Computational Culture, a journal of software studies, issue 8

[Matthew Fuller]

We are happy to announce issue eight of Computational Culture, with the 
following articles and reviews now online:

Editorial

Issue Eight Editorial

Articles

Christian Ulrik Andersen and Søren Bro Pold, The User as a Character, 
Narratives of Datafied 
Platforms

Andrew Lison, New Media, 1989: Cubase and the New Temporal 
Order

Luke Munn, Imperfect Orchestration, Inside the Data Center’s Struggle for 
Efficiency

David Rambo, Building, Coding, Typing: Defining Technological Individuation 
through Custom Mechanical Keyboard 
Culture

Matt Spencer, Creative Malfunction: Finding Fault with 
Rowhammer

Comments

Mark Marino, Indigenous Code: Interview with Jon 
Corbett

Reviews

Brian Alleyne, Black Software Matters, Review of Charlton McIlwain, Black 
Software: The Internet & Racial Justice, from the AfroNet to Black Lives 
Matter

Federica Frabetti, Review of Annette Vee, Coding 
Literacy

Jared Gampel, Thinking Culture in the Age of Global Finance, review of Maria 
Eriksson, Rasmus Fleischer, Anna Johansson, Pelle Snickars, Patrick Vonderau, 
Spotify 
Teardown

Monika Szűcsová, Rethinking Execution, review of Helen Pritchard, Erik 
Snodgrass and Magda Tyżlik-Carver (eds.). Executing 
practices

Zhenia Vasiliev, Learning from Russia’s hi-tech Soviet heritage, review of 
Mario Biagioli and Vincent Antonin Lépinay, eds. From Russia with Code: 
Programming Migrations in Post-Soviet 
Times

Graham White, Towards an Archaeology of Machine Learning? Review of Adrian 
Mackenzie, Machine 
Learners

David Young, Theorising While Practicing, review of Winnie Soon and Geoff Cox, 
Aesthetic Programming, a handbook of software 
studies



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Computational Culture issue 5

[Matthew Fuller]

   Computational Culture [1]Issue Five is now online.  This issue features
   a special issue on Rhetoric and Computation edited by Annette Vee and
   James J. Brown Jr.

   [2]Issue Five Introduction

   Special Issue, Rhetoric and Computation

   Annette Vee &James J. Brown, Jr., Editors, [3]Special Issue
   Introduction

   Steve Holmes, [4]Can we name the tools? Ontologies of Code, Speculative
   Techné and Rhetorical Concealment

   John Tinnell, [5]>From WIMP to ATLAS: Rhetorical Figures of Ubiquitous
   Computing

   Kevin Brock, [6]The `FizzBuzz' Programming Test: A Case-Based
   Exploration of Rhetorical Style in Code

   Elizabeth Losh, [7]Sensing Exigence, a Rhetoric for Smart Objects

   Jennifer Maher, [8]Artificial Rhetorical Agents and the Computing of
   Phronesis

   Alexander Monea, [9]Graph Force: Rhetorical Machines and the
   N-Arization of Knowledge

   Andreas Birkbak & Hjalmar Bang Carlsen, [10]The World of Edgerank:
   Rhetorical Justifications of Facebook's News Feed Algorithm

   Matthew Bellinger, [11]The Rhetoric of Error in Digital Media

   Articles

   M. Beatrice Fazi, [12]Incomputable Aesthetics: Open Axioms of
   Contingency

   Erica Robles-Anderson and Patrik Svensson, [13]"One Damn Slide After
   Another": PowerPoint at every Ocassion for Speach

   Michael Lachney, William Babbitt & Ron Eglash, [14]Software Design in
   the "Construction Genre" of Learning Technology: Content Aware versus
   Content Agnostic

   Reviews

   Zara Dinnen, [15]Interface Poetics, a review of Reading Writing
   Interfaces: From the Digital to the Bookbound, by Lori Emerson

   Silvia Mollicchi, [16]Memorious Histories of Open Circuits, a review of
   Beautiful Data, a history of vision and reason since 1945 by Orit
   Halpern

   Giles Askham, [17]Inner and Outer Networks, a review of Anna Munster,
   An Aesthesia of Networks: Conjunctive Experience in Art and Technology

   Prof. Matthew Fuller

   Director of Centre for Cultural Studies

   Digital Culture Unit

   Centre for Cultural Studies

   Goldsmiths, University of London

   New Cross

   London SE14 6NW

   e: m.ful...@gold.ac.uk

   t: +44 (0)20 7919 7061

   w: [18]http://www.goldsmiths.ac.uk/cultural-studies/staff/m-fuller.php

   t: @GoldsmithsCCS

   f: [19]https://www.facebook.com/centreforculturalstudies

References

   1. http://computationalculture.net/
   2. http://computationalculture.net/editorial/editorial-issue-five
   3. http://computationalculture.net/?p=2451&preview=true
   4. http://computationalculture.net/?p=2574&preview=true
   5. http://computationalculture.net/?p=2565&preview=true
   6. http://computationalculture.net/?p=2463&preview=true
   7. http://computationalculture.net/?p=2474&preview=true
   8. http://computationalculture.net/?p=2476&preview=true
   9. http://computationalculture.net/?p=2557&preview=true
  10. http://computationalculture.net/?p=2568&preview=true
  11. http://computationalculture.net/?p=2602&preview=true
  12. http://computationalculture.net/?p=2490&preview=true
  13. http://computationalculture.net/?p=2485&preview=true
  14. http://computationalculture.net/?p=2488&preview=true
  15. http://computationalculture.net/?p=2446&preview=true
  16. http://computationalculture.net/?p=2607&preview=true
  17. http://computationalculture.net/?p=2480&preview=true
  18. http://www.goldsmiths.ac.uk/cultural-studies/staff/m-fuller.php
  19. https://www.facebook.com/centreforculturalstudies

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Jumping the Paywall: How to freely share research, workshop

[Matthew Fuller]

   Jumping the Paywall: How to freely share research

   This workshop will identify and address two safety-critical problems
   permeating research today: lack of total free access to scholarship,
   and the looming threat of apprehension for trying to facilitate said
   free access.

   The workshop will hypothesize workable solutions to the stated problem
   sets by presenting actionable intelligence and investigating tactical
   modes of engagement in the on-going copyfight via the exploration of
   securing free access to scholarship (in the form of academic e-journal
   articles and e-books), and via developing avoidance strategies to
   forego existent and emergent threats of apprehension resulting from
   participation in the practices of free access.

   Topics covered will include:

   --> Content access procurement
   --> Operational security during field deployment
   --> Watermark, metadata and content-protection identification and
   removal
   --> Content distribution


   Huh?
   Ever try to view a journal article only to slam into an extortionate
   paywall? Then you should stop by.

   Where?
   PSH (NAB) 314
   Goldsmiths, University of London
   https://www.gold.ac.uk/find-us/

   When?
   Date: Friday, 24 April 2015
   Time: 15.00-17.00

   Flyer:
   https://a.pomf.se/rafwpk.pdf
   https://a.pomf.se/eztizr.jpg​;

   Prof. Matthew Fuller
   Director of Centre for Cultural Studies
   Digital Culture Unit
   Centre for Cultural Studies
   Goldsmiths, University of London
   New Cross
   London SE14 6NW
   e: m.ful...@gold.ac.uk
   t: +44 (0)20 7919 7061
   w: http://www.goldsmiths.ac.uk/cultural-studies/staff/m-fuller.php
   t: @GoldsmithsCCS
   f: https://www.facebook.com/centreforculturalstudies​;


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PDF of "Fun and Software, Exploring Pleasure, Paradox and Pain in

[Matthew Fuller]

   A PDF of "Fun and Software, Exploring Pleasure, Paradox and Pain in
   Computing", edited by Olga Goriunova, which is otherwise
   presently priced only for libraries has been observed to be available
   in various book-sharing sites.

   Fun and Software

   Exploring Pleasure, Paradox and Pain in Computing

   Edited by Olga Goriunova

   Table of Contents

   Acknowledgements vi

   Introduction Olga Goriunova 1

   1 Technology, Logistics and Logic: Rethinking the Problem of Fun
   in Software Andrew Goffey 21

   2 Bend Sinister: Monstrosity and Normative Effect in
   Computational Practice Simon Yuill 41

   3 Always One Bit More, Computing and the Experience of
   Ambiguity Matthew Fuller 91

   4 Do Algorithms Have Fun? On Completion, Indeterminacy and Autonomy in
   Computation Luciana Parisi and M. Beatrice Fazi 109

   5 useR!: Aggression, Alterity and Unbound Affects in
   Statistical Programming Adrian Mackenzie 129

   6 Do (not) Repeat Yourself Michael Murtaugh 145

   7 Not Just for Fun Geoff Cox and Alex McLean 157

   8 Fun is a Battlefield: Software between Enjoyment and Obsession Wendy
   Hui Kyong Chun and Andrew Lison 175

   9 Monopoly and the Logic of Sensation in Spacewar! Christian
   Ulrik Andersen 197

   10 Human-computer Interaction, a Sci-fi Discipline?
   Brigitte Kaltenbacher 213

   11 A Fun Aesthetic and Art Annet Dekker 233

   12 Material Imagination: On the Avant-gardes, Time and Computation Olga
   Goriunova 253

   Notes on Contributors 275

   Index 279​

   ​


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Computational Culture, a journal of software studies Issue Four

[Matthew Fuller]

Computational Culture, a journal of software studies

Issue Four

We are very pleased to announce that issue four of Computational
Culture is now online

Computational Culture is an online open-access peer-reviewed
journal of inter-disciplinary enquiry into the nature of cultural
computational objects, practices, processes and structures.


http://www.computationalculture.net/


_Articles

Paul Dourish, NoSQL: The Shifting Materialities of Database
Technology

Irina Kaldrack and Theo R?hle, Divide and Share:
Taxonomies, Orders and Masses in Facebook's Open
Graph

Benjamin Grosser, What Do Metrics Want? How
Quantification Prescribes Social Interaction on
Facebook

Dennis Tenen and Maxwell Foxman, Book Piracy as Peer
Preservation

Alex Taylor, Jasmin Fisher, Byron Cook, Samin Ishtiaq,
Modelling Biology - working through (in-)stabilities and
frictions

_Comments

Geert Lovink, Reflections on the MP3 Format: Interview with Jonathan
Sterne

Mark Marino, Field Report for Critical Code Studies
2014

_Reviews

Michael Stevenson, A Review of Reverse Engineering Social
Media

Ana Gross, How Crucial is Rawness? A review
of "Raw Data" is an Oxymoron by Lisa Gitelman
(Ed.)

Annet Dekker, Re-collecting the Museum, a review
of Re-collection. Art, New Media, and Social
Memory

Eleni Ikoniadou, Algorithmic Thought: a
review of Contagious Architecture by Luciana
Parisi


http://www.computationalculture.net/


?


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Computational Culture 3

[Matthew Fuller]

Computational Culture 3

Issue Three of ?Computational Culture, a journal of software studies? is now 
online.

 http://www.computationalculture.net

Articles

Michael Castelle, ?Relational and Non-Relational Models in the Entextualization 
of Bureaucracy?

Evelyn Ruppert, ?Not just another database: the transactions that enact young 
offenders ?

Anne Helmond, ?The Algorithmization of the Hyperlink?

Taina Bucher, ?Objects of Intense Feeling: The Case of the Twitter API?



Reviews

Thor Magnusson, ?On Creativity and Calculation: Attempts at and Rejections of 
Formal Definitions of Creativity?

Harry Halpin, Review of ?Cypherpunks: Freedom and the Future of the Internet? 
and ?This Machine Kills Secrets: How WikiLeakers, Cypherpunks, and Hacktivists 
Aim to Free the World?s Information?

H?kan R?berg, ?Lost in a Maze of Code?

Alan F. Blackwell, ?Critical Codes ? from forkbomb to brainfuck?

Lone Koefoed Hansen, Review of ?Inventing the Medium. Principles of Interaction 
Design as a Cultural Practice?

http://www.computationalculture.net


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London CryptoFestival Tools and analysis for a post-PRISM internet

[Matthew Fuller]

London CryptoFestival
Tools and analysis for a post-PRISM internet

https://www.cryptoparty.in/london_cryptofestival

Saturday, November 30th
Doors open 10.30 / Start 11am sharp

New Academic Building
Goldsmiths, New Cross
London
Location: http://www.gold.ac.uk/find-us/

Free, all welcome

What happens to the internet after the Snowden revelations?
Do we just sit tight and let the most important cultural and economic force of 
the last two decades get turned into a giant surveillance honeytrap?  London 
CryptoFestival is the biggest public and academic manifestation in the UK after 
the spy-network has been exposed.  The unique day-long festival is aimed at 
showing paths beyond the logic of fear and coercion offered by the state on the 
one hand, and business models based on surveillance on the other.

London CryptoFestival brings together leading security engineers, computer 
scientists, civil rights groups, hackers, activists and artists to evaluate the 
current situation and to show ways forward.

Alongside this, three strands of hands-on workshops present user-friendly tools 
to increase security by encrypting email, web-use, chat and other data.

Speakers
Ross Anderson, University of Cambridge Computer 
Lab
Ian Brown, Open Rights Group, Oxford Internet 
Institute
George Danezis, UCL
Marianne Franklin, 
Goldsmiths, 
Internet Rights and Principles 
Coalition
Jo Glanville, PEN
Wendy Grossman, Open Rights Group
Annie Machon ex-MI5 whistleblower
Sm?ri McCarthy (@smarimc), International Modern 
Media Institute
Nick Pickles, Big Brother Watch

Workshops
Over twenty workshops will teach non-experts how to use advanced tools to 
support internet privacy, secure personal data, and to use the internet, mobile 
phones and computers without falling easy prey to spooks.  Workshops will 
include: Internet of Things; Tor (secure web-browsing); PGP (secure email); 
Metadata; TCPDump (analyzing network traffic); File encryption; Bitmessage 
(chat); Talk (chat); OTR (chat); Digital Double (app); Chokepoint Project; and 
more to be announced.  Bring your computer and start working with these tools.  
Workshops are suitable for all skill levels.

Art
IOCOSE ? present First Viewer Television
Orsolya Bajusz ? Swarming Talent Competition
Deckspace ? Community Access

Organised by
Digital Culture Unit, Centre for Cultural Studies, Goldsmiths, University of 
London:
http://www.gold.ac.uk/cultural-studies/ccsdigitalcultureunit/

Department of Computing, Goldsmiths, University of London:
http://www.gold.ac.uk/computing/

Contacts
Book a place online: https://londoncryptofestival.eventbrite.co.uk/
Twitter: @cryptofestival



Please circulate


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CFP: Culture of the Artificial symposium

[Matthew Fuller]

actice" proposed by Philip
Agre);

- Artificiality and simulation as modes of speculative culture;

-The cultural and political conditions of the pursuit of AI agendas in
the generalization of computational forms of life;

- Speculative possibilities for a theoretical and practical exploration
of what intelligence is or might be said to be in relation to the
computational turn in culture.


Submission and Publication Details

Submissions must be full papers and should be sent to:
 cultureoftheartificialATgmail.com


Text editor templates from a previous convention can be found at:

http://www.aisb.org.uk/convention/aisb08/download.html

We request that submitted papers are limited to 2000 words. We will
provide fast feedback on whether a paper is accepted or not. Each
accepted paper will receive at least two reviews. Selected papers will
be published in the general proceedings of the AISB Convention, with the
proviso that at least ONE author attends the symposium in order to
present the paper and participate in general symposium activities.

Papers successfully submitted and presented will be considered for
further development towards inclusion in a special issue of the online
open-access peer-review journal "Computational Culture, a journal of
software studies": http://www.computationalculture.net/


Important Dates

i.   Full paper submission deadline: 3 January 2014

ii.  Notification of acceptance/rejection decisions: 3 February 2014

iii. Final versions of accepted papers (Camera ready copy): 24 February
2014

iv. Convention: 1-4 April 2014 [confirmation of symposium dates tbc]


Additional Information

Please note that there will be separate proceedings for each symposium,
produced before the convention. Each delegate will receive a memory
stick containing the proceedings of all the symposia. In previous years
there have been awards for the best student paper, and limited student
bursaries. These details will be circulated as and when they become
available. Authors of a selection of the best papers will be invited to
submit an extended version of the work to a journal special issue.


Symposium Chairs

Matthew Fuller (Centre for Cultural Studies, Goldsmiths) and M. Beatrice
Fazi (Centre for Cultural Studies, Goldsmiths)


Organising Committee

M. Beatrice Fazi, Matthew Fuller & Luciana Parisi, Digital Culture Unit,
Centre for Cultural Studies, Goldsmiths, University of London

Computational Culture Editorial Group, Matthew Fuller (Goldsmiths), Olga
Goriunova (Warwick), Andrew Goffey (Nottingham), Graham Harwood
(Goldsmiths), Adrian Mackenzie (Lancaster).


Symposium Website

http://computationalculture.net/cfps-events



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CFP: Culture of the Artificial symposium

[Matthew Fuller]

esearch
programmes operating in a fully inter-disciplinary or post-disciplinary manner.

Topics of Interest

We welcome submissions from various fields of expertise and areas of
research related to the rationale of this event. Topics include, but are
definitely not limited to:

- Software Studies analyses of historical artificial intelligence and
  simulated behaviour artefacts;

- Critical and philosophical analyses of the legacy and achievements of
  Alan Turing in relation to culture;

- Developments in modes of collaboration and mutual problematisation
  between cultural theory and artificial intelligence and robotics (such
as for instance the "Critical Technical Practice" proposed by Philip
Agre);

- Artificiality and simulation as modes of speculative culture;

-The cultural and political conditions of the pursuit of AI agendas in
the generalization of computational forms of life;

- Speculative possibilities for a theoretical and practical exploration
  of what intelligence is or might be said to be in relation to the
computational turn in culture.

Submission and Publication Details

Submissions must be full papers and should be sent to:
cultureoftheartificialATgmail.com

Text editor templates from a previous convention can be found at:

http://www.aisb.org.uk/convention/aisb08/download.html

We request that submitted papers are limited to 2000 words. We will provide
fast feedback on whether a paper is accepted or not.  Each accepted paper will
receive at least two reviews. Selected papers will be published in the general
proceedings of the AISB Convention, with the proviso that at least ONE author
attends the symposium in order to present the paper and participate in general
symposium activities.

Papers successfully submitted and presented will be considered for further
development towards inclusion in a special issue of the online open-access
peer-review journal "Computational Culture, a journal of software studies":
http://www.computationalculture.net/

Important Dates

i. Full paper submission deadline: 3 January 2014
ii.Notification of acceptance/rejection decisions: 3 February 2014
iii.   Final versions of accepted papers (Camera ready copy): 24 February 2014
iv.Convention: 1-4 April 2014 [confirmation of symposium dates tbc]

Additional Information

Please note that there will be separate proceedings for each symposium,
produced before the convention. Each delegate will receive a memory
stick containing the proceedings of all the symposia. In previous years
there have been awards for the best student paper, and limited student
bursaries. These details will be circulated as and when they become
available. Authors of a selection of the best papers will be invited to
submit an extended version of the work to a journal special issue.

Symposium Chairs
Matthew Fuller and M. Beatrice Fazi (Centre for Cultural Studies, Goldsmiths)

Organising Committee

M. Beatrice Fazi, Matthew Fuller & Luciana Parisi, Digital Culture Unit,
Centre for Cultural Studies, Goldsmiths, University of London

Computational Culture Editorial Group, Matthew Fuller (Goldsmiths), Olga

Goriunova (Warwick), Andrew Goffey (Nottingham), Graham Harwood
(Goldsmiths), Adrian Mackenzie (Lancaster).

Symposium Website

http://computationalculture.net/cfps-events


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Amodern 2: Network Archaeology

[Matthew Fuller]

Announcing the launch of Amodern 2: Network Archaeology
A special issue guest-edited by cris cheek, Braxton Soderman and Nicole 
Starosielski

http://amodern.net

Amodern 2: Network Archaeology

Editorial
Nicole Starosielski, Braxton Soderman, cris cheek

"Circulating Concepts: Networks and Media Archaeology"
an interview with Jussi Parikka, by Braxton Soderman and Nicole Starosielski

"Re-engaging the Humanities"
an interview with Alan Liu, by Scott Pound

"Pentameters toward the Dissoloution of certain Vectoralist Relations"
John Cayley

"The Information Defense Industry and the Culture of Networks"
Adrian Johns

"Terms of Reference & Vectoralist Transgressions: Situating Certain Literary 
Transactions over Networked Services"
John Cayley

"Last In, First Out: Network Archaeology of/as the Stack"
Rory Solomon

"On Lists and Networks: An Archaeology of Form"
Liam Young

"Holding Electronic Networks by the Wrong End"
Lisa Gitelman

"Infrastructure and Intermediality: Network Archaeology at Gaumont's Cit? Elg?"
Brian Jacobsen

"Connections Concealed: Signaling (Racial) Excess from the Historic Movie 
Palace-Turned-Church"
Veronica Paredes

"Ear to the Wire: Listening to Historic Urban Infrastructures"
Shannon Mattern

"Electric Cinema, Pylon Poetry"
James Purdon

"Henry Charles Beck, Material Culture and the London Tube Map of 1933"
Sebastian Gie?mann

"Picturing Networks: Railroads and Photographs"
Brooke Belisle

"Dematerialized Infrastructures: On the Ethereal Origins of Local Area Networks"
Peter Schaefer

"Divining the Network with the Forked Twig: An Archaeological Approach to 
Locative Media"
Alex Ingersoll

"Of Other Networks: Closed-World and Green-World Networks in the Work of John 
C. Lilly"
John Shiga

"Half-Inch Revolution: The Guerrilla Video Tape Network"
Kris Paulsen

"Transfiguring the Newspaper: From Paper to Microfilm to Database"
Sandra Gabriele

"A Network Archaeology of Unauthorized Comic Book Scans"
Darren Wershler, Kalervo Sinervo, Shannon Tien



*

AMODERN
---

http://amodern.net

AMODERN is a peer-reviewed, open access scholarly journal devoted to
the study of media, culture, and poetics. Its purpose is to provide a
forum for interdisciplinary conversations about the role of media and
technology in contemporary cultural practices. We are particularly
interested in those topics that normally escape scrutiny, or are
ignored or excluded for whatever reason.

The journal is distinguished by its focus on poetics as a scholarly
practice, with particular emphasis on the unruly ways that people
deploy media and technology behind, beneath, and despite their
instrumental functions. Against the grain of determinism, we hope to
attract work that bears witness to media as complex assemblages of
institutions, subjects, bodies, objects, and discourses.

Please send all submissions and queries to:
submissi...@amodern.net


Founding Editors: Scott Pound and Darren Wershler
Managing Editor: Michael Nardone


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Feral Trade's Packet Network

[Matthew Fuller]

Feral Trade's Packet Network

Kate Rich is a Bristol based artist who for ten years has been running
Feral Trade (feraltrade.org) a global trading network working with
people's incidental carrying power. Social networks here provide, not
sets of spindly lines and nodes as graphs for the extraction of value,
but a means of hefting foodstuffs in suitcases, rucksacks and bags as
people travel.  Feral trade is currently a means of circulating coffee,
blue corn, agave syrup, mescal, chocolate, olive oil and the syrup with
which to produce 'Cube Cola', an open source cola devised for the cube
cinema. The fascinating Waybills of Feral Trade transported goods
provide a log of the transit of each object, mixing logistical
information with reminiscences, photos and personal data, making another
map of infrastructures, informal trade and data-structures as they move
through idiosyncratic channels around the world.

(This interview was carried out by email in mid-2013 by Silvia Mollichi
and Matthew Fuller.)

SM: The Feral Trade website mentions its use of the "surplus potential
of social, cultural and data networks for the distribution of goods". Is
it possible to relate this surplus or excess to the slowed-down rhythm
and non-linear routes your traded items transit through? Would you say
that your business re-defines questions of efficiency?

KR: Yes I think so. Or replaces one idea of efficiency with another one.
Right now I am shipping 6 bags of green tea from Fujian province to MoMA
in New York, via around 5 other institutions and private homes in China,
UK and USA, which are acting as depots or transit points. Another pack
of tea arrived from India to my flat in Bristol and then toured the Lake
District before passing back through my flat & departing for Heathrow
Airport, where it had touched down from India weeks before, to fly to
New York in someone else's baggage. Both these shipments were actually
super-efficient. The products got delivered to their exact destinations,
they were enjoying not just frictionless but fruitful passage,
hitchhiking on existing travel or at the most diverting their couriers a
couple of blocks, so it's efficiency along completely different lines
than streamlined or containerised cargo. The loops, which occur when an
item passes through the same space twice can actually enhance the
product's value in terms of its CV.

SM: A widespread network of relations, especially among art and business
people, is what makes Feral Trade possible. Yet, your Internet database
mentions the people participating in the project, its essential human
component  (the chain of sender, receiver and courier/s), mostly just by
name. The relations amongst them, or their interests, this key layer of
the  infrastructure, are often left to the intuition and conjecture
based on brief  couriers" reports. Could we say that the main focus is
kept on the transiting object and its route? Is there a specific reason
for this, other than perhaps privacy?

KR: Feral Trade is essentially not web 2.0 - it anyway preceded facebook
and I would suggest presents a radically different vision of what real
social networks are like. The database is set up specifically to not
harvest social goods. So if you search for transactions by agent you
could see all shipments that that particular individual has been
involved in, but you would have to then draw your own conclusions. In
some ways it's a cynical database because it encourages the futility of
trying to capture social networks, over and above any notion of
individual privacy.

The focus of the project is actually the load-bearing capacity of the
network - how can it handle materials? - along with an interest in the
agency of things, which effectively hands off subjectivity to the
travelling grocery object. So the product gets the full joined-up
biography, the agency of the couriers comes out through only partial
narratives, chopped up.

SM: Couriers do not necessarily know each other or you directly and
Feral Trade constitutes a chance to become part of a permanently
expanding network.  What"s  interesting though, is the contingent nature
of the network itself.  During their brief meetings, couriers get to
know each other while swapping their  roles, shifting from the receiver
of the object to its giver. Yet, the only thing they have in common
might be exactly the transiting object, positioned in between the two of
them. Are the dynamics of these odd encounters something you are
interested in?

KR: The network is more like permanently drifting than expanding.
Couriers come and go, some take on frequent and huge loads, others are
intermittent, but the network has settled in at its own scale. It flies
in the face of for example facebook's proposition that social networks
can just scale up indefinitely.

I thought about it recently as a normal courier system, like DHL, but
without any actual infrastructure. So no

Don't Give_Me_the_Numbers - an_interview_with_Ben_Grosser_about_Facebook_Demetricator

[Matthew Fuller]

Don't Give Me the Numbers - an interview with Ben Grosser about Facebook
Demetricator.


Matthew Fuller



Ben Grosser is an artist, composer, and programmer based in
Urbana-Champaign, Illinois. His work is highly attuned to the role of
computation in changing and producing aesthetics, knowledge and social
formations and much of it is available to view online at
http://bengrosser.com/.

Recently, Ben made a new piece of software available. Facebook
Demetricator (http://bengrosser.com/projects/facebook-demetricator/) is a
tool for adapting the social network's interface so that the numerical data
it foregrounds is removed. No longer is the focus on how many friends one
has or how many comments they've gotten, but on who those friends are and
what they've written. The following interview took place by email in
September 2012.


-

MF: Facebook uses numbers as a key part of the information provided on its
interface. Things, or what are there rendered as things, such as likes,
friends, comments waiting, events, are all numbered as are the relation of
several other kinds of things to time. Facebook Demetricator suggests that
Facebook users might step away from enumeration as a way of understanding
the service. What role, for you, does the number play in Facebook, and
what does the Demetricator propose?

BG: As a regular user of Facebook I continually find myself being enticed
by these numbers. How many friends do I have? How much do people like my
status? I focus on these quantifications, watching for the counts of
responses rather than the responses themselves, or waiting for numbers of
friend requests to appear rather than looking for meaningful connections.
In other words, these numbers lead me to evaluate my participation within
the system from a metricated viewpoint.

What's going on here is that these quantifications of social connection
play right into my (capitalism-inspired) innate desire for more. This
isn't surprising as we're living in a time when our collective obsession
with metrics plays out as an insatiable desire to make every number go
higher. How much money did I earn? How many choices do I have? Perhaps
the most destructive example of this is the recent financial crisis, when a
constant desire for more led the global economy into financial ruin.

Bringing this back to Facebook, I find myself asking questions about how it
affects user behavior. Would we add as many friends if we weren't
constantly presented with a running total and told that adding another is
"+1"? Would we write as many status messages if Facebook didn't reduce its
responses (and their authors) to an aggregate value? In other words, the
site's relentless focus on quantity leads me to continually measure the
value of my social connections within metric terms.

In response, Facebook Demetricator invites the site's users to try the
system without these things, to see how their experience is changed by
their absence, to enable a network society that isn't dependent on
quantification. Who are my friends? How do they think? What have they
said?

Along the way Demetricator explores how the designs of software prescribe
certain behaviors, and questions the motivations behind those designs.
What purpose does this enumeration serve for a system (and a corporation)
that depends on its user's continued free labor to produce the information
that fills its databases? Where does it lead when quantity, not quality is
foremost?

MF: Can you tell us now what Facebook Demetricator essentially does and
how?

BG: Most simply, Facebook Demetricator changes how Facebook looks to its
users by hiding all the metrics within the interface. For example, if the
text under someone's photo says 'You and 4 other people like this'
Demetricator will change it to 'You and other people like this'. Under an
ad, '23,413 people like this' becomes 'people like this'. '8 mutual
friends' becomes 'mutual friends'. The user can still click on a link and
count up their mutual friends if they care about reducing them to a single
count, but under the influence of Demetricator that foregrounded
quantification is no longer visible. These removals happen everywhere: on
the news feed, the profile, the events page, within pop-ups, etc. Users
can toggle the demetrication, turning it on or off when desired. Its
default state is on (numbers hidden).

To make this possible, Demetricator is software that runs within the web
browser, constantly watching Facebook when it's loaded and removing the
metrics wherever they occur. This is true not only of those counts that
show up on the user's first visit, but also of anything that gets
dynamically inserted into the interface over time. The demetrication is
not a brute-force removal of all numbers within the site, 

July 5th Moving Forest workshop

[Matthew Fuller]

MOVING FOREST CODA - One day Workshop 5th July 2012
12-5pm Chelsea College of Art and Design, John Islip Street, London

What are the aesthetics of the unitised/securitised/database city, one 
scorched by thick steams of capital, excitation and control? What forms of 
timing, synchronisation, disruption and commune are possible, dead, or 
making themselves happen? What kinds of signals and distribution can start 
other forms of composition? What lines do the arrows that fill the air 
describe, how does the forest move?
Moving Forest works with a number of scales to force something chaotic, 
doomed and tender into being, but also proposes new virulent forms: 
durational performance frameworks; distributed urban aesthetics; full 
improvisation; software aesthetics; Following Kurosawa's reworking and 
invoking of Macbeth, what form of tragedy is adequate to the present - a 
moment when we see not just the wreckage of the flawed hero, as a form of 
learning, but entire systems tanking and contorting and breaking? What are 
the ethical and aesthetic consequences and what comes into being?
Taking Moving Forest as a case study, the conference gathers together 
thinkers, artists, programmers, schemers, strategists to provide a context 
for unravelling complex innovative and challenging performance works.


12.00 doors open - Triangle Space, CCAD

12.40pm - Opening with David Garcia & Shu Lea Cheang

1pm - how can a forest move?
Ambivalent affordances and interests; practical experiments in disruptive 
infrastructures; de facto commons; cryptophilia; unbankable data; witches 
who cleave time

chair: Matthew Fuller
Graham Harwood, YoHA
Eleni Ikoniadou, Arts and Social Sciences, Kingston University
John Jordan, The laboratory of insurrectionary imagination
Rachel Baker, irational.org

3.30pm - The tragic in the present, (in which futures are deleted)
tragedy; minor politics / non-normative political art; anti-representation; 
human strike; the self-expression of control

chair: Josephine Berry-Slater
John Cunningham, writer and participant in Full Unemployment.
Jesse Darling, Brave/New/Whatever
Brian Ashton, writer and activist
Nick Thoburn, School of Social Science, Manchester University
Closing movement with Robin Bale


Organised by
Take 2030
Centre for Cultural Studies, Goldsmiths, University of London
Chelsea College of Art and Design
Mute
Full Unemployment Cinema


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Galloway: 10 Theses on the Digital

[Matthew Fuller]

“10 Theses on the Digital”
Alexander R. Galloway

5pm, Monday 14th May
Room LG02
New Academic Building
Goldsmiths, University of London

Free, All Welcome

Despite being the object of much discussion these days, the digital does 
not often appear in the writings of philosophers, except perhaps when it 
arrives unwittingly under the aegis of another name. The world of business 
consultancy has accepted it, as has the popular and folk culture, consumer 
society, telecommunications, medicine, the arts, and of course the spheres 
of industrial engineering and information processing (where it plays a 
special role). But is there an ontology of the digital, or even a 
philosophy of it? The goal of this project is not so much to answer such 
questions, but to draw up a map for what is necessary to answer them, 
something like a prolegomenon for future writing on digitality and 
philosophy.


What is the digital exactly? The digital means the one dividing into two. 
Its heart lies in metaphysics, and adjacent philosophical systems, most 
importantly dialectics. By comparison, the analogue means the two coming 
together as one. It is found in theories of immanence: either the immanence 
of the total plane of being, or the immanence of the individual person or 
object. Either immanence in its infinity, or immanence in its finitude.


The goal, then, is not so much to produce a “philosophy of the digital” 
or even a “digitization of philosophy.” Rather we will explore how 
digitality and philosophy come together, as two modal conditions. They 
exist both in parallel as they diverge and differentiate themselves, but 
also in series as they merge and intermediate. So this project will, if it 
is successful, pay attention to the conceptual requirements of the digital 
(and by contrast the analogue) and the strictures and affordances it grants 
to philosophy.


For directions: http://www.gold.ac.uk/find-us/

Organised by Centre for Cultural Studies 
http://www.gold.ac.uk/cultural-studies/
and the Department of Media and Communications 
http://www.gold.ac.uk/media-communications/



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CFP: The Lived Logics of Database Machinery

[Matthew Fuller]

The Lived Logics of Database Machinery
A one-day workshop organised by Computational Culture 
(http://www.computationalculture.net/)


Date: Thursday 28th June
Location: Central London

With many of the most significant changes in the organisation and 
distribution of knowledge, practices of ordering, forms of communication 
and modes of governance taking shape around it, the database has remained 
surprisingly recalcitrant to anything other than technical forms of 
analysis. Its ostensibly neutral status as a technology has
allowed it to play a significant - yet largely overlooked - role in 
modelling of populations and configuring practices, from organisational 
labour through knowledge production to art.


The importance of the database for gathering and analysing information has 
been a theme of many studies (especially those relating to surveillance) 
but the specific agency of the database as an active mediator in its own 
right, as an actor in constructing, organising and modifying social 
relations is less well understood.


A one-day workshop, organised by Computational Culture seeks to rectify 
this state of affairs. We are looking for proposals for papers, 
interventions, poster presentations and critical accounts of practical 
projects that address the theme of the social, cultural and political 
logics of database technologies.


Proposals should aim to address the intersection of the technical qualities 
of databases and their management systems with social or cultural relations 
and the critical questions these raise. We are particularly interested in 
work that addresses the ways in which entity-relations models, or 
structures of data-atomisation, become active logics in the construction of 
the world.  Historical contributions that tease out the connections 
between the database 'condition' and antecedent technical and theoretical 
objects (from indexes and archives to set theory), or which develop 
critical accounts of transparency are also particularly welcome.


The focus of the workshop on the lived social dynamics and political logics 
of database technologies is envisaged as a means of opening up paths of 
enquiry and addressing questions that typically get lost between the 
‘social’ and the ‘technological’:

•   How do the ordering of views, permissions structures, the normalisation
of data, and other characteristic forms of databases contribute to the
generation of forms subjectivity and of culture?
•   What impact does the need to manage terabytes of data have on knowledge
production, and how can the normative assumptions embedded in uses of data
and database technologies be challenged or counter-effectuated?
•   What conceptual frameworks do we need to get a hold on the operational
logics of the database and the immanence of social categorization to
relational algebras?
•	Is there a workable politics available for exploring strategies of data 
management, the commonalities and differences of practices in different 
settings - from genome sequence archiving through supply chain management 
to medical records and cultural history?


Abstracts of around 500 words should be sent to 
editor...@computationalculture.net  by March 9th



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Computational Culture: Double Book Launch and Launch of Computational Culture, a journal of software studies

[Matthew Fuller]

 Code, software and society 
and Transductions, bodies and machines at speed and an editor of 
Computational Culture.




Presented by the Centre for Cultural Studies, Goldsmiths, University of 
London

http://www.gold.ac.uk/cultural-studies/
_________
Dr. Matthew Fuller
David Gee Reader in Digital Media

Centre for Cultural Studies
Goldsmiths College
University of London
New Cross
London SE14 6NW

e: m.ful...@gold.ac.uk
t: +44 (0)20 7919 7206
w: http://www.goldsmiths.ac.uk/cultural-studies/staff/m-fuller.php



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