Creative Material Computing in a Laboratory Context

Principles for organizing a laboratory with material computing resources are articulated. This laboratory, the Trope Tank, is a facility for teaching, research, and creative collaboration and offers hardware (in working condition and set up for use) from the 1970s, 1980s, and 1990s, including videogame systems, home computers, an arcade cabinet, and a workstation. Other resources include controllers, peripherals, manuals, books, and software on physical media. In reorganizing the space, we considered its primary purpose as a laboratory (rather than as a library or studio), organized materials by platform and intended use, and provided additional cues and textual information about the historical contexts of the available systems

Getting Started with Digital Humanities in the Library

https://www.worldcat.org/oclc/943646141In this chapter, Zach Coble details the skills, experiences, and training necessary to get started with digital humanities in libraries. After providing a brief outline of the different types of digital humanities work, we will examine six categories of skills that digital humanities librarians should be competent in. Practical examples of experiences and training are provided, focusing on getting involved in existing projects and connecting with others interested in digital humanities work. An emphasis is placed on the idea that the skills in the digital humanities librarian’s toolkit are transferrable and can be acquired through non-digital humanities projects, and that developing these skills will help you become a more well-rounded librarian

No Code: Null Programs

To continue the productive discussion of uninscribed artworks in Craig Dworkin’s No Medium, this report discusses, in detail, those computer programs that have no code, and are thus empty or null. Several specific examples that have been offered in different contexts (the demoscene, obfuscated coding, a programming challenge, etc.) are analyzed. The concept of a null program is discussed with reference to null strings and files. This limit case of computing shows that both technical and cultural means of analysis are important to a complete understanding of programs – even in the unusual case that they lack code

PETSCII – A Character Set and a Creative Platform

PETSCII is the built-in character set used on 8-bit Commodore computers, such as the PET, C-64 and Plus/4. The character set and the BASIC environment provided an entry point to rudimentary graphic editing for a generation of hobbyists. Over the years PETSCII has been used for a variety of creative purposes: for example games, demos, telecommunications, videos, books and fine art have been created using the graphical symbols. Through the analysis of existing art works and our own hands-on project – a graphics editor – we dig deeper into the specific properties of the character set. In this article we show how the fixed symbols set the frame for what is possible and how, on the other hand, they provide grounds for creative experimentation, display of skill and recognizable styles

PETSCII – A Character Set and a Creative Platform

PETSCII is the built-in character set used on 8-bit Commodore computers, such as the PET, C-64 and Plus/4. The character set and the BASIC environment provided an entry point to rudimentary graphic editing for a generation of hobbyists. Over the years PETSCII has been used for a variety of creative purposes: for example games, demos, telecommunications, videos, books and fine art have been created using the graphical symbols. Through the analysis of existing art works and our own hands-on project – a graphics editor – we dig deeper into the specific properties of the character set. In this article we show how the fixed symbols set the frame for what is possible and how, on the other hand, they provide grounds for creative experimentation, display of skill and recognizable styles.</p

Beep-Boopatronics

Beep-Boopatronics addresses discarded consumer goods, nostalgia, and the creativity inherent in adapting one object into another. Working through the lens of Ian Bogost’s Alien Phenomenology and Linda Hutcheon’s Theory of Adaptation, the exhibition and paper Beep-Boopatronics explore how objects can be made to communicate with each other, and how that communication, while fragmented, can produce a novel object; in this case, a strange musical instrument. This process was conducted through practice-based research as determined by the application and adaptation of Bogost’s Carpentry as a working methodology. The observations within this study dwell on the humour and meaning which can arise from incongruity. The results include new connections between object-oriented ontology and inter-textual adaptation, which were revealed through the project’s discourse on translation and porting

Unlocking the digital crypt: Exploring a framework for cryptographic reading and writing

This article argues that we should take seriously Friedrich Kittler&rsquo;s suggestion that we now live in a post-writing world. It is argued that much of this transition is due to the shift towards cryptographic writing. Shawn Rosenheim&rsquo;s Cryptographic Imagination is briefly analyzed and critiqued; teasing out the many conceptual themes of that Rosenheim presents this article offers critique and analysis of this important work. As a way of rebuilding Rosenheim&rsquo;s analysis, an original conceptualization of cryptography is also briefly sketched. Returning to Kittler&rsquo;s suggestion, it is concluded that cryptographic writing performs an ordering role in our control society

What Can the Digital Humanities Learn from Feminist Game Studies?

When game studies became an area for scholarly inquiry in the academy, feminist game studies soon followed. The first generation of feminist theory in game studies built on the work of Sherry Turkle, Brenda Laurel, and Janet Murray, although some might argue that the legacy of challenging gender norms in game studies goes back even earlier. Now feminist game scholars organize international conferences, edit journals and scholarly collections, and shape trends in the profession, much as their counterparts in the digital humanities attempt to do, but critics in feminist game studies have been able to take advantage of what is seen as a relatively long trajectory of feminist theoretical inquiry and field development. Articulating a need for a feminist corrective in the digital humanities has come at a much slower pace, perhaps because the instrumentalism of a “tool” seems much less blatantly anti-feminist than the instrumentalism of a gun. Furthermore, calls to action from more radicalized forms of feminist approaches to science and technology studies have been noticeably absent in the literature around digital information retrieval in the humanities. This issue of DHQ indicates that a sea change may finally be taking place