nik /courses /210

Description

3f:6c:61:79 is a series of software designed to reconfigure and subvert of established computational metaphors through play.

Digital actions are removed; a button or a browser is not necessarily just an extension of our agency. The mediation that occurs is two-fold: both committed action and operator become a product of the digital system. The operator becomes functionalized within the metaphors provided by the language and limits of the digital system. My aim is the reform and reconstitution of the conventional lexicon of digital metaphors. This intervention is neither rooted in being destructive or utopian, but as a playful shift designed to present new and explorative words for our digital selves. The inherent inefficiencies and unreasonableness of play allows for the explorative creation of new language. Play confronts rationality, reconfigures it, and expands the system in which it is confined.

Background

The bit is a discreet, formless, state. It is bound to syntax that is also discreet and formless, a system of states. The rules imposed on the syntactical relations of bits are static and non-evolving, for a mutation outside of this system of oppositional states presents the incomputable: a system fault. The system is ‘perfect’ in that it is a system of information that strictly adheres to the conventional laws of boolean logic. The digital system is therefore bound to these digitally defined syntactic relations and is incapable of emergent properties outside the realm of digital logic. 

Digital systems are then both reflexive as well as dualistic: the digital system is permutable within the constraints of the digital information that defines it. As softwares are designed to employ this functionality beyond a mere set of etherial information the subjugation of boolean order onto the digital system renders itself tangible in its effects on external reality.

Strangely enough this involves a large amount of remediation of antiquated modes of mechanical instruments. As the text-editor, command-line are remediated typewriters, buttons and various other user interface elements are appropriated from mechanical devices, image and music editing software being the worst offenders, quite explicitly mimicing interfaces of previous technologies into the computational platform.

Lev Manovich makes the qualitative surmise that the imposition of the digital presents an analogous product despite the discreetness of the digital. I argue that the loss of fidelity in the digital conversion does not lie in the accuracy of the mediative representation but the mediation itself: the act of attempted translation into the binary is effectual under the translation of interface. Under Manovich’s assessment the information external and internal to digitality are equals, or at least have the potential to be accepted as equivalent.

The imposition of language as a product of digital translation is problematic. A programmatic array of numbers can be represented as a list, a graph, a song, a vector, or a piece of furniture. But the reality remains that these objects are not homologous in their relational interface to an operator. If relational interface is effected by digitally constructed metaphors, then it would seem that the digital system should be designed in a such a way that allows for a fluidity of creation, a movement within the syntactical relations that afford the construction of this digital language.

Unfortunately, conventional computational practice prides modes of efficiency over the fluidity within digital vocabulary. On a closer-to-the-metal inspection it would seem that the inherent attributes of the digital system are not designed to afford the meandering of bits, the shifting of definition, or inefficient disconnect between digital metaphor and computational function.

The incorporation of play into the implementation of digital systems sets the foundation for the creation of an expanded digital vocabulary. Remediation of previous metaphors may be familiar, and in this regard functionally intuitive, but confines the limits of exploration. Through play, we are able to explore and create our new meanings and map new these metaphors onto ourselves.

Design

The creation of software that allow for the expansion of digital vocabulary is an ongoing project, to say it is finite in scope would be to confine the boundaries of language. Nevertheless, 3f:6c:61:79 will interrogate and reconfigure conventional, contemporary computational metaphors. As a series of software constituted as a larger project, each piece of software will render digital reification explicit.

3f:6c:61:79 engages three themes:

Reconfiguration and Subversion of Established Metaphors

Computational metaphors range from the pushing of the “Send” button in an email applications, “Buy” in an online store, selection of “menu” items, to the very composition of objects on the computer screen. These metaphors create meaning when posed in a relational situation: the “trash can” is an extension of the “desktop” which hides “behind” the various “icons” and “windows” to reinforce the “spatial” context.

3f:6c:61:79 will to create new relations to create a context in which these metaphors can be mutated or removed in an effort to emphasize the absurdity of the representational interface.

Interrogation of Remediation

The button itself is a prime example of a remediation of a mechanical metaphor. As the computer interface a representational abstract of underlying logical structures, this affords nearly endless possibilities in regards to exploring new frontiers of human/computer interface. This is not a systematic approach for the “efficiency” of interaction, but rather an exploration in the injection of irrationality to subvert “efficiency.”

Creation of New Contexts for Digital Metaphors through the Injection of Play

The overarching theme within 3f:6c:61:79 is the inclusion of play to create a an irrational foundation for potential. The user must be able to explore outside of the bounds of conventional metaphors to become aware of the absurdity of conventional digital lexicon. This engagement is rooted in both functionality and semiotics, and aims to tackle the semantic disconnect between hardware and user.

Implementation

3f:6c:61:79 will take the form of hacked applications, plugins, and software that is created simply for the exploration of interface.

Other Software

Argeïphontes Lyre approaches a similar in concept to 3f:6c:61:79. Functionally, Argeïphontes Lyre is merely a set of digital filters for images, text and audio. However, the interface that the application presents is highly obfuscated: buttons have no explicit function, menu naming conventions are abstracted, and compositionally the layout of conventional user-interface elements are subverted. While Argeïphontes Lyre confronts similar concepts through the reconfiguring of explicit modality within applications, the overarching functional aspects of the program are still paramount: Argeïphontes Lyre is an application explicitly designed to work as a digital filter.

Contextual Statement

Kazimir Malevich’s Black Square is visually bare: an opaque quadrilateral, painted in black on white canvas. Despite this visual simplicity, Black Square engages an infinitude of forms, engaging in a generative process that manifests a self-referential utopian language.

As a creator of software, I find extreme elegance in Malevich’s piece. Black Square was much more than a simple form on canvas, it was the embodiment of an ideology reduced to its simplest elements. Software, confined to algorithms and data structures is in essence a very close analogue to what Malevich envisioned: a transcendental system of communication. This is not to say that digital systems are not restrained by the inherent properties that define them; as an artist and programmer I believe that software is both communicative end as well as beginning. I believe digital works must extend beyond the simple algorithmic structures that define them.

Narrative Biography (100 words)

Nikolaos Hanselmann graduated from the University of California, Berkeley in 2007 with a BA in Art History. During his time as an undergraduate his interest in movements within Modernism started a line of inquiry into his use of contemporary technology. His interrogation of digital media shifted his focus from functional programming to programmatic concepts integrated into performance and installation. In addition, Nikolaos worked in several collaborations involving data visualization and ludic aspects of new media. Nikolaos’ current work is concerned with questioning the effects of the digital media with regards to their inherent binary properties.

Narrative Biography (300 words)

Nikolaos Hanselmann’s concerns as an artist focus on the limitations and affordances provided by contemporary technology. His examinations are primarily critical of the properties of digital mediation, specifically the ways in which digital media are product and producer of informational realities internal and external to computation.

His early fascination of technology was initially spurred by the now-antiquated pieces of technology his father would bring home for work. He became especially enamored with computers when he learned that he could make them interact as opposed to functioning simply as a reactive device. For fun, he would often spend his time writing recently standardized HTML in pencil on the back of scratch dot-matrix printer paper.

Nikolaos graduated from the University of California, Berkeley in 2007 with a BA in Art History. During his time as an undergraduate his interest in movements within Modernism started a line of inquiry into his use of contemporary technology. His interrogation of digital media shifted his focus from functional programming to programmatic concepts integrated into performance and installation. In 2007 he showed “Blips and Bleeps” at the Pacific Film Archive, a short film inspired by abstract movements in information.

During his time at UC Berkeley, Nikolaos also worked as researcher and collaborator for several projects involving both data visualization and ludic aspects of new media. The internationally exhibited game “The Return of Balance” as well as the musical installation “Tomato Quintet” served as grounds for inspiration for the development of his interests in play and the mutability of information.

Nikolaos’ current work is concerned with questioning the effects and impacts of the digital media with regards to their inherent binary and systematic properties. His efforts are intended to confront the rational programmatic structures of software with irrationality and purpose external to functional programming.

Artist Statement

In my work I interrogate metaphors imposed by digital systems. Digital actions are removed; a button or a browser is not necessarily just an extension of our agency. The mediation that occurs is two-fold: both committed action and operator become a product of the digital system. The operator becomes functionalized within the metaphors provided by the language and limits of the digital system.

This presents a problem in the context of increasing technological ubiquity. The inherent properties of digital mediation constrain the possibilities of irrational emergence, especially within the confines of efficient objective-based computational paradigms. Mundane and ubiquitously assimilated softwares formulate the digital lexicon for which we operate: office suites, internet browsers, email programs, file managers are the words used to construct our digital presence.

My aim is the reform and reconstitute the conventional lexicon of digital metaphors. This intervention is neither rooted in being destructive or utopian, but as a playful shift designed to present new and explorative words for our digital selves. Play is unreasonable and inefficient which allows for the explorative creation of new language. Play confronts rationality, reconfigures it, and expands the system in which it is confined.

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Bibliography

• Bush, Vannevar. "As We May Think." The Atlantic July 1945.
• Davis, Whitney. "How to Make Analogies in a Digital Age." OCTOBER (2006): 71-98.
• Haugeland, John. “Analog and Analog.” Philosophical Topics 12 (1981).
• Lotto, Beau. "The Postmodern Brain." Journal of Neuro-Aesthetic Theory (2005).
• Manovich, Lev. The Language of New Media. MIT P, 2001.
• Müller, Vincent C. "Representation in digital systems." Interdisciplines, Adaptation and Representation.
• Negroponte, Nicholas. Being Digital.
• Shagrir, Oron. "Two Dogmas of Computationalism." Minds and Machines 7
• Shaviro, Steven. Connected, or What It Means to Live in the Network Society.
• Turing, A. M. "Computing Machinery and Intelligence." Mind (1959)
• Vesna, Victoria, ed. Database Aesthetics : Art in the Age of Information Overflow.

OLD MOESP Questions
OLD Revision Exercise OLD Revised Proposal