Technology Review

New Projects

For this project, I am inspired by two existing esolang projects that explore similar ideas to mine.

The first is Esopo by William Hicks (2016). This is a project that is intended to contain a family of languages, rather than a single language. A blog post analysing the project covered the two existing languages AshPaper and Correspond and the work-in-progress Emily (Temkin, 2018). According to the creator, this project was motivated by a desire to explore the intersection of code and writing in ways that are more authentic to the conventions of poetry and prose. For example, in an AshPaper program, not only does it look authentic to typical poems, with its poetic diction and choice use of indentation, but the rules of the language corresponds brilliantly with the choices of the poet, producing a sophisticated work that is meaningful across multiple levels. Similarly, a Correspond program looks authentic to a written letter, and is furthermore functionally meaningful to the conventions of letter-writing. I think this project is exciting because it is a revelation in the elegant and meaningful ways that the rules of a programming language can be modelled after other sets of rules that are familiar to different audiences, such as those for writing poetry or letters. In my project, I hope to explore similar methods of creating associations to other domains from within the rules of the language itself.

The second project is Cree# by Jon Corbett, as discussed in an Indigenous Programming thread in the Creative Code Studies Working Group 2020 (Corbett, 2020). This language is a Cree interpretation of the established C# programming language, bringing to mind other programming languages that have been created in attempts to broaden the English-dominated tech space. However, as opposed to many of those languages, which simply map English keywords into other languages, Cree#, uniquely, also uses Cree concepts and metaphors to shape the structure of programs in the language. For example, programs are built around the Cree tradition of storytelling by involving a specific folklore character, which the programmer must interact with in specific ways. This project is part of the Corbett’s broader Indigenous Coding Framework, a work-in-progress intended to help indigenous communities bring their culture into the realm of code. I deeply admire this and other projects of Corbett’s, as indigenous representation is few and far between in tech, and I had never imagined how special it could be to create technological works that are so intricately tied to cultural values. Though I do not currently intend to associate my project with my cultural background, I am inspired by this project to consider different possibilities involving concepts and metaphors in code.

Rapid Critical Media Project #5

Critical Analysis of an Arts-Based Research Project: Documentation + Analysis. Chosen project: Algorithmic Censorship Resistance Toolkit by Qianqian Ye and Xiaowei Wang. Statement of Approach. Critical Analysis Screencast.