a journal of software studies
The Project This book is an account of the practice of machine learning – that is, the project of configuring software, by means of a learning process, so that it can learn from data and, as a consequence, be able to deal with further data in an intelligent way. However, some of these terms – …
Continue reading “Towards an Archaeology of Machine Learning?”
The notion of execution and its practices, which gave birth to this book, were first examined by a collective of artists, thinkers and researchers calling themselves “Critical Software Thing” in two workshops in Aarhus, Denmark and Malmö, Sweden between 2015 – 2016.1 With these discussions, the group, interested in thinking things and objects from the …
The initial release of the Atari ST musical sequencing program Cubase by the German software company Steinberg in April 1989 marks a significant moment not only for computer music but the development of digital multimedia as a whole. The features established by Cubase, in particular its ‘innovative graphical tracks and timeline interface’ (see Figure 1), …
Continue reading “New Media, 1989: Cubase and the New Temporal Order”
Over approximately the past two decades, ‘creative coding’ has gone from a fairly niche, heterogeneous, and often elective unit in media arts education to an increasingly mainstream offering in many arts and design degree programmes. Distinct from the instrumental and disciplinary approaches in computer science where software is ‘engineered’ and technical principles are mastered in …
Continue reading “Theorising while() Practising: A Review of Aesthetic Programming”
Introduction During a scene in Oliver Stone’s Wall Street film sequel, titled Wall Street: Money Never Sleeps,1 the young trader Jake Moore asks investment bank CEO Bretton James a question: “What’s your number? The amount of money you would need to be able to walk away from it all and just live happily-ever-after. See, I find that everybody …
As part of the Infrastructures series edited by Geoffrey Bowker and Paul N. Edwards, and with a provocative and engaging title that addresses what the editor of the book, Lisa Gitelman, defines in her acknowledgements as the emerging field of data studies, it is no wonder that expectations of this book run undoubtedly high. Organised …
Continue reading “How Crucial is Rawness? Review of Raw Data is an Oxymoron by Lisa Gitelman (Ed.)”