1. A Handmade Web, J.R. Carpenter

Carpenter’s essay, A Handmade Web, tells of multiple evocations from the word ‘handmade.’ Among the first things I thought of when reading this was the website for my grandfather’s family company, Jensen Steam Engines. If I went there now, I believe it still looks the same, but it was made much before my time, maybe around 2000? Before? Not sure to be honest, but if you have seen the Space Jam website, it looks just like that. There are massive margins to each side, the whole page is a mix of Times New Roman and Arial, filled with asterisks and other smybols to denote importance. There’s a wood pattern in the margins which is now almost wider than the main column, and all the colors are the most saturated, brightest, intense versions of red, blue white, and yellow. The idea of a website being created for a different audience, a different screen, with different constraints all around is so interesting because the experience has evolved so much. I did a project on the concept of ‘BitRot’ last year and in that I talked about hardware and software degradation or incompatibility. For example, if you tried to play on an NES using a 4k television. 3 coaxial cables do not go into an HDMI port, so you’ll have to get an adapter, and then it might show up on the screen, but most definitely not in a 16:9 aspect ratio. The experience is so much different from that of the original, intended experience, and in the case of archiving video games, it makes it difficult to truly archive the experience of playing that console, when it was released. Creating an experience online is something that I am super interested in, and I thought Carpenter’s project, which was a looping book, is a great example of how something as simple as a looping page, transforms the meaning and experience of reading a document. The essay was written in 2015, so the resistance against templates and software assisted making was not nearly as ubiquitous as it is now, therefore the resistance and smallness argument has only multiplied in importance. I think that all the points in the article are still relevant overall, and I do agree that the look of handmade outdated web still looks good, or at least feels good still.

2. The Handmade Computer, Taeyoon Choi

I really enjoyed this piece by Taeyoon Choi and the way that connections were made between urbanization, computers were so very insightful. When I'm reading an essay within an artistic, designerly, or poetic realm, one of the things I always notice (and I always enjoy) are definitions. Generally definitions of the title subject, or words surrounding that subject. What often comes through these definitions is an etymology of the word or words, and it is in that etymology that the terms can be deconstructed and re-assembled into the real or intended definition within the context of the essay. Choi does not carry on with an exhaustive etymology, but dedicates a couple of paragraphs to the history of the word, especially noting the humanness that lies within that word. To put a word's etymology or definition into computer terms, maybe I could say that as the word is repeated and used within society it is a loop. But, maybe I can say that with every day that passes, or every year, a word's meaning might shift by 1 point, but that can be multiplied by outside variables. For major culture moments involving the word, it adds 2 points. If the word is not used for a long time, it decreases by 1 point. I'm rambling and it would be hard define something so seemingly random, but there are so many factors to what words mean, or what from, their history of usage and definitions, a word can mean.

The choice of words 'abstraction' to represent levels of complexity is also really interesting, because that is the key of advancements in technology it seems. Or at least in a broader sense. Making things that can do more, simpler to use. Whether that is removing a person's understanding of the object or device, is up to the creator of the technology, but it seems that making that screen "opaque" as Choi said, removing the technical and fiddly bits, that is what we push for. We in this sense is generally large tech corporations who want our money, attention, and more of our money, but I would say that most technology's goal is to be simpler, easier to understand, and easier to use. It sort of leaves the understanding to those who make the effort to understand, and while that is a neutral exchange itself, it becomes parasitic when people don't know they are being toyed with or harvested for data they might not realize they are giving out.

3. A Friend is Writing by Callum Copley

Callum Copley did an excellent job resurrecting the feelings I have towards social media messaging and notifications on my phone. I felt the dopamine rush that is unavoidable when you see a notification that you wanted. The subsequent barrage of notifications about things I don't care about, or from people I do care about are still there, and the anxiety associated with that. The social media sensations that I experience so often are crafted through the interactivity and careful organization of the webpage, and analyzed in Copley's writings. Mentioning how social media competes for your time, and you are the product, there is an interesting 'invisible' dynamic happening right in front of our eyes, maybe just behind the screen. It's similar to Taeyoon Choi's observation of abstraction within software/hardware design, but for us it's the social engineering of our time spent on what we might feel is the product. For instance Youtube tracks watch time, tracking the literal amount of time your eyeballs are (probably) watching a video on a certain topic. After that happens you're going to be hit with ads about that when you are reading an article you Googled about something completely different, but then when you go back to Youtube, you are going to be recommended videos about that completely separate topic if you scroll for just a little bit on your homepage. I personally watch a lot of Youtube, so my algorithmic profile has to be constantly evolving. All the things I just spoke of do generally rely on your account being signed in and tracking all of these extraneous yet not so extraneous data points in our world overly saturated with prompts to connect to and within the internet. It feels daunting to exist in this sort of environment, but there is a creeping numbness which comes with the every day exposure. I am not excluded from this by any means, because it is something that our generation, or at least most folks living in this time have learned to simply cope with while trying to exist in two separate but currently inseparable worlds. It's not hard to want something different, but it's hard to imagine a reversion, or repackaging of our current world. It seems like everytime I talk about almost large issue facing society today in any of my classes, or even with friends, it reveals there is no societal or economic problem isolated from another. To be honest I don't know what to do with that with the simple rambling I do here, but I do hope that at some point the ever-rolling snowball stops just for a moment so we can breath and think.

4. The Poetry of Tools by Mindy Seu

Mindy Seu's exploration and observation of the internet's functions and dysfunctions was particularly informational and inspiring for me. When referencing older, early internet or computer-based works it is fascinating to see the technology manipulated in so many different directions. Displaying Krueger's human interaction based work, Videoplace the fact that someone was able to create something that fused two realities together, IN 1989(!) is crazy to me. A common theme in the art presented is decay, temporality, or error over time. These 3 terms are broad, but they are inherent within a work that deals with digital space, or technology (again really broad). The 2002 work by Penelope Umbrico, All the Catalogs (A-Z) is a great example of decay, in this case presented specifically in terms of the internet, and the interactions found within that space. Catalog websites are meant to be visited, and a physical catalog of a business meant to be kept and hopefully referenced more than once. A lot of times when we think of something being digitized, we see that form as the final form of whatever was previously physical. A digital catalog, a solution!