[Reader-list] Linker - Software as Culture
Harwood
Harwood at scotoma.org
Tue May 22 01:37:23 IST 2001
Descartes: (1596-1650) Probably near Ulm on the Danube has a fever.
After a day spent in intense philosophical speculations he falls
asleep in an agitated state - three dreams later and his vision
produces Cartesian Co-ordinates and within them one of the multiple
Origins of maps. This period is dominated by deadly epidemics and
during his time in Paris he would have witnessed 60,000 deaths in
Lyon from Typhus and 25,000 deaths in Limogues.
Linker construction: Note#1 October 98 (Getting user input)
Do_Linker_Actions me, ancestor_Descartes
TheMouse_location = point(the mouse_Horizontal ,the mouse_Vertical)
The.Content_Name = the_name_of_User Content
repeat with cnt = 1 to count(This.Content_Name.coordinate_list)
if(TheMouse-location is inside( The.Content_Name.coordinate_list))then
The.Point_inside = cnt
if(the mousedown)then
DoContent(theType)
end if
end if
end repeat
end
Cartesian Co-ordinates are used to input the mouse user position on
most windowing enviroment.
Guy Debord, a key Situationist theorist, has caught a cold, some 300
years after Descartes. His infection started after walking around
Paris making a series 'psycho-geographic guides' in the rain.
Recording his aimless wanderings, Debord cuts up and reconfigures a
standard Paris map. Reflecting street-level desires and perceptions,
mapping alternative itineraries and attempting to subvert what
Descartes origin had become. 1988 Stefan Szczelkun walks around
cities and produces a series of Collaborations called Duet's. Two
people collaborating took a series of 24 "aimless" pictures over the
day revealing the subjective city, Harwood among them leaves early
due to a stomach ulcer.
Spring 1998 Mongrels begin attempting to subvert Descartes origin.
Walking around Hull and struck by the lack of finds in the emotional
fossil record. Take it upon themselves to fill in the space by making
emotional maps of the city with other Mongrels met along the way.
Richard; "We could make maps of fear or maps of lust."
Matsuko; "let's plot emotional states onto the position of things."
Harwood; "let's go for a long aimless walk's about nothing and go nowhere."
We work four days and calibrate the information into a geography of
social Class.
Linker construction: Note#1 May 98 (a specific need)
We have a specific need that we found doing workshops. We want to
have dialogues that allow us to produce fast artefacts of digital
culture with other mongrels. A crucial thing we have found in
workshops is that people want to produce something that looks good,
and means something, but don't want to have to invest months in
teaching themselves up to know something like Photoshop or Director.
We don't particularly want to knock these programs, but they're
cultured up to be useful really only to experts.
Harwood; "let's go for a long aimless walk's about nothing and go nowhere."
We work four days and calibrate the information into a geography of
social Class.
Linker construction: Note#1 May 98 (a specific need)
We have a specific need that we found doing workshops. We want to
have dialogues that allow us to produce fast artefacts of digital
culture with other mongrels. A crucial thing we have found in
workshops is that people want to produce something that looks good,
and means something, but don't want to have to invest months in
teaching themselves up to know something like Photoshop or Director.
We don't particularly want to knock these programs, but they're
cultured up to be useful really only to experts.
February 2001 - lost somewhere in Delhi feeling well and thinking
about this article. I pick up the map; a practical tools for
merchants and governments to carve up territory for themselves and
plan military campaigns. Wipe the scum of the city from my mind: a
usual activity for most of us, a "common sense" that can help amass
someone an empire a small business, transport people half way around
the world against their will. This forgetting offers us a temporary
blindness that allows us to go about our daily lives, walking past
the rich-sick-homeless-no-hoper-beggars or the building built on the
glories that meant other peoples' pain.
Linker construction: Note#3 November 98 (Linker a device for a
subjective "Knowledge-Map")
We need to make some sort of Subjective knowledge-maps that can draw
together the invisible structure of fear, lust and happiness that
underpine our experience of the city. Fear imprisons people - divides
up territory every bit as much as the very real razor wire you see on
a ride around the city or the urinated lifts and deserted corridors
of north London.
I now forget the map and remember the journey, as I also forget the
software that wrote this text. It seems software exists in some form
of invisible shadow world of procedure something like the key we find
in maps. Software is establishing models by which things are done
yet, like believing the objectivity of maps, we forget that software
is derived from certain cultural, historical and economic
trajectories. Software like the map, can never just be a tool; In the
invisibility of it's construction it is always drawn and positioned.
Linker construction: Note#3 January 99 (Linker Basics)
In order to make Linker work for as many people as possible, we need
to explore creativity reduced to Selection, Naming and Linking - Try
to illuminate everything else from the creative act.
Take nine images, not ten or eight but nine - the upper limit of
gestalt grouping. Create a layout or "knowledge-map" structured into
an easily remembered instrumental [3][3] grid.
Alpha-numerically order the grid according to the users filename
entries so the map elements can be arranged on the screen.
E.G [[1] = a, [2] = b, [3] = c ], [[4] = d, [5] = e, [6] = f], [[7]=
g, [8] = h, [9] = I]]
I follow the menu items of Software like I followed the map of Delhi
moving from place to place transfixed by the representation I see
before me, while seeing nothing of the social geographies from which
they were emerged and on which they act. I ignore the built-in bias
- the implicit totalitarianism of prescribed functions and procedures
- instead I am transfixed by the outcome of my interaction with
applications. I forget the program in order to get on with this
article so I can go home - love the wife - bath the boy - walk the
dog.
Linker construction: Note#4 February 99 (Content totalitarianism)
Linker will be content totalitarianism. From Linkers initial layout,
the software will enable you to create sixteen links from each map
image to a sound, image, text, video clip or to other parts of the
map or again to other maps and different scale views of the map with
a single click.
Reduce objectifying the interface to the user to the minimum. No menu
items like File, Edit, View, and their subsets; Cut; Paste, Save As,
open - all removed.
Although maps depict what is actually visible, they also visualise
what is invisible in everyday experience and through the selectivity
of the mapmaker, certain elements are shown and given relative
importance whilst others are not. The map it seems is an abstract
visual composition for finding my way round, a godly view from a
vertical rather than horizontal plain, usually drawn at a constant
scale across its surface.
Software also attempts to visualise and structure creative processes
and procedures along "helpful" lines. It objectifies interface
content for the user. Imposing invisible constructs within their
work, reducing it to a series of binary choices that are
hierarchically defined and through the selectivity of the programmer
certain elements are shown and given relative importance whilst
others are not.
Linker construction: Note#5 March 99 (Content totalitarianism continued)
Linker should work in series, no binary choices. The difference
between two and three is as large as the difference between the map
and the experience the city.
Lets make absolutely sure we do not waste pixels. Interface = the
least effective difference.
The apparent confidence I feel, when looking at a map points toward a
graphic illusion of our experienced urban space. It is so compelling
over and above its use as a method of knowing where I was - where I
will be - where I'm going. It is also obvious that maps present only
one possible version of the earth's surface, a fiction constructed
from factual observation derived from Descartes origin. This fiction
maps itself onto the cities exterior - the city image as a mediated
concept, the city as seen from elsewhere.
Out of the put-put and walking down to Sarai, 29 Rajpur Road Delhi
India I realise the cab driver could not read the map? I could have
been showing him an engineering drawing of the Boeing 747 - he does
not care. This city is navigated by asking the way. The map is in the
exchange between people finding their way and recognising places.
"That's where I got married, That's were the riot took place, That's
where I lost my virginity, that's Delhi Gate where the British
re-took the city"
Linker construction: Note#6 April 99(Inconsequential interface)
Process: Take four uses of Linker and calculate the
(Pixels-UsedFor-InterfaceDisplay) divided by
(Pixels-UsedFor-ContentDisplay) to give the % of interface in the
total visual experience of using Linker.
Yields that that early implementations of the Linker interface are
averaging %5 of the total visual experience of the user. Final
interface reduces this to %1.08 of the total visual experience of the
user.
Map-Directory ={Nine images at 640x480= 2764800 pixels} +
Image-Directory ={Ten images at 320x240 pixels = 768000 pixels} +
Video-Directory ={ Five Videos 320x240 pixels at static state =
384000 pixels} + Text-Directory = {Five texts of 100 words 12 pixels
height with 2 pixels between each line = 259200} + Sound-Directory =
{revealed within other content types}
Total content = 4176000 = (Video-Directory + Text-Directory +
Map-Directory + Sound-Directory + Image-Directory)
Interface for user :
Map-And-Links = {(Border-Area = 20160)+ (Link-Lines1920)}
Content-Action-Signifiers = { Nine-Content-Types = 1204}
Borders-Images = {11200}
Borders-Video = {5600}
Borders-Text = {5020}
File-Text-Edit-Mode = {12000}
Total interface = 45104 = (Map-And-Links + Content-Action-Signifiers
+ Borders-Images + Borders-Video + Borders-Text + File-Text-Edit-Mode)
((100 / Total content pixels) * Total interface pixels) = 1.08
The interface is %1.08 of the total visual experience of the user.
The modern map presupposes a certain worldview, a specific visual
geography, one that takes a kind of birds eye view. The map is a
scale drawing not an exact reproduction, it is a symbolic
representation by an agreed set of symbols figures, lines and
shading. Software also presupposes the user to have a certain
world-view - a high point in it's marketing potential. Software is a
systematic modelling of the creative process not an exact
reproduction of that process. Software is a symbolic representation
of creative processes by an agreed set of symbols and processes of
interaction.
Linker construction: Note#7 May 99(Multimedia equivalent of a
throw-away camera.)
Place the contents in data-type folders and start. Formal simplicity - explained in ten minuets to people not familiar with computing. It's clear and deliberately constrained. This constraint makes it quick and turns the implicit totalitarianism of prescribed options into an opportunity to learn quickly. Links between content drawn on the top of the data. So the user can see where the link goes. Not hidden in some symbolic operating system somewhere.
Download it get on with it:
http://www.linker.org.uk
Post script:
Linker 1.0 workshops were run by Mongrel in the UK, Australia, New
Zealand, USA, France and Holland working with various groups from
indigenous and ethnic peoples to white majorities, the unemployed,
art students, war veterans and friends and family.
Harwood will be working at the Waag for the next year to produce the
online version of Linker which will be implemented in Sarai India
Australia and London Busit.
Harwood at scotoma.org
Tel +31 (0) 20 365 9334
MONGREL
http://www.mongrelx.org
HARWOOD DE MONGREL TATE GALLERY SITE:
http://www.tate.org.uk/webart/mongrel/home/default.htm/
WASTE_WORDS THEIR WEIGHT& FREQUENCY IN LONDON'S MUNICIPAL RUBBISH
http://www.heise.de/tp/deutsch/kunst/waste/index.html
Linker site
http://www.Linker.org.uk
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