label
object
Linked to 31 items
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from: Sound and Temporality (chapter)
05:50 But I do think we can reflect on the double notion of ‘time and space’. Space was a prominent element in our research. In a hybrid event, as we saw it, you have spacethe physical space, and many online spaces or people joining online from their own house. In the livecasting group, we built ‘Emoji Proxies & Ghost Messengers’, a tool that could make the online audience more present on-site during an event. Using commands in the livestream chat, online audiences can influence something in the space, like triggering an on-site objectlight or scenta scent diffuser in a spacespace. We aimed to make the relationship between offline and on-site audiences a bit more equal. This is difficult to achieve, especially when there is a main stage, which is the objectphysical stage. As long as we think of on-site programming as primary, it’s very difficult to give online audiences a more equal type of agency. So we tried to decenter the main stage. the virtual space is merging in the background, can it be considered non-real space? For instance, we tested the scent diffuser during an event that was focused on audioaudio. alexa this is not FaceTime app how did I get here So there was a main stage, but there were no visuals on a beamer. It was a listening event. Ultra hyper-focus on the present moment, years of preparation and research leading up to the current moment, with weeks of post-production dealing with the now. How authentic is this now then? This worked well. I think you’re in the right place, welcome!
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from: Sound and Temporality (chapter)
22:28 We did these workshops twice, and especially the second time we really consciously took a lot of objectcraft materials and really made it hands-on, where people could invent little objectweird puppets that could be moved by the online audience. Back to listening to: I feel that if we focus on listening we shift the attention from the people who have something to say to the people who decide whether or not to pay attention. Listening involves goodwill and perhaps a form of power. It wasn’t so serious. I always say that there hasn’t been a big solution, but more playful paths. It reminded me of the early web where you could assemble your website using copy/paste, and here you could copy/paste little weird interactions.
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from: Thresholds of Access (chapter)
05:05 Thanks for the question and it’s really nice to be here. As was mentioned, I’m here to represent two people. I’m Ren and my collaborator Iz is joining us on the livestream. We work together as MELT, and in our practice, access functions as a creative motor for the way we work through practices and problems. We work with a disability justice and trans-feminist-oriented practice. We’re primarily concerned with making access for disabled people and thinking about the multiplicity of formats that that might require. We also think about multimodal design quite a lot. An example of that is a recent project we have called ‘Counting Feelings’. ‘Counting Feelings’ was a two-day workshop collectively by MELT, exploring how we can use data otherwise. It took place online on 18 and 19 April 2023. See: https://www.extraintra.nl/initiatives/crip-the-curriculum/counting-feelings In that work, we are looking at what would data mean for trans and disabled people, if ableism and anti-queer sentiment were not the organizing factors of our everyday lives. We’re developing other ways of thinking with data practices. We have, for example, a work that’s a objectweighted blanket. And with that weighted blanket, we have it both as something that you can feel, textsomething that you can read like a booklet with all of the information of the data bits inside of it, and also audiosomething you can listen to. We are thinking through multiple layers of access-making through something very much coming out of our community as well. Did someone say mushrooms? and unicorns?
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from: Thresholds of Access (chapter)
12:14 Next week, Iz and I are hosting a Crip Hackathon with Heinrich-Böll-Stiftung. websiteParticipating accessibly at the Hackathon is entirely online because we are making sure that people that are immunodeficient or anyone who’s disabled can also still join. And we’re sending everyone a objectpackage. And in that package is a toolbox of things that you might need to imagine. So that’s one way that we’re still practicing with that. We also like the work of the Critical Design Lab and Aimi Hamraie, especially their project ‘Remote Access Archive’. ‘The Remote Access Archive will gather stories, documents, and other information about how disabled people have used technology to interact remotely’ - https://www.mapping-access.com/the-remote-access-archive It looks at this exact problem: how is access made or lost? It records the moments in which access is no longer possible, which brings up more radical claims and questions that we can ask.
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from: Interaction and Activation (chapter)
07:13 It’s the reason why we chose the game experience. We were treating this collaboration with IMPAKT as an experiment, but also as a way to research how far can you go with this online/offline interaction. And I think the research question Derk and I made for ourselves came out of the ‘COVID time’ when there was a new influx of all these livestreams and online events, like the one we’re doing now. ^ Ray took part in one of these events and wrote a little report on it. What a conversation-starter! There you saw that both audiences are not treated in the same way, so we asked how we can experiment with that. Derk studied Game Design, I’m more of an autodidact, but both of us are insane game fanatics. So it was clear to us what the urgency of this is when it comes to hosting online events or hybrid events. And why it is needed. We thought it was good to focus on how can you make an interaction work. When it comes to games and puzzle design or interaction design, there’s this element of needing it to work. Otherwise, if it doesn’t work, you get frustration, fatigue… The things that were mentioned in ‘COVID time’. So we thought, okay, can we maybe figure out where the frustration is when it comes to this very static event: a hybrid stream? We thought it was videothe static position of the camera for a live audience. And what if we place it in the most unsuspecting location? objectFor us that was placing the camera on the butt of another participant.
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from: Interaction and Activation (chapter)
09:11 There is a picture of it. With this, we created a very difficult task for ourselves, by giving all the participants some sort of obstacle. It was a game where the offline participants, spacewho were present at IMPAKT, and the online participants had to work together. They have to do all of these kinds of challenges. But there is this big obstacle, which is that they can’t see each other, but they can talk with each other through headphones. So they have different kinds of powers. The game is about becoming a true hybrid human being: both of you are working together to become the future human that is both online and offline at the same time. My attention from back there is selective, free: rather than being constrained to listening exclusively and constantly to the vertical speech of speakers, I choose where to navigate my attentional ship, in the horizontal seas of the world wide web. With these great powers comes great responsibilities… I need to avoid drifting my ship too much and to anchor a bit from time to time We thought that, by making objectthe offline participant have to carry this online vessel around, we would create a dynamic that is more equal. But we discovered so many problems with that. If you’re offline, you run around a lot. So videothe camera was shaking all the time and the online participants became very nauseous. the live participants are interacting with the digital layering of themeselves and their content on the screens, love that hopefully there isn’t an exam at the end I won’t be exhaustive We had to come up with challenges with a little less movement. It was really an experiment where we were trying to figure out how we make both of these participants move closer to each other so that there’s a nice collaboration going on between the two.
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from: Forms of Hybridity (chapter)
03:40 Now, within the context of Going Hybrid, we’ve been looking at expanding or exploding the old methods of hybrid publishing into different media, into audioaudio, into spaceonsite interventions. green book gets keyed We had multiple people in our group that were doing experiments like this. For instance, Maria van der Togt created the work Hard Copy, Soft Copy: a websitelittle local server hosting a ton of pirated textbooks, combined with an objectonsite book printing station. Read more about Hard Copy Soft Copy here: https://sandberg.nl/alumni/maria-van-der-togt/work/hard-copy-soft-copy–impermeable-domains. Another example is Victor Chaix, who developed the concept of digital social text. Victor Chaix, ‘Hypothes.is: Playing with Digital Texts’ Expandable Confines’, Institute of Network Cultures, 2023, https://networkcultures.org/longform/2023/07/13/hypothes-is-a-story-of-playing-with-digital-texts-expandable-confines. He’s looking at the afterlives of online text and how people can create social relationships and meaningful conversations with each other using tools like the websitebrowser plug-in Hypothes.is. Hypothes.is is a browser plug-in that allows the user to (collaboratively) annotate any website. Read more: https://web.hypothes.is. These are different forms of hybridity that we try to explore in different directions from this point. Read more about the Hybrid Publishing group and the backgrounds of the members here: https://networkcultures.org/goinghybrid/2022/07/06/the-crowbar-of-cultural-publishing-introducing-the-hybrid-publications-research-group.
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from: Forms of Hybridity (chapter)
09:31 Our initial approach was more editorial than tech-oriented. On one of the first days we worked together, we made a little objectminizine called text'Elements of the Conversation Starter'. We did that during one day together at Varia in Rotterdam and then risoprinted it on the spot - it was really fun! You can download or read the minizine here: https://networkcultures.org/goinghybrid/2022/11/14/minizine-elements-of-the-conversation-starter. In this minizine, we map out what we find to be meaningful types of take-aways from cultural events. One element is mood or atmosphere. For instance, if spaceit's snowing outside during an event, a reporter might not think about including that in the report, but it’s actually interesting to read because it sets the stage, and sketches a mood. Then, there are also more traditional elements, like interesting quotes, and the red thread of an event. Having defined these types of main take-aways that can make event reports interesting, we started mapping or tagging this kind of content to see what kind of different pathways start emerging from a text.
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from: Participatory Livecasting (chapter)
Working on this concrete prototype, it became easier to think experimentally. You start to see the different ways it can be used, for different purposes. Testing, development, and participation naturally merge. During a workshop we organize in November of 2022 in Page Not Found, The Hague, we invited the audience to help us join us in building a system encompassing several different hybrid networking experiments. We explained to both audiences (online and on-site) that Emoji Proxis & Ghost Messengers runs on objecta little ESP32 module, and we taught the on-site audience to develop their own prompt. These performanceprompts would trigger small, mechanic on-site events: lights going on and off, a scentscent dispenser going off, and a objectblower turning on. During this fun experiment, we exchanged knowledge about assembling systems like these and thought together about how to situate them in the context of hybrid events.
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from: Hybrid Trains of Thought (chapter)
Trains are great.
You start from point A,
then you arrive at point B,
and in between you can read,
write,
sleep,
chat,
eat,
drink,
play,
even work.
But anyway,
I’m on public transport in the Netherlands,
on a spaceNederlandse Spoorwegen (NS) Intercity Direct train now,
on my way to deliver a talk with Clara at a hybrid
cultural event in Rotterdam.
The event is described as hybrid because some
people can attend on location and some can follow
online.
It sounds fancy,
but in many cases,
it just
means websiteZoom,
a videovideo projector,
objectchairs,
one or several cameras,
and a video mixer (in the best of cases.)
In these events,
awkward interactions and audioaudio/videovideo glitches Oh no :( We cannot hear the sound on-site
come for free, the green is clear now
but (at least for some of us) it also means that we
get to sit together again,
just not too close.
At least for now,
I get to post-pandemically daydream one more time
in the train on the way to point B.
Is it the post-pandemic though?
I like when the water level of the small canals in the
fields is getting so close to the grass that—
Gooooooede morgen, ticket alstublieft. we can hear it well form our decentralized and networked living rooms -
from: Hybrid Trains of Thought (chapter)
Not sure why,
but I am always super stressed during these
checking moments.
As if I had done something wrong,
as if I was traveling guilty — already of something.
Anyway,
what was the other train of thought?
Ah right,
hybrid events
To be honest,
it feels a bit weird that we’re calling the pandemic
and/or post-pandemic turn of technology ‘hybrid’,
as if hybridity were a novelty.
Here—and in many other places blessed by the so-
called digital revolution and the church of
technosolutionism—
it feels as if we have already been in hybrid
systems for a very long time.
See,
this train ride is already a much more
fundamentally hybrid experience than the hybrid
event I’m going to.
When the controller checked my ticket,
it was not so much of a discussion
or exchange between two human beings over the
validity of a ticket.
It was a software—and network—
mediated interaction over digital access control
validation.
My credentials,
all sorts of personal information,
were checked by a worker paid to be a spacemeatspace
bridge.
This bridge’s function is to ensure the data stored
on my card’s chip can travel to an Application
Programming Interface (API) from the NS
computational infrastructure via the wireless
spaceinterface of a objecthandheld device.
To be sure,
the digital record of our courteous ritual is most -
from: Hybrid Trains of Thought (chapter)
Most of the stuff displayed and announced on the
spacetrain is also pulled from the websitenet,
and in the meantime everyone is glued to their
objectphone, microdosing drops of dopamine,
mindlessly performancedoomscrolling.
Yeah, yeah, yeah…
A boomer cliché, right?
Maybe.
In the meantime,
while we argue over the freshness of this critique, /camera:90
our hyperinterdependence on hybrid systems has
remained unchallenged,
unregulated,
unconditional,
and ultimately underestimated.
Chapters are written,
panels are moderated,
slides are presented,
research is funded,
but radical discourse is not met with radical action,
and thus the hyperinterdependence stays on track
towards an increasingly gloomy destination.
Well, on track, not always.
When the computational infrastructure of NS failed
on 3 April 2022,
the effects were telling.
The whole train infrastructure stopped nationwide,
and NS employees,
without their daily software-generated instructions
and schedules,
simply went back home,
unable to do any kind of task.
Maybe that’s the problem.
The path to the offered destination,
regardless of what or where it could even be,
is so broken that we wouldn’t be able to reach it
before the infrastructure supporting the journey
completely collapsed.
In the meantime:
Let’s write more software.
They say it’s cheap.
LOL.
The meme/tired adage that ‘computation and
storage are cheap’ is not going away,
despite their well-documented extractivism,
resource-heavy labor, and bloated infrastructural
requirements that
(despite being ‘merely’ computational)
demand a recursive amount of even further
investment and resources. Fun fact 3: All dots at the top of the screen represent members of the audience. So there’s about a classroom full of us. Curious to know which dot you are? Use the ‘emote’ function at the bottom of the screen, and you’ll see
But, hey, we need apps.
More apps.
It’s not surprising that the software side of the
NS infrastructure is becoming an increasingly /camera:100
important part of its agenda and financial
investment,
even boasting new performance indicators such as
‘user-friendly travel information’. From the NS annual report ‘Performance on the main rail network and the high-speed line’, 2021, https://www.nsannualreport.nl/annual-report-2021/our-activities-and-achievements-in-the-netherlands/performance-on-the-main-rail-network-and-the-highspeed-line/performance-on-the-main-rail-network-and-the-highspeed-line.
As a traveler whose existence needs to be validated
by take-it-or-leave-it data extraction,
I don’t really feel like a friend of the NS.
More than anything else,
to me,
this clearly shows how operating systems and
software interface language is transforming the
traveler into a computer user or a pawn used by
computers for who knows what purpose. -
from: Hybrid Trains of Thought (chapter)
I’m on the train. I will be there on time for the
audiosound check. I’m trying to get there early because I
will be using my objectlaptop, and they asked me to send
a PDF a couple of days in advance, but seriously
WTF, like I have time to prepare something for
their workflow. Everyone always works on their
presentation at the last minute anyway… -
from: Hybrid Trains of Thought (chapter)
Yeah, what happens when objectpaper—in essence, a form of presence, materiality, and simultaneity—is no longer an option?
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from: Hybrid Trains of Thought (chapter)
Because software is only just one part of it. Because using the computer to mediate human relationships is just not working, period. Even though we are having so much fun with our objectfancy gadgets and dystopic technological experiments, all this is just generating more detrimental issues than positive social changes. The alternatives that are proposed to classic surveillance capitalism or extractivist approaches to software production are not working thankyou so much :) either. The problems are political, social, economic, cultural, so writing software as a reponse to such complex systemic issues is completely delusional.
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from: Introducing Etherport.org (chapter)
Our main objective was to to find new cultural and digital strategies that expand the room for reflection and collectivity, with the use of alternative ways of online publishing. In this process, we were keen to experiment with making event reports can more open-ended, multi-voiced, and non-linear. Instead of creating FOMO-inducing descriptions, or bureaucratic documents, we wanted to create a structure for event reporting that would give readers an interesting, explorative experience. We looked at textreal-time transcriptions and instant publishing, non-linear and modular formats, objecton-demand printing stations as part of spaceexhibitions, and audioaudio-texttext hybrids. We found inspiration in zines, websiteinteractive digital longforms, wikis, annotated maps, hybrid indexes, chat-to-print tools, objectbook printing machines, and performanceinterventions in spacepublic space. There are so many alternatives to the boring and bureaucratic event report! Among the interesting practices we found, five deserve a special mention:
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from: Introducing Etherport.org (chapter)
Print Are.na allows to make a objectbook from a websitepublic Are.na channel. Print Are.na was created by Mindy Seu, Charles Broskoski and Ekene Ijeoma. print.are.na uses bindery.js, an open-source library for creating books using HTML and CSS, created by Evan Brooks. The first version print.are.na was created by Callil Capuozzo for the 2017 Cybernetics Conference. Explore Print Are.na here: https://print.are.na. Are.na is a popular tool among creatives for public-private archiving which supposedly helps you to ‘organize your internet and expand your brain’. It allows to create simple collections by posting and reposting in a blog- or feed-like structure. Print Are.na scrapes a public Are.na channel, structures and paginates the content, and creates a printable .pdf. It can be used to print at home or create a serious book through the print-on-demand service Lulu.
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from: Introducing Etherport.org (chapter)
ChattyPub is a design tool in the making developed by Hackers & Designers. Explore the ChattyPub archive here: https://chatty-pub.hackersanddesigners.nl. It leverages a chat interface to apply styles and formats to the content of a publication. ChattyPub is a collaborative publication/zine-making tool built on top of the chat platform Zulip. By sending messages, reacting with emoji and writing simple CSS style rules the publication can be collectively designed. Concretely, this means that every texttext sent in a chat is automatically added to the websitefront-end publication. The primary output of ChattyPub is a web publication, but objectautomated print versions of the files can be generated, turning the chats into hybrid publications. The use of ChattyPub requires chatters-authors to use basic coding, so it is not intuitively useable for anyone. However, with a little teaching, it’s a very low-threshold way of playfully publishing together with surprising outcomes. Some examples: https://chatty-pub.hackersanddesigners.nl/Open; https://chatty-pub.hackersanddesigners.nl/Lauren-Berlant; https://chatty-pub.hackersanddesigners.nl/photo-collage. With ChattyPub workshops, Hackers & Designers teach participants to use the tools and, ideally, create a publishing community in the process.
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from: Introducing Etherport.org (chapter)
In 2022, Varia started publishing the hybrid, bilingual textnewsletter SomeTimes / Af en toe. Read SomeTimes here: https://varia.zone/en/sometimes-af-en-toe.html. The contents are created collectively by the members of Varia in OctoMode and published as text.pdfs and objectflyer-like prints. The format of these newsletters is a direct expression of the collective working process Varia uses. According to Simon Browne, contingent librarian and member of Varia, it cost some time to set up the template, but it’s pretty simple in its use. The .pdf newsletter is a seamless extension of the websiteVaria website, spreading news on events and projects to the collective’s (international) network of cultural workers, geeks, and organizers. The print version, which feels like a crossover of a flyer and a local newspaper, allows for a bigger spacepresence in the Rotterdam neighborhood. This reflects a tendency within Varia during the lockdowns, to not go online, but to focus on the hyperlocal and provide a community space. Urgent, hybrid publication in the arts doesn’t always equal digitization, but rather an adaptive workflow and method that allows for the right hybrid format according to needs.
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from: Introducing Etherport.org (chapter)
To question and circumvent paywalls that enclose knowledge that should be public, Maria van der Togt has created the artwork Hard Copy Soft Copy—Impermeable Domains (2021). Read more about the work here: https://sandberg.nl/alumni/maria-van-der-togt/work/hard-copy-soft-copy–impermeable-domains. The work consists of websitea virtual platform with an open-source collection of textdigital publications, run on a objectraspberry pi, and a spacespatial printing and binding set-up. Members of the public use the objecton-site computer to select any of the documents and performanceprint and bind it on the spot. In rescuing material from the clutches of corporatization, the work upholds the true definition of ‘public’ through the simple gesture of providing resources without any expectation of return.
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from: Introducing Etherport.org (chapter)
Publisihing an event reports on Etherport generates two versions simultaneously: a websiteweb version, and a objectprintable .pdf.
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from: Introduction: Hybrid Culture in a Changing World (chapter)
We’ve seen videolive streams set up on a spacestage, with performancespeakers giving a lecture and no audience except the viewers at home behind their computer; clunky live events with pre-recorded interviews that pixelate with every hesitation of the WiFi; videoInstagram Lives that nobody watches or that everyone is watching; countless videoZoom live streams with break-out rooms and tens of people on audiomute, fighting the Zoom fatigue or their clingy cat. Already in November 2020, Geert Lovink wrote about the phenomenon of Zoom fatigue: Geert Lovink, ‘The Anatomy of Zoom Fatique’, Eurozine, 21 November 2020, https://networkcultures.org/geert/2020/11/21/anatomy-of-zoom-fatigue. And we’ve also seen marvelous experiments: objecta big screen on a spacelive stage that shows a lively, textonline chat which is actually integrated into the conversation; performancea buddy system where an offline visitor takes their online friend by the hand (meaning, on their phone) and guides them through an spaceexhibition, event, Q&A’s with speakers live on stage.
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from: Introduction: Hybrid Culture in a Changing World (chapter)
The events group created Emoji Proxis & Ghost Messengers, a tool for interaction between on-line and on-site audiences, giving online audience direct agency over things that happen in space. For instance, by typing a command in the livestream chat, online audience members can performanceactivate an on-site scentscent objectdispenser, or performancephysically move objectthe camera. A version of this tool was presented during the Going Hybrid conference. Read more about this tool and the workshop here: https://networkcultures.org/goinghybrid/2023/03/29/workshop-emoji-proxies-ghost-messengers-conference-report-day-2.
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from: Introduction: Hybrid Culture in a Changing World (chapter)
You may hold this objectbook in your hands, read it from your websitescreen, or encounter it as a recorded videolivestream. That’s because we practice what we preach: this book is an experiment in hybrid publishing; the first time the Institute of Network Cultures has produced an event as a book. We started with an event, which took place on the 10th of November 2023 on the websitelivestream platform of The Hmm, and then used the recording to start forking and expanding. You can watch back the full recording of Screentime Airtime Facetime on the website of The Hmm: https://live.thehmm.nl/screentimeairtimefacetime. The recording was made in the audiovisual studio of the Amsterdam University of Applied Science. Rethinking the book as starting from a videolivestream, we composed a program of elements that can exist in both an event and a book: live textchapter-performanceconversations, videopre-recorded intermissions, textchatroom annotation, and a audiospoken colophon.
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from: Introduction: Hybrid Culture in a Changing World (chapter)
The title Screentime Airtime Facetime hints at our shifting relation to technology. The notorious term screentime gestures towards the recent tendency to develop extremely intimate one-on-one relationships with objectour screens. Airtime gives a nod to older forms of hybrids events; the times of families gathering to audiolisten to the radio or videowatch TV. Facetime emphasises the immediate connections we foster with one another through, for instance, videothe use of video calls. With the gradual succession of these terms, we want to think through the public’s relation to technology, to collective bodies and to each other (with technology as a mediator). What can we learn from a history of different hybrid interactions and take with us as seeds for the future?