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1 <!DOCTYPE html> 2 <html> 3 <head> 4 <title>On Permacomputing Aesthetics</title> 5 <meta charset="utf-8"> 6 <style> 7 @font-face { 8 font-family: 'Route159-SemiBold'; 9 src: url('fonts/Route159-SemiBold.woff') format('woff'); 10 } 11 @font-face { 12 font-family: 'Aegyptus'; 13 src: local('Aegyptus'), 14 url('fonts/subset-Aegyptus.woff2') format('woff2'), 15 url('fonts/subset-Aegyptus.woff') format('woff'); 16 font-weight: normal; 17 font-style: normal; 18 } 19 20 body { 21 font-family: "Route159-SemiBold", Fallback, sans-serif; 22 font-size: 1.35em; 23 list-style-type: hiragana; 24 line-height: 1.3em; 25 color:#7800FF; 26 } 27 28 .inverted { 29 background-color:#7800FF; 30 color:#FFF; 31 border:1px solid #7800FF; 32 } 33 34 .words { 35 background-color: #FFCD3F; 36 color: #000; 37 //font-size: 8vH; 38 } 39 40 .faded { 41 opacity: 0.2; 42 } 43 44 .contain{ 45 background-size:contain; 46 } 47 48 .caption { 49 background-color:#FFF; 50 font-family:monospace; 51 52 } 53 54 .quote { 55 line-height: 2em; 56 } 57 58 .remark-code, .remark-inline-code { font-family: 'Ubuntu Mono'; } 59 60 .remark-slide img { 61 max-width: 100%; 62 } 63 64 .remark-slide h1 { 65 line-height: 1.1; 66 } 67 </style> 68 </head> 69 <body> 70 <textarea id="source"> 71 72 class: bottom, middle 73 74 # On Permacomputing Aesthetics 75 76 .left[Iterations 2022<br /><br />Aymeric Mansoux - @320x200@post.lurk.org<br />Brendan Howell - @praxeology@post.lurk.org<br />Dušan Barok - @sandu@post.lurk.org<br />Ville-Matias Heikkilä - @viznut@venera.social] 77 78 ??? 79 AYMERIC!!! 80 Introduce ourselves 81 + Quick words about this being work in progress 82 83 --- 84 class: inverted, middle, center 85 # PERMACOMPUTING? 86 87 ??? 88 - permacomputing is a relatively new concept and community of practice inspired by permaculture 89 - permaculture is essentially an approach to land management and construction of human communities that adopts natural ecosystems 90 - by making a connection between computer tech and permaculture, what we are truly asking is whether or not there can be a place for computer and network technology in a world where humans contribute to the well-being of the biosphere rather than destroy it? And if yes, how? 91 - at the moment permacomputing is both a set of design principles and a way to make cultural works in a more sustainable way 92 93 --- 94 class: inverted, middle, center 95 # AESTHETICS OF PMC 96 97 ??? 98 - why talk about aesthetics in this context 99 - well we thought that given the context of this presentation at en event related to creative coding it would be a good opportunity to talk about aesthetics 100 - but also from the pov of how we look at things 101 - and how to deal with the fact that we are implicated in the objects we criticize 102 103 --- 104 class: inverted, middle, center 105 # THE GOAL 106 107 ??? 108 - ultimately we would like permacomputing to be a materialisation of real, recognizable, useful form of degrowth and other concepts orthogonal to capitalistic growth and market organization. 109 - a countervoice to digital aesthetics that promote maximisation 110 - high bandwidth, high-res, more computational power at any cost, for anything 111 112 --- 113 class: inverted, middle, center 114 # CAVEATS AND SCOPE 115  116 117 ??? 118 - of course our perspective is partial and biased 119 - both bothered and aware of the narrow cultural basis of those who get to define the aesthetics 120 - and the perspective of the 'white western heterosexual male' 121 - we will loop back to this later 122 123 --- 124 class: inverted, middle, center 125 # WHAT BRINGS US TOGETHER? 126 127 ??? 128 - but so what is in what brings us together? 129 - artists/hackers familiar enough with computer/net technology fed up with the state of computational culture 130 - also fed up with how the field of art and culture production has engaged with computer tech criticism 131 - wondering if questions of sustainability/activism/etc can be more than formal aesthetics in creative practices 132 133 --- 134 class: inverted, middle, center 135 # FROM MAX TO MIN 136  137 138 ??? 139 BRENDAN!!! 140 - we live in time of maximalist texhno-aesthetics perverted by the myth of eternal growth and infinite resources 141 - with maximalist techno-aesthetics we do not mean the overwhelming richness and diversity of maximalists paintings and novels 142 - we mean the situation where aesthetics becomes synonym with technological demos constantly pushing the boundaries of the previous one in terms of increased complexity and resource use 143 - photorealism 144 - high resolution and high-bandwidth media 145 - bandwidth increases in social media: from textual posts to image-based posts to video posts; from textual chats to video chats/streamings 146 - ML model training 147 - computational power of a super computer in your pocket 148 - etc 149 150 --- 151 class: inverted, middle, center 152 # ANTI-BIOLOGICAL AESTHETICS 153  154 ??? 155 - the maximalist techno-aesthetics are profoundly anti-life and deceptive 156 - anti-life: 157 - "In the future nobody shits." 158 - anti-biological aesthetics as promoted by "seamless" design, suburban corporate-shopping-car-culture, rubberized virtual worlds, cloud, consciousness downloading, transhumanism, brain freezing, app-based anonymous delivery servants, mars colonies, etc. 159 160 --- 161 class: inverted, middle, center 162 # HYPERNORMATIVITY 163  164 165 ??? 166 - the entire world should look like cupertino, san jose and mountain-view 167 - Apple's "I'm a mac. / I'm a PC." - the battle for ditital normative whiteness standards 168 169 --- 170 class: inverted, middle, center 171 # SIMPLE THINGS MADE COMPLICATED 172  173 174 ??? 175 - absurd IOT that requires huge infra to do something simple 176 - 1GB ram electron apps that just show a single HTML form or a bit of text and an image 177 - "where are my files?" - no way to know if they're locally stored or in "the cloud" 178 - therefore increases dependence on constant internet connectivity even when working on things that wouldn't require the internet 179 - constant connectivity causes its own psychosocial issues 180 181 --- 182 class: inverted, middle, center 183 # REALITY IS DIRTY 184  185 186 ??? 187 - all this stuff is deceptive because while it presents itself as detached from material realities and constraints, it is in fact dependent on material constraints and the systemic extraction and physical processing of resources 188 189 --- 190 class: inverted, middle, center 191 # MATERIALITY AND THE PLEASURE OF CONSTRAINTS 192 193 ??? 194 - constraint is a fundamental concept in mathematics, biology, mechanics, design, economy, etc 195 - life and our experience of it is only constraints, constraints root us to the reality (we are constrained by our bodies, cultures, etc) 196 - constraints are perceived negatively because they are essentially a restriction 197 - such a limitation is at odds with capitalist ideologies that constantly sell us freedom from restrictions through new products, enable and fetichize accumulation, and rely on colonial and post-colonial strategies to extract and exploit without restrictions and at the expense of the environment, and we include ourself in this definition. 198 199 --- 200 class: inverted, middle, center 201 # MATERIALITY AND THE PLEASURE OF CONSTRAINTS 202 203 ??? 204 - making visible constraints in such context is therefore a potential threat to the economic reproduction of capitalist ideologies 205 - this is mirrored completely in the maximalist techno-aesthetics that magically give the illusion of lifting restrictions from everything 206 - with permacomputing being driven by opposite forces, the challenge and motivation for permacomputing aesthetics is therefore to embrace the constraint as a restriction as well as a facilitator 207 - to make visible what has been obfuscated 208 209 210 --- 211 class: inverted, middle, center 212 # ARTISTS AND CRAFTSPEOPLE ALWAYS WORK WITH CONSTRAINTS 213 214 ??? 215 - when it comes to aesthetics, constraints in art/design have a very long generative relationship (especially in more vernacular contexts) 216 - here are a very few examples 217 218 --- 219 class: contain, bottom, left 220 background-image: url(history/01-pakkete.png) 221 .caption[El Paquete (Julia Weist and Nestor Siré)] 222 223 ??? 224 AYMERIC!!! 225 - constraints via alternative media distribution 226 - example here with a project that document ephemeral media circulation in Cuba 227 228 --- 229 class: contain, bottom, left 230 background-image: url(history/02-teamspeak-snet.jpg) 231 .caption[TeamSpeak (Julia Weist and Nestor Siré)] 232 233 ??? 234 - Still in Cuba, TeamSpeak a chat application for online gaming that is central to SNEST an alternative Internet 235 236 --- 237 class: contain, bottom, left 238 background-image: url(history/03-Original_Video_Journal_1_still.jpg) 239 .caption[Originální Videojournal] 240 241 ??? 242 - Original Videojournal a late 80s dissident video magazine edited and copied secretly on school equipment in Czechoslovakia 243 244 --- 245 class: contain, bottom, left 246 background-image: url(history/04-ubu.jpg) 247 .caption[UbuWeb film/video archive] 248 249 ??? 250 - lowres glitchy artist's videos on ubuweb (working under restrictive copyright regimes) 251 252 --- 253 class: contain, bottom, left 254 background-image: url(history/05-Second_Spring_Exhibition_of_OBMOKhU_Moscow_May-June_1921_b.jpg) 255 .caption[Second Spring Exhibition of OBMOKhU, Moscow, May-June 1921] 256 257 ??? 258 - socioeconomic constraints (working in poverty): 259 - russian and soviet constructivists using wood and scrap metal because other art supplies were scarce 260 261 --- 262 class: contain, bottom, left 263 background-image: url(history/06-IMG-20220727-WA0004.jpg) 264 .caption[Mpho Makutu uses scraps from Johannesburg’s dump sites to build electronics/electric devices] 265 266 ??? 267 - diy tech creativity in poverty, that shows in mainstream media every now and then as a twisted ode to creativity in the global south 268 269 --- 270 class: contain, bottom, left 271 background-image: url(history/07-chicanx.jpg) 272 .caption[1973 support for the United Farm Workers making use of discarded computer print] 273 274 ??? 275 - recycling, Artists in the 1970s used discarded materials to quickly and inexpensively produce their work 276 277 --- 278 class: contain, bottom, left 279 background-image: url(history/08-HOLO-Dossiers-Vera-Molnar-Variations-LEAD-D.gif) 280 .caption[Vera Molnar, 36 Squares, 8928 Quadrilaterals: Pleasure Geometries (1986), excerpt] 281 282 ??? 283 - formal constraints (self-imposed and/or limited by technology): 284 - early computer artists working out algos for plotters without screens 285 286 --- 287 class: contain, bottom, left 288 background-image: url(history/09-KMM_Merz_01.JPG) 289 .caption[Igloo di pietra (1982) by Mario Merz] 290 291 ??? 292 - arte povera in Italy from late 1960s : "The movement born in open polemic with traditional art, whose techniques and supports it rejects in order to resort, precisely, to "poor" materials such as earth, wood, iron, rags, plastic, and industrial waste" 293 --- 294 class: contain, bottom, left 295 background-image: url(history/09-disparition.jpeg) 296 .caption[La Disparition (1969) by Georges Perec] 297 298 ??? 299 - constraint in literature: for instance with OuLiPo collective, here in the novel "la disparition" from Georges Perec, the letter "e" is not used at all. 300 301 --- 302 class: contain, bottom, left 303 background-image: url(history/09-gramophone_1200.jpg) 304 .caption[live typewriting drawing (2011) by Keira Rathbone] 305 306 ??? 307 - typewriter art, a sort of cousin of ASCII art in some way 308 309 --- 310 class: contain, bottom, left 311 background-image: url(history/10-atrium-4k.jpg) 312 .caption[Atrium (2008) 4k PC demo by TBC & Loonies] 313 314 ??? 315 - software-based art 316 - for instance demoscene : 4kb intros 317 - oh and by 4k we don't mean 4k resolution we mean that the software to generate this animation is only 4 kilobyte big 318 319 --- 320 class: contain, bottom, left 321 background-image: url(history/11-mari-autoprogettazione-1b.jpg) 322 .caption[Autoprogettazione (1974) by Enzo Mari] 323 324 ??? 325 - constraints related to materials 326 - Enzo Mari - Autoprogettazione - making furniture only with common sizes of construction wood 327 328 --- 329 class: contain, bottom, left 330 background-image: url(history/12-papenak.jpg) 331 .caption[Nomadic Furniture (1973) by Victor Papanek] 332 333 ??? 334 - furniture based on found industrial materials 335 336 --- 337 class: contain, bottom, left 338 background-image: url(history/13-rustic.jpg) 339 .caption[The Cabinetmakers Chair (1994) by Daniel Mack] 340 341 ??? 342 - "rustic" furniture made using saplings, bits of firewood, driftwood, scraps, old tool handles 343 - you get the point, constraint and "creativity" have a very rich history 344 - we will get back however to the nature of some of these 345 346 --- 347 class: inverted, middle, center 348 # THE EXPANSIVE IRONY OF "LIMITATIONS" 349 350 ??? 351 - and this is where another interesting contradiction emerges 352 - they create a lot of diversity 353 - constraints expand the narrow cultural scale 354 355 --- 356 class: inverted, middle, center 357 # A BULLWARK FOR DIVERSITY 358 359 ??? 360 - so this is interesting because there is indeed a strong connection between cultural diversity and constraints 361 - cultural uniformity is the oil that keeps the capitalist and neoliberal machines running 362 - corporate capitalism relies on hegemonic ethnocentrism, cultural assimilation and cultural appropriation to be the most efficient and productive 363 - produced under such conditions, computer aesthetics are obviously affected and will always struggle to escape the fate of computational culture as mimicking and reinforcing dominant forms of organisation 364 - for instance UX can be articulated as a neo-colonial project, designed to steamroll the "look and feel" of everyday life and to standardize our relations to the world in the service of massive hegemonic tech companies. 365 366 --- 367 class: inverted, middle, center 368 # SPACE FOR (WEIRD?) CHARACTERS & CULTURES 369 370 ??? 371 - how to reintroduce critical weirdness? 372 - we believe that diversity in computing should be celebrated like diversity in food, clothing, architecture, music and crafts. 373 - important counter-hegemonic action 374 - by celebrating unconventional interfaces we resist the normative forces, symbolically but also via cultural diffusion 375 - maybe a first step to reintroduce critical weirdnessin computational cultural could be to as simple as embracing the plethora of underlying constraints found in software code, procedurality and interaction 376 377 378 --- 379 class: inverted, middle, center 380 # CONSTRAINTS OF CONSTRAINTS 381 382 ??? 383 - of course limits are arbitrary 384 - the latest GPU also has limits within which a creative coder needs to work with 385 - what makes permacomputing stands apart from a more creative approach to make visible and use constraint is its connection to material and environmental constraints 386 387 --- 388 class: inverted, middle, center 389 # CONSTRAINED AESTHETICS DRIVE ETHICS 390 391 ??? 392 - permacomputing uses material constraints to reflect its environmental and cultural values 393 - working with e-waste 394 - limited availability of hardware and energy 395 - but also thinking of computational devices as heirloom objects 396 - using natural materials 397 - and also repairable and designed to reflect local, regional and sub-cultural aesthetics and materials. 398 399 --- 400 class: inverted, middle, center 401 # PERMACOMPUTING EXAMPLES 402 403 ??? 404 BRENDAN!!! 405 - like we said permacomputing is a nascent community of practice 406 - it exists as two interleaved threads 407 1. incentive to re-use and repurpose existing computer technology and materials for the making of new works 408 2. design principles to guide such re-use and repurposing but also to inform the development of new software and hardware 409 - some projects have started to use the term pmc: 410 411 --- 412 class: inverted, middle, center 413 # GEMINI PROTOCOL 414 415  416 417 418 ??? 419 - gemini 420 421 --- 422 class: inverted, middle, center 423 # HUNDRED RABBITS: UXN 424 425  426 427 ??? 428 - uxn 429 430 --- 431 class: inverted, middle, center 432 # WHAT REMAINS 433 434  435 436 - what remains (kind of) 437 438 --- 439 class: inverted, middle, center 440 # THE SCREENLESS OFFICE 441 442 <img src="screenless3.jpg" style="max-width: 60%;" /> 443 444 ??? 445 - screenless office (ok?) sure! 446 447 --- 448 class: inverted, middle, center 449 # GARDEN LIBRARY NETWORK: MICHAL KLODNER 450  451 452 ??? 453 - biolab from michal? 454 455 --- 456 class: inverted, middle, center 457 # MARTIN HOWSE: EARTH COMPUTER 458 459  460 461 ??? 462 - AND there are also other projects that we find super inspiring 463 - martin howse's earth computing and life coding 464 465 --- 466 class: inverted, middle, center 467 # SMALL FILE FESTIVALS 468 469  470 471 ??? 472 - small file photo/media festivals 473 474 --- 475 class: inverted, middle, center 476 # ROBERT HENKE CBM 8032 477 478  479 480 ??? 481 - CBM 8032 482 483 --- 484 class: inverted, middle, center 485 # MNT REFORM 486 487  488 489 ??? 490 491 - MNT reform? and the amiga stuff they're doing. 492 493 --- 494 class: inverted, middle, center 495 # HYBRID PRINT MACHINE SCENES 496 497  498 499 ??? 500 - Zine scenes printing using hybrids with older tech? 501 - vintage plotter stuff? 502 503 --- 504 class: inverted, middle, center 505 # CLAIRE WILLIAMS - TEXTILE HACKING 506 507  508 509 ??? 510 - Knitting scene? - ravelry, Cat Mazza and others who take pixel art and render it into textiles - also hacked older knitting machines 511 - the embroidered computer (irene posch) 512 513 --- 514 class: inverted, middle, center 515 516  517 518 ??? 519 - That car shop in Poland that still uses a C64 for invoices 520 521 --- 522 class: inverted, middle, center 523 # NOSTALGIA 524 525 ??? 526 AYMERIC!!! 527 - following these examples + given the focus of pmc in not hesitating in using old computational devices 528 - there is a risk to misunderstand pmc with retro-computing and retro-aesthetics 529 530 --- 531 class: inverted, middle, center 532 # BUT IS IT EVEN NOSTALGIA 533  534 ??? 535 - so let's ask the question directly, are pmc aesthethics a form of nostalgia? 536 - in a world vastly dominated by technological novelty, linear economy, and technosolutionism our relation to time is hard to decouple from consumerism 537 - this relation to time is also not ours, but the one of industries and economic cycles 538 - our short lifespans, our short attention spans benefit a productive apparatus that favours obsolescence, neophilia, amnesia, non-historicity 539 - as a result framing all usage of "dated" things as nostalgic because they have exhausted their time of maximal economic value 540 541 --- 542 class: inverted, middle, center 543 # __RETRO__ - INSULT OR TRAP 544 545 ??? 546 - in a context where consumerism is what defines our identity, it means that dated things can only relate to a past self 547 - in that sense retrocomputers and retroaesthethics are essentially restorative nostalgia in the way they allow a connection with a past self through objects of mass consumption 548 - they favour the cult of simpler times, the good old days where things were simpler 549 - this is obviously a trap that through the well meaning intention of creating a safe-space for emulating a lost youth, fosters instead deep conservative thinking, fetichises a past that never was 550 - if anything it prevents the problematisation of an already defective computational culture back then. 551 552 --- 553 class: inverted, middle, center 554 # AVOIDING NEOPHILE BABYLON 555 556 ??? 557 - when Jamaican studios started to experiment in the 70s with obsolete and abandonned US audio equipment like spring reverbs, they were not nostalgic about 60s surf music, instead it became a core component of new musical genre: dub music. 558 - pmc sees computational devices like as many different instruments waiting to be turned upside down and rediscovered 559 - but most importantly it belongs to a wider range of post-digital aesthetics 560 561 --- 562 class: inverted, middle, center 563 # BEYOND POSTURES OF NOVELTY 564 565 ??? 566 - the 90s meme of "digitality" is exemplary of all the problems presented so far (maximalism, virtualism, narrow cultural basis, neophilia) 567 - however the more recent concept of post-digital aesthetics brings to light the end of such new media cult 568 - more specifically in its articulation of the potential to combine new + old media POV 569 - as a result permacomputing tries to exist outside of hype cycles and favour an ongoing practice itself moving in an ever changing landscape of new and old media and tech 570 571 --- 572 class: inverted, middle, center 573 # NEW TEMPORALITIES 574 575 ??? 576 - so in a sense pmc has a different connection to temporality 577 - it values slowness and non-flashiness as an antithesis to the usual short-attention-span user experiences 578 - it departs from the asynchronous but always connected life and the mediation of our social interactions that deeply affects our natural rhythms and flows 579 580 --- 581 class: inverted, middle, center 582 # SAVOIR VIVRE OVER SAVOIR FAIRE 583 584 ??? 585 - ultimately permacomputing tries to resist the exhaustion of everything 586 - energies 587 - natural resources 588 - ecosystems 589 - life here and elsewhere 590 - an exhaustion at our own cost and the cost of others who did not ask anything to start with 591 - so no, it's not nostalgia, it's a flag that signposts social cultural regressions 592 593 --- 594 class: inverted, middle, center 595 # CONCLUSION 596 597 ??? 598 - Once again pmc is a nascent concept and community of practice 599 - there are many issues that some of us in this community are currently trying to figure out and reflect upon 600 - for instance while we are able to frame positively pmc aesthetics from the POV of post-digital aesthetics 601 - we are also aware that this is potentially accelerating a form of entanglement with problematic systems as opposed to truly provide an alternative 602 - said differently the richness of combining old and new media and ways of working can also create an obfuscation over the increasing dependencies such ways of working have on the very neophilia we are trying to adress with pmc 603 604 --- 605 class: inverted, middle, center 606 # CONCLUSION 607 608 ??? 609 - but an even bigger issue is wether or not pmc is a truly transitional and transformative practice 610 - or if its existence is just symptomatic decadence of living in the western ruins of capitalism 611 - making art and creative works, regardless if rooted in professional environment, within folk art, or the history of crafts 612 - remains an activity that cannot be decoupled from questions of classes and privileges 613 - so while pmc aesthetics and the lifestyle it aims to encourage may feel affiliated to grassroot DIY activism or for instance Brazilian cultural practices such as gambiarra and mutirão 614 615 --- 616 class: inverted, middle, center 617 # CONCLUSION 618 619 ??? 620 - it is nothing like that, on the contrary 621 - in the global north an alternative lifestyle and practice, let alone the possibility to remove yourself temporarily from productivist, extractive and exploitative systems is a sign of privilege and remains innaccessible for the vast majority 622 - there is therefore a danger that pmc aesthetics remains just that, formal aesthetics heavily relying on style appropriation of pratices for which the urgency and its constraints are life imperatives and not a creative choice 623 624 --- 625 class: inverted, middle, center 626 # CONCLUSION? 627 628 ??? 629 - that should not be understood as an excuse to embrace extractivism and wasteful practices, absolutely not 630 - but it means that pmc is walking on thin ice and needs a lot of work on understanding its situadness to avoid a... situation where it ends up as a mere hobby for the most privileged (like a lot of low-tech practices) 631 - or ends up becoming a romanticisation and aesthetisation of poverty 632 - we're trying to figure it out, it's complicated 633 634 --- 635 class: bottom, middle 636 .left[https://permacomputing.net<br /><br />Iterations 2022<br /><br />Aymeric Mansoux - @320x200@post.lurk.org<br />Brendan Howell - @praxeology@post.lurk.org<br />Dušan Barok - @sandu@post.lurk.org<br />Ville-Matias Heikkilä - @viznut@venera.social] 637 638 ??? 639 - if you want to join us check the wiki, we have mailing lists, IRC, and we're using the #permacomputing hashtag on the fediverse 640 - Thanks 641 Thank you. 642 643 *people screaming/booing/silent* 644 645 646 647 </textarea> 648 <script src="remark-0.15.0.min.js"></script> 649 <script> 650 remark.macros.scale = function (percentage) { 651 var url = this; 652 return '<img src="' + url + '" style="width: ' + percentage + '" />'; 653 // Usage: 654 //  655 // Outputs: 656 // <img src="image.jpg" style="width: 50%" /> 657 }; 658 </script> 659 <script> 660 var slideshow = remark.create({ 661 ratio: "16:9", 662 slideNumberFormat: '', 663 }); 664 </script> 665 </body> 666 </html>