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< h1 > Contents< / h1 >
< ul >
< li class = "toc-title" > < a href = "#section-2" > Introduction< / a > < / li >
< br >
< br >
< li class = "toc-title" > < a href = "#section-3" > Backplaces< / a > < / li >
< li class = "toc-title" > < a href = "#section-4" > < ?water bodies> < / a > < / li >
< li class = "toc-title" > < a href = "#section-5" > Talking Documents< / a > < / li >
< li class = "toc-title" > < a href = "#section-6" > Performing the Bureaucratic Border(line)s< / a > < / li >
< li class = "toc-title" > < a href = "#section-7" > Wink!< / a > < / li >
< li class = "toc-title" > < a href = "#section-8" > Fair Leads< / a > < / li >
< li class = "toc-title" > < a href = "#section-9" > do you ever dream about work?< / a > < / li >
< li class = "toc-title" > < a href = "#section-10" > ⊞< / a > < / li >
< br >
< br >
< li class = "toc-title" > < a href = "#section-11" > Special Issues< / a > < / li >
< li class = "toc-title" > < a href = "#section-12" > Garden Leeszaal< / a > < / li >
< li class = "toc-title" > < a href = "#section-13" > Console< / a > < / li >
< li class = "toc-title" > < a href = "#section-14" > TTY< / a > < / li >
< li class = "toc-title" > < a href = "#section-15" > Colophon< / a > < / li >
< / ul >
< / section >
< div id = "contenteo" >
< section id = "section-2" class = "section" >
< h1 id = "introduction" > Introduction< / h1 >
< h2 id = "act-1." > Act 1.< / h2 >
< h3 id = "scene-1." > Scene 1.< / h3 >
< h5
id="internal.-a-reader-holds-a-book-in-their-hands.-the-first-page-of-the-book-is-opened-the-reader-holds-it-to-their-face-and-smells-the-paper-touches-it.-the-book-touches-them-back.">< em > Internal.
A reader holds a book in their hands. The first page of the book is
opened, the reader holds it to their face and smells the paper, touches
it. The book touches them back.< / em > < / h5 >
< p > < strong > the book: (whispering in the reader’ < / strong > Being
vulnerable means being transparent, open and brave, trusting others to
handle stories with care. By publicly sharing and processing our
narratives, we take ownership of our experiences while contributing to a
collective voice. Even when we incorporate stories from others, our
names remain attached to this collective creation: Ada, Aglaia, Irmak,
Stephen. We have created interfaces highlighting the balance between
communal sharing, individual responsibility and awareness.< / p >
< p > < strong > the reader:< / strong > Interfaces?< / p >
< p > < strong > the book:< / strong > Interfaces are boundaries that< br / >
connect and separate. They’
An interface can be an act, a story, a keyboard, a cake; It allows us to
be vulnerable together, to share our stories with and through each
other. I am a collection of these interfaces.< / p >
< p > < strong > the reader: (confused)< / strong > What do you mean a
collection, like a catalogue?< / p >
< div class = "xpub3" >
< p > < strong > the book:< / strong > Yeah I guess. I weave the words and the
works we created during…< / p >
< p > < strong > the reader:< / strong > we?< / p >
< p > < strong > the book:< / strong > …I mean the four of us, the students of
Experimental Publishing at the Piet Zwart Institute. From 2022 until
today, June 2024, we published three special issues together. We wrote
four theses and made four graduation projects. We grew our hair out and
cut it and grew it again and dyed it. We cared and cried for each other,
we brewed muddy coffee and bootlegged books.< / p >
< p > (The book tears up).< / p >
< p > Finishing a Master’
is a gentle archive, a memory of things that have been beautiful to
us.< / p >
< p > < strong > the reader: (sarcasm)< / strong > do you have a tissue, im soooo
touched.< / p >
< p > < strong > the book:< / strong > malaka, just read me.< / p >
< / div >
< / section >
< section id = "section-3" class = "section" >
< h1 id = "backplaces" > Backplaces< / h1 >
< p > vulnerable-interfaces.xpub.nl/backplaces< / p >
< p > Hi.< br / >
I made this play for you. It is a question, for us to hold together.< / p >
< p > Is all intimacy about bodies? What is it about our bodies that makes
intimacy? What happens when our bodies distance intimacy from us? This
small anthology of poems and short stories lives with these
questions—about having a body without intimacy and intimacy without a
body. This project is also a homage to everyone who has come before and
alongside me, sharing their vulnerability and emotions on the Internet.
I called the places where these things happen backplaces. They are
small, tender online rooms where people experiencing societally
uncomfortable pain can find relief, ease, and transcendence.< br / >
< / p >
< p > I made three backplaces for you to see, click, and feel: Solar
Sibling, Hermit Fantasy, and Cake Intimacies. Each of these is the
result of its own unique performance or project. Some of the stories I
will share carry memories of pain—both physical and emotional. As you
sit in the audience, know I am with you, holding your hand through each
scene. If the performance feels overwhelming at any point, you have my
full permission to step out, take a break, or leave. This is not
choreographed, and I care deeply for you.< br / >
< / p >
< figure >
< img src = "../images/../images/index.png"
alt="This is the Index, the stage of my play. Each felted item is an act." />
< figcaption aria-hidden = "true" > This is the Index, the stage of my play.
Each felted item is an act.< / figcaption >
< / figure >
< p > Solar Sibling is an online performance of shared loss about leaving
and siblings. This project used comments people left on TikTok poetry. I
extracted the emotions from these comments, mixed them with my own, and
crafted them into poems. It is an ongoing performance, ending only when
your feelings are secretly whispered to me. When you do, by typing into
the comment box, your feelings are sent to me and the first act closes
as the sun rises.< br / >
< / p >
< figure >
< img src = "../images/../images/solar-1.png"
alt="The initial comment shaped poems and their sun count." />
< figcaption aria-hidden = "true" > The initial comment shaped poems and
their sun count.< / figcaption >
< / figure >
< figure >
< img src = "../images/../images/solar-2.png"
alt="The fillable comment where you can whisper your feelings to me." />
< figcaption aria-hidden = "true" > The fillable comment where you can
whisper your feelings to me.< / figcaption >
< / figure >
< p > Hermit Fantasy is a short story about a bot who wants to be a hermit.
Inspired by an email response from a survey I conducted about receiving
emotional support on the Internet, this story explores the contradiction
of being online while wanting to disconnect. As an act it’
letters, click by click.< br / >
< / p >
< figure >
< img src = "../images/../images/one.png" alt = "The first letter." / >
< figcaption aria-hidden = "true" > The first letter.< / figcaption >
< / figure >
< figure >
< img src = "../images/../images/two.png" alt = "The second letter." / >
< figcaption aria-hidden = "true" > The second letter.< / figcaption >
< / figure >
< p > Cake Intimacies is a performance that took a year to bring together.
It is a small selection of stories people told me and I held to memory
and rewrote here. The stories come from two performances I hosted.
First, I asked participants to eat cake, sitting facing or away from
each other and sharing their stories about cake and the Internet. The
second performance was hosted at the Art Meets Radical Openness
Festival, as part of the Turning of the Internet workshop. For this
performance, I predicted participants’
using felted archetypes and received stories from their Internet past in
return. Now the stories are here, each of them a cake with a filling
that tells a story, merging the bodily with the digital and making a
mess of it all.< br / >
< / p >
< figure >
< img src = "../images/../images/pie.png"
alt="The first two stories and their memory illustrations." />
< figcaption aria-hidden = "true" > The first two stories and their memory
illustrations.< / figcaption >
< / figure >
< figure >
< img src = "../images/../images/phone-pie.png"
alt="The second stories in the way they were meant to be experienced." />
< figcaption aria-hidden = "true" > The second stories in the way they were
meant to be experienced.< / figcaption >
< / figure >
< p > The play ends as all plays do. The curtains close, the website stays
but the stories will never sound the same. For the final act, I give you
the stories. It’
Digital intimacies about the digital, our bodies and the cakes we eat.
For the last act, I ask you to eat digital stories. To eat a comment, to
eat a digital intimacy. Sharing an act of physical intimacy with
yourself and with me, by eating sweets together. Sweets about digital
intimacies that never had a body. There is no moral, no bow to wrap the
story in. A great big mess of transcendence into the digital, of
intimacy and of bodies. The way it always is. Thankfully.< br / >
< / p >
< figure >
< img src = "../images/../images/biscuit.png"
alt="Accept My Cookies, biscuits for the performance." />
< figcaption aria-hidden = "true" > Accept My Cookies, biscuits for the
performance.< / figcaption >
< / figure >
< / section >
< section id = "section-4" class = "section" >
< h1 id = "water-bodies" > < ?water bodies> < / h1 >
< h3 id = "a-narrative-exploration-of-divergent-digital-intimacies" > A
narrative exploration of divergent digital intimacies< / h3 >
< blockquote >
< p > Water, stories, the body,< br / >
all the things we do, are< br / >
mediums< br / >
that hide and show what’ < br / >
hidden.< br / >
(Rumi, 1995 translation)< / p >
< / blockquote >
< h2 id = "for-you" > ꙳for you< / h2 >
< p > All intimacy is about bodies. Is this true? Does it matter? I doubt
it. Do you know? Let’ < / p >
< p > Once, I thought that everything in the world was either one or zero
and that there was a harsh straight line between them. Then I found out
you could step or hop across the line, back and forth, if others showed
you how. Today, I am no less binary, no less interested in dichotomies,
but I am willing to dance through them if you are too. Can we dance
these dichotomies together, embracing the contradictions of the virtual
and physical, the comfortable and uncomfortable, intimate and
non-intimate? I can’
binary is too 1011000. I won’
I have no desire to. Instead, I hope we can cultivate the tension and
tenderness inherent in holding together incompatible truths because both
prove necessary.< / p >
< p > To dance through these dichotomies I will start in a specific
position, growing from Donna Haraway’ ’
essay, Haraway explores the concept of a cyborg as a rejection of
boundaries between humans, animals, and machines. A symbol for a
feminist posthuman theory that embraces the plasticity of identity.
Before she does all this dancing, however, she takes a strong stance of
blasphemy. She engages seriously with traditional notions of feminism
and identity but with irony, not apostasy, which is to say without full
rejection—without unbelief. My position as I jump will be the same as
hers, ironic faith. My mocking is grave but caring and my primary aim is
for us only to spin fast enough not to see the line anymore, while still
being able to see the binaries. It won’
will do my best to keep softening for you, I promise.< / p >
< p > I will show you a digital body, make it comfortable and then
uncomfortable, lightly intimate, and richly intimate. I have my own
story, my own digital body, of course. This is where I take my second
stance, however. This time, the position is Lauren Berlant’ ‘
Female Complaint’
autobiographies of a collective experience and uses the personal to
explain an intimate general experience. In our story, the difference
between my body and the collective digital body is unimportant, I hope
you see that. I will tell you my story if you know how to look, but I
will tell you through the stories of many others who shared them with
me. I have no other choice, every time I have tried to tell this story a
chorus of voices has come out.< / p >
< p > Some of the stories I will tell you will carry memories of pain;
physical and emotional. I will keep holding you while you hear this, but
your limbs may still feel too heavy to dance. In that case, I give you
my full permission to skip, jump, or lay down completely. This is not
choreographed and I care deeply for you.< / p >
< p > I love you and hope you see what I saw in these stories.< / p >
< p > Safe dreams now, I will talk to you soon.< / p >
< h2 id = "digital-bodies" > 0. DIGITAL BODIES< / h2 >
< blockquote >
< p > “I think the worst must be finished.< br / >
Whether I am right, don’ < br / >
Don’ < br / >
No ringlet of bruise,< br / >
no animal face, the waters salt me< br / >
and I leave it barefoot. I leave you, season< br / >
of still tongues, of roses on nightstands< br / >
beside crushed beer cans. I leave you< br / >
white sand and scraped knees. I leave< br / >
this myth in which I am pig, whose< br / >
death is empty allegory. I leave, I leave—< br / >
At the end of this story,< br / >
I walk into the sea< br / >
and it chooses< br / >
not to drown me.”< br / >
(Yun, 2020)< / p >
< / blockquote >
< h3 id = "a.-what-is-a-digital-body" > a. what is a digital body?< / h3 >
< p > A digital body is a body on the Internet. A body outside the internet
is simply a body. On the internet, discussions about corporeality
transcend the limitations of physicality, shaping and reshaping
narratives surrounding the self. This text explores the intricate
dynamics within these conversations, dancing at the interplay between
tangible bodies and their digital counterparts. The construction of a
digital body is intricately intertwined with these online dialogues,
necessitating engaged reconstructions of the narratives surrounding
physical existence. Yet, the resulting digital body is a complex and
contradictory entity, embodying the nuances of both its virtual and
tangible origins.< / p >
< p > There is a specific metaphor that would allow us to better carry
these contradictions as we further explore digital bodies. Do you
remember that dream you had about deep ocean pie? Allow me to remind
you.< / p >
< p > You were walking on the shore, slowly, during a summer that happened
a long time ago. Your skin was warm and you could feel the wet cool sand
sticking to your feet. The gentle lapping of the waves washed the sand
away as you walked towards the ocean. You stepped, stepped. Then dove.
Underwater, the sea unfolded deeper than you remembered. It was a
vibrant display of life: bright schools of small fish, and tall
colorful, waving corals. It looked like that aquarium you saw once as a
kid. Your arms moved confusingly through the water as if you were wading
through a soup or were terribly tired. On the sandy ocean floor, you saw
a dining table. It had a floating white tablecloth, one plate, a fork,
and a pie in the center of it, on a serving dish. You sat on a chair but
could not feel it underneath you. You ate a heaping slice of pie. It had
a buttery-cooked carrots filling. You woke up. In the world, the sun was
still timid and your bedroom thick with sleep. What a weird dream. You
rubbed your face, sat up on your bed, and drank the glass of water next
to you. You felt full, as if you just ate a plateful of carrot pie.< / p >
< p > There were two bodies in this story. An awake one and a dream one, an
ocean one. In dreams, bodies have their own set of rules, often blurring
the boundaries between waking and sleeping, wanting and fearing. Digital
bodies are very similar to dream bodies. They exhibit a similar fluidity
and abstraction, a defiance of traditional notions of physicality. They
share the blurring and inherent potential nature of dream bodies. They
are slower, stronger, and different. They switch and change and melt
into each other, they lose and regrow limbs, they run sluggishly and fly
smoothly. If we scream in our dreams, we sometimes wake up still
screaming. Our waking bodies react to our dream bodies, they have the
same tears, the same orgasms, the same drives.< / p >
< p > This is a story of two bodies, same but different, influenced but not
driven. A tangible body, full of fluids and organs, emotions and
feelings. Cartilage, bacteria, bones, and nerve endings. A digital body,
cable-veined and loud-vented, shiny and loading.< / p >
< p > The digital body is ethereal and abstracted, embarrassing, graphic,
and real but not physical.< / p >
< p > This is the beginning.< / p >
< h3 id = "b.-body-vs.-computer" > b. body vs. < / h3 >
< p > Framing the discourse around bodies on the internet as a clear-cut
dichotomy feels clunky in today’
available by body, cyborg dimensions of the internet of bodies, or
virtual and augmented realities, creating a complex interplay between
having a body and existing online.< / p >
< p > As intricate as this dance is now, it certainly did not begin that
way. It started with what felt like a very serious and tangible line
drawn by very serious tangible people; this is real life and this is
virtual life. Even people like Howard Rheingold, pioneers who approached
early virtual life with enthusiasm and care, couldn’
characterizing it as a “bloodless technological ritual” (1993).
Rheingold was an early member of The Whole Earth ’
a seminal virtual community built in the 1980s that was renowned for its
impact on digital culture and played a pivotal role in shaping what
would become the landscape of the Internet. Rheingold’
his experience on this primordial soup of the Internet offer insight
into the initial conceptualizations of online life by those joyfully
participating.< / p >
< p > In “The Virtual Community”, Rheingold offers a heartfelt tribute to
intimacy and affection through web- based interactions which, at the
time, were unheard of. He struggles in his efforts to highlight the
legitimacy of his connections, finding no way to do so except by
emphasizing their tangible bodily experiences. The community’
authenticity thus had to lie in the physical experiences of its members—
the visible bodies and hearable voices, the weddings, births, and
funerals (1993).< sup > < span class = "margin-note" > You’
good. Would you feel closer to me if you could hear my voice? Is my
voice a sound? Could it be a feeling?< / span > < / sup > < / p >
< p > Even then, and even by people with no interest in undermining the
value of the virtual, the distinction between physical and virtual was
confusing. Rheingold himself reinforces the boundary of body relations
and computer relations by referring to his family as a “flesh-and-blood
family’
Constantly interplaying digital connections with the physical
characteristics of the kind of connections people valued before the
internet.< sup > < span class = "margin-note" > I will be honest with you, I
have little patience for this recurring line of thought that seeks to
distinguish people’
love that is the valuable one and a virtual imaginary one that is feeble
and unworthy.< / span > < / sup > < / p >
< p > In any case, his primary interest seemed to be to emphasize computer
relations as valid forms of connection between bodies, not to talk of
any distinction quite yet. It’
fresh and new and the possibility to form close relations with strangers
online seems fragile and concerning yet exciting. This is the clearest
the distinction between in-real-life and online has ever been and it’
still fuzzy and unclear.< / p >
< p > At the same time and in the same digital space as Rheingold, there
was another man, a digital body being formed. This is our second story,
the ocean body we dreamt of earlier is now in a digital primordial soup,
questioning itself and stuck between staying and leaving. In this story,
its name is Tom Mandel and when he died, he did so on the Well.< / p >
< p > Mandel was a controversial and popular figure in this pioneering
virtual community. According to many other members, Tom Mandel embodied
the essence of the Well—its history, its voice, its attitude. Mandel’
snarky and verbose provocations started heated discussions, earning him
warnings such as “Don’
comments often stirred emotions that reminded people of family
arguments, fuelling an intimacy that was characteristic of the Well:
both public and solitary (Hafner, 1997).< / p >
< p > Until 1995, Mandel had done a quite rigorous job of keeping his body
separate from The Well and had never attended any of the physical
in-person meetings from the community. His only references to being a
body had been on the “health” online conference, where he often talked
about his illnesses. One day, after nearly a decade of daily
interaction, he posted he had got the flu and that he felt quite ill.
When people wished for him to get well soon, he replied he had gone to
get tested and was waiting for a diagnosis. This way, when cancer was
found in his lungs, the community was first to know. In the following
six months, as his illness progressed, the community followed closely
(Hafner, 1997). They were first to know when Nana, a community member
with whom he had had a publicly turbulent relationship, flew to
California to marry him. The community was a witness and is now an
archive of his declining wit as cancer spread to his brain and his
famously articulate and scathing comments got shorter, fearful, and more
tender.< sup > < span class = "margin-note" > Initially, when a member he often
argued with offered to pray for him Mandel had replied: “You can shovel
your self-aggrandizing sentiments up you wide ass sideways for the
duration as far as I’
ain’
dying this way. I am not very good at playing saint. Pray for me,
please.< / span > < / sup > < / p >
< p > Before he posted his final goodbye, he chose to do one last thing.
Together with another member, they programmed a bot that posted randomly
characteristic comments from Mandel on The Well—the Mandelbot. In the
topic he had opened to say goodbye, he posted this message about the
bot:< / p >
< blockquote >
< p > “I had another motive in opening this topic to tell the truth, one
that winds its way through almost everything I’
five months since my cancer was diagnosed. I figured that, like everyone
else, my physical self wasn’
going to have less time than actuarials allocateus [actually allocated].
But if I could reach out and touch everyone I knew on-line… I could toss
out bits and pieces of my virtual self and the memes that make up Tom
Mandel, and then when my body died, I wouldn’
Large chunks of me would also be here, part of this new space.” (Hafner,
1997)< / p >
< / blockquote >
< p > With the Mandelbot, Mandel found a way to deal with what he later
called his grieving for the community, with which he could not play
anymore once his own body died. By doing so, he was starting to blend
the boundaries of intimacy through computers and bodies, driven by his
love and grief.< sup > < span class = "margin-note" > It’
lack of relevance that I am not showing you Mandel’
It’
community he loved and cared for and that pain was felt in every
word.< / span > < / sup > < / p >
< p > When he talked about the bot in previous messages, it sounded almost
like a joke. A caring haunting of the platform, to keep his persona
alive for the community in a way that could be quite horrific for those
grieving. In his admission though it becomes clear that this was closer
to an attempt to deal with his grief around losing the community, his
unreadiness to let go of a place he loved so dearly. A place just as
real in emotion, that was built in part by Mandel’
persona.< / p >
< p > In a tribute posted after his death, fellow Well member and
journalist Andrew Leonard tried to convey his own sense of blended
physicality and emotion.< / p >
< blockquote >
< p > “Sneer all you want at the fleshlessness of online community, but on
this night, as tears stream down my face for the third straight evening,
it feels all too real.” (Andrew Leonard, 1995)< / p >
< / blockquote >
< h3 id = "c.-bot-feelings" > c. < / h3 >
< p > An internet body has bot-feelings if allowed to. Let me explain.< / p >
< p > A bot functions as a different entity from a cyborg, as it does not
attempt to emulate a human body but rather human action and readiness.
Its role is to mirror human behavior online, simulating how a physical
body might act, what it would click on, and what would it say. On social
media, bots engage in a kind of interpretative dance of human
interaction, performing based on instructions provided by
humans.< sup > < span class = "margin-note" > The first bot communities on the
internet are now born, half- mistakenly. They are always spiritual
communities posting religious images created by artificial intelligence,
all the comments echoing choirs of bots praising. Amen, amen, amen. I am
not naive, I know they are built by humans but it is this performance of
religiosity that I am interested in, and how little humanity is shown in
it. It is something else.< / span > < / sup > < / p >
< p > Unlike an internet body, which represents the virtual embodiment of a
person, a bot doesn’
alongside many other bots, all under a fake name and photo but nothing
else to give the illusion of humanity. When an internet body has
bot-feelings, it is a disruptive performance. They are feelings that do
not attempt to be human body feelings, they exist as their own genuine
virtual expression.< / p >
< p > In “Virtual Intimacies”, McGlotten also incidentally argued that a
virtual body has bot-feelings (2013). He described the virtual as
potential, as a transcendent process of actualization, making it into,
generally, a description of bots. Internet bodies, as virtual, would be
by this understanding also charged with the constant immanent power to
act and to feel like a human body. It is a constant state of becoming,
of not- quite-pretending but never fully being anything either.< / p >
< p > Most of the time we can tell disembodied bots online from tangible
people and as such they have the potential to be bodies, without ever
trying to be.< / p >
< p > Of course, when McGlotten described the virtual as such he placed it
in a dichotomy, once again, against the “Intimacies” which are the other
side of his book. The emphasis here lies in intimacy being an embodied
feeling and sense and a carnal one at that. Virtual intimacies are, by
this definition, an inherent failed contradiction. However, McGlotten
plays with the real and non-real in new ways, using the text to
highlight how virtual intimacy is similar to physical intimacy and then,
even more, blurring as he shows the already virtual in physical
intimacies. Applying this to a body, rather than an affective
experience, works just the same.< / p >
< p > McGlotten uses a conceptualization of the virtual based on the
philosopher Deleuze’ < sup > < span class = "margin-note" > A step in a step in
a step, sorry.< / span > < / sup > which can be used to refer to a virtual body
as well. The virtual is in this case a cluster of waiting, dreaming, and
remembering, embodying potential. Something that is constantly becoming,
an object and also the subject attributed to it (2001). An internet body
with its bot-feelings is a body in the process of being one, acting as
one, an ideal of one beyond what is physical but including its
possibility.< / p >
< p > Going a step further in McGlotten’
also plays into how virtual intimacies mirror queer intimacies as they
approach normative ideals but “can never arrive at them”. Both queer and
virtual relations are imagined by a greater narrative as fantastical,
simulated, immaterial, and artificial—poor imitations and perversions of
a heterosexual, monogamous, and procreative marital partnership (2013).
A virtual body is similarly immanent, with both potential and corruption
at the same time. It carries all the neoliberal normative power of
freedom that a queer body can carry today but also reflects the unseemly
fleshly reality of having one.< / p >
< p > This is where the story continues. The body from the dream ocean
leaves the primordial soup of the internet to stage a disruptive
performance. It moves from potential creation to a wild spring river. A
fluid being, that exists simultaneously inside and outside normative
constructions. It channels deviant feelings and transcendental opinions
about the collective’
navigate their physicality. Both virtual and queer intimacies highlight
the constructed nature of identity and desire. They disrupt the notion
of a fixed, essential self, instead embracing the multiplicity and
complexity inherent in human experience. This destabilization of
identity opens up possibilities for self-expression and connection,
creating spaces where individuals can redefine themselves beyond the
constraints of societal expectations while still technically under its
watchful eye. In essence, the parallels between virtual and queer
intimacies underscore the radical potential of both to disrupt and
reimagine the norms that govern our understanding of relationships,
bodies, and identity. They invite us to question the rigid binaries and
hierarchies that structure our society and to embrace the fluidity and
possibility inherent in the human experience.< / p >
< h2 id = "digital-comfort" > 1.DIGITAL COMFORT< / h2 >
< p > The only laws: Be radiant. Be heavy. Be green.< / p >
< p > Tonight, the dead light up your mind like an image of your mind on a
scientist’ ‘ ’ – ’ < / p >
< blockquote >
< p > “In the town square, in the heart of night (a delicacy like the heart
of an artichoke), a man dances cheek-to-cheek with the infinite
blue.”< br / >
(Schwartz, 2022)< / p >
< / blockquote >
< h3 id = "a.-comfort-care" > a. comfort care< / h3 >
< p > Let’ ’
while you wipe away the wear of battery fatigue. And why not encourage
it to take strolls through the network, it might be good for it.< / p >
< p > But what if it falls ill? What if its sickness is inherent, designed
to echo like the distorted reflection of rippling water a corrupted,
isolated, and repulsive physical form? Then we must comfort care for
it.< / p >
< p > Comfort care is a key concept in healthcare, described as an art. It
is the simple but not easy art of performing comforting actions by a
nurse for a patient (Kolcaba, 1995). The nurse is in this story an
artist full of intention, using the medium of comforting actions to
produce the artwork of comfort for the uncomfortable. Subtle,
subjective, and thorough. However, achieving comfort for another is far
from straightforward. It demands addressing not only the physical but
also the psychospiritual, environmental, and socio-cultural dimensions
of distress, each requiring its blend of relief, ease, and transcendence
(Kolcaba, 1995).< / p >
< p > In moments of need, digital comfort may become the only care certain
digressive bodies receive. When the distress a body is in becomes too
culturally uncomfortable, no nurse will come to check on it.< / p >
< p > If care is offered, it’
divergent body back into expected standards of normalcy and ability.
This leaves those with non-conforming bodies isolated, ashamed, and
yearning for connection and acceptance.< sup > < span class = "margin-note" > I
am talking here about the distress caused by mental health issues that
have direct connections to physicality—self- injuring in any direct
form; food, drugs, pain. The culturally uncomfortable diseases, the
it’
hidden topic of this text because I cared more about the pain
surrounding them and the reasons to hide rather than the grim
physicality of them all.< / span > < / sup > < / p >
< p > In the depths of isolation and confusion, marginalized bodies often
look for belonging and understanding online. Gravitating towards one
another with a hunger born of desperation, forming intimate bonds
through shared pain. Through a shared sense of unwillingness, a lack of
desire, and a desperate need for physical assimilation with the
norm.< / p >
< p > The healthy body, the normal body, the loved body.< / p >
< p > On the internet, these digital bodies claw onto each other, holding
each other close and comfort-caring for one another. The spaces where
this happens are rooms, or corners of the internet that I’
places. Back places were initially defined by the sociologist Goffman as
symbolic spaces where stigmatized people did not need to hide their
stigma(1963). In our story, backplaces are small rooms online, tender
soft spaces reserved by those in terrible psychological pain themselves,
where they can find relief, ease, and transcendence.< / p >
< p > Of course, when we speak of digital bodies, their physicality is not
relevant. To comfort care for a digital body one would thus need to
provide relief, ease, and transcendence for the mental, emotional, and
spiritual; through the digital environment of the body and the
interpersonal cultural relations of the individual. As with any place of
healing, however, it is a transient place. It is an achy place, for the
last step of the journey will see them leave the community and
compassion that saw and sustained them.< / p >
< p > There is no other way for divergent people.< / p >
< h3 id = "b.-uncomfortable-comfort" > b. uncomfortable comfort< / h3 >
< p > In the past and the present, social scientists have studied the
people in the corners of the internet, characterizing these spaces
between people as deviant. Like children lifting stones to look at the
bugs underneath— simultaneously repulsed and fascinated by the coherence
discovered where once was separation. A partition that was then
reinforced by the scientists themselves as they began documenting the
bugs’
moments, and asked again and again what made them so different. The more
they probed, the more they made sure to separate their behavior from the
norm to place the deviants against (Adler and Adler, 2005, 2008; Smith,
Wickes & Underwood, 2013).< / p >
< p > The concept of deviance, particularly concerning what people do with
their bodies and how their bodies behave, I find inherently flawed.
Observing from an artificial external standpoint only serves to further
alienate those already marginalized. I like to approach my research into
the intimacy and comfort care expressed in marginalized digital
communities without the alienation of social science. There are many
approaches one can take if one wishes to avoid this, and the one I am
choosing to borrow is a mathematical approach to anthropology. I would
like to borrow from mathematician Jörn Dunkel’
formation. It’
behavior through their similarities, not differences. This includes
specificities in atypicality, of course, but also the distinctions
between me as the writer and them as the writer. You as the reader and
you as the community. Me and you, as a whole. Both exist, both separate
but in what is not of such importance.< / p >
< blockquote >
< p > “Though many of these systems are different, fundamentally, we can
see similarities in the structure of their data. It’
differences. What’ ’
similar.”< br / >
(Chu & Dunkel, 2021)< / p >
< / blockquote >
< p > Individuals who forge and inhabit these communities, fostering
tender, intimate connections amongst themselves, are not deviant but
rather divergent. Deviance involves bifurcation, a split estuary from
the river of appropriate cultural behavior.< sup > < span
class="margin-note">Of course, the river itself is not a river; it’
many confused streams that believe themselves both the same and
separate. I don’ ’ ’
river of normativity and I’
you.< / span > < / sup > < / p >
< p > Divergence can be so much more than that. In mathematics, a divergent
series extends infinitely without converging to a finite limit. A
repetition of partial sums with no clear ending, never reaching zero.
Mathematician Niels Abel once said that “divergent series are in general
something fatal and it is a shame to base any proof on them. [..] The
most essential part of mathematics has no foundation”(1826). Drawing a
parallel to social relations would then imply that there is no end to
divergence, too many paradoxes in the foundation of normativeness to
base anything on it.< / p >
< p > Harmonic series are, on the other hand, also divergent series. They
are infinite series formed by the summation of all positive unit
fractions, named after music harmonics. The wavelengths of a vibrating
string are a harmonic series. These series also find application in
architecture, establishing harmonious relationships. Despite their
integral role in human aesthetics, all harmonic series diverge,
perpetually expanding without ever concluding. They embody a richness
that transcends conventional boundaries, blending into one another
infinitely.< / p >
< figure >
< img src = "../images/../images/../images/Harmonic-series.png"
alt="Figure 1 - Harmonic Series to 32 (Hyacint,2017)." />
< figcaption aria-hidden = "true" > Figure 1 - Harmonic Series to 32
(Hyacint,2017).< / figcaption >
< / figure >
< p > By likening digital bodies to divergent series, we embrace the
complexity and infinite possibilities arising from their
interconnectedness and deviation from the norm. However, it’
note that the divergence I’
accompanied by the requirement of bodily discomfort. There are other
forms of divergence, ways to have different bodies that necessitate
creating spaciousness around normativity to allow them grace to
grow.< / p >
< p > The divergent digital bodies we are dancing with and caring for,
however, are of a particular type. If we were to go back to our water
stories, we’
ones. Cold, deep streams, hard to follow, hard to swim in. Their
divergence from the norm makes them so.< / p >
< p > They have intricate relationships with themselves, existing in
unstainable forms devoid of comfort, nourishment, or thriving. What does
comfort mean for a body whose whole existence is uncomfortable?
Moreover, what if the comfort care performed for these divergent bodies
makes them too comfortable being in their pained state of self? Could
they be?< sup > < span class = "margin-note" > I heard the idea of living
questions for the first time in “Letters to A Young Poet” by Rainer
Maria Rilke and then again on the podcast On Being with Krista Tippet.
It may be a bit transparent but this entire text is informed by the
concept of keeping the unsolved in your heart and learning to love it.
Not searching for the answers for we cannot live them yet. The point is
to live it all. It could be that at some point we will live our way to
an answer but it is feeling the questions alive within us that is
important. Do you?< / span > < / sup > < / p >
< p > Caring for a digital body involves providing it with space to live,
giving its experimental bot-feelings tender attention, and revealing
your own vulnerable digital body in response. It’
audience, hands to hold, eyes that meet theirs in understanding. A
rehearsal room, a pillow, a mirror. These rooms, backplaces scattered
across the internet, are hidden enough to allow the divergent to
comfort- care for one another, sometimes to the point where it is only
the same type of divergent digital bodies reflecting back at each
other.< / p >
< p > So far I have talked fondly of divergence and the harmony of
divergent series, and the need to have no finite ending. I’
tell you a different story now. Divergent digital bodies are, by this
point in our text, built and alive as they can be. They are many, they
are together and seeing each other, producing harmonic waves. They are
in backplaces on the internet, but they are less safe than they seem.
They are themselves resonant echo chambers, with an ongoing risk of
catastrophic acoustic resonance.< / p >
< p > Acoustic resonance is what happens when an acoustic system amplifies
sound waves whose frequency matches one of its natural frequencies of
vibration. The instrument of amplification is important for the harmonic
series, for the music must not match exactly. An exact match will break
it for the object seeks out its resonance. Resonating at the precise
resonant frequency of a glass will shatter it. Digital bodies meet in
these rooms, amplifying their own waves seeking resonance but the risk
of an exact match is that it may shatter them. These spaces full of
divergent digital bodies quickly grow unstable, tethering echo chambers.
Rooms full of reflections, transforming what was once individual pain
into a mirrored loop of anguish. Caring for your own and others’
becomes increasingly difficult, making permanent residence in the mirror
room unbearable. You all know you must leave before you meet your exact
resonance.< / p >
< h3 id = "c.-unbearable-intimacy" > c. < / h3 >
< p > This is the end of the story. Our digital bodies have a shape, a
sense of life and death, and someone to care for us and to care for. We
are alive and have found intimacy with each other.< / p >
< p > We live in the backplaces, hiding and being hidden online as we have
been for years. We used to be on invitation-only forums,
password-protected bulletin boards, or encrypted hashtags. Now we are
alive in the glitches between pixels, in a shared language of numbers
and acronyms and misdirection. Avoiding a content moderation algorithm,
always hunting the dashboards of social media websites for visible pain
it can cure by erasure. We cannot tell you where to find you or it might
too. We try to stay alive, to hold each other, hiding behind code words,
fake names, and photos. We care for each other as best we can, the blind
leading the blind, the sick caring for the sick. We have brought our
unseemliness, our gory gross bodies to each other and found tender
intimacy and understanding.< / p >
< p > On good days, dashboards are full of goodbyes and my heart swells
with hope, for those of us who make it and for the small bright light
telling us that we may be one of them. At the same time, some of us
leave only to come back ghosts of ourselves, hunting threads with the
empty hope of missionaries.< / p >
< p > Don’ ’ < / p >
< p > Most of us scoff at this. The idea of leaving only to come back and
tell people you left is uncomfortable, the failed progress that washes
away hope. A healed patient who regularly comes back to the hospital to
encourage the sick, who wish to be anywhere but there. The genuine love
and care within these communities transpire better under goodbye posts.
When people do heal and shed their accounts’
surrounded by all those who once cared for the digital body within
it.< / p >
< p > I’ < / p >
< p > Recover, don’ ’
come back.< / p >
< p > I had a conversation with a friend who once lived in these spaces
between letters but has since moved outside them. When asked, he
mentioned he could only find recovery by leaving that community. His
body has changed since now it is the spitting image of a standard,
healthy body. I didn’ ’ ’
like his new body and preferred the divergent one he once built himself.
Why leave then? Why did you stop?< / p >
< p > Because that was no life.< / p >
< p > Now life sparkles, everything feels brighter and more exciting. I got
my will to live back. Before, there was nothing but my body. I was
willing to die for it.< / p >
< p > He pulls up the sleeve of his shirt to show me his shoulder, where he
has tattooed a symbol for a community friend who died.< / p >
< p > I hope I never go back. I miss them every day.< / p >
< p > This is the last dichotomy. For the divergent digital body can’
in a Backplace for very long, the intimacy of it is unbearable. It is an
intimacy that floods, and overruns. In their definition of intimacy in
the context of a public surrounding a cultural phenomenon, the author
Lauren Berlant denotes that intimacy itself always requires hopeful
imagination. It requires belief in the existence of an ideal other who
is emotionally attuned to one’
conditioned by the same longings and with willing reciprocity
(2008).< sup > < span class = "margin-note" > If we were to be honest, the
entire exercise of writing this for you requires this very
faith.< / span > < / sup > < / p >
< p > In the context of the intimacy of a Backplace, where divergent
digital bodies have formed a community around existing outside the
healthy and standard, longing and hopeful intimacy becomes a heavy-
hearted and cardinal concept. Being in these rooms and finding care and
love for others like you can be so uncomfortable when the longings,
experiences, and fantasies you are sharing are centered around pain. The
shared cultural experience of existing as a collective divergent digital
body promises a fantasy of belonging, a collective hope, and commitment
that is extremely fragile.< / p >
< p > There is a duality then, if not a dichotomy. As a divergent body,
there is nothing you crave more than to be seen and to be loved in a
space where you are safe, where the faces looking at you are not
repulsed but warm with familiarity. Yet, it is this very warmth that
becomes unbearable and an inherently traumatic intimacy. Being loved at
your worst, at your most embarrassing, cultural borderline self is an
agonizing duality to deal with. McGlotten, who was referenced earlier
concerning the potential of bot-feelings of a digital body, now comes
back to remind us of their impossibility. In his book, he talks of a
digital intimacy that inundates us and is both a source of connection
and disconnection (McGlotten, 2013). We are looking at a smaller scale
than he does, but intimacy in the context of shared vulnerability can be
a need just as intolerable.< / p >
< p > Certain kinds of witnessing can become curses, shivers of resonance
so close to an explosion of glass if only you strike the cord that will
keep me going. Certain kinds of divergence can only end with leaving or
death, truth be told. People in these bodies know this, even if the
digital bodies behave as if there is hope in a future where the
divergence brings joy to one’
vulnerability itself then, is unbearable. I need you to see me, I need
you, who are just like me at my worst, to love me. When you do, I can’
stand it. It ruins both of us to be seen this way and we need it so
desperately. It has to exist and yet it can’ < / p >
< p > I leave even though I love all of your digital bodies. I leave
because I love you, little digital body and you are me.< / p >
< h2 id = "a-life-to-be-had" > 2. A LIFE TO BE HAD< / h2 >
< p > < sup > < span class = "margin-note" > Was this the end of this story? In the
epilogue, you sit your body down and enter your computer. The air coming
in from the window smells wet and earthy, new. The sun shines low on the
horizon. You log in to the internet and realize you are being told a
story. You start to listen, carefully and, full of love, touch the story
to let it know you are there. Delicate-fingered, curious like a child
holding a fallen bird. I hold you and the story tentatively.< / p >
< p > I don’
bodies are stories, like physical bodies are, like dreams are, and like
water is.< / p >
< p > Stories that are hard to tell and hard to hear and even more, maybe,
hard to understand. I have loved these stories and I have loved telling
them to you. I hope you understand that my goal was for you to live
these questions, to feel these stories in their confusion. My digital
body, my bot-feelings, my divergent communities. I have given them to
you, so they may live longer, like an obsolete but beloved cyborg shown
in a museum.< / p >
< p > Look: I was here, Look: I was loved, Look: I was saved.< / p >
< p > The digital bodies that kept me alive, kept me from becoming fully a
machine are no longer around in these online rooms. They are in
different places, being touched by tentative hands, being loved for more
than their divergence. I am too.< / p >
< p > The rooms, the backplaces, however, are still full of others,
divergent digital bodies who did not leave, who keep caring for each
other at the bottom of the whirlpool. There is no happy ending because
there is no ending. They keep typing and hoping, writing their
collective pain down on keyboards that transmit love letters to each
other. I am not embarrassed by my care for you, but you may be so if it
helps. I know how overwhelming intimacy can be.< / p >
< p > Telling you these stories was important for me, so much so that I
will tell you so many more in a different place if you wish to listen to
me longer. With this story, I dreamt of a digital body for you. It came
from an ocean of dreams, into a primordial soup that gave it enough
shape to become wild rivers, deep streams, sound waves. It flooded and
now, it leaves. A digital body that grew its own feelings, looked for
others like it, and realized its divergence and the need to leave. A
dream body, a primordial body, a disruptive body, a divergent body, and
now, a leaving body. This last story, however, of the leaving and loving
body, is yet to be told.< / p >
< p > The sun is now almost up, and the birds are alive and awake, telling
each other stories just outside the room. We don’
left. I have made you something, to tell your digital body the stories
of the leaving and loving body. It is a webpage, the address is
https://vulnerable-interfaces.xpub.nl/backplaces/.< / p >
< p > You open the page, and you are asked to write the characters you see
in a captcha. E5qr7. eSq9p. 8oc8y. Fuck. You try not to panic, but you
know you have been detected.< / p >
< p > You pack up your things: the pie I made you, a love letter, two hands
made out of felt, a star, a door, a stuffed animal; and you leave
again.< / span > < / sup > < / p >
< h2 id = "references" > references< / h2 >
< p > Adler, P.A. and Adler, P. (2008) ‘
Deviant communities, relationships, and selves’
31(1), pp. – < / p >
< p > Berlant, L.G. (2008) The female complaint the unfinished business of
sentimentality in American culture. Durham: Duke University Press.< / p >
< p > Chu, J. (2021) Looking for similarities across Complex Systems, MIT
News | Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Available at:
https://news.mit.edu/2021/jorn-dunkel-complex- systems-0627 (Accessed:
08 March 2024).< / p >
< p > Deleuze, G., Boyman, A. and Rajchman, J. (2001) Pure immanence:
Essays on a life. New York: Zone Books.< / p >
< p > Goffman, E. (2022) Stigma: Notes on the management of spoiled
identity. London: Penguin Classics. Hafner, K. (1997) The epic saga of
the well, Wired. Available at: https://www.wired.com/1997/05/ff-well/
(Accessed: 01 February 2024).< / p >
< p > Haraway, D.J. (2000) ‘
socialist-feminism in the late twentieth century’
pp. – < / p >
< p > Hyacint (2017) Harmonic series to 32,
https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Harmonic_series_to_32.svg.< / p >
< p > Kolcaba, K.Y. and Kolcaba, R.J. (1991) ‘
comfort’ –
doi:10.1111/j.1365- 2648.1991.tb01558.x.< / p >
< p > Leonard, A. (no date) All Too Real, https://people.well.com/.
Available at: https://people.well.com/user/cynsa/tom/tom14.html
(Accessed: 01 April 2024).< / p >
< p > McGlotten, S. (2013) Virtual intimacies: Media, affect, and queer
sociality [Preprint]. doi:10.1353 book27643.< / p >
< p > Rumi, J. al-Din and Barks, C. (1995) ‘ ’
Rumi. New< / p >
< p > Schwartz, C. (2022) Lecture on Loneliness, Granta. Available at:
https://granta.com/lecture-on-loneliness/ (Accessed: 08 March 2024).< / p >
< p > Smith, N., Wickes, R. and Underwood, M. (2013) ‘
marginalised identity in pro-anorexia and fat acceptance
cybercommunities’ –
doi:10.1177/1440783313486220.< / p >
< p > Yun, J. (2020) ‘ ’
University of Nebraska Press.< / p >
< h1 id = "water-bodies-1" > < ?/water bodies> < / h1 >
< / section >
< section id = "section-5" class = "section" >
< h1 id = "talking-documents" > Talking Documents< / h1 >
< h3 id = "section" > < / h3 >
< figure >
< img src = "../images/../images/../aglaia/wijnhaven.JPG"
alt="WDKA- Winjhaven Building- February 2024- reading of act0 and act1" />
< figcaption aria-hidden = "true" > WDKA- Winjhaven Building- February 2024-
reading of act0 and act1< / figcaption >
< / figure >
< p > This project appeared as a need to explore potential bureaucratic
dramaturgies within the educational institution I was part as a student.
I was curious about educational bureaucratic mechanisms being driven by
smaller-scale paperwork struggles and peers’
experiences. However, unexpected emergencies - due to my eviction on the
31st of January 2024 - placed centrally my personal struggles unfolded
in parallel with the making period. I ended up conducting accidentally
auto-ethnography as the project was dynamically being reshaped due to
the material constraints of the bureaucratic timeline.< / p >
< p > Talking Documents are performative bureaucratic text inspections that
intend to create temporal public interventions through performative
readings. I utilized the paperwork interface of my smaller-scale story
in order to unravel and foreground questions related to the role of
bureaucracy as less material border and as a regulatory mechanism
reflecting narratives, ideologies, policies.< / p >
< p > Central element of this project is a seven-act scenario that
construct my personal paperwork story, unraveling the actual struggles
of my communication with the government. The body of the text of the
“theatrical” script is sourced from the original documents, email
threads as well as recordings of the conversations with the municipality
of Rotterdam I documented and archived throughout this period. I
preserved the sequence of the given sentences and by discarding the
graphic design of the initial forms, I structured and repurposed the
text into a playable scenario.< / p >
< figure >
< img src = "../images/../images/../aglaia/call1.png"
alt="Act 2 “Call with the municipality about the rejection of my application”" />
< figcaption aria-hidden = "true" > Act 2 “Call with the municipality about
the rejection of my application”< / figcaption >
< / figure >
< p > < img src = "../images/../images/../aglaia/call2.png" / > < / p >
< figure >
< img src = "../images/../images/../aglaia/dereg1.png"
alt="Act 7 “Confirmation document of my deregistration”" />
< figcaption aria-hidden = "true" > Act 7 “Confirmation document of my
deregistration”< / figcaption >
< / figure >
< p > < img src = "../images/../images/../aglaia/dereg2.png" / > < / p >
< p > I perceive the document as a unit and as the fundamental symbolic
interface of the bureaucratic network. The transformation of the
materiality of a document into a scenario to be enacted collectively in
public aims to examine these artifacts and highlight the shrouded
performative elements of these processes.< / p >
< p > I see the collective readings of these scenarios as a way of instant
publishing and as a communal tool of inspecting bureaucratic bordering
infrastructures. How can these re-enactments be situated in different
institutional contexts and examine their structures? I organized a
series of performative readings of my own bureaucratic literature in
different spaces and contexts, pubic and semi-public WDKA, Art Meets
Radical Openness Festival in Linz, the City Hall of Rotterdam where I
invited people to perform the play together, like a tiny theater.< / p >
< figure >
< img src = "../images/../images/../aglaia/AMRO_all.jpg"
alt="Art Meets Radical Openness Festival –
< figcaption aria-hidden = "true" > Art Meets Radical Openness Festival –
Linz, Austria - May 2024 - Reading Act 2 and Act3 in the
tent< / figcaption >
< / figure >
< p > < img src = "../images/../images/../aglaia/AMRO_kamo.jpg" / > < / p >
< figure >
< img src = "../images/../images/../aglaia/gemeente_front.jpg"
alt="City Hall Rotterdam - May 2024 - Reading of Act 5 and Act 6" />
< figcaption aria-hidden = "true" > City Hall Rotterdam - May 2024 - Reading
of Act 5 and Act 6< / figcaption >
< / figure >
< figure >
< img src = "../images/../images/../aglaia/statue_garden.jpg" alt = "The garden of Gemeente" / >
< figcaption aria-hidden = "true" > The garden of Gemeente< / figcaption >
< / figure >
< p > The marginal voices of potential applicants are embodying and
enacting a role. “The speech does not only describe but brings things
into existence”(Austin, 1975). My intention was to stretch the limits of
dramaturgical speech through vocalizing a document and turn individual
administrative cases into public ones. How do the inscribed words in the
documents are not descriptive but on the contrary “are instrumentalized
in getting things done”(Butler,1997). Words as active agents. Bodies as
low-tech “human microphones”. A group of people performs the
bureaucratic scenario in chorus, out loud, in the corridor of the
school’
of the municipality building.< / p >
< p > I documented and recorded these public acts and I re-created the
collectively voiced scenario. This audio piece is a constellation of
different recordings and soundscapes of these public moments, a vocal
archive, published in the graduation exhibition of XPUB in 2024.< / p >
< / section >
< section id = "section-6" class = "section" >
< h1 id = "performing-the-bureaucratic-borderlines" > Performing the
Bureaucratic Border(line)s< / h1 >
< hr / >
< h2 id = "introduction" > introduction< / h2 >
< p > This thesis is an assemblage< sup > < span class = "margin-note" > I live
somewhere in the margins of scattered references, footnotes, citations,
examinations embracing the inconvenience of talking back to myself, to
the reader and to all those people whose ideas gave soul to the text. I
shelter in the borderlands of the pages my fragmented thoughts, flying
words, introspections, voices. Enlightenment and inspiration given by
the text “Dear Science” written by Katherine McKittrick.< / span > < / sup > of
thoughts, experiences, interpretations, intuitive explorations of what
borders are, attempting to unleash a conversation concerning the
entangled relation between material injurious borders and bureaucracy. I
unravel empirically the thread of how borders as entities are manifested
and (de)established. How does the lived experience of crossing multiple
borders change and under what conditions?< / p >
< p > The eastern Mediterranean borderland< sup > < span class = "margin-note" > I
use the word borderland to refer to Greece as a (mostly) transit zone in
the migrants’ ’ < / span > < / sup > , I
happened to come from, proves to be one of Europe’
towards specific ethnic groups. The embodied experience of borders and
practices of (im)mobility change radically depending on the various
identities of the people crossing them. As I moved to the Netherlands I
started more actively perceiving bureaucracy as another multi-layered
border. I was wondering how this situation is shifted and transformed
moving towards the European North. What is the role of bureaucracy and
how it could be perceived as a mechanism of repulsion for some bodies -
a camouflaged border?< / p >
< p > But what is my starting point and where does my precarious body fit
within the borders that I am touching? The language of the
administrative document is rigid and hurtful but myself lies between the
margins of these lines.< / p >
< p > This thesis does not consist of an excessive inquiry about the
profoundly complex concepts of borders and bureaucracy. On the contrary,
it is initiated by personal concerns, awareness and my positioning. I
choose to structure my argument and talk through a personal process that
is being unfolded in parallel with the writing period. Accordingly,
these words are dynamically being reshaped due to the material
constraints of the bureaucratic timeline. A more distant approach became
personal and tangible with auto-ethnographical< sup > < span
class="margin-note">I perceive auto-ethnography as a way to place
myself, my lived experiences, my identities, reflections in the
(artistic) research and talk through them about structures and within
the structures of social, cultural, political frameworks.< / span > < / sup >
elements as I was trying to squish myself and my urgencies under these
thresholds and fit the A4 document lines.< / p >
< p > I would like at this point to acknowledge and state explicitly my
privilege recognizing the different levels of otherness produced by the
several bordering mechanisms. My European machine-readable passport as a
designed artifact dictates and facilitates the easiness of my mobility.
In other (many) cases the lack of it creates profoundly a severe
barrier< sup > < span class = "margin-note" > “Passports still function as a
technology to control movement. Technologies like RFID chips and face
recognition are part of a control system for digital state surveillance.
Designing a passport is relative to design a surveillance tool. The
analysis of passport designs rarely looks at the social consequences of
identification, control, and restriction of movement, which can have
violent consequences.” (Ruben Pater, 2021)< / span > < / sup > . I do not intend
in any respect to compare my case to the lived experiences and struggles
of migrants and refugees. I utilize the paperwork interface of my
smaller-scale story in order to unravel and foreground the
aforementioned questions.< / p >
< p > This thesis is very much indebted to some text-vehicles that
mobilized my reflections and nourished the writing process. “Illegal
Traveller, an autoethnography of borders” and “Waiting, a Project in
conversation” both written by Shahram Khosravi as well as “The Utopia of
Rules: On Technology, Stupidity, and the Secret Joys of Bureaucracy” by
the anarchist anthropologist David Graeber. Graeber initiated his
research utilizing the horrendous prolonged bureaucratic processes he
had to follow in order to place his sick mother in a nursing home. In
parallel, Khosravi’ ‘
experience of borders’
migrants. I found valuable and inspiring in both texts the personal
filter through which they articulate their positioning and develop
critique.< / p >
< p > I follow a zoom-in approach in mapping my thoughts beginning from the
large-scale rigid border as entity and ending up at the document as the
smallest designed artifact of the bureaucratic labyrinth.< / p >
< p > In the first chapter, I touch the concept of borders in relation to
migration. I begin with a personal inspection and comprehension of
material borders as entities. Alongside, I interweave in the text the
concept of hospitality as a cultural attitude towards ‘ ’
the state’
I hold in my hands reflects positions on the government’
hospitality and what constraints it dictates.< / p >
< p > In the second chapter, I unpack bureaucracy and focus on its
bordering function. From migration ghost bureaucracies to the
educational bureaucracies of my surroundings to even smaller components
of this apparatus. I end up analyzing the document as a unit within this
complex network. Through the “interrogation” of the form as an artifact
are emerging issues related to language, graphic design and
transparency, universality, and underlying violence.< / p >
< p > In the third and last chapter, I bridge the written text with the
ongoing project that runs simultaneously as part of my graduation work
in Experimental Publishing, where I mainly speak through my prototypes.
Talking documents(5) are performative bureaucratic text inspections,
vocal and non-vocal, that intend to create temporal public interventions
through performative readings. The intention is to underline how the
vocalization of bureaucracies as a tool can potentially reveal their
territorial exclusive function and provide space for the invisible
vulnerability.< / p >
< hr / >
< h2 id = "borders" > borders< / h2 >
< blockquote >
< p > “on the other side is the river< br / >
and I cannot cross it< br / >
on the other side is the sea< br / >
I cannot bridge it”< br / >
(Anzaldua, 1987)< / p >
< / blockquote >
< p > How a border is defined? How, as an entity, does it define? How is it
performed? I used to think of borders in a material concrete way, coming
from a country of the European South that constitutes a rigid, violent
border that repulses and kills thousands of migrants and refugees. In
the following chapter, I will attempt to explore the terrain of material
borders in relation to bureaucracy as another multi-layered filter.< / p >
< p > What constitutes a border? Is it a wall, a line, a fence, a machine,
a door, an armed body or a wound on the land? When somebody crosses a
border are they consciously aware of the act of crossing? I am crossing
the pedestrian street and walking on the white stripes to reach the
pedestrian route right across. Are the white stripes a border or a
territory to be crossed to reach another situation? Does the way I
perform my walking when I step onto the white stripes change? Is there
any embodied knowledge about what could be classified as border? Under
which circumstances does this knowledge become canonical? I hop over a
fence that separates one garden from another. What if instead of
assuming that the fence is a device or a furniture or a material of
enclosure, it is just part of the same land? The process or act of
jumping a fence can be itself a moment of segregation and a moment of
re-establishing or demonstrating the bordering function of it.< / p >
< p > Borders could be considered as devices of both exclusion and
inclusion that filter people and define forms of circulation and
movement in ways no less violent than those applied in repulsive
measures. Closure and exclusion are only one function of the
nation-state borders. Of course, borders are not always that visible or
treated and perceived as borders, as Rumford argues they are “designed
not to look like borders, located in one place but projected in another
entirely” (Rumford, cited by Keshavarz, 2016, p.298)< / p >
< p > As institutions, they seem to be much more complex, flexible, or even
penetrable in comparison with the traditional image of a wall as a
bordering device that demonstrates in a way itself. Crossing and borders
are inherently defined in relation to each other. “Where there is a
border, there is also a border crossing, legal as well as illegal”
(Khosravi, 2010).< / p >
< h3 id = "conditional-hospitality" > conditional hospitality< / h3 >
< p > I started thinking about hospitality as a cultural behavior and as an
inseparable term in the context of borders due to a recent personal
bureaucratic experience. Hospitality can be instrumentalized to describe
an individual’ ’
their enclosed territory - a property, a home, a land, a country. What
does hospitality mean and how hospitality under specific circumstances
can be a tool in the hands of a state?< / p >
< p > I will share a personal story related to hospitality and bureaucracy.
I was recently evicted from my previous house [31/01/2024] due to a
trapping contract situation. My former roommates and I were forced to
terminate our previous contract and sign a new one that further limited
our rights. The bureaucratic free market language of the contract, the
foreign law language barrier, the threats of the agent and the precarity
of being homeless in a foreign country forced us to sign the new rental
agreement which was the main reason for our eviction. Currently, I am
hosted temporarily by friends until I find a more permanent
accommodation. Meanwhile, the government requires me to declare the new
address which I do not have within five days of my moving. Consequently,
I have to follow another bureaucratic path. This involves requesting
permission for a short-term postal address while declaring the addresses
of my current hosts [4/02/2024]. I gathered the required documents, I
processed a 9-page-text and another one with the personal data of my
hosts and myself and answered questions about:< / p >
< blockquote >
< p > why don’ < br / >
who are the people who host me,< br / >
what is my relationship with them,< br / >
where do I sleep,< br / >
where do I store my belongings,< br / >
how many people are hosting me and accordingly their personal
data,< br / >
for how long,< br / >
why I cannot register there,< br / >
what days of the week do I stay in the one house and< br / >
what days do I stay in the other house,< br / >
whether and how am I searching for a permanent place and< br / >
what is the tangible proof of my search?< / p >
< / blockquote >
< p > All these questions provoked thinking around the concept of
conditional hospitality as a behavior of the state towards strangers. I
can see that on a smaller scale it is being applied to the hospitality I
receive from my friends in the middle of an emergency. I am wondering,
though, whether is it that important for the government to know on whose
couch I sleep or where I store my belongings. The omnipresent gaze of a
state who has the right to know every small detail about myself while at
the same time questioning people’
seems that forms of knowledge are inseparably related to forms of power.
It will take 8 weeks for my request to be processed and for the
government to approve or reject if I deserve my friends’
hospitality.< / p >
< blockquote >
< p > “Today as yesterday, her land and her time are stolen, only because
she is told that she has arrived too late. Much too late”< br / >
(Khosravi, 2021)< / p >
< / blockquote >
< h3 id = "waiting" > waiting< / h3 >
< p > Waiting can be considered as a dramaturgical means embedded in
bureaucratic procedures that camouflage power relations through the
manipulation of people’
bureaucratic process and waiting for the government’
case or just waiting for their turn. “The neoliberal technologies of
citizenship enacted through keeping people waiting for jobs, education,
housing, health care, social welfare or pensions turn citizens into
patients of the state” (Khosravi, 2021). I waited two weeks for a
response from the municipality only to discover that my request was
rejected [16/02/2024].< / p >
< p > Contemporary border practices mirror past colonial practices, as they
exploit migrants’
way colonial capitalism transformed lands to wastelands to plunder the
wealth underneath” (Khosravi, 2021). The current border regime, known by
extended waiting periods and constant delays, is part of a larger
project aimed at taking away wealth, labor, and time through colonial
accumulation and immediate expulsion.< / p >
< p > When someone opens their house to a guest, a stranger, someone in
need, means that they open their property to someone. Hospitality is
interweaved with a sense of ownership over something. Expanding the
concept of hospitality to a nation-scale, we could say that the
nation-building process involves people asserting artificial ownership
over a territory even if they do not own any property within this
land.< / p >
< p > Conditional hospitality is tied to a sense of offering back to the
home-land-nation-state-country as a way to win or trade your permission
to enter and enjoy the hospitality of a place. Coming from specific
places in comparison to others, having to offer some special skills or
your labor - if it is asked for - can be possible conditions that may
allow somebody to receive hospitality. I would say that an efficient
check of these conditions is regularly facilitated through bureaucratic
channels. The concept of unconditional-conditional hospitality is
closely related to exchange. When you do not have something to offer
according to the needs or expectations of a “household”, you may not
receive the gift of hospitality.< / p >
< p > The notion of hospitality is excessively instrumentalized within the
Greek context portrayed as an “ideal” intertwined with the
nation-building narrative and as a foundational quality - product by the
Greek tourist industry. However, the Greek sea has been an endless
refugee graveyard and the eastern Aegean islands a “warehouse of
souls”< sup > < span class = "margin-note" > For further reading:
https://wearesolomon.com/mag/focus-area/migration/how-the-aegean-islands-became-a-warehouse-of-souls/< / span > < / sup >
for the last many years. In this case, conditional hospitality applies
primarily to those who invest in and consume.< / p >
< p > Hospitality can function as a filtration mechanism that permits
access – –
valid visas, adequate bank statements, or invitations” (Khosravi, 2010).
By doing this, unproductive hospitality is being avoided due to
sovereign state’
hospitality, is about worthiness, is directed towards migrants deemed
good and productive –
minority of vulnerable and marginalized asylum seekers who lack
representation. Only in a world where the nation-state’
been dismantled and where the undocumented, stateless, non-citizens are
unconditionally accepted, only at this moment, we are able to imagine
the “political and ethical survival of humankind” (Agamben, 2000).
Hospitality does not seem a matter of choice but a profound urgency, if
humanity desires to foster a future together.< / p >
< h4 id = "the-right-to-have-rights" > “the right to have rights”< / h4 >
< p > (Arendt, as cited by Khosravi, 2010, p.121)< / p >
< p > What about the crossers who managed to travel and reach the desirable
“there”, the ones who transcended the borders and the control checks of
the ministries of defense(7), the ones who enter but do not own papers,
the paperless? What does it mean to be documented and what is
inefficiently documented within a territory? They are threatened if they
get caught by authorities and also according to the official narrative,
they threaten. Since the physical mechanisms of bordering did not
succeed in repulsing them, the bureaucratic border appears as an
additional layer of filtration. The undocumented are non-citizens, they
might be crossers or burners(8), both, or even none. “Undocumented
migrants and unauthorized border crossers are polluted and polluting
because of their very unclassifiability” (Borelli, Poy, Rué, 2023). The
loss of citizenship, denaturalisation, makes somebody denaturalised,
they are rendered unnatural. “Citizenship has become the nature of being
human” (Koshravi, 2010).< / p >
< p > According to Hannah Arendt, the right to have rights and claim
somebody else’
Khosravi, 2010, p.
Declaration of Human Rights is its dependence on the nation-state
system. Since human rights are grounded on civil rights, which are
essentially citizens’
system. Consequently, human rights can be materialized only in a
political community. “Loss of citizenship also means loss of human
rights” (Khosravi, 2010)< / p >
< blockquote >
< p > “…< sup > < span class = "margin-note" > This is a transcribed recording of
my phone during a protest on migration at Dam Square in Amsterdam. I
insert part of the speech of a Palestinian woman addressing the matter
of undocumentedness. Date and time of the recording 18th of June 2023,
15:05.< / span > < / sup > I am here for the rights of the children which
haven’
undocumented mothers and they are more than
< em > < sup > < span class = "margin-note" > “< / em > ” means
undecipherable< / span > < / sup > years. I am here to represent mothers who
are looking for a place to have a sense of belonging or how long are you
trying to continue humiliating them and the female gender. I am here to
express my frustration with IND< sup > < span
class="margin-note">Immigratie- en Naturalisatiedienst - Dutch
Immigration and Naturalisation Service< / span > < / sup > . So frustrated. And
I will not stop talking about democracy. Democracy is the rule of law
where everybody feels included. Democracy is a rule of law where
everybody feels * We, undocumented people, we don’
belonging from the system.”< / p >
< / blockquote >
< hr / >
< h2 id = "bureaucracy-as-immaterial-border" > bureaucracy as immaterial
border< / h2 >
< p > Apart from the rigid visible borders, bureaucracy related to
migrants, refugees and asylum seekers can also constitute an in-between
less visible borderland. I used to perceive bureaucracy as an immaterial
and intangible entity. However, now I can claim that this assumption is
not true. Bureaucracy is material and spatial and can be seen as an
apparatus, a machine, a circuitry, an institution, a territory, a
borderland, a body, a zone –
claims. It can be inscribed on piles of papers, folders, drawers,
booklets, passports, IDs, documents, screens, tapes, bodies, hospital
corridors, offices, permissions to enter, stay, work, travel, exist,
come and go, leave, visit family, bury a friend.< / p >
< p > Bureaucratic documents especially those related to migration, can
become territories or should be interpreted “as sites where social
interactions happen, where power relations unfold and are contested”
(Cretton, Geoffrion, 2021). When these bureaucratic objects are used and
manipulated, they can constitute sites of “confrontation, reproduction,
negotiation and performance” (Cretton, Geoffrion, 2021) shaping social
relations and producing meaning.< / p >
< p > Bureaucracy related to asylum seekers reveals the profound bordering
nature of these practices, as a continuous process of producing
otherness. Accordingly, I see bureaucracy as a practice that raises
material and symbolic walls for specific groups of people who are
rendered unwanted and unwelcome because they dared to cross the borders
of the Global North. It is as if they could never manage to eventually
arrive and shelter their lives within the desirable “there”< sup > < span
class="margin-note">I am referring to the desirable potential
destinations of migrants and refugees corresponding mainly to Global
North countries.< / span > < / sup > . “In these bordering processes, we can
detect the “coloniality of asylum”< sup > < span class = "margin-note" > In this
text they insert the concept of the “coloniality of asylum” introduced
by Picozza, which talks about how asylum systems are intertwined with
colonial legacies and power dynamics. These systems are often colonial
structures reinforcing hierarchies between nations and reproducing
patterns of domination and oppression. In this framework, asylum is not
just about offering protection but also about regulating and managing
populations in a way that reflects colonial relationships.< / span > < / sup >
(Borelli, Poy, Rué, 2023). Bureaucracies in practice act as filters,
determining who, from an institutional standpoint, deserves to receive
protection and who does not. They operate as systems that classify
non-citizens and place them in a social hierarchy of disproportionate
unequal obligations, lack of rights and access to institutional
support.< / p >
< h3 id = "higher-educations-expanding-bureaucracy" > higher education’
expanding bureaucracy< / h3 >
< p > While I had this inherent concern about borders and bureaucratic
structures in relation to migration, I decided to start zooming in and
explore my own bureaucratic surroundings through my personal lens. As a
student, I was eager to understand and dig into the educational
institutions’
bureaucratic struggles and peers’
How can higher education in a European country reflect policies around
migration and border control less profoundly. How can education filter
and distinguish, how it can reproduce efficiently itself?< / p >
< p > I gradually started perceiving the bureaucratic apparatus as an
omnipresent immaterial border - a ghost infrastructure - that one always
encounters but does not really see, a borderland that lies in the gray
zone between visibility and invisibility. Bureaucracy renders us
“stupid” and vulnerable in front of it. It is rarely questioned but it
should be performed efficiently for people to exist properly.< / p >
< p > The contradiction embedded in many cultural and educational
institutions lies in the level of unawareness regarding surveillance via
multiple bureaucratic rituals that (re)produce docile behaviors. How
these mechanisms are masked and standing in the margins of the visible
nonvisible sphere.< / p >
< blockquote >
< p > “This is what makes it possible, for example, for graduate students
to be able to spend days in the stacks of university libraries poring
over Foucault-inspired theoretical tracts about the declining importance
of coercion as a factor in modern life without ever reflecting on that
fact that, had they insisted their right to enter the stacks without
showing a properly stamped and validated ID, armed men would have been
summoned to physically remove them, using whatever force might be
required.”< br / >
(Graeber, 2015)< / p >
< / blockquote >
< p > The genuine essence of education is not bureaucratic at all, neither
does it have to fit and ground its foundations under a bureaucratic
roof. “The pedagogical process runs counter to the hierarchical,
impersonal qualities of bureaucracy” (Cunningham, 2017). However, people
working in educational institutions acknowledge the fact that entrenched
bureaucratic systems impose their material constraints on teaching
structures and on how these actors in this process interact with each
other.“Students and staff are treated as human capital” (Cunningham,
2017). This determination can dehumanize people involved, like when
“faculty-as-labor” and “students-as-consumers” are marginalized and
treated as just variables.< / p >
< blockquote >
< p > “there is no document of civilisation which is not at the same time a
document of barbarism”< br / >
Walter Benjamin< / p >
< / blockquote >
< h3 id = "the-document" > the document< / h3 >
< p > From fences and armed police to nation-state mechanism of
less-material bordering to bureaucracy to the elements of bureaucracy to
the document itself as the minimum unit of an apparatus. Understanding
and unhiding the violence of a form -violence materialized and at the
same time camouflaged by the language structure, the vocabulary, the
graphic design, their ability to render subjectivities that fit and
don’
language that fragments, classifies, places and un-places. Thus
bureaucratic apparatus is something more than a metaphor it is also a
symbol. It is hard to see that there are many more layers beneath the
purpose it propagates. A metaphor that is so perfectly materialized as
well as naturalized that you cannot even see it.< / p >
< h4 id = "bureaucracy-as-textual-institution" > bureaucracy as textual
institution< / h4 >
< p > The bureaucratic apparatus can be considered as something more than
an infrastructure that organizes institutions, markets, states, etc. It
can constitute itself an institution, a textual institution. As the
factory generates commodities and sets them within a circuit of motion,
bureaucracy generates documents and sets them throughout a communicative
circuitry (Cunningham, 2017). An institution that organizes and
(infra)structures other institutions and similarly reproduces itself
through text. The materiality of a text document reflects the ideology
of the interconnected institutions and their underlying bureaucratic
systems. Language occupies a dual contradictory role as the foundational
element of bureaucracy. Language can become a shroud to conceal the
violence and reinforce hierarchical structures and simultaneously can be
transformed into the rigid rational cell itself. They shape their own
narratives, they reflect the institutional narratives.< / p >
< h4 id = "the-myth-of-universality" > the myth of universality< / h4 >
< p > One of the great powers of bureaucracies is their ability to render
themselves transparent. It seems that bureaucracy does not have to say
anything more beyond itself, is self-referential and self-contained. It
is boring or most likely is supposed to be boring. “One can describe the
ritual surrounding it. One can observe how people talk about or react to
it” (Graeber, 2015). The supposed universality of the form which is
carefully constructed can be partly attributed to the individuality and
impersonality of many bureaucratic processes. “Bureaucracies operate
through an assemblage of hierarchy, impersonality, and procedure in
order to complete organizational tasks with maximum efficiency” (Weber,
as cited by Cunningham, 2017, p. < / p >
< p > I had to open a discussion with students from non-EEA (non European
Economic Area) countries in order to understand that they have to
conduct tuberculosis x-rays< sup > < span class = "margin-note" > “To keep the
Residence Permit, some non-European students need to visit the Dutch
Public Health Authority (GGD) after they arrived in the Netherlands.
They will undergo a medical test for tuberculosis (TB). This is a
requirement from the IND (Dutch Immigration Office)”. (Introduction
days, 2021)< / span > < / sup > when they arrive in the Netherlands. It seems
that for the Dutch state, their bodies might be more threatening than
bodies coming from a European country. The relativization in the quality
and the quantity of paperwork requested from different “groups” of
applicants in a specific context deconstructs the myth of the
universality of the bureaucratic form.< / p >
< p > Undoubtedly the success of bureaucracy is drawn from its efficiency
in relation to schematization as an efficient material quality. “Whether
it’
always a matter of simplification (Cunningham, 2017)”. Bureaucracies
ignore the social existence of a person and fragment, classify and
define them under specific perspectives. Why do they ask for this
information instead of others? “Why place of birth and not, say, place
where you went to grade school? What’
signature?” (Graeber, 2015)< / p >
< h4 id = "materiality-underlying-violence" > materiality-underlying
violence< / h4 >
< p > There is a great materiality in bureaucracies. Bureaucratic
procedures are often compared to a labyrinth which appears as a
similarly complex structure constituted by simple geometrical shapes
(Weber, as cited by Cunningham, 2017, p.310). Bureaucratic documents can
be complicated and multiple due to this infinite accumulation of really
simple but at the same time contradictory elements. A constant
juxtaposition of letters, symbols, stamps, signatures, paper, ink,
barcodes, QR codes within a circuit of workers, interweaved and
interconnected offices, repetitive performative tasks and rituals.< / p >
< p > Underneath every bureaucratic document, there is a good amount of
graphic design labor. What kind of visual strategy is embedded in
administrative objects that the design aspect of these artifacts appears
to be invisible? The material decisions applied as well as the material
constraints attributed to the document can transform or produce
different textual meanings and consequently understandings. > “This
does not mean that constraints limit meaning, but on the contrary,
constitute it; meaning cannot appear where freedom is absolute or
nonexistent: the stem of meaning is that of a supervised freedom”< br / >
> (Roland Barthes, 1983)< / p >
< p > When I encountered the green logo of the municipality of Rotterdam I
did not cultivate any feelings of enthusiasm or even boredom. A big
calligraphic “R” with the flawless green ribbons that penetrate it on
the left corner of a 229x162 mm standardized dimension folder with a
transparent rectangle that reveals my inscribed name and surname from
the inside part. I did not put any aesthetic critique over this but I
rather felt this rush of stress for the expected response to my
objection letter or a fine or a tax to be paid within a specific
timeline cause another fine would come if I did not comply with
this.< / p >
< p > One month ago (from the writing present), my friend Chae made for my
birthday this amazing Dutch-government-like biscuit forms, recreating
the entire layout of the document using the interface of a crunchy
biscuit. She used the same color blue scheme and she placed the biscuit
form inside the same standardized dimension folder 229x162 mm with the
same transparent layer that reveals my name and surname. According to
literary critic and theorist Katherine Hayles:< / p >
< blockquote >
< p > “to alter the physical form of the artifacts is to change the act of
reading and understanding but mostly you transform the metaphoric and
symbolic network that structures the relation of world to world. To
change the material artifacts is to transform the context and
circumstances for interacting with the words, which inevitably change
the meaning of the word itself. This transformation of meaning is
especially possible when the words interact with the inscription
technologies that produce them”< br / >
(Hayles, 2002)< / p >
< / blockquote >
< p > In the latter case, the inscription technology used is the sugar blue
paste and the handwriting of Chae. The text in the white-blue government
document forces a different reading from the white-blue biscuit
document, even if they carry the same bits of information. If I do not
read carefully the text in the folder and if I do not act according to
the suggested actions there is a threat. The level of threat varies in
relation to the case, the identities of the holder, the state, the
context, etc. There is no room for negotiation in bureaucracy and this
is the omnipresent underlying violence. The threat of violence shrouded
within its structures and foundations does not permit any questioning
but on the contrary creates “willful blindness” towards them< sup > < span
class="margin-note">I am referring to those people subjecting others to
bureaucratic circles shaped by structurally violent situations as well
as people in positions of privilege who deliberately ignore these
facts.< / span > < / sup > . Bureaucracies are not stupid inherently rather they
manage and coerce processes that reproduce docile and stupid
behaviors.< / p >
< hr / >
< figure >
< img src = "../images/../images/../aglaia/chae_form.jpg"
alt="The birthday biscuit that Chae made, re-creating the Dutch government form" />
< figcaption aria-hidden = "true" > The birthday biscuit that Chae made,
re-creating the Dutch government form< / figcaption >
< / figure >
< hr / >
< h2 id = "vocal-archives-talking-documents" > vocal archives-talking
documents< / h2 >
< p > This chapter is mainly a constellation of some prototypes I created
while writing and coping with personal bureaucratic challenges. I
provided some further space for my anxiety by unpacking and exploring
the material conditions that nourished it within this timeline.< / p >
< p > An administrative decision on a case may not seem necessarily hurtful
in linguistic terms. However, it can be injurious and severely
threatening. By performing the bureaucratic archival material of my
interactions with the government, I aim to draw a parallel narrative
highlighting the bordering role of bureaucracy and the concealed
underlying violence it perpetuates.< / p >
< p > A bureaucratic text does not just describe a reality, a decision, a
case or an action, but on the contrary, it is capable of changing the
reality or the order of things that is described via these words.
Bureaucratic official documents are inherently performative. These texts
regulate and bring situations into being.< / p >
< p > My intention in transforming bureaucratic texts into “playable”
scenarios is to explore how embodying these texts in public through
collective speech< sup > < span class = "margin-note" > I imagine the theatrical
play as a “human microphone”, a low-tech amplification device. A group
of people performs the bureaucratic scenario in chorus, out loud, in the
corridor of the school’
across, outside of the municipality building. The term is borrowed from
the protests of the Occupy Wall Street Movement in 2011. People were
gathered around the speaker repeating what the speaker was saying in
order to ensure that everyone could hear the announcements during large
assemblies. Human bodies became a hack in order to replace the forbidden
technology. In New York it is required to ask for permission from
authorities to use “amplified sound” in public space.< / span > < / sup > can
provoke different forms of interpretations and open tiny conceptual
holes. “The meaning of a performative act is to be found in this
apparent coincidence of signifying and enacting” (Butler, 1997). The
performative bureaucratic utterances - the vocal documents - attempt to
bring into existence -by overidentifying, exaggerating, acting- the
discomfort, the threat, the violence which is mainly condemned into
private individual spheres.< / p >
< p > How performing a collection of small bureaucratic stories can
function as an instant micro intervention and potentially produce a
public discourse. Where do we perform this speech, where and when does
the “theater” take place? Who is the audience? I am particularly
interested in the site-specificity of these “acts”. How can these
re-enactments be situated in an educational context and examine its
structures? Is it possible for this small-scale publics to provoke the
emergence of temporal spaces of marginal vulnerable voicings? According
to the agonistic approach of the political theorist Chantal Mouffe,
critical art is art that provokes dissensus, that makes visible what the
dominant narrative tends to undermine and displace. “It is constituted
by a multiplicity of artistic practices aiming at giving a voice to all
those who are silenced within the framework of the existing hegemony”
(Mouffe, 2008).< / p >
< p > I started working and engaging more with different bureaucratic
material that my peers and I encountered regularly or appeared in our
(e)mail (in)boxes and are partly related to our identities as foreign
students coming from different places. I chose to start touching and
looking for various bureaucracies that surround me as a personal filter
towards it. From identification documents and application forms to
rental contracts, funding applications, visa applications, quality
assurance questionnaires related to the university, assessment criteria,
supermarket point gathering cards, receipts. A sequence of locked doors
to be unlocked more or less easily via multiple bureaucratic keys. The
methods and tools used to scrutinize the administrative artifacts are
not rigid or distinct. It is mainly a “collection” of small bureaucratic
experiments - closely related to language as well as the performative
“nature” of these texts themselves. I was intrigued by how transforming
the material conditions of a piece of text could influence the potential
understandings and perceptions of its meaning.< / p >
< hr / >
< h2 id = "prototypes" > prototypes< / h2 >
< h4 id = "section" > 1.< / h4 >
< p > < strong > Title:< / strong > “Quality Assurance Questionnaire
Censoring”< br / >
< strong > When:< / strong > October 2023< br / >
< strong > Where:< / strong > XPUB studio wall< br / >
< strong > Who:< / strong > myself< / p >
< p > < strong > Description:< / strong > Some months ago my classmates and I
received an email with a questionnaire aimed at preparing us for the
upcoming quality assurance meeting within the school. Ada and I had a
meeting, in an empty white room with closed doors, with an external
collaborator of the university. The main request was to rate and answer
the pre-formulated questions covering issues about performance,
different and multiple topics related to the course, the teaching staff,
the facilities, the tools provided. The micro linguistic experiment of
highlighting, censoring and annotating this document aimed for an
understanding of what a quality assurance meeting is within an
educational institution.< / p >
< p > < strong > Reflections-Thoughts:< / strong > This experiment was my first
attempt to start interrogating and observing the language and the
structure of a bureaucratic document. How these “desired” standards
propagated through text. What is the role of the student-client in these
processes as an esoteric gaze of control over the course and their
teachers? My focus was to locate and accumulate all the wording related
to measurements, rate, quantity, assessments, statistics. Highlighting
the disproportionate amount of metrics-related vocabulary was enough to
craft the narrative around this process.< / p >
< p > These ‘ ’
serving as a tool that blurs the distinction between discourse and
reality (Cunningham, 2017). This culture of evidence influences how
people perceive and understand information. The primary purposes of
these metrics are twofold: they play a role in the marketing sphere,
attracting potential students to the university as well as they are
utilized in interactions and negotiations with the government, which
increasingly cuts budgets allocated to universities.< / p >
< hr / >
< figure >
< img src = "../images/../images/../aglaia/quality.jpg"
alt="The linguistic experiment of the Quality Assurance Questionnaire Document" />
< figcaption aria-hidden = "true" > The linguistic experiment of the Quality
Assurance Questionnaire Document< / figcaption >
< / figure >
< hr / >
< h4 id = "section-1" > 2.< / h4 >
< p > < strong > Title:< / strong > “Department of Bureaucracy and Administration
Customs Enforcement”< br / >
< strong > When:< / strong > November 2023< br / >
< strong > Where:< / strong > Leeszaal< sup > < span class = "margin-note" > Community
Library in Rotterdam West< / span > < / sup > < br / >
< strong > Who:< / strong > XPUB peers, tutors, friends, alumni< / p >
< p > < strong > Description:< / strong > During the first public moment at
Leeszaal, I decided to embody and enact the traditional role of a
bureaucrat in a graphic and possibly absurd way performing a small
“theatrical play”. I prepared a 3-page and a 1-page document
incorporating bureaucratic-form aesthetics and requesting applicants’
fake data and their answers for questions related to educational
bureaucracy. People receiving an applicant number at the entrance of
Leeszaal, queuing to collect their documents from the administration
“office”, filling forms, waiting, receiving stamps, giving fingerprints
and signing, waiting again were the main components of this act.< / p >
< p > < strong > Reflections-Thoughts:< / strong > Beyond the information
gathered through my bureaucratic-like questionnaires, the most crucial
element of this experiment was the understanding and highlighting of the
hidden performative elements that entrench these “rituals”. It was
amazing seeing the audience becoming instantly actors of the play
enacting willingly a administrative ritualistic scene. The provided
context of this “play” was a social library hosting a masters course
public event on graduation projects. I am wondering whether this
asymphony between the repetitive bureaucratic acts within the space of
Leeszaal, where such acts are not expected to be performed, evoked
contradictory feelings or thoughts. Over-identifying with a role was
being instrumentalized as an “interrogation” of one’
the reproduction of social discourses, power, authority, hegemony.< / p >
< figure >
< img src = "../images/../images/../aglaia/queue.jpg"
alt="Leeszaal West Rotterdam - November 2023 –
< figcaption aria-hidden = "true" > Leeszaal West Rotterdam - November 2023 –
People queuing to receive their documents and sign. I was thinking of
queues as a spatial oppressive tool used often by (bureaucratic)
authorities. The naturalized image of bodies-in-a-line waiting for
“something” to happen at “some point” under the public gaze in an
efficiently defined area.< / figcaption >
< / figure >
< hr / >
< figure >
< img src = "../images/../images/../aglaia/mitsi.jpg"
alt="One of the forms that the audience had to fill out during the Lesszaal event" />
< figcaption aria-hidden = "true" > One of the forms that the audience had to
fill out during the Lesszaal event< / figcaption >
< / figure >
< hr / >
< h4 id = "section-2" > 3.< / h4 >
< p > < strong > Title:< / strong > “Passport Reading Session”< br / >
< strong > When:< / strong > January 2024< br / >
< strong > Where:< / strong > XML – < br / >
< strong > Who:< / strong > Ada, Aglaia, Stephen, Joseph< / p >
< p > < strong > Description:< / strong > This prototype is a collective passport
reading session. I asked my classmates to bring their passports or IDs
and sitting in a circular set up we attempted to “scan” our documents.
Every contributor took some time to browse, annotate verbally,
interpret, understand, analyze, vocalize their thoughts on these
artifacts, approaching them from various perspectives. The three
passports and one ID card were all coming from European countries.< / p >
< p > < strong > Reflections-Thoughts:< / strong > For the first time I observed
this object so closely. The documentation medium was a recording device,
Ada’ < sup > < span
class="margin-note">Vosk is an offline open-source speech recognition
toolkit.< / span > < / sup > and myself and a small booklet of our passport
readings was created.< / p >
< blockquote >
< p > “So the object here is like not by random it comes from the history
of nation-states and how nation-states and nationalities created like a
form of identity. So nation-state is actually a recent invention that
came into existence over the last two hundred fifty years in the form as
we know it nowadays, in the form of democratic capitalism, before like
monarchies and so on and each citizen of such a nation-state got also
kind of a particular identity”,< br / >
Joseph says about his ID card.< / p >
< / blockquote >
< p > We read the embedded signs, symbols, categories, texts, magical
numbers in our passports that construct our profiles. Seeing someone’
passport, ID cards, visas, travel documents might mean that you are able
to understand how easy or not is for them to move, what are their travel
paths, how departure or arrival is smooth or cruel. Are there emotions
along the way? For some people these are documents “that embody power —
minimal or no waiting, peaceful departure, warm and confident arrival”
(Khosravi, 2021).< / p >
< hr / >
< figure >
< img src = "../images/../images/../aglaia/passport1.png"
alt="Part of the A6 booklet of the transcription of the passport readings session" />
< figcaption aria-hidden = "true" > Part of the A6 booklet of the
transcription of the passport readings session< / figcaption >
< / figure >
< hr / >
< p > < img src = "../images/../images/../aglaia/passport2.png" / > < / p >
< hr / >
< h4 id = "section-3" > 4.< / h4 >
< p > < strong > Title:< / strong > “Postal Address Application Scenario”< br / >
< strong > When:< / strong > February 2024< br / >
< strong > Where:< / strong > Room in Wijnhaven Building, 4th floor< br / >
< strong > Who:< / strong > XPUB 1,2,3, tutors, Leslie< / p >
< p > < strong > Description:< / strong > This scenario is the first part of a
series of small episodes that construct a bureaucratic story unfolding
the processes of my communication with the government. The body of the
text of the “theatrical” script is sourced from the original documents
as well as recordings of the conversation I had with the municipality
throughout this process. I preserved the sequence of the given sentences
and by discarding the graphic design of the initial form, I structured
and repurposed the text into a scenario. The main actors were two
bureaucrats vocalizing the questions addressed in the form, in turns and
sometimes speaking simultaneously like a choir, three applicants
answering the questions similarly while a narrator mainly provided the
audience with the context and the storyline constructing the scenery of
the different scenes.< / p >
< p > The first and the last moment of the performance was during a
semi-public tryout moment where XPUB peers performed the distributed
scenario in a white room on the 4th floor of the Winjhaven building.
They were seated having as a border a black long-table. A border
furniture between the bureaucrats and the applicants. The narrator was
standing still behind them while they were surrounded by the audience.
The main documentation media of the act were a camera on a tripod, a
recorder in the middle of the table and myself reconstructing the memory
of the re-enactement at that present - 6 days later.< / p >
< p > < strong > Reflections-Thoughts:< / strong > Vocalizing and embodying the
bureaucratic questions was quite useful in acknowledging the
government’
floating, arbitrary entity. It was interesting observing the bureaucrats
performing their role with confidence and entitlement, contrasting with
the applicants who appeared to be more stressed to respond convincingly
and promptly. There is a notable distinction between performativity and
performance. Performing consciously and theatrically amplifying real
bureaucratic texts by occupying roles and overidentifying with them can
constitute a diffractive moment, a tool itself. From bureaucratic text
to performative text scenarios to speech. The embedded (but rather
unconscious) performativity of “real” bureaucratic rituals establishes
and empowers (bureaucratic) institutions through repetitive acts. These
theatrical moments attempt to highlight the shrouded performative
elements of these processes.< / p >
< hr / >
< figure >
< img src = "../images/../images/../aglaia/postal.png"
alt="A6 booklet of the first chapter of the “theatrical” scenario created out of the Postal Address Application documents and performed by XPUB peers" />
< figcaption aria-hidden = "true" > A6 booklet of the first chapter of the
“theatrical” scenario created out of the Postal Address Application
documents and performed by XPUB peers< / figcaption >
< / figure >
< hr / >
< h2 id = "conclusion" > conclusion< / h2 >
< h3
id="next-chapters-of-the-case-with-reference-number-a.b.2024.4.03188">next
chapters of the case with reference number A.B.2024.4.03188< / h3 >
< p > I expanded the “play” by incorporating additional “scenes” sourced
again from the documents accompanying the ongoing “conversation with the
government”. Two weeks after submitting my application for a short-term
postal address [16/02/2024], I received a letter from the municipality
stating their rejection of my request and warning me of potential fines
if I fail to declare a valid address and provide a rental contract.
After extensive communication with the municipality, I decided to
respond to this decision by writing and sending an objection letter
[19/02/2024]. The objections committee received my letter [21/02/2024],
and after some days, they issued a confirmation letter outlining the
following steps of the objection process which involves hearings with
municipality lawyers and further investigation of my case. The textual
components collaged for the next “episodes” are sourced from the
transcribed recordings of my actual conversations with the municipality
clerks, my objection letter, the confirmation documents including the
steps I am required to take.< / p >
< p > My case has finished by this time. I withdrew my objection
[7/03/2024] and I de-registered [11/03/2024] after a good amount of
stress and precarity. My bureaucratic literature is meant to be read and
voiced collectively. People’
and voiced collectively.< / p >
< p > My intention is to facilitate a series of collective performative
readings of bureaucratic scenarios or other portable paperwork stories
as a way of publishing and inspecting bureaucratic bordering
infrastructures. The marginal voices of potential applicants are
embodying and performing a role. “The speech does not only describe but
brings things into existence” (Austin, 1975). I would like to stretch
the limits of dramaturgical speech through vocalizing a document in
public with others and turn an individual administrative case into a
public one. How do the inscribed words in the documents are not
descriptive but on the contrary “are instrumentalized in getting things
done” (Butler, 1997). Words as active agents. I am inviting past and
future applicants, traumatized students, injured bearers, bureaucratic
border crossers, stressed expired document holders or just curious
people to share, vocalize, talk through, read out loud, amplify,
(un)name, unplace, dismantle the injurious words of these artifacts.< / p >
< hr / >
< p > < img src = "../images/../images/../aglaia/objection1.png" / > < / p >
< hr / >
< p > < img src = "../images/../images/../aglaia/objection2.png" / > < / p >
< hr / >
< h4 id = "we-didnt-cross-the-border-the-border-crossed-us20" > “we didn’
cross the border, the border crossed us”(20)< / h4 >
< p > As I sit in the waiting area at the gate B7 in the airport preparing
to come back to the Netherlands, I am writing the last lines of this
text. I am thinking of all these borders and gates that my body was able
to pass through smoothly, carrying my magical object through which I
embody power- at least within this context. However, I yearn for a
reality where we stop looking at those bodies that cross the
multifaceted borders and get crossed and entrenched by them, but on the
contrary we start interrogating and shouting at the contexts and the
frameworks that construct them and render them invisible, natural and
powerful.< / p >
< hr / >
< h2 id = "references" > references< / h2 >
< p > Agamben, G. (2000) Means without end: Notes on politics. Minneapolis,
MN: University of Minnesota Press.< / p >
< p > Anzaldua, G. (1987) Borderlands - la Frontera: The new mestiza. 2nd
ed. < / p >
< p > Austin, J. L. (1975) “lECTURE VII”, in How to do things with words.
Oxford University Press, pp.83-93.< / p >
< p > Barthes, R. (1983) Fashion system. Translated by M. Ward and R.
Howard. Hill & Wang.< / p >
< p > Border controls (2017) Defensie.nl. Available at:
https://english.defensie.nl/topics/border-controls< / p >
< p > Borelli, C., Poy, A., and Rué, A. (2023). “Governing Asylum without
‘ ’
the State.” < em > Social Sciences< / em > , 12(3), 169. [DOI:
https://doi.org/10.3390/socsci12030169]< / p >
< p > Butler, J. (1997) Excitable speech: A politics of the performative.
London, England: Routledge.< / p >
< p > Cretton, V., Geoffrion, K. (2021). “Bureaucratic Routes to Migration:
Migrants’
Intermediaries”, University of Victoria< / p >
< p > Cunningham, J. (2017), “Rhetorical Tension in Bureaucratic
University”, University of Cincinnati, Ohio, USA< / p >
< p > Graeber, D. (2015) The utopia of rules: On technology, stupidity, and
the secret joys of bureaucracy. Brooklyn, NY: Melville House
Publishing< / p >
< p > Hayles, N. K. (2002) Writing Machines. London, England: MIT
Press.< / p >
< p > Introduction days (2021) Rotterdam University of Applied Sciences.
Available at:
https://www.rotterdamuas.com/study-information/practical-information/international-introduction-days/Tuberculosis-test/
(Accessed: April 8, 2024).< / p >
< p > Keshavarz, M. (2016) Design-Politics: An Inquiry into Passports,
Camps and Borders. Malmö University, Faculty of Culture and Society.< / p >
< p > Khosravi, S. (2010) “illegal” traveller: An auto-ethnography of
borders. 2010th ed. < / p >
< p > Khosravi, S. (ed.) (2021) Waiting - A Project in Conversation.
transcript Verlag.< / p >
< p > M’
colonialism,” The sociological review, 68(2), pp. –
10.1177/0038026120905491.< / p >
< p > Malichudis, S. (2020) How the Aegean islands became a warehouse of
souls, Solomon. Available at:
https://wearesolomon.com/mag/focus-area/migration/how-the-aegean-islands-became-a-warehouse-of-souls/
(Accessed: April 7, 2024).< / p >
< p > McKittrick, K. (2021) Dear science and other stories. Durham, NC:
Duke University Press.< / p >
< p > Mouffe, C. (2008) ‘
Internvention’ < / p >
< p > Pater, R. (2021) Caps lock: How capitalism took hold of graphic
design, and how to escape from it. Amsterdam, Netherlands: Valiz.< / p >
< p > Picozza, F. (2021). The coloniality of asylum : mobility, autonomy
and solidarity in the wake of Europe’
& Littlefield Publishers.< / p >
< / section >
< section id = "section-7" class = "section" >
< hr / >
< h1 id = "wink" > Wink!< / h1 >
< h3 id = "a-prototype-for-interactive-childrens-literature" > A Prototype
for Interactive Children’ < / h3 >
< p > Wink is a prototype for an interactive picture book platform. This
platform aims to make reading into a mindfull and thought provoking
process by using interactive and playful elements, multiple stories
within one narrative and sound elements. Especially today where
consumerism and low attention span is a rising issue especially amongst
young readers, this was an important task to tackle. The thought of Wink
emerged to find a more sustainable and creative way of reading for
elementary school children.< / p >
< hr / >
< p > Working as a children’
realisation that picture books were turning into another object that
kids read and consume on daily basis. At least this is what I observed
in Turkey. Teachers and parents were finding it difficult to find new
books constantly or were tired of rereading the same book.< / p >
< figure >
< img src = "../images/../images/../irmak/twine.png" class = "half-image"
alt="“The twine map of text based story, reachable from Bee Within.”" />
< figcaption aria-hidden = "true" > “The twine map of text based story,
reachable from Bee Within.”< / figcaption >
< / figure >
< p > < img src = "../images/../images/../irmak/cg.png"
alt="“Click game story of the Queen Bee.”" />{.half image}< / p >
< figure >
< img src = "../images/../images/../irmak/printp33.jpg" class = "image-95"
alt="“Example page from the print version of the picture book.”" />
< figcaption aria-hidden = "true" > “Example page from the print version of
the picture book.”< / figcaption >
< / figure >
< figure >
< img src = "../images/../images/../irmak/printp3.jpg" class = "image-95"
alt="“Example page from the print version of the picture book.”" />
< figcaption aria-hidden = "true" > “Example page from the print version of
the picture book.”< / figcaption >
< / figure >
< figure >
< img src = "../images/../images/../irmak/printp44.jpg" class = "image-95" alt = "’ ’ / >
< figcaption aria-hidden = "true" > ’ ’ < / figcaption >
< / figure >
< figure >
< img src = "../images/../images/../irmak/printp4.jpg" class = "image-95" alt = "’ ’ / >
< figcaption aria-hidden = "true" > ’ ’ < / figcaption >
< / figure >
< p > As a young person in the publishing sector, I believe there should be
more options for children as there is for adults; such as ebooks,
audiobooks etc. But moreover a “book” that can be redefined, reread or
be interacted with. So I revisited an old story I wrote, translated to
English and named it, “Bee Within”.< / p >
< p > Bee Within, is a story about grief and it is based on my experiences
throughout the years. I erased it, rewrote it, edited it, destroyed it
multiple times over the past years, simultaneously with new experiences
of loss. In the end, I believe the story turned out to be an ode to
remembering or might I say an ode to not being able to forget or an ode
to the fear of forgetting which I now think is a great and sweet battle
between death and life. I think it is an important subject to touch
upon, especially for children dealing with trauma in many parts of the
world.< / p >
< figure >
< img src = "../images/../images/../irmak/printp1.jpg" class = "half-image"
alt="“example page from the picture book”" />
< figcaption aria-hidden = "true" > “example page from the picture
book”< / figcaption >
< / figure >
< figure >
< img src = "../images/../images/../irmak/printp22.jpg" class = "image-95"
alt="“example page from the picture book”" />
< figcaption aria-hidden = "true" > “example page from the picture
book”< / figcaption >
< / figure >
< figure >
< img src = "../images/../images/../irmak/printp2.jpg" class = "image-95"
alt="“example page from the picture book”" />
< figcaption aria-hidden = "true" > “example page from the picture
book”< / figcaption >
< / figure >
< p > Over the past two years, experimenting with storytelling techniques,
interactivity options and workshops with children and adults, around
reading and doing various exercises on Bee Within, I improved the story
to be a more playful and interactive one which can be re-read, re-played
and eventually re-formed non digitally to be reachable for all
children.< / p >
< figure >
< img src = "../images/../images/../irmak/improv.JPG" class = "half-image"
alt="“a tag made by a participant in the public moment at XPUB studio. Trying to understand different approaches to certain emotions/states for a bee”" />
< figcaption aria-hidden = "true" > “a tag made by a participant in the
public moment at XPUB studio. Trying to understand different approaches
to certain emotions/states for a bee”< / figcaption >
< / figure >
< figure >
< img src = "../images/../images/../irmak/leeszaalknotpoems.jpg" class = "image-95"
alt="“From the event at Leeszaal West, experimenting with knots and poetry. How can we see movement in text?”" />
< figcaption aria-hidden = "true" > “From the event at Leeszaal West,
experimenting with knots and poetry. How can we see movement in
text?”< / figcaption >
< / figure >
< figure >
< img src = "../images/../images/../irmak/knotpoems2.jpg" class = "image-95"
alt="“From the event at Leeszaal West. Some of the results of knotting text”" />
< figcaption aria-hidden = "true" > “From the event at Leeszaal West. Some of
the results of knotting text”< / figcaption >
< / figure >
< figure >
< img src = "../images/../images/../irmak/animationseq.png" class = "image-95"
alt="“A small sequence of onclick animation for Bee Within”" />
< figcaption aria-hidden = "true" > “A small sequence of onclick animation
for Bee Within”< / figcaption >
< / figure >
< figure >
< img src = "../images/../images/../irmak/45.png" class = "image-95"
alt="“A screenshot from Wink!”" />
< figcaption aria-hidden = "true" > “A screenshot from Wink!”< / figcaption >
< / figure >
< / section >
< section id = "section-8" class = "section" >
< h1 id = "fair-leads" > Fair Leads< / h1 >
< h3
id="fair-leads-or-fair-winds-is-a-saying-sailors-and-knotters-use-to-greet-each-other.-it-comes-from-the-working-end-of-a-string-that-will-soon-be-forming-a-knot.">Fair
leads or Fair winds is a saying sailors and knotters use to greet each
other. It comes from the working end of a string that will soon be
forming a knot.< / h3 >
< hr / >
I would like to clarify and introduce some terms for you in order to
read this text in the desired way. For a while, we will stay in the
bight of this journey as we move into forming loops, theories and ideas
on how interactive picture books can be used to foster curiosity for
reading and creativity for children. I am building a web platform called
Wink that aims to contain a children’
an interactive experience, in relation to my research.
< figure >
< img src = "../images/../images/../irmak/unnamed.png"
alt="knot words from Leeszaal" />
< figcaption aria-hidden = "true" >
knot words from Leeszaal
< / figcaption >
< / figure >
< p > Through this bight of the thesis, I feel the necessity to clarify my
intention of using knots as a “thinking and writing object” throughout
my research journey. Although knots are physical objects and technically
crucial in many fields of labor and life, they are also objects of
thought and are open for wide minds’
knots have been used to connect, stop, secure, bind, protect, decorate,
record data, punish, contain, fly and many other purposes. So if the
invention of flying -which required a wing that was supported using
certain types of knotswas initiated with the knowledge of how to use
strings to make things, why wouldn’
wonderful art as an inspiration for writing and interactive reading?< / p >
< h2 id = "knots-as-objects-to-think-with" > KNOTS AS OBJECTS TO THINK
WITH< / h2 >
There is a delicate complexity of thinking of and with knots, which
ignites layers of simultaneous connections to one’
where one person may associate the knots with struggles they face,
another may think of connecting or thriving times. In a workshop in
Rotterdam, I asked participants to write three words that comes to mind
when they think of knots. There were some words in common like strong,
chaotic, confusing and anxious. On the other hand, there were variations
of connection, binding, bridge and support. Keeping these answers in
mind or by coming up with your words on knots and embodying them in the
practice of reading would make a difference in how you understand the
same text.
< figure >
< img src = "../images/../images/../irmak/knot1.jpeg"
alt="knot words from Leeszaal" />
< figcaption aria-hidden = "true" >
knot words from Leeszaal
< / figcaption >
< / figure >
< br >
< figure >
< img src = "../images/../images/../irmak/knot2.jpeg"
alt="knot words from Leeszaal" />
< figcaption aria-hidden = "true" >
knot words from Leeszaal
< / figcaption >
< / figure >
< p > Seeing how these words, interpretations of a physical object were so
different to each other was transcendental. In this thesis, I am excited
to share my understanding of knots with you. My three words for knots
are resistance, imagination and infinity. Keeping these in mind, I
experimented with certain reading modes as you will see later on.< / p >
< p > Knots are known to be used 15 to 17 thousand years ago for multiple
purposes. These purposes were often opposing each other. For example, it
could be used to let something loose or to restrain it; for pleasure or
pain; for going high above or down below… I believe this diversity of
uses can also be seen in how people approach knots as an idea or a
metaphor. One can think it represents chaos where someone else might see
it as a helpful mark. Essentially, this diversity is what got me
interested in knots years ago and since then, I have found ways to
implement this “loop of thought” in my daily life and research
methods.< / p >
< p > There are two main reasons to why I chose to write this essay in a
“knotted” format. One is that I would like to share my process and
progress of research on this project and this involves “thinking with an
object”, in this case types of knots. In Evocative Objects, Sherry
Turkle, who is a sociologist and the founder of MIT initiative of
technology and self, refers to the object in the exercise of thinking as
emotional and intellectual companions that anchor memory, sustain
relationships and provoke new ideas. I completely agree with this
statement through personal experience. The second reason is that I see
this as an opportunity to experiment if I can use knots as an
interactive (which is not in knots’
practiced in solo) and playful element in writing. This is also why I
would like to take a moment to mention what happens to the interplay of
processes in which we call thought when we think with knots in
specific.< / p >
< p > For Turkle and Seymour Papert, who is a mathematician, computer
scientist and educator that did remarkable research on constructivism,
being able to make a reading experience tangible, or even physically
representable makes the process of thought more concrete. Concrete
thinking in this sense is a way of thinking that I adapted to in the
past years, where you think with the object and imagine it vividly
during the process and address meanings to it as you read or write
along. This way it’
parts of a text to an imagined or real physical item which makes the
mind at ease with complex chains of thought.< / p >
< p > Imagine you are reading a story… What if you think of the string
itself as the journey and the slip knot (which is a type of stopper
knot) as a representation of an antagonist because of its specific use
in hunting, would this change your approach to reading this story? I
believe so…< / p >
< p > What if instead of a slip knot a Bowline was on the string, would
that represent something else in the story because of its usage in
practice. A Bowline is commonly used to form a fixed loop at the end of
a string; it’
can imagine the bowline to represent the conclusion in a story. What if
we have a Square Knot, how would that change the course of a narrative?
Square knot is used to bundle objects and make the two ends of the same
string connect. From just this, we can use it to represent the
connection between the beginning and end of a story. My point is, there
are limitless implementations on how to use knots in literature because
of their versatile purposes and the narrative vocabulary they create.
Topologists are still trying to identify seemingly infinite numbers of
combinations which we simply call “knots” and I see this as an
inspiration to keep writing.< / p >
< p > One example of the wondrous versatility and potential of knots is how
they are used to archive and encrypt information. Incan people from the
Andes region recorded information on Quipus, dating back to 700 CE.
Quipus are textile devices consisting of several rows of cotton and/or
camelid string that would be knotted in a specific way to record, store
and transmit information ranging from accounting and census data to
communicate complex mathematical and narrative information (Medrano,
Urton, 2018). Another example is the Yakima Time Ball, which was used by
North-American Yakama people to show life events and family aff
airs.< / p >
< p > This is why I humbly decided to document my research process with a
Quipu of my own. I am trying to symbolize the twists, decisions and
practices throughout this year with knots of my choosing. I was inspired
by Nayeli Vega’
knot?”< / p >
< h2 id = "weaving-into-the-text" > WEAVING INTO THE TEXT< / h2 >
< p > This thesis expects participation from its reader. You have the
option to have a mode of reading, where you will be guided by strings to
start reading from a certain section according to the type of reader you
are and read the loops one by one until the end, weaving through the
text. To determine the string or mode of reading, there are some simple
questions to answer.< / p >
< p > The three modes of reading are combine, slide, build. After you
discover the starting point with the yes or no map in the upcoming
pages, you will continue the reading journey through the strings of diff
erent colors that will get you through the text. This way, the linear
text will become in a way, non-linear by your personal experience.< / p >
< p > Bear in mind that you can choose to read this thesis from beginning
to end as a single string too if you wish so.< / p >
< p > Combine mode of reading is for readers who are more interested in the
journey and the connections between process and result. Slide mode of
reading is for more laid back readers who aren’
ideas but are more focused on the motivation and purpose of the project.
Build readers are detail oriented and academic readers who would prefer
a “traditional” lead to reading.< / p >
< p > Alongside the different strings to follow the text, there will be
little drawings in the margins as seen above, which will have diff erent
representations like in a Quipu. Certain knots represent the experiences
that raise interesting opportunities for research and distinct events I
went through while making the project and underneath the drawing you can
find the relation to the knot itself explained. For example if I
couldn’
represented with a broken knot. Bend knots which are used to connect two
strings, will be representing the relation between theories and my
ownexperiences/motivations. Hitches which are knots that are formed
around a solid object, such as a spar, post, or ring will be
representing the evidence or data I have collected on the subject. We
move on now with the working end and make some loops!< / p >
< h2 id = "how-to-choose-your-string" > HOW TO CHOOSE YOUR STRING< / h2 >
This map will reveal your mode of reading. The order of reading will be
indicated with a loop sign Please hold a string in your hand as you read
the text and make knots or loops as you weave through the reading as an
exercise for concrete thinking. See you at the standing end! and a
number on top of the sign with a color. This is the numeric order you
should follow to read the thesis, if you choose to read with a mode.
Every reader starts from 1 and continues until 12, with a consecutive
numeric order, according to their color/mode.
< figure >
< img src = "../images/../images/../irmak/map.png"
alt="knot words from Leeszaal" />
< / figure >
< h2 id = "working-end" > Working End < sup > < span class = "margin-note" > < / h2 >
< h3 id = "loop-1" > Loop 1< / h3 >
< h3 id = "why-am-i-doing-this" > Why am I doing this?< / h3 >
< p > My desire to write a children’
when I was studying in college and doing an internship in a publishing
house in Ankara. I was struggling to process a loss I experienced at the
time and to find something to cling to on a daily basis. Then one day I
started hearing a buzzing sound in my bedroom at my family’
searched everywhere but couldn’
my father and he started searching too. A couple of days passed and the
buzzing was still there.< / p >
< p > One day I found a bee on the floor in my bedroom and realized that
the bees nested on the roof and were coming inside my room through a gap
in the lamp. I was terrified because I have an allergy to bees and
thought they might sting me in my sleep. This moment was when I realized
I was so determined to find this buzzing sound for some time that I
forgot about dealing with the loss I was experiencing. This made me feel
very guilty and I remember thinking I betrayed the person I lost.< / p >
< p > As funny as it may appear, I felt like I was sabotaged by these bees
that I thought were here to hurt me but in the end they made me
understand that its ok to let things go and every being does what it has
to do to find its way of survival. The little habitat that they chose to
create in my room seemed like a calling or a sign that I can aff ect
another living being significantly without being aware of it. This goes
for everything, no matter if some people leave us in this world, they
have living matter in us that keeps pulsing. So then I started
researching bees and their ecosystems. I read Alan Watts, Alan Lightman,
Emily Dickinson, Maurice Sendak, Meghan O’
Macy, Rilke, Montaigne and theories on order in chaos, correlative
vision, harmony of contained conflicts and the mortality paradox. I
wrote a lot and erased a lot and fairly figured out the wisdom of not
knowing things.< / p >
< p > Years passed and I wrote and deleted and rewrote the story that I am
working on to make interactive today so many times and was waiting on it
because it always felt incomplete. In a way it will always be incomplete
because of the natural ambiguity the topic carries. Years later, grief
was back in my life with the loss of my grandfather. So therefore, the
story I wrote and abandoned changed again as I attempted to rewrite it
as a diff erent version of myself with a diff erent understanding of
death. And this went on… The story remained hidden and I forgot why it
ever existed in the first place.< / p >
< p > Last year when two earthquakes hit Syria and Turkey, I was drowned
like everyone I know, by a collective trauma and grief. Then this
horrible feeling flared up by neglect and desperation. It was and still
is impossible to mourn so many strangers at the same time. I lost two
dear friends, I was furious, away from home, mostly alone and remembered
vividly my failed attempt to understand or place grief in one of the
piles in my mind.< / p >
< p > Previous months, I was working on this story (yes, again) but didn’
know how to tackle the text because it was so diff erent to what I was
experiencing now, when compared to the last time I rewrote it. A tutor
asked me why I wrote this story in the first place and I couldn’
remember. I kept tracing back to 2016 and step by step, remembered why,
as told above. The consciousness that this story is actually a personal
history of how I went through grief in diff erent stages of my life,
made me realise that it doesn’
story.< / p >
< p > In the end with the experience I had with loss, I believe the story
turned out to be an ode to remembering or might I say an ode to not
being able to forget or an ode to the fear of forgetting< / p >
< h3 id = "loop-2" > Loop 2< / h3 >
< p > The effect of storytelling knowledge on kids’
creativity. What can we learn from open ended and multiple ending
stories?< / p >
< p > ability to form basic stories or to express their emotions through
fictional characters or events. Children are not born with a wide
vocabulary of emotions and expressions. They learn how to read, mimic
and express their feelings over time. The more children read, write and
are exposed to social environments, the more they widen their sense and
ability of expressing themselves. The language gained as kids comes in
many forms and storytelling plays a crucial role in this development.
The exposure to stories prepares the kids to the era of reading and
writing. Children come to understand and value feelings through
conversation (Dettore, 2002). When children are off ered to read or
share stories, they also learn to understand people around them better
and gain emotional literacy.< / p >
< p > Storytelling has been a means of communicating with others for many
centuries. It is not only a way to discuss important events, but also a
way to entertain one another (Lawrence & Paige, 2013). Stories have
been told orally, in writing or with drawings for thousands of years and
some of these stories are still alive. This is because language is a
living thing that travels through time and still remains brand new. When
necessary, it just adapts form, evolves and blends in with the changing
world. Children comprehend the idea that they have a story to tell by
hearing other stories and this ignites the imagination. We tend to
forget many things but almost everyone remembers one small story they
heard or read when they were a kid, this moment we remember is the
moment a certain story sparked for us.< / p >
< p > Nowadays storytelling takes many forms. For example, some readers’
story might even begin from here although it isn’
Interactivity is one of the storytelling forms that can signifi- cantly
improve children’
readers or listeners get to contribute and aff ect the story. This of
course requires and improves creative and active thinking. Getting the
chance to choose a path for a fictional character gives the child the
freedom and confi dence of constructing a world, a character or an
adventure. Although this is essentially “writing” as we know it,
children think of this as a game, yet to discover they are actually
becoming writers. What kind of reward can we expect from active
participation in a story? Narrative pleasure can be generally described
in terms of immersions (spatial, temporal, emotional, epistemic) in a
fictional world (Ryan, 2009). When we are set to create or co-create a
world, the narrative has eff ects on us such as curiosity, suspense and
surprise. At this point, we start creatively producing ideas to keep
these three emotions.< / p >
< p > Interactive storytelling reminds everyone but especially children
that there are limitless endings to a story that is solely up to the
maker’
assuming an end to a story, I think influences the children’
making abilities and sense of responsibility towards their creations. It
is basically the same in theatre where if an actor chooses to create an
imaginary suitcase on stage, they can’
created on stage and exit the scene because the audience will wonder why
the actor didn’
when kids decide to choose a path or item or any attribute for a
character in a story, they feel responsible and curious to see it
through to the end or decide what to do with it. This interactivity
therefore creates a unique bond between the reader/writer and the
text.< / p >
< p > There are many theories on how to approach interactive literature for
children. Multi-literacy theory and digital literacies are some of the
theories which I find relevant to my aim with Wink. Multiliteracy theory
in a nutshell is an education oriented framework that aims to expand
traditional reading and writing skills. This theory was developed by the
New London Group. They were a collective of scholars and educators who
addressed the changing nature of literacy in an increasingly globalized,
digital world. The theory explores multiple modes of communication
consisting The sense of storytelling settles for kids, starting from age
three. By this time, children have the of multimodal communication,
cultural and social contexts, critical inquiry, socio-cultural learning
theory and pedagogical implications. Multimodal communication focuses on
the variety of communication techniques. This was groundbreaking in the
90s because of its acknowledgment of a diverse range of literacies and
its departure from traditional approaches to literary texts. This theory
includes new media and communication studies such as visual, digital,
special and gestural literacies.< / p >
< p > I kept this theory in mind as I chose the interactivity elements to
use in the picture book. I think the usage of multiple media such as
sound, image and games is a good way to start and diff erentiate from a
regular interactive e-book. The fact that this theory has an educational
perspective and is taking the rapidly changing qualities of literature
seriously, made me consider it as a guide in designing the
prototype.< / p >
< p > Looking through the perspective of multiliteracies, questions come up
for me that lead to the rest of this thesis: What is an interactive
picture book? Is it a book? Is it a game? Is it an exercise?< / p >
< p > What is it defined as? How can we design an interactive reading
environment without confusing children?< / p >
< h3 id = "loop-3" > Loop 3< / h3 >
< p > Diff erences and similarities between interactive e-books and
storytelling games< / p >
< p > Storytelling games and interactive e-books have many things in
common. To begin with, they both centralize the narrative to engage the
audience. While both of these formats are storytelling tools, e-books
tend to stay more in a linear narrative and format when compared to
storytelling games where the audience is commonly the main character.
Reading experiences are also a way to be in the shoes of the narrator or
the character but in a storytelling game, you embody the mission and the
experience overrules the story most of the time. In the specific example
of a child, storytelling games are complicated and puzzle driven where
the player has missions to complete. Whereas in an interactive e-book,
the missions are solely based on the interactive elements implemented in
the text and images.< / p >
< p > Another diff erence is that the visual world in an interactive e-book
is less cinematic and has limited movement. The imagery plays a massive
role in a storytelling game where the world created is off ered to the
player. In an interactive e-book, the text itself is designed to be
playful and ready for readers to discover.< / p >
< p > The main diff erence in my opinion that separates these two methods
of storytelling is the reward. In a game, we expect to be rewarded by a
victory, passing a level or unlocking something throughout the
experience. In an interactive e-book, we work with the story and in
return we expect a good experience and there is no reward other than
that. But, the whole design of interactivity involves aspects of a game
where the reader –
elements that come up on the pages. This ignites curiosity but not
ambition, which is a good start to foster the love for reading.< / p >
< h3 id = "loop-4" > Loop 4< / h3 >
< p > Ways of using interactivity in digital platforms< / p >
< p > CASA theory, also known as the Cognitive-Aff ective-Social Theory of
Learning and Development, is a framework used in educational psychology
to understand how learning occurs within the context of cognitive, aff
ective, and social factors. Research on cognitive learning with keeping
in mind the limited attention span and memory factors. For children in
specific, I think these are very important factors to keep in mind when
trying to design an interactive experience. This is because children get
bored very easily and can be disengaged because of failure of
solving/understanding something in a story. This is something I kept in
mind as I wrote for children and chose the interactive elements in the
story.< / p >
< p > Finding the balance between making the interactive element surprising
and making it easy to interact with is the key to designing for kids in
this scenario. We don’
attention span in a non-engaging way but we want to keep the reading
interesting enough so they want to continue.< / p >
< p > Digging deeper into how to do this, I found Children Computer
Interaction (CCI) study very useful. This study examines how children of
diff erent ages and developmental stages interact with digital devices
and how these interactions can support their growth. This made me think
about digital gestures; how they change through generations and how to
use these to design a platform where children can navigate easily and
freely. CCI suggests that when introducing a new media to children its
better to start easy and clear when they try it. Through this I think
the best easy interaction is the tap or click for children. It is easy
to do, instinctive and common. So I decided to base the interactive
elements on click animations.< / p >
< p > There are multiple ways to use digital gestures in storytelling to
make the experience more intriguing. These are usually elements such as
sound, animations, voice-overs that are ignited with a click or tap by
the reader. For children younger than 5, its usually just tapping over
the page and experiencing an action-reaction. For older kids between the
ages 6-8, I made some workshops to figure out which types of interactive
elements are most useful in engaging them in the reading process.< / p >
< p > It is true that sound and animations are very inclusive and it is
engaging for kids to find out which part of a page is interactive by
clicking on images. Another thing I found out is that kids enjoy being a
part of the story. For the prototype of Bee Within (the story I am using
to test interactivity also can be read in the appendix) I will focus on
color, sound and click based animations according to the results of my
research.< / p >
< h3 id = "loop-5" > Loop 5< / h3 >
< p > What is the target age group for the designated prototype and
why?< / p >
< p > It is tricky when it comes to choosing the right age spectrum for
children’
referred to as preschoolers have more developed social skills and day by
day increasing interest in play. They can take on roles in imaginative
play scenarios. They can also share and take turns more, listen and
think about rules of a game. They can form friendships and connections
easily.< / p >
< p > School age children are between the ages 6-12, which is Wink’
age group is a little diff erent. These kids can form more rooted
friendships and engage in more complex narratives. They learn to
negotiate and compromise around this time as well. This age group is
desired for Wink because kids this age are open to creative problem
solving, connecting events and comprehending slightly more complex
narratives. Moreover, this age group would benefit the most from the
interactive stories and the reading process because of the developmental
phase they are in.< / p >
< p > The average amount of time children between these ages use on a daily
basis is depending on their parents and circumstances. But to be fair,
it is often not less than 2 hours. If a child isn’
spending these hours reading a book, why not ask them: “Would you like
to be a part of a story?”< / p >
< p > Today, kids from age 3 can use digital gestures successfully and
experience these as simple as flipping the page of a book. This is why
it is fairly easy to create an interactive picture book which kids can
navigate themselves and be able to browse through with or without their
parents. But for Wink, I chose to design for older kids because I want
to experiment on multi-leveled narratives and I want to avoid the risk
of confusing children.< / p >
< h3 id = "loop-6" > Loop 6< / h3 >
< p > Limits of interactivity in narratives for children and why do we have
less modes of reading and writing for children?< / p >
< p > Although there are many upsides of creating digital environments for
children due to their advanced skills in technology from early ages,
there are also risks involved in this where the kid can be overwhelmed
and confused due to the autonomy they receive. Reading a story is
supposed to be eff ortless and a good free time activity but with
interactive picture books, it is slightly more than that and more
complicated as an experience.< / p >
< p > First of all, with the story at hand, called Bee Within, there are
two other stories in one. Although the main story is about a little
girl’ ’
the tree’
certain pictures on the page, they will be led to the bee’
or the trees. This is where the storyline can get a little bit
complicated for younger kids. The child reader at this point should be
able to follow the main storyline after visiting the side quests or
stories presented in the interactive book. To create this balance I
tried to limit the interactive elements I used in the main story. I
tried to keep the picture animations limited and focused more on the
storylines.< / p >
< p > Another aspect I am concerned about after the workshop I did with the
kids, is the risk of confusion due to an undefined and multimodal design
for a “book”. Kids tend to be confused when they can’
are asked to improvise without knowing the purpose.They know what a book
is and that it is similar to what they encounter on the screen. But the
method of reading and interacting with Bee Within is diff erent than
what they are used to. This concerns me because they might prefer to
just read a book or play a game instead of discovering a new thing,
which they are exposed to daily because they are always in a process of
active learning. So one more thing to learn might come as exhausting.
Therefore, in designing, I want to make interactions as clear as
possible for them.< / p >
< h3 id = "loop-7" > Loop 7< / h3 >
< p > Interactive reading and writing examples and surveys done with kids
As an improvisation theater enthusiast myself, I tried to engage the
kids with the story through some exercises and games during the
workshops. My aim was to see how involved they want to be in
storytelling. Improvisation has a certain way of storytelling and
interaction where there are either too many options or none. You need to
have good empathy and harmony with the person you are acting with and
you are designated to be creative in your own way. I tried to use
several improv games and warmups to involve the kids in the story more
and see how they see certain characters from the picture book.< / p >
< p > My first attempt was to make a survey at the end of workshops with
kids to whether they liked it or not, but when I researched further,
surveying with kids has very diff erent methods and complications.< / p >
< p > Most kids either really like or really dislike things. Finding the in
between emotions with a survey, ends up being vague. Most surveys done
with kids use emoticons as representation of a good or bad or average
time. Instead, I chose to observe the environment and understand how
much empathy kids can off er in an interactive reading or playing
environment.< / p >
< h3 id = "loop-8" > Loop 8< / h3 >
< p > What does the joy of destruction and the awe eff ect have to do with
interactivity? Indeed, why did we ever start playing games? The most
important aspect of a game for me is that it surprises you and leaves
you in awe towards something you weren’
every reaction I give when I’
when I was playing freeze and had to stop moving at any given time or
when I found the last friend hiding somewhere in hide and seek. This
feeling of appreciation and unexpectedness is why most people remember
certain games, movies from their childhoods very vividly. Its an
introduction to a feeling we experience maybe for the first time because
we don’
that is why it’
impression with us.< / p >
< p > In my opinion, what drives everyone as a common denominator is
amazement; because it takes us to our childhoods or distant memories
where we first felt that feeling of awe. This is the main purpose behind
any kind of interactive design and I think books can be an amazing
medium to experiment this with. Specifically because this ancient device
can take us to numerous worlds. For me as a millennial, books give me
enough amazement as it is. But as I worked in publishing through the
years and observed, I think kids today need something more to ignite
their interest. There are so many factors in a picture book such as the
image, the text and sound which can be played with to create an
experience that is more surprising. This is the main purpose behind my
research and protoype. Today’
serving very short attention spans with social media, it is a tough task
to insert a story or reading experience that requires full attention and
patience. There are examples of Tiktok stories, Instagram reels, audio
books and games that try to tell stories worth listening with attention.
Wink is also an attempt to do this and I believe the key is to make an
already engaging story enriched with interactive elements that appear to
you through a click if you choose to. I think this is also the key to
nourishing a new way of storytelling.< / p >
< h3 id = "loop-9" > Loop 9< / h3 >
< p > Interactivity in reading and writing in history. What changed?< / p >
< p > Interactivity has always been an experimental area in literature from
inscriptions to narrative games then to playable stories and artificial
intelligence. I will expand some of these examples from the rich history
of interactive fiction. When I dig a little bit into the media
archaeology there are three still relevant aspects that strike me and
change/improve my approach to Wink. The first is the need to connect
that remains untouched through centuries of human communication, the
second is how there were multiple projects concerning interactive media
especially for kids that later turned into narrative games or remained
as prototypes and lastly how the integration of media and literature has
been such a grand topic even before information and technology era. Some
examples to this is music, masks, puppets, props used in
storytelling.< / p >
< p > Ancient texts with annotations such as The Odyssey, The Mahabharata
are maybe the earliest written interactive experiences in a historical
context. They are published with notes and explanations, clarifications
which make the text inhabit diff erent opinions and approaches in an
engaging way where the reader can choose to hop on and off from the
annotation and margin texts. From the 70s to the present there have been
many examples but I will be focusing on a few here. One of them is,
Choose your own adventure books which allowed the reader to participate
in the plot. These still exist as picture books where you are directed
to certain pages according to the choices you make throughout the story.
Along with this were also board games and cards that required
interactive inputs. Some examples to this is exploding kittens or cards
against humanity where the player has the autonomy to be creative and
fill in the blanks to win the game. Simultaneously, text-based adventure
games such as Zork and Adventure were popular. Early days of computing
off ered a wide space for exploring virtual worlds. In the early 80s,
hypertext fiction contributed to electronic literature. Hyperlinks were
used as a tool to navigate a text and choose paths of reading. This
inspired me to write this thesis with diff erent modes of reading as
well. After the 80’
of interacting with text based input. Dynabook by Alan Kay was
prototyped during this time as a promising reading and writing device
designed for children.< / p >
< p > The 21st century off ers a combination of text and illustrations in
augmented reality books that have animations, sound and external
interactions. These are followed by digital storytelling platforms like
Wattpad and Storybird and interactive e-book apps such as Pibocco, Bookr
and Tiny Minies. Most of these apps are dedicated to education however
and not solely to creativity. Their aim is to use creative elements to
foster education for kids.< / p >
< p > With Wink, I want to use a mainly educational tool (a book) to foster
creativity and expression. So I believe it is the opposite purpose as to
these examples in certain ways. I am trying to combine the delicacy of a
narrative where you can only be a reader and the excitement of
autonomous writing and experiencing.< / p >
< p > This is because I think the understanding and usage of media changed
in the last years. Some tools that created the awe eff ect for users
faded and left their place to more compact designs. Although audio books
were very welcome at some point, younger users nowadays prefer book
summary apps or podcasts to them. Of course they are still used and not
outdated but there is certainly a visible change to where media is
heading.< / p >
< h3 id = "loop-10" > Loop 10< / h3 >
< p > Experimentation of creative exercises to be used in WINK. Exercises
of storytelling with words, images, drawing, sound and gestures.< / p >
< p > Before I completed the prototype of Wink, I reached out to an
international school in Rotterdam to make a 20 minute workshop with kids
between ages 6-8. The aim here was to grasp the interactive elements in
the picture book to implement in the digital framework. I wanted to see
which parts of the story the children found exiting and which ones are
not so thrilling for them. It also helped me draw the pictures for the
book accordingly and edit the text with their reactions in mind. Due to
a privacy agreement, I couldn’
but I made some helpful observations from my time there.< / p >
< p > The first workshop I planned consisted of two main parts that made up
20 minutes. The first 10 minutes we read Bee Within (attached in the
appendix) together in a circle and the last 10 minutes we played little
improvisation games, focused on the three main characters in the story
(the bee, the kid and the tree). I made three groups and gave these
groups the three characters. I asked them to embody a character
throughout the workshop and be loyal to it. Each group of three had 1
minute on the stage to silently improvise their characters. They were to
use one sentence if they wanted to speak.< / p >
< p > During the first part, I couldn’
their teacher kindly took notes during this time, regarding the
children’
narrative to the reading by tossing the paper I had in my hand and
picking up a new one as I kept reading the bees and trees story. This
was crucial because I wanted to see if this multiple stories in one
concept would be confusing for kids. The teacher told me that they were
excited about my gesture of juggling papers as I seemingly read one
story. They were intrigued and confused at first but they did keep up
with the storyline and understood all. Her notes basically said they
were very focused and less interested in the kids journey. They really
liked the bee and were a bit confused with the tree.< / p >
< p > There were 12 international kids and 3 of them didn’
the workshop, they wanted to observe. I told them that they could paint
and draw what they see. The drawings they made were of their classmates
acting as trees or bees. They drew their classmate with a stinger and
the other was of a classmate as a tree with his hands wide open as he
was performing.< / p >
< p > What struck me most on the second part of the workshop was how these
kids used the room so freely and in relation to their characters.
Because we read the story before the improvisation games, some of their
characters were influenced by how it is in the story we read. Next
workshop, I am planning to not tell the story but to talk about it
before and give context. This is because I want to see how their
understanding changes without a limitation of a story.< / p >
< p > Bees in the classroom that day were all very active and they used
chairs, tables and windows to position themselves in a higher
perspective. Children who played the kid were usually standing closer to
the trees and looked very calm. Trees were all very diff erent. One of
the kids used postits as leaves. Some of them didn’
it is winter. Trees didn’
around. “The kid” usually sat near the tree, on the tree (as in the
other performers’ < / p >
< p > Overall only 2 groups used the option to say a sentence which were,
> “I want to go on an adventure”< br / >
> “I don’ < / p >
< p > This was a good feedback for me because I realized they are very
perceptive of actions and facial expressions rather than words. The
workshop we did in the studio with XPUB 2 students was harder than the
session with the kids because everyone felt so restricted to obligations
and were not comfortable to let go of bodily control. No one actually
attempted in using objects from the room which is a huge diff erence
with the kids because they drew on their faces, used plastic bags as
wings for the bee and made sounds with their mouths as trees.< / p >
< p > The next workshop was to discover how improv would work without
reading the story first. This workshop was fruitful because it helped me
realize how much information or guidance I have to off er for children
in order for them to be comfortable to participate and interact without
confusion. We made a circle and I summarized the story to the kids,
acting in the middle of the circle. This broke the ice completely
because I was a part of the workshop and they thought I was funny. For
the next part, I divided the group in three and assigned a character to
them. After this, I asked them to decide on an attitude, pop in the
middle and tell or act out their character. I went first and they
followed easily. They were not under the influence of the story so the
performances were diff erent but they still got influenced by each
other, which in my opinion is inevitable. Some of the kids were
buzzing/running around, the “kids” were walking around, acting like they
are playing which I found very interesting. Some trees were small some
were mighty and old. It was helpful to see the diff erent attributions
they gave to the characters.< / p >
< p > After the circle session, they separated in three groups: the kids,
the bees and the trees. I asked each group to come up, walk around
randomly, embodying the character they chose. Then as I rang the bell, I
asked them to change the character. I asked them to be a busy, tired,
injured, happy and scared bee one by one. They kept walking randomly and
acted these feelings out. For the “kids”, I asked them to be angry, sad,
scared, and curious. For the trees I asked them to be wise, mad, funny
and happy. The results were amazing. They adapted very quickly to the
changing of emotions which showed me that this age gap was good to work
with. The trees stopped walking as I changed the emotions and this was
an affirmation to not animate the tree with movement but more with
changing of color and tiny animations. They mostly used arms and face
expressions to show the emotions, some of them ducked or made sounds. As
I said mad, one of the kids ran and put her red jacket on. This made me
think about using color to show emotions for the tree. It was good to
see that they weren’
well. We ended the workshop by drawing our characters. It was nice to
see them own their imaginary characters enough to draw them with
joy.< / p >
< p > The last workshop was dedicated to discovering the sound aspect. The
tree in the story speaks in verses so I chose one verse and
read/performed it in a circle to begin with. Then I gave them some
instruments: a drum, a bell, aluminum folio, a balloon and a bubble
wrap. I asked for a few volunteers and they made sound eff ects as I
read the verse very slowly. This went good and I saw that they like to
dramatize the sounds and make them funny or unexpected. They used the
bubble wrap to make sounds for snowing or aluminum folio for the
volcano. They had great fun but I think I made a mistake by making a few
kids do foley at the same time because they didn’
turns and were hesitant at first. Then quite impressively, they made
their own system where they took turns to make eff ects for each
sentence.< / p >
< p > Then I made four groups of three. 3 kids as actors and 3 kids as
foley actors. They buddied up and made short scenes where one group made
sounds eff ects to the others acting on stage. This was the best part of
this workshop because they could lead the actors with the sounds they
made or vice versa. This I think is very important because it shows that
they like to be a part of or be eff ective to the story itself. They
were very creative in using the objects in the room and turning them
into a tool for sound. They enjoyed to foley the bee and the other
characters not so much. Which showed me that I should focus on the sound
of the bee in the prototype.< / p >
< p > Overall, the workshops were very helpful for me to understand where
to focus on as I develop. I realized that some of the sound, color and
movement animations I planned were too complicated and I decided to make
them more simplistic. I decided to animate the tree with only color
because I was eff ected by this one participant who took the red jacket
to represent the tree was mad. For the bee I decided to focus on sound
more. For the kid I decided to use more visual animations to make it
more interesting.< / p >
< p > One other thing the workshops helped me with is the multiple stories
I am planning to tell in one narrative. The book I have has two side
quest/stories so it nice to see that kids weren’
narratives. I decided to make the story of the tree as a click game
where the lines appear by clicking and the bee’
based game. I wanted to use click game with the tree because it seemed
like they needed more stimulation to be interested in that story and I
though a ‘ ’
the bee, knowing they like the character, I wanted to make it more like
a game to give the kids a chance and autonomy to be a part of the story
itself.< / p >
< h3 id = "loop-11" > Loop 11< / h3 >
< p > The diff erences of these exercises in WINK than the already existing
interactive e-book platforms The interactive e-book apps existing today,
made especially for children, are quite similar in both format and
purpose. If we take a look at Bookr, Piboco, and Kotobee, we can see
they seek a new way to tell a story but have one mode of reading. The
stories are linear and can be read once, without side quests. This is
the main diff erence with what I am trying to design. Wink acts as a
tool to play with and choose paths. The story isn’
traditional way where you interact with the pictures and finish the book
but there are side stories to the main story that they can discover or
choose not to. I think this is a solid diff erence. This makes it a
playable narrative, diff erent from a book.< / p >
< p > This prototype is a good start to see how far I can get with the
interactive elements and side stories without confusing or discouraging
the children. There are many other aspects that can be implemented to
this design such as writing elements and drawing but for the meantime,
also in correspondence with the workshops, I choose to test the sound
and image along with one main and two small narratives.< / p >
< p > For future prototypes, I envision space to draw and write as a
contribution to the story and maybe turning Wink into a hybrid format
with more autonomous features. For me, at this point, it’
essential to see if my technique of combining narratives is working or
not.< / p >
< h3 id = "loop-12" > Loop 12< / h3 >
< h2 id = "standing-end" > Standing End< / h2 >
< p > After many loops of thought, we are here at the standing end of the
thesis. There is room for more loops and knots in the future to secure
this string of thought but for now, we have come to the dock and rest
ashore.< / p >
< p > Reading this thesis with a string, using concrete thinking as a
technique to go through a research and text was a helpful exercise for
me and helped me mark my thoughts and ideas. The overarching theme of
knots and experimental approach to modes of reading was valuable for me
to share and try as an enthusiastic young writer. I like that I asked
the reader to interact with the thesis and follow paths accordingly.< / p >
< p > It was enlightening to see the results of working with kids and be
able to see from their point of view and alter everything according to
these encounters. Using CCI and Multiliteracy theory as a guide to
approach the design and prototype was helpful in understanding how to
approach and tackle the desire of making something for children.< / p >
< p > Now from where I stand, I feel more rooted and have a clearer idea of
what works and doesn’
well like the choice of writing didn’
narratives is already too much. I realized I underestimated the eff ect
of introducing a new media to children. This is why I decided to take it
step by step with the interactivity.< / p >
< p > Taking a step to make Wink and using the story I wrote and feel is
important in my personal history as a prototype was a breakthrough. I
feel like my interest and desire to discover new ways of writing,
reading and experiencing literature is ongoing and it was a beautiful
journey so far. I am looking forward to making more knots on this long
and mysterious string at hand. < / span > < / sup > ## Bibliography Cope, B.
and Kalantzis, M. (2009) ‘
learning’ –
doi:10.1080/15544800903076044. < br > Dettore, E. (2002) “Children’
emotional GrowthAdults’
education, 78(5), pp. – < br >
Ingold, T. (2015) The life of lines.London, England: Routledge. < br >
Lawrence, R. L. and Paige, D. S. (2016) “What our ancestors knew:
Teaching and learning through storytelling: What our ancestors knew:
Teaching and learning through storytelling,” New directions for adult
and continuing education, 2016(149), pp. –
10.1002/ace.20177.< br / >
< br > Papert, S. and Papert, S. A. (2020) Mindstorms (revised): Children,
computers, and powerful ideas. London, England: Basic Books. < br > Ryan,
M.-L. (2009) “From narrative games to playable stories: Toward a poetics
of interactive narrative,” StoryWorlds A Journal of Narrative Studies,
1(1), pp. – < br > Smeets, D. and Bus, A.
(2013) “Picture Storybooks Go Digital: Pros and Cons,” in Quality
Reading Instruction in the Age of Common Core Standards. International
Reading Association, pp. – < br > Strohecker, C. (ed.) (1978) Why
knot? MIT. < br > The Effect of Multimodality in Increasing Motivation and
Collaboration among 4th CSE EFL Students (no date). < br > Turkle, S.
(ed.) (2014) Evocative objects: Things we think with. MIT Press. < br >
Urton, M. M. & . (2018) The khipu code: the knotty mystery of the
Inkas’
aeon.co/ideas/the-khipu-code-the-knotty-mystery-of-the-inkas-3d-records.
< br > Vega, N. (2022) Codes in Knots. Sensing Digital Memories, The Whole
Life. Available at: https://wholelife.hkw.de/
codes-in-knots-sensing-digital-memories/.< / p >
< / section >
< section id = "section-9" class = "section" >
< h1 id = "do-you-ever-dream-about-work" > do you ever dream < nobr > about
work?< / nobr > < / h1 >
< h2 id = "stephen-kerr-2024" > stephen kerr, 2024< / h2 >
< p > Reading an email in a dream and you can hear the voices of every word
you read. Or the one where you’
typing, late, stressed, rushed. What about that dream where you had no
idea how to do your job, everyone is going to know you’
this project I have made spaces for us to share our dreams about labour,
and through that allow conversations about our work, our working
conditions, and the feelings we’
night.< / p >
< p > For the past year I have spoken with designers, artists and makers
finding out how they spend their time in everyday life, what they
believe and how they feel. In our dreams we feel the weird bits the
most: hmm a bit uncomfortable, ooh that gave me a fright, aah so, so
sad. Through performances, online tools and storytelling, I want to hold
these dreams together, to unite our experiences. Online I have made < a
href="https://stephenkerrdesign.com/dream/" class="ext">tools to gather
stories< / a > and < a href = "https://stephenkerrdesign.com/typing/"
class="ext">tools to tell them< / a > . I have facilitated < a
href="https://worm.org/production/opening-experimental-publishing-graduation-show-2024/"
class="ext">group dream re-enactments< / a > (< a
href="https://art-meets.radical-openness.org/2024/program/turning-off-the-internet-slot-1/"
class="ext">a few times< / a > ), using felt dolls to share our night time
theatre.< / p >
< p > < em > stephen kerr is a graphic designer or a musician or a very weird
and long dream.< / em > < / p >
< button >
< a href = "https://stephenkerrdesign.com"
class="ext">stephenkerrdesign.com< / a >
< / button >
< button >
< a
href="https://pzwiki.wdka.nl/mediadesign/User:Ssstephen/Final_presentation"
class="ext">Wiki: more about the project< / a >
< / button >
< button >
< a href = "https://stephenkerrdesign.com/theeeeesis/" class = "ext" > ⊞ (the
research thesis)< / a >
< / button >
< hr / >
< figure >
< img src = "../images/../images/../stephen/keyboard24.jpeg" class = "image-95"
alt="Keyboard of things designers have said. Our feelings about work." />
< figcaption aria-hidden = "true" > Keyboard of things designers have said.
Our feelings about work.< / figcaption >
< / figure >
< figure >
< img src = "../images/../images/../stephen/keyboard25.jpeg" class = "image-80"
alt="The messages on the keys were gathered using experimental interview methods and questions." />
< figcaption aria-hidden = "true" > The messages on the keys were gathered
using experimental interview methods and questions.< / figcaption >
< / figure >
< figure >
< img src = "../images/../images/../stephen/keyboard26.jpeg" class = "image-55"
alt="Except “it’
< figcaption aria-hidden = "true" > Except “it’
me on the phone one day.< / figcaption >
< / figure >
< figure >
< iframe src = "https://stephenkerrdesign.com/dream" title = "dream" >
< / iframe >
< figcaption >
Web page to share and read labour dreams. Scroll down for more.
< / figcaption >
< / figure >
< figure >
< iframe src = "https://stephenkerrdesign.com/typing/" title = "typing" >
< / iframe >
< figcaption >
Interactive dream telling. Click then type your story.
< / figcaption >
< / figure >
< figure >
< img src = "../images/../images/../stephen/peecee.jpg" class = "desaturate image-45"
alt="Re-enacting dreams about work at Piet Zwart Institute, Rotterdam." />
< figcaption aria-hidden = "true" > Re-enacting dreams about work at Piet
Zwart Institute, Rotterdam.< / figcaption >
< / figure >
< figure >
< img src = "../images/../images/../stephen/amro.jpeg" class = "desaturate half-image"
alt="Collective dream re-enactment at Art Meets Radical Openness, Linz." />
< figcaption aria-hidden = "true" > Collective dream re-enactment at Art
Meets Radical Openness, Linz.< / figcaption >
< / figure >
< figure >
< img src = "../images/../images/../stephen/dizzy.jpeg" class = "full-image"
alt="Where do dreams come from?" />
< figcaption aria-hidden = "true" > Where do dreams come from?< / figcaption >
< / figure >
< h3 id = "licensing-information" > Licensing information< / h3 >
< p > This work is free to distribute or modify under the terms of the SIXX
license as published by XPUB, either version one of the SIXX License or
any later version. See the SIXX License for more details. A copy of the
license can be found on < a href = "vulnerable-interfaces.xpub.nl/license"
class="ext">vulnerable-interfaces.xpub.nl/license< / a > .< / p >
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<!-- I cut my thumb so every time I type i can feel it in my nerve endings. Not true, it's my left thumb so I don't type with it. Not true, I feel it anyway. Why are most of the function keys on the left of the keyboard. What's so functional about pressing buttons. Stephen Kerr is a designer and musician based in. Have you ever loved an instrument? The Ctrl key broke like four times since I moved here. I have one more replacement because I bought a bunch of them but at some point I gave up and use an external keyboard. I dunno I'm more confused than ever. It was something to do with dreams and working. It's the middle of the night I'm writing this on my phone. If I had a dream this is when I would be writing it. The memory is fuzzy: either I don't remember or it didn't make sense in the first place. It was something to do with fuzziness and memory no wait. Phones don't have keyboards in real life this doesn't make sense. I'm trying to type but I don't think I can get it on the way to the office for the weekend and I think it was a good idea to do it and I was thinking about you and I was thinking of you and I was thinking about you and I was in the same place as a friend of mine and I was in the studio and we were in the studio and we were in the studio and we were in the studio and we were in the -->
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2024-06-06 15:53:55,513 - '\x06'
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2024-06-06 15:54:10,754 - 'e'
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2024-06-06 15:54:44,466 - '\x13'
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2024-06-06 15:54:53,122 - 'o'
2024-06-06 15:54:53,265 - 'n'
2024-06-06 15:54:53,817 - Key.space
2024-06-06 15:54:54,410 - 'g'
2024-06-06 15:54:54,442 - 'e'
2024-06-06 15:54:54,609 - 'n'
2024-06-06 15:54:54,714 - 'e'
2024-06-06 15:54:54,810 - 'r'
2024-06-06 15:54:55,073 - 'a'
2024-06-06 15:54:55,202 - 't'
2024-06-06 15:54:55,306 - 'e'
2024-06-06 15:54:55,809 - '-'
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2024-06-06 15:54:58,945 - Key.enter
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2024-06-06 15:55:11,630 - Key.ctrl_l
2024-06-06 15:55:11,642 - '\x12'
2024-06-06 15:55:15,457 - Key.ctrl_l
2024-06-06 15:55:15,730 - '\x06'
2024-06-06 15:55:16,210 - 'z'
2024-06-06 15:55:16,434 - 'e'
2024-06-06 15:55:16,626 - 'n'
2024-06-06 15:55:16,714 - 'o'
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2024-06-06 15:55:28,298 - Key.ctrl_l
2024-06-06 15:55:28,330 - '\x1a'
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2024-06-06 15:55:28,834 - '\x18'
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< / section >
*What do graphic designers do all day and why do they do it and what does "graphic design" even mean?!????!!1!?* is an assessment of what the term "graphic design" means to its practitioners today. Through experimental ethnographic research methods and the development of reflexive tools, the project highlights and questions the boundaries that exist around this apparent category. The research focuses on my own practices as well as other people and groups that identify with "graphic designer" as a label. The research was both conducted by and shared with interested parties in the form of the tools themselves, as well as a series of performances. There is no strict distinction between the research and its publication. The tools were released in an iterative cycle throughout the process of the project, and the research is conducted through the performative use and development of these tools.
This research is carried out in three intersecting methods: experimental ethnographic research, reflexive tools, and performative research. Keylogging, performance of personal work habits, interviews about the manual work of "immaterial labourers", and dream analysis are combined in order to uncover less obvious and less discussed aspects of what a designer is and does in their daily life, as entry points to their worldviews, belief systems, mythologies or ideologies. The methods were developed in an iterative process that reflected on findings from the previous prototypes. The research took into account its own publication as part of one process.
1. Experimental ethnographic research methods: I documented my own practices as a graphic designer for nine months. Sometimes based on technical observations of my interaction with my tools, primarily my laptop computer and the software on it. I conducted interviews with designers. I recorded the interviews. I had prompts to open the discussion such as reading material and weird tools to try with them. I will carry out auto-ethnographic research using experimental methods such as mouse tracking and unusual annotation methods. I shared the results of this research as a series of interactive publications (tools) with a small but selected audience of people who are involved in these processes and who would benefit from it.
2. Reflexive tools: Software and hardware tools that explore the boundaries of "graphic design" as a category. For example at the boundaries between graphic design and other disciplines. At the boundaries between work and play, or between design and art. These tools malfunction in order to explore what it even means to be working. The tools aim to highlight what a graphic designer does by interacting with their user in ways that the designers standard tools do not (for example an interface to connect musical instruments to the designers workflow), or conversely by amplifying how the designer usually interacts with their tools (for example a keylogger to celebrate and focus on the use of the keyboard). The tools are digital in nature and involve software and hardware interventions into the graphic designers work.
3. Performative research: I see all the methods above as having a performative element. For example the ethnographic-slash-performative act of answering my emails on a large screen in front of an audience, research which was carried out as part of this project at Leeszaal, Rotterdam West on November 7th 2023. By showing directly the work practices of graphic designers to an audience, or their interaction with the tools mentioned above, I am publishing through performance the daily activities of designers and my aim is to show these practices without the conventional lenses they are seen through. To be contrasted for example with how graphic design is presented on behance.net or in a bookshop, this performative approach will highlight the mythologies and practices of the graphic designer.
I made this to explore why designers make design, based on Clifford Geertz's ideas of why humans make culture: "to affirm it, defend it, celebrate it, justify it and just plain bask in it" (Geertz, 1973). This exploration will also involve less constructive actions like participating, dissociating, questioning, protesting, destroying and disregarding. There is a disconnect between the narratives about "graphic design" and the effects it is known to have on its audiences, practitioners, and society in more general terms. I am attempting to "loosen the object" of graphic design (Berlant, 2022), to make the definition less defined and maybe more useful or easier to engage with. This shit could be better. Its urgent for the people being exploited by it, to break the inequalities it serves to maintain, to expose what it hides, to improve things that are definitely working but not in a good way. Design can hide and reproduce inequalities in its output and also dominate workers in its practices. This research starts primarily from the bodies and actions of the practitioners so will primarily engage with the effects on and by these bodies.
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< / section >
< section id = "section-10" class = "section" >
< h1 id = "section" > ⊞< / h1 >
< hr / >
< p > Stephen Kerr< / p >
< p > ⊞< / p >
< p > Thesis submitted to the Department of Experimental Publishing, Piet
Zwart Institute, Willem de Kooning Academy, in partial fulfilment of the
requirements for the final examination for the degree of Master of Arts
in Fine Art & ⊞: Experimental Publishing.< / p >
< p > Adviser: Marloes de Valk< br / >
Second Reader: Joseph Knierzinger< br / >
Word count: 7828 words< / p >
< h4 id = "to-de-sign-design-i-will-assign-a-sign" > To de-sign design, I
will assign a sign: ⊞< / h4 >
< p > This symbol represents design in this writing in an attempt to avoid
the assumed meaning of the word and examine it as something unknown, to
mystify it, to examine its structure. The label ⊞ is a functional part
of a belief system involving order, structure, and rationality and I
want to break it. Removing the label is part of loosening the object,
making it avilable to transition (Berlant, 2022).< / p >
< figure >
< img src = "../images/../images/orange.jpg" style = "margin-top: 95mm; width: 40mm;" alt = "The Cadaster of Orange, unknown ⊞er, c. 100 CE." / >
< figcaption aria-hidden = "true" >
The Cadaster of Orange,< br / > unknown ⊞er, c.
< / figcaption >
< / figure >
< figure >
< img src = "../images/../images/Niggli-Grid-systems-in-graphic-design-7.jpg" style = "margin-top: 95mm" alt = "Grid Systems in Graphic ⊞, Josef Muller-Brockmann, 1981." / >
< figcaption aria-hidden = "true" >
Grid Systems in Graphic ⊞, Josef Muller-Brockmann, 1981.
< / figcaption >
< / figure >
< figure >
< img src = "../images/../images/albuni2.jpg"
alt="Shams al-Ma’
< figcaption aria-hidden = "true" > Shams al-Ma’
circa 1200.< / figcaption >
< / figure >
< figure >
< img src = "../images/../images/Simple_carthesian_coordinate_system.svg"
alt="Cartesian Geometry, Rene Descartes, 1637." />
< figcaption aria-hidden = "true" > Cartesian Geometry, Rene Descartes,
1637.< / figcaption >
< / figure >
< figure >
< img src = "../images/../images/art-josef-albers-study-for-homage-to-the-square-69.1917.jpg"
alt="Homage to the Square, Josef Albers, 1954." />
< figcaption aria-hidden = "true" > Homage to the Square, Josef Albers,
1954.< / figcaption >
< / figure >
< figure >
< img src = "../images/../images/TheoVAnDoesburgCounterCompositionVI.jpg"
alt="Counter Composition VI, Theo Van Doesburg, 1925." />
< figcaption aria-hidden = "true" > Counter Composition VI,< br / >
Theo Van Doesburg, 1925.< / figcaption >
< / figure >
< figure >
< img src = "../images/../images/po-valley2.png" style = "margin-top: 95mm;" alt = "The Po Valley, The Roman Empire, 268 BCE." / >
< figcaption aria-hidden = "true" >
The Po Valley, The Roman Empire, 268 BCE.
< / figcaption >
< / figure >
< figure >
< img src = "../images/../images/pietzwart.jpg" alt = "Monogram, Piet Zwart, c. / >
< figcaption aria-hidden = "true" > Monogram, Piet Zwart,
c. < / figcaption >
< / figure >
< hr / >
< h4 id = "introduction" > Introduction< / h4 >
< p > This document is a collection of fragments exploring beliefs about
labour in the creative industries, in particular graphic ⊞. Each
fragment focusses on the social, cultural, political, spiritual or
religious aspects of these beliefs through an ethnographic lens. They
record, celebrate and question the meaning that ⊞ers give to their
actions and how those meanings affect the world they live in. And it’
about how ⊞ers feel when we live with these beliefs: we feel a bit funny
and I want to talk about it. < / p >
< p > I use various modes of address and different lenses to further
fragment the definition of ⊞. The origin of the word thesis is to set or
to put, but I am trying to show you something liquid that can’
placed but shimmers and disappears through the sand. I document some ⊞
activities, in my own work and the work and writings of others who
identify with the label of ⊞er. The writing dissolves and reintegrates
definitions of ⊞ from different voices to show the multiplicity of
beliefs from practitioners, and to explore what it means to acknowledge
these beliefs beside eachother: the tensions and harmonies, some
lineages and some breaks. What is going on here in this thing we call
⊞? < / p >
< p > This is a collection of stories about living life with particular
working conditions, located at certain points in social, economic and
cultural webs. In my practice-based research I gather and tell these
stories through (auto)ethnographic methods: documenting how ⊞er’
conducting interviews, improvising communal performances and exploratory
tool-making. This document collates and reflects on this research. < / p >
< h4 id = "what-is-a-er" > What is a ⊞er?< / h4 >
< ol type = "1" >
< li > < em > A ⊞er is a person who wakes up at 5am but refuses to open their
eyes. There are birds talking outside, it’
already. Something is wrong, not sure what. They finally open their eyes
and there’
curtains this early you can see all the little ripples and imperfections
in it. Nothing. Ribcage. Stomach. The front of the ⊞er’
would be better to sleep again. Have to pay taxes again next week. A ⊞er
is someone who wonders if that invoice will come through I need to
follow up on it. The birds are so loud. < / em > < / li >
< li > < em > The role of the ⊞er is to count back from five to two and
realise that was only three hours same as yesterday. They use ⊞ thinking
to never get back to sleep. They need excellent time management skills
to make this short moment feel like an eternity, several times a week.
⊞ers have an acute spatial awareness and an eye for detail: although the
ceiling seems miles away they focus on each tiny ripple for hours. A ⊞er
is someone who will work the whole waking day today, but it’
than last week when there was no work. ⊞ers look at their phone and see
their alarm is going to go off in ten minutes, so they switch it off and
get up.< / em > < / li >
< / ol >
< p > The precarity of working in the creative industries, in particular as
a freelancer or within a small studio, induces anxiety. There is a
belief that the ⊞er as freelancer is empowered by their autonomy, but in
fact the ⊞er as worker is trapped by it. ⊞ is work and this work is
believed to be inherently good. Work in our society is understood as “an
individual moral practice and collective ethical obligation” which
shapes the worker’
believes they are a skilled or talented worker, someone who possesses
spatial awareness, time management skills, and the capacity to carry out
work effectively and efficiently. < / p >
< p > ⊞ers are entangled in the Protestant religious underpinnings of the
European work ethic (Pater, 2022). ⊞ is seen as a vocation which
expresses and creates the ⊞er’
make a valuable contribution to society. People understand the world and
interact with it smoothly, thanks to the work of ⊞ers. ⊞ers pick the
right materials to save the planet and increase efficiency and whatever
else it is people find important. But the ⊞er becomes anxious despite
meeting these goals and becoming this person. In reality, the ⊞er is a
bot, the ⊞er is software. Value is extracted from their time, creativity
and expertise which makes them stressed. ⊞ers are a creative cloud, a
service to be tapped into, a cpu being run too hot. There is something
to be learnt from the revelation that being replaced by machines proves
we were being treated as machines all along. < / p >
< h4 id = "geestelijk" > Geestelijk< / h4 >
< p > There was a belief that ⊞ could be a crystal goblet (Warde, 1913),
something unbiased, clear and, in more recent versions of the theory,
serving the context it fits within. But the foundations of this belief
in functionality and rationality dont seem to come themselves from
something functional or rational. < / p >
< p > De Stijl members, such as Piet Mondriaan and Theo van Doesburg
(Figure 6), in their 1917 manifesto described a “new consciousness of
the age […] directed towards the universal”. There was a drive towards
universal standardisation or pureness of culture from the rich white
men. Purity is a concept that turns up a lot in Mondriaan’
< em > Neo-Plasticism in Pictorial Art< / em > (1917). They claimed a shared
spirit was driving this universalisation. A later paragraph of the
manifesto is translated into english as:< / p >
< ul >
< li > “The artists of to-day have been driven the whole world over by the
same consciousness and therefore have taken part from an intellectual
point of view in this war against the domination of individual
despotism. They therefore sympathize with all who work for the formation
of an international unity in Life, Art, Culture, either intellectually
or materially.”< / li >
< / ul >
< p > In this translation it appears the authors believed in an emerging
consciousness of the age, something collective which would bring an
international unity. The members of De Stijl were neither aligning
themselves with the capitalists or socialists but believed in an inner
connection between those who were joined in the spiritual body of the
new world (De Stijl, Manifesto III, 1921). The word intellectual, or
geestelijk in the original Dutch, can also be translated as “spiritual,
mental, ecclesiastical, clerical, sacred, ghostly, pneumatic”. The
choice to translate as intellectual seems to be the most rational
interpretation of this sentence, an effort to make the theories of De
Stijl appear more materialist without the spiritual element. Compare
with this translation:< / p >
< ul >
< li > “The artists of today, all over the world, impelled by one and the
same consciousness, have taken part on the spiritual plane in the world
war against the domination of individualism, of arbitrariness. They
therefore sympathise with all who are fighting spiritually or materially
for the formation of an international unity in life, art and
culture.”< / li >
< / ul >
< p > In this translation it is clearer that the members of De Stijl saw a
link between the effects of what they made materially and their attempts
to be fighting spiritually against the domination of individualism. I
care about this story because of how it contextualises contemporary ⊞
practice. Is contemporary ⊞ practice still involved in this spiritual
battle? Did the new consciousness of 1917 survive the past century, did
it procreate? Can aesthetics have generational trauma? William Morris,
Constructivism, De Stijl, Bauhaus, International Style, International
Typographic Style, Swiss Style, then what happened. Modernist artists
had spiritual beliefs, and again I care about these people from a
hundred years ago because of the effect they have on the present. < / p >
< p > Imagine I could trace this thought from Mondriaan all the way to
myself, wow, cool thesis. Swiss style became corporate identity ⊞ and
encouraged minimalism in ⊞. 21st century Flat ⊞, such as Metro ⊞
language from Microsoft and Material ⊞ (Google, 2014), claim direct
descendance from the International Typographic Style and that pretty
much brings us up to date. I wonder about the use of the word Material
in Google’
geestelijk fight of De Stijl. Is Google’
example, as with the subtle change in the translation above, that the
spiritual element is no longer as important a part of the ⊞er’
worldview as it was a hundred years ago? < / p >
< h4
id="excerpt-from-an-interview-with-conor-clarke-1st-december-2023">Excerpt
from an interview with Conor Clarke, 1st December 2023< / h4 >
< p > < em > Conor Clarke is a Director of ⊞ Factory, independent Irish ⊞
agency based in Dublin. His work has featured in international
publications such as Who’ < / em > , < em > Graphis, Novum
Gebrauchsgrafik, and the New York Art Directors Club Annual. He was the
recipient of the Catherine Donnelly Lifetime Achievement Award for his
contribution to ⊞ in Ireland and is the Course Director of ⊞ West, an
international summer ⊞ school located in the beautiful village of
Letterfrack on the West Coast of Ireland< / em > . (⊞west.eu, 2023)< / p >
< hr / >
< ul >
< li > SK: What do you think is the best shape?< / li >
< li > CC: Oh yeah, good god. square.< / li >
< li > SK: Square? how come?< / li >
< li > CC: Dunno, it just, it just seems resolved. I don’
Circles I sometimes like.< / li >
< li > SK: Yeah, squares, do you use grids?< / li >
< li > CC: Sometimes. Not always.< / li >
< li > SK: Once you have grids squares make sense. But you like squares
maybe because you like logos?< / li >
< li > CC: If I’
(Figure 5) or something I just kind of feel, I just like, or Malevich i
just like that stuff. If I see a Kandinsky and all those squiggles and
circles it just, that just kind of upsets me a little bit.< / li >
< li > SK: That’ < / li >
< li > CC: Yeah. And even if I’
square structure and logic, for some reason that always appeals to
me.< / li >
< li > SK: Things are a bit organised when there’ < / li >
< li > CC: Yeah. And really great artists who don’
their stuff and think well that’ < / li >
< li > SK: Its something else?< / li >
< li > CC: Yeah. so yeah.< / li >
< li > SK: At least you didn’ < / li >
< li > CC: Oh good god. Good god no.< / li >
< / ul >
<!-- -->
< h4 id = "maths-and-grids" > Maths and grids< / h4 >
< p > Why not choose a spiral or a circle if you dream of ⊞ers as shamans?
Why the grid of squares? There are strong links beween ⊞ and
mathematics, Josef Muller-Brockmann’ < em > Grid Systems< / em > (Figure 2)
for example or Karl Gerstner’ < em > ⊞ing Programmes< / em > (1964). I read
these ⊞ theorists as you might comparatively read religious texts. What
were or are the beliefs of the authors and their audiences?< br / >
< br / >
< br / >
< br / >
< br / >
< br / >
< br / >
< br / >
< br / >
< br / >
< br / >
< br / >
< br / >
< br / >
< / p >
< ul >
< li > “To describe the problem is part of the solution. This implies: not
to make creative decisions as prompted by feeling but by intellectual
criteria. The more exact and complete these criteria are, the more
creative the work becomes.”< / li >
< li > (Gerstner, 1964)< / li >
< li > “This is the expression of a professional ethos: the ⊞er’
should have the clearly intelligible, objective, functional and
aesthetic quality of mathematical thinking.”< / li >
< li > (Muller-Brockman, 1981)< / li >
< / ul >
< p > These texts present a worldview where ⊞ can be mathematical,
objective or problem-solving. In Muller-Brockman’
the formal qualities of the ⊞ in particular the use of grids and
typographic systems. Gerstner’
and the ability of ⊞ to solve a problem. Rationality and creativity are
presented as proportional to eachother. He makes space for the
intellectual by pushing aside feelings. < / p >
< p > The graphic ⊞er is presented as a functional actor in society who
makes the world better. Gerstner seems to be implying that creative ⊞
comes from following the intellect and some rational cause and effect
process. I find it interesting that ⊞ claims this rational basis in the
same historical period when science and mathematics, its supposed
foundations, became much less rational and predictable, for example in
chaos theory. It makes me think that the rationality serves some other
purpose.< / p >
< h4 id = "the-grid-and-the-written-word" > The ⊞ grid and the written
word< / h4 >
< p > Why do ⊞ers believe in using a grid to present the written word, and
where did this belief come from and how did it develop? It can be
materially traced back to Guthenberg and metal type but that’
Magic squares have been used in astrology books and grimoires throughout
history (Figure 3). French poet Stéphane Mallarmé is sometimes quoted as
a precursor to modernist typography (Muller-Brockmann, 1981). Why did
Steve McCaffrey include the manifesto of De Stijl with < em > CARNIVAL< / em >
(1973)? De Stijl is best known for its painters and architects, and
theories from both of these fields affected later ⊞ theories. But they
also were poets and had literary theories similar to the german
expressionists. Man’
through a cosmic hybris. < / p >
< ul >
< li > “An artists’
printed on perforated pages meant to be torn out and arranged into a
square of four. Complete with instructions, a reproduction of a de Stijl
manifesto from 1920, an errata slip, and publisher’
postcard.”< / li >
< li > Description of Steve McCaffrey’ < em > CARNIVAL< / em > < br / >
(The Idea of the Book, 2024)< / li >
< / ul >
< hr / >
< p > The developments of the written word and its relationship to form in
the 20th century is very much a part of the history of ⊞. I care about
this story because it affects contemporary practitioners. I believe
there is something magical in graphic composition and the layout of
typography, something that can’ ’
non-canonical for ⊞ers but how have people who put words on pages like
Mallarmé and McCaffrey influenced my beliefs about the written word?
What makes one thing fit in the category of art, another ⊞ and yet
another concrete < / p >
< h4 id = "mystically-assigning-or-finding-meanings-in" > Mystically
assigning or finding meanings in ⊞< / h4 >
< p > This autoethnographic annotation attempts to really miss as many
cultural and technical cues as possible. It’
being totally mystified by their behaviour. < / p >
< hr / >
< ol type = "1" >
< li > < em > A rhythm exists and I wonder why. There is music and there are
voices, and my fingers press the keys and the colours of the screen
flicker and morph. There appears to be a life or energy flowing
somewhere between these things and I am curious about it.< / em > < / li >
< li > < em > The screen shimmers between different symbols, letters, images.
The colours are symbolic. White means the ground, although sometimes it
switches to white symbols on a dark ground. They are full of meaning and
relationship. I press two buttons to the left of the keyboard and the
screen answers with a flicker.< / em > < / li >
< li > < em > I count out loud to 40. It symbolises both the number of pages
to be made and the enormity of the task. It represents a period in the
desert, long but with an end in sight. What is the relationship of the
desert to the stars? If the screen can flicker from a dark to a light
ground, is it possible for the sky to also switch from day to
night?< / em > < / li >
< li > < em > I have taken three of the forty steps.< / em > < / li >
< li > < em > I have taken seven of the forty steps.< / em > < / li >
< li > < em > ⊞ is a series of movements and reconfigurations. It is a
creative act and one of elision. I use the keyboard to communicate my
will to the machine with commands such as “Ctrl+C” and “Ctrl+V”. I
firstly inform the computer that I wish to control it. Each letter has a
deep and layered meaning. CVCVCVCVCVCVCVCVCV. “Alt+Tab” asks the screen
to flicker. The computer must match my multithreading. It must be
prepared to follow my changing demands in our shared focus. FAVCV. F is
to seek, but it is optimistically labelled to find. I enter the
incorrect combination of symbols (“samle”) the incantation is useless
and I will not find what I seek. I try again “sample” and the computer
gives me what I desire. Why does the machine demand perfection? Why does
it value perfection in me, what is it trying to teach me? Why wont it
leave me alone?< / em > < / li >
< li > < em > I have taken eleven of the forty steps. I will rest.< / em > < / li >
< / ol >
< h4
id="what-does-do-what-is-the-er-trying-to-do-by-pressing-all-these-buttons-and-making-the-screen-vibrate">What
does ⊞ do? What is the ⊞er trying to do by pressing all these buttons
and making the screen vibrate?< / h4 >
< ul >
< li > < em > “< / em > ⊞ only generates longing”< / li >
< li > (Van Der Velden, 2006)< / li >
< / ul >
< p > I wasn’
report. It was a corporate job I was working on, a nice one to have
because it’
kinda repetitive, but you can just put your headphones on and get stuck
into it. I was pretty happy with the results in the end, but for sure
not the type of work you’ < / p >
< ul >
< li > < em > “< / em > I found myself way over my head with, believe it or not, a
catalogue and price list for bathroom equipment. Nothing I’
has seemed as difficult.”< / li >
< li > Michael Bierut (creativechair.org, 2018)< / li >
< / ul >
< p > And of course Piet Zwart’
catalogues. ⊞ is just work, chill. Is a ⊞er a user or a server? Maybe ⊞
is an example of our general belief in this dichotomy not quite making
sense or fitting reality. The ⊞er is working for whom? Themselves? Their
clients?< / p >
< hr / >
< ul >
< li > < em > “< / em > attempts to undo the privileged position of the agentive
subject can help us understand the strange status of repetitive and
quasi-robotic labour in today’ < / li >
< li > (Hu, 2022)< / li >
< / ul >
< p > This quote relates to freelancing generally in some way, and
deconstructing the work or worker. Are workers things? Yeah, kinda. ⊞ers
don’
For example on what⊞cando.com it is suggested that we should “re⊞
everything!”. Let’
working on computers like so many other bots. ⊞ers try to create
clarity, to assign meaning and understand: “Confusion and clutter are
failures of ⊞, not attributes of information” (Tufte, 1990, p.53). What
if the sounds of my fingers and my keyboard are not noise but music: we
are quasi-robots and maybe its good to listen to our little Taylorist
finger tappings and see what else is being said.< / p >
< h4
id="excerpt-from-an-interview-with-the-members-of-distinctive-repetition-on-1st-december-2023.">Excerpt
from an interview with the members of Distinctive Repetition on 1st
December 2023.< / h4 >
< p > Distinctive Repetition is an award-winning graphic ⊞ studio based in
Dublin, Ireland. Principal ⊞er and Institute of Creative Advertising and
⊞ past-president, Rossi McAuley, is joined in this interview by ⊞ers
Jenny Leahy and Ben Nagle. This interview was carried out around a table
with the interviewer in the bottom right corner (◲) and the three
members of the studio in the other three seats.< / p >
< ul >
< li > ◲: whats your favourite colour?< / li >
< li > ◰: red.< / li >
< li > ◲: red.< / li >
< li > ◱: really? thats it? are you fucking kidding me?< / li >
< li > ◰: do i fill it in?< / li >
< li > ◳: they’ ’
comfortable answering questions.< / li >
< li > ◳: yellow< / li >
< li > ◲: if the seat of your consciousness was in your hands, like all of
your feelings and your thoughts and your desires and your emotions come
through your hands, can you describe to me the day that you’
far please?< / li >
< li > ◳: jelly that’ < / li >
< li > ◳: not quite solidified in the fridge yet< / li >
< li > ◳: and its just oozing through my fingers< / li >
< li > (redacted sentence)< / li >
< li > ◳: that’
of me< / li >
< li > ◲: yes. that’
circle?< / li >
< li > ◱: whatever you like bro.< / li >
< li > ◲: do you ever dream about work?< / li >
< li > ◱: all the time.< / li >
< li > ◲: would you care to share one of those dreams?< / li >
< li > ◱: they’ ’ ’
never positive solution-solved things, we’
and lists of things to do they’ ’
shit we’ < / li >
< li > ◳: weren’ < / li >
< li > ◱: yeah yeah.< / li >
< li > (obscured)< / li >
< li > ◲: why were you taking grids out of drawers?< / li >
< li > ◱: emm recently I had a dream where I was giving out to ◳ about not
having things done, this ◳, participant two, about not having things
done, and i was opening up drawers in my office and I was like, just use
this grid and the drawers were full of grids and I was giving them to
her and saying just fucking use those grids for fucks sake why don’
use those grids.< / li >
< li > (section redacted by request of interviewees)< / li >
< / ul >
<!-- -->
< h4 id = "about-the-interview" > About the interview< / h4 >
< p > Before meeting them in person, I mailed a small booklet to the
interviewees entitled < em > Enthusiasm< / em > to give context to the
conversation. The word enthusiasm originally meant inspiration or
possession by a god. The booklet recounted three mystical dreams René
Descartes had which he credited as a moment of inspiration or enthusiasm
that influenced his later work on rationalism, and related to his work
on geometry and grids (Figure 4). As well as the content of the dreams,
the booklet described their relevance:< br / >
< / p >
< ul >
< li > “404 years ago on the night of the 10th November 1619, three dreams
were dreamt. A 23-year old man is “filled with enthusiasm” and enters a
feverish sleep in Ulm, Germany. In this process of enthusiasm and
dreamwork, he discovers the foundations of a wonderful science. < em > The
Method of Properly Guiding the Reason in the Search of Truth in the
Sciences< / em > will be suppressed by the churches, both Calvinist and
Catholic. They are a threat to the world view, and a threat to religion.
The cartesian grid uses measurements to estabish relationships.
Cartesian geometry has let us fly spaceships and zone and divide land.
Some things have happened. Some good things, some bad things. The link
is broken or breaking or should be broken. It’ ’
better way we can interpret these dreams now.”< / li >
< / ul >
< p > Descartes felt that interpreting his dreams was an appropriate method
to develop a rational theory of skepticism, which led to some of the
philosophical foundations of modern scientific and mathematical
theories. The booklet also drew parallels with Martin Luther’
scrupulous doubt, “Only God and certain madmen have no doubts!”. Like
Descartes, Luther’
structure of thought for the following centuries. These stories were
presented together to direct the focus of the conversation towards
belief, rationalism and grids. The fact that rationalism is a belief
system, as pervasive as it may be, and suggestively hinting through its
< span style = "letter-spacing: -0.2px" > relationship with grids that there
is a relationship with ⊞.< / span > < / p >
< ul >
< li > ◳: jelly that’
yet and its just oozing through my fingers< / li >
< / ul >
<!-- -->
< p > They seem so sad it hurts to hear them talk about the oozing. Are you
supposed to put jelly in the fridge, it just needs time to settle right?
My nana used to put the jelly in the freezer. There’
how they talk in the interview for sure, or more a desire for stability.
Was it ever stable? Do you really want it to be? Its gooey and not the
way it should be but its still jelly and thats fun and its probably
delicious. Their hands are there as something that is for grasping and
jelly is there as something that can’
they resigned to it? < / p >
< ul >
< li > ◱: they’ ’ ’
never positive solution-solved things, we’
and lists of things to do they’ ’
shit we’ < / li >
< / ul >
< p > I can’
because I’ ’
feels like I’ ’
talk to other people without being completely frozen jelly. It is the
feeling of lists and lists and lists. It’
resolved, all the time. We believe we are busy and under pressure and
struggling to survive. That makes us anxious and stressed.< / p >
< ul >
< li > ◱: just fucking use those grids< / li >
< / ul >
<!-- -->
< p > The grids are not being used, the grids are useless. Drawers full of
them, all useless. Whats the point of sitting here in this studio. They
dont fit, they dont make sense, they’
can’
misplaced and there is a human urge to stop, just < / p >
< h4 id = "modern-work" > Modern work< / h4 >
< ul >
< li > “A cause becomes unmodern at the moment when our feelings revolt,
and as soon as we feel ourselves becoming ridiculous”< / li >
< li > Adolf Loos, < em > On Thrift,< / em > 1924 (Loos, 2019)< / li >
< / ul >
< hr / >
< p > Adolf Loos was a modernist architect whose writings such as
< em > Ornament and Crime< / em > in 1910 influenced modernist ideals of
functionalism and minimalism. He rejected ornament and favoured the use
of good materials which showed “God’
relation of Loos’ ’ < em > The Protestant Ethic and the
Spirit of Capitalism< / em > (Weber, 1905) that was published five years
earlier. Work as a duty which benefits the individual and society as a
whole, do ⊞ers still believe this today? I like taking Loos’
of context here, instead in the context of the feelings of the
interviewees, revolting the supposedly modern cause they are working
with. < / p >
< p > But also Loos was found guilty of pedophelia and it feels kind of
aggressive to include his voice here at all. This is part of the point
of what I’ ’
it make me uncomfortable or really disgusted and I don’
with all that. I just wanted to go to art school and draw circles and
maybe thats the problem and sure simple materials are pretty, but yeah
jelly is exactly what it feels like, you’ < / p >
< p > Graphic ⊞ is often performed by paid professionals in what is known
as the creative industry: as a profession and an activity, ⊞ is
considered to be creative. There are some positive preconceptions about
the creative industry and what it does, but I see it as an assimilation
of cultural activity into a neoliberal economic framework. Creativity in
this context is used to reproduce the status quo and and grow capital
(Mould, 2018). But maybe we can profit from examining the margins
created by this terminology: ⊞ is less functional than it seems. People
in creative jobs are stressed and this is reflected in their dreams.
Workers have rights and those rights are systemically undermined. Being
self employed or part of an independent studio brings anxiety and
challenges. Some ⊞ers try to structure the world around them and like
things to be neat and tidy, which makes us uncomfortable existing in
precarious work conditions.< / p >
< h4 id = "the-roman-grid" > The Roman grid< / h4 >
< p > The Roman grid was a land measurement method used in the Roman
colonies for example in the Po Valley (Figure 7). With a surveying tool
called the groma, the colonisers would divide the land from north to
south and east to west, resulting in a square grid of roads and land. At
Orange, France, a cadaster has been found which shows the division of
land in a geometric way, helping the colonisers to privatise the land
and allocate it to roman veterans (Figure 1). The name groma, as well as
referring to the surveying tool, describes the central point of the
grid, the origin. Is making grids just a way to control and colonise? Do
all grids have origins? In Descartes’
attempt to order and structure chaos:< / p >
< ul >
< li > “the grid allowed an embrace of complexity: curved lines that could
be described by mathematical formulas, and thereby were not a sign of
chaos but an expression of the divine mathematical order assumed to be
underlying nature.”< / li >
< li > Descartes was Here, Clemens Driessen, 2020< / li >
< / ul >
< p > A part of the belief systems of ⊞ers is that the world is chaotic and
their role is to order it or even simplify it. This belief may be
inherited from a wider cultural belief of the same general drive: to
order and simplify. Humans try to make sense of the world. ⊞ers make
sense of ⊞ briefs and structure them into something understandable to an
audience or target market. < / p >
< hr / >
< ul >
< li > ◱: for fucks sake why don’ < / li >
< / ul >
<!-- -->
< p > Is there an answer to this question, do they know the answer to this
question? I get the impression they have a gut feeling about the answer
but are afraid of it.< / p >
< h4 id = "an-analysis-of-a-joke-about-in-the-early-21st-century" > An
analysis of a joke about ⊞ in the early 21st century< / h4 >
< p > When reviewing the AIGA Next conference in Denver Colorado, 2008, ⊞
critic Adrian Shaughnessy tells a joke:< / p >
< ul >
< li > “The venue was shared with a beer festival, but it was easy to tell
the ⊞ers from the beer fans. The beer fans were more serious.”< / li >
< li > (Shaughnessy, 2013)< / li >
< / ul >
< p > This joke is funny because in the setup where it is easy to tell them
apart, the reader should assume the beer fans are drunk and therefore
raucous, misbehaving or maybe just having a lot of fun. But then he
unexpectedly suggests that they were in fact more serious than the ⊞ers.
This gives the reader a problem to address: is he claiming the ⊞ers were
even more outrageous than what we assumed of the beer fans, or the beer
fans were in fact taking their own conference seriously? As both seem
unbelievable the true funniness of the joke hits home in it’
meaning: ⊞ers are boring as fuck.< / p >
< hr / >
< h4
id="an-annotation-of-my-practices-as-a-graphic-er-on-a-typical-working-day-23rd-october-2023">An
annotation of my practices as a graphic ⊞er on a typical working day,
23rd October 2023< / h4 >
< ol type = "1" >
< li > < em > I read an email< / em > < / li >
< li > < em > and< / em > < / li >
< li > < em > I type< / em > < / li >
< li > < em > Alt tab alt tab alt tab alt tab alt tab alt tab alt tab ctrl c
ctrl v ctrl c ctrl v ctrl c ctrl v ctrl c ctrl v ctrl v ctrl v ctrl v
ctrl v ctrl v ctrl v< / em > < / li >
< / ol >
< hr / >
< p > ⊞ers interact with the computer through keyboard and mouse usage.
Compared to other computer users, my interaction involves lots of
pressing of function keys, something common with other technical
computer users and not so much with other creative workers. What is
creative in the repetitive and low level operation of a computer? Is a
pianist creative? What’
in different ways. ⊞ers and other specialists like video editors or
photo colourists are using a computer as a tool, the musician is
performing on an instrument. Maybe this distinction doesn’
so clear though. I am questioning this here because I think there is
some fairly complicated belief system about artists and their tools that
has had an effect on ⊞ers. ⊞ gives itself a history of conflict and
harmony between artisans and industrialisation, for example in Bauhaus
founder Walter Gropius claiming William Morris as a precursor (Bayer,
1975). < / p >
< p > I think it is important to show that ⊞ers are workers with tools,
their repetitive tasks are a form of labour as are their creative
processes. In the annotation opposite my aim is to mystify the manual
and digital labour, rather than demystify the creative ideation
part. < / p >
< p > Following this annotation I made a digital tool to record all
keystrokes on my computer. Then I printed them out with a pen plotter to
celebrate the labour that had taken place. It took several hours to plot
the keylogging data from just a few minutes of the ⊞er’ < / p >
< h4 id = "libreoffice" > LibreOffice< / h4 >
< ol type = "1" >
< li > < em > I have no idea what any of this structuring does. And I don’
care. But I would like to remove the page title from the export. It is
in another tab called User Interface. I also select only page 1 to save
to PDF. Now I run into a software issue in this workflow: the best
software for the next part of the job is Adobe Acrobat Pro. How
aggressively do I want to remove this software from my workflow? Not
aggressively enough I guess because here I am still using it. I don’
know any other software that really gives me details of how a document
will print or lets me edit PDFs on such a useful level.< / em > < / li >
< li > < em > For example the title still exported (it always does, is this a
LibreOffice bug or just I don’
yet?). It takes two seconds to remove in edit mode in Acrobat. I also
delete the page number, I don’
LibreOffice. The print dialogue in Acrobat is also so powerful, its so
easy to print actual size which is important to me. It is structured and
reliable. < / em > < / li >
< / ol >
< p > Like many other ⊞ers, I was trained to only use Adobe products. I try
to switch to open source alternatives because I believe in using
software developed and maintained by a community rather than a private
company, and as a worker believe I should be in control of my tools. In
this annotation, I was trying to ⊞ and export a single page document in
LibreOffice, an open source desktop publishing software. The
documentation reflects on my frustrations and struggles to switch to a
workflow that relies less on proprietary software for print ⊞. < / p >
< p > Proprietary software from big mean tech corporations is based on a
model of society and economy where a few people own things and everybody
else has a hard time. I believe the internet gives an opportunity for
knowledge (including software code) to be shared. I like the idea of
modifying my tools, this is easier technically and legally with open
source software. I would prefer my tools to be developed by me and my
peers. These are some of my beliefs as a ⊞er about my work and my tools.
They’ < / p >
< ul >
< li > < em > my god im trying to use scribus to prepare a booklet< / em > < br / >
< em > im going crazy< / em > < br / >
< em > im going crazy< / em > < / li >
< li > Correspondance with kamo, 2024< / li >
< / ul >
< p > Transitioning to open source software sucks. I spent years learning
other tools and its like starting all over again. There is a dual
commitment in my beliefs about how my tools should be built and my
desire to get things done in a reasonable amount of time. My action of
fumbling with open source programs reflects my belief that they are
worthwhile, and my action of still using Adobe Acrobat Pro reflects my
belief that there are better things to do with my time than restarting
software when it crashes again. Some parts of graphic ⊞ have become so
entangled in capitalist ways of working, it can be immobilising to try
to act without engaging with the icky parts. Our dependencies on
ecosystems of tools and workflows are not enforced, but it can be
difficult to exist outside them, or more specifically, beside them.< / p >
< ol type = "1" >
< li > < em > “And I don’ < / em > < / li >
< / ol >
< p > It’
workflow with wanting to complete my work tasks efficiently doesn’
me up at night, but it is important to me and other ⊞ers. Open source ⊞
software is unreliable and unstandardised, it takes longer to do things
and then when they are nearly done the program crashes and I’
my work. The standards of open source software have not been widely
embraced by the ⊞ community. To fit into a workflow with peers you have
to use Adobe products. Even web ⊞ers who engage with open standards can
find the need to work with proprietary software, because these tools are
deeply integrated into the workflows of their peers. Can you send me
that in a normal file format please, I can’ < br / >
< / p >
< h4 id = "work-sans" > Work Sans< / h4 >
< ol type = "1" >
< li > < em > The font is Work Sans SemiBold and it is set in 10pt, colour
“automatic”. I think even if it wasn’
because I want to print it clearly and cheaply. I use Work Sans because
I am trying to switch to using Open Font Licence and open source fonts
more generally. Previously I would have used Helvetica Now or some other
proprietary font. There is a visual difference between these fonts too
which is also relevant buuuuut this description is getting very detailed
maybe not right now.< / em > < / li >
< / ol >
< hr / >
< p > Similarly to the software changes, this documentation of my practice
sees me choosing open source fonts. I’
do like the idea of being able to modify a font when needed, but I have
done so regardless of whether the font licence allows it. I’
comfortable ethically with a font being open source. Buying fonts is
expensive for freelancers and small studios, and open source fonts are
more commonly free of charge. Many ⊞ers pirate fonts rather than buy
them, or are locked into a font subscription. In Adobe software, Adobe
subscription fonts don’
is verified.< / p >
< p > For my work, fonts are also a tool, one that I need to practice with
and one that needs to be suitable for the job. So changing font is a
little like a ceramicist changing clay. Work Sans is good for online use
because Google Fonts serves it as a web font for free, the open source
font I want to use is served most reliably by a large corporation I have
issues with. This balancing act of practical considerations and
idealistic beliefs is kind of ironic and reminds me again that my values
can be inconsistent and to me a bit funny. < br / >
< br / >
The use of fonts as tools is full of tensions from ⊞ers’
Like many ⊞ers, I want to use open source fonts. I also want to use
fonts that will load quickly from a content delivery network for web
projects. I also want fonts to be cheap and well made and I am
interested in fonts that are free. The internet is full of illegal and
pirated copies of fonts that are not supposed to be free of charge. I
sometimes receive or am asked to send font files outside of their
licence. I dont have a huge amount of respect for some of these
licences. But at the same time font ⊞ers are my friends and colleagues,
I have ⊞ed fonts. What does a ⊞er’
beliefs around copyright? Do ⊞ers believe in intellectual property? What
value do ⊞ers, specifically typographers, see in their work and that of
their close peers, the font ⊞ers, and how does copyright relate to these
values?< / p >
< hr / >
< h4 id = "follow-up-questions-for-conor" > Follow up questions for
Conor< / h4 >
< p > Hey Conor, hope you’ ’
through the interview from back in December and was wondering if you
would mind me including this piece in my thesis:< / p >
< p > I guess the thesis has become a lot about ⊞ers and the beliefs they
have about their work, and its effect on the world around them. I was
really interested in your answer to this question because I think it
shows something a lot of other ⊞ers including me feel too; some desire
to structure the world around us, to have things be resolved, organised,
fitting together. And not just a desire but maybe even a belief that
this is really what our job is for? Maybe I’
but to me this maybe hints at part of the reason we’
field like graphic ⊞? Curious to know what you think.< / p >
< p > And if youre uncomfortable with being included in this way, Im
totally fine with anonymising, removing, or editing. < / p >
< p > Thanks,< br / >
Stephen< / p >
< hr / >
< h4 id = "follow-up-questions-for" > Follow up questions for ◱< / h4 >
< p > Yo ◱, hope all’ < / p >
< p > I’ ’
to include this section about your dream if that’
seems to get at something I feel as well: this system that we’
up and these drawers full of grids, sometimes there’
unresolved feeling that they’
answer to the problem. < / p >
< p > For me I think it might be something to do with order and chaos if
that doesn’ ’
things and fit them in a form, and the dream seems to get at that fear
that it’
be jelly at best, but very often custard and little bits of tinned
strawberry and soggy sponge. < / p >
< p > I assumed the dream is about the pressure or anxiety of running a
studio? I wonder for you, do you see it more relating to the work itself
or the management around that, or are these things that you consider
separate from eachother? I’
way, or maybe it’ ’ < / p >
< p > And if youre uncomfortable with being included in this way, Im
totally fine with anonymising, removing, or editing.< / p >
< p > Thanks,< br / >
Stephen< / p >
< hr / >
< h4 id = "follow-up-questions-for-1" > Follow up questions for ◳< / h4 >
< p > Hey ◳, hope youre good! < / p >
< p > I’
december in my thesis. Is that ok with you? I want to include it because
I think it really captures some emotions that ⊞ers feel quite often,
some stress or anxiety or an attempt to grab onto something more stable.
But I also find it really interesting that you were talking about jelly
slipping through your hands, any idea why you didn’
gold but jelly? To me it seems like a fun and cute material to pick,
even though its a bit lumpy and maybe even kinda gross sometimes. < / p >
< p > I’
there’ ’
the most appetising, and for sure unnatural or over-processed. Maybe you
just said it off hand, but it makes sense to me as well about being a
⊞er in some way? Something enjoyable and lovable about the jelly despite
its weird unnatural wiggliness. Really interested to know if you have
any thoughts or maybe you meant something completely different.< / p >
< p > And if youre uncomfortable with being included in this way, Im
totally fine with anonymising, removing, or editing. < / p >
< p > Thanks,< br / >
Stephen< / p >
< h4 id = "conclusion" > Conclusion< / h4 >
< p > The title of this document, ⊞, was borrowed from the mathematical
theory of free probability where it symbolises free additive
convolution, a way of relating terms that is more nuanced than
traditional ideas of cause and effect. In the fragmented look at ⊞ in
this document, which we’
something similar: a convoluted addition, freely placing things together
to be held for a moment. < / p >
< p > ⊞ involves a wide range of activities; typing, drawing grids,
communicating with other specialists, quoting, drinking coffee, working
out of office hours, having panic attacks, arguing, building myths,
personal expression, keyboard shortcuts, dreaming, rubbing paper and
exhaling, tilting your head and looking at the screen. We have examined
when and how these actions happen, and more importantly, why they do,
according to the ⊞ers carrying them out. < / p >
< p > These stories were gathered through various modes of describing,
listening and understanding. It is important that these are different
from conventional ways to frame the discipline, as I think a shift in
viewpoint is needed. So not “⊞er as Author” (Rock, 1996), “⊞er as
salesperson” (Pater, 2021) but instead ⊞er “sitting at the machine,
thinking” (Brodine, 1990) or “⊞er without qualities” (Lorusso, 2023).
The fragments have been situated and subjective rather than objective,
they have been outside of categories because the categories are broken
anyway. < / p >
< hr / >
< h4 id = "conclusion-1" > Conclusion< / h4 >
< p > Last night I dreamt I was standing on a hill in the Swiss Alps and
you were there and all of our friends and the hill was covered in little
fields but not like a grid like lots of different shapes and sizes and
the sky opened in two and a ring of light so bright it nearly blinded me
came out of my chest and yours and they all merged into eachother and
everyone opened their mouths to sing and the air was filled with so many
sounds and one ⊞er walked up to me and smiled and said < / p >
< ul >
< li > < p > “I dunno, I’ < / p > < / li >
< li > < p > and they said < / p > < / li >
< li > < p > and then you said< / p > < / li >
< li > < p > “a funny feeling its a bit weird”< / p > < / li >
< li > < p > “I’ < / p > < / li >
< li > < p > “live the gap between where you are and where you could
be” < / p > < / li >
< / ul >
< p > and then I was them and you were me and we laughed and fell over and
the hill turned into a bright pink jelly ocean the whole sky was this
sort of green-blue and we all surfed wobbly waves and some people’
surfboards were Quiksilver and some they had built themselves from a git
repository but the sun was a walnut and it was definitely moving but I
couldnt tell was it rising or setting but it didn’
surf was great and everything smelled like magnolias.< / p >
< hr / >
< hr / >
< hr / >
< h4 id = "acknowledgements" > Acknowledgements< / h4 >
< p > Thanks to Ada, Aglaia, Ben, Chae, Conor, Irmak, Jenny, Joseph, kamo,
Leslie, Manetta, Marloes, Michael, Rossi.< / p >
< h2 id = "bibliography" > Bibliography< / h2 >
< p > Bayer, H. < em > et al.< / em > (1975) < em > Bauhaus, 1919-1928< / em > . New
York: Museum of Modern Art. < / p >
< p > Berlant, L. (2022) < em > On the Inconvenience of Other People< / em > ,
Durham: Duke University Press.< / p >
< p > Brodine, K. (1990) < em > Woman Sitting at the Machine, Thinking:
Poems< / em > . Seattle: Red Letter Press.< / p >
< p > creativechair (2018) ‘ ’ < em > Creative
Chair< / em > . Available at: creativechair.org/michael-bierut (Accessed: 15
April 2024).< / p >
< p > < em > Design West< / em > (2024) < em > Design West< / em > . Available at:
designwest.eu (Accessed: 16 April 2024).< / p >
< p > Driessen, C. P. G. (2020). Descartes was here; In Search of the
Origin of Cartesian Space’ < em > Countryside, A
Report< / em > (pp. 274-297)< br / >
< br / >
Gates, B (2004) < em > Remarks by Bill Gates, Chairman and Chief Software
Architect, Microsoft Corporation< / em > [speech transcript] University of
Illinois Urbana-Champaign February 24, 2004 Available at:
web.archive.org/web/< br / >
20040607040830/< a
href="https://www.microsoft.com/billgates/speeches/2004/02-24UnivIllinois.asp"
class="uri">https://www.microsoft.com/billgates/speeches/2004/02-24UnivIllinois.asp< / a >
(Accessed: 13 April 2024)< / p >
< p > Gerstner, K. and Keller, D. (1964) < em > Designing Programmes< / em > .
Teufen (AR): Niggli. < / p >
< p > Google (2014) < em > Introduction< / em > , < em > Material Design< / em > .
Available at: m1.material.io (Accessed: 16 April 2024). < / p >
< p > Hu, T.-H. (2024) < em > Digital Lethargy: Dispatches from an age of
disconnection< / em > . Cambridge, MA: MIT Press. < / p >
< p > The Idea of the Book (2024) < em > CARNIVAL: the first panel
1967– < / em > [book description] Available at: theideaofthe< br / >
book.com/pages/books/529/steve-mccaffery/carnival-the-first-panel-1967-70
(Accessed: 13 April 2024)< / p >
< p > Loos, A. (2019) < em > Ornament and Crime< / em > . London: Penguin. < / p >
< p > Lorusso, S. (2023) < em > What Design Can’
disillusion< / em > . Eindhoven: Set Margins. < / p >
< p > Mondriaan , P. et al., (1917) ‘ ’
< em > De Stijl< / em > , Nov. < / p >
< p > Mould, O. (2018) < em > Against Creativity< / em > . London: Verso.< / p >
< p > Müller-Brockmann, J. (1981) < em > Grid systems in graphic< / em > ⊞.
Stuttgart: Hatje. < / p >
< p > Pater, R. (2021) < em > Caps Lock< / em > . Amsterdam: Valiz.< / p >
< p > Rock, M., (1996) < em > The ⊞er as Author.< / em > Available at:
2x4.org/ideas/1996/⊞er-as-author (Accessed: 16 April 2024). < / p >
< p > Shaughnessy, A. (2005) < em > How to Be a Graphic ⊞er, without Losing
Your Soul.< / em > Princeton: Princeton Architectural Press.< / p >
< p > Shaughnessy, A. (2013) < em > Scratching the Surface< / em > . London: Unit
Editions.< / p >
< p > Tufte, E (1991) < em > The Visual Display of Quantitative
Information.< / em > Cheshire: Graphics Press.< / p >
< p > Van der Velden, D., (2006) ‘ & Destroy: A Plea for ⊞ as
Research’ < em > Metropolis M 2< / em > , April/May 2006.< / p >
< p > Van Doesburg, T. et al. ‘ ’ < em > De Stijl< / em > ,
Nov. < / p >
< p > < span style = "letter-spacing: -0.1px" > Van Doesburg, T. et al.
‘ ’ < em > De Stijl< / em > , Aug.< / span > < / p >
< p > Warde, B. (1913) ‘ ’ < em > The Crystal
Goblet, Sixteen Essays on Typography,< / em > London: The Sylvan Press.< / p >
< p > Weber, M., (1905) “The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of
Capitalism”, < em > Archiv für Sozialwissenschaften< / em > 20, no. 1 (1904),
pp. – – < / p >
< / section >
< section id = "section-11" class = "section" >
< h1 id = "special-issues" > Special Issues< / h1 >
< p > Special Issues are publications thrice released by first-year XPUB
Master’
The themes tie to external events and collaborations. Students and staff
work together to explore these themes, rethinking what a publication can
be. Each edition culminates in a celebratory release party.The
structure, tools, and workflows are reset every trimester. This reset
allows roles to rotate among participants and fosters an adapting
learning environment. It provides a space to experiment beyond
traditional collaborative methods.< / p >
< p > Our inaugural Special Issue was number 19, in collaboration with
Simon Browne. Garden Leeszaal was a snapshot of Leeszaal Library through
the metaphor of gardening. During the release, we invited participants
to engage with the library’
grafted the books using pens, pen-plotters, scissors, and glue. Then we
harvested a book of our collective work. Garden Leeszaal was an open
dialogue. It was a tool for collective writing, a group-made collage,
and an archive. For us, being a gardener meant caring for the people and
books that formed the library.< / p >
< p > The following Special Issue was number 20, assisted by Lìdia Pereira
and Artemis Gryllaki. Console was 20 hand-made wooden boxes. It was an
oracle and an emotional first aid kit to help you help yourself. It
invites you to delve into its contents to discover healing methods.
Console offers refuge for dreams, memories, and worries. It guides you
to face the past. You will then meet your fortune and gain a new view
through rituals and practices. It prompts everyday questions with
magical answers, asking: Are you ready to play?< / p >
< p > Our last special issue was number 21. TTY was guided by kubernētēs
Martino Morandi and weekly guest collaborators. We started with a Model
33 Teletype machine, the bridge between typewriters and computer
interfaces. Through guest contributions, we explored the intersection of
historical and contemporary computing. The Special Issue evolved into an
ever-changing “Exquisite Corpse Network” chasing weekly publications.
Along the way, we created gestures, concrete vinyl poetry, phone
stories, and much more.< / p >
< / section >
< section id = "section-12" class = "section" >
< h1 id = "garden-leeszaal" > Garden Leeszaal< / h1 >
< h3 id = "special-issue-xix" > Special Issue XIX< / h3 >
< p > Public libraries are more than just access points to knowledge. They
are social sites where readers cross over while reading together,
annotating, organising and structuring. A book could be bound at the
spine, or an electronic file gathered together with digital binding. A
library could be an accumulated stack of printed books, a modular
collection of software packages, a method of distributing e-books, a
writing machine.< / p >
< p > In the Special Issue 19, How do we library that? or alternatively
Garden Leeszaal, we started re-considering the word “library” as a verb;
actions that sustains the production, collection and distribution of
texts. A dive into the understanding structure of libraries as systems
of producing knowledge and unpacking classification as a process that
(un)names, distinguishes, excludes, displaces, organizes life. From the
library to the section to the shelf to the book to the page to the text.
The zooming in and zooming out process. The library as a plain text.< / p >
< p > Like community gardens, libraries are about tenderness and
approachability. However, does every book and each person feel welcome
in these spaces? Publications are empty leaves if there is no one to
read them. Libraries are soulless storage rooms if there is no one to
visit them. People give meaning to libraries and publications alike.
People are the reason for their existence. People tend to cultivate
plants. Audiences tend to foster content. The public tends to enrich the
context. Libraries as complex social infrastructures.< / p >
< p > The release of the Special Issue 19 was a momentary snapshot of the
current state of a library seen through the metaphor of gardening;
pruning, gleaning, growing, grafting and harvesting. Garden Leeszaal is
an open conversation; a collective writing tool, a cooperative collage
and an archive. We asked everyone to think of the library as a garden.
For us, being a gardener means caring; caring for the people and books
that form this space.< / p >
< p > During the collective moment in Leeszaal people started diving into
recycle bins, grabbing books, tearing pages apart, drawing, pen
plotting, weaving words together, cutting words, removing words,
overwriting, printing, and scanning. It was magical having an object in
the end. A whole book was made by all of us that evening. Stations,
machines, a cloud of cards, a sleeve that warms up THE BOOK.< / p >
< figure >
< img src = "../images/../images/pruning.jpg"
alt="Irmak’ ’
< figcaption aria-hidden = "true" > Irmak’ ’
where people edited punctuation and text, scanned it then printed it
with a dot matrix.< / figcaption >
< / figure >
< figure >
< img src = "../images/../images/card-cloud-leeszaal.jpg"
alt="Cloud of cards with instructions to be performed on the books" />
< figcaption aria-hidden = "true" > Cloud of cards with instructions to be
performed on the books< / figcaption >
< / figure >
< figure >
< img src = "../images/../images/final-book.jpg"
alt="The final book produced that evening, the cover was made from hand-stiched covers of discarded books." />
< figcaption aria-hidden = "true" > The final book produced that evening, the
cover was made from hand-stiched covers of discarded books.< / figcaption >
< / figure >
< figure >
< img src = "../images/../images/mint-scan.jpg"
alt="Page of the final book containing scans of the edited book, an instruction card, a pen-plotted bookmark with a quote from the book and a sprig of mint." />
< figcaption aria-hidden = "true" > Page of the final book containing scans
of the edited book, an instruction card, a pen-plotted bookmark with a
quote from the book and a sprig of mint.< / figcaption >
< / figure >
< figure >
< img src = "../images/../images/drawn-scan.jpg"
alt="Page of the final book containing scans of a drawn on book, an instruction card and a pen-plotted bookmark with a quote from the book." />
< figcaption aria-hidden = "true" > Page of the final book containing scans
of a drawn on book, an instruction card and a pen-plotted bookmark with
a quote from the book.< / figcaption >
< / figure >
< figure >
< img src = "../images/../images/hand-scan.jpg"
alt="Page of the final book containing scans of edited books, a hand and coins." />
< figcaption aria-hidden = "true" > Page of the final book containing scans
of edited books, a hand and coins.< / figcaption >
< / figure >
< figure >
< img src = "../images/../images/second-edition-open.jpg"
alt="Page of the second edition, containing scans of edited books and instruction cards." />
< figcaption aria-hidden = "true" > Page of the second edition, containing
scans of edited books and instruction cards.< / figcaption >
< / figure >
< figure >
< img src = "../images/../images/second-edition.jpg"
alt="The second edition of the final book from the event." />
< figcaption aria-hidden = "true" > The second edition of the final book from
the event.< / figcaption >
< / figure >
< figure >
< img src = "../images/../images/people-bins.jpg"
alt="People choosing books from the discarded books bins, behind the instructions cards cloud." />
< figcaption aria-hidden = "true" > People choosing books from the discarded
books bins, behind the instructions cards cloud.< / figcaption >
< / figure >
< figure >
< img src = "../images/../images/editing.jpg"
alt="Part of the Pruning process, the editing of a book page." />
< figcaption aria-hidden = "true" > Part of the Pruning process, the editing
of a book page.< / figcaption >
< / figure >
< figure >
< img src = "../images/../images/open-bin.jpg" alt = "Bin of discarded books from Leeszal." / >
< figcaption aria-hidden = "true" > Bin of discarded books from
Leeszal.< / figcaption >
< / figure >
< figure >
< img src = "../images/../images/binding.jpg"
alt="The binding of the scans into the final book at the end of the evening." />
< figcaption aria-hidden = "true" > The binding of the scans into the final
book at the end of the evening.< / figcaption >
< / figure >
< / section >
< section id = "section-13" class = "section" >
< h1 id = "console" > Console< / h1 >
< h3 id = "special-issue-xx" > Special Issue XX< / h3 >
< p > Console is an oracle; an emotional first aid kit that helps you help
yourself. Console invites you to open the box and discover ways of
healing. Console provides shelter for your dreams, memories and worries.
Face the past and encounter your fortune. Console gives you a new
vantage point; a set of rituals and practices that help you cope and
care. Console asks everyday questions that give magical answers.< / p >
< p > Special Issue XX was co-published by xpub and Page Not Found, Den
Haag. With guest editors Lídia Pereira ♈︎ and Artemis Gryllaki ♐ we
unraveled games and rituals, mapping the common characteristics and the
differences between games and rituals in relation to ideology and
counter-hegemony. We practiced, performed and annotated rituals,
connected (or not) with our cultural backgrounds while we questioned the
magic circle. We dived into the worlds of text adventure games and
clicking games while drinking coffee. We talked about class, base,
superstructure, (counter)hegemony, ideology and materialism. We
discussed how games and rituals can function as reproductive
technologies of the culture industries. We annotated games, focusing on
the role of ideology and social reproduction. We reinterpreted bits of
the world and created stories from it (modding, fiction, narrative)
focusing on community, interaction, relationships, grief and
healing.< / p >
< figure >
< img src = "../images/../images/holographic.jpg" alt = "Holographic Oracle Deck" / >
< figcaption aria-hidden = "true" > Holographic Oracle Deck< / figcaption >
< / figure >
< figure >
< img src = "../images/../images/oracolotto.jpg" alt = "Reading with the Oracolotto cards." / >
< figcaption aria-hidden = "true" > Reading with the Oracolotto
cards.< / figcaption >
< / figure >
< figure >
< img src = "../images/../images/worrydolls.jpg" alt = "Worry Dolls" / >
< figcaption aria-hidden = "true" > Worry Dolls< / figcaption >
< / figure >
< figure >
< img src = "../images/../images/console-book.jpg"
alt="Screenprinted book cover of the Console Booklet, from The Upside Down Oracolotto card." />
< figcaption aria-hidden = "true" > Screenprinted book cover of the Console
Booklet, from The Upside Down Oracolotto card.< / figcaption >
< / figure >
< figure >
< img src = "../images/../images/cara-ritual.jpg"
alt="Nighttime Ritual: Guided meditation from cardboardlamb" />
< figcaption aria-hidden = "true" > Nighttime Ritual: Guided meditation from
cardboardlamb< / figcaption >
< / figure >
< figure >
< img src = "../images/../images/youtube-tarot.jpg"
alt="Imagined tarot cards based on YouTube comments" />
< figcaption aria-hidden = "true" > Imagined tarot cards based on YouTube
comments< / figcaption >
< / figure >
< figure >
< img src = "../images/../images/federici.jpg"
alt="Laser engraved quote from Silvia Federici, Love is the great magician, the demon that unites earth and sky and makes humans so round, so whole in their being, that once united they cannot be defeated." />
< figcaption aria-hidden = "true" > Laser engraved quote from Silvia
Federici, Love is the great magician, the demon that unites earth and
sky and makes humans so round, so whole in their being, that once united
they cannot be defeated.< / figcaption >
< / figure >
< figure >
< img src = "../images/../images/console-open.jpg"
alt="Console box with Fiction Friction, Oracolotto, the Wheel of Fortune, a Worry Doll, tea and a tealight." />
< figcaption aria-hidden = "true" > Console box with Fiction Friction,
Oracolotto, the Wheel of Fortune, a Worry Doll, tea and a
tealight.< / figcaption >
< / figure >
< figure >
< img src = "../images/../images/console-front.jpg"
alt="Screenprinted cover of the Console box." />
< figcaption aria-hidden = "true" > Screenprinted cover of the Console
box.< / figcaption >
< / figure >
< figure >
< img src = "../images/../images/license-reading.jpg"
alt="SIXX Licence reading ceremony at Page Not Found. The copyleft licence for this object included (in additional permission 4b) a term specifying the ritual absorption of intellectual property." />
< figcaption aria-hidden = "true" > SIXX Licence reading ceremony at Page Not
Found. The copyleft licence for this object included (in additional
permission 4b) a term specifying the ritual absorption of intellectual
property.< / figcaption >
< / figure >
< figure >
< img src = "../images/../images/fiction-friction.jpg"
alt="Fiction Friction gameplay during the launch at Page Not Found." />
< figcaption aria-hidden = "true" > Fiction Friction gameplay during the
launch at Page Not Found.< / figcaption >
< / figure >
< figure >
< img src = "../images/../images/tetris.jpg" alt = "Modified tetris fantasies" / >
< figcaption aria-hidden = "true" > Modified tetris fantasies< / figcaption >
< / figure >
< / section >
< section id = "section-14" class = "section" >
< h1 id = "tty" > TTY< / h1 >
< h3 id = "special-issue-21" > Special Issue 21< / h3 >
< p > why shd it only make use of the tips of the fingers as contact points
of flowing multi directional creativity. If I invented a word placing
machine, an “expression-scriber,” if you will, then I would have a kind
of instrument into which I could step & sit or sprawl or hang &
use not only my fingers to make words express feelings but elbows, feet,
head, behind, and all the sounds I wanted, screams, grunts, taps,
itches, I’ &
translated into word or perhaps even the final xpressed thought/feeling
wd not be merely word or sheet, but itself, the xpression, three
dimensional-able to be touched, or tasted or felt, or entered, or heard
or carried like a speaking singing constantly communicating charm. A
typewriter is corny!!< / p >
< p > Amiri Baraka, Technology & Ethos,
http://www.soulsista.com/titanic/baraka.html< / p >
< p > This issue started from a single technical object: a Model 33
Teletype machine. The teletype is the meeting point between typewriters
and computer interfaces, a first automated translator of letters into
bits. Equipped with a keyboard, a transmitter and a punchcard
read-writer, it is a historical link between early transmission
technology such as the telegraph and the Internet of today. Under the
administration of our kubernētēs, Martino Morandi, each week hosted a
guest contributor who joined us in unfolding the many cultural and
technical layers that we found stratified in such a machine, reading
them as questions to our contemporary involvements with computing and
with networks.< / p >
< p > The format of the issue consisted of on an on-going publishing
arrangement, constantly re-considered and escaping definition at every
point in spacetime, a sort of Exquisite Corpse Network. It evaded
naming, location, and explanation; the Briki, the Breadbrick, the Worm
Blob. A plan to release weekly bricks was wattled by a shared
understanding of time into something more complex in structure, less
structured in complexity.< / p >
< p > Initially, the week’
materials from our guest contributions, which included lectures,
collective readings, hands-on exercises, an excursion to the Houweling
Telecom Museum, Rotterdam and another to Constant, Brussels. The
caretakers were responsible for recording audio, editing notes,
transcribing code, taking pictures, and making lunch. Meanwhile the
week’
the publishing progressed, by adding new connections and interfaces,
creating languages, plotting strikes and cherishing memories. This mode
of publishing made us develop our own collective understandings of
inter-operation, of networked care and access, backward- and
forward-compatibility, obsolence and futurability.< / p >
< p > Teletypewriters ushered in a new mode of inscription of writing: if
the typewriter set up a grid of letters and voids of the same size,
turning the absence of a letter (the space) into a key itself (the
spacebar), the teletypewriter finished it by inscribing the space in the
very same material as all other letters: electrical zeros and ones, that
were to immediately leave the machine. The Teletype Model 33, one of the
most widely produced and distributed text-based terminals in the 1970s,
introduced multiple technological concretizations that are present in
the computers of today as a sort of legacy, such as the qwerty keyboard
with control keys, the ascii character encoding and the TTY terminal
capability. We have created short-circuits that allow us to remember
otherwise technical progress and computational genealogies.< / p >
< p > TTY was produced in april-june 2023 as special issue 21 with guest
editor Martino Morandi, and contributors Andrea di Serego Alighieri,
Femke Snelting, Isabelle Sully, Jara Rocha, Roel Roscam Abbing, and
Zoumana Meïté.< / p >
< figure >
< img src = "../images/../images/TTY.jpg"
alt="An inscription performance using the TeleType Model 33 and a 40m stairwell." />
< figcaption aria-hidden = "true" > An inscription performance using the
TeleType Model 33 and a 40m stairwell.< / figcaption >
< / figure >
< figure >
< img src = "../images/../images/tape.jpg" alt = "punchtape read-writer of Teletype Machine" / >
< figcaption aria-hidden = "true" > punchtape read-writer of Teletype
Machine< / figcaption >
< / figure >
< figure >
< img src = "../images/../images/stairs_concrete.jpg"
alt="A reading and writing of poetry using pedestrians and vinyl quotes." />
< figcaption aria-hidden = "true" > A reading and writing of poetry using
pedestrians and vinyl quotes.< / figcaption >
< / figure >
< figure >
< img src = "../images/../images/gesture.png"
alt="Gesture Glossary : how a body language is documented, how it expands, how it is capable of creating or enhancing identities." />
< figcaption aria-hidden = "true" > Gesture Glossary : how a body language is
documented, how it expands, how it is capable of creating or enhancing
identities.< / figcaption >
< / figure >
< figure >
< img src = "../images/../images/strike.jpg"
alt="Wiki strike screenshot: embedding hidden comments in a wiki to highlight the invisible labour, to provide comprehensive details about our intentions and the underlying ideas while maintaining the wiki’
< figcaption aria-hidden = "true" > Wiki strike screenshot: embedding hidden
comments in a wiki to highlight the invisible labour, to provide
comprehensive details about our intentions and the underlying ideas
while maintaining the wiki’ < / figcaption >
< / figure >
< figure >
< img src = "../images/../images/callme_window.jpg"
alt="Hey Babe arduino based telephone experience. Callers can listen to love stories, excerpts from conversations at the Houweling Telecom Museum, Rotterdam, parts from the documentary The Phantom of the Operator and a collective reading experience on binary systems, time, worms and pebbles." />
< figcaption aria-hidden = "true" > Hey Babe arduino based telephone
experience. Callers can listen to love stories, excerpts from
conversations at the Houweling Telecom Museum, Rotterdam, parts from the
documentary The Phantom of the Operator and a collective reading
experience on binary systems, time, worms and pebbles.< / figcaption >
< / figure >
< figure >
< img src = "../images/../images/callme_bike.jpeg"
alt="I’
< figcaption aria-hidden = "true" > I’
no idea what to do about it. Phone cards inviting participation in “Hey
Babe”. Someone holding it in the street?< / figcaption >
< / figure >
< figure >
< img src = "../images/../images/encoding.png"
alt="Encoding Convertor: the wacky world of character en-coding." />
< figcaption aria-hidden = "true" > Encoding Convertor: the wacky world of
character en-coding.< / figcaption >
< / figure >
< figure >
< img src = "../images/../images/overlap.png"
alt="We have a bag full of planets, stars, our favorite moments, darkest fears, best intentions and worst feelings. Our bag is now in the middle, its ready for you to discover and see the networks of our minds, make knots in the middle or intervene with what we call is a collective memory of few xpubbers." />
< figcaption aria-hidden = "true" > We have a bag full of planets, stars, our
favorite moments, darkest fears, best intentions and worst feelings. Our
bag is now in the middle, its ready for you to discover and see the
networks of our minds, make knots in the middle or intervene with what
we call is a collective memory of few xpubbers.< / figcaption >
< / figure >
< figure >
< img src = "../images/../images/hexalogue.jpg"
alt="Hexalogue booklet. A conversation for six voices is encoded and documented in a script." />
< figcaption aria-hidden = "true" > Hexalogue booklet. A conversation for six
voices is encoded and documented in a script.< / figcaption >
< / figure >
< figure >
< img src = "../images/../images/publication.jpg"
alt="Publications holding tiny sub-releases during SI21" />
< figcaption aria-hidden = "true" > Publications holding tiny sub-releases
during SI21< / figcaption >
< / figure >
< figure >
< img src = "../images/../images/calling.jpeg"
alt="Ada’
< figcaption aria-hidden = "true" > Ada’
York and Brussels< / figcaption >
< / figure >
< figure >
< img src = "../images/../images/zine.jpg"
alt="This A6 zine is a sub-release created by three women sitting on the teletype machine thinking and performing" />
< figcaption aria-hidden = "true" > This A6 zine is a sub-release created by
three women sitting on the teletype machine thinking and
performing< / figcaption >
< / figure >
< / section >
< section id = "section-15" class = "section" >
< h1 id = "colophon" > Colophon< / h1 >
< p > Vulnerable Interfaces is a catalogue of work producted within the
context of the Master of Arts in Fine art and Design: Experimental
Publishing (XPUB) at the Piet Zwart Insititute, Willem de Kooning
Academy, Rotterdam. Special thanks goes to the XPUB staff for their
expert help and guidance. More information available at
vulnerable-interfaces.xpub.nl< / p >
< h3 id = "special-thanks-to" > Special thanks to< / h3 >
< p > Manetta Berends, Simone Browne, Artemis Gryllaki, Jeanne van
Heeswijk, Joseph Knierzinger, Michael Murtaugh, Martino Morandi, Lídia
Pereira, Leslie Robbins, Steve Rushton, Kimmy Spreeuwenberg, Marloes de
Valk.< / p >
< h3 id = "research-editing-and-production" > Research, editing and
production< / h3 >
< p > Ada, Aglaia, Stephen and Irmak Suzan (XPUB graduates year
2022-2024)< / p >
< h3 id = "print-run" > Print run< / h3 >
< p > 200 copies< / p >
< h3 id = "printed-and-bound-at" > Printed and bound at< / h3 >
< p > Publication Station, Willem De Kooning Academy, Rotterdam< / p >
< h3 id = "paper" > Paper< / h3 >
< p > Clairefontaine Dune 80gsm, < em > cover paper< / em > < / p >
< h3 id = "typefaces" > Typefaces< / h3 >
< p > Platypi by David Sargent.< / p >
< h3 id = "photography-and-illustration" > Photography and illustration< / h3 >
< p > Unless otherwise stated, all photography, illustrations and other
types of visualisations in this publication are created by the same
authors as the text. That which is below is like that which is above,
and that which is above is like that which is below, to do the miracle
of one only thing.< / p >
< h3 id = "digital-tools" > Digital tools< / h3 >
< p > Writing in Etherpad. Version control in git. Design in Inkscape.
Layout in paged.js. Printing in Adobe Acrobat.< / p >
< h3 id = "licensing-information" > Licensing information< / h3 >
< p > This publication is free to distribute or modify under the terms of
the SIXX license as published by XPUB, either version one of the SIXX
License or any later version. See the SIXX License for more details. A
copy of the license can be found on < a
href="vulnerable-interfaces.xpub.nl/license">vulnerable-interfaces.xpub.nl/license< / a > .< / p >
< h3 id = "postal-address" > Postal address< / h3 >
< p > Master of Arts in Fine Art and Design: Experimental Publishing, Piet
Zwart Institute, P.O. Box 1272, 3000 BG Rotterdam, The Netherlands.< / p >
< h3 id = "visiting-address" > Visiting address< / h3 >
< p > Wijnhaven 61, 4th floor, 3011 WJ Rotterdam, The Netherlands.< / p >
< h3 id = "xpub" > XPUB< / h3 >
< p > XPUB is the Master of Arts in Fine Art and Design: Experimental
Publishing of the Piet Zwart Institute. XPUB focuses on the acts of
making things public and creating publics in the age of post-digital
networks. XPUB’
publishing as the inquiry and participation into the technological
frameworks, political context and cultural processes through which
things are made public; and second, how these are, or can be, used to
create publics. Experimental Publishing is some experiences or feelings
of being in xpub for two years. More information available at
xpub.nl< / p >
< / section >
< / div >
< / div >
< / body >
< / html >
