One of the biggest fails I had this week was scrapping my original final hack idea on Sunday night. I was originally going to redo my poetry bot from Hack 1 and my plan was to have users build their own poems and all the poems were famous ones written about works of art, so then when they build the final poem it would be next to a remixed work of art based on how the user made the poem. I decided to cut the idea because when I made my own mashup I thought the art looked weird and also I wanted to have more of a critical lens for my project.
After doing a lot of brainstorming, I realized how the Abacus could be used as an educational tool because my own hack with the abacus taught me how it works. I did a lot of brainstorming on ways to make it a game and a lesson that related back to my original idea.
In the process of creating my abacus I faced many challenges with my code. A complexity I didn’t realize was that Javascript uses RGB colors, but I wanted my abacus to be in CMYK because those color values are out of 100. While Claude accounted for this conversion when it wrote my code. It did not account for the fact that every color value had to be a multiple of 10. This meant it would give the user a color that was impossible to make with the abacus. This was something I had to fix with the code, so all the random values could be multiples of ten.
Claude’s initial code also did the spacing of the game very weirdly, so I had to manually fix a lot of the problems in where it placed text and different boxes as shown above. The code also added a bunch of labels to the beads and percentage points that I thought made the game too easy and would not allow the user to learn as much, so I had to go in and delete all of them to make the game harder.
The final challenge I ran into was that whenever the randomly generated color had 0 as one of the values, the abacus would initially not register that the user had matched the color. To fix this problem I had to add the check color button, so the code knew to actually go in and check the colors to see if they matched. While this was not the ideal solution, it proved to be more effective and fixed the problem.
I chose to reimagine my virtual abacus made in Google Sheets because I wanted to explore how I could design the abacus to have more utility. I thought about the Oregon Trail Game and how games can be designed to enhance learning and make players think more critically, which I wanted to attempt by gamifying the abacus. I was inspired by the critical play hack, where we redesigned games to have players think more critically on a topic, and thought this could also be done through making the abacus a mode of engaging in critical play.
There is no clear purpose for a user in my initial abacus, they are invited to play around with the tool to see how it represents different numbers, but there is no specified goal. In my beta version, I wanted to think about how playing with the abacus could help users better understand some of the basics of our computer systems. In the first artist statement, I talked a lot about how our computers are a black boxes where we don’t understand their algorithmic processes. In the new project, I wanted the abacus to act as a tool to better introduced users to some of the invisible processes our computers engage in.
Many people don’t realize that the basis of what computers do is based in binary, that everything is abstracted down to 0s and 1s. Similarly, an abacus abstracts numbers through how the beads are placed. I decided I could make a game that could better exemplify to a player the concept of data being abstracted. Inspired by a comment from Dr. Sample, I thought color was a type of data that could be represented well through the abacus. I came up with a concept for each row of an abacus to represent a color in the CMYK color model. I then thought users could adjust the beads to see how the color changes, when there are more or less beads clicker representing certain colors.
I realized I could further make this idea a game by having the code generate a random color and then the user has to attempt to match the color by adjusting the beads on the virtual abacus. This challenge allows users to begin to teach themselves not only how an abacus works, but also gain an understanding how things like color can be represented through numerical data. To someone with no familiarity with an abacus, the game is rather hard to figure out in the beginning, but over time the goal is for the user to keep experimenting until they start to get the hang of using the numerical data below each color to adjust the abacus.
In the alpha abacus, while the tool itself is meant to be simple, the code existing beneath the surface is rather intricate. This is similar in the beta version, where the proper code to make the game function is pretty complex, but a user would never know. In this way, there is cognitive friction because while I aim to teach about the hidden processes hidden below a computer’s surface, the algorithms that allow my design to function are inaccessible to the user. This introduces a from of resistance where making a tool meant to highlight its simplicity requires rather developed and more inaccessible technology.
The utilization of complex modern technology to create the abacus is also essential in combating ideas of technological utopianism. In designing my game, I maintained that it was important to have the abacus be a central feature despite there being other tools to represent data. O’Shea explains the dangers in viewing technological progress as the marker of a perfect society and how we shouldn’t view technology as the method to supposedly rewrite our future. Thousands of years ago, the abacus was a remarkable piece of technology, yet today it would seem to have no utility. It would be unwelcome in the technological utopia, yet my game is centered around its abilities and how it can act as a learning tool. In this way, I hope to argue that new development in technology is not a solution to all our problems, instead we can also callback to the past to reframe our understanding of the present.
Works Cited
Lizzie O’Shea, “Technological Utopianism is Dangerous” from Future Histories: What Ada Lovelace, Tom Paine, and the Paris Commune Can Teach Us about Digital Technology (2019)
This week I failed to prioritize my own timing. I always get upset with myself when I choose to not due my Flogs on Thursday night, so I am then forced to do them on Friday afternoons. While this is usually frustrating to future grace on Friday afternoons, I think the Grace on Thursday evenings takes great joy in this practice.
Otherwise, I felt like I failed this week because I didn’t pay as good attention to the class schedule because for some reason I thought we had two classes to have work days to work on the final hack. I wish I had realized this because I would have ran my idea by Dr.Sample during Thursday’s class, but I didn’t because I wanted to prioritize working and having my idea fully fleshed out. Now, I just have to get it done before Tuesday. I am not too concerned though because I have found I generally work pretty well under the pressure, so I think it will be ok.
This week I felt like I failed in the sense I could have used our day without class to be more productive and get ahead on the readings for Thursday. I ended up waiting too long to do the readings and it forced me to stay up pretty late on Wednesday night in order to get a full grasp of the concepts. I saw the one reading was 11 pages and thought it would be rather quick, but I ended up having to spend a good chunk of time looking at it because it was rather complicated and dense.
At the same time, I did enjoy doing both the readings and I thought it was a good way to conclude our coursework. Our class discussions caused me to reflect on the design work I have done for the different projects and how not all design is necessarily radical and good. There remains a necessity to still approach design with criticality and remain conscious of how design can promote harmful ideas or practices. Design does not necessarily solve a problem, it also can lead to the creation of new ones.
In regards to the final hack, I am feeling a little stuck as to which project I am going to redo and how I am going to do it. I am hoping that by taking a step back I will be able to reflect and find inspiration to decide the next best approach for my project. I am excited by the potential to redo one of my hacks, but I still have to figure out exactly how. I fear some of my initial ideas may be too big to complete.
This week I was overall very proud of my final remix, but in order to get it to that place it involved a lot of failure along the way. I discussed in my flog last week how I locked myself into one idea, but then decided I didn’t like it and was deciding what to do instead. In class last Thursday, I had actually spent a lot of time finding clips for the camp drag queen idea, but I then stopped because I thought I would come up with an idea I liked better. I was also hesitant to do the idea because I explained the idea to one of my friends and she didn’t seem excited about it. I convinced myself I could come up with something genius, so I ended up spending 2 hours trying to come up with a new idea. This ended up being a huge waste of time once I finally realized I was actually super excited about doing the drag queen idea, I had just second guessed myself.
`When I actually began working on the drag queen project I had originally edited most of the videos on my ipad in adobe. However, I realized that the app was rendering all of my clips with super bad quality. This was frustrating because it made me realize that I had to completely redo the project on my computer to ensure the videos were at higher quality. However, as annoying as this was, it actually gave me the chance to rethink my editing process and how I was placing the footage.
I also struggled to find the exact type of film footage of Trump that I wanted. I’m not sure if part of the problem was Tiktok limiting searches that could be deemed critical of Trump, but a lot of my searches of “Trump strutting” or “Trump posing” did not yield fruitful results. However, I learned to search for other things like “Trump’s funniest moments” or “Trump walking” ended up working pretty well. I also had a lot of trouble deciding which tweets to include because there were so many options. My friend ended up sending me about 20 of her favorites she thought I should use. I am happy with the final result, but it was very challenging to narrow them down.
RuPaul’s Drag Race has been one of my favorite tv shows since middle school. I have always been in awe of the different queens’ abilities to explore fashion, humor, and performance. It is through the show that I was first introduced to what it means to be ‘camp.’ A concept I continued to be fascinated by through my freshman year writing 101, Bad Art. In this class, we read Susan Sontag’s iconic essay Notes on Camp, and discussed how viewing art through a camp lens allows us to find new meaning and appreciation to what high culture would view as bad or lacking in value. In this class, I was inspired by some of the ideas we explored when learning about radical play in thinking about how it connects to camp culture because they both incorporate playfulness as a way of commentary. I think these ideas as particularly expressed through drag, where engaging with camp serves as a rebellion to society’s cultural norms which are historically exclusionary to queer culture.
This exclusion is particularly seen through the actions of the Trump administration and the conservative agenda which seeks to eliminate LGBTQ+ language from books in school and stop the performances of Drag Queens across the country. However, this reality is somewhat ironic because many conservative politicians, like Trump, are somewhat camp figures and I argue are comparable to drag queens themselves. The theatricality of politics and performative nature of their inherently lends itself to camp culture. This inspired my remix project, Camp Figures, where my goal was to playfully point to how Trump’s actions are similar to that of drag queens through clips placing them in the same context. In this way, I hoped to create a video that is both fun to watch, while still criticizing Trump and his actions.
I began my remix with RuPaul explaining the definition of ‘Camp’ to Stephen Colbert because I thought this was a necessary contextualization considering it is a rather complex topic. In her essay, Notes on Camp, Susan Sontag explains how camp is “a sensibility that is as difficult to define as it is easy to identify.” This is something I particularly relate to because it is easy to point to something at camp, but the act of verbalizing why is always difficult. Even in Sontag’s essay, there are many instances where she contradicts herself. I wanted my video to be accessible to a wide variety of audiences, which is why I chose to try and make camp a more attainable and clear concept for viewers to grasp.
To further demystify the confusing nature of camp, I chose to include three different Sontag quotes throughout the remix from Notes on Camp. While this essay has faced a lot of criticism since it was published in 1964, I think it is a necessary text to begin to understand what it means to be camp. I was mindful to choose quotes that I thought were easy to relate to the actions of Trump and the drag queens featured in the video.
After RuPaul explains camp and the viewer sees the first Sontag quote, the remix features a series of drag queens strutting and posing down a runway to Rupaul’s song, Hustle that Cat. Then, at a dramatic moment in the music, a mysterious figure comes out from behind a curtain, only to reveal it is Donald Trump, who then struts down a carpet. I was purposeful to have Trump’s sudden emergence surprise the audience through having no clear context beforehand on what the video would be about. I thought this would contribute to the humor of the video and also would give the audience an aha moment, when they think back to RuPaul saying politicians should go to drag shows. I also thought the dramaticness of this reveal would contribute to the over the top campy editing style I tried to utilize to fit with my overall theme.
After the reveal, begins a series of video clips that alternate between Donald Trump and drag queens from Rupaul’s Drag Race. All of the drag queen videos come from one video I found from the most current season of one of the runway challenges. I spliced the video into sections to show a variety of queens being silly and over the top as they strut down the runway in their elaborate costumes. In contrast, I searched tiktok and youtube for a variety of clips of Trump dramatically strutting and performing silly actions like when he solitarily gets off of an airplane or hugs and kisses an american flag. One of my favorite comparisons was my clip of a series of drag queens sipping from straws and then including a photo of Trump wide-eyed and funnily sipping diet coke. It is through these back and forth comparisons that I tried to convey that there are direct similarities to be found with Trump and Drag Queens.
I also included a video I found from 2000 of Trump flirting with Rudy Giuliani in drag. This video helped emphasize that Trump himself is not that removed from drag because he has actively engaged with it. When this video came out, it served as a way of mocking women and queerness. However, in the context of the remix, where the clip is surrounded by other drag queens, the joke gets put on Trump and Giuliani as it further proves that they are like individuals they wish to be distanced from.
In addition to the video clips, I also included a variety of Trump’s social media posts from X and Truth Social. I thought these were necessary to include because one of the ways Trump is most associated with being outrageous is through his posts on these platforms. It was easy to find lists online of some of the craziest and most outlandish tweets because he has posted so many. I tried to choose tweets that I thought were something I could see a queen saying on RuPaul’s Drag Race, but in that context the sentiment would have been completely performative. In the case of Trump, these tweets are also quite performative to his audience, but not in the same intentional way as the drag queens.
The backing track to my remix is the song ‘Hustle that Cat’ which is a Rupaul song that is used as the runway song in the most recent season of RuPaul’s Drag Race.This made sense as the song because it is iconic to anyone who is a big fan of the tv show. In addition, the message of the song is about having ambition and working hard to achieve your goals, yet the lyrics argue that in order to achieve this success you must “put your whole kitty in it.” This language was particularly relevant because it speaks to harnessing one’s inherent femininity. Specifically in relation to Trump, I felt like the lyrics respond to what he said on the leaked Access Hollywood Tape. Through having Trump ‘strut and pose’ to this song, it demonstrates Trump playing into his femininity, this same femininity he feels entitled to taking advantage of in others.
In the middle of the remix, I include a clip from Larry King’s show, where a famous drag queen explains how she and Trump have more in common than one would realize. This was one of quite a few pieces of media I found where drag queens compare themselves to Trump. This was notable because while the drag community seems to find humor in the fact that Trump is somewhat like them, this remix would have outraged Trump. This speaks to the importance of camp in acting as a way for people to find meaning in the not serious and how humor and irony are methods of political statement. Trump himself is not able to really understand how he acts as a camp figure, which on one hand makes him more camp, but it also gives those who do engage with camp a unique way to critique him outside of his awareness.
In regards to breaking one of the rules, I broke rule #2 that states the source material must come from at least three distinct time periods. Technically, I did break rule #4 because upon completion I realized I used content from 3 different eras (1960s, 2000s, & 2020s), but I did this completely unintentionally. When I began my remix, I was mindful of breaking rule #2 because I believe Trump is very specific to our current cultural moment, so I wanted to mainly utilize content from the same time period. Also because my method of comparison of him and drag queens is already rather upfront, I didn’t want to overcomplicate my message by creating comparisons over time as well.
A hesitation I had with my project is that it paints Trump as a joke, yet the realities of his administration remain deeply serious. I did not want the message to be that we do not have to be concerned about Trump’s policies because he engages in camp performance. Labeling Trump as ‘camp’ is not the solution for those of us who disagree with his administration, as camp is not designed to solve life’s problems. Instead, labeling Trump as camp reveals how the very subcultures his administration seeks to suppress find ironic empowerment in the fact that he, unwittingly, embodies aspects of them.
This week I failed by locking myself into an idea for the remix project. I was really excited about the prospect of using the Booker 25 hour speech on the Senate Floor and I thought I could make a good comentary with it. However, as I began working on it I realized it was becoming more reminiscent of a tiktok edit of a politician than a remix in the way I wanted. Part of the problem is I realized I hadn’t fully formulated my idea, but more just saw the Booker video as enough to base my project.
This wasn’t ideal because I ended up spending a lot of time working on this video to only realize that it wasn’t formulating into an effective project. This was frustrating because I felt like I wasted my time. However, in my independent study I did a reading about the I’m not being biased bias, where stuborness can lead to one not be willing to change their idea. I embraced this idea to evaluate what I was doing with my project, and realized it would be best to just change to a new direction.
Something challenging about this project is that the time for it is 3-5 minutes. Alot of my ideas I realize could not go along for that amount of time, which has been challenging. As I have continued working on the project, I keep reminding myself to think about the timing and making sure the point can extend into 3-5 min.
This week I think I let my stubbornness get the best of me when we had the class debate on whether the Obama Hope Portrait was fair use. I think my background makes me always want to be on the side of the artist, so even if I thought the court would look another way I still wanted to stick to my guns. There were definitly moments during the class debate that I thought about switching, but I didn’t want to concede at all or abandon my “team.”
However, while I aknowledge that under the court’s definition of fair use the Hope image could potentially not be allowed. On my own philisophical perspective, I think that it is wrong to say that the artist did not do enough to change the photograph. As I mentioned in class, Justice Kagen’s dissent in the Andy Warhol Supreme Court Case is something I think about a lot in these discussions of fair use. She explained how “Nothing comes from nothing, nothing ever could, So somewhere in the copyright statute, there must be an ‘escape valve’ to create something good.” I agree with this statement completely. Whether we are aware or not everything we create is somewhat inspired or based off of something else, similar to what Lethem argues. It is with this awareness that I think that any creative who slightly adjusts something already made should get a level of leeway.
I do aknowledge that it is wrong to straight up copy the work of someone else and not give them any sort of compensation or credit. However, I think that as long as an individual makes some sort of thoughtful adjustment or alteration they should be allowed to use this new sort of work. I think ultimatley a big part of this problem stems from the capitalist economy we live in and the fact we feel that everything should be approached with some level of just compensation. With this awareness, it makes sense why Fair use has become such a thing, but when I really think about it, I think it is better to let people create freely without fear of “stealing from someone else.”
This week I am failing to find inspiration in what exactly to include in my flog. I think that I learned a lot this week in thinking about remixes and such. It was really interesting to think back about copyright and how it has become bloated. My sister is in law school right now learning about copyright law and she explained to me how there are so many things that I could put a copyright on, for example tweets. I find this super interesting and a cool concept, but I also see how engaging with copyright in such a way would continue adding to its excessive bloat.
In my reflections on copyright this week and discussions with my sister, I also realized that there is a lot I still need to learn to better understand copyright because in class I confused it for trademarks. I still think I need to read up more to better differentiate between the two concepts.
I was also inspired by class on Thursday in listening to the songs claimed to copy another and Jacob’s opinions on how the chords and such are overused and it not being a true copycat. It inspired me to try and better understand music and learn to have a better ear because I was not catching the same details, nor had the same awareness.
Building the Abacus presented quite a challenge that involved many fails, but overall I was very proud of the final result. I discussed in my flog last week the challenges of trying to get the beads to simulate like an abacus, and after a lot of different trials and errors, I think I was successful. I was able to have the user only click certain slots, like moving a bead, to change the abacus value.
I also had a lot of problems figuring out how to write the algorithm for the abacus beads to add five if the top level beads were up. In the end, I worked with a tutor in Data Cats to figure out the best way to write the code correctly. A process that was quite complex and long lines of code for a fairly simple output.
In reflecting on my virtual Abacus, I looked towards some of the questions Sacasas poses in the article Do Artifacts Have Ethics?
36. Does using this technology require me to think more or less?
With the abacus the process of representing a number with the beads requires more thought than simply writing it out. Although the abacus is designed to be a simple tool to represent numbers, it is unfamiliar to modern audiences. However, this is part of the point in thinking about subversive design, the tool is meant to be more challenging to reflect on how our algorithmic systems have evolved.
28. What limits does my use of this technology impose upon others?
In a similar vein, the abacus is rather inaccessible at first because it has no instructions. Most of my friends had no idea how to use the abacus and were puzzled when I showed them my version. One is required to understand the numerical system in order to use it properly.
18. Can I imagine living without this technology? Why, or why not?
Because the abacus is basically useless in relation to the many different settings and offerings of Google Sheets as a program, it would be very easy to live without this program. Even simple calculators can perform the abacus math in a faster more precise way. However, the use of the abacus in ancient civilizations throughout the world speaks to the importance of math and understanding numbers throughout time. The same mathematic principles are still the basis of our calculators and computers today, even if they completely out perform the original abacus.
I have felt like I am failing this week through figuring out what to do with my third hack project. I have two different ideas, but I am not super excited about either of them/ I need to develop them more.
The first is using a Hinge account as a way to do random public opinion polls because the way it is designed could put one’s profile on a variety of random people’s phones, so it could be an interesting way to get sample data. The problem however, as Dr. Sample pointed out is that I don’t know exactly what the public opinion poll would ask different users. I think this is a key part of the project because there needs to be some sort of commentary or the poll needs to have some utility that I can explain.
My other idea was to create an abacus in excel or google sheets. I thought this was clever because the abacus is such an outdated form of technology and excel and google sheets make the function of an abacus obsolete. Therefore I thought it would be interesting to bring the technology online. I spent a while learning how Abacuses work and it is very interesting, but definitely a little confusing. This leads to concern number one that it would maybe be hard to present because I don’t think the class knows how abacuses work. My other bigger concern is building an abacus in either program is rather challenging because of how to move the beads back and forth in a way that makes sense in the virtual setting. All of my ideas to do it are rather clunky and would be difficult to navigate.
I found the readings for Thursdays class to be helpful in thinking about the creative process and how I could combine two very different designs to make something new and unique. I think that it is very helpful to think about the softwares that are part of my everyday life and the specifics of how they were designed to find new uses and ways to use the design against itself to explore new mediums. I am excited to finish my hack and come up with something I am proud of!
It is nice to look back now that we finished our second hack and think about all the challenges we faced along the way. It makes me more appreciative and proud of the final result.
An initial challenge we faced over the weekend was that the DACE space was closed, so we couldn’t access a lot of the materials we planned on using. However, we got creative and made friends in order to get all the materials we needed. Davis Cafe gave us the much needed box cutter and the brothers of Kappa Sigma provided us with all of the tinfoil that we needed to keep the current flowing to our new board.
Another challenge we ran into was that the depth of the cardboard base in relation to the cover map of Africa was rather deep which meant we kept losing pieces as they would come out of reach of the holes (this is a rather confusing problem, but I am including an image to demonstrate). In order to fix this problem we realized we could use pipe cleaners that we could shape around the different holes to make sure the different resources would not become inaccessible. Overall, this project really involved David and I thinking creatively because we are not really used to working with physical objects. However, overall I think it really pushed our minds in different ways.
