Let's begin with a void. Could this be...
... nullity?
In law, void means of no legal effect. An action, document, or transaction which is void is of no legal effect whatsoever: an absolute nullity—the law treats it as if it had never existed or happened. The term void ab initio means “to be treated as invalid from the outset.”
... loss?
“Loss is to be avoided when possible, but it’s also formative. New histories arise around loss.”
“Marginalized, persecuted people have had to destroy their own history for their safety. Loss isn’t random.”
... permeability?
“...test the permeability of the archive and, by extension, the permeability of history...”
... omission?
“...render absences in the archives as prominent as presences, while sometimes recognizing their necessity.”
“Judith Allen has noted that at the very least, the writing of women's historical experience can never really be just a matter of putting women back, 'as if they [had] somehow slipped out.' Their omission from the historical record should be a signal to address the entire basis and procedures of the discipline...”
... memory?
Mindy describes the bee orchid scene and “arts of memory” from Donna Haraway's "Symbiogenesis, Sympoiesis, and Art Science Activisms for Staying with the Trouble" in Arts of Living on a Damaged Planet, edited by Anna Tsing.
... research?
“We pursue research precisely because we perceive gaps in the record, or because we come to recognize that the powerful have suppressed evidence about the powerless.”
What else could a void be?
Find a void. Present this (as an object, website, image representation, reading, hole, etc) next week. Be prepared to discuss its context and lineage.
— Sergio Lopez-Pineiro's A Glossary of Urban Voids
— Sarah Perry's "How to See Voids"
What is a trail? On what terrain does it exist?
"We call things like MapQuest and Google Maps on your phone interactive... but are they? Are they interactive? It's a system that largely gives you instructions to obey. Certainly, obedience is a form of interaction... while you figure out the way from here to there yourself, instead of having a corporation tell you, you might pick up peripheral knowledge: the system of street names, the parallel streets and alternative routes. Pretty soon, you've learned the map, or rather, you have — via map — learned your way around a city. The map is now within you. You are yourself a map."
Consider… maps, blogchains, learning trails, hyperlinks, timelines...
Create a trail through the void and a system of navigation.
— ul, ol, li
— var array_name = [item1, item2, ...];
— Richard Vicjen, deletedcity.net on Internet Archive Experiments
— Leo Shaw, Dream Machine, “Learning Trails”
— Stewart Brand, Whole Earth Catalog, are.na/block/3164087
— Shannon Mattern, “Revisiting the Whole Earth, Feminist Tools”
— Penelope Umbrico, All the Catalogs
— Office for Creative Research, A Sort of Joy
— Charles Broskoski, Directions to Last Visitor
— Mimi Onuoha, Library of Missing Datasets
— Ursula Le Guin, Carrier Bag Theory of Fiction, “before the tool that forces energy outward, we made the tool that brings energy home.”
A packet is a bundle. To unpack is to decode, separate, interpret, comprehend. Do the contents (links, texts, audio, videos, objects, etc) come with rules, principles or systems? How and why is it being delivered? What is revealed in the transference?
Create a packet to be delivered and opened by 1+ people in this class. Each packet should contain a minimum of ten assets.
— Print CSS
— JavaScript Workshop with Tim Ripper
— packet switching
— Sneakernets
— zip bombs
— offsiteproject.org/ZIP
— Rhizome, Digital Publishing unzipped
— Rhizome, Sorry to dump on you like this
— Is airdrop the contemporary zip bomb?
— El Paquete Semanal, vimeo.com/255453548
— Orit Gat, “Data Roaming: Orit Gat and artist Julia Weist travel to Havana in search of El Paquete Semanal, the Cuban offline internet,” Frieze (July 30, 2016)
— Indigitization Toolkit, re: "Archives are adapting to an era of digitization and decolonization"
— Morehshin Allayari, Material Speculation
— Dexter Sinister, On a Universal Serial Bus
— O–R-G, postcardware + definition
— Duke Riley, Trading with the Enemy
— Kameelah Rasheed for Michel Obultra
— The Thing Quarterly
— Werkplaats Typografie, Wurm
— Voyager Golden Record
— Trevor Paglen The Last Pictures
— James Goggin's Are.na channel “Packets, Distribution, Dispersion, Circulation, Propagation”
— James Bridle, “Encoded Experiences,” Mieke Gerritzen (ed.)
— Anicka Yi, Radical Hopeless perfume, Dover Street Market
— Anthony Huberman, “Naive Set Theory,” Dot Dot Dot 15 (2008)
Margaret Anderson, ed.,The Little Review (1914–22). Digitized archive on The Modernist Journals Project, Brown University
— ultimape's Are.na channel Archivist
Adapted from a project by James Goggin
We are navigating uncertain times. We are asked to practice "social distancing", but this phrase is inaccurate. While we should be physically distant from one another, we can attempt to maintain social interactions, often times through digital media, chat software, and online tools. For this final project, let's try to implement "intimacy without proximity," a quote from Donna Haraway's Staying with the Trouble: Making Kin. For this final project, make a website for a future event. The event should be an activation of your current subject of study.
Create a website for a future event. The website should include:
— an upcoming event that would occur on a physical site
— the ability for remote attendees to view or participate in the event
— a time-keeping device (countdown to event, new method of measuring time, etc)
— Consider... how do we countdown to an unknown future date?
— optional: CMS
Kirby & Alt CMS workshop with Eric Li
A kiosk is a small interactive structure in a public space. It can be analog (like a newspaper sales kiosk) or digital (like an information kiosk at a museum).
Consider... what information this is providing? Is it a spectacle? Is it a bulletin board? What is its relationship to the location?
With a partner, create a kiosk in a public space, like the Atrium or hallway.
— The Well, Whole Earth 'Lectronic Link
— Link NYC
— Mechanical Turk
— book wheel