100 Screenshots: a reflection
The 100 screenshots warm-up exercise took a kinetic start – actions were swiftly taken without questioning their values and meanings, nor allowed over-conceptualisation (my hopeless habit) to halt this supposedly nimble and light-footed iteration exercise. The snippet from Elaborate to kick start this exercise is one rather randomly chosen image in the Elaborate project storage drive (let’s call it Image 0), screenshot, the resulting png file screenshot again – the process repeated 100 times until I accumulate 100 files.
The supposedly swift and simple practice did not consider the conceptual impact to the Elaborate project’s context, nor did it engage with much of my personal, organic input (since every iteration is generated with the same computing process applied to the previous one).
To enhance it with the missing organic input, I set myself with such a brief: ‘explore this collection of memories, through making something new out of them’, and found myself indecisively pondering over a myriad of different prompts: the audios of the footages; any other files in the collection that could be associated with Image 0 because they can be attributed to the same experience/event/environment; the Proustian approach to memories and nostalgia; as well as oneself’s vitality and actualisation. The positioning orients towards a very public discourse, with a motive to innovate, and bring about changes for the better.
Therefore moving image collage with a soundtrack presented as the 100 Screenshot ‘outcome’ was far from a success, if evaluated from the position’s aspect. Personal housekeeping excuses aside, one key underlying reason for this is the lack of universality – a lack of substance. Moreover, being couped up deeply inside the sterile ivory tower of self-indulgence, the inevitable entanglement and engagement with the greater reality was selective and naive, therefore could not sustain ‘communication’, one of the cornerstones in GCD.
Advancing an ideology/ideal and advocating for a change, albeit unsubtle, is one of the most classical positions a practitioner could take, also the one that resonates with me the most. Looking back at my Elaborate project, the journey took from that sterile ivory tower (in which I was too timid to challenge or interrogate) to a not unradical initiative, with the potential to innovate the cyber environment – one megastructure shared universally by humans living today.
Having identified a practice position hoping to bring about genuine changes, the Reading List reference I chose to cite gives an astute and poignant tocsin to the danger of awry innovation – What is Wrong with TED Talks by Benjamin Bratton in 2013.
When discussing TED’s D for design, Bratton stressed that the focus should shift from innovation to immunisation, ‘actively [prevent] certain potential “innovations” that we do not want from happening’ – as per guidance for dealing with web building.
The source also pointed out that oversimplification is a major pitfall. It goes hand in hand with empty inspirational-ism, and exhausts our effort to tackle the real problem. Handling potentially emotional devices such as memory and nostalgia, I should be wary about overflowing my practice with sentimentality, and turn it into some affectation – honestly speaking, a large number of GCD practices have slipped down this slope, ‘clinging to reaffirm the comfortable.’ As a practitioner, I certainly wish to look toward Copernicus, not Tony Robbins.
The Brief
When GCD practitioners confront the countless issues that currently plague our world, we should not be stressed to engineer an immediately implementable tick list towards the solution – resolving anything will require thorough assessment of the incredibly nuanced and interconnected outlook, with sustained multidisciplinary effort. The mismatch with the pragmatic could dangerously veer towards harmful placebos that fail to address the issue.
A more attainable approach is to inspire an active imagination of a new possibility, allowing the audience to engage with a vision beyond the confinement shaped by the status quo – in other words, not to bring about the change itself, but delivering the catalyst for it.
In the next four weeks, I aim to iterate with the tool of web-building to construct a new vision of a different cyberspace, using GCD practice to inspire genuine innovation in one of the most crucial infrastructures of our world. So here’s the prompt: how can a practitioner inspire visions towards a different possibility, towards a better world, through web-design?
The starting point is to identify one specific aspect (mass consumption) I wish to change (towards connection), and produce the first iteration.