octomode

Dear Publishing…

A Network of Relations Through Letter-Writing


Prompt:
In this format, we will collectively and simultaneously write multiple letters and weave together different relationships and narratives.
  • Start writing a letter to publishing, writing, the Hackers & Designers Summer Camp (or whatever topic feels fitting) as if they were a person.
  • Write as much as you want. Then switch. If the topic you want to write to is already covered, add your letter. If not, start a new one.
  • Try not to stay too long in one letter and try to switch several times.
  • If you like, take time to read only.

Dear Publishing…

I love you, but lately, I feel a bit disconnected. I was a frustrated by the digital and craved a different materiality. I was missing spontaneity, a more immediate connection with people. I was missing nice surprises and fruitful friction.

I’m often reflecting about the materiality of publishing. How do we make things public, without fueling plantetary and human extraction? Should we stick to one mode of publishing that fits best with our values and habits, or constantly experiment and try out new things? I mostly tend to prefer paper-based outputs, but they can be hard to circulate in meaningful ways (and expensive/cumbersome to produce). When preparing to publish, I tend to resort to digital tools, but I’m really put off by digital-only ways of publishing and circulation. How to overcome this?

I feel that there is often an expectation to do things in a clean and organized way and I struggle with—but also yearn for—a more messy approach that embraces the unplanned, the uncertain, the unfinished.

What the fuck is with the whole charging people to put out their research papers? And then charging people to read it? Pyramid-scheme energy but we’re all just underneath the pyramid being squashed. Does anyone on top even read?

I am sad to hear that academia led to such a bad relationship to writing and publishing. I feel I would love to give you back the joy and companionship that publishing can mean.

I don’t know you very well.

Dear Writing…

a start, sometimes when writing in this free format I imagine a dialouge in my head where the words that I am activly typing are being spoken as I write them. This can be weird at times when spelling mistakes or the speed that I type does not match my typing speeds. I wonder where this style of writing comes from? Is it natural or is it some learned behaviour from popular culture, thinking of the main character narrating what they are typing as a dialouge that we as an audience can hear. When writing technology was much slower did earlier humans think in this same manor? Chiselling or carving letters and words as their internal dialouge speaks at a slow pace. How does it feel to read and understand a sentance for the first time, just like how does it feel to write and understand a sentence for the first time. There is some direct connection between physically writing, ie. with a pencil on paper and memory. The physical act of writing something down helps to solidfy the memory in both the body and mind. Studies have shown that typing digitally or on a keyboard is not as effective as physically writing something down. How will the further effect memory in the future.

How can we bring back the bodily into writing?

This is interesting way of thinking about things, this may be tangental but I feel like we are in a push and pull trend of technological and biomedical solutions to the many modern issues that are arising. Is it better to have a new keyboard or technological way of physcially typing text that better enhances memory, is the solution simply a medical one that in 40 years we simply take a pill to solve the issue of memory and we can type and forget as freely as we want. These two options are the things regularily churned out as the solutions even though they are often the cause of the problem. Do we just remember and try to be active in the ways of old or do we continue down the path we are going. I don’t know and feel like I am rambling a bit now.

How does it feel that you can’t feel us? Or perhaps you can, perhaps the weight of this data presses on you somehow, but it seems like we’re far away. Do you have memory of carvings, scratching, the slip of ink? Are those moments fewer and far between for you? Do you idealise the past the way we do? Has it taken pain away from you, the smoothness of pixels and bytes? Do you miss that friction? I kind of hate you, or perhaps one flavour of engaging with you. You always have seemed so linear, so solid, so intimidating, so alien to the chaos in my mind. But perhaps you also are craving something more tangible. I still remember the shock at learning that everyone else seemed to write their uni essays in order. I came to you haphazard, confused by myself, not so much a pouring out of words as an awkward hail strorm strewing lonely words across a document, later squashed together in the hope you’d melt into some semblamce of others’ rivers. Turning to paper helped, didn’t it? The forced confines, the knowledge that I couldn’t turn back and endlessly edit, the strange fondness I had for a written exam, the only space in which I could forgive myself for imperfection and therefore actually, finally, write something. Maybe this is all nostalgia though. I remember hearing about how someone or other in roman empire complained about the introduction of sundials – this newfangled tech imposing when to have your lunch. Perhaps we just all hate change, or change that we can’t control, or change we had no foreknowledge of. But I do wonder how you, who have felt every manifestation of our etchings, feel about these changes. When the romans carved into those sundials, did it feel different? Did you sense the pursuit of uniformity? Was it the same as all the carvings before – and after? When a tree has initials hacked into its side, do you relish the physicality, or is the pain disruptive? Do you yearn for silence? Do these keyboard tiles echo in the same way as the ringing chisel? Do you hear this?

Let’s lose our sense of time together.

+1

For me, writing mostly serves as a tool to document and research, maybe less a way of creative self-expression and fictional imaginaries. However, I try to play with language whenever I can, even if the topics I write about are are nerdy and maybe a bit dry :)

I love the nerdy!

Dear H&D Summer Camp…

I feel so greatful i was able to participate, to learn new stuff and to be able to meet new people it’s still emotionally challenging

I was a bit afraid and asked myself if I can fit in. I am happy I was proven wrong.

I often find it challenging to switch to fully communal ways of working and engaging with each other, as I tend to be someone who needs quite some alone time to recharge. At the same time, I hugely value everything that participants are bringing to the table in all their beauty and diversity.

I often miss moments where we can just spend time with each other and be in a space together without talking.

Exactly!!!!!!!!

YESSS introverts unite

<33

I have been having a great time learning so much and having the early sparks of connection and friendship with my fellow camp members. I love the use of the word camp and how much this concept is leaned into, before I left to attend there were many jokes amongst friends about going to “summer camp” as something that is exclusivly done for children. Leaning into this playful notion is quite fun and keeps the lightness while also allowing for some freshness, it is not so often that you can return to that plastic mindset of a child and embrace every experience as if it were new. As time passes and less and less experiences become unique it is important to have experiences like this to rewire or circuit break your brain. Return to that childlike playful state without going down the route of nostalgia.

I love this part of your code of conduct that embraces us to learn what we did not expect to learn. I want to take this attitude with me—to loose expectation and open up for what you might not have been looking for.

I love you but I feel like I’m in a simulation. I want to be friends with everyone but I don’t want to have to talk to you all lol. I feel closer to everyone in the sanctity of this companionable silence than any time anyone’s asked me a question (god forbid). (On god though, it’s significant to be at a camp that’s not shaming me on the basis of religious performance/behaviour/vibes <3 )

I would love if we could find something that replaces small talk. I feel I am so bad at it. I always feel so boring (and bored).

Dear Tech…

I am sad that often, people understand you as solely machinery systems. I miss notions of tech that include ancient wisdom, knowledge that is has been passed down over generations and that are so embedded that we don’t realize that they are technologies: certain ways of doing and engaging with the world.

I’m quite tired of digital technology, even though I rely on it for so much of my daily functioning and creative practice. I often catch myself longing for the “good old times” (I know they weren’t good at all). How would my life look like from a technological perspective if I lived in the 1970s instead of the 2020s?

I wonder, it feels like there are far fewer jobs that people are proud of in this modern technological landscape. Maybe only within the “trades” plumbing, electrician, farmer these more traditional work places feel like is where there is the most pride of labour. There is a balance to be had of course as a lot of the work people were proud of in the 1970s such as miners was also extreamly dangerous and detremental to you and your loved ones or “colleauges” (although the current landscape makes it feel like that word is too impersonal).

I am tired of being constantly online—in the sense that means that we are all constantly connected and reachable.

(I recently spent two weeks at an artist residency in the Swiss Alps and was barely online. It was one of the best times I’ve had in the past years! Coming back into “reality” felt really depressing.)

I am wondering how we can create these little islands in our everyday lives without needing fixed rules. How can we fight against our social media addictions without having the feeling of missing out? How can I still know about things like this summer camp without needing a bunch of newsletter that I then have to check (again spending time on my computer of phone)?

Dear Cloud…

You are just an assemblage of wires, silicon wafers and exploitative practices all stacked up together to make up the world’s largest fossil-fuel powered machine. We are all addicted to you and you keep expanding, because you are never big and powerful enough. Where will this lead to? Will we only stop once every single surface of our dying planet is covered by your tentacles?

If I think about all the data that I create, store, and leave, I am overwhelmed. I love sorting our my partner’s old documents. He has these messy boxes with receipts, letters from the insurance, old school notes, photos… I love going through them and sort them for him. It brings me peace of mind. Imagine if that would be the case with my digital data as well. Letting go of all the emails, photos, old facebook accounts and even feeling joy while doing so.

I’m sorry that the tech bros have taken your name when you just want to chill and rain and shit.

Yes! So much language needs to be reclaimed.

Dear Periphery…

I used to often be drawn to the centre, to the most urban of urban places, but recently, I’m drawn a lot to sites and landscapes that are considered peripheral, maybe even boring. There is so much to discover! Maybe, we need to immerse ourselves more deliberately in mundane places, practices, etc. to rediscover joy and appreciate what we have. I really like the concept of “sufficiency”, it can be applied to so many realms of life.

Make life boring again I want to be free to be mediocre

Thank you for giving me a space I feel I belong to. No matter which periphery others see themselves in, the periphery itself became a new shared home.

Whats over here?

Who knew we were this deep??!

Dear Dear-Publishing…

I’m loving this workshop, it’s funny how we are all sitting around typing on our laptops silently as if we are strangers in a coworking space but we are all in communication on a deep level being honest within the screen but physically not interacting. This is meant in a positive way too btw, it’s an interesting excercise :)

I’ve never done something like this. I’m quite moved.