GMU:Designing Utopias: Theory and Practice

Projektmodul
Lecturer(s): Christian Doeller
Credits: 16 SWS
Date: Thursdays 09.30-12.45
Venue: Room 204
BBB: https://meeting.uni-weimar.de/b/min-g3n-kqy-lol

Description:

This is a tool building seminar. Many of us today believe that we live in a dystopia. Our personal agency and autonomy have been slowly eroding. Many of the tools that were meant to liberate us -- the internet, computers, AI, biotechnology have turned against us. Is it possible to reimagine a future where humans take control of our own narrative or is it lost forever? Do we now learn to live in a dystopia or can we still dare to imagine a Utopia? In this seminar, We will borrow from the toolkit of hackers, designers, artists-collectives, activists and biohackers to learn the tools that they have imagined to create a utopia or fight dystopia. Our final project will critically examine these tools and techniques and attempt to reimagine or rebuild these tools. (original text by Yashas Shetty)

Participants:

• Mavie Beisheim
• Selena Deger
• Eli Kiefer
• Martin Müller
• Jan Munske
• Dahye Seo
• Jenny Soggia
• Jemma Woolmore

Sensor Tutorials:

• Analog Temperature Sensor
• Analog Sound Sensor
• Water Sensor
• Soil Humidity Sensor
• Analog Gas Sensor
• Analog Piezoelectric Ceramic Vibration Sensor
• Thin-film Pressure Sensor
• DHT11 Temperature and Humidity Sensor
• Infrared Obstacle Avoidance Sensor
• Triaxial Acceleration Tilt Sensor / Gyroscope
• HC-SR04 Ultrasonic Sensor
• Photo Interrupter Module
• Knock Sensor Module
• Capacitive Touch Sensor
• Flame Sensor
• PIR Motion Sensor
• Digital Tilt Sensor
• Hall Magnetic Sensor (Magnet not included)
• Steam Sensor

Artists / Links:

• Rasa Smite & Raitis Smits
• Neil Harbisson
• Gil Delindro
• Marco Barotti
• Kerstin Ergenzinger
• Niklas Roy
• Agnes Meyer Brandis
• Jiří Suchánek

Schedule:

November 17 – introduction

- utopia in the context of DIY technologies

- utopia and technical sensors as interfaces to environments

- utopia and the maker movement

November 24 – Arduino basics + Sensors

- breadboard connections

- analog / digital converter

- analog / digital input

- light sensor experiments

December 1 – Sensor Tutorials + text discussion

- sensor starter kit presentations

- reading no. 1: Jennifer Gabrys: How to Do Things with Sensors

December 8 – project ideas + text discussion

- presentation of first ideas and experiments

- reading no. 2: Silvia Lindtner, Shaowen Bardzell, Jeffrey Bardzell: Reconstituting the Utopian Vision of Making: HCI After Technosolutionism

December 15 – hands-on (I) + text discussion

- presentation by Selena on Stafford Beer and the Cyber Syn project

- hands-on session

December 22 – Christmas holidays

December 29 – Christmas holidays

January 5 – online consultations (optional)

10:30 - 11:00 – Jemma

11:30 - 12:00 – Mavie

January 12 – updates + presentations

- present the current state of your projects

- presentation by Jemma on Deep Listening

January 19 – presentation + hands-on (II) + private consultations

- present the current state of your projects

- presentation by Martin on Ursula K. Le Guin

January 26 – hands-on (III) + private consultations

- present the current state of your projects

- presentation by Dahye on philosophies of cycles

- Deep Listening Experiment with Jemma

February 2nd – final presentations

Topics:

Technology:

• Getting started with Arduino
• Connecting and reading different sensors
• tools to capture real-time sensor data
• tools to transform the collected data into different phenomena

Art & Thinking:

• Contemporary (media) art positions that relate to the subject matter
• Sensors as interfaces between beings and their environments
• perceptual awareness and sensors as magnifying glasses of everyday processes
• interactive prototypes and simple tools as interfaces to »the other«
• Strategies in working with sensor technologies and input/output systems
• Feedback mechanisms, cybernetic circuits
• Relations between the physical and the digital

Literature:

• Silvia Lindtner, Shaowen Bardzell, Jeffrey Bardzell: Reconstituting the Utopian Vision of Making: HCI After Technosolutionism
• Jennifer Gabrys, How to Do Things with Sensors, https://www.jennifergabrys.net/2019/09/how-to-sensors/
• Jennifer Gabrys, Program Earth, https://www.jennifergabrys.net/2016/03/program-earth-environmental-sensing-technology-making-computational-planet/
• Donna Haraway, Staying with the Trouble. Making kin in the Chthulucene
• Byung-Chul Han, Shanzhai, https://mitpress.mit.edu/9780262534369/shanzhai/
• Hannes Bergthaller, Eva Horn: Anthropozän zur Einführung, ISBN 978-3-96060-311-5
• Klimakunstforschung, ISBN: 3883962996
• Christiane Heibach: Dem Spüren auf der Spur: Zur Wahrnehmung biologischer und technischer sensorischer Systeme, Link: https://www.medienobservationen.de/pdf/20200430Heibach1.pdf
• Verena Kuni: The Plants Are (Watching) Sensing, Link: https://www.medienobservationen.de/pdf/20200430Kuni6.pdf
• Field_Notes – From Landscape to Laboratory, https://s3.eu-central-1.amazonaws.com/hybridmatters-production/media/Field_Notes-From_Landscape_To_Laboratory-2013.pdf

• Make: Getting Started with Arduino, EAN 9781449363314
• Arduino Cookbook, O’REILLY, German/English, ISBN Print: 978-3-86899-353-0
• Das Sensor Buch, O’REILLY, ´German, ISBN 978-3-95561-902-2
• Make: Sensors, ISBN: 9781449368104
• Make: Getting Started with Processing, MIT Press, ISBN: 9781457187087
• Processing: A Programming Handbook for Visual Designers, ISBN: 9780262028288
• Arduino Tutorials 1: https://www.arduino.cc/en/Tutorial/HomePage
• Arduino Tutorials 2: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCfYfK0tzHZTpNFrc_NDKfTA
• Processing Tutorials 1: https://processing.org/tutorials/
• Processing Tutorials 2: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCvjgXvBlbQiydffZU7m1_aw

Criteria for passing:

• document exercises on the wiki, present them for the rest of the class
• experiment, attend the classes and develop your own prototypes and experiments relating to the topic