CRITIQUE SUMMARY — Wk 11 Studio Session

14/10/2020

Discussing documentation with Andrew

• Everything doesn't need to be in it! Remember what Anne said back in Wk 1, that this will probably be bigger than a 1 year exploration, in a honours project.
   
• Documentation can either: work around a finished outcome that is completely playable, or is the thing that gets people to understand the concept, research, design processes and show a user journey around these spaces. 
  
  If the latter, polish up what you can in the website, and leave it. Document it as a final piece e.g. screenrecord and embed into documentation
  
  
• Experiments from semester 1 would be really good to put in, gives more context, sense and scope of this concept-world. And in different ways than you've focused on this semester. Also contextualises your work as a series of experiments, that don't necessarily have to be totally polished, playable experiences — especially the theatre. More about the world itself — as spaces to explore, move through, get lost in, be immersed. 
  
  Experiments that place you in the role of the performer, observer, voyeur. And think about the audience in those different roles, how their identity and lived experience comes into their reading of it, their knowledge/familiarity with these contexts and cultural references. 'Is the viewer important or is it more about the position you put them in, and their relationship to this space and the questions they ask about it?' Which doesn't need to be answered fully, or at all, but definitely something to talk to. 
  
  It is a playful and experimental space — trying to speculate around the boundaries / definitions / experience of identity. Something that we have lost the ability/freedom to do a bit, in our modern capitalist society ??? !? ! And everything here is looking at breaking from this rigidity. 
  
  
• Website form — keep it simple, should be something you continue to work with and on after honours. Templates are great! 
  
  
• Audience — going into industry, but with that academic grounding. Do a hybrid to show design, research and conceptual skills. Showing: contextual framework, material experiments and experiment outcomes, and demonstrate the trajectory through this. 
  
  Showing your trajectory through complex questions, around identity, with process and experiments as a response to these questions? 
  
  
• Also a matter now of curating this trajectory. What's in and what's OUT!
  
  
• Documenting research: yes. Polish it out of your dissertation. You do need this textual communication of the theory and ideas, can't communicate that purely through image. 

• Project feedback — tutorial aspect:
• Something like holding your hands up is about the least intuitive thing to do to a computer, could do this with pop ups and explainers, or have a separate scene as a guide into the interactions/rules/world
  
  Hands interaction — instruction should be fairly explicit. Don't need to tell them what will happen, but yes, like 'put your hands up' 

CRITIQUE

• I guess I've figured out a form! RIP zine :( but honestly why give myself more to worry about. 
  
  
• I think I need to map this out first. Go through what I've done this year, gather up the research and experiments and get a sense of this trajectory. Get a sense of how much I need to do. How to communicate the tone, materiality of the project. How I can make this project SING, be SHAREABLE, be MEMEABLE. How the research context can be communicated and structured. How everything can be structured. What bits of copy I need to have. And then how that might sit within a website format. 
  
  Then I have a better sense of how to use my time, and what bits of the theatre I can polish/when I need to do it to have the screen recordings for documentation. 

CRITIQUE SUMMARY — Wk 6 Studio Session

2/09/2020 — Group Studio

Setup pseudo code
First motion tracking exp
Visual style refining
Cyborg-witch sound experimentation

Critique

• Motion tracking — acupuncture reference interesting, could play with energy-cyborg electricity/circuitry parallels. E.g. change the form/image based on which side of the screen you're on etc. Playing with the intersection through the visuals and visual/conceptual references.
  
  Loading textures onto the models, like wrapping paper. Good place to start, works with established aesthetic e.g. loading transparent images etc. 
  
  Play with props — can save out google poly models as obj files. 

• Voices — working well, the cyborg-digital, Macbeth witches, female voice elements are all coming through and are balanced. 

• Code stuff — inviting interaction — from setup — flashing cursor, or something else. Webcam — try making a first screen where the webcam is called and ready to go, so you don't get the delay. 
  
  Images cutoff — look into the clipping plane on camera, might also be the transparency on top of each other? 
  
  Type glitch — not certain what's causing it. Send through code file. 
  
  Sound — try switches and booleans instead of current time? Also try different browsers for current time. 

• Username — If you build it in (spoken/text), use it throughout the experience. Refer to the user as such. Good way to bring people further into the experience/world. 
  
  Adrian — likes the idea of usernames. Create your own? Random generate a combination from a list of words. Agency of the user — creating their own, or being "assigned" one. Giving a name, and true names, hold power and a lot of significance, especially in different cultures and spiritual circles. What are you playing with here and how might it inform the experience/discourse around intersections. Definitely makes the experience more personalised, and allows you to more fully occupy the space. 
  
  True Names — cyberpunk novella by Vernor Vinge. Keeping your true name hidden in cyberspace. Have a look at it. 

• Fonts — trickster maybe too much. Droulers is working well!

• Visuals — type legibility is not great, experiment with the colours and contrast. 

• Speech (bubble) — Working better than the banner, more visible. Harks back to 90s chat sites and interfaces e.g. The Palace. Could be a combination — different types of information could be brought in through the speech bubble, or the running banners. 

• Audience — 2 audiences — primary target audience of project and audience of the documentation. The 2nd will consider the first audience, and assume that perspective when looking at the work. 
  
  Andrew — understood my project audience to be people with an understanding of and personal identification with intersectionality — women and gender diverse folx, people of colour, LGBTQ+ people, and combinations of these identities, who I am inviting into this space. The audience from the documentation perspective would be those looking at my portfolio, in the design research space, etc. Perceived that I was never sure if I was going to open it up to a wider audience? It is hard to navigate and make sense of these multiple audiences, that's normal.
  
  Can maintain that the output isn't for a general audience, but one that you're defining. Then think through how you're defining your target audience to the general audience of the project as a piece / process of design. 
  
  Adrian — framing the experience with an invitation to start off with is a good way to approach it. The username idea is a good way to open it up even further, as a playful, accessible touchpoint to the world that you're about to enter. Imagines that some people might be uncomfortable and uncertain about the subject matter / in the space, and that is a fun way in. Also opportunities to define these intersections further(?) — incorporate Chinese characters/astrology references, etc. as added elements of representation. 

Critique of Critique

• SO much to unpack here, think on, work through. Audience first. This is really helpful. Andrew's comments are making it more clear while also making me feel better about struggling to define who this is for, who I want it to be for. I think creating it for an intersectional audience, or those who have an understanding of it / identify with those identity groups, makes sense. When I think about it and try to remove the confusion, I am materialising an intersectional space (my own) and building performativity into it so that the process of reimagining and becoming is visible. So that possibilities and narratives outside of what has been established by white, male, heteronormative bodies are visible. I can see someone within that interacting with this space, but that's kind of not the point? 
  
  I think there's more power in people of intersectionality, those who embody intersectional perspectives, to have some (some more than others) representation and potentially, build upon this framework to explore this within themselves. The framework/process of cyborg-witch becoming can be transposed for anyone (and significantly, perhaps less potent), but the point is to capitalise on the inherent "deviance" of the cyborg and the witch, and "deviant" gender/race/sexuality — as a metaphor, as a generative strategy for a viral deviance, survival, reimagining. So why bother to speak to everyone? What's the point? 
  
  My main concern was more about what it meant for people outside those identities and communities to occupy space in a project that is exploring representation, through performativity, through inserting the audience into the project. And it's not like they're expressly choosing to do so. The project puts you in that position. While it helps to understand the distinction between the output's target audience and the audience of the documentation, and how the latter might try to experience it from the perspective of the former, the performative element blurs that. 
  
  I think this is where the usernames can be really helpful in stripping some of these layers back. Blurring those distinctions in a way that is playful and helpful? I'm not sure which route I would go with — self/random generated names, maybe I can find a way to test this.

• On the motion tracking, I'm eager to get this underway. I like how Adrian was conceptualising the link between qi and electricity, acupuncture charts and circuitry. I think the acupuncture also taps into the idea of the witch as a healer, with knowledge of the body — ideas that are present across different cultures. Would be cool to explore this through 3D objects and texture mapping, or the linework like Navira suggested. I don't know if I'm super excited by this, but I think it's definitely worth testing. On texture mapping though, I'd be keen to get back to image-making for a bit to generate more material to work with/import in as the backdrops/play with on top of 3D objects. 
  
  Also not forgetting that the suggestion last week was to build the interaction around gesture. Which I think is really compelling, especially in a performative context, and with hands! Should look further into hand tracking projects and see if there's anything I can use. And also writing and thinking about gesture in a queer context. 
  
  I think the idea of props is really interesting. I hadn't thought about it, but there seem to be more possibilities — incense, teapots, vases, bamboo, etc. just having a look at what's there on google poly. 

• I agree with Andrew on the speech bubble. I think it suits the experience and visuals, and is a fun kitsch element. I think doing some thumbnails and mapping would be helpful now? To start bringing in details like the speech bubble, and work out other bits of communication, how they're presented and how they are consistent throughout. Also good on another level to work through the code on paper. Start researching how you might link pages/files together 

• Setup page — keep going with recording and editing the voice. Test the username input/generation in code. Test it as an experiment maybe? Build in the interaction please !!!!!!! !!

ACTION LIST

• Get stuck into the motion tracking — understanding the code. Researching gesture, hand tracking, concept/references. (image making for 3D objects?)
• Usernames — map out process. Develop method to test.
• Make overview map of project — conceptual, thumbnail, audience/user. 
  
• SO MUCH 2 DO !! :-)

CRITIQUE SUMMARY — Wk 5 mixed group critique

 Mike

• Narrative really strong, both cyborg-witch layers...textures are coming through. The speaking of the comment/poem is setting it up really well.
• Didn't feel inclined to read the 'script' out, didn't realise that was the aim. How could you encourage this, invite that sense of performance and play?  
• Representing intersections — reads queerness into the setup, not any references to Chinese culture. 
  
  Is this a space personal to you, that you want other people to experience?  
• Yes, partly but also I want build a process of cyborg-witch becoming so that the audience feels more open to exploring/occupying different possibilities of their own body/identity, whatever that might look like for them.
• Thinks I'm on the right track!

Jacqueline Gothe

• Might be a problem with bandwith? Device memory? — Not working, or is really slow to work on other people's computers. 
• The webcam, seeing yourself there is really exciting, a motion capture based interaction on top of that would be very cool
• Setup is working, communicating really well. The cyborg-witch materiality is definitely coming across. The play on words e.g. 'parse'/pass is super effective
• Conceptually strong, keep it that way so that it contextualises the experiments seamlessly. 
• Visually it is working, especially if you get the live feed to work. In terms of the stage setup, there's a bit of confusion. The imagery is in the right space content-wise, but it seems unresolved — the weird cutoffs at the corners, transparency of the shrine, the legibility of the ouija board etc.? Could be intentional but make sure it's your choice, not just throwaway details. Could play with the clarity and not-clarity of the imagery.... what the forms are? (??)
• Visually evocative of the 60s — the forms... also 90s with early net art, and degradation of the image. 
• Using 'incantation' deliberately, to frame speech, and thus, the speaker (user) as a witch, in this context? interesting approach..? Might be established first in the setup space — get them to speak along with it? Be more explicit in how you are constructing the user as a performer(?) in the theatre. 
• The camera feed could be really key in affording speech — seeing yourself there
  

Critique of critique

• I think the cyborg-witch materiality, and ontology is really coming through, I was not concerned about that so much but it's good to see that the conceptual groundwork is really strong. 

• The positive reaction to the webcam feed was surprising. I haven't thought that much about it, but I should be. How might I make it more embedded in the scene and look more deliberate?
  
  I think Jacqueline's points about the visual style are important to keep in mind. More research into theatre spaces and setups would be good here to, again, make sure these choices are deliberate. Also to work out why the images are getting cut off, and if I should fix that or work the imagery around it. To experiment and iterate, be a little looser with the "template"
  
  
• Mike's questions about the space and the audience are really important, and I'm struggling to make sense of who this is for, who it isn't, and how I design to that. Who gets to play on the stage. I think the interactions are the most compelling aspect of this, being able to play and see yourself occupying / embodying a cyborg-witch way of being. But what does it mean when a white man (?) "stands" on that stage, and speaks those words? Because I can set out to make this for a really specific audience who occupy similar intersections to me, but other people are going to enter it, and realistically, more people who are not LGBT+/Chinese/Chinese-Australian/women are going to experience it than not. 
  
  Gender/race/sexual identity aside, I think it is for everyone who has access to the internet, and a webcam and microphone. I'm not acknowledging all identity categories e.g. able-bodiedness/disability but should I so that it's not ignored? 
  
  I don't know if this, as the audience is too broad? I don't know how to reconcile the differences in identity and representation, but then asking the audience/putting them in a position of occupying a space that isn't theirs. Doing a project about representation but having, potentially, other people occupying the space. 

Action list:

• iterate ways to get people to speak
• user map the experience out
• start thinking/researching visual styles/precedents to make sure the design is where you want it to be. 

CRITIQUE SUMMARY — Wk 5 Studio

26/08/2020

Andrew:

• Think of the theatre as a space of play. And WORK WITH YOUR EXPERIMENTS IN THE SAME WAY. Really use the theatre metaphor as a device, interactions --> scenes, stage directions, etc. It's the central idea, so build it into everything. And especially the BODY in the THEATRE.
• More effective and interesting to explore aspects of identity together, don't separate them otherwise it becomes reductive and not . 
• Possibly too big as it is in this map, looking at doing two scenes instead of 4. But depends on how much depth you build into each, could run experiments in all of them. 
• Fourth audience input space could be brought in to the other spaces. (?)
• The structuring of the experience — also about experimenting, give yourself lots of room for that, especially at this stage. You've BEEN doing this so far, just keep making and testing
• The 2nd stage — exploring queerness, the body/movement idea I had vaguely put down is interesting in the potential reference and use of gesture in spellwork, which also does have queer significance. (RESEARCH THIS) Would be great to try motion capture through ML5 (they have good documentation/how-tos), poseNet(). 
• Documentation — again, keeping up with critical framework and documentation. Could be a more traditional website, or other process document e.g. a ZINE? (!) speaks back to this space and research nicely? For now, collect and continue the documentation process. 
• Interaction in the setup. Start building this in sooner rather than later. Especially to test! How people react and navigate the experience. Definitely put them up online. 

Adrian:

• Look into Adobe Audition for sound experimenting? Best to build it into the audio file instead of applying effects through the code, in the browser. 
• Questions around audience — user mapping is really helpful! Make personas based on all potential audiences and map out their navigation of the experience. 

Zoe:

• Crucial to be immersed into the making and process at this point in time. Come PREPARED for studio/feedback sessions, they are really valuable so set them up so you can get the best feedback. 
• Use the slack group! Post stuff up, give each other feedback throughout the week. 

Critique of critique

• The motion capture/gestural interaction is very cool. I think that's what I was imagining without fully realising it/articulating it? I think looking into that technically and doing the research around gesture will go a long way in rounding out this project; getting in these touchpoints and experiences that I want to speak to. 

• I agree that I should focus on this and the poetry scene, I think I was a bit lost last week and panicked about it — I don't really want to do a another half-baked interaction around women and coding/weaving. In terms of another interaction that is more dependent on audience input, I like it as an idea but I'm not sure how that might work — what actually happens, what is the input, what is the interaction? And I think probably dependent on time.

• This was really helpful, I feel less panicked about what I don't know/have yet. Documentation doesn't need to be a pressing concern right now, just continue with the experiments but confining it for now to 2 scenes and the entry setup gives you really good boundaries to work within. 

ACTION LIST

• Research into gesture — queer theory, spell/code work. 
• Put stuff on slack — new iteration of poetry scene, setup code.
• Sketch out gesture interaction/stage. Gather references — hands? etc.
• USER MAPPING for different audiences — who gets to play on this stage?

CRITIQUE SUMMARY — Week 4

19/8/20 — Wednesday group critique

Andrew:

• The typeset code poem is referencing William Blake — 18th Century English poet/painter/printmaker. Religious/mystical tones and themes. 
• Voice experiment — evocative of witches from Macbeth, peripheral power and omniscient knowing. Taps into the historical knowledge of the witch as a speaker. 
• Navigate the poetry through archetypes/characters e.g. looking at the major arcana and picking 3 "voices" to explore and represent a different facet of this (your) intersection. 
• Also consider my voice(?) / the voice of the narrator, in the theatre space but also in the commenting and setup of the code
• Github is good because it allows you to update and see results pretty quickly. 
• Not knowing the conventions of web design is probably good, has a retro feel before we settled into this idea of what a website is now. \
• Sound — more interesting to play with the sound library in p5, rather than editing them together in audacity — the code/performers as live mixers, another generative process. 

Adrian:

• Would be interesting to play with the musicality more... draw upon mystical figures and knowledge — three muses from greek mythology, the three faced goddess in druidic stories / triple deities across many cultures. How might I add cyborg elements through sound, and the layering of it? 
• With poems/content, think about bringing characters into direct the narrative and interaction. 

Navira:

• Content: the intersection of incantation-cyborg-magic is coming through, but play with the metaphors and word choice more. Complexify!

CRITIQUE of CRITIQUE

• It was really cool doing the experiment, especially the effect that sound-based work can have, but I'm not sure if I want to kind of basically do sound design? 
• Having characters in mind to weave together the poetry/intersectionality/an overarching narrative makes a lot of sense, I'd be keen to start on that especially as everything feels really piecey at the moment. Would also help me lot at the poetry/approach from a perspective that is less determined by what I think is good/bad, therefore hopefully less pressure and I can actually make good progress with it. 
• I think it's worth exploring p5 sound more to figure out what's possible, also I will need to troubleshoot even just this current experiment to get it to work fully. 

ACTION LIST

• Look at — research — potential archetypes
• Do a deep dive into p5 sound
• Don't forget about documentation, do those exercises and look for precedents. 
• Map out experience, have outline for Wednesday. 

CRITIQUE SUMMARY — Task 1 Pitch

12/8/20

Anne Burdick, Ali Chalmers, Andrew Burrell

PRESENTATION SUMMARY

• Pitching a Cyborg Witch Theatre — code space-stage for a cyborg-witch becoming
• Parts — creative code, code 'casting', generative poetry, image-making
• Asking for feedback: how to better tackle the task of representation, how to build performativity into the actual outcome? 

FEEDBACK

Representation

• Sitting well as a personal project AND as something that speaks to a broader audience — feels really specific to me, while acknowledging other identities and without coming across as prescriptive.

• SO much material, don't think about it as a single project but the beginning of a body of work / research trajectory. But really interesting metaphors, analogies, experiments, materials, framings. May be helpful to not think of it as a single, big thing that is supposed to represent and communicate EVERYTHING, but one of many pieces exploring some of these themes and ideas. Figure out how to make this a DOABLE project — maybe it's not a good thing to be intimidated??? 

• Refocus and try to explore one or two ideas really well, especially to have a solid foundation to build from later on, definitely scope for this to go beyond honours. But for now, work out what you can do WELL in the time frame. It's ok to set some things aside!
  
  It's worth it to take an idea as far as it can go, to play it out and explore something small really rigourously. Good learning experience, and you don't lose the other stuff either because you've tried to do too much badly. 

• I seemed most confident/interested in the poetry translations? 

Live performativity / web interactivity

• Have a record/recording of me in the experience as a closed space/separate entity? A kind of manifestation of the cyborg that performs and goes through a ritual. What about the performativity, whether I'm there or not, is interesting? Seems like a nod to the constructedness of the space and identity. 

• Answer might be in the 90s cyberfeminism space — navigating the performance of body, to traces of the performance/the body, the viewer as performer. Really researching those precedents. 
  
  Ways to be present, active in it without being there in real time. Writing interactivity off personal data, patterns of behaviour, etc. 

• What is the role of the audience, if this is a theatre? 

• Depends on what the content is? How do people engage in the experience over time? What do you want the takeaway to be? Ask yourself these questions and work out helpful boundaries — time, entry/exit points, content, to work within. This will help you answer some of the bigger questions. Right now it's super open which makes it hard to work towards and pin down. 

CRITIQUE OF CRITIQUE

• I think re: representation, if i want to do it, and if it's either queerness/chineseness/both, I know what I need to do, it's research. Finding the stories and touchpoints that I could work into the content and narrative. I don't know if I do, though? They're both BIG. I think that I could do both, with everything I pitched here, but not with the full depth and richness that they offer. I really liked what Anne said about playing these ideas out rigourously. I think that is what I would benefit from most, at this moment with the structure and support of honours. 
  

• Same with the form and how I explore performativity within it. It's doing more research, looking at cyberfeminist precedents and thinking about what I want this project to do, and how to achieve that. I think this should be the priority right now, to work out the best way forward, with purpose. 

• I think what Ali was picking up on around the theme of 'constructedness' was really pertinent. I am pointing to the theatre, and our identities as constructions as a way to invite people to look at their own identities and consider how they inhabit them. The theatre is such a sacred place of imagination, where we willingly put aside what 'is', and explore what 'could be'. If we consider our identities as constructs, are we not more equipped to understand, see and shape/reclaim our own narratives? As performers on a stage, our stories are the story, and we are in a position to play with where it goes or what that means. 
  
  I think the transparency of the theatre — the spectacle of it, but also it as this blatant illusion, is also really compelling in pointing to our agency. It's significant also, the roles of the performer and viewer in this context. For the viewer it's a suspension of disbelief, and allowing yourself to be immersed in the world and rules of the story. For the person on stage, the lines between acting/performing/living blur — whether or not there is a script I think there's a sense of control in occupying and living out this particular story. 
  
  It's pretty much a structural device in and of itself — all projects tell a story, but placing the story on a stage invites us to examine it all as a construct. I want the seams — between code and performance, text and image, words and reality, to be visible and tangible, inviting participation — interaction? In a way giving the audience the same tools to think/perform/reimagine with, in their own way. 

KEY TAKEAWAYS

• How you set up the theatre — in the code, in the presentation/communication, will be significant. There needs to be a threshold, to establish the bounds, rules, objective of the space, and invite people in. Isn't this your narrative? Why it's a theatre? 

• Ask yourself why something is, or what about it is interesting. That will give you a way forward, and focus the work. 

• Work out what ideas and aspects of this are the most compelling, and workable in this moment and play this out through the semester. Might be helpful to think about the project as a process, just one that is building to an outcome. What you are doing, back from week 1 to week 13, is the project. 

ACTION LIST

• Research cyberfeminism. Find interesting, relevant examples of performativity. 
• Work through the questions raised here. Map out project, map out whys, possible boundaries, experiments, and outcome. 
• I think a good next experiment might be coding/casting the theatre, playing with the commenting and language around this.  
• Rework timeline. 
• Start thinking of and designing ways to test these ideas in class sessions.
• Remember to consider documentation !!! Do the exercises and research from Gabe's workshop. 

CRITIQUE SUMMARY — Week 2

 Andrew 5/8/20

• Definitely experiment with voice and speech, especially for task 1. The power of the female voice has a long history and basis in feminist work and stories, play upon that. Do more research into this too. Lots of possible applications and manipulations of voice — speech recognition, text bubbles, thinking about the voice as a enacting agent, the voice and code performing simultaneously. 

• Commenting the code, thinking about the variables and commands and functions! as part of the package. As visible, active agents? actants? components in this experience. Acknowledging them as the constructors in these worlds, by naming and calling upon them in accessible ways. "Thinking about functions as incantations of the environment" !!!

• Cyberfeminism — lots of examples centred around performance in the 90s and 00s. Spend a good day researching this! Find precedents and cool things to play with.

• Output — Is this one big cumulative thing that you're working towards, or a series of code/hybrid material experiments, functioning as little micro worlds. Is it a web-based output that supports these p5 environments, and enables performance through live feeds/interaction? A video piece that records the performance? Where am I, as a performative agent in this? Untangling/entangling the bounds of the project outcome and the documentation. 

• The idea of a theatre, and stage — think through who gets to play on that stage. Who's voice, and narratives am I amplifying/"collaborating" with? 

• Generative poetry — yes make the process more transparent! Would be good to have it as an element/process that the audience is aware of, but not privy to. Playing with the idea of 'secret knowledge' that surrounds witches, witchcraft, and cyborgs too. 

• 3D — WEBGL & p5 is working well at the moment, if things become hard/you can't do something specific look into 3.js and Aframe, for higher level support with 3D. 

Action list

• RESEARCH
• performance in Cyberfeminism beyond VNS Matrix
• performative poetry/voice projects
• Queerness and performativity... !

• MAKING 
• Consciously commenting into the code. Inserting a sort of meta awareness/another layer of agency --> construction of the world --> ontology in relating to the body? Think about it as open architecture???
  
• Experiment with voice input, get speech recognition working? 

• THINKING
• Outcome vs. documentation
• Form and boundaries — video, web, interactive??, live thing? One big outcome or a series of spaces/experiments/worlds?

• TASK 1
• Image-making?? Maybe if you need a break from code, not a priority
• Slides! Communicating clearly and concisely!
• Show experiments
• Work out timeline

CRITIQUE SUMMARY — Week 1, soft pitch

29/7/20

Andrew: 

• Tech/people to look into
• Dr Nancy Mauro-Flude
• Look more into cyberfeminism, beyond VNS Matrix
• Machine learning x generative poetry, GPD3/GPD2, runway platform 
• For 3D — if u want to explore further, game engine like unity

• Experiments
• Representing space, drawing from Japanese/Chinese traditions —Team Lab, isometric perspective vs Cartesian plane
• Performativity — start experimenting with this — webcam/voice input, live poetry readings (Navira: recording people’s reactions??), vocal inputs… vocaloids (Adrian)
• Look into live coding, theatre aspect. p5 affording directness

• General pointers
• Solidifying project objective, core aims/tone/direction/etc.
• Experimenting with these starting points
• Work through to-do list

4/8/20

Critique of critique

• Really exciting suggestions and potential directions
• Have looked into a number of these — isometric perspective, Team Lab, Nancy Mauro-Flude, AI Dungeon, Runway AI/ML
• Further research: Nancy Mauro-Flude, live coding, GPD3/2, international cyberfeminism, generative/code poetry
• Think about more, and more explicitly: ontology? poetry as a part of this? performance, performativity
• Need to layout/show tracery/word experiments and the process behind it (!!) Make it an accessible and transparent process. 

CRITIQUE SUMMARY — Jacqui Lorber-Kasunic

Chat with Jacqui Lorber-Kasunic 
22/5/2020

• Questions a good place to start from, last two are getting specific and interesting. 
• Define 'multiplying', 'multiplicity'... n-dimensionality. Explain the metaphor-analogy of space and dimensions
• Diversifying and complexifying identity, generatively. Generativity as expanding possibility
• Agrees with Jacqueline Gothe — examine them separately first, and set it up properly. Why are they valuable for a way forward. Problematise it first, is there a lack of spectrum and how can the witch-cyborg body point to an alternate politics. Setting up a theoretical foundation. 
• Read more, find more texts. A lot to draw from, writing on Haraway's cyborg, Haraway herself. Look more at posthuman theory
• Witches — super rich field of scholarship: literature, women's/gender studies, history. Do keyword search on various databases. Find 2-3 more texts to flesh out these tropes/constructions and establish their definitions and possibilities, then build your argument
• Methodology — interpretive lenses. Intersectionality, moving out of normative/hegemonic power structures and ways of being. Why this is approach is important. 
• Wordplay and language. Can talk about this in methodology. A post-structuralist perspective — language as a constraining force on what is possible (logocentrism), and with an intersectional lenses can unpack further. 
• Texts for intersectionality — look into intersectional, feminist theorists. Need to define it, and the theorists you're drawing from. 
• Who else has built on Haraway's cyborg?
• 'How might this inherent deviance be multiplied?' Think about how design fits into this context. How does design play a role in realising this deviance and mutliplicity!

CRITIQUE SUMMARY — Week 8 workshops

Monday Experimentation workshop 4/5/2020

MIKE & ADY

• Hubspace has a lot of potential to enact rituals / spells e.g. ouija board... Maybe think about how you might test this, what you want from/for the participants
• Ady commented that the "unseen" narrative element as hinted at in the room description was effective, definitely a lot of room to build on this and create an experience around being "hidden" or "unseen". 
• Similar to the ritual potential, it would be powerful to think about how you might initiate participants into this world — what are the relevant objects and rituals you could bring in and play with? Perhaps think about their introduction as an initiation rite. Similarly, what other parallels and metaphors could you use to design this experience, and make it more engaging and immersive? 

ZOE

• @raven? See-er — CyborgWitchNameGenerator Meme

• Is it a feminist project? What's the scope — communicate the context !!!

• Test your concept and thinking. What do you mean by 'Cyborg' and 'Witch'? What are other people's own understanding of these identities, and how are they different? You're coming with your own assumptions and bias, maybe you need to make this more of a process and conversation. Conduct interview with women from different backgrounds?
  
  I think this is really important feedback, that I should take and seriously work with. I don't particularly want to do interviews, because I'm not sure who I would ask and there are ethics considerations/formalities. But I think that testing these ideas is very important to make sure I'm not just imposing and prescribing my opinions and experience on/to other people.
  
  I think the workshops would work better for participants, and for me in receiving feedback/ to test ideas if they took an open-ended but step-by-step approach. This way it's not a prescriptive experience and allows participants to bring in and build their own perspectives.

• For her: witches as solitary, sometimes amoral, self-serving/sustaining female figure. Doesn't interact/engage unless something is encroaching upon her spaces and desires. Cyborgs as a problematic figure — "female" bodies that are often of male creation, for the purpose of objectification and fulfilling the male gaze / desire / fantasy. Both the witch and the cyborg probably more so, carry a narrative of being sexualised and stripped of agency.
  
  This really struck me as something to address and take a stand against. The influence of the male gaze has definitely been something I am aware of, in the conjuring of these fantastical body-identities. But I absolutely want my project to do the opposite of objectifying and stripping agency from someone/something. I want empower others through the pure and defiant agency afforded to them by these examples and identities of the "witch" and the "cyborg". I hope that both of these rebel-bodies, and both of them as a hybrid, multiply possibilities of deviance, and celebrate this creation and embodiment of difference.
  
  I think cyborgs do hold this transgressive power because they actually are in full possession of their agency and choose to enact it in embrace of technology. They choose to transgress binaries of human/organism and machine, of the natural and artificial. I think there might be a gap in popular understanding / my definitions of the cyborg, and communicating this effectively.
  
  Cyborgs are not androids or robots, not fully machine (no matter what they look like). Cyborgs take hybridisation upon themselves. Their very state of being, as this hybrid, is a fully realised act of agency, and certainly defiance when considered in the original 1985 context of Donna Haraway's 'A Cyborg Manifesto' (2016/85). 2020's (and futures', in the scope of the project) understandings of a cyborg is definitely not the same as it was then, but I think the core argument that Haraway presents of it as a body through which we can imagine, and materialise a more inclusive and diverse world is still very powerful.
  
  The Witch I think is more instantly associated with power and agency because of her many iterations and manifestations across history, politics, myths, fictions and pop culture. Perhaps I need to build this defining feature of agency into the world? Have participants construct/propose/enact their own personas in the image of witch-cyborgs?

• Workshops/hubspace — you need to create a threshold for participants. Give them context, opportunities to situate themselves in the space. Are they here as themselves? Do you give them a persona and ask them to engage in a roleplay? Can they construct their own persona — what might they be allowed to be in this space? Should you be asking if they are gendered, what pronouns they use?
  
  Is the witch-cyborg a spectrum of identity that they can plot themselves on? How might you get participants to understand their own identity in relation to these quite possibly very abstract ideas and thinking.
• Set it up for them. What sort of activities might they engage in to realise this agential potential? Get them to choose a hat? Read something out? Might they mingle with other participants first? Are there different spaces e.g. an entry way, different rooms that serve their own purpose? Build a sense of narrative into the experience, and think about it as a real space. User map the workshop, play through the experience... with different personas?
  
  Think about what participants might expect from the space/experience. How do they participate. Think about who these spaces, and the workshops are for. Is it only women? How might a straight, white male occupy and interact with the space differently? What might the purpose of the space be for them? 

• Think about this context as a brains trust — with either the texts you've been drawing from and working with, or with others' perceptions and definitions of "witch" and "cyborg".
  
  Set up your own thinking so that it is visible (with a sense of narrative and agency for participants), and test it. 

Critique in Experimentation, Wednesday 6/5/2020

• Ady's definitions of "witch" — strong feminine power, doesn't take shit, radical, not being afraid of their power, unapologetic. Self-assured, mastery of magic.
  "Cyborg" — didn't really know what it is, or how it's different from robots/androids. "A technological monster"!.There seems to be confusion here. TEST THIS. 
• Mulanne — Witches as Self-assured, masters of magic.
  Clarifying if I meant cyborgs as humans with some kind of augmentation. Went into a tangent about the technology we attach to our body to function in other/additional capacities — build a workshop around this? 
• Tracery experiments — generating alternate worlds (hubspaces/rooms) out of each "poem", or use them to write the narrative of cyborg-witch characters — e.g. the ID cards.
• Mulanne — reminds her of Dungeons and Dragons. Look into one shot campaigns, online gameplays? Genre-mixing element, realised in worldbuilding. Make character sheets to direct roleplay? Build up different elements and snippets. Also lots of concept art to maybe look into — props, characters, spaces. 

Critque in Theorisation class 8/52020 (Jacqui, Eugenie, Andrew, Aaron)

• Jacqui — ideas and research around "emergent identities", towards inclusivity and empowerment. Try plotting a line graph? map? of your research — the trajectory, where you might go next. Summarise your claim in 25 words. 
• Eugenie/Andrew: could look into physical disability, the tehcnological enhancement/augmentation in this space. Mutations, particularly in sci-fi.
  Check out DnD, Alita Battle Angel? 

Other notes/thoughts/feedback from people:

• Adrian — Have you ever watched gameplay from 'Detroit: Become Human'? - you used the word deviant which is a term they throw around in that gamehttps://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Q4SNXU0yqB8

Action list

• Build workshop experiment in consideration of this feedback. (Test "cyborg" and "witch", create a threshold, think about ritual, think about narrative and worldbuilding)
• Summarise research claims in 25 words
• Watch DnD / Alita Battle Angel / Detriot: Become Human gameplays

CRITIQUE SUMMARY — Chat with Thea

Had a brief chat with Thea Kable after the Wednesday seminar on workshopping, and there were some great insights into her project and ways I could bring similar methods into my work. 

Chat with Thea — 29/4/2020
I was asking a question about generative participatory methods in a very nebulous world building context, and knowing what to offer as information and what spaces to leave blank. 

• Embedding people in the scenario to start off with --> giving them a sense of purpose and agency, which they run with once they have prompts. 
• e.g. first exercise as introducing themselves in the workshop: making them aware that they are not assuming a character, but operating in this world as themselves. 
• Refinement comes from the experiments! Don't overthink it, think through it. 
• The experiments started as individual, self-testing process. Things that she found interesting/compelling, content self-generated/quotes from historical texts and Haraway. 
• Figuring out what works best, seeing what ends up being the most interesting just with your own ideas, then taking that and designing participation into it. 
• The Architecture of Closed Worlds, Or, What is the Power of Shit by Lydia Kallipoliti — worlds as an extension of the body?
• Participatory methods are great! But don't necessarily need to all be workshops and big, they can be small moments and still really valuable. 

Action List

• This was really helpful in realising that I can take it slow, and introduce participatory methods when it makes sense or I feel that I'm in a good spot to start thinking about it. For now, totally ok to make things for yourself. (Although we do start student workshops on Monday I need to start thinking about that.)
• Look into the Architecture of Closed Worlds if you're revisiting bodies and designing in that space/towards worlds. And if you need more textual research into it. 

CRITQUE SUMMARY — Chat with Ali

Have bee messaging and chatting with Ali Chalmers Braithwaite, on Zoe's suggestion and it's been really helpful and expansive in how I think about my research topic and the kind of experiments I could do. There are a lot of suggestions / possibilities / tangents / nuggets here, and I want to write them up to process everything and be able to revisit anything that's particularly helpful later on. 

Chat with Ali — 1/5/2020

Experiment stuff

• Augmented reality, face masks could be a cool direction — could even do this physically.. makeup? mask materials. Could look into drag, avant garde makeup https://www.instagram.com/isshehungry/
  https://www.instagram.com/ines.alpha/?hl=en
• For cultural references — look at people doing work in this space — https://yunyingh.com/, other people from the ArtCenter College of Design
• The illustrative potential to explore and materialise the world is great, keep going with it if you want to

• Pairing narrative elements (character, place, action) together, smashing generativeness together — manually — design the experience e.g. poster, game, etc. OR with tools like Tracery http://tracery.io/editor/ — put in variables. And it’ll spit out a combo 
• Similar  — computer generated language around input https://talktotransformer.com/
• Roleplaying games —> generative/participatory character narratives
  e.g. DnD, The Quiet Year

• World building exercises to think through different possibilities/versions spaces etc. — quadrant mapping, do more research into this

Textual/creative references? 

• Caliban and the Witch by Silvia Federici — a capitalist history of the body, and rebel-bodies — especially the female body/labour/Witches
• Technopaganism — Joshua Madra http://eldri.tech/. Technology and ritual
• A note on 'Why Witches'… bodies, bodies in communion, in relation to world and non-bodies
• VNS Matrix — South Australian art collective, similar work around tech and cyberfeminism https://vnsmatrix.net/

General tips

• World building exercises, get into it
• Little things and experiments are good for thinking through big concepts, don't write them off
• Make kit stuff now?? Make now to figure out what this is, and cull/edit later on. 
• Foreground things that matter to you! Design/research agenda. Keep it fun and 
• Do the blog stuff. It all counts — visual research, whatever — just write it up
• Writing-as-research — it totally can reflect the wicked anarchic energy of the topic. 
• It's ok to revisit anchors/texts. Sometimes nice to forget about them and come back. 

Their project 

• Fictionalising history — archives, Sappho's poetry
• Queer phenomenology
• Started out looking at queer methodology and design practice --> generative poetry and vr
• VR / digital focus as partly strategic: as significant relatively unexplored technological space, hijacking it for their queer agenda
• Strengths: conceptual working through, narrowing down, pulling references and thinking around what it could be? 
• Didn't really engage in participatory methods. Really clear idea of what she wanted it to be, and as a queer, just went with the vision

Action list

• Look more into these references
• I feel like I will play around with Tracery and Talk to Transformer, get back into a code space and keep switching between digital//physical?
• The world building excercise(s). Do the quadrant, and iterate !!
• I'm scared of approaching the conversation around culture and heritage, but take it slow. Do some research first. 

CRITIQUE SUMMARY — Stuvac feedback

Feedback and notes from 20/4/2020 (write-up 2/5/2020)

Feedback from peer groups:

• Fleshing out this cyborg//witch world — spaces to interact in, spectrums to explore, creating other vernacular objects (ephemera, articles of clothing?) --> World building
• Diana on participatory experiments — a take on the magazine quiz? (!!)

Feedback from Zoe:

• CODE: push it further? Is there are difference in the aesthetics of the 'cyborg' and the 'witch'? How do they play off each other? How might you start representing this in the type? Type as a sort of character in and of itself??
• Think about the cyborg/witch as different entities. What are the audio, visual, sensory characteristics around each? The differences?
• ID cards/illustration: push and refine! Look at references in mythology, and cultural and artistic representations. Eduardo Wolfe-Alegria, Aubrey Beardsley, Norman Lindsay, Egon Schiele, Gustav Klimt. Representations of women // femininity
• Think about the aesthetic tensions present here, and in monsters. When does cute become creepy? When does the grotesque become sexy? 
• Also what is the narrative here? Why are they using fake IDs? 

Action list:

• Look up artist references from Zoe. What can you take from these? How can you keep building "strangeness" into this world/the bodies in it. 
• Definitely take up Diana's suggestion of a witch quiz.
• Keep world-building and following ideas or narrative paths. 
• Revisit code soon

CRITIQUE SUMMARY — Experimentation Task 1

Notes from critique 6/4/2020

Zoe and Chris

• Start making first. 
• Start small! How do you visually represent this? Use language?
• How do you design a deviant experience?
• How do you recontextualise code (language) to be "witchy"?
• Start around code poetry, but think about how accessible it actually is
• Think about the tone you want to have... design towards that?
• Talk to Mike? collage/anarchy
• Design anchors/visual prompts: feminism + design, Guerilla Girls, collage
• More texts: look at Haraway's 'Staying with the Trouble' — online videos, with Anna Tsing, also a documentary

Madi and Aaron

• Again, start small! Especially if I'm scared
• Look into the Post Digital Publishing Archive

Action list 12/4/2020

• Start code experiment(s), write up logs
• Code Poetry (start poetry separately?) find a way to construct language first (maybe next experiment)
• Research suggested visual prompts, Post Digital Publishing Archive
• Watch/read more Haraway (with Tsing) — Staying with the trouble, vids, documentary
• Think about generative // collaborative experiments, talk to mike about collage/methods

*UPDATE* 18/4/2020

Written Feedback / action list based on Pitch Document 

• Read Donna Haraway's 'Staying with the Trouble'
• Watch Haraway documentary 'Storytelling for Earthly Survival'
• Do more thinking/visual research into explorations/speculations around The Body and wearables. Find relevant precedents
• Look at links/material from Zoe in slack !  
• PRIMER19 - Rhonda Holberton: Cosmetics for Cyborg https://vimeo.com/346641460 
• 'When You Meet the Monster, Anoint Its Feet' https://emergencemagazine.org/story/when-you-meet-the-monster/
• (Astrophysicist reads poetry?) https://www.brainpickings.org/?mc_cid=764aee99aa&mc_eid=8f363f1ec0
• (experimental art making) http://www.plastiquefantastique.org/
• Memories of a Deluzian: To Think is Always to Follow the Witches' Flight, by Simon O'Sullivan