[...]ntation: polymorphic abstract data types =/= relational data model



Building Abstractions with Data

how to use:
•primitive data (numbers)
•primitive operations (arithmetic operations)

building abstractions by combining data objects to form compound data <==> *to increase the modularity* of (our) designs ==> to increase/enhance the expressive power of our language

data abstraction:
*technique of isolating* (the parts of a program that deal with) how data objects are ‘represented’ from (the parts of a program that deal with) how data objects are ‘used’


versioning
garbage collection

...................................

the question of “what [✕] can learn from [Y]?”


Calvert on Mestiza consciousness
library and information scientists
consciousness of the borderlands [~ in between categories, creative/annihilating forces a person living borderlands must struggle against]

***contradictory impulse for *hording* & *sharing*

categorizing, naming, describing --> power-laden practices we cannot do without

each *schema* reveals its priorities, legitimizes/delegitimizes, renders visible/invisible the knowledge it contains/excludes

(Foucault:) library: (places that preserve) discourses that one wishes to remember and keep in circulation [--✕--> Anand's jinn temporality and genealogy of human memory]

mestiza --> hybrid way of knowing/acting/living, as “none of the above”
what is hybrid and impure may be monstrous (in the epistemologies of power) and may experience *hightened visibility* (~= scrutiny, study, problematization, pity)

“orphans of infrastructure” (Leigh Star)

locked in a duel with the oppressor
lived experiences of marked classes
(in each duality pair, one is called “the consitutive outside” [subject/object, male/female, etc.]) --?--> switching polarity ==> valorizing feminine over masculine, black over white, nurture over nature, emotion over reason

crossing of cultures

*which collectivity does the daughter of the darkskinned mother listen to?*

(while i was in apass i had a shift of attention to) the *labor of knowledge work* (in collective digital flesh life)

media ~= knwoledge form

in media arts studies i learn to ask which cruicual material limitations have been radically eased in a digital era --> impulse to hoard/share + constant tension with the epistemological work of categorization and classification (--> database) + (ongoing) feminization of the field

the library and information science knowledge --> intense expertise required to enact it =/=!? art expertise (a category of works that are expertise-free)

(gift of Marx, Foucault, Lorde, Haraway, Leigh Star in) *understanding subjugated epistemologies*

(Lorde) master's tool dismantle the master's house? = can the technologies and epistemologies that have been used to organize thinking about the world in one way succesfully uproot that way?

“recovering multivocality”

رسوب
*enact residuality
*residual (of transformations [--> sometimes wiping away previous techniques for dividing and describing, and substituting another set of categories that don't easily map to the first ==> eliminating the residuum of the old order --> case of ajayeb? --> can we make overlaps and hybridities of old/new categories? ~ *residual categories*: affective-epistemic content that often go unclassified. Calvert: *affect* is too thin, too subjective to calcify into a category. it abundantly uses its categories in a way that offers a kaleidoscopic shuffling and reshuffling of the items***)])
*residuum

categories overlapping, non-hierarchical (“animal” + “livestock”, etc.)

truthiness
melting pot
actions (filled with verbs)
nouns (both living and nonliving entities)

*score of recognizable historical era*

using:
•filmic techniques (animation, montage, time lapse)
•affective techniques (sarcasm, intimacy)


how can we address aspects of apass's exceptionalism?
(with its things: characters, colors, doings, values)
*historical/cultural specificities of apass*


enlightenment inheritances:
•quest for universality
•


apparent seamlessness and universality with the veneer روکش of helpfulness ==> purity, deny multivocality, hide the residuum produced, and exclude hybridity
--> (pulling the carpet of familiarity out from under users:)
to replace ‘familiar generic conventions’ (~ universal) --replace-with--> a “universal of local application” (~= residuum)

(we rely on) [*]words: value-laden components of language that also serve as categories and moor لنگر us in the symbolic, to effect the transformations of the collections

labels ~-/==> power and oppression epistemologies <== *organizing logics* (that remain invisible when when we change the words or subsitute new sets of categories)--> that is why i am reluctant with only changing the metadata @Pierre: using metadata to manipulate the organizing apparatus ==> versions of residuality (?)

...................................

[working on apass milieu data model, summer2018]

c.r.i. (“collective research interface”)
--?--> a pathological collage

discrete object (of problem [who, when, how,]) interface
--> refering to something outside c.r.i. (outside the digital model)

face (slider) --> object monster

(?what is lost at) linking the symbolic space of data-model to the qualities of the researches of participants [which are relational, procedural, and emotional]

s.s.s. (scroller, slider, still-life)

discourse =/= valorizing information

Pierre's fables:
•“nonviolent way”
•“not by chance ...”

*Apologue*

research --> data flow
sieve --> nodes in/of residual


internal categories:
•stickiness
•zoom
•cheat
•persistence
•repetition
•(vulgar)
•
}==> topology:
1. ramp
2. nest
3. skew

ramp: sequential, one dimensional, ‘sliders’
nest: fractal quality, JSON, hierarchical tree, ‘comments’
skew: verb act, streching, ‘2D field picker’

(slider: marking everything)

semantic in flux + persistence
object repository + identifiers


feedback --> quasi object --> structured knower --> data


#workshop in apass 2018 Summer
...a series of data models that was produced during a three days work session in a.pass May 2018.
The aim was to create a “filter" for the artistic research projects of each participants, in order to train in making meta-linguistic abstractions (on a given computer hardware) to construct a “thing” that enables describing the problem of Building Abstractions with Data, to increase/enhance the expressive/descriptive power of the languages we use. It addresses the question of machine/human readability in the digital imperative of computational world we are inhabiting, with the particular case of a.pass artistic research environments for advanced performance studies.
•interested in computational literacy (including data-collection, librarianship) as part of our *diversity-work* and our *articulation-work*
•interested in different languages (english, computer, non-sign languages, etc.) refers to different value systems and to different lived experience
•interested in the *labor of knowledge-work* (in collective digital flesh life)
•interested in shifts in topology (the ongoing reworking of bodily boundaries of each of our research practices)
•


TERMINOLOGY:

*articulation-work: the labor necessary to make technologies fit together seamlessly

*diversity-work: a kind of work in which we learn about the damage we cause, and of how “causes” are understood as “damage”

*librarianship: a work that hooks up people with their technologies

*data abstraction: a *technique of isolating* (the parts of your mini-language that deal with) how data/info objects are ‘represented’ from (the parts of your mini-language that deal with) how data/info objects are ‘used’ (---> i addressed this in my fable workshop in a totally different episte[...]