Introduce yourself

markcmarino · January 2020

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.

Once you are done with you introduction:

See Forum Tips and Tricks for a guide to posting in general.
Read the CCS Bibliography and suggest new entries!
Post your Code Critique after reading the Code Critique guidelines.
Attend weekly forums, each with featured discussions (like plenaries).

You are free to repost any of your contributions to the WG elsewhere on the Web, but please do not post the comments or work of others without their permission.

Waliya · January 2020

Thanks.

Waliya · January 2020

Hi! I am Waliya, Yohanna Joseph, digital poet http://vispo.com/guests/waliya/index.html, Postgraduate student at Ahmadu Bello University, Zaria-Nigeria. I am actually working on Twitterbot @Protestitas and Twittérature as my thesis research. I welcome everybody to the CCSWG2020. I will like to get in touch with the French Scholars in CCS and develop my Code Manipulation Composition Method that I started last year.

siusoon · January 2020

Hi everyone, I am Winnie Soon, Denmark based Hong Kong artist and researcher, interested in the cultural and political implications of technology in general. Central to critical code studies, reading, writing and executing code are always part of my thinking/methods in research. Recent publication includes API practices (w/ Eric Snodgrass) https://firstmonday.org/ojs/index.php/fm/article/view/9553/7721 and I am currently working collaboratively with Geoff Cox on the book called "Aesthetic Programming: A Handbook of Software Studies", and all the work in progress is documented here: https://gitlab.com/siusoon/Aesthetic_Programming_Book/tree/master/source. My specific interest here is to see how people work with code as a material and medium that allow reflexive, conceptual, aesthetic and critical thinking.

Look forward to this year CCSWG2020.

KirillAzernyi · January 2020

Hello everyone!
I am Kirill Azernyi - a fiction writer and poet and a philologist (with a post-graduate course of aesthetics), my interest in code studies is literary - I'm interested in code functioning in narrative and narrative being coded.
Along with conventional fiction and poetry I write Interactive fiction in TADS, make games in GameMaker Studio, create interactive texts in Word, Excel and PowerPoint. I also develop Illiterature site and Facebook group - both devoted to computer literature and digital art.
As a literary scholar, I'm thinking of how the performative nature of code corresponds with the representative one. Where is the distinction between what code tells and what it does? How does code hide the writing (due to A.Mackenzie) and reveals the procedures behind it? And - how would we define form and medium in a code piece?
Thank you!

barry.rountree · January 2020

Barry Rountree, Computer Scientist, LLNL. Not speaking for my employer. He/him/his.

Bill Condee (Ohio University) and I have been exploring what we call Nonmaterial Performance, a critical approach to code that draws on actor-network theory, vibrant matter, and performance studies. Our first paper will be published in Richard Schechner's "The Drama Review." The (gnomic) teaser "Imagining the Nonmaterial" was published in Imagined Theatres 03:14.

Professionally my research covers firmware interfaces to processors and accelerators and how they can be leveraged for high performance computing. In English: I poke at individual bits on the processor to make them do unexpected things. I've also done laboratory robotics, system administration and a bit of Linux kernel hacking.

I'm particularly interested in how code is an unreliable guide to its performance.

alvarotriana · January 2020

Hello everyone. My name is Álvaro Triana, and I'm writing from Colombia.
I'm a Software Engineer and recently finished my master's degree in Cultural Studies. As a academic I'm fairly inexperienced, but as a videogame producer I have more than 10 years of experience. I'm especially interested in the Seriality Studies, and I think that CCS are a great complement to them. I hope to work on a particular function of the Unreal Engine, let's see what happens

eamonnbell · January 2020

Hello — I'm Eamonn Bell and I'm a researcher in the Department of Music at Trinity College, Dublin. I recently completed a thesis on the early history of music information retrieval, focusing on computer applications in the storage and processing of musical scores and other representations of musical objects. I'm now working on the Audio CD format from a position somewhere between musicology and new media studies, the latter influence stemming more from the practical end of media archaeology (as opposed to its theoretical preoccupations).

In my work, I like to draw on code and pseudocode representations of computational processes as they appear in the historical record to further some of my arguments and I'm excited by the scholarly agenda set out by the CCS community. I plan to post a crit of some code from the BIOS of the Atari Jaguar CD, a commercially unsuccessful but beloved add-on for the Atari Jaguar that I've already published a little bit on.

I look forward to the discussion and the future of the field. Please don't hesitate to contact me if anything I post seems to demand correction, clarification, or follow-up: I'm willing to admit I've much to learn in this area. Thanks — and welcome!

SimonHutchinson · January 2020

Hi all. My name is Simon Hutchinson (he/him). I'm a composer and Asst. Prof. of Music Technology at the University of New Haven. While my musical training is "traditional," my current work focuses interactive electronic composition, including data-driven instruments, Arduino, and digital games. I teach a wide variety of courses about art and technology, including a digital humanities lab that is new this semester.

I am very new to CCS, but my readings thus far have really resonated with me and what I'm trying to accomplish in my work. I'm here to learn, engage with these ideas as an artist, and see what I can bring back from the discussion for my students.

dmrieder · January 2020

Hi Everyone. I'm David Rieder. I'm the current director of the Communication, Rhetoric, and Digital Media PhD program and Assoc. Prof. in English @ NC State University. My training is in digital rhetoric, writing, and critical theory. I've written about and developed projects under the auspices of digital rhetoric (and writing) for a number of years. In the past 10 years or so, I've focused a lot of my interests on 'physical computing' (post-PC tech like Arduino, sensor-based and interactive projects using Kinect, collaborating on several projects for public audiences). My 2017 book, Suasive Iterations: Rhetoric, Writing, and Physical Computing, covers some of those ideas and offers a 3-step practice toward the creation of moving (read: suasive), everting experiences. Most directly related to the CCS approach promoted here is probably my 2010 article, "Snowballs and Other Numerate Acts of Textuality." I'm looking forward to the discussions over the next few weeks!

Remony · January 2020

Hi, my name is Rosi Grillmair. I am an artist, programmer and researcher from Linz/Austria. In 2019 I finished my graduate study program Interface Cultures at Art University Linz on the topic of "CODE AND POETRY - An Exploration of Logic throughout Art, Philosophy and Computation".

Besides that I am enthusiastic about community-driven programming platforms like Processing and vvvv. I used to teach them to different interest groups (at art festivals, for kids and for undergraduate students) and feel part of the communities who keep these platforms alive.

I am also a member of NODE Forum for Digital Arts, a biennial festival in Frankfurt/Germany that embraces the vvvv community in form of a dense workshop program and a hackspace.

My current research revolves around languages and how they shape our realities. These languages can be visual or code or poetry or choreography.

Reading through the first chapter showed me that I am in a very good place here and eager to explore further! Thanks.

Nupoor · January 2020

Hi everyone! I'm Nupoor Ranade, a Computer Engineer turned (technical) communicator. I'm a third year PhD Candidate in the Communication, Rhetoric and Digital Media program at NC State. My interests lie in the fields of digital and computational rhetoric, user experience and audience studies especially in open source spaces. I'm excited to be in this group! As you can tell, it's my first time. I published a conference proceeding (Conditional usability testing for UX optimization) based on an algorithm I developed myself to optimize usability tests. For some reason, I chose to write the algorithm using code. I think it worked well since the conference was ACM, but I often wonder how i would handle this in a non-engineering space. I'm excited to learn how to critically think about making such decisions and get more insights on interpretation of codes from the discussions that will take place here. I recently taught a course on Digital Rhetoric of AI (syllabus) in which students built chatbots in Python and made rhetorical decisions for inclusivity and empathy while writing code. Although I'm super excited for the third week where we discuss AI, I look forward to learning new things and building new perspectives throughout this program.

Stefkax · January 2020

Hi all. My name is Stefka Hristova - I am an Associate Professor of Digital Media and Michigan Technological University and former UX Designer/Developer. I am interested in the tension between document and data as well as in the relationship between algorithm and data. I have written on aesthetics, computers, and cinema here: https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/10304312.2017.1338668?journalCode=ccon20
Current research focuses on facial recognition algorithms. Look forward to our discussions!!

driscoll · January 2020

Hi everyone! My name is Kevin Driscoll and I am an assistant professor of media studies at the University of Virginia. My recent research is about alternative histories of computing and the internet. I'm especially interested in the contributions of amateurs, hobbyists, and enthusiasts to popular computing cultures. This year's CCSWG themes are very exciting and I'm looking forward to reading more from you all.

I'm also looking forward to chatting about critical code studies and pedagogy. This year, I'm teaching a class titled Computational Media in which students learn to write small programs to explore big ideas like randomness, creativity, time, etc. This course is a hybrid grad/undergrad seminar in media studies but I've previously taught programming in a variety of settings from K-12 to doctoral methods.

jang · January 2020

Jan Grant here. I'm not an academic. I read and write a lot of code. First encountered CCS when Ari Schlesinger asked, "what does a feminist programming language look like?" - her criteria were quite interesting, I think.

I like diverse opinions and the questions they throw up; hence, I'm mostly here to lurk and listen.

That being said, here's a non-lurking thing. I think there's another way to look at the examples in "a job interview," from the introductory chapter circulated before this WG kicked off. They don't achieve the same thing. Explanation / demonstration here.

If I had to interpret those two samples, I'd say it was much more likely that the second was a reproduction of a trick seen elsewhere, whereas the first seems more likely to be an on-the-spot invention.

From a critical stance, I'd also observe that there's a western bias to the problem. I'm not sure that the notion of an anagram even applies across all the languages that Unicode covers.

It's a pleasure to (virtually) meet you!

smorillo · January 2020

Hi everyone,

My name is Stephanie Morillo (pronouns: she/her/hers) and I'm a Technical Program Manager. I've worked at B2B developer companies for over five years in engineering (presently), developer relations, and marketing. I also have a Master's degree in User Experience Design.

Though I learned to code many years ago, I've not done any programming in a while. Instead, I developed an interest in looking at code through my role as a content strategist. Three years ago, I was an editor for the "Race" section of the Responsible Communication Style Guide, which is a resource for people in tech who want to write more inclusively. That experience exposed me to the terms technologists use to illustrate specific concepts, and how word usage in code evolves (or doesn't) over time. I will share one such example in a Code Critique.

I'm really looking to working with and learning from you all!

Leonardo.Flores · January 2020

Hi folks,

I'm Leonardo Flores, but please call me Leo (run that sequence of letters through your Spanish language compiler, so your mind's ear hears "Lao" instead of "Leeo").

I'm President of the Electronic Literature Organization (ELO) and professor and chair of English at Appalachian State University. You can read more about me and my work at leonardoflores.net.

I have long been interested in reading code for works of electronic literature and have participated (lurked, mostly) in several CCSWG since 2012. I gave a TEDx talk in 2015 in which I do a little code reading, so that might be a fun intro to my work. I am particularly interested in how bots, text generators, AI systems, and other digital phenomena are used to produce literary works. I will be giving a talk about this in March at the MITH Digital Dialogues titled "Distant Writing" so I'm interested in using the CCSWG as an opportunity to test out ideas for this talk.

meredith · January 2020

Hi I'm Meredith. I have been interested in reading code as a cultural artifact for a long time - I gave a paper presentation on literary tropes in PERL at SLSA in 2004.

I have done a bunch of things in the intervening years (my cv is on my blog), but the last year I have been focused on poetic experiments with various blockchain protocols and ml,
human narratives around the art of coding (rather than code creating narratives or art), teaching, and advising startups. I have been working on something I call 'conscious computation'.

With CCSWG I am interested in looking at different power structures and logical structures embedded in code.

I have an idiosyncratic stream of consciousness blog here - https://thewitchofendor.com/ and I like instagram these days. https://www.instagram.com/meredith.noelle/

NGz · January 2020

Hello, I'm Nicholaus Gutierrez and I am a PhD candidate in the Rhetoric department and Center for New Media at UC Berkeley. I'm interested in alternative programming paradigms and "homebrew" approaches to certain technologies, like VR. Looking forward to the discussions!

samara · January 2020

Hello, I'm Samara Sallam and I'm an artist based in Denmark as a stateless person. I got into programming to use it in my art but I went in a different direction and I'm writing a book called "statelessness and AI robots" I published the first chapter as a draft and the text is a cross between academic and poetic, and it looks into stateless and robots as alienated objects. its political social philosophical text.

nick_silcox · January 2020

Hi! I'm Nick Silcox. I'm a Ph.D. student at New York University in the English department. I am interested in programming's literary qualities and uses, as well as coding as a media practice and possible site of theorization. Looking forward!

mai_ibrahim · January 2020

Hi everyone. My name is Mai Ibrahim. I'm a second-year Ph.D. student in Communication, Rhetoric, and Digital Media at NC State University. I haven't learned code before. I'm therefore interested in learning as much as possible about coding, as well as its cultural significance.

gripp · January 2020

hello!

my name is marshall "gripp" gillson (they/them). i graduated from morehouse college with a degree in computer science and ga tech with a degree in interactive intelligence. until june, i was a full-time engineer at google. i left to enroll in a creative writing mfa program. about to start my second semester. ccs seems to be right on the intersection of several of my interests. excited to learn from and with you all!

-gripp

belljo · January 2020

Hi all,

I'm John Bell, a digital humanities researcher at Dartmouth College and the University of Maine. I write code, make art, and teach about digital culture and preservation at both of those institutions.

I've been interested in code as text and the creative practices that come from treating it as such for a long time, particularly artificial constraints like one-liners, esoteric languages, and code poetry. I often make bots and generative art built around those artificial constraints.

samwalkow · January 2020

Hi Everyone!

I'm Sam Walkow, a PhD Student in Informatics at the University of Illinois. I research open source scientific software development, focusing on the natural science disciplines. I'm interested what motivates people to use the software tools they use, how people re-use tools, and how people think about data.

I look at a lot of code and try to identify patterns in usage and approaches to solving problems. I'm really looking forward to discussions and to broadening my perspective.

miltonlaufer · January 2020

Hi all!
My name is Milton Läufer (he/him). I am from Argentina, but I live in Berlin. I worked as computer programmer (since 2000), as a journalist and as a teacher. I have published some articles and short stories in Esquire, Vice, Guernica, CIA Revista, and Otra Parte, among others. First, I studied philosophy, with a thesis about Wittgenstein's Tractatus. Then, I earned an MFA on Creative Writing (in Spanish) at New York University and currently I am finishing a PhD (also at NYU) focused on digital literature in Latin America. I was the 2016-2017 writer-in-residence of The Trope Tank, MIT. In 2015 I published Lagunas, a partially algorithmic-generated novel (in Spanish), which—as most of my work—is available online at http://www.miltonlaufer.com.ar. My second computer generated novel, A Sound Such as a Man Might Make, was published in 2018 by Counterpath. I have participated in art exhibitions in Latin America, the US and Europe.
But, most of all, I am very excited to be part of this working group! Looking forward to participating in the conversation!

Denise_Thwaites · January 2020

Hello everyone!

Denise here. I'm a contemporary art curator and Assistant Professor of Digital Arts and Humanities at the University of Canberra, Australia. My background is in aesthetic and political theory, as well as digital art history and theory. Current research and teaching explores digital heritage and ethnography of online communities. I'm new to CCS, my interest stemming from its applications of critical theory. I'm particularly looking forward to learning more about feminist and Indigenous programming!

derya · January 2020

Greetings,

My name is derya (she/her) and i am a first-year phd student at the university of utah working on the intersection of visualization and reflection. i am self-taught in both programming (my undergrad was in labor relations) and design (i worked in nyc for about six years developing a symbolic system for an economic r&d firm).

With a focus on making visual systems more accessible across race, class, and gender, i am looking to learn about the embedded semiotics within code and how critical code reading (and writing) can be used as a reflective tool in practice and in art.

jeremydouglass · January 2020

I am Jeremy Douglass, an Assistant Professor of English at University of California, Santa Barbara, where I serve as the faculty director of our new Digital Arts & Humanities Commons. I am one of the organizers of the Critical Code Studies Working Group -- 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). Once upon a time my first code "close reading" was of Andrew Plotkin's Shade -- that piece ("Enlightening Interactive Fiction") appeared as a chapter in Wardrip-Fruin and Harrigan's First Person (2006). I helped organize the first Software Studies conference in 2007, and at Digital Humanities 2009 I took a look at how code criticism might apply to non-traditional programming paradigms ("What Counts as Code to Criticize?"); at the CCS Working Group in 2010 I led a week discussion on code reading practices and how code circulates "in the wild" in public, non-programming forums ("Week 2: Reading Reading Code"); at USC's 2010 CCS Conference I looked at the history of code comments in the computer science literature ("Comments on Comments in Code."). At CCS 2012 I was one of the participants in the week on "Play" -- and I'm one of the authors of the book 10 PRINT CHR$(205.5+RND(1)); : GOTO 10, a sustained 10-author reading of a single line of source code (MIT Press 2012). In 2014 I helped present the ACLS Workbench collaborative (code) commenting environment modification for the Scalar platform. That was intertwined with a project on collaborative close reading of electronic literature (with Jessica Pressman and Mark Marino) which became the book Reading Project: A Collaborative Analysis of William Poundstone's Project for Tachistoscope {Bottomless Pit} (2015). And I have joined my colleague Mark Marino in organizing this workshop every two years for a decade now!

CCS has been a very 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.

mncmncmnc · January 2020

Hi there! I'm Maxwell Neely-Cohen. I'm a novelist and essayist who works on technology projects for fun. I'm Editor-At-Large for literary magazine The Believer and am lucky enough to have all sorts of roles in the NYC literary and art world.

I recently was an artist-in-residence at CultureHub and Pioneer Works, and part of the Fall cohort at the School For Poetic Computation, all places I totally recommend if you're looking to work on cool stuff.

I'm really interested in figuring out how to get the old school literary world and technology world interacting more, so would love to talk to anyone about that

And of course, love talking about writing and books forever

https://www.maxwellneelycohen.com/

angelica_martinez · January 2020

Hello everyone! My name is Angelica. I am a Ph.D. student at the School of Arts, Technology, and Emerging Communications at the University of Texas-Dallas. I am pursuing research on digital technologies as they intersect with issues of equity and inclusion. My research aims to study the ethical implications and social impacts of artificial intelligence. I am looking to learn more about reading codes critically and algorithms used for everything from police profiling to health insurance calculations because I believe these skills are absolutely necessary to have a profound impact on these systems.

I am excited to start new conversations with new people about these issues.

jbinder · January 2020

Hi all! I'm Jeffrey Binder, a postdoc at Penn State University's Center for Humanities and Information. I'm both a historian of computation and a programmer working in digital humanities. I'm currently in the later stages of writing a book about the intellectual history of algorithms, with a particular focus on the period from the seventeenth to the nineteenth centuries.

One of my major software projects is the Distance Machine, a web application that finds words in historical texts that would have been less familiar in past moments than they are today; I published an article on this project in American Literature. I have also written a variety of text generators and other experiments with digital poetics, most of which are listed here. I am, finally, the creator of the esoteric programming language Homespring.

This is my first time joining the CCS group. I'm looking forward to the conversation!

nickm · January 2020

I'm Nick Montfort (he/him), computational poet, digital media scholar. My computational poems are made of code that is short and available as free software, open to study and modification.

I just finished with Synchrony, a demoparty (digital art festival) that begins in NYC, continues on a train, and concludes in Montreal — I was lead organizer for the event with a great team. I was also part of a project that originated in CCSWG, 10 PRINT CHR$(205.5+RND(1));: GOTO 10 — a book written by 10 authors.

A new (and open access) edition of my textbook Exploratory Programming for the Arts and Humanities is coming out this year. I edit the Using Electricity series of computer-generated books and co-edit the Platform Studies book series.

At MIT, I'm a professor of digital media and direct the Trope Tank. I live in New York City, where I'm involved with community gallery Babycastles, the School for Poetic Computation, and LiveCode.NYC. Site: nickm.com

patricia_s · January 2020

Hello, I'm Patricia S., arts and media worker using image and culture as material. I make visual media projects that take the form of photographs, videos, lumps of words, photo books, and ad hoc publishing streaks. I teach photo and video courses in New York City, ranging from production best practices to theoretical framing.

This is my first time joining the CCS group and I'm looking forward to our conversations!

quinnanya · January 2020

Hi, I'm Quinn Dombrowski and I support non-English digital humanities at Stanford University. I've been involved in digital humanities work for 15+ years, but CCS is pretty far afield from anything I've ever done (DH-wise or disciplinarily -- my background is originally in Slavic linguistics), and I'd like to understand it better.

I'm always working on a handful of collaborative projects at once, currently including an analysis of Harry Potter fanfic metadata in English, Italian, and Russian; an ongoing set of analyses (with associated tutorials spelling out all the steps) of The Babysitters Club novels (in the original English and translation), and exploring linguistic give-aways for texts translated into English.

Ryan_Leach · January 2020

Greetings! I'm an English Ph.D. student at UC Santa Barbara, interested in game studies, digital humanities, media theory, and critical infrastructure studies. Currently, I'm developing a project to computationally analyze the source code of interactive fiction (or "text-based adventure games"). In addition, I've worked on several dh projects here, requiring both the use of and critical reflection on code.

Looking forward to our discussions!

edwarddejong · January 2020

Greetings, I am Edward de Jong, a long-time programmer located in Oakland California. I have a very broad experience programming, having done software for general business, art, education, finance, insurance, toys, basically everything but 3D games and military real-time. Currently, I am developing a new language called Beads (free beta download at beadslang.com) which is designed to replace Java, Javascript, and Python with a single, simpler language that permits us to enter an era of interchangeable parts where projects can be made more quickly, and to have a much longer lifespan as they are more insulated from vendor quirks. It is designed to remove the unnecessary complexity which makes programming so frustrating for regular people. I especially welcome non-professional programmers to give it a try, as it requires only a fraction of the time to learn compared to the unholy mess that is HTML/CSS/JS/+Frameworks.

jooyoungoh · January 2020

Hello, I am Jooyoung Oh(jojooh) practicing artist and researcher(Ph.D. candidate) working on ACT-R based artificial user. ACT-R is a cognitive Architecture that simulates the given task to perform the goal set forehead, and written in early AI language, LISP. Recently, I have been creating an installation that reveals how Youtube algorithm guide user. By utilizing a custom-built computer, an EEG helmet, and eye tracking, the installation uses the search results for "most viewed videos on YouTube" as a case, enabling participants to see how predictable they are under the algorithm of recommendation.
for further interest, I share the link below
jojooh.com

pierre_d_ · January 2020

Hi everyone,

I'm Pierre Depaz, and I lecture between NYU in Berlin, where I'm based and Sciences Po in Paris. I've been interested in source code ever since I finished an MFA in game design and I've just started a thesis at the Sorbonne University in literature, looking at the aesthetics of source code (broad topic! in the process of being narrowed down).

I'm particularly interested in programming languages, from esoteric ones to the different worldviews they afford and their conditions of production and "consumption", and am looking forward to the discussion these coming weeks!

(also some links: https://pierredepaz.net and a small zine that was published of source code poetry: https://www.officialfan.club/product/coroutines-book )

lskains · January 2020

Hi, all.

I'm Lyle Skains. I'm a Senior Lecturer in the new School of Digital Arts at Manchester Metropolitan University. My research is practice-based, and I focus primarily on the cognitive aspects of writing in digital media, as well as publishing in digital media.

I only dabble in code, so I'm interested in expanding that perspective (this is my first time in the CCS group).

I'm currently working on science communication through interactive digital narratives. The first project is up and running at http://youandco2.org.

Looking forward to the discussions!

jed · January 2020

Hi, I’m Jed Dobson! I’m quite interested in CCS approaches to code and hope to learn more from everyone in the working group. I co-authored a book on the Apollo 11 Guidance Computer code called Moonbit—it’s a mix of cultural-theoretical work and creative renderings of the code as erasure poems. Rena Mosteirin, my co-author, wrote the most interesting part, the poems. I’ve been working on what I think of as the intellectual history of algorithms. I like to understand algorithms as ideas or concepts that are rooted in the material conditions that made them thinkable and executable and continue to evolve with new situations, become remediated in new languages/platforms, take prior assumptions with them, and impress themselves on the present.
I’m interested in thinking more about the historicity of computational objects while paying attention to their formal arrangements. I made small attempt at this in my reading of the k-nearest neighbors algorithm in my book Critical Digital Humanities.
Really looking forward to learning with you!

eugenio · January 2020

Hi everyone,

I'm very happy to join such an amazing crowd! My name is Eugenio Tisselli, originally from Mexico City but now living somewhere else

I started exploring different pathways across the rich forest of electronic writing since 1999, and have continued ever since. If you'd like to have a look, most of my works are accessible at my website, motorhueso.net.

I have also explored collaborative writing through various projects with communities at risk of social exclusion, available at megafone.net, and also with farmers and other communities that deal with terrestrial matters as part of their daily lives (ojovoz.net)

I'm interested in the many possible intersections between code, writing, technology and ecological thinking, and I'm really looking forward to having exciting discussions with you!

kostherr · January 2020

Hi everyone, I'm fascinated and impressed by all of the participants in this group and eager to learn from everyone. I'm a media studies and medical humanities researcher at Rice University in Houston, TX and for the past few years my work has moved from archival research on historical medical films to cultures of code in medicine and health. I've published a few pieces in the Washington Post, Slate, and STAT about the ways that big tech companies are moving into healthcare and the problems this is raising for patients. This has led me to collaborate with some patient groups who have identified vulnerabilities in their Facebook groups (and elsewhere), and I'm hoping that by participating in this working group, I'll be able to generate some fruitful ideas about the future of health in the context of datafication. More about my activities can be found at the Medical Futures Lab.

luke · January 2020

wow this is an interesting group of people! my name is luke fischbeck (he/they); first-year phd student / politely lurking listener / deer in headlights: interdisciplinary media art and practice at university of southern california; my current research concerns pain, affect, and AI; background in (self-taught) coding for creative, artwork, performance; completely new to (very excited by) methodologies for reading code critically / discursively. thank you!

SarahCiston · January 2020

Hi, I'm excited to talk with and learn from you all. My background is in experimental creative writing and self-taught coding.

As a PhD student at USC, I research and make computational media art that focuses on co-writing with algorithms, immersive data identities, and intersectional AI. I am also invested in building communities for learning programming with an interdisciplinary, intersectional approach.

My projects include an interactive sculpture that uses NLP to help 'rewrite' the inner critic and a bot that tries to explain feminism to misogynists online.

I'm interested in all kinds of language machines!

masoodkamandy · January 2020

I'm a media artist and faculty co-creator of the Design Media Art program at Pasadena City College (PCC) where I teach Creative Coding and Human Computer Interaction.

PCC mostly serves low income and, often, at-risk students. They may not have been exposed to as much computing and technology as other students, so it's always a pleasure and privilege to be able to do what I do. Our students are very passionate, politically active, and the social, ethical, and technological are constantly in dialogue in our program.

My background was originally photography. My current work involves computer vision and, in general, the combination of lens-based media with custom software. In the coming year I will be joining a machine learning and artificial intelligence lab for a PhD to expand on this work. My hope is to deepen my knowledge, contribute to research in the field, and to participate in more free and open source projects.

Though I was born in the US, my family is from Kabul, Afghanistan and I have always been curious and interested in ways to integrate my family's ethnicity, culture, and heritage into my research as well.

Looking forward to sharing with and learning from you all.

estene · January 2020

I'm Emily. My day job is at the intersection of Judaic studies and digital humanities, but more broadly interested in how media, technologies, and code factor into the human experience at this point in time. I'm on Twitter

Temkin · January 2020

Hi, I'll be co-hosting week 2, and am psyched to take part in this year's discussion!

I make programming languages where code consists of empty folders, or where data decays over time, or where spelling everything wrong is okay. I believe we are irrational beings and so there is a natural drama in our attempts to write code or deal with logical systems.

I've been writing about programming languages and other works that challenge the norms of computing for my blog esoteric.codes since 2011.

I'm impressed with the links posted so far and am excited to talk about code!

Ignotus_Mago · January 2020

Hello, I'm Paul. I'm an artist who has worked with computers for nearly 40 years. Before I learned to code, I produced algorithmic art as a painter and performer, collaborating with actors and musicians in Spain, where I lived from 1971 to 1983. In 1984 I joined Apple's Macintosh Developer Program at its very start, while earning my MFA and learning to code at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago (SAIC). I later developed online collaborative software for K12 education at Northwestern University, where I also taught in the interdisciplinary Center for Art and Technology. Later I returned to SAIC to teach media art history and various programming courses. I have worked with VR off and on since 2001, first with the CAVE and then with headset VR.

Intermedia structures fascinate me, inform my theoretical and physical work, and are one reason I am here for CCSWG. Structures in code are structures in the world. They migrate into social discourse. They can be used in an artist's or designer's toolbox of forms, but (like all form) they come with a history and a context: They are not neutral.

ignot.us

cleogirl2525 · January 2020

Hiii. I'm shawné michaelain holloway. I'm an artist. You can see my work at www.shawnemichaelainholloway.com. I frequently co-curate festivals and exhibitions around feminist strategy and other radical perspectives as they intersect art and technology, the next one with DGTLFMNSM in March in Berlin. The rest of my research focuses on blackness, code(s), and performance (both the efficiency and expression types) through an exploration of BDSM.

I am currently teach Intro to Creative Coding at the University of Illinois at Chicago.

Jessica.Westbrook · January 2020

Hi everybody, I'm Jess (she/her). I'm an artist, designer, researcher, educator. Currently an Associate Professor in the College of Computing and Digital Media (CDM) at DePaul University in Chicago where I teach courses in UxD, HCI, Games, Media Arts, Creativity, Semiotics, and in the spring Data Viz... lots of nested code in all these domains. In addition to teaching I Co-direct Divergent Design Lab (www.divergentdesignlab.org). DDL research involves cybersecurity, vulnerability, malware, social cognition, and social engineering. I also Co-direct Channel TWo (CH2), a Chicago-based new media studio (www.onchanneltwo.com). While the teaching, lab, and studio keep me busy I am most intensely occupied with completing coursework towards a PhD in Education - seeing the light ABD 2020! Relishing the experience and landing primarily in educational research. Dissertation themes involve: creativity, teaching/learning, self-regulated learning, self/peer assessment, critical technical practice, literacy and agency, new forms of sustainable learning ecosystems. I have read a few CCS articles over the past few years and excited to go deeper/focus. Thank you!

Federica.Frabetti · January 2020

Hi everyone! I am Federica. I live and work in the UK (University of Roehampton). I am a an academic and an author. My first monograph (2015) is titled Software Studies and it takes a deconstructive approach to software (my work is mostly philosophical, drawing on Jacques Derrida, Bernard Stiegler, Gilbert Simondon). I am very proud to say that I took part in the first CCSWG2010 (happy times!) and in some editions afterwards! I am currently working on a book on (big) data and associated technologies. Thank you

Imani.Cooper · January 2020

Hi all! I am Imani Cooper (first timer). I am a PhD student doing multidisciplinary arts-informed research in the Department of Comparative Literature and at the Digital Studies Institute. I am coming from a Critical Data Studies and translations background, however a case study from my dissertation project has lead me to CCS. Currently, I study code and algorithms as they intersect with experimental writing, and creative technologies that center notions of ancestral knowledge, movement, and self-becoming within black diasporas. I have some structural understanding of Recursive Neural Networks (RNN) and deep learning algorithms for machine learning. While I have taken coursework in web design learning the fundamental principles of HTML, CSS, and digital typography most of my knowledge about code and algorithms is self-taught. I look forward to participating with you all!

Cheers

ebuswell · January 2020

Hi! I'm Evan Buswell. I've been fortunate enough to be part of this community since the first CCSWG in 2010. I'm (still) a PhD candidate in cultural studies at UC Davis, finishing up next quarter. My dissertation project looks at the concept of code, in its particularity, as the ideological outgrowth of changes in the monetary/credit system. I've also been programming all kinds of things, some of which you can find out about on my website: evanbuswell.xyz. My latest projects are a sonification module for Eurorack—like what dataviz is, but with sound—which I hope to have a prototype of by the end of this quarter, and a project which is trying to sonify space in response to a performers movement through it. In a (maybe) less academic sense, I make music (as Next Expanse) and have been designing analog electronics for modular synthesis (as New Systems Instruments). I hope to have about 5 modules available by the end of the year.

As you might gather from all that, I might go missing for a bit from Too Much to Do syndrome, but I'm nevertheless excited to join you all for this. These working groups always seem to produce something exciting for me.

JamalSRussell · January 2020

Hello all, my name is Jamal Russell, and I am currently a PhD candidate in the University of Calfornia, Santa Barbara's English department. I am currently writing a dissertation on the poetics of interfaces that trend towards black (so, codices that have been printed completely black, black squares in novels, black screens in film and digital poetry, empty space in augmented reality poetry, etc.) and what they convey about how interfaces come into form and structure modes of interaction.

I was fortunate enough to be a part of 2018 edition of the CCSWG, and am looking forward to being a part of it again this year. In addition to my dissertation interests, I have expressed my interests in CCS through the play and analysis of what I've been calling meta-programming games: games such as TIS-100 and Pony Island that make the manipulation of code (and with it, the game space) a key aspect of their game design. Over the years, I have been particularly interested in what these game mechanics express to their players about code as a language, interface, and means of manipulating data.

Looking forward to the next few weeks of discussions!

acstanfield · January 2020

Hi all! I’m Ashleigh Cassemere-Stanfield. I am a PhD student in English at the University of Chicago and I research digital media, artificial intelligence, and monstrosity in relation to changing conceptions of the human and her relationship to the environments that construct her. In addition, I am a poet, a photographer, and a self-taught programmer. Methodologically, I combine these interests in order to execute critical-making projects that foreground the enigmatic, playful, and affective dimensions of algorithmic inquiry.

For an example of my work, see SonifyingHamlet.com. This project transforms textual data from Shakespeare’s Hamlet into nonspeech sound in order to explore the physical and temporally constrained construction of an environment as a form of reading.

samplereality · January 2020

I'm Mark Sample. I teach and research digital culture and creative coding at Davidson College. In addition to myself, students from my class Gender and Technology will be lurking about the discussion forums here!

ibull · January 2020

My name is Iris Bull (she/her/they/them). PhD student at Indiana University in a Social Informatics program titled Computing, Culture, and Society. I'm a transplant from a Communication and Culture program at IU that was disbanded some years ago, and so my research background is somewhat broad and extensive: feminist/gender studies, media studies, cultural studies, communication studies, (some) game design, but more recently I identify as a student in science and technology studies, anthropology, and social informatics. At present, my dissertation project concerns analyzing toxicity within competitive gaming environments and contributing to critical discussions about computing as a colonial phenomenon.

I am also part of the local team teaching computer ethics to undergraduates, and so I am very much engaged in topics related to algorithmic decision-making or governance, uncomputing, and representations of science and technology in popular culture.

I was drawn to participate within the group because a long-standing interest in critical code studies, in part fostered by reading Federica's Software Theory about 6 years ago — so thank you for that! I don't program and I am not proficient with any languages, but I'm also not allergic to code and I personally enjoy exploring code architectures. I may be more of a lurker in the group when it comes to sharing and talking about code, but I hope to learn and contribute when I can. I am especially excited for the agenda laid down for the next few weeks, as I am presently engaged in trying to understand what it means to approach software design and coding from an Indigenous epistemological position.

Nice to meet you all!

GodaKl · January 2020

Hi All, my name is Goda (she/her). I am a research associate and PhD candidate at the University of Kassel (Germany), research group Gender/Diversity in Informatics Systems. My background is media and gender studies, with specific interest in feminist new materialism and posthumanism.

My current research is on epistemologies of machine learning. Specifically, I am interested in the principles and logic of different machine learning algorithms and how these principles act as organising structures for generating knowledge. I am currently looking into statistical models of KNN, Decision Trees and Linear Regression, their histories and their computational expression as machine learning algorithms.

Together with colleagues from my research group I have published mostly on the intersection between computer science, technology design and feminist theory. A couple of latest articles can be found here: on situated algorithms; and on rethinking computing through artistic research+technofeminism.
Currently am teaching myself Python and am working together with a colleague from computer science on a couple of hands-on machine learning projects.

I am relatively new to code studies, but I am very excited to join such a fantastic group!

erinkathleenbahl · January 2020

Hello everyone! I’m Erin Kathleen Bahl, Assistant Professor of Applied and Professional Writing at Kennesaw State University (Atlanta, Georgia). My research, teaching, and design explore the possibilities digital technologies afford for creating knowledge and telling stories. I focus on webtexts, folklore, and digital editing/publishing, and I also make vector art webcomics inspired by birds and fairy tales. I’m an editor for the online scholarly journals Kairos: A Journal of Rhetoric, Technology, and Pedagogy and Computers and Composition Online. My recent dissertation on invention and multimodal scholarship received the 2018 Computers and Composition Hugh Burns Best Dissertation Award.

I’m new to Critical Code Studies and to this working group; mostly I’m excited to lurk, listen, and learn from everyone’s various expertise and perspectives. I’m comfortable writing HTML/CSS from scratch and can plug in JavaScript as needed, and I’ve started playing around with C# through some excursions into game design via Unity. There’s a LOT more I’d like to learn, though, and I’m looking forward to following along with the code critiques to broaden my horizons. Especially excited to learn more about the cultural/semiotic/human communication dimensions of code and how these might be approached via folklore studies, and to find ways in which scholar-designers grounded in rhetoric and composition might connect more deeply with similar work going on in electronic literature circles.

Thanks for the opportunity to be part of these conversations, and to Mark Marino, Jeremy Douglass, and Zach Mann for coordinating!

dcuartielles · January 2020

Hej, this is David, lecturer at Malmo University, Sweden, PhD in Interaction Design, and Co-founder of the Arduino platform. I used to be very active in the development of bootloaders, development environments, web-platforms, etc. Currently I teach Tangible and Embodied Interaction, Non-linear Narratives, and Data Visualization techniques at Malmo University, as well as make research at the Internet of Things and People group.

My interest in critical code has to do with the fact that programming languages are mostly written in English (or a pseudo version of it) what affects the way people can learn about them. I am also interested in the way programming languages can resemble the physical world and how to create APIs that will allow for a faster learning curve thanks to their more descriptive nature. Paradoxically, while people are trying to move away from oop, to me it seems like it is the best option to do this representation of the real world.

So the question for me is ... would technical innovation be different if programming languages were written in e.g. any of the many Mayan languages?

Cy.X · January 2020

Hi! My name is Cy X (they/them). I’m an artist, technologist, and student at New York University’s Interactive Telecommunications Program. My background before ITP was in media studies and film.

Currently, I am interested in exploring time, portals, and memory through sound, performances and installation. My work and interest is heavily influenced by research on computation and how computation / code have altered our understanding of these things. Namely, how do code and society alter each other?

I am wrapping up finishing School for Poetic Computations Code Societies and this work has inspired my interest in learning more about Critical Code Studies.

alejandra · January 2020

Hi everyone! I'm Alejandra. I recently graduated from NYU with a double major in Computer Science and Interactive Media. I'm interested in Critical Code Studies as I'll be soon starting working as a software engineer soon. I want to have a better understanding about how coding affects society and the other way around. I've previously taken some classes that have touched on this topic but I want to dig deeper.

Thanks for organizing this!

brianh · January 2020

hey all! looking forward to exploring these topics with everyone over the next few weeks. my name's brian h (he/him). i've been a professional software developer working in c++ for the last year and a half, but my main background is in music composition and experimental electronic music. i am one of the lead maintainers of supercollider, which is a music programming language based on Smalltalk and J. i'm interested in CCS as it seems to be pretty tied to a lot of what i do + what i like, i.e. software, ethics, electronic music, internet art, and culture studies.

Brooke.Cheng · January 2020

Hi Everyone, I'm Brooke (she/her). I'm a professional software engineer working primarily on UX. I also have a passion for fine art photography and digital editing. I am currently working at Microsoft, working on web experiences. I'm interested in learning how code can make things more accessible, especially in web UX development. I'm also curious how we can make code/ux more inclusive. I'm excited to learn more about CCS, and hope that critical code reading will help me make me make UX accessible by everyone.

Tully · January 2020

Hi all, I'm Tully Barnett, senior lecturer in Creative Industries at Flinders University in South Australia. I'm a member of the Exec Committee of the Australasian Association of Digital Humanities. I'm normally teaching in English and Cultural Policy but am currently on a three year research grant looking at digitisation as a cultural practice and the way immersive reading works in read-in-browser environments and distributed reading. I'm interested in critical code studies as a way of making visible some of the assumptions that lie beneath our everyday experience of the world, the ethics of code and digital interactions, and decolonising the digital and the research around it.

gregorybringman · January 2020

Hi, I’m Gregory Bringman, an independent researcher and software developer interested in the French 18th Century and science studies in addition to critical code studies.

I was an early CCS participant, attending the first working group in 2010; I also participated in the 2016 and 2018 working groups and am glad to be joining in once again in 2020.

I’ve played a little bit with multilingual CCS and for one experimental writing project, I authored articles on CCS topics - en Français. This project intersected with L’Encyclopédie studies and a program for revisiting the tradition of the historical critical dictionary.

I think computers are philosophical tools and that approaching code and software critically can return us to the first years of computing history when building computers and writing software positioned thinkers to ask questions of ontology and epistemology “les plus grandes”.

I look forward to the discussions of the next few weeks.

DavidBerry · January 2020

It's great to be back at CCS and has it been a decade already?

I'm David Berry and I've written a fair amount about computation, particularly theoretically in terms of its social, economic and political implications but also connected to new strains of idealism that computation seems to engender. I've also written on digital humanities, trying to connect DH to software studies and CCS, together with work on ways of knowing through computation.

More recently I've begun work on the concept of Explainability, a short paper is given here for some background.

I actually think the explanatory value of a concept like explainability could be really valuable within CCS, which seeks to untangle the knot of software and code. I will try to develop these thoughts in a code review over the next week or so.

Lesia.Tkacz · January 2020

Hi, my name is Lesia and I'm working on my interdisciplinary PhD in Web Science at the University of Southampton. I'm researching creative text generation, with a focus on generated novels.

I first came across CCS while researching for my BA thesis, and I was incredibly excited to find that it enabled me to bring together my fascination with dead/legacy programming languages, linguistics, the history of AI and computing, literature, and culture. And further, that a CCS approach can support my interest in investigating one area with the theoretical frameworks and tools from another.

Looking forward to digging into the discussions here!

Juliakott · January 2020

Hello all! My name is Julia Kott and I am an MA student at the College of William and Mary. I am currently writing my MA thesis on the role that digital technology and the surveillance infrastructure of the internet plays on pedagogical relationships. I am so looking forward to our discussions!

Currently, I live in NYC so if anyone else is in the area, it could be great to arrange an IRL meetup.

Looking forward!

liacoleman · January 2020

Hi everybody!

I'm Lia Coleman, an artist and computer vision researcher based in Seattle. I've been doing research on how generative adversarial networks (GANs) can produce artwork, and recently presented a poster at the NeurIPS workshop on creativity. I'm now a teaching assistant teaching visual artists and designers how to use AI as part of their creative practice.

I'm a recent alum of the School for Poetic Computation in NYC, and completed my bachelor's in computer science at MIT in 2017. I also was a computer vision engineer at Facebook for 1.5 years working on computer vision detection systems for terrorism, graphic violence, and other harmful content.

I'm interested in discussing biases in machine learning-- biases in both the systems and the culture surrounding it (for example, regarding gender: the recent NIPS -> NeurIPS name change, the ubiquitious 'Lena' playboy centerfold as the go-to test image in the field of computer vision, etc.).
As the daughter of two Chinese immigrants who were quickly churned out of their computer engineering jobs, I'm also interested in the invisibility and discardability of (asian) techworkers.

lucidbard · January 2020

Hello all,

I'm joining a little late. I'm an Assistant Professor at UCF, in the Games and Interactive Media department. My research investigates platforms, computational and reality media, and authoring/programming paradigms. I am looking into ways of measuring, recording and analyzing the individual actions and responses using physiological signals and computational models. Here's a few relevant works:

I'm co-author with Anastasia Salter of Flash: Building the Interactive Web (MIT, 2014, Nick Montfort and Ian Bogost series editors). In that book, we and

Aaron Reed and Anastasia Salter and I wrote the upcoming Adventure Games: Playing the Outsider (Bloomsbury) due out February 20th. In it, we explore the threads of interactive narrative design solutions that weave through the genre and its descendants.

I collaborated with Mark Marino and Joellyn Rock on Salt Immortal Sea, an iPad interactive narrative that has been exhibited several places and published in the New River Journal. I am also a member of the editor collective for the Electronic Literature Collection Volume 4, along with Rui Torres, Mia Zamora, and Kathi Inman Berens (which is accepting submissions).

I recently taught introduction to programming for first-year MA students, using Nick Montfort's Exploratory Programming for the Arts and Humanities, and am currently teaching mobile development with React to undergraduate web design majors.

I'm looking forward to learning more about the working group and the many perspectives represented here!

Mace.Ojala · January 2020

Hi everyone, I am Mace Ojala.

I came across "software studies" during my Information Studies and Interactive Media study program at University of Tampere via a peer who referred me to Taina Bucher's PhD work when we were writing an essay together on a games research course. Reading her PhD, I immediately started identifying as a "software studies scholar" – I had found an intellectual home, and some specialized literature for myself.

Then reading Computational Culture and some of the other literature already mentioned above, that is how I think I encountered CCS proper, and some of the people above too. Thank you for your work. Nowadays I find myself working in Science and Technology Studies (STS) research group/lab and also in digital design at IT University of Copenhagen, and I spend much of my time teaching.

Finding people who appreciate deeply "studying the paint" of software isn't always easy, and I'm glad to see this amazing collection of folks here, and finally to be able to attend CCS WG remotely.

Peace ?

clarissal30 · January 2020

Hello all,
I am Clarissa Lee (she/her) and I used to be part of the critical code studies community, but that kind of fell by the wayside mainly because the various turns that my career has taken. Hence, I was only able to do all things digital on a part time (and sometimes even less than that) over the past 4 years.

However, this year things will change for me as I am preparing ground to launch a project on digital wellbeing (which is part critical algo, part critical AI, and part critical code project) - a coding aspect of this project involves me developing a bot (I am thinking about what it means to implement an AI in this sense here) to assist me in tracking through the practice of trolling in Malaysia, which is a tough process in itself due to the multiple languages spoken there. However, for the starting phase, I am interested in tracking trolling in both English and Malay, and am looking into designing code that would allow me to decide on the iterative decision-making process involved (of course, my challenge would be to decide what sort of patterns of textual exchanges or trail and I interested in tracking). I haven't written code in awhile, so being on this group is actually a way to make me commit to finally doing that again.

My day job presently is as a research fellow at a sustainable development and Southeast Asian studies part centre/part think-tank. However, my projects are not completely defined by these fields, and technically, unless one lacks imagination, there are many ways to define the scope of possibilities for these very broad fields. But one thing that I am particularly interested in, stemming from my own interrogation into science and technology in relation to indigenous knowledge objects in Southeast Asia, is to understand how differently the present knowledge systems which we privilege in the west could have looked like if contributions were also forthcoming from the region during the 20th century development of programming languages and internet cultures. This connects to what @dcuartielles was saying about non-English languages (and I would expand this to include non-European cultures; however, given the pervasiveness of globalization, it is naive to consider there non-European cultures are uninspired by what went on elsewhere).

I am still working through @markcmarino's intro to critical code studies, which I am happy to learn, include many interesting new considerations that were not so evident in the early days of the development of this area (as @DavidBerry said, it has been a decade now).
The closest thing to code I had written about could be found at nomorepotlucks. If you have interest in an early collaborative work I did which tracks the more technical aspects of internet trolling, which also connects it to the internet history, feel free to have a look here

So happens that this forum is coinciding with the lunar new year holidays in my part of the world, so presently juggling social/family commitments with work, and this forum, so will take a bit of time to catch up. Nevertheless, I will be checking in regularly and am looking forward to some interesting conversations ahead!

PS I an presently writing a book about the history of physics in Malaysia and one of the things I discovered from interviewing some practicing physicists concerns interest in neural networks during the 1980s in Malaysia (although this was largely a theoretical concern).

Happy Metal Rat Year to all!

clndgrn · January 2020

Hi everyone,

Late to the party, sorry! The WG's first week coincided with a busy first week of the semester.

I'm Chris Lindgren. I'm an Assistant Professor of Technical Communication in the Department of English at Virginia Tech. My approach to studying coding takes up writing studies methodologies: think social sciences of writing in the world.

My work takes up past studies (think Chun and Hayles) that have shown how code has indeed automated numerous forms of knowledge labor: storage, retrieval, and other custom dexterities with data.

Despite of, or because of, these automations, Hayles' call for research that studies how speech, writing, and code intermediate our communicative media sparked my early interest in coding as an inter-related form of writing. I was also influenced by Chun's position that coding is another form of writing, because "coding still means producing a mark, a writing, open to alteration/iteration rather than an airtight anchor" (p. 25). That neither code or data can be fully known -- there are no perfect carriers of meaning, only more durable carriers of signs.

I am very curious about the situated material and symbolic action that is still required -- how code is not the source of information, but, as Chun puts it, “more accurately a re-source.” My larger research question could be phrased as, "If code is more accurately a 're-source,' then what kind of resource does code have the capacity to be?" So, rather than study code, after it has been produced, how can we develop theories of coding as writing with data, so we can see the diversity and range of its production across domains (beyond software, I might add!).

My previous work studied coding literacy movements, and my current work examines sense-making strategies of a web developer on a data-journalism team. My first article for this study should be out around Jan 2021. fingers-crossed It attempts to describe a dialectical theory of computer coding activity by studying this developer's data-processing to 'slice' data for the team. It was an ethnographic case-study, so lots of observational data to make sense of!

Ok, I hope to jump into some discussions soon!

Thanks to all of the CCSWG organizers! And, congratulations to Mark on his book with MIT. So great to see!

KalilaShapiro · January 2020

Also late to respond! I was coming back from the MIT Reality Hack and then I was on the Funny As Tech podcast talking about the ethics of virtual reality!

I'm Kalila Shapiro! I'm a digital media researcher, virtual reality and human-computer interaction designer, and creative technologist. Currently, I'm writing a series of pieces on the ethics of virtual reality for All Tech Is Human, serving as the Social Media Lead for the MedVR Hackathon, and have joined several working groups in the XR Access Initiative (through Cornell Tech). My first Virtual Reality project, Spoons - which I wrote, filmed, directed, produced, and edited, was recently featured at the Frameless VR Symposium. I'm NYC based and participate in several tech communities including the Recurse Center and the Columbia Digital Storytelling Lab sandbox. I became interested in code studies after doing work in accessibility tech. Check out my portfolio here!

I know I'm late to the game but I'm excited to hop in to some good conversations and share insights and ideas!! Looking forward to talking to you all!

Fereshteh · January 2020

I'm Fereshteh (she/they) and I'm an artist living and working in Miami, Florida, USA on Miccosukkee, Seminole, Tequesta lands. I teach in the digital area of the art department at Florida International University which is a large public research school with a "majority-minority" student body. I'm new to critical code studies but I have been incorporating some of it into my teaching and I hope to participate in programs at the School for Poetic Computation someday. This is my first time joining the CSS working group.

You can find more information about me at my website which is fereshteh.net

joncorbett · January 2020

ᑕᓂᓯ! (tanisi) = Hello!
I'm Jon Corbett, a sessional faculty and PhD Candidate at the University of British Columbia - Okanagan. I am a Cree/Saulteaux Métis media artist and computer programmer and constantly looking for opportunities to encode my artistic practice. I am very honored to be a part of this coming week's discussion.

In particular I hope to share my very long lasting passion for computer programming, and am now in the process of creating the first programming language based on an Indigenous North American Language. Though my language focus at the moment is Cree, it includes the development of an Indigenous Computing Framework that I hope translates well enough to make the language portable to other Indigenous langauges. Like many Native American languages, Cree is a very descriptive and morphemic language with no adjectives (only nouns and verbs) In Cree, my language would be called:

ᓀᐦᐃᔭᐤ ᒑᐦᑭᐯᐘᓯᓇᐦᐃᑫᐏᐣ ᐱᐦᒑᔦᕽ ᒪᓯᓂᑕᑲᐣ ᒋᑲᐢᑌᐸᔦᒋᑲᓂᐢ

in Roman Orthography it is spelled as:

nehiyaw cāhkipewasinahikewin pihcāyehk masinitakan cikastepayecikanis

In as best a translation as I can make into English, it literally means "Cree spirit markings inside a writing book shadow casting box" or in meaning "Cree syllabics inside a computer". Now because that is a mouthful even for me, I chose to call the programming language family "Ancestral Code", and my Cree iteration is called Cree# (or ᓀᐦᐃᔭᐁᐧᐃᐧᐣ ᑮᓂᑳᐤ nehiyawewin kînikâw).

I am looking forward to sharing and discussing more this coming week!

ᐁᑯᓯ ᒪᑲ (ekosi maka) = that's it for now!

Jon

lberdugo · January 2020

Hi all -- I'm Liat Berdugo an artist, writer, curator and coder whose work focuses on embodiment and digitality, archive theory, new economies.

My first introduction to coding came through electronic literature, and the 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. Like any language, coding is not neutral: it has semantic and linguistic biases. I currently teach object-oriented coding courses to art students at the University of San Francisco, where we engage in a critical reading of computing history (Turing, Engelbart, Kay) and present (Blas, Lessig, Chun). Additionally, I regularly code for my own artistic practice, and produce new media art as direct commentary on digital culture.

outilaiti · January 2020

Hello!
I'm Outi Laiti (B. Eng., MA, she/her), PhD candidate (ABD) at the University of Lapland, Finland. My field of research is education and computer science from indigenous perspective and focus is on Sami language, culture and intangible heritage in computer game software. I am a Sámi and especially a gamer and game developer in indigenous context. I have done some coding studies in the past (2016, ethnoprogramming) and maybe after defending my Sámi gaming dissertation I will return in the field of indigenous programming.
ATM I'm not a full-time researcher. I work as a project manager and media educator at Finnish Pensioners’ Federation during daytime. And by night, I'm Batman.

Happy to share my Sámi knowledge with you all.

zzl · January 2020

Hi all!

Sorry for the late post.

I'm Zizi Li, a Cinema and Media Studies PhD student at the University of California, Los Angeles. My dissertation topic is on digital media culture, specifically using influencer ecosystem as a space to work through digital paradoxes and study the intersection of race, gender, sexuality, ethnicity, and indigeneity in transnational spaces and encounters on/off-line. Some of my research interest include: critical digital studies, feminist media theories/praxis, critical infrastructure studies, and cultural geography/critical spatial analysis.

I'm new to critical code studies and hope to learn from this working group.

JoeyJones · January 2020

Hello everyone. I'm Joey Jones, I write interactive fiction and twitter bots. I've got an academic background in analytic philosophy. Very interested in the intersections between code and literature.

Zach_Mann · January 2020

Hello. I'm Zach Mann, an English PhD student at USC. My interest in Critical Code Studies is pretty general: methods, strategies. I'm hoping to incorporate it more in my studies than I am currently (which is little to none!).

In the meantime, I am assisting with organizing this forum. So if you're having an issues with this site, send me an email at zmann@usc.edu, and I will try to help!

Zach

hyaghoobian · January 2020

Hello everyone, I'm Hamed Yaghoobian (he/him), a fourth-year computer science PhD student at the University of Georgia. I'm interested in coding/writing practices from both affect theory and new materialist perspectives.

Within computer science, my focus is on computational models of discourse analysis using machine learning and natural language processing techniques. Very glad to be here.
Email: hy@uga.edu

brycejackson · January 2020

Hi, everyone! I’m Bryce and I’m a Ph.D. candidate in the Texts and Technology program at the University of Central Florida. The Texts and Technology program is an amazing interdisciplinary program “dedicated to inventing the future of the humanities.” I also work at the university in the information technology area where I act as the IT liaison between multiple colleges and the central IT unit. My background is in web development and programming and analyzing systems and applications.

I’m generally interested in examining code and algorithms, their social and cultural influence and power as code and communication, and the ways people interact, perceive, and perform through the mediums, applications, or platforms code produces. For my dissertation, I’m attempting to focus and examine ethical and rhetorical approaches developed and incorporated within a given open source code base.

I must admit that after reading many of the introductions, I am overwhelmed and intimated by this marvelous group. I never could have realized there was such a vibrant community until experiencing it. I’m looking forward to learning more over the next two weeks.

HarlinHayleySteele · February 2020

Hi everyone,
I'm Hayley, and I'm a researcher and game developer with the ModLab, the Digital Humanities Lab at UC Davis. That's one of my alter-egos anyway. I think analog code (as found in RPG games like larps and tabletops) is a great pedagogical tool for opening up larger discussions about how we co-create identity through the legal and social apparatuses that that reinforce asymmetrical power relations like imperial gender, racial capital, and colonial ecocide. I'm super interested in the processes through which we might collectively reclaim a greater amount of autonomy, and a lot of my work is about spotlighting how things we treat as essential could be disarticulated back into (accessible) decision-making processes. I'm also into "grounded theory" right now. I haven't advanced to candidacy yet, and am kinda A.D.D., so we'll see if I just become some weird media artist who complains unto her dying day about being ABD, which might actually be pretty fun, lol, but we'll see. Also, here's an Easter Egg: if you find yourself in Berkeley on a Monday, go into University Press Books and talk to Jay. If you play your cards right, you just might make it to the hidden passage. If you get stuck, try asking him about the lunch he had with Foucault.

danvers · February 2020

Hey everyone,

I'm Dan, and I'm currently working as a researcher at the University of Magdeburg, Germany. My research is in the field of educational science and therefore I want to combine questions of coding literacy and self-expression through digital media with educational theory in general and the philosophy of education in particular.

I also have a background in software development and engineering. According to this, my primary interest is to discuss the social implications of digitally networked architectures.

Being part of the working group means something to me, since I'm following the efforts on Critical Code Studies for quite a long time now.

osnr · February 2020

Hi all! I'm Omar; I work as a researcher at Dynamicland, a lab in Oakland, California which explores different ways of computing -- ways that are more physical / communal / spatial / changeable than the traditional screen and mouse and keyboard and apps.

I'm interested in end-user programming and in 'paths not taken' in the history of computing. I'm also interested in low-level details of computer systems and standards (operating systems, network protocols, Web browsers) and how they carry certain hidden politics.

Re: end-user programming, I'm also interested in ways that we can preserve unstructured / open spaces inside the computer, and in how we can recognize and build on existing 'folk practices' of computer usage. I wrote Screenotate, a program which tries to do that preservation/extension of folk practices for screenshots.

Finally -- and this is a bit vague -- I'm always trying to push away from the 1950s 'mainframe mode' of computing, where you come up with a bunch of constraints and inputs, feed them into the machine, turn the crank and let it optimize, and then you get some output. I'm constantly looking for fast feedback and direct manipulation of whatever objects I'm working with on the computer; working on code (as it exists today) often frustrates me because it doesn't meet this standard.

liliang · February 2020

Hello! I'm Lilian (she/her) and am currently an engineer at Apple working on applied machine learning for the watch.

As an engineer, I am interested in exploring the social structures and systems that machine learning systems are enmeshed in. I hope I can be more cognizant of this through critical code studies and am excited to learn from everyone here!

Jordan.Clapper · February 2020

Hi, my name is Jordan. I'm a graduate student in English at Brandeis University, and I'm a budding game designer, if I ever find the time to do that full force. (Apologies for the lateness in introduction.)

For me, coding is interesting to me as it describes a practice that is done through vastly different, but related, coding "languages" that seek to draw from the processes built into computing devices to deliver an experience. I'm interested in this as it applies to gaming, as I'm slowly attempting to learn C++/C# and older programming languages from earlier generations of consoles with the idea of "hacking" them or using their older technology to deliver queer and indigenous gaming experiences.

CatherineGriffiths · February 2020

Hi I'm Catherine. I'm just joining the discussion for week 3. I'm a PhD Candidate in Media Arts & Practice at USC. I'm interested in CCS as a method of critical engagement alongside visual arts practices. I'm looking at deep learning networks, accountability, and visualization.

averywiscomb · February 2020

Hi All, I'm Avery.

I'm a PhD Candidate at Carnegie Mellon University in English interested in connections between the software arts and the mechanical and liberal arts. Before returning to CMU, I worked for a game company in New York developing backend technologies for ARGs. Right now, I'm thinking alot about VisiCalc, the first spreadsheet program, both as segments of code (it was developed using a 6502 assembler) and as the "killer app" for the Apple II desktop in the early 80s and its relationship to finance capitalism. I'm also interested in coding literacy, and my dissertation project is on Herbert A. Simon's training in the humanities.

I'm very sorry to be late to the party (a sudden move coincided with the start of the CCS working group), but after reading your intros, I'm excited to catch up with your posts and replies and to hopefully jump in. Great to meet you!

lfoster · February 2020

Hi I am Laura and an Associate Professor of Gender Studies at Indiana University Bloomington. I am excited to be joining, even if it is late!

My work contributes to conversations in feminist decolonial queer STS, African Studies, plant studies, and socio-legal studies. My earlier work examined struggles over the patenting of the Hoodia plant in South Africa as a site for understanding human-plant relationships, and how plants and San peoples refuse, align, and interupt forces of law, science, and market.

My expertise on intellectual property law and long-standing collaborative work in South Africa has taken me towards a new collaborative project that examines gendered, radialized, and Western meanings of artificial intelligence and associated forms of governance across the continent of Africa.

Fernanda.Rosa · February 2020

Hi everyone, it took me sometime to read all of your bios, and this group seems fascinating!

My name is Fernanda Rosa (she/her). I'm a social scientist and a postdoctoral fellow at the Annenberg School for Communication (U of Pennsylvania).

My work builds on science and technology studies, decolonial and feminist studies and seeks to shed light on internet interconnection infrastructure, and its social, political and economic implications. I'm mostly concerned with the imbalances of power that emerge between the global North and the global South when it comes to the flows of information online.

For that, I've worked with network engineers to understand some features of Border Gateway Protocol (BGP), the code used for internet networks to communicate and send data packets from one point to another on the internet. I call what I do "code ethnography," and I'm here to learn other approaches you have to code.

My email: feferosa@gmail.com

jorge.franco · February 2020

Hello! I am Jorge Franco and have taught English language at k-12 levels in São Paulo, Brazil. I have developed and used my coding skills to support English language teaching. This has brought about enhancing my research and digital abilities and inspiring students to amplify their English and digital literacy repertories. The educational activities have been related to utilizing web3D based information production and visualization technologies for stimulating educators and students’ coding skills acquisition in an integrated mood with teaching and learning scientific concepts from k-12 curriculum through building interactive 3D virtual reality environments. It has been a long term work which has resulted in a British Council scholarship for doing a Master in Sciences of Virtual Environments at the University of Salford, England. And currently with support of another scholarship from Mackpesquisa, I am doing my PhD research in Letters at Universidade Presbiteriana Mackenzie, in Sao Paulo, Brazil. The theme of my research is computational practice through stimulating coding literacy during the building of 3D digital virtual reality environments. Then, although the concept of critical code studies (CCS) is new for me, I believe that CCS can bring light for a deep comprehension why is relevant studying coding with support of information production and visualization at k-12 levels beyond a vision of enhancing individuals’ computer science skills. The following links are related to publications that explain the trajectory of this research work.
http://www.abed.org.br/arquivos/ICDE_conference_2001_jorge_franco.pdf;
https://ivi.fnwi.uva.nl/tcs/QRgroup/AIED2005//W6proc.pdf;
http://www.abed.org.br/arquivos/icde_rio_enhancing_learning_2006_jorge_franco.pdf;
https://www.intechopen.com/books/computer-graphics/developing-an-interactive-knowledge-based-learning-framework;
http://delphos-gp.com/primus_vitam/primus_11/jorge.pdf;

suttonkoeser · February 2020

I'm the Lead Developer at the Center for Digital Humanities at Princeton. I've been working as a developer in Digital Humanities / Digital Libraries space for a long time, have a PhD in English Literature and in college I double-majored in English Lit and Computer Science. I've been interested in the overlaps between those fields for a long time, and have thought and written about the parallels between writing code and other kinds of writing. I've been aware of Critical Code Studies for some time, but never had the chance to dig into it very much and have always been a little skeptical. I've appreciated the chance to learn more about it through this working group, and am interested in learning more about indigenous and feminist approaches.

Very late joining the forum because I've been so busy for the duration of the working group, unfortunately, but have been able to read some of the essays and posts.

lybertram · February 2020

Hello! I am late to the party but glad to be here. I know nothing about this group at all, so I am interested in learning about what everyone is doing. I think this will be a very rich learning experience and environment for me!

I direct the MFA in Creative Writing at UMass Boston where I also teach introductory coding for writers but primarily teach creative writing (poetry) and creative writing pedagogy. I am self taught and have only been coding for a couple years. Since then I've done workshops on coding, worked with Nick Montfort at The Trope Tank at MIT, and have guest taught at The School for Poetic Computation in NYC. I use code to reimagine (Black) literature and think about Black Computational Poetics.

I am primarily a writer, and am currently working on fine-tuning GPT2 models for writing .
I've written five books of poetry, one artist book, and authored a handful of code projects. Co-founder, with Nick Montfort and others, of Taper

My name is Lillian-Yvonne Bertram (they/them).

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