@ -193,7 +193,7 @@ create / claim new spaces for participation, validate participation
### Hello worlding
The Screenless Office is an _artistic operative system_ to reimagine personal computing away from pixel-based displays, using radically alternative forms of everyday human interaction with media.
The Screenless Office is an _artistic operative system_by Brendan Howell and Mikhail Pogorzhelskiy to reimagine personal computing away from pixel-based displays, using radically alternative forms of everyday human interaction with media.
Similarly to other operative systems, the Screenless Office can be used to read news, browse websites and interact with social media. What's different here is that the surface where all these exchanges happen is not a screen, but rather an articulated ecosystem of thermal and laser printers, barcode scanners and other interconnected physical devices that can be plugged in or printed at need.
@ -232,45 +232,15 @@ class Humor(Bureau):
Sample from `jokes.py`, the module of the _Department of Humor_. Here two _docstrings_ describe the bureau itself and the `Fortune Cookie` command.
Menu printed by the Inhuman Resources bureau using the docstrings from the other offices, ready to be invoked with the barcode-scanner.
Menu printed by the Inhuman Resources bureau using the docstrings from the other offices, ready to be invoked with the barcode-scanner. _4-4-2022 Workshop with Brendan Howell at XPUB_
Versioning Tiger Dingsun, code documentation can be intended as an act of world-building. In their essay _Chimeric Worlding_, the designer and writer explores what can graphic design learn from poetics and the art of creating worlds. It's enough to find&replace all the occurences of `graphic design`→`code documentation` in the text to get an interesting perspective on what's happening in the Screenless Office.
In the essay _Chimeric Worlding_, researcher and designer Tiger Dingsun explores what can graphic design learn from poetics to escape a condition of pure functionalism. Graphic design and code documentation are similar: both deal with organizazion and presentation of information, making meaning through configuration of various element which are not just limited to language and text, but also might include images, symbols, (code snippets, examples). With a `find&replace` to swap all the occurences of `graphic design` to `code documentation`, Dingsun's essay can be versioned to get an interesting perspective on what's happening in the Screenless Office.
The essay questions the idea of _code documentation_ as a service voted to pure functionalism, as a lubricant for the smooth flow of capital, which relies on a singular, totalizing interpretation of the world. On the extreme opposites of the spectrum stand conventional mythos, common and accepted systems of knowledge, and personal ones, with their internal logic and structures. _Code documentation_ is stuck between these two. Referring only to conventional rules and standardized practices would result in a total disappearing of the context from where the documentation is coming from, conforming to the ideologies of the status quo. Drawing on just personal mythos on the other hand, would result inaccessible to external readers.
In the essay, they highlight how poetry often does offer rich context and a world for a work to live in, while _software documentation_ often does not. A poetic practice of world-building would benefit _code documentation_, allowing for multiple potential narratives to sprawl out nonlinearly, validating them, inviting to question the surroundings of the code, and offering points of resistance to the smooth flow of capital, which relies on a singular, totalizing interpretation of the world. Hence the idea of chimeric worlding: to provincialize _code documentation_ with multiple ways of structuring knowledge, leaving open ended spaces for others to participate.
`this paragraph is too dense`
In the Screenless Office, the bureau aesthetic, with its collective imagery of characters, situations, and power dynamics, becomes a personal interaction design framework. Here the system is structured enough to articulate a complex application in a coherent, clear and legible way. And yet, the cosmology of the office remains open to contribuitions coming from elsewhere, say, another departement such as the `Canteen of the Screenless Office` inaugurated during a workshop with Howell at XPUB, with all its peculiar set of characters, aesthetics and documentation practices.
Conventional mythos and communal meaning
By refering to methodologies coming from literature and poetry, Dingsun notices how is at the intersection between personal and communal meaning that worlds thrive.
The office's aesthetic, with the collective imagery of characters, situations, and power dynamics, becomes an interaction design framework.
poetics often emerges from the overlapping of multiple systems of meaning.
poetics emerging from the frection between clarity and ambiguity
Seeking inspiration in literature and poetry, Dingsun report
- versioning tiger dingusun and the chimeric worlding
- (chimeric api, chimeric code documentation)
- syntesis between conventional mythos and personal mythos
- code documentation accessible to others, conveying meaning but also producing more vague and interpretable affect, with deeper unkknown meaning
- paradox coexistence of clarity and poetic ambiguity and opennes of interpretation
