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Götz Bachmann’s Ethnographic Research on Dynamicland

Jan 10, 2024, 7 min read

Götz Bachmann’s Ethnographic Research on Dynamicland

rw-book-cover

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Highlights

  • The Dynamic Medium Group’s vision is rooted in the idea that the computer revolution of the ’70s and early ’80s was cut short, primarily by premature com­mer­cia­li­za­tion. While the computer as a medium was still unfolding its potential, and way before it could do so entirely, it was solidified into commercial products, thereby stifling its free growth. Once corporations had built their businesses on the ideas developed so far, they were only interested in incremental change that could easily be integrated into the products, rather than revolutionary new ideas. (View Highlight)
  • Bachmann describes the lab at this time as feeling like a “giant brain”: “The abundance of prototypes, books and manifests spread around the room made me feel as if I was sitting within a ‘giant brain’ […]: in a shared, associatively interwoven, growing room of ideas.” ​Bachmann, 2019a, p. 281 [translation mine] Seemingly contrary to this feeling, Bachmann writes that there appeared to be little direct collaboration, or even communication, among the members of the group: “The members of the group often didn’t seem to notice on another. They did not greet each other. (View Highlight)
  • There were, however, some forms of collaboration, centered around the prototypes: “riffing”, “dropping” and “jams”. Bachmann describes them like this: • “riffing” — sending and documenting a prototype to the others via email, who then respond not just with comments but also with new prototypes, that try to develop the ideas of the previous prototypes further in surprising ways. • “dropping” — leaving prototypes or posters in the room for others to explore without any comments. • “jams” — the entire group occasionally spending 30 to 60 minutes to create “mock-ups” (very rough prototypes) in response to a given topic, then “riffing” on those. Longer jams with external visitors took place too. (View Highlight)
  • “promise-artefacts, which are to be read as a promise, as evidence for the promise, and as promising even more than what it evidences, all at the same time.” (View Highlight)

New highlights added March 1, 2023 at 1:14 PM

  • Bachmann describes that during this time there was a sense that their primary work at the moment was “scaffolding” (View Highlight)
  • In his email Victor explained his reasoning by describing the metaphorical “Yak Stack”:

    On a given day, you might be designing a messaging protocol to implement a pub/sub system to make a network of IMPs to make sensor data easily accessible throughout the room to implement an object model, based on observation to enable authoring of dynamic media in-the-world to represent complex systems that used to be unseeable to understand complex systems that used to be ungraspable to introduce new forms of human thought and communication to expand humanity’s thinkable territory to escape tribalism and lift humanity to a sufficient level of enlightenment that technological power can be used responsibly, not destructively to prevent the world from tearing itself apart (View Highlight)

  • Once again there were conflicts within the group regarding the exact nature of their undertaking: “Some engineers emphasized, like Schachman, the social aspects of the emergent medium (often described with the adjective ‘together’), others, like Victor, the ability of understanding complex systems, others, like Paula Te or Luke Iannini, were particularly interested in the medium’s political potentials.” (View Highlight)
  • A new objective was to promote new types of ‘togetherness’, not only as a means for common understanding, but as a goal on its own. The research group also prevailed with their wish of involving other users outside of themselves, such as kids. The group increasingly started to speak of themselves as a ‘community’. (View Highlight)
  • Since then, a continuous flow of visitors was invited into the lab to play with the prototype and build their own ideas using the system, or often “riffing” on other people’s prototypes. Pages of code are kept in binders that are available as libraries to build more things on. The new forms of social interactions, togetherness, and spatial collaboration seem to actually be emerging. (View Highlight)

title: “Götz Bachmann’s Ethnographic Research on Dynamicland” author: “christophlabacher.com” url: ”https://christophlabacher.com/notes/ethnographic-research-on-dynamicland” date: 2023-12-19 source: reader tags: media/articles

Götz Bachmann’s Ethnographic Research on Dynamicland

rw-book-cover

Metadata

Highlights

  • The Dynamic Medium Group’s vision is rooted in the idea that the computer revolution of the ’70s and early ’80s was cut short, primarily by premature com­mer­cia­li­za­tion. While the computer as a medium was still unfolding its potential, and way before it could do so entirely, it was solidified into commercial products, thereby stifling its free growth. Once corporations had built their businesses on the ideas developed so far, they were only interested in incremental change that could easily be integrated into the products, rather than revolutionary new ideas. (View Highlight)
  • Bachmann describes the lab at this time as feeling like a “giant brain”: “The abundance of prototypes, books and manifests spread around the room made me feel as if I was sitting within a ‘giant brain’ […]: in a shared, associatively interwoven, growing room of ideas.” ​Bachmann, 2019a, p. 281 [translation mine] Seemingly contrary to this feeling, Bachmann writes that there appeared to be little direct collaboration, or even communication, among the members of the group: “The members of the group often didn’t seem to notice on another. They did not greet each other. (View Highlight)
  • There were, however, some forms of collaboration, centered around the prototypes: “riffing”, “dropping” and “jams”. Bachmann describes them like this: • “riffing” — sending and documenting a prototype to the others via email, who then respond not just with comments but also with new prototypes, that try to develop the ideas of the previous prototypes further in surprising ways. • “dropping” — leaving prototypes or posters in the room for others to explore without any comments. • “jams” — the entire group occasionally spending 30 to 60 minutes to create “mock-ups” (very rough prototypes) in response to a given topic, then “riffing” on those. Longer jams with external visitors took place too. (View Highlight)
  • “promise-artefacts, which are to be read as a promise, as evidence for the promise, and as promising even more than what it evidences, all at the same time.” (View Highlight)
  • Bachmann describes that during this time there was a sense that their primary work at the moment was “scaffolding” (View Highlight)
  • In his email Victor explained his reasoning by describing the metaphorical “Yak Stack”:

    On a given day, you might be designing a messaging protocol to implement a pub/sub system to make a network of IMPs to make sensor data easily accessible throughout the room to implement an object model, based on observation to enable authoring of dynamic media in-the-world to represent complex systems that used to be unseeable to understand complex systems that used to be ungraspable to introduce new forms of human thought and communication to expand humanity’s thinkable territory to escape tribalism and lift humanity to a sufficient level of enlightenment that technological power can be used responsibly, not destructively to prevent the world from tearing itself apart (View Highlight)

  • Once again there were conflicts within the group regarding the exact nature of their undertaking: “Some engineers emphasized, like Schachman, the social aspects of the emergent medium (often described with the adjective ‘together’), others, like Victor, the ability of understanding complex systems, others, like Paula Te or Luke Iannini, were particularly interested in the medium’s political potentials.” (View Highlight)
  • A new objective was to promote new types of ‘togetherness’, not only as a means for common understanding, but as a goal on its own. The research group also prevailed with their wish of involving other users outside of themselves, such as kids. The group increasingly started to speak of themselves as a ‘community’. (View Highlight)
  • Since then, a continuous flow of visitors was invited into the lab to play with the prototype and build their own ideas using the system, or often “riffing” on other people’s prototypes. Pages of code are kept in binders that are available as libraries to build more things on. The new forms of social interactions, togetherness, and spatial collaboration seem to actually be emerging. (View Highlight)

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