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2024 Participants: Hannah Ackermans * Sara Alsherif * Leonardo Aranda * Brian Arechiga * Jonathan Armoza * Stephanie E. August * Martin Bartelmus * Patsy Baudoin * Liat Berdugo * David Berry * Jason Boyd * Kevin Brock * Evan Buswell * Claire Carroll * John Cayley * Slavica Ceperkovic * Edmond Chang * Sarah Ciston * Lyr Colin * Daniel Cox * Christina Cuneo * Orla Delaney * Pierre Depaz * Ranjodh Singh Dhaliwal * Koundinya Dhulipalla * Samuel DiBella * Craig Dietrich * Quinn Dombrowski * Kevin Driscoll * Lai-Tze Fan * Max Feinstein * Meredith Finkelstein * Leonardo Flores * Cyril Focht * Gwen Foo * Federica Frabetti * Jordan Freitas * Erika FülöP * Sam Goree * Gulsen Guler * Anthony Hay * SHAWNÉ MICHAELAIN HOLLOWAY * Brendan Howell * Minh Hua * Amira Jarmakani * Dennis Jerz * Joey Jones * Ted Kafala * Titaÿna Kauffmann-Will * Darius Kazemi * andrea kim * Joey King * Ryan Leach * cynthia li * Judy Malloy * Zachary Mann * Marian Mazzone * Chris McGuinness * Yasemin Melek * Pablo Miranda Carranza * Jarah Moesch * Matt Nish-Lapidus * Yoehan Oh * Steven Oscherwitz * Stefano Penge * Marta Pérez-Campos * Jan-Christian Petersen * gripp prime * Rita Raley * Nicholas Raphael * Arpita Rathod * Amit Ray * Thorsten Ries * Abby Rinaldi * Mark Sample * Valérie Schafer * Carly Schnitzler * Arthur Schwarz * Lyle Skains * Rory Solomon * Winnie Soon * Harlin/Hayley Steele * Marylyn Tan * Daniel Temkin * Murielle Sandra Tiako Djomatchoua * Anna Tito * Introna Tommie * Fereshteh Toosi * Paige Treebridge * Lee Tusman * Joris J.van Zundert * Annette Vee * Dan Verständig * Yohanna Waliya * Shu Wan * Peggy WEIL * Jacque Wernimont * Katherine Yang * Zach Whalen * Elea Zhong * TengChao Zhou
CCSWG 2024 is coordinated by Lyr Colin (USC), Andrea Kim (USC), Elea Zhong (USC), Zachary Mann (USC), Jeremy Douglass (UCSB), and Mark C. Marino (USC) . Sponsored by the Humanities and Critical Code Studies Lab (USC), and the Digital Arts and Humanities Commons (UCSB).
#critcode Tweets
Introduce yourself
Welcome!
Please reply here with a brief introduction to yourself and your interests in Critical Code Studies.
Some of us are first-time members, others have been attending since 2010. In addition to your general profile, consider briefly sharing new publications or projects, new ideas in progress, or simply new questions.
Comments
Howdy; I'm a computer professional (ret.) interested in the development of algorithms and studying algorithm genesis and time related changes; expansion of, contraction of, and/or abandonment. In this role I was responsible for reimagining an API created by Dr. Weizenbaum in 1964, SLIP, and through this became involved in a group studying ELIZA, a Dr. Weizenbaum program to simulate human-machine-interaction in which the machine 'seems' to be human, i.e., attempts to pass the Turing Test. As part of that group I am currently engaged in doing critical code studies of the ELIZA program and of the extant DOCTOR script which is the input data to the program.
I am an Associate Prof in Digital Media at University of Roehampton, UK. I have attended the first CCSWG and a few of the following ones. I'm interested in software studies, critical code studies, critical AI studies, theory of culture, philosophy of tech. My first book Software Studies came out in 2014 (Roman & Littlefield). I have published recent articles on AI, especially on the racist and sexist uses of AI in predictive policing and bordering practices. I have used the feminist concept of performativity (Butler and Barad) to show how "debiasing AI" (for example datasets) is not enough, because AI is performative and socio-technical and it iteratively "cites" gender and race norms. I am planning a new book on AI and how it reflects the present historical conjuncture.
One of my questions: is it possible to critically read code in AI, how, and what would the benefits be? How can CCS be used to avoid usual pitfalls such as technical solutions ("if we fix training datasets, we'll fix racism").
Just in case you are interested:
AI that Matters: A Feminist Approach to the Study of Intelligent Machines
Frabetti, F. & Drage, E., 5 Oct 2023, Feminist AI: Critical Perspectives on Algorithms, Data, and Intelligent Machines. Browne, J., Cave, S., Drage, E. & Mackereth, K. (eds.). Oxford University Press (OUP), p. 274-289 https://doi.org/10.1093/oso/9780192889898.003.0016
The Performativity of AI-powered Protest Detection: How AI Creates a Racialized Protest and Why Looking for ‘Bias’ Is Not a Solution
Frabetti, F. & Drage, E., 27 Mar 2023, In: Science, Technology, & Human Values (ST&HV) : journal of the Society for Social Studies of Science.
Copies without an Original: The Performativity of Biometric Bordering Technologies
Frabetti, F. & Drage, E., 30 Dec 2023, (E-pub ahead of print) In: Communication and Critical/Cultural Studies. https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/14791420.2023.2292493
Lack of Transparency over Police Forces’ Covert Use of Predictive Policing Software: Raises Concerns about Human Rights Abuses
Frabetti, F., Drage, E. & Colbert, M., 28 Mar 2023 https://bylinetimes.com/2023/03/28/lack-of-transparency-over-police-forces-covert-use-of-predictive-policing-software-raises-concerns-about-human-rights-abuses/
Hello, Usename: shadoof, I'm John Cayley and here is a brief bio:
Despite being about to be swept aside by the everywhere-and-all-for-the-0.1% Generative Pre-Trained Transformer, John Cayley persists as a human maker of computational language art in programmable media. He has published books of poetry and translation, and a collection of essays called Grammalepsy, its title naming one of writing's many pathologies. Meanwhile, John has explored dynamic and ambient poetics, heuristic (as opposed to occult) text generation, transliteral morphing, aestheticized vectors of reading, and transactive synthetic language (as in 'smart speakers' and listeners). More academically, he is now investigating the ontology of language, and is doing so in the context of his philosophically-informed practice-based research. An augmented and reconfigured edition of his poetry collection, Image Generation, is recently out from Counterpath Press in Denver. If you're curious, go to nllf.net. (nllf stands for the Natural Language Liberation Front.)
I'm Professor of Literary Arts at Brown University and have been interested in CCS for some time now. You might think that my (relatively) oft-quoted:
"The Code Is Not the Text (Unless It Is the Text)." Electronic Book Review (September 10, 2002). https://electronicbookreview.com/essay/the-code-is-not-the-text-unless-it-is-the-text/
... was opposed to CCS but it's not.
I'm afraid I'm not big on online forums but because I have a CCS piece in the Digital Humanities Quarterly special issue, I was asked – and am honored by the invitation – to be a host for discussions on the week of the 19th Feb. Here is a reference to my DHQ article:
"Computational Art Explorations of Linguistic Possibility Spaces: Comparative Translingual Close Readings of Daniel C. Howe’s Automatype and Radical of the Vertical Heart 忄." Digital Humanities Quarterly 17, no. 2 (July 2023). https://digitalhumanities.org/dhq/vol/17/2/000705/000705.html.
It was my long term collaborator, Daniel C. Howe, who introduced me to the use of 'heuristic' to describe compositional and interpretive approaches to language art with computation (electronic literature) in which code can be observed and humanly comprehended. These approaches may now be opposed to kinds of hermetic, perhaps even occult, composition and interpretation (Large Models and their operations) which are, I believe, less amenable to Critical (Code) Study.
Hello world! The full name is Erika Fülöp, I am professor of contemporary (French) literature, digital humanities and creative writing at the University of Toulouse 2 in France. I started my career with Proust and then moved increasingly towards digital literature, but the key interest through all this has been the question of writing. I have very little background in coding (a bit of JS and Python, understanding of key concepts), but am fascinated by coding/programming as a form of writing in so many senses and am keen to learn. I work on the interpretation of a couple of classical digital literary pieces with light touch coding (ex. Tibor Papp's digital poem made with Macromedia Director from the late 90s with a number of combinatory scripts which uses) as well as on modes and levels of writing with GPT. I am also very curious to see how we can detect queerness in code and in what senses and ways code can be queer.
I'll have a very busy February with travels and things so my presence will be patchy, but I'm hoping to follow and participate in at least some of the discussions. Thanks in advance for all the ideas and insights you share!
Hi all -- I'm Liat Berdugo, and artist / writer / associate professor of Art + Architecture at University of San Francisco. My own creative work focuses on embodiment, labor, and militarization in relation to capitalism, technological utopianism, and the Middle East. (https://www.liatberdugo.com/). I was a member of this working group 4 years ago and am glad to be back.
My first introduction to coding came through electronic literature, and the Electronic Literature (aka 'e-lit') program at Brown University in the early 2000’s. I learned how to code within the context of literature -- of writing -- and have continued to see it as such.
I sort of love that the question of AI has brought us back to language (with chatGPT being everywhere, etc). I've been making some exhibition- and venue-specific videos marrying AI-generated scripts with animated talking cats (see here).
I teach code to art/design students and am constantly asking them to consider its semantic and linguistic biases. Looking forward to this year's group.
Hi! My name is Sam Goree, I'm an assistant professor of computer science at Stonehill College in Massachusetts, I have a PhD in Informatics from Indiana University and am a former data scientist and music major. These days, I work at the intersection of computer vision and human-computer interaction and am interested in qualitative, critical and humanistic approaches to evaluation of the algorithms and models which underlie contemporary computer vision.
I am also broadly interested in designing for humanists, leveraging computer vision algorithms for distant viewing of artifacts like websites and critiquing computational approaches to aesthetics. I used to be really interested in generative modeling and computational creativity until the big data diffusion models took over. You can see most of my projects at https://samgoree.github.io
I'm not an expert in language in any sense, but I've had to give the "how does chatgpt work" talk a couple times now to a variety of audiences, and taught my HCI students how to design interfaces to language models this year. If you're interested in teaching students how to build things with LLMs, I might be able to help.
This is my first time participating in this working group, I'm excited to see the discussions!
Hi! My name is Marta Pérez-Campos (PCampos), and I'm an artist and PhD student at the UPV/EHU University of the Basque Country (Spain). My research is focused on the aesthetic and pedagogical uses of programming languages and software.
I studied Fine Arts (University of Zaragoza, Spain) and a Master in New Media Art (Kunstuniversität Linz, Austria) and some courses on computer Science. Therefore, I have some knowledge of programming, but I do not consider myself a coder. I'm particularly interested in 'code poetry' and trying to reflect on what sense it makes to write it nowadays.
Apart from that, I'm very interested in CCS as a way to reflect on what is behind the software that rules our daily interactions.
I'm very excited to be part of this discussion group!
Hi folks, I’m Leonardo Flores (please call me Leo, but try to pronounce it in Spanish) and I’m a longtime lurker/participant of CCSWG. I’m a professor and chair of the English Department at Appalachian State University in Boone, NC.
In addition to being interested in reading and critiquing code, I love to think about code engines as frameworks and e-poetic forms that can be hacked, remixed, and adapted to one’s needs. (I first encountered Taroko Gorge at a CCSWG 10+ years ago!) This became such a part of my creative and pedagogical practice that I’ve coined the term “hackeur” as a combination hacker+auteur.
More recently, however, I’ve been using ChatGPT to create new code engines and e-poetic frameworks. And so I would love to have a conversation with you all about doing a code critique of code generated by AI.
All this makes me wonder: is it time to move past my Leo Hackeur phase to become more of a cyborg writer and programmer? And what would I call this cyborg version of myself, LeoGPT? 😁
I look forward to our conversations!
(And if I fade into the background and go radio silent, it’s because we’re having 10 campus visits for 3 TT positions in my department this month.)
Hello, all! My name is Edmond Chang. I am associate professor of English at Ohio University. I have been around and about CCSWG over the years and am excited to be one of the co-leads for the first week of this year's discussions!
Hi all! My name is Claire Carroll. I'm a PhD student in Digital Humanities at the University of Cambridge. My research mostly focuses on interactive fiction and digital perspectives/agency. I am also a novelist and musician, so am very excited by the focus on artistry in this community!
I am particularly interested in combining code reading with analysis of the physical media underpinning it.
This is my first working group; can't wait to see where it goes.
Hi everyone,
I'm Matt (he/they), an artist and musician based in Toronto. I also teach sound art, installation, and computational art at the University of Toronto.
My research and practice is focused around thinking about computer-cultures, the ways that computation and technological interfaces impact our relationship to self and shape our worldviews, and digital materiality.
I'm excited to be here for the working group again this year and can't wait to dive into the threads.
Hi, I'm Daniel Temkin, and this is my third CCSWG. I am thrilled it is that time again, I've I've been missing the energy of this board!
I'm an artist who (among other things) makes esolangs: experimental programing languages that explore our relationship with systems and logic. I wrote a blog on the subject, esoteric.codes, for ten years, ending in 2021. I'll be leading an esolangs thread during the third week, building on my contribution to the DHQ special issue.
I might be scarce the first two weeks, as I'm on a writing retreat for another esolang project (an artist monograph), but will be checking in and hopefully not getting too distracted!
Hello again! Back to the CCSWG for the third time!
My name is gripp. I'm a cyborg with a crunchy human bit in the middle. Model year 1987. I graduated Morehouse in '09 and Georgia Tech in '12 with degrees in C.S. and Interactive Intelligence respectively. I work as a programmer but find my personal research and mad science more compelling. Digital computers are also at the center of my extremely multimedia/interdisciplinary art practice. I find joy in mixing theory from different disciplines to create new and affective and challenging things. I'm probably going to mostly lurk and read and look for book recommendations. But the contextual meaning of code matters a lot to me; it feels as much my native language as English. So I look forward to sloshing everyone's thoughts around inside my brains.
Hi all! I'm Orla Delaney and this is my first time in the CCSWG. I'm a PhD student in English at Cambridge, where I convene a reading group on CCS with @clairejcarroll.
I work on collections databases in museums, using ethnographic methods to understand how database infrastructures produce meaning within the collection. I'd be very interested to chat to anyone else who's working on or thinking about code in the museum, or the use of code across other informal contexts. I have a background in the application of linked data within cultural heritage, so I'm especially interested in using CCS methods to start unpicking LD/Semantic Web stuff, which I find escapes criticism by escaping everyone's attention.
Excited for discussions to start tomorrow and looking forward to speaking with everyone!
I am Jeremy Douglass, an Associate Professor of English at University of California, Santa Barbara, where I serve as the faculty director of our Digital Arts & Humanities Commons.
I am one of the organizers of the Critical Code Studies Working Group -- and I have joined my colleague Mark Marino in organizing this workshop every two years for going on fourteen years now! CCS has been a rewarding community for me to learn from and grow in, and I am excited to continue these conversations -- and begin new ones with new people. PLEASE CONTACT ME on the forum or by email if there is any way that I can help, or just to say "hi".
My relevant research interests are in CCS, software studies, cultural analytics, and information visualization. I'm interested in tracing the transition of interactive narrative from print to digital forms, particularly in the context of elit and game studies, and currently working on projects on narrative encoding and visualization -- including Pathpattern for graphing interactive page space, and Panelcode for diagramming page composition (as in comics and graphic novels). More recently I have been interested in AI/LLM-augmented code critiques using a process based on my Persona Games from Exploring AI Pedagogy (MLA-CCCC).
Hi--I'm Kevin Brock, an associate professor in the Department of English Language and Literature at the University of South Carolina, where I direct the First-Year English program.
I'm interested in rhetorical dimensions and relevant inquiry of code as well as the writing/composition thereof, and I've written a few articles that may be of interest along with a book (Rhetorical Code Studies, U Michigan Press 2019).
I've had the good fortune to participate in a couple of previous CCSWGs, and I'm excited to be involved again this year.
Hi everyone. I co-created Scalar, developed the Police Violence Verdict Generator, am interested in Metric time, live in Los Angeles, and occasionally teach at Occidental College.
I helped live-stream the first (2010) CCSWG at the Institute for Multimedia Literacy, and in this iteration will be co-hosting the teaching thread.
Hey folks, I am Shu Wan, currently enrolled as a doctoral student in history at the University at buffalo
Hi I’m Paige Treebridge. last week I taught code to user experience design students in my AI class, introducing P5js vectors as a way to approach understanding and not being intimidated by tensors. In parallel we’re reading Os Keyes and Ruha Benjamin on AI ethics. I always hope to empower designers to understand technical structures while acting as inclusive advocates.
My work with code has ranged from professional to pedagogical to practical. I'm an associate professor of design teaching hci, also working on a CS phd focused on cybersecurity, influence operations, information warfare (also games and simulations). the focus is my terrified reaction to the state of the world: do coordinated, automated attacks on vulnerable populations for political gain require automated influence detection? I will post on that question later this week, including code and efforts behind these sorts of tools.
{she/her. queer,feminist,neurodivergent}
Hi there, my name is Thorsten Ries, I am an Assistant Prof at UT Austin, Germanic Studies and DH, specialized in general DH, born-digital archives and digital forensics, digital scholarly editing. From this angle, the historical materiality of code, code works, and coding cultures are of special interest for me.
Hi, my name is Pablo Miranda Carranza, and I am a senior lecturer in architecture at Lund University, in Southern Sweden. For the last 20 years, I have been trying to figure out what happens to architecture when it is programmed rather than drawn. In the process I have built interactive installations, written generative design software, and published academic essays and articles.
My current academic research examines how software and programs have historically affected the way we think and make architecture. To look at code as a historical material implies to expand traditional historiographical methods to include the rewriting and execution of programs and algorithms. At the present, I am working on a project that examines the history of software in urban planning and the apparent incontestability of their results in governance and decision-making. The research is supported by a grant from Vetenskapsrådet, the Swedish Research Council.
I obtained my PhD from KTH in Stockholm in 2018 and was a postdoctoral fellow at the Department of Architecture at MIT in Cambridge, Massachusetts in 2022, before my current position at Lund University.
https://gitlab.com/Zenbagailu
https://github.com/zenbagailu
Hello, my name is Jan-Christian Petersen. I am a poet, writer and journalist from Husum, Germany. I write in the fields of culture and minority issues. Critical Code Studies are highly fascinating for me as an artist and recently also as a teacher who helps children finding ways into literature and journalism.
Digital ethics are a motif in my novel "What Happened After The Analogue Revolution". Critical Code Studies, in particular, are subject in some of my essays that have been published by hacker and humanist magazines (German only so far). -- The whole subject is very inspiring. CCS surely opens new ways of expression, ways of understanding literature and finally of understanding who we are. I am keen to learn more. I thank everyone for her/his ongoing contributions in this field.
Hi My name is Anna Tito I am a technical lead at Tantalus North (game studio) and PhD candidate at the University of Canberra. My PhD looks at games, code, power, rhetoric, and a relational approach to game development. There is a strong theme throughout my research on how code can be a tool of symbolic violence but with critical and conscious engagement it can also be a tool of empowerment.
Hello everyone. This is my third time at CCS Working Group. I'm Joey Jones, I'm an author interactive narrative and I'm doing my PhD in this area at the University of Southampton (with any luck finishing this year). In the last year I had a chapter in the Authoring Problem, and released my interactive science fiction novel, Lies Under Ice with Choice of Games.
I'm interested in text games, generators, art bots, and the creative processes behind making narrative computer programs. In my last code critique I looked at some of the considerations of using name generators. I'm also interested in how code decisions shape our self-perceptions— in my first code critique I looked at how arbitrary weightings in personality quizes or political compass code can shape people's understanding of their own politics.
Hi everyone. I am Joris J. van Zundert, and I am a senior researcher in digital & computational humanities at the Huygens Institute in Amsterdam, where I work in the department for computational literary studies and at the DHLab. My current work is mostly in reader response (what makes readers tick?) and narratology (what makes stories tick?) and I mostly use code and statistics to figure this out. That is also why I am interested in CCS: because code is so much pervading literature production and research I want to sharpen my critical understanding of these tools I use on a daily basis.
Hey, all, I'm Lyle Skains (she/her).
I'm a researcher and creative practitioner in Creative Digital Writing and Science Communication: practice-based research into writing, reading/playing, publishing digital and transmedia narratives, and how these can be used for health and science communication. E.g., You & CO2 project, Infectious Storytelling project.
I'm primarily interested (at the moment) in the spaces between the code — how we communicate with ourselves and others through comment and silent code functions.
I lurk a lot, but generally find my workload prevents me from contributing to CCSWG discussions as much as I'd like.
Hey people, my name is Gulsen (she/her). I work as a researcher looking at varying social and political contexts of digital technologies, and the way they are implemented and used. I am also developing an artistic practice through an alternative art school, looking at coded decisions, long-term impact, power relationships, and collective sense-making through performance and collaborative processes, often using humorous and no-tech methods. I'm excited to be here for the first time and looking forward to the discussion.
hi folks! I am Jarah. I was involved with CCSWG in the early years, and I am glad to be back now as one of the co-leads for the queer code forum. I look forward to our discussions.
Hi all! I'm Christina (or Tina) and this is my second CCSWG, very excited to be back! I'm a software engineer, currently a student based in New Jersey, and used to teach at a bootcamp. I'm interested in a more multidisciplinary approach to code/technology, particularly keen on creativity/arts and culture/history/archiving. I just started an MEng in Applied Artificial Intelligence at Stevens, so I'm looking forward to having this group to balance out the more hard approach to code things I'm getting through there.
Hi all! I'm Sam (he/him/his), and I'm a PhD candidate in information studies at the University of Maryland. This is my second CCSWG, and I'm excited to rejoin y'all. I study the social effects of surveillance technology, and I've been focusing on anti-surveillance activism and the social practices of PGP key-signing among hackers and open-source developers lately.
I am Yohanna Joseph Waliya. I obtained M.A. French Studies (Twitterature;Twitterbot poetry) at the Ahmadu Bello University, Zaria, Nigeria. I am a Nigerian digital poet, distant writer, ludokinetic writer, novelist, playwright, python programmer, winner of the Janusz Korczak Prize for Global South 2020, Electronic Literature Organization Research Fellow, UNESCO Janusz Korczak Fellow, Creator & Curator of MAELD and ADELD [2022 Emerging Open Scholarship Award: Honourable mention by The Canadian Social Knowledge Institute (C-SKI)], Executive Director of AELA& ADELI (https://africanelit.org ), International Association for Advancement of Artificial Intelligence Conference on Web and Social Media [ICWSM ] Scholar 2021-2022, Scrimba Scholar 2022-2023, and Hastac Scholar 2021-2023. I write in English and French. Among my works are : La récolte de vie (play), Monde 2.0 (play), Hégémonie Disparue (novel), Quand l’Afrique se lèvera (novel), Homosalus (digital poetry), Momenta (digital poetry), @TinyKorczak (Twitterbot-poetry), Climatophosis (digital poetry: The best use of DH for Fun 2020), Inferno 2.0 (ludokinetic poetry) etc. I am also a lecturer at the Department of Modern Languages and Translation Studies, University of Calabar. My research interests cover distant writing, Distant reading, Digital Poetry, Metaversal literature, Twitterbot-poetry , Twitterature, Digital Humanities and language discourse.
My name is Jason Boyd and I am an Associate Professor in English at Toronto Metropolitan University (Toronto, Canada). I'm interested in electronic literature, digital games, procedural creativity and queer digital humanities--and CCS of course! I published an article in the DHQ special issue on CSS (17.2, 2023).
Hello everyone,
I am Martin Bartelmus (he/him/his), currently a Postdoctoral researcher at Heinrich-Heine-University in Duesseldorf, Germany. As a scholar specializing in Literary, Media, and Cultural Theory, my interest in Critical Code studies developed during my work in the research field of “Schriftlichkeit” (loosely translated as theoretical and historical literacy, or writing) at the Department for German Literature Studies in Duesseldorf. While there, I initiated a project with Professor Alexander Nebrig, exploring written code and the concept of “Digitale Schriftlichkeit”, drawing inspiration from Derrida’s Grammatology. Informed by French theory, my interest in CCS focuses on the intersection of theory, writing, and code.
Hi, I'm Leonardo Aranda from Mexico City. I'm a media artist and PhD in Media Study from SUNY Buffalo. I've work with code for over 20 year, either teaching, programming or in my own projects. I'm really interested into the politics and materialities of code, specially in relation to the Global South.
Hi everyone,
My name is Valérie Schafer, I am a professor in Contemporary History at the C2DH (Center for contemporary and digital history) at the University of Luxembourg. I'm a newcomer there. Thank you for welcoming me ! My field of expertise and interest lies in the history of the Internet and the Web, and born-digital heritage. As a researcher, I am impressed by Critical Code studies and what they have already achieved and may bring to digital studies (and beyond), and as a teacher (in Master's in history), I'm eager to better introduce my students to digital methods and digital humanities and open their minds to critical code studies.
Hi, I am David M. Berry, Professor of Digital Humanities at the University of Sussex. My most recent book is Digital Humanities: Knowledge and Critique in a Digital Age. My current research is Reassembling the University: The Idea of a Digital University. I am also working on early AI as part of a collaborative international research project examining the recently unearthed original ELIZA source-code, its cultural significance, and the emergence of the Chatbot, see http://findingeliza.org
See my full bio here: https://profiles.sussex.ac.uk/p125219-david-berry
Hello! My name is Katherine (she/her). I was first introduced to CCS and the working group as a student a few years ago, and have continued to be excited about the field past my studies. I work as a developer and designer professionally, and maintain an artistic practice of exploring code, language, syntax, and poetry through the creation of creative tools, handmade websites, language design, and computational poems.
Hi! My name is Zach Mann. I received my PhD in English at the University of Southern California, where my dissertation on early machine programmability was deeply inspired by critical code studies. I now work at USC as an admin for the Levan Institute for the Humanities and the Society of Fellows in the Humanities. I also teach literature classes at USC and Occidental College. My interest in CCS is born of my love for material metaphors of all shapes and sizes.
I'm also volunteering as a coordinator for CCSWG 2024. If you have any questions about your forum account or need help registering, please email me at zmann@usc.edu.
Patsy here. Hi, everyone. I participated in an early CCSWG, the year the 10 PRINT thread yielded the eponymous book. I don't really read much code; I was a DH, Media Lab, and Languages librarian at MIT for a decade. I retired. Nowadays I translate mostly books and so far all from French. (I'm considering starting to translate from German.)
Hi everyone, I'm Lee Tusman. I'm an educator and artist in NYC. I make art, games, music, software, websites, and sound works. I work with code for most but not all of my art. I'm an Assistant Professor of New Media and Computer Science at SUNY Purchase College. I co-founded Processing Community Day NYC and direct a podcast called Artists and Hackers. One area I've been increasingly interested in is Permacomputing and particularly have found myself motivated by Permacomputing Aesthetics: Potential and Limits of Constraints in Computational Art, Design and Culture. I'm personally motivated to find how this may complement and be informed by discussions in critical code studies.
Hello everyone, I am Lyr Colin, currently a PhD student at USC under the CSLC (Comparative Studies in Literature and Culture) program. My research focuses on the relationship between players and avatars, and I'd like to write about it from a theoretical standpoint that allows me to think of broader questions of how one constructs their identity as well as where the border between virtual and "real" space could be drawn. I have worked on CCS alongside Mark Marino, both in the context of his Electronic Literature reading group, and his most recent seminar dedicated to CCS.
I have very little knowledge of coding (though I am trying to learn Python), but am always enthusiastic to read and experiment with the code critiques I have seen over the past couple years. I am very happy and looking forward to be participating to this year's working group!
I'm one of the volunteers coordinating this year's CCSWG as well, and you can feel free to contact me at ccolin@usc.edu.
EDIT: Since I see other French people here, I should add that I am originally from France, where I studied both English at Paris 3 Sorbonne Nouvelle, and Japanese at the INALCO.
Hi everyone!
My name is Jonathan Armoza and I'm a research software engineer and PhD
at the English department at New York University. I have a background in industry as a software engineer, game developer, and tech consultant, and also have been moonlighting in engineering for neuroscience and NLP since 2017. I've been programming since 1996 and got my start in the game industry with Firaxis Games (Civilization III) and 5th Cell (Drawn to Life, Lock's Quest, Scribblenauts). I'm an avid computer and video gamer since 1986 when I first got a controller and keyboard in my hands, and have a wealth of knowledge in the graphical and text adventure game subgenres.
I've been doing digital humanities - officially - since 2012 when I began volunteering some of my time for Google Books and joining the Bamboo DIRT board in Berkeley. Since then I've been a graduate student at McGill in Montreal, working under Stéfan Sinclair, designing data visualizations for various kinds of models of literature, and visiting them on models of 19th century American works. Some here may know me from various conferences attended and talks I've given since then in Canada and the US. I'm currently attempting to finish up my dissertation under the supervision of Tom Augst at NYU.
My language specialties include C, C++, C#, Java, JavaScript, Python and various other web and scripting technologies, but you know, one puts the tools in the box and uses them. Happy to contribute to our discussions in any way I can. I'm based in Orlando, FL so my local community for these kinds of conversations mostly reside at UCF with folks like Anastasia Salter and Dan Cox – who mentioned the existence of this working group to me!
Hi, I’m Harlin/Hayley Steele (they/she/ze/he). I’m a PhD Candidate at UC Davis, where I’m working on a project that explores what I call “diegetic code,” based on some musings that have emerged since my first CCSWG in 2016. My work also includes research into the "gamemaking turn" in game-based learning, something I've explored in a paper that was published last year in the Proceedings of the 2021 GENeration Analog conference by Carnegie Mellon ETC Press. I'm genderqueer-genderfluid and genderful, and it's great when folks switch up my names and pronouns.
I’ve had the honor of joining Mark and Rob Wittig to design a Netprov that dramatizes climate data through a wedding planning game set in the year 2070 (Spoiler Alert: Climate change is the ultimate wedding crasher). Working on this got me diving into the code bases used to organize future-facing IPCC climate data, something I explored in the CCSWG in 2022 and actually later that year ha ha, I ended up speaking at an IPCC-partnered gathering...
This situation led to a Yes Men stunt in which LM Bogad played his oil company executive character, Oily Gark, and we kind of crashed the ICONICS Scenarios Forum paper exhibition. I still don't know if that was a good idea yet or not. I've been thinking a lot since that time about applied humor. Like: is it worth trying to reframe the "call out" structure of humanities critique to maybe be more of a "call in" sometimes? I mean, is it possible for critiques to be a sort of loving thing, or at least to be communicated that way...? So I guess I'm on Team Jacob and Team Kierkegaard, respectively.
Hi! I'm also into nonbinary computing.
Hi all! I'm Dan and my work is dedicated to the teaching of code as well as research on algorithmic systems, digital inequality and creative technologies. Though I'm educational scientist, my research and teaching is interdisciplinary at core. With a background in software development, I'm interested in all creative practices that involve code and software, such art installations, creative coding and aesthetical-political modes of self-expression. Additionally I'm fascinated by everything that blinks and overcomes gravity, therefore I've been into the FPV drone community for quite a while.
I'm excited to be here for the working group again this year and can't wait to dive into the different threads and discussions.
Hello everyone ! My name is Titaÿna (she/her)[ti-ta-i-na] and I'm currently working on the source code of the first Apple Lisa as part of my PhD project, "Code as a Source", in History under Valérie Schafer supervision at the C2DH (Center for contemporary and digital history) in Luxembourg.
I have a Master's degree in Digital Humanities and History from Lausanne University and a background in political science. During my time there, I contributed to the Lausanne Time Machine project and completed a master's thesis on Handwritten Text Recognition (HTR) and Topic Modeling on 18th-century sources in collaboration with the project team. The thesis and the results are available on my Github profile (github/titayna).
Within my PhD research investigating code as a source, this case study may highlight the significance of source code in comprehending the initial development of personal computers and the evolution of user interfaces. My PhD project aims to demonstrate and delve into the importance of source code as a primary historical resource. This case study aims to comprehend how unveiling the “black box” of source code can shed light on the history of computing, and conversely, how history can inform the understanding of source code.
I’m also interested in a more general reflexion about how code can be used in social science in general. So I’m really looking foward to see what all of you all doing and exchange about it !
Hi, all, and welcome. So, back in 2005, I was studying chatbots and wanted to honor the call for "medium specific analysis" -- meaning, to look at each object with its unique properties. For chatbots, that meant looking at the code. Drawing on what I knew of semiotics, cultural studies, and other critical approaches, including feminist, queer, and race critical theories, I proposed Critical Code Studies. In 2010, while running an independent study on the topic with Max Feinstein, I put out a call for others to join us in an online discussion. Jeremy Douglass joined in to help organize as he has been developing this field with me. Soon we had 6 weeks, each run by their own host, bringing together scholars, artists, and programmers from around the world. Fourteen years later, here we are!
A few other milestones: In 2010 and 2011, we ran in-person CCS conferences and hope to resume. In 2020, I published Critical Code Studies with MIT Press.
Currently, I am at the University of Southern California where I run the Humanities and Critical Code Studies Lab with many affiliates and advisors joining us here. This past fall I taught my first Critical Code Studies course and hope to make it a staple of USC's offerings. I am currently working on a book about ELIZA with David Berry and several others gathered here, including Art Schwartz, Jeff Shrager, Peggy Weil, Anthony Hay, Sarah Ciston, and Peter Millican.
Thank you for joining us! I am grateful for your presence here and your commitment and energy in developing Critical Code Studies. I look forward to our conversations and meeting you in person some time soon!
Hi everyone, I'm Fereshteh (they/them) I live on Miccosukee, Seminole, and Tequesta land, aka Miami.
I teach in the art department Florida International University. I mostly teach digital media but I also do the critical theory class for our MFA candidates and I have an eco-art class that is dear to me.
I still consider myself a code n00b and I enjoy learning about creative and poetic computation and technology practices that center care, justice, and liberation.
Hi everyone! I'm Cyril Focht, and this is my second time in the CCS working group. In a recent whiplash career change I'm running for the US house of reps on a platform of software and digital technology policy. That means these days I'm mostly working with computing ethics and public communication. If anyone's interested in chatting with me about that, I'd be delighted for you to reach out since I don't want to be pestering anyone about it here. My campaign website is at https://vote4focht.us
I sent the last few years teaching in the CS department at Tennessee Tech, where I was trying to insert more interdisciplinary perspectives into our curriculum. Last year I got to teach a software studies course that was designed to go through a broad range of critical approaches and build up to the ethical skills and emphasis on justice that too much CS education is lacking.
I'm generally interested in philosophy of computing, game studies, and elit (mainly hypertext). Most of my research has been around game narrative, appropriating hypertext theory to analyze choice-based games, and some thinking about the relationship between player, character, and avatar in games. I also make eclectic video essays on youtube analyzing games.
Hi, everyone!
I'm Dr. Daniel Cox, but I go by Dan. I'm currently a post-doctoral scholar at the University of Central Florida in the Text and Technology department. If you have encountered me before, though, it is probably through my work with the authoring tool Twine or with the narrative scripting language ink.
Over the last decade, I've been creating video tutorials for Twine, including a new series with 70+ videos. I was also the primary contributor for the Twine Cookbook for multiple years and will be included as first editor when it finally comes to print this year. I also wrote the first textbook on ink named Dynamic Story Scripting with the ink Scripting Language in 2021. (Sadly, because of some issues with the publisher, the code examples are now out of date and can't be updated.)
Much of my research over the last few years has used or referenced Critical Code Studies including multiple conference presentations and my dissertation last year. Since then, I've been continuing my research into applications of Media Archaeology and Critical Code Studies by examining code across space and time. (I even did a recent workshop on the Zork I (1980) source code.)
Hello everyone!
My name is Brian Arechiga. I'm a third year PhD student at USC. Originally, my research involved reading conspiracy theories as a type of literary object, but over the last couple of years, it has evolved into also including critical code analysis of the social media sites where conspiracies thrive. An object of study that fascinates me is 4chan and it's wild /pol/ board - where many conspiracies get their start. Through CCS, I want to try and examine the intersections between the software and the narratives created within it.
This is my first year participating in this working group, so I am excited to be a part of it!
Hello! I'm Judy Malloy -- https://people.well.com/user/jmalloy/ --
My work -- with innovative authoring systems, words, and information art ranges from the seminal hyperfiction Uncle Roger (BASIC, 1986) to the spoken word aleatoric system "The Fabric of Everyday Life", just shown at Nick Montfort's MIT Trope Tank.
At the School of the Art Institute of Chicago, I teach in the Art and Technology Dept., which just merged with the Sound Dept.
Thirty years ago in 1994 -- a year in which I was an Artist-in-Residence/Consultant at Xerox PARC, as well as a Consultant for the 1993-1994 New Riders' Official Internet Yellow Pages -- the World Wide Web drastically impacted hypertext authoring.
At that time, my hyperfiction L0veOne, the first work to be published in the Eastgate Web workshop, was a road trip both in its narrative content and in the paths for electronic literature that the World Wide Web engendered.
So, this anniversary year, I'm writing a paper focusing on working in this then new authoring environment and including other early creative work in 1993–1994 -- such as the ANIMA arts website hosted by the Center for Image and Sound Research, (CSIR) in Vancouver.
This also seemed like good time to once again experience the collegial energy of Critical Code Studies.
Great to see so many familiar names in this Introduction topic!
Hey everyone and good morning to all of you in the same timezone
My name is Juliane Ahlborn, I'm currently working as a research assistant at the Bielefeld University, Germany. In my PhD project I'm dealing with the question how artists and designers are using AI as a new tool in creative processes and for their personal artistic expressions and to what extent there are new constraints (against the backdrop of subjectivation). In ethnographic interviews, I have spoken with artists and creative professionals and examined the role of complex data-driven algorithms and also the (new) (im-)material conditions, that these artists and designers are facing.
I am also taking part in the CCS working group for the first time this year and I'm really looking forward to discuss with you!
Sorry to be so late to the intro thread! I'm Quinn Dombrowski, and I work as digital humanities staff between Stanford Libraries and the Division of Literatures, Cultures, and Languages (which houses all of them, except for English, East Asian, and Classics.) I'm also wrapping up my last year as co-President of the Association for Computers and the Humanities.
I participated in the last CCSWG until I came down with COVID, but hoping for better luck this time around! I support non-English computational text analysis, but that's also expanded into running a Textile Makerspace transformed out of a former computer lab, and teaching/doing a lot of data visualization with textiles. I've also started working with the Unicode Consortium and spending time in the Unicode Archives at Stanford, which has been a trip. Oh, and one of my kids is named Eliza, not least for the chatbot.
Hello everyone
My name is Amira Jarmakani; I use she/they pronouns. I joined the anti-racist critical code working group sometime in the middle of hard covid lockdown times. This is my second time joining, and I am excited to build some more understanding of code -- particularly the possibilities of nonbinary code/ing and queeringOS -- in conversation with you all. I work mostly in Cultural Studies, so come to this group with an interest in feminist surveillance studies and data abolition movements.
I'm a professor of women's, gender, and sexuality studies at San Diego State University, and am currently working on a project about how anti-Muslim racism goes viral.
Hi all,
I'm Evan Buswell, PhD in Cultural Studies from UC Davis. I've been working with Critical Code Studies for quite some time now. My dissertation focused on the development of mathematical language and programming languages from 16th century to present, and I did a lot of close readings of programming languages and mathematics in the course of writing it. There's an article coming out in the second Critical Code Studies special issue that presents the tail end of this research, so I'll be talking about that, along with the other contributions, in Week 3. Here's a teaser: we constructed programming languages according to a particular epistemic framework which now all but prevents us from thinking adequately about machine learning. More recently, I've been studying mathematics to try and better understand the space of machine learning and optimization—what can these algorithms do, what will they be unable to achieve, how does this relate to symbolic analysis and discretization in general, and how will this affect our knowledge production processes.
In parallel with all this, I've taken on quite a few projects in the "critical making" genre. I'm not sure that shouldn't just be called "art"—but then, I'm not sure. I helped create and architect Play the Knave[1] with the UC Davis ModLab, and I created a few projects along with my dissertation, including a pair of mini programming languages, the Noneleatic Languages,[2] that we talked about in the 2018 working group. More recently, I've been writing about sound and designing analog electronic musical instruments as New Systems Instruments.[3]
Looking forward to the next few weeks!
[1] https://www.playtheknave.org/
[2] https://github.com/ebuswell/noneleatic
[3] https://nsinstruments.com/
Hello, I'm Stefano Penge, a rather old programmer with a philosophy background and an strong interest in child education. Since 2013, while coding educational software, I was questioning myself and my colleagues about what make a bit of code so different from another that give exactly the same result, apart speedness, correctness or efficiency. I could even recognize code written by my colleagues. So I started to read and think about styles, aesthetics, trends, history, gender... here in Italy :-( . I've to tell that it was not so easy. I'm so happy to be here with you, trying to breath some fresh air.
I have founded an association (Codexpo.org) and coded a web site (namely, a flat file CMS) that mimics an exhibition on source code life (and growth, and death) that you can explore if you like https://www.codeshow.it/index-en.html . Texts are being translated from italian to english (or french) by DeepL dynamically, so please be tolerant.
Hi! I'm SHAWNÉ MICHAELAIN HOLLOWAY. I'm an artist ~ I spent many years at School of the Art Institute of Chicago's FVNMA department teaching new media and am now at Virginia Commonwealth University where I teach video and performance (a lot of queer history for video and performance) for the Kinetic Imaging department.
I teach code as a conceptual framework as well as intro coding-for-art courses to computer science students and partner with Xin Xin to teach a pedagogical practicum called code, Decolonized to look at how we can teach code using experiential learning.
I also work for Black Lunch Table as their Digital Developer and Technology Manager as we build a new home their amazing audio archive.
This is my second time in the working group and am super happy to be back. My broader interests are code and poetry, breaking rules, games for a single player, learning how to teach things better, learning how to teach things more inclusively, intentional listening, and also computer music.
Reach out anytime if you wanna chat about code or any of these other things.
Hello everyone! I'm Saksham Gupta. I'm a machine learning engineer currently working with Deloitte in their financial audit group. I've also worked with Fashion/Finance, and cybersecurity startups helping them build AI solutions. My research focus has been examining gender biases present in large language models, and cryptography. I strongly believe that working groups like CCS are crucial in understanding how systems are built, and how we can make them resilient. Looking forward to having fruitful discussions with all of you!
Hey, there, I'm Mark Sample, a professor of Digital Studies at Davidson College and long-time participant in these working groups. I've written on the use of randomness in early literary computing, as well as the code of games like SimCity. Lately I've shifted away from research into creative coding, making interactive pieces that use the procedural rhetoric of videogames in order to critique contemporary online culture.
Hi! I'm Carly Schnitzler (University Writing Program, Johns Hopkins) and I'm so grateful to be back for my second CCSWG this year. My teaching and research center digital rhetoric, creative computation, and the public humanities. Something of potential interest to this group: I organize If, Then: Technology and Poetics, a collaborative, interdisciplinary working group and workshop series promoting inclusivity and skills-building in creative computation for artists, scholars, and teachers. We have some great events coming up in the next few weeks and I'd love to see you there.
Hello everyone! I'm Koundinya Dhulipalla, an artist and lecturer based in London, UK. I teach design and programming for the web. My research interests are CCS, FLOSS communities, software studies- especially the poetic potential of computational systems. I have recently completed my thesis project that looks into the aesthetics and politics of programming languages with a focus on esoteric programming languages; and have built my first esolang as an exploration of vernacular computing as a tool for decolonizing code.
Hello, Everyone! Stephanie August is a computer scientist (retired), introduced to Critical Code Studies by Mark Marino during my days as a computer science professor looking to reconnect with her liberal arts roots. This is my third (fourth?) CCSWG adventure. With my undergraduate degree in Slavic Languages and a computer science dissertation on a model for understanding arguments by analogy in natural language texts, working with the CCS and the digital humanities crowd is a welcome opportunity to think deeply and outside the box about what code and coding means and accomplishes. I am currently interested in understanding how our world views, values, and biases are reflected in our code, and promoting the use of AI to enhance yet not misguide education from K to gray.
I should add that @StephanieAugust delivered the first version of the Critical Code Studies manifesto to a conference in 2005. We've had many conversations about it over the years, so I am deeply in her debt as to many others here, and am grateful to you all for joining us.
It is a pleasure to be here, Mark, and exciting to see CCS flourish. Hopefully it will raise awareness of the need to understand code and its implications beyond just writing instructions for a machine to follow.
Hi folks! Sadly I am coming to this quite late; life has been a lot lately. Expect to see me comment on some older threads.
My name is Steve Klabnik. I am not affiliated with a university, but almost did CCS-related work with the University of Pittsburgh back in the 2010s. I have been writing software for roughly 30 years now, and got into the humanities in my college years. I presented a paper at the Cultural Studies Association's 2014 conference titled "Distributed sexism in a networked world," whose contents are sadly lost to time, I believe, but was focused on providing examples of how intolerance spreads on the Internet.
I have a history of teaching software development to both new folks and re-training experienced developers; I used to do both professionally.
Additionally, I have been involved in a significant amount of Open Source work; I was heavily involved in both Ruby and Ruby on Rails, GitHub was created by several of my peers, and I spent the last ten years of my life working on the Rust programming language, including writing the canonical introductory text, "The Rust Programming Language," with a co-author.
I see several familiar faces here, but also a lot of folks I don't know. I'm excited to dig in.
I teach English at Seton Hill University, a SLAC near Pittsburgh. I'm currently teaching a special topics course called "A.I. and the Future of Literacy" for a general population (with no coding experience). I regularly give workshops at the Computers and Writing conference on such topics as Inform 7, Scratch, ChoiceScript and Twine, and I'm currently teaching myself Visual Scripting for the Unity3D game engine. I'm happy to learn from the smart, hard-working people who have put so much effort into CCSWG24.
I am Steven J. Oscherwitz, an artist and philosophical researcher. I am honored to be here. Thank you, Mark Jeremy, the crew, and the community.
I am not an expert in the theory of electronic literature, but I have studied the history of mainstream Western philosophy and science for many years. I am concentrating on mathematical thinking.
I am researching Agnes Arber, Darcy Thompson, Alan Turing, and Rene Thom.
I am curious about your discussion of how your code technology's algorithmic structuring relates to mathematical structures, whether algebraic, potentially geometrical, or brings its inherent logical schema to more parent forms of mathematical thought.
That is how mathematical entities work with play/games, where subject and object and their monotonous metaphysically integrated structures get rehearsed and reshaped as unexperienced dimensions of space and time.
**
How does code language innovate more potent mathematical innovation?
Do you know if it does?
Can your use of code improve mathematical innovation?
Do you produce mathematical knowledge?
If so?
How?****
Thank you
Best
Steven