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Looks interesting, thanks for sharing! The abstract for the curious: > Permacomputing is a nascent concept and a community of prac- tice centred around design
by NeutralForest 2y ago
Looks interesting, thanks for sharing!
The abstract for the curious:
> Permacomputing is a nascent concept and a community of prac-
tice centred around design principles that embrace limits and con-
straints as a positive thing in computational culture, and on creativ-
ity with scarce computational resources. As a result, permacomput-
ing aims to provide a countervoice to digital practices that promote
maximisation, hyper-consumption and waste. It seeks to encourage
practices as an applied critique of contemporary computer tech-
nology that privileges maximalist aesthetics where more pixels,
more frame rate, more computation and more power equals more
potential at any cost and without any consequences. We believe
that such a critical practice can be relevant to artists, designers and
cultural practitioners working with computer and network tech-
nology who are interested in engaging with environmental issues.
This is particularly relevant given the tendency in art, design and
cultural production to rely on tools and techniques designed to
maximise productivity and mass consumption.
In this paper, we argue for the potential of permacomputing as a
rich framework for exploring creative design constraints building
on a long history of applying constraints in art, design and cultural
practices. Because of the need to reconfigure the modes of produc-
tion and organisation within computational practices, this calls for
a different understanding of aesthetics, one that goes beyond the
formal evaluation of how things look, but addresses how aesthetics
can also be systems of relations, sensing and making sense that
are already present in the process of making. We will also discuss
the challenges faced by permacomputing practitioners, such as the
complicated link with retro-computing, post-digital culture and
nostalgia, as well as the problem of constraints in relation to the
aesthetisation of poverty, and more generally what it means to
work with self-imposed limits in a more privileged socioeconomic
context.