User:Donald

Quarter 9 + 10:

1. Future Memory: Deja Vu

déjà vu |ˌdāZHä ˈvo͞o| noun a feeling of having already experienced the present situation. • tedious familiarity: to list the opponents of his policies is to invite boredom and a sense of déjà vu. ORIGIN early 20th cent.: French, literally ‘already seen.’

Consideration # 1 If I could swallow a pill and learn a new language through it, how would I experience those memories that aren’t mine but have become mine by being imprinted?

2. Infra-ordinary: Ad-hoc studying

Consideration # 1 How to think about the infra-ordinary in a situation in which things that were previously observable –reading a newspaper, writing a lettre, reading a book, etc…– have become non-observable as they all happen on one device or interface that is often only directed at the person using it at that moment? And thus, how to think about observation while some algorithm of google or Facebook is probably ‘mining’ data about what someone is doing more efficiently than you as the spy-observer can?

Consideration #2 For this first concept I wanted to return to the 'useless machine' and try to combine the feeling that a theatre play like Waiting for Godot calls for with the trend in overpublication in universities. In the academic world –due to it's increased size, a legislation that promotes publication and the easy access of databases– there is a rapid increase in articles. Most articles are barely read, yet the production of it goed on. How to put this into an image or artwork?

Consideration #3 How does this apply to the infra-ordinary? Because overpublication is a highly complex problem with many causes and effects, there is more going on than one artpiece could lament on. So...back to basics: how does studying look like? What kinds of behaviour does it call for? Do interfaces or screens also dominate this area of activity?

3. General observations and thoughts

1. Most devices or interfaces try to offer services that become more automatic, less visible, more easy. This might imply that as the interface in itself might be receding, we become less aware of what functions are at work around us and what kind of influence those have on us. Paradoxically, as devices develop to make real-life actions more simple by becoming invisible, in the autonomous practice of digital craft we can make use of devices of project to make us more aware of our relation to digital technologies. So we move against the current. Knowing this, what can we expect from our future (art/design) viewer?
2. Reading ’To save everything, click here’ by Evgeny Morozov:
   1. CH1: beware solutionism: the movement that preaches that all can be done more efficient en better, by design. Which raises the question: what if the designs no longer follow a certain path, will we then stop behaving in the right way? Wasn’t there also an ethical reason to behave in a certain way, apart from a designed or gamified one?
   2. CH 2: beware internet-centrism: the movement that thinks that there is one concept of ‘the internet’ with values that automatically follow it, like openness and connectedness. The movement that also believe these values can be translated into other domains, making them thus progressive. Which raises the question: is there one ‘the internet’ and not a politically, socially, culturally embedded internet with distinct and separated websites and services (apps)?
3. The smart-phone appears not to be used as extensive as we could. In this article [1] by De Correspondent it is discussed that in China the smartphone is used for many more services, ranging from ordering taxi’s to taking a virtual place in a real-life que for a restaurant. This is explained by the fact that Chinese cities are so big and complex that people can easier navigate and live in them through their smartphone. In that case the smartphone is way more integrated in their daily life, follows a more introvert Chinese lifestyle and simplifies the complex cities. In contrast, we Dutch supposedly make a more restrained use of our smartphone. And here I speculate: because we hold a greater value for our surroundings, the history of more permanent and less quickly changing cities and the context in which we live. We try to fix ourselves more to a certain place, integrating in the social networks of a certain city.