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.
*etherpad-to-graphviz [changes in style, content, structure same level] Gijs
*Feed-to-be-fed http://snelting.domainepublic.net/feedtobefed/02 [building a narrative without hierarchy] Femke or Hotglue
*html2print = ethertoff [changes in style, content, structure same level] evt. Eric
12:35
Toolparade [20min]
Each group prepares 10 min presentation/interview of the tools + 30min discussion
*Is this a tool or an interface?
*How do you use it, or would you want to use it?
*How could it be changed?
*Who has made this tool/interface, and why?
*Who is the intended user for this (and how does the tool/interface select it's user)?
*Who should not use this?
*Where does it come from?
*What problems might arise with this tool/interface?
*What else do you want to know about this tool?
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L I N K S
(to be updated/completed)
*etherpad-to-graphviz [changes in style, content, structure same level] ES/GDH/FS
*Hotglue http://hotglue.me [endless web canvas]
*Feed-to-be-fed http://snelting.domainepublic.net/feedtobefed/02 [building a narrative without hierarchy] FS
INTERFACE MANIFESTO
AXES
*(Definition)
*Ethics
*Politics
*Aesthetics / Poethics
*Design
*Semiotics
TENSIONS
*Participation vs. Collaboration
*Invisibility vs. Transparency
*closed vs. opened
*Standard vs. Original - Innovative - Novel
*Symmetry vs. Subordination (podria ser-ne una altre?)
USER
*User’s role
*Reciprocal transformation of the technology
*Shared responsibility - Critical spirit
*The user Literacy is a political act
*Basic user / desirable user
THEORETICAL FRAMEWORK
*New materialism: DeLanda
*The materiality of interface is based on code or pixels basically, but I should take in account also the devices where it’s performed
*The materiality of interface is drawed from materiality of other media (texts pages, photography, cinematic language, control panels)
*Actor-network theory: Latour
*Cultural studies:
*Media theory: Manovich, Fuller & Goffrey
__Commandline poet(h)ics??? florian Cramer
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*html2print ... ethertoff ... [changes in style, content, structure same level] GDH
*Cirkels Gijs [discovering code/graphics] GDH
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*Literal draw [making vocabulary read-write, influence syntax] GDH
*Toonloop
*webcanvas http://webcanvas.com/#488,2014,1
*irc ...
*Net Art Generator http://net.art-generator.com/ + http://net.art-generator.com/moiNAG/
*Dave Young: Yet another collaborative editor http://dvyng.com/selected/yace/ [interrogating collaboration together] FS
*Alex selecteer-vervang ?
*diff tool
*ethercalc
*nuage
*Latex to print
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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
*How do you deal with this contradictions [FS: between 'participation' and 'power' I guess]?
*How to deal between ethics and pragmatics?
*How to involve the user on the design process? And how to involve also the client? [FS: User = client ?]
*How to manage the transparency? [FS: ie legibility of processes?]
*Do open tools promote more open and collaborative projects? Which are those tools?
*How do you translate your philosophy to your creation/object/product results? [FS: ie how do different tools produce different aesthetics?]
*cultural mediation and interfaces
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."
*Building on/with practice. Tools - practice - tools
*Mediawiki, RDF: Toneelstof, Michael Murtaugh (Data Diary)
*git-voor-designers: visual culture, OSP (git dictator, conflicts of iets anders ... samen iets maken) samen iets laten
*Scanning and probing
*Nancy/Fonzie, Dingbats liberation
*Pierre Marchand + hxbl scanner
*Algorithm as interface. Experimenting with archives
*Data Radio Kurienniemi Nicolas Maleve/Michael Murtaugh
*Asger Jorn, Nicolas Maleve/Michael Murtaugh
*Robert Ochshorn
*Toolbending
*Piksels and lines orchestra, Brendan Howell, Jon Nordby
*Off the canvas
*html2print: Balsamine
*etherpad-to-print, latex: etherpash, Christoph Haag