these notes are useful/ interesting (or at least make sense!) - we can keep the conversation going too (my replies may be a little irregualr until i am back in the UK though)
phil
On 6 February 2015 at 18:26, Femke Snelting <snelting@collectifs.net> wrote:
Dear Phil,
How are you?!
This weekend I have the pleasure to open up the GenderBlending files again with Jara Rocha, who also participated in the session (there's a plan for a
second edition, exhibition growing). We spent the afternoon going through your notes and concepts on software, interfaces, parameters, scale,
topology and topography, very helpful; thank you so much. We got a bit stuck though on what you mean by Topological subjectivities (we tried 'Topological embodiment' but not sure ...) and were wondering if you have written more notes somewhere on that?
--------------------
Redo/rethink MakeHuman parametric interface
hacking parametrics
interface software tools
makenonhuman -> break the binarity of MakeHuman tools -> bugreport to makehuman (ex.: tool to say "be more vegetable" )
make bugreport? patch? Sketch-up proposals in Blender?
A 'but' report
http://eskeletons.org/tree
--------------------
Modify makehuman tutorial text: http://pad.constantvzw.org/p/makehumanTuto
--------------------
Bugtracking on MakeHuman
http://bugtracker.makehuman.org/projects/makehuman
*Bug: 118 open / 318
*Feature: 109 open / 193
http://bugtracker.makehuman.org/issues/611
Bugreport
Why this report, how it was written, by who
FLOSS: But report, meta bug report
Used it with design students
Experimented with genders
Looked at the code
Seen it in use in scientific context
AGPL3 license
http://www.makehuman.org/doc/faq/im_not_a_coder_how_can_i_contribute.html
Issue 1
Parametric bodies: gender as a slider
Makehuman is a completely free, innovative and professional software for the modelling of 3-Dimensional humanoid characters.
Targets are used internally by MH to deform the basemesh. They are the magic that happens when you pull some of the sliders. Behind each of the sliders in MH there is one or multiple targets that are created by artists. Those are usually created for one specific characteristic, so you can apply them individually, but you can put as many combined transformations in them as you want. Custom targets are targets that you can create yourself for achieving other transformations than those obtained within MH itself. Often they are used for more specific things like creating fantasy characters. Technically, a target is a collection of relative offsets of vertices of the basemesh. They remain compatible with new versions of makehuman as long as the basemesh does not change. http://www.makehuman.org/faq
Issue 2
Precision vs. guessing
Features that make this software unique include a new, highly intuitive GUI and a high quality mesh, optimized to work in subdivision surface mode (for example, Zbrush).
Humanmodifier
Averageweight vs gender average
ethnic modifier
Issue 3
Genitals as external elements
Some bugs related to genitals being worked on for the upcoming release
http://bugtracker.makehuman.org/issues/611
http://bugtracker.makehuman.org/issues/36
Proposals
- A new splashscreen
- R G B sliders for race
- tutorial for changing interface
///////////////////////////////////////////////////////////
Human api project
from human._hair import Hair
self.hair = Hair(self)
self.subNames.append(self.hair)
from human._topologies import Topologies
self.topologies = Topologies(self)
self.subNames.append(self.topologies)
from human._attributes import Attributes
self.attributes = Attributes(self)
self.subNames.append(self.attributes)
from human._skeleton import Skeleton
self.skeleton = Skeleton(self)
self.subNames.append(self.skeleton)
from human._measurements import Measurements
self.measurements = Measurements(self)
self.subNames.append(self.measurements)
from human._mesh import Mesh
self.mesh = Mesh(self)
self.subNames.append(self.mesh)
from human._posing import Posing
self.posing = Posing(self)
self.subNames.append(self.posing)
from human._skin import Skin
self.skin = Skin(self)
self.subNames.append(self.skin)
from human._bodyparts import Bodyparts
self.bodyparts = Bodyparts(self)
self.subNames.append(self.bodyparts)