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kamo-soupbato/projects/gpp/documentation.md

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categories cover cover_alt date description slug title
GRS
Writing
Research
gppc.jpg someone wants to graduate eh 08/10/2022 The secret plan to graduate gpp Graduation Project Proposal

Draft Project Proposal

What do you want to make?

Focus on software documentation as an interface between code, users, developers, communities, and the world.

Research how writing software documentation changes depending on the context and actors involved.

Experiment with software documentation as a generative device to keep thinking through code from multiple and different perspectives.

Explore software documentation as iterative process, that grows and shrinks through versioning, and embrances branching to adapt to other environments.

Develop tools to facilitate rich software documentation. To assist and stimulate the writing process with prompts and gently reminders that software documentation is a form of care.

How do you plan to make it?

Define a domain of research. Where does software documentation begin and where does it end? What about tutorial, guideline, and demo? How porous is this surface?

Start to set some coordinates by looking back at the works made last year and read them through the axis of code and care. Or some other system of coordinates that suits better.

Expand the research to tap into projects outside XPUB, such as freelance works and artistic research. Are there ways to make the documentation process more sustainable? Which strategies to overcome a low resources environment?

Question the nature of the documentation: what does it take for granted? For what kind of public is it produced, and what kind of public does it produce? How does it normalize the context around the software? What are its politics of access? How does it create entry points and how does it gatekeep?

Try to infiltrate the industry of software development through their documentation. Attempt to expose their typical public to these questions in subtle ways. Offer entry points and escape routes from the universal solution proposed by big corporates.

What is your timetable?

October

Define a domain of research. Do not decide on it's granularity.

Define the premises where which to ground the project by revisiting first year projects. Draw a political compass of software as care.

Think about a glossary and possible formats to test some concept in a small scale, such as the first public moment at Leeszal or the freelance works for Non-Linear and CLI.

November

Get in touch with key figures to interview for research.

December OOC performance and follow-up about findings for the methodology.

January Start working on case study 2. Start working on case study 3.

February Work on one case study. Update protocols and possible formats for graduation project outcome.

March Work on the other case study. Update protocols and possible formats for graduation project outcome.

April Follow-up about findings for the methodology. Production for methodology outcome.

May Production for methodology outcome. Production for graduation exhibition.

June Graduation exhibition. Party

July Siesta

Why do you want to make it?

Documenting software it's a complex practice. Documenting software is a process of translation. Writing documentation it's more difficult than writing software itself. It requires a lot of time and energy, and it involves many different skills: writing, coding, knowing how to share and at which intensity.

As a piece of code would write: I am documented, therefore I am. And viceversa.

Undocumented software is invisible, but for the eyes of their own developers. And eventually, it begins to fade as soon as the developer looks away.

Who can help you and how?

I would like to interview some artists with programming-related practices to get some glimpse of their workflows. I'm thinking for example to Nathan Sinigalia, Ian Cheng, Nicolas Maigret. I want to ask to Ariella Vidach A.i.E.P. how working with technology changed in the past 30 years. I'm interested in the workflow of radical studios such as Open Source Publishing but also more commercial ones like Forensic Architecture and Studio Moniker. For sure it would be interesting to get in touch with someone mantaining open source projects such as Paged.js, P5Js, vvvv, or more unconventional ones. Some interesting things could emerge from field research directly in git repositories, issues and wikis.

The practical aspect depends on the second and third case studies. There are some communities I would like to work with: Pietre Parlanti is a non-profit association that works with the recovery of old routes and cultural heritage in Liguria, Italy. I'm already in touch with them for Frana Futura, the documentary I'm working on with Sofia, Elena and Micalis.

Relation to previous practice

Relation to a larger context

References/bibliography

  • software studies - ed. matthew fuller

  • close to the machine - ellen ulman

  • ways of being - james bridle

  • new dark age - james bridle

  • cuttling code - software and society - adrian mackenzie

  • gay robot noises - comfy software

  • kent beck - wiki.c2.com

  • extreme software & SCRUM

  • simon yuill

  • The Social Structure of Open Source Software Development TeamsTeams(2003)

  • Nelly Oudshoorn, Trevor Pinch, eds. How Users Matter

  • Ron Eglash, Jennifer L. Croissant, Giovanna Di Chiro, and Rayvon Fouche, eds., Appropriating Technology: Vernacular Science and Social Power.

  • Towards the Sixth Level in Interface Design: Understanding Culture

  • The Social Shaping of Technology Paperback, Donald MacKenzie (Editor), Judy Wajcman (Editor) (1999)

  • Visualisation and Cognition: Drawing Things Together - B. Latour

  • www.literateprogramming.com - Donald Knuth

  • Donald Knuth, The Art of Computer Programming

  • Lucy Suchman. Plans and Situated Actions: The problems of Human-Machine communication

  • Soenhke Zehle, 'FLOSS Redux: Notes on African Software Politics'

  • Verran, Science and an african Logic

  • Balibar, Universality, Ambiguous Universality

  • John Law and Annemarie Mol, Complexities: Social Studies of Knowledge Practices

  • Cecile Crutzen, Giving Room to Femininity in Informatics Education

  • Cecile Crutzen and Jack F Gerrissen, Doubting the OBJECT World

  • P. Béguin and P. Rabardel, Designing for Instrument Mediated Activity

  • Wendy Hui Kyong Chun, On Software, or the Persistence of Visual Knowledge

  • Matthew Fuller, Behind the Blip, essays on the culture of Software

  • N. Katherine Haykesm, My Mother was a Computer

  • David Toop, Growth and Complexity, Haunted Weather

  • Leo Brodie, Thinking Forth

  • Brian Cantwell Smith, On the Origin of Objects

  • Bruce Sterling, Shaping Things

  • Timothy C. Lethbridge, Susan Elliott Sim, Janice Singer - Software Anthropology: Performing Field Studies in Software Companies

Tut with Joseph

galloway protocol situated software, https://www.gwern.net/docs/technology/2004-03-30-shirky-situatedsoftware.html post-meritocratic manifesto josep weizenbaum

Tut with Manetta aha!