San Diego will be the site of the Software Studies Initiative. Among the Critical Code Studies blog participants there will be Rita Raley and myself.
Wednesday, May 21st, from 12:30-5:00pm, the Software Studies Initiative at UC San Diego invites you to attend a public event:
SoftWhere: Software Studies Workshop 2008
Time: Wed. May 21 - Thu. May 22
Place: Calit2, University of California, San Diego
Format: Open public session (Wed May 21, short presentations of research in “Pecha Kucha” format)
Closed workshop session (Thu May 22)
URL: http://workshop.softwarestudies.com/
[Public session seating is limited. RSVP by May 19 to softwarestudies@gmail.com]
Software studies is a research field that examines software and cyberinfrastructure using approaches from humanities, cultural criticism, and social sciences. Following on the first Software Studies Workshop organized by Matthew Fuller (Rotterdam, 2006 http://pzwart.wdka.hro.nl/mdr/Seminars2/softstudworkshop), the SoftWhere @ University of California, San Diego is a foundational event bringing together key figures in this emerging area to inaugurate the field. The event aims to coalesce a high-level conversation about what it means to study software cultures, and the direction and goals of Software Studies as an emerging movement. It will take place at Calit2, a pre-eminant research center for future computing and telecommunication (http://www.calit2.net/), where the Software Studies Initiative @ UCSD is located and currently collaborating with researchers on several exciting projects. SoftWhere has has also been timed to precede (and co-ordinate with) the the HASTAC II conference (http://www.hastac.org/) which will begin in nearby U. California Irvine on Thursday evening.
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ELO’s upcoming 2008 conference “Visionary Landscapes” would be an excellent opportunity to meet up and share some more CCS work, focusing this time on the “literary” and the “visionary.” If you are still looking for a paper proposal, consider a Critical Code Studies reading of one of the works from the Electronic Literature Collection, many of which include their source code. We can use the blog to build discussion on whatever object you choose.
Looking at the call (reproduced below), CCS would fit well in at least three of the subcategories:
- Strategies for reading electronic literary works
Reading the code is certainly central here, and the more examples we produce the better.
- Innovative approaches to critiquing electronic literature
Again, since CCS is charting its own territories, most CCS readings would fall into the category of “innovative.”
- Artistic methods of composition used in intermedia storytelling (improvisation, collaboration, sample and remix, postproduction art, codework, hactivism, etc).
Certainly, this part of the call turns our attention to artistry in the code.
Hope to see you all there. And send in your proposals!
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To extend my presentation at SLSA ‘07, I offer the following set of resources:
The redux version (and revised vision) of Codd’s 1970 article.
Resource for developing interpretive use of database
A clear concise description of Object-Oriented Databases, particularly defining their relation to Relational Databases.
This Friday at the 21st Annual conference of the Society for Literature, Science, and the Arts in Portland, Maine, Critical Code Studies will get a major extension. The theme of the entire conference is Code, taking into account computer code, genetic codes, cryptographs, and more. One panel on computer code in particular poses to extend the work of CCS under the auspices of “Code as Argument.”
The panel features:
- Nick Montfort and Michael Mateas “Hammurabi’s Code”
- Ian Bogost, “Procedural Rhetoric”
- Mark Marino, “Encoding Terrorism: Applying Critical Code Studies
to Command and Control Code”
This panel may offer some of the most intensive readings of software yet. Other papers of interest to CCS:
- Rita Raley, “The im.positions of code” [05e]
- Zabet Patterson, “Code and the ‘Linguistic Turn’ in Art” [05e]
- Zach Blas, “TransCoder: Queer Programming Anti-Language” [07c]
- Edmond Chang, “‘How ya doin’, mon?’: Coding and Coded Race in World of Warcraft”
- Evelyn Stiller, “Breaking the Code: Are Women’s Voices Heard Online?” [02c]
- Cathie LeBlanc, “Coding Women: Female Avatars in Online Communities”
No doubt all the panels will be fascinating, but these are of particular interest to CCS. More reports to follow.
Extreme Tracking