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• from: Sound and Temporality (chapter)

  Carolina 11:37 With everything that’s going on, like the war in Gaza, I think it’s important to reflect on the act of listening. Who is listening to whom? In that sense, MUMORIES which was developed in the context of an art exhibition space, opened up wider possibilities of archiving different types of records (other types of knowledge beond textfacts or numbers) in a way that’s less procedural. mushy the camera on the left is being moved to make a better focus in the physical space seppi Fun fact 2: this chat is not just a live chat, but also the annotation tool of Going Hybrid’s final publication. It will be included in the margins of the print book Screentime Airtime Facetime. Chatting today is co-authoring the book! As you can maybe tell, in our group, we shared a feminist understanding of memory and archiving with oral histories. We have included in this publication a part of the audioradio show ‘Talkshop’ that our group did last month in Screentime Airtime Facetime. See the intermission ‘Talkshop Mumories: Living Archives’. The program reflects on MUMORIES and the memories, on listening to each other, on the privilege that comes with speaking and listening.

• from: Sound and Temporality (chapter)

  Carolina 24:39 I guess this question is about imagination, speculation, and fiction. Hybridity can be a mix of real and fictional. In the Living Archives group, we tried to get people to imagine ‘how it would be like’. When we think about the different temporalities and especially the afterlife, there’s a lot you can add to the experience that happened during the program. For instance, this particular publication we’re experiencing now will then become a websiteweb and textprint publication. We can add things to it. We can tell a different story. Different mediums can add different elements.

• from: Thresholds of Access (chapter)

  Ren Loren Britton 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. Anonymous Dragon Did someone say mushrooms? and unicorns?

• from: Thresholds of Access (chapter)

  Ania 13:16 In the context of our group, one of the starting points was two-fold. On the one hand, we saw that many cultural institutions started to invest in building their digital infrastructure, which before maybe was not on the priority list. mushy nice colors combining seppi Reposting on request: Down with visual culture! Anonymous Shrew this background world is gorgeous We considered that as a gain. But very quickly, we also realized that making available is not the same as making accessible. Klara Debeljak Certainly sonic over visual lesssgoooo So, you know, the fact that we just had the tools to dump things online, was at first perhaps understood as ‘we’re making it accessible, it’s open, you can join’. But in the end, we all experienced Zoom fatigue. What can we do more radically? Thinking of different forms of access and different needs that go beyond just providing videoa stream or providing an textunreadable report, which was our research topic, is something that we were only starting to think about and experiment with. Klara Debeljak So poignant and essential this statement that making available is not the same as making accessible Partly, the question of access is one of continuity and keeping on learning by doing, rather than thinking that we’ve gone through this, and now we can return to the status quo from before the pandemic.

• from: Thresholds of Access (chapter)

  Karl 22:34 If I understood the event report research correctly, there was a focus on the authorship of the person reporting and textwriting, and, in other words, on the accessibility of a tool towards the author. I think you were trying to achieve a process in which the author would have to do a bit less filtering, which would leave more space for honesty about how they think and do during the event, right? Klara Debeljak /camera:50

• from: Thresholds of Access (chapter)

  Ania 23:05 That was an important aspect of the collective dimension. We experimented both with individual authorship but also with collective authorship. The provision of that freedom, to choose how you want to move through these options, was key to our project. What you mentioned emerged from the desire to create something that would facilitate the textcreative writing process and the more subjective perception of an event rather than a dry report (‘and then, and then, and then, this happened’). H /camera:90 seppi We’re having collective authorship right here, right now! Chat power! For instance, we found that it is important to highlight aspects of an event such as audience moods and atmosphere as essentials parts. H /camera:110

• from: Thresholds of Access (chapter)

  Ren 25:22 In the work that Iz and I do, we often work with textalt-text or still imageimage description. One project we often reference in this context is ‘Alt-text as Poetry’. runs https://alt-text-as-poetry.net I find the work that they’re doing to be very much about this objective thing: when you look at something, what do you see? Paying attention and trusting the perspective that you describe is also a super interesting part of access-making. I find that the textimage descriptions that I write for the still imageimages are often quite verbose because I like to describe things. That’s my perspective in sharing, I can imagine this event reporting having a similar structure.

• from: Thresholds of Access (chapter)

  Ren 25:22 In the work that Iz and I do, we often work with textalt-text or still imageimage description. One project we often reference in this context is ‘Alt-text as Poetry’. runs https://alt-text-as-poetry.net I find the work that they’re doing to be very much about this objective thing: when you look at something, what do you see? Paying attention and trusting the perspective that you describe is also a super interesting part of access-making. I find that the textimage descriptions that I write for the still imageimages are often quite verbose because I like to describe things. That’s my perspective in sharing, I can imagine this event reporting having a similar structure.

• from: Thresholds of Access (chapter)

  Ania 26:06 textImage descriptions have an interesting facet to them, because who are we writing the image descriptions for? Is it for the audience or is it for technological reasons like search engine optimization? These are very different purposes, which are definitely not in sync with one another. H for sure we need to add snowflakes to the dryness of event reports We need to make a conscious choice, thinking of the audience and who are we addressing.

• from: Interaction and Activation (chapter)

  Roos 24:47 This is a very difficult question. A lot of people ask me about the question of archiving. What do you do with this information? textDo you write it down? Do you document it? I’m like: ‘No, that’s not what it’s about’. I do use it as a tool for the next projects and it’s also a learning experience. Arjon mentioned the Escape Room project, which I did in 2021 in the middle of the pandemic. spaceI created an escape room that you couldn't really escape out of. It was a commentary on us trying to escape from the big data platforms like Google, Facebook, and Instagram, but constantly returning back to them. And that this feels like an endless quest. In the escape room, you could play it in the traditional way: go with your friends and figure it out. But because it was during the pandemic, I also had an online experience in which the host of the escape room would videowalk around with a body cam. The host would connect with a group of friends that would websitecall in via Microsoft Teams. So the group would see through the eyes of the host and tell them: ‘Oh, open this door, please.’, ‘Please look at that.’, ‘Enter this code’. It was interesting since it was a truly hybrid experience and it worked in different ways. In the online experience, people played the puzzles in a different way. The underlying factor of the game was about being dependent on parties you don’t trust. The host played a very important role in the escape room. At some point, you would discover you can’t trust the host or what they’ve said, but you’re literally tethered to the host with a cam. In the offline and the online experience, the level of dependency was completely different, but it still worked out. The conversations that I had with the players afterward were really about these uncanny valley moments of dependency. And I thought it was interesting because it wasn’t really the first reason why I made the project. runs https://roos.gr/I-want-to-delete-it-all-but-not-now You find out these surprising things and how people experience something you’ve made afterward, but via different eyes. And the players have all been given the same level of agency. seppi Would it be useful to think about archiving (or the future lives) of this kind of experimental cultural programs in a bigger way than within one organisations? Would it help to have a shared infrastructure between cultural institutions and workers? But what players do or how they engage with your project is not always aligned with your intentions. And I find how people engage from different perspectives really interesting.

• from: Interaction and Activation (chapter)

  Margarita 28:31 That’s a good question. I don’t know if I could answer the larger question of whether we can change this in hybrid times. I’m not an archive scholar, but I think what you’re saying is that some things just don’t get archived. We were working on another research project with The Hmm in which we were mapping hybrid events and also looking at different case studies. seppi Red threads: dependency and agency. Spot on We were looking at it as ‘Is it something that lives forever (forever being a really relative term)?’ mushy /camera:20 and ‘Is it something that you have to be there to experience and then it’s just gone?’. And I think all those things fit on this spectrum of hybridity. Tommaso /camera:40 Probably not everything has to be preserved. Also because we work inside of these funding structures, textwe always have to document and prove we did things in order for them to be valid. Tommaso /camera:60 This point was also brought up in the Hybrid Publication’s group: ‘It seems that most cultural institutions are so busy organizing events, that their archives become an institutional obligation to justify received funding.’ This quote was taken from the ‘Introducting the EtherPort’ blog post, to read it fully, visit: https://networkcultures.org/goinghybrid/2023/11/16/introducing-the-etherport . With the Hmm, we would document through our livestream and websitethe livestream would automatically go online. Tommaso /camera:80 And recently we did a data center tour in which we took a bus and spacemoved around the periphery of the data center. H /camera:90 We thought it would be really boring for people to have to watch this back. So instead we created an audio tour. People were audiorecording each other's experiences and the sounds of the data center. I think archiving doesn’t have to be this 1:1 digital twin version of what happened because that’s probably impossible. It’s interesting to rethink the archival format in ways that are different from what the experience was for people who were participating in it. Listen back to the Data Center Tour here: https://live.thehmm.nl/the-hmm-s-data-centre-tour

• from: Forms of Hybridity (chapter)

  Senka Milutinović 00:04 And we’re back for the final chapter, which is about forms of hybridity. Again, we had a change of hosts. I’m Senka and I’m hosting this chapter together with Jordi. We’re joined by Michael Murtaugh, who is the course leader of the Experimental Publishing MA program (XPUB) at the Piet Zwart Institute. Read more about the XPUB program here: https://xpub.nl As a practitioner, he designs and researches websitecommunity databases, videointeractive documentaries, and tools for textnew forms of reading and writing online. Besides Michael, we are also joined by Sepp Eckenhaussen, who is a researcher at the Institute of Network Cultures (INC) and has been the leader of the Hybrid Publications group of Going Hybrid. Other members of this group were Ashley Maum and Ebissé Wakjira on behalf of Framer Framed, Ania Molenda, Anna Maria Michael, Carolina Pinto, Gijs de Heij, Maria van der Togt, Ray Dolitsay, Tommaso Campagna, and Victor Chaix. Welcome!

• from: Forms of Hybridity (chapter)

  Sepp 02:43 The idea of a ‘hybrid publication’ has been around for a long time. It usually is taken to mean a textbook that's available in both print and in websitedigital format. To explain that a bit better, I’ve brought a book. I don’t know if people can actually see it because it’s green, but it’s called From Print to E-books. From Print to E-books: A Hybrid Publishing Toolkit for the Arts (Amsterdam: Institute of Network Cultures, 2015), https://networkcultures.org/wp-content/uploads/2014/12/0419-HVA_DPT_from_print_to_ebooks_OS_RGB_aanp_lr_totaal.pdf. This book is the result of a previous INC research project, about ten years ago, in which Michael was also involved. The research blog of this research project, called Digital Publishing Toolkit, is available on the website of the INC: https://networkcultures.org/wp-content/uploads/2014/12/0419-HVA_DPT_from_print_to_ebooks_OS_RGB_aanp_lr_totaal.pdf. It’s a workflow for making a print book that’s also available in two digital versions, ePub and PDF. I would say this is the old and tested and also proven form of hybridity in publication making. Since 2015, the Institute of Network Cultures has published over 50 books using this workflow, most notably the Theory on Demand series: https://networkcultures.org/publications/#tod. It is now adopted by the mainstream publishing industry as well.

• from: Forms of Hybridity (chapter)

  Sepp 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. mushy 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.

• from: Forms of Hybridity (chapter)

  Michael 07:05 This is a bit farfetched, but these beeping sounds were actually the result of a command called ‘wall’ that allows people who share a server to send textmessages to other people who are logged in to the same server. wall, which stands for ‘write to all’, is a Linux command-line utility that displays a message on the terminals of all logged-in users It comes from the 1960s when computing was something very scarce and extremely expensive. As a result of that reality, you needed to create an operating system to make it shareable. It had a sociality embedded in it. By looking at these older forms, we open up new questions around the values embedded in the technology. What kind of choices can we still make?

• from: Forms of Hybridity (chapter)

  Sepp 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.

• from: Forms of Hybridity (chapter)

  Sepp 10:29 Non-linear storytelling has a very long and rich history, especially in game design. For a good overview, see Marc de Bruijn, ‘Non-linear Publication Tools’, Institute of Network Cultures, 2018, https://networkcultures.org/makingpublic/2018/12/13/non-linear-publication-tools. So, once the work became more technical, we could work with many existing tools. You can find an overview of the tools and practices that inspired us on the research blog: https://networkcultures.org/goinghybrid/2022/10/03/relevant-tools-practices-in-hybrid-publishing. We tried working with Twine, which we found very interesting. A previous research program headed by the INC had already explored the possibilities of non-linear stand-alone publishing. The resulting manual Inside Out Upside Down: Discover the Hidden Structures of Your (Digital) Content suggested Twine as an interesting tool. See: https://networkcultures.org/makingpublic/wp-content/uploads/sites/45/2020/03/Upside-Down-Inside-Out-Manual.pdf. In Twine, you can create different types of blocks of texttext that can then link to each other in different ways to create a weblike structure. But after a while, we found that the backend of Twine turned out to be more interesting than what we could make with it on the front end. In the end, we ended up working with a simple tagging system, and integrated this in the final prototype of Etherport. Etherport and its functionalities are introduced in ‘Intermission 3: Introducing Etherport’.

• from: Forms of Hybridity (chapter)

  Sepp 11:15 To come back to the larger question of reading culture, the promise behind Etherport is not just one of a shared infrastructure between different cultural institutions. What Victor Chaix tries to define with this concept of text'digital social text' is a new reading culture. A culture in which the reader has more agency, and can start interacting with and ideally adding to the text while engaging in conversation with other readers. As a consequence, this ideal type of new event report is more of a ‘conversation starter’ that couldn’t be contained linearly even if you wanted to. runs check out the minizine here: https://networkcultures.org/goinghybrid/2022/11/14/minizine-elements-of-the-conversation-starter

• from: Forms of Hybridity (chapter)

  Michael 12:42 I’ll start by giving some context. Since September 2023, XPUB has taken part in Going Hybrid, so we came a bit late into the process. Going Hybrid started in January 2022. Since then, we have been running audioa weekly radio program at Radio Worm, which is an online radio stream. Each week, Tuesdays from 10 to 12, we’re producing a radio program ‘Protocols for an Active Archive’. A texttranscribed excerpt of that program is included in this book as one of the intermissions. In that snippet, Leslie, our course coordinator, describes pushing back on protocols. performanceIt's a very personal story of a friend who resists the conformity imposed by an outdated dress code.

• from: Forms of Hybridity (chapter)

  Michael 14:08 An important text that we read in the XPUB program is textSimon Yuill's 'All Problems of Notation Will Be Solved by the Masses'. Simon Yuill, ‘All Problems of Notation Will Be Solved by the Masses’, Mute, 23 May 2008, https://www.metamute.org/editorial/articles/all-problems-notation-will-be-solved-masses. In it, Yuill described how musicians in the sixties and seventies devised various forms of protocols, as well as different systems of textnotation, to break out of the esthetic and social conventions. Think of examples like audioCornelius Cardew and the Scratch Orchestra. student at the back student-at-the-back is brought to the front without anticipation I feel disturbed in my distanced identity For example: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AnN5bAkd6jw&ab_channel=INVIGORATION. These protocols would often have the form of games that played around with leadership roles. The point is that, just like a children’s game of tag, you’re playing out different possibilities and it’s disrupting the established order. There is not some informal, implicit leader, but by defining a protocol together, these people speak about who’s the leader now, and how and why to give the leadership over to someone else. Tommaso /camera:75 performanceAfter this conversation, performers are more 'awake' and responsive to each other. I think it’s really exciting. Tommaso /camera:70

• from: Forms of Hybridity (chapter)

  Michael 14:08 An important text that we read in the XPUB program is textSimon Yuill's 'All Problems of Notation Will Be Solved by the Masses'. Simon Yuill, ‘All Problems of Notation Will Be Solved by the Masses’, Mute, 23 May 2008, https://www.metamute.org/editorial/articles/all-problems-notation-will-be-solved-masses. In it, Yuill described how musicians in the sixties and seventies devised various forms of protocols, as well as different systems of textnotation, to break out of the esthetic and social conventions. Think of examples like audioCornelius Cardew and the Scratch Orchestra. student at the back student-at-the-back is brought to the front without anticipation I feel disturbed in my distanced identity For example: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AnN5bAkd6jw&ab_channel=INVIGORATION. These protocols would often have the form of games that played around with leadership roles. The point is that, just like a children’s game of tag, you’re playing out different possibilities and it’s disrupting the established order. There is not some informal, implicit leader, but by defining a protocol together, these people speak about who’s the leader now, and how and why to give the leadership over to someone else. Tommaso /camera:75 performanceAfter this conversation, performers are more 'awake' and responsive to each other. I think it’s really exciting. Tommaso /camera:70

• from: Forms of Hybridity (chapter)

  Sepp 19:28 This very live-publication is a good example. There is a websitechat room in the live stream, where live annotating takes place as we speak. The livestream platform of The Hmm, which was used for this live-publication event, often hosts a lively chat. The texttext from this chat will literally be the annotation of the book that will be produced after this event. I can share the protocol that was developed for this purpose. A group of five people are dedicated reporters in that chat, and they’ve all assumed different roles. Klara Debeljak !!! They are doing a roleplay together that enables them to comment on this event in their specific way. It creates a new, alternative linearity within the publication. The chat conversation can take different turns and then come back to what we were talking about now. For instance, about half an hour ago, the people in the conversation-chapter were talking about game design while the chat was going on about #hopecore. This freedom to diverge and later converge again is the result of the reporting protocol that we’ve created together. mushy #craftpersonship

• from: Forms of Hybridity (chapter)

  Michael 21:27 Each Tuesday, we would have an interview. textWe had an Etherpad, where we would write some possible as we started to think, and in the process, we would allow our focus to shift. Etherpad is an open-source web tool for collaborative writing. I think this resonates with the earlier discussion about the archive. Michael refers to Chapter 1 Radio Worm’s archive shouldn’t be just about collecting all the audioMP3s and dumping them somewhere, as, by the way, they’re already doing on websiteMixcloud. Maybe we should focus more on the community, on how this radio is made, and who the makers are. And so we’ve shifted to interviewing the makers. Tuesday morning we started for the first time at the studio with no set ‘caretakers’, as we call them (in the past we had prearranged a caretaker role). ‘Caretakers’ are the students in the radio studio during the broadcast, who take care of that weeks radio show plan. We started by playing a recording of something we presented on Sunday at the spaceZine Camp in Worm. To find more about Zine Camp 2023 check: https://zinecamp2023.hotglue.me/?home. While that was happening, the class was voting on questions to ask the makers. Then, performancewe had a rotating shift, of different question askers and engineers to do the mixing. mushy unfortunately we need to keep a low volume here :( Ash, Lucas Simonis, and Lieuwe Zelle, the main makers of Radio Worm, got asked these questions. It was in the space of 48 hours, so much had been happening. We were textconnected on the pad but also spacevisible through the studio window. I think that was an amazing experience.

• from: Forms of Hybridity (chapter)

  Michael 21:27 Each Tuesday, we would have an interview. textWe had an Etherpad, where we would write some possible as we started to think, and in the process, we would allow our focus to shift. Etherpad is an open-source web tool for collaborative writing. I think this resonates with the earlier discussion about the archive. Michael refers to Chapter 1 Radio Worm’s archive shouldn’t be just about collecting all the audioMP3s and dumping them somewhere, as, by the way, they’re already doing on websiteMixcloud. Maybe we should focus more on the community, on how this radio is made, and who the makers are. And so we’ve shifted to interviewing the makers. Tuesday morning we started for the first time at the studio with no set ‘caretakers’, as we call them (in the past we had prearranged a caretaker role). ‘Caretakers’ are the students in the radio studio during the broadcast, who take care of that weeks radio show plan. We started by playing a recording of something we presented on Sunday at the spaceZine Camp in Worm. To find more about Zine Camp 2023 check: https://zinecamp2023.hotglue.me/?home. While that was happening, the class was voting on questions to ask the makers. Then, performancewe had a rotating shift, of different question askers and engineers to do the mixing. mushy unfortunately we need to keep a low volume here :( Ash, Lucas Simonis, and Lieuwe Zelle, the main makers of Radio Worm, got asked these questions. It was in the space of 48 hours, so much had been happening. We were textconnected on the pad but also spacevisible through the studio window. I think that was an amazing experience.

• from: Forms of Hybridity (chapter)

  Senka 23:02 I’d like to bring up another experiment that XPUB students have done. In the choose-your-own-adventure game audioradio broadcast, the audience could textwrite in an Etherpad and guide the people who are audioon the radio where they’re going next, and which part of a narrative they’re performancepresenting. This game was based on David Maroto’s research into the ‘Choose Your Own Adventure’ gamebook, which was very popular in the 1990s, just before the advent of the internet. See: https://www.davidmaroto.info/The-Wheel-of-Fortune. Radio was no longer one-directional, but the audience had agency and even guided the people who were supposed to be the presenters. They were changing the medium and allowing it to be more than what it was conceived to be. The choose-your-own-adventure radio broadcast was called ‘The Hitchhiker’s Guide to an Active Archive’

• from: Participatory Livecasting (chapter)

  At the moment, as an online visitor of a hybrid event, you can just performanceask a question to the speaker, which may or may not be seen by the moderator. Of course, you can also textchat with each other, but there are relatively very few other ways to show what you think. Or what knowledge you have to share. That return channel from the online audience to the event and to the on-site has not yet been developed at all. That is still very simple.

• from: Participatory Livecasting (chapter)

  During the project, we focused on the development of the tool Emoji Proxis & Ghost Messengers, which translates changes in the online environments (like textchat inputs, a new online performancevisitor entering the space, or a still imagereceived emote) into something that happens in the spacephysical space (like a light goes on, a smoke machine turns a vote is cast, or the program shifts). This tool is a kind of open-source plug-in we developed for The Hmm’s livestream website.

• from: Online Critical Reflection, a Fable from the Past? (chapter)

  In a series of work sessions with Varia we explored three methods developed with or by Varia members. The first one focused on exploring a collective annotation system by using a textspellbook of __MAGICWORDS__; the second played around with the idea of inversing indexing formats into unexpected relational forms of reading, which they call x-dexing; and the third one unfolding an understanding of how algorithms such as word2vec could help us embrace textcomplex relations within texts instead of simplifying and quantifying them (word2complex).

• from: Online Critical Reflection, a Fable from the Past? (chapter)

  In a series of work sessions with Varia we explored three methods developed with or by Varia members. The first one focused on exploring a collective annotation system by using a textspellbook of __MAGICWORDS__; the second played around with the idea of inversing indexing formats into unexpected relational forms of reading, which they call x-dexing; and the third one unfolding an understanding of how algorithms such as word2vec could help us embrace textcomplex relations within texts instead of simplifying and quantifying them (word2complex).

• from: Online Critical Reflection, a Fable from the Past? (chapter)

  These exercises, with what Varia provisionally calls more-than-computational practices, were collaborative and speculative acts of questioning and discovering unobvious forms of using existing digital tools for new ways of reading existing content. What emerged out of these highly engaging experiments was, as Manetta Berends and Cristina Cochoir described it in their report from our collaboration, ‘a formation of a social environment in and around the texttext'. Manetta Berends and Cristina Cochoir, ‘More-than-computational Reflections (in the Form of a Report)’, Varia, 19 December 2022, https://varia.zone/en/more-than-computational-reflections.html. These relational approaches between readers, writers, computational tools, use protocols and their entanglements allowed us to explore spacethe spatial and collective dimension of how readers, writers, and publishers can textengage with each other through text.

• from: Online Critical Reflection, a Fable from the Past? (chapter)

  These exercises, with what Varia provisionally calls more-than-computational practices, were collaborative and speculative acts of questioning and discovering unobvious forms of using existing digital tools for new ways of reading existing content. What emerged out of these highly engaging experiments was, as Manetta Berends and Cristina Cochoir described it in their report from our collaboration, ‘a formation of a social environment in and around the texttext'. Manetta Berends and Cristina Cochoir, ‘More-than-computational Reflections (in the Form of a Report)’, Varia, 19 December 2022, https://varia.zone/en/more-than-computational-reflections.html. These relational approaches between readers, writers, computational tools, use protocols and their entanglements allowed us to explore spacethe spatial and collective dimension of how readers, writers, and publishers can textengage with each other through text.

• from: Online Critical Reflection, a Fable from the Past? (chapter)

  Exploring that tension further and looking for more low-threshold ways to look for potential future ways of embracing critical reflection we dove deeper into more basic ways of approaching the technology and the audience. Through different forms of experiments with assisted close reading and deep reading using at times less ethically pure technologies we aimed to engage users, who are not engaged with the critique of digital culture in their day-to-day practice. Yet, who do have a vested interest in finding new ways to engage with texttext online.

• from: Online Critical Reflection, a Fable from the Past? (chapter)

  We started our event series from the premise that the quest for finding new ways of imagining critical reflection online ought to start by reclaiming agency by readers themselves. In the first workshop organized as a part of the New Ways of Reading series titled Owning Readership, textembracing text collectively through an array of deep and close reading exercises turned out to not only be joyful but also allowed to create a degree of focus and attention for reading, which the participants had not been able to experience in a long time. One of the key takeaways was the role of the interface in activating a reflective mindset by not asking too much of the user. The more complex the possibilities within the interface and the familiarity required to navigate it the more distracting and dysfunctional the reading environment has been perceived.

• from: Online Critical Reflection, a Fable from the Past? (chapter)

  The second event Imagining Accessibility took up the act of writing to explore the relationship between the textmutability of the text (both in terms of its polyvocality and evolution in time) and the results this could have for increasing accessibility for various users. Here different ways of engaging with text as well as peer readers or other writers were explored through three exercises: collective writing, building up non-linearity, and summarizing with AI. Seeing the texttext as a playground of versions offered critical perspectives not only stimulating the creativity of writing but also forming a contrast with static institutional forms of text.

• from: Online Critical Reflection, a Fable from the Past? (chapter)

  The second event Imagining Accessibility took up the act of writing to explore the relationship between the textmutability of the text (both in terms of its polyvocality and evolution in time) and the results this could have for increasing accessibility for various users. Here different ways of engaging with text as well as peer readers or other writers were explored through three exercises: collective writing, building up non-linearity, and summarizing with AI. Seeing the texttext as a playground of versions offered critical perspectives not only stimulating the creativity of writing but also forming a contrast with static institutional forms of text.

• from: A Living Archive Is also a Dying Archive (chapter)

  Sofia Boschat-Thorez In early April of 2022, a sub-group of the researchers involved in the Going Hybrid project came together for a first knowledge session, which was also the first physical gathering since the project’s kickoff in January. The session was dedicated to making sense of the term ‘living archives’, a task supported by generous input from both researcher Annet Dekker and artist Clara Bahlsen. A secondary goal for the session was to hear more about each team member’s interest in the project, and what the group wishes to get out of this collective research. Our team members at the time included Karl Moubarak from Hackers and Designers, Margarita Osipian from The Hmm, Angelique Spaninks and Fenna Wenselaar from MU, freelancer Hay Kranen, Laurence Scherz from the Institute of Network Cultures, and Sofia Boschat-Thorez from Varia and the Willem de Kooning Academy. Later, Carolina Pinto joined the group as a co-facilitator. Ahead of this session, members had been sharing thoughts with each using an textEtherpad. It turned out that we were interested in archives and their workflow, design, and user engagement, as well as property, licensing, care, and maintenance.

• from: A Living Archive Is also a Dying Archive (chapter)

  As Clara explained, the collection grew with external contributions from the community she gathered around it, mostly via social networks. She maintains an interest in the collection via an websiteInstagram account, where she regularly publishes excerpts from the archive. The project has evolved very intuitively so far, and so has the organization of the images submitted, which is structured with the support of websitethe website, via a textlist of tags she attributes to each item at the time of their inclusion. These tags also assist users’ navigation. Clara further mentioned that her approach to this work is determined by her capacity to assume the workload in her free time, as the project has never received any funding, and was developed completely outside the spheres of traditional archiving. So far the only task she has managed to externalize was the design of the website, and, of course, curation, since the images are submitted to her and she chooses which ones to include. It was very interesting to our team to see how this project complemented the previous conversation we had, as the method stated by Annet is very closely linked to the specific habits and intuitions of Clara, rather than reflective of current conventions in the field of archiving.

• from: A Living Archive Is also a Dying Archive (chapter)

  The collection, currently containing around 18,000 scans of historical materials like textmagazines and still imageposters, has been almost entirely OCR’ed, meaning that the content of in the archive is searchable. As noted by Rosemary Grennan ‘this might sound a minor technical point but actually is highly significant in opening up digital archives and using the actual document’s content as the basis of classification.’ ‘Somewhere between Automation and the Handmade: Interview with Rosemary Grennan’, VLTK, 9 December 2021, https://vltk.vvvvvvaria.org/w/Somewhere_between_automation_and_the_handmade. This system thus allows viewers to search for a textword or a phrase within the system, and access every document that includes the search term.

• from: A Living Archive Is also a Dying Archive (chapter)

  The collection, currently containing around 18,000 scans of historical materials like textmagazines and still imageposters, has been almost entirely OCR’ed, meaning that the content of in the archive is searchable. As noted by Rosemary Grennan ‘this might sound a minor technical point but actually is highly significant in opening up digital archives and using the actual document’s content as the basis of classification.’ ‘Somewhere between Automation and the Handmade: Interview with Rosemary Grennan’, VLTK, 9 December 2021, https://vltk.vvvvvvaria.org/w/Somewhere_between_automation_and_the_handmade. This system thus allows viewers to search for a textword or a phrase within the system, and access every document that includes the search term.

• from: A Living Archive Is also a Dying Archive (chapter)

  In some of our earlier collective exchanges, Hay Kranen mentioned that though it is unfeasible to provide context to every single object, it helps to make a ‘core collection’ of the most interesting objects in an archive and to create stories or articles around them. This suggestion seems to have found a potential answer in a commission work by one member of our group, which shows that subtly providing context to items can be also achieved via design. When Karl Moubarak was commissioned by Pia Chakraverti-Wuerthwein to build websitea website that archives her work, he decided to explore the concept of relationality, by ensuring that each item’s relations are highlighted when the user hovers over each one. See: https://piacw.com. This was made possible by having the textlist of all the content visible on the first page, meaning that it is also enabled by the scale of this archive. The system allows for some transparency in how the navigation works but also ties the material together with the project by emphasizing its partners.

• from: A Living Archive Is also a Dying Archive (chapter)

  The last aspect discussed by the group was the possibility to have a system decentralized through the use of a federated format. For instance, Michelle Teran brought up the example of Memory of the World, a distributed infrastructure for amateur librarians to collect still imagescans of textbooks in a shadow library. Within Memory of the World, searches can be operated via title, author names, and tags (as entered by each librarian). The project was developed by Marcell Mars and Tomislav Medak. For more info, see: https://www.memoryoftheworld.org/blog/2015/05/27/repertorium_public_library.

• from: Talkshop Mumories: Living Archives (chapter)

  Margarita Osipian So in March of this year (2023), our group was part of the ‘In-between Media Conference’, which was organized by the Institute Network Cultures. And one of the sessions that we had was called ‘A Living Archive is Also a Dying Archive’. textKate Babin reported on this session student in the back Nietzsche said that forgetting is necessary to imagine. Poor large language models that do not forget anything :( in an article that she wrote for INC. Kate Babin, ‘Expert Session: A Living Archive is also a Dying Archive (Conference Report, day 2)’, Institute of Network Cultures, 31 March 2023, https://networkcultures.org/goinghybrid/2023/03/31/expert-session-a-living-archive-is-also-a-dying-archive-conference-report-day-2/. In it, she mentioned the work of Eric Kluitenberg, who was working on the topic of living archives. So textI'm just going to quote Kate here where she writes:

• from: Talkshop Mumories: Living Archives (chapter)

  Margarita Osipian So in March of this year (2023), our group was part of the ‘In-between Media Conference’, which was organized by the Institute Network Cultures. And one of the sessions that we had was called ‘A Living Archive is Also a Dying Archive’. textKate Babin reported on this session student in the back Nietzsche said that forgetting is necessary to imagine. Poor large language models that do not forget anything :( in an article that she wrote for INC. Kate Babin, ‘Expert Session: A Living Archive is also a Dying Archive (Conference Report, day 2)’, Institute of Network Cultures, 31 March 2023, https://networkcultures.org/goinghybrid/2023/03/31/expert-session-a-living-archive-is-also-a-dying-archive-conference-report-day-2/. In it, she mentioned the work of Eric Kluitenberg, who was working on the topic of living archives. So textI'm just going to quote Kate here where she writes:

• from: Introducing Etherport.org (chapter)

  Often, they are reduced to videoa 12-hour-long recording of the live stream on YouTube, with no means to decimate any of the information. Sometimes the interested secondary audience is blessed with an textautomated transcription, allowing one to scrape through some of the content. It seems that most of the cultural institutions are so busy organizing events, that the movements they aim to set in motion become an afterthought.

• 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:

• 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:

• 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.

• 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.

• 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.

• 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.

• from: Introducing Etherport.org (chapter)

  Etherport supports texttext, still imageimages, videovideos, and timestamps.

• from: XPUB Special Issue: Protocols (chapter)

  Zuzu 08:23 Today, when I had the CSS lesson there was textsome command that made me think ‘Is this so complicated because human beings are too complicated?’ Because we are so complicated, the thing we produce needs a specific rule to help other human beings understand. So, we need the protocols to easily be in communication with each other or with a computer or something.

• from: XPUB Special Issue: Protocols (chapter)

  Alessia 09:27 Because you need to actually textunderstand the language first. It’s like a code that you need to absorb and afterwards, you can understand the protocol. But without that base, you can’t go anywhere.

• 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.

• from: Introduction: Hybrid Culture in a Changing World (chapter)

  We’ve witnessed performanceTravis Scott playing a concert in the game websiteFortnite, for a whopping 27 million viewers—and he wasn’t the only one. Roel Vergauwen, ‘Will Games Become the New Concert Temples?’, Boekman, https://catalogus.boekman.nl/pub/P21-0355.pdf. Cultural institutions, usually relying on their audience having to travel to an offline destination to attend an event, found that they could reach a bigger and more international audience, and on top of that, speakers didn’t need to travel which saves both time and costs. Also, the common use of videolivestreams and textcaptions created new accessibility features for audience groups with different needs. It became possible to be sick and participate in culture, to be cooking dinner for your children and participate in culture, to have hearing impairments and participate in culture. These needs existed before the pandemic and will exist in the future too. It remains important not to forget the issue of accessibility now that on-site programming is the norm once again.

• from: Introduction: Hybrid Culture in a Changing World (chapter)

  The research consisted of three parts. One was about hybrid events. How to create interesting new forms of hybrid interaction? How do they ensure that both groups have an equal experience at these videolivecasts? And how to give both on-site and online audiences a sense of agency in an event? The other two parts were about what happens after the event: the publication, and ultimately the archiving of the outcomes. How to translate a hybrid cultural experience into something visitors can videowatch, textread, follow afterward? Is it possible to capture the essence, the interactive essence, of a hybrid event and reproduce it? And how do they harness the potential of this recorded material for publication and lasting audience interaction in their websitedigital (web) archive? Three groups, corresponding with the three main questions, set out research (the use of) existing platforms, to gather expertise, and ultimately to develop a prototype tool for hybrid culture.

• from: Introduction: Hybrid Culture in a Changing World (chapter)

  The publications group developed Etherport: a tool for cultural organisations to make more experimental and exciting. In Etherport, event reports including texttext, videovideo, still imageimage, and audiosound are connected by a web of tags, drawing non-linear connections between different parts of the event report, and between different reports. The tool helps to standardize the event reporting workflow, reducing production workload and clarifying the role division between authors and editors. But, most importantly, it allows for event-reports to connect different levels of knowledge and observations, to create a web of meaning between reports, and thereby – hopefully – to provide a more exciting, explorative reading experience. You can read more about this tool and how to use it in the intermission ‘Introducing Etherport’.

• 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.

• 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.

• from: Introduction: Hybrid Culture in a Changing World (chapter)

  The linear succession of chapters, intermissions, and appendixes allows you enjoy the content in the same order that it appeared in during the live event. But if you’re feeling more adventurous, you can pay attention to the spacemargins of this publication, which are portals to non-linear reading experiences. In the inner margins (print) or on the right-hand side of the page (digital), you will find the ‘textlive annotations’: a direct reproduction of the chat during the live event, in which a team of reporters has commented on both the contents of the program and their own experiences. Also in the inner margins (print) or on the left-hand side of the page (digital), you will find textmedium-based tags (e.g., ‘still image’, ‘audio’), indicating the kind of media and hybrids discussed. In the digital version, you can click on these tags to discover other paragraphs with the same tag, making Screentime Airtime Facetime navigable by medium as well as by linear progression. In the print version, you’ll find a more traditional index in the back of the book, showing the numbers of each page the tag appears on. Both functionalities are features of the Etherport tool, which was used to create this publication.

• from: Introduction: Hybrid Culture in a Changing World (chapter)

  The linear succession of chapters, intermissions, and appendixes allows you enjoy the content in the same order that it appeared in during the live event. But if you’re feeling more adventurous, you can pay attention to the spacemargins of this publication, which are portals to non-linear reading experiences. In the inner margins (print) or on the right-hand side of the page (digital), you will find the ‘textlive annotations’: a direct reproduction of the chat during the live event, in which a team of reporters has commented on both the contents of the program and their own experiences. Also in the inner margins (print) or on the left-hand side of the page (digital), you will find textmedium-based tags (e.g., ‘still image’, ‘audio’), indicating the kind of media and hybrids discussed. In the digital version, you can click on these tags to discover other paragraphs with the same tag, making Screentime Airtime Facetime navigable by medium as well as by linear progression. In the print version, you’ll find a more traditional index in the back of the book, showing the numbers of each page the tag appears on. Both functionalities are features of the Etherport tool, which was used to create this publication.