Week 1: Reading Response - kalibirdsall/Creative-Coding-Class-Wiki GitHub Wiki

Kali Birdsall Creative Coding, Week 1 Reading Response

WHY I WANT TO LEARN TO PROGRAM:

I see great value in learning about new technologies and in being able to use them creatively. I’ve always been a maker, eager to learn to use new mediums, and learning to program will be an exciting new way for me to make stuff that feels relevant and exciting. I also think that if you don’t learn at least a little bit about coding, you’re missing out on understanding a big chunk of how everything works now, how the digital world affects us, and how our lives are shaped by it.

Over the last year I became interested in UX design, and as I learned more about it, I realized how much effort is put into creating technology that controls our behaviors (to get us to buy stuff, scroll endlessly on an app, delegate our decision making to a device, etc.). Learning about UX has given me insight into the implications of allowing apps, devices and machines to determine the shape of our lives. As Rushkoff argues in his text, control rests in understanding technology, and to do that, having an understanding of how technology works, and therefore the underlying programming, is essential.

Additionally, I’ve wanted to learn how to use Arduino technology for the last decade. When I last tried to figure it out, the coding part was a big barrier for me. I’m therefore really excited to be in an environment now at NYU where I’ll be able to finally learn about and understand this technology and about programming in general. I’m still figuring out what sort of creative projects will be relevant to me, but I’ve got many half-formed ideas brewing!

TECHNOLOGY-BASED ARTWORK I ADMIRE:

This summer I saw an exhibit of interactive artwork by Daniel Rozin at Bitforms Gallery. I also saw a show by him about 10 years ago at Bitforms which I’ve thought of many times. While Rozin’s work isn’t digital in the sense that it’s on a computer screen, it does involve a lot of programming and he uses various sensors, motors, and, I assume, microcontrollers which he has programmed to create objects which move and react based on the movements of the viewer. His work is also about investigating “the structure and materiality of images” by breaking images down to the pixel level. Below is a quote from Rozin’s biography on the Bitforms website which describes some of his work:

“Rozin’s interactive installations and sculptures integrate the viewer, in real time, to create a representation of the viewer’s likeness in the object. His kinetic “mirrors” are often made with materials that become unexpectedly “reflective,” responding to a person’s presence via a camera and physical computing or custom software. Reflection and surface transformation become a means to explore human behavior, representation, and perception.”

READING RESPONSE/SUMMARY: Program or Be Programmed, Ten Commands for a Digital Age, by Douglas Rushkoff

Rushkoff’s description of how we are essentially either consumers (passive) or creators (in active control) is very powerful to me, and it applies to many aspects of our lives. This concept became a core principle and motivation for me when, during art school, I realized how much more meaningful and authentic it felt to create something rather than to go out and buy something. Making is a powerful antidote to the numbing sensation of passive consumption, and just being aware of that is hugely impactful.

In the text, Rushkoff makes the point that every new media throughout history has offered humans a passive role and an active role that people are typically divided between. For example, with the advent of the printing press, people could passively read what the presses printed, or they could be in control and actively create/write the ideas that the presses disseminated. The real power is always with those actively engaging with and controlling the new media or technology, and those in power typically limit access to the power and control to an elite few.

We are now in the midst of a new media revolution, the digital age, and we find ourselves largely in the role of passive digital consumer, unaware of how the machines are made, or of how the programming, biases and agendas of the machines affect and control many aspects of our thinking and decision making. Digital networks are often working in opposition to our needs, leaving us with feelings of disconnection and despair. Despite our awareness that there’s some sort of problem, society hasn’t managed to implement real solutions.

The processing and generation work that computers now do is replacing our “intellectual processes”. By handing over the labor of thinking to computers, ultimately this affects our ability and motivation to contemplate, innovate and create meaning. We must adapt to regain control over the digital, and Rushkoff argues that the only way to do that is by learning to program. By understanding the underlying structures and functioning of computers, we gain insight into the biases and agendas the machines impose on us, and we gain the ability to shape the machines to our benefit. Understanding and awareness give us the ability to control our path forward.

On a personal note, I’m so excited to finally learn how to do some programming! Today, Sept 12, 2024, I used programming for the first time, and I made a digital self-portrait in P5.JS. Creating a self image through coding is an apt metaphor in this context for taking control back from the machines!

TEXT SUMMARY:

The first point Rushkoff makes is that every form of communication has a both passive and active role that can be chosen by an individual. He argues that only when you take an active role do you take control of the outcome. Rushkoff applies this argument to the digital world, specifically to programming, and he argues that since digital technologies are the future, those who program them will be controlling the future. If we don’t become literate in programming, we forgo the opportunity to choose the future we want for ourselves.

Rushkoff lays out a collective digital future of great potential in all areas of our society, however he notes that we are just not there yet, and most people find that digital networks are actually working in opposition to their needs. In many cases, rather than creating connections and meaning, the internet leaves people feeling “disconnected” and “drained”. But he argues that it doesn’t have to be this way, and that if we “learn the biases of the technologies we are using and become conscious participants in the way they are deployed” we can turn things around.

To adapt, humans must reorganize how they operate all facets of their lives to include “new forms of collective and extra-human activity.” A refusal to adapt leaves us “vulnerable to the biases and agenda of our networks–many of which we are utterly unaware we programmed into them in the first place.”

Rushkoff notes that every “media revolution” (i.e., language, the alphabet, the printing press, etc) allows people “an entirely new perspective through which to relate to their world.” However, access to the power behind these media revolutions is always limited to powerful gatekeepers who determine what the technologies are used for, and how information is disseminated. Historically, those in power of the new media have ensured that most people were only able to passively consume it, rather than actively create content for their own personal expression, i.e., access to the presses was reserved, by force, for the use of those already in power”, and this led “not to a society of writers but one of readers.”

The text details how people typically stay “one step behind the capability actually being offered us.” Though people eventually gain access to the capabilities of a particular media, the real power is held by the few who master the new emerging media. “Most of society remains one full dimensional leap of awareness and capability behind the few who manage to monopolize access to the real power of any media age.” And this time, failing to engage in the new media relinquishes control not just to the elite, but to the “machines themselves”.

Rushkoff talks about how “the industrial age challenged us to rethink the limits of the human body: Where does my body end and the tool begin?. The digital age challenges us to rethink the limits of the human mind: What are the boundaries of my cognition?” He points out that the labor that computers do replaces our “intellectual processes” which ultimately discourages “our more complex processes-our higher order cognition, contemplation, innovation, and meaning making”. If we want to prevent this, we must understand these systems and how they work, which means learning to program.

He concludes that “Only by understanding the biases of the media through which we engage with the world can we differentiate between what we intend, and what the machines we’re using intend for us—whether they or their programmers even know it.”