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@ -21,7 +21,7 @@ In Varia's practice of collective infrastructure making, we often consider the s
## Methods
### __MAGICWORDS__
__`__MAGICWORDS__`__
`__MAGICWORDS__` is an open ended system for collective annotation of a text, using small instructions that can be activated during a collective reading experience. In the field of software, and specifically in the MediaWiki software, magic words appear as words with special programmatic functions, connecting a specific cue to a programmatic action, such as adding the current time on a page. Within the context of Varia's research, the `__MAGICWORDS__` are used to manually perform programmatic gestures with the text.
@ -31,7 +31,7 @@ Magic words emerged from a curiosity to see what kind of social incantations can
`__MAGICWORDS__` have started being used in this way by amy pickles and Cristina Cochior during a Read & Repair session on Digital Solidarity Networks.
### x-dexing
__x-dexing__
`x-dexing` is a cross-reading practice that through chance operations guides the reader in going over a body of texts. Contrary to an index, the `x-dex` invites to perform a non-linear distribution of attention across textures, semantics and aesthetics of the texts at hand.
@ -43,7 +43,7 @@ If “indexing” would be about gaining access through the illusion of complete
`x-dexing` was made by Jara Rocha and Manetta Berends to navigate and cross the book Iterations.
### word2complex
__word2complex__
`word2complex` is taking the algorithm word2vec as starting point for a discussion around how users can read alongside algorithms and how algorithms construct machinic readings of text. As a reading exercise, `word2complex` investigates how algorithms order our experience and understanding of relationality between different words, by calculating semantic distances and context similarities. By staying close to the logics of word2vec, `word2complex` aims to rethink such ways of calculating and proposes to form semantic distances between contexts in more-than-computational ways.
@ -60,6 +60,6 @@ Forms of collective annotation, close reading and cross-linking, as proposed by
Next to an interest in collective work and forms of togetherness, the methods also feed a curiosity around more-than-computational practices*. `__MAGICWORDS__`, `x-dexing`, and `word2complex` are all grounded in forms of computing, structuring, and processing and refer to specific computational artefacts: MediaWiki's magic words, the index as structuring device, and the word2vec algorithm. The methods stretch these artefacts as a way to challenge their authority. Versioning them, making space to form interpretations, creating a possibility for comparison along the way; things can be done differently! These acts of re-situating computational artefacts have turned into a technological artistic research practice, positioned between the fields of art & design and software studies.
*This is not really a proposal for a term, but a play on the phrase "more-than-human"; we are still trying to find words to refer to the research based practices around algorithms, tool-making and language that we have been close to in the recent years.
<small>*This is not really a proposal for a term, but a play on the phrase "more-than-human"; we are still trying to find words to refer to the research based practices around algorithms, tool-making and language that we have been close to in the recent years.</small>