@ -68,35 +68,29 @@ Here code documentation could work as a backdoor: hacking its way to people that
from reaching a public to creating a public
### politics of participation and representation
#### from the trans\*feminists servers manifesto to the queer motto api to the 360 degrees of proximity
### Documentation & distribution
To rethink participation in coding practices from femminist perspectives means not just swapping who can join and who can not. Doing so would just replicate current forms of exclusion and polarization. It also doesn't mean to commit to an overexert openness, accepting everything and everyone in, possibly endangering safe spaces.
The _Wishlist for Trans*femminist Servers_ engages with a more messy entangled complex way of understanding participation and technology
a way to open up for plurality, for questioning, for instability, for safety, for situatedness. Iterating from the _Feminist Server Manifesto_, it offer a prompts to embrace coding within contradictions: not as a moral setback, but rather as an ongoing wishlist, striving for different tech for this world, and for different worlds.
These principles are reflected in the documentation of the Queer Motto API, a software-as-service commissioned by transmediale in 2020-2021, developed by the Queer Service team (Winnie Soon, Helen V. Pritchard, Cristina Cochior, and Nynne Lucca). The project questions the idea of software as a smooth service always available, with a motto generator that sometimes refuses to work, takes a nap when it needs to REST, or strikes to celebrate particular days such as the 8th March.
These principles are reflected in the documentation of the Queer Motto API, a _software as a service_ commissioned by transmediale in 2020-2021, developed by the Queer Service team (Winnie Soon, Helen V. Pritchard, Cristina Cochior, and Nynne Lucca). The project questions the idea of software as a smooth service always available, with a motto generator that sometimes refuses to work, takes a nap when it needs to REST, or strikes to celebrate particular days such as the 8th March.
The Queer Motto API is published in the form of an application programming interface (API), an online service that other developers can request from their applications, in order to use generated feminist motto. By publishing in the form of an API, the service engages by nature with other projects, such as the Transmediale website, that uses it to display a new motto every day.
Who wants to integrate the API however, needs to come at terms with the conditions detailed in the _readme_, the documentation text file available on the project repository.
the readme of the API offer an understanding of the various technical process involved in the classic idea of software-as-service, but re - narrating them from a feminist perspective
Who wants to use the API needs to come at terms with the conditions detailed in the documentation available on the project repository. The _readme_ offers an understanding of the various technical moments and aspects involved in the interaction with a typical software-as-service, but narrating them from a feminist perspective. Error codes, service availability, consent and refusal, request and response, token policy, and all the terms neutralized by the normativity of everyday tech, are here reactivated as powerful narrative (and subversive) devices.
errors, service availability, consent and refusal, tokenism, all the terms neutralized by the normativity of everyday tech are here reactivated as powerful narrative devices
One example is the paradigm of constant availability of the server. Behind every _SaaS_ there are always one or more servers: the so called _someone else's computer_ working behind the scenes. The seamless picture of cloud of big techs rarelly includes these machines, that are abstracted away and hidden from the user. In the Queer Motto API instead the presence of the server is a key aspect, especially when it decides to take a nap or refuses to work for strike. These behaviors are documented with different error codes, offering a way for the developers using the API to make their applications react accordingly, or even join the cause.
2
SI16 API
SI16 API where ? ? ? ?
3
### Federated docs
To inject context in software is required to operate at different scales. Within both public and private dimensions, with technical and social frameworks. During a workshop for example, people meet face to face. Here togetherness can glue technicalities together, questioning reproduction of knowledge and its power dynamics. (See for example _Feminists Federating_, mara karagianni, ooooo, nate wessalowski, vo ezn in Toward a Minor Tech - A peer reviewed Newspaper vol 12, 2023) (Note that the opposite effect is also true, with technicalities as paratext conditioning how people are together)
@ -140,7 +134,9 @@ e.zn
```
#### from alt-text as poetry to the discussion about accessibility in p5js to the soupboat
### Representation specs
from alt-text as poetry to the discussion about accessibility in p5js to the soupboat
alt-text as poetry is a project by Bojana Coklyat and Shannon Finnegan
published as a website and other flexible formats it's an ode to the alt attribute in html image tag
@ -238,7 +234,7 @@ In the Screenless Office, the bureau aesthetic, with its collective imagery of c
Our first project in XPUB was Special Issue 16: a collective exploration of natural language processing with a vernacular turn. It was published as an API, offering several functions to users to play with strings and texts.
#### aesthetic programming as a bridge between software studies and creative coding
### aesthetic programming as a bridge between software studies and creative coding
_Aesthetic Programming - A Handbook of Software Studies_, by Winnie Soon and Geoff Cox is an example on how to weave together these different discourses. The book explains the basic concepts of programming: it starts from variables and loops, to arrive at more complex topics such as machine learning or speech recognition. The technical curriculum offered is in line with other similar resources that target non-engineers. What's different here is a commitment to critically enquiry themes such as colonialism, racism, gender and sexuality, capitalism and class, and how are they embedded in code.
