Nonhuman Participation: a materialist perspective on execution from agency of things, vibrancy of matter and code materiality
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A talk at Participatory IT research center in Aarhus University
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Nonhuman Participation: a materialist perspective on execution from agency of things, vibrancy of matter and code materiality
- 1. Nonhuman Participation: a materialist perspective on execution from agency of things, vibrancy of matter and code materiality Winnie Soon 2015 @ PIT
- 3. What is participation? Why do we have to look into nonhumans?
- 4. Participatory Design • Design processes and decisions that made by participants • Participation through IT IT as a supporting role • What counts as participation?
- 5. What is participation? Google image search as of 21 Apr 2015
- 6. What is participation? Google image search as of 21 Apr 2015 an act or instance of participating the fact of taking part, as in some action or attempt http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/participation
- 7. Have we equally and seriously considered nonhumans as participants?
- 10. Actor Network Theory - See things as connections and associations, dissolving the dichotomy of inside/outside, big/small, far/close. - it does not limit itself to human individual actors, but extend the word actor -or- actant- to nonhuman, non individual entities. (Latour 1996:5-8)
- 11. ANT: Actant Implies no special motivation of human individual actors, nor of humans in general. An actant can literally be anything provided it is granted to be the source of an action. * Not a fixed entity but regards as flow, as circulating objects * Action is not done under the full control of consciousness (Latour 1996:5-6; 2005:44)
- 12. ANT: black box (Latour 1987:2-3)
- 13. ANT: translation • Changes relationship • Becomes someone, something else • Creates mixtures between entirely new types of beings, hybrids of nature and culture • Consists of displacing…one program of action into another program of action (Latour 1991:125; 1999:180-182; 1993:10)
- 14. Actant: a source of action that can be either human or nonhuman; it is that which has efficacy, can do things, has sufficient coherence to make a difference, produce effects, alter the course of events. (Bennett 2010:viii)
- 15. Vibrant materiality Vitality of matter Thing-power
- 16. material powers, which can aid or destroy, enrich or disable, ennoble or degrade us, in any case call for our attentiveness, or even ‘respect’ (Bennett 2010:ix) Vibrant materiality Vitality of matter Thing-power
- 17. How could we know the thing-power without understanding the thing? [what are things?]
- 18. Code materiality
- 19. Computer code is not solely technical though, and must be understood with respect to both the 'cultures of software' that produce it, but also the cultures of consumption that surround it (Berry 2011:17) Code materiality
- 20. I reject so-called ‘immateriality” of software and draw attention to the concrete thing-in-the-world-ness of software so that we can ‘see what it is, what it does, and what it can be coupled with’ (Fuller, 2008:3) (Berry 2011:10) Code materiality
- 21. Close reading of code How the code is created/tested/maintained/run? Code materiality
- 22. Socio-technical network Triangular relation of code execution
- 23. By bringing in the concept of agency, thing-power and the culture of computation, how might this materialist perspective reconfigures our understanding of “participation” in the field of PD?
Hinweis der Redaktion
- For those who duno me, my name is Winnie Soon, a PhD student here in PIT. I am half way through of my 3 years PhD study. Today I am going to talk about nonhuman participation, bringing together humanities, social sciences and computer science. This is not my exact PhD topic though as I am still ironing it out (very much work in progress). But for today I want to share with you my theoritical / perspective of my thesis, emphasizing the materiality of execution – computation.
- One of the obvious research question that I have to address: why computation is important – one of the answer perhaps is that we are constantly voluntary and involuntary participate in IT system e.g stock exchange, social media platforms, smart cities etc. IT system is being part of our culture, how can we say it is not important? However, do we actually know the power of computation? What constitutes computation? Here just show some of the things in relation to computation, of course there are more…
- Particularly in this context of PD, these are the at stake question: Hope today’s talk can give some insight in answering these questions.
- -Participants: Designers, users, researchers, target groups, stakeholders -Use of IT for participation, for improving quality of life.. we pay attention on IT from the perspective of its Outcome, efficiency, functionality and effectiveness Focusing on the use of IT + technological developments. - There is a room for us to rethink the question -
- How about material? In the case of IT – specifically computation, does it count as participants? Does it take part in design processes, does it has action? Does action limits to human?
- According to the material turn in the humanities and social sciences, nonhuman could be meant by many things -> nonhuman animals, weather, ecology, waste, computation, computer system etc
- 3 different materilist framework giving us some hints on the approach and thinking towards the world, towards the understanding of the world. Actor Network Thoery, Vibrant matter from Jane Bennett (she is a feminist materialist) and David berry on software and Code They all give special attention to matter (materiality, processes of materialization) shifting to a new attention to the active role of materials, matter or thing. Re-recognize the things that we have been taken for granted.. One of the important thing about materiality, is to include social/cultural relations, therefore materials that we see is no longer a stable, fixed form. As Butler claim “the distinction between the material and the cultural [being] no longer a stable or viable one (249)
- ANT rooted in STS , developed from 1980s by Bruno Latour, Michel Callon and John Law. There are multiple variations. Although ANT carries theory in its name, but what latour clarifed better looked at as a method for doing research. Has now been used in other areas as well. In short, ANT focus on the connection between both human/nonhuman entities, it describes how these connections lead to the creation of new entities. But I have to say I can’t go into details about every thing in ANT, I just pick some of the concepts which highly inspire me to think differently in an ontological level particularly in examining computational system.
- How the scholar use the word Network – it does not mean computation network. Network is more as a metaphor, is heterogenuous It is about actions, things that perform in different relations One of the famous example that latour has given was gunman. A man and a gun can form a new entity when they are connected in a third entity: gunman: It focuses on the connection that bring gun and man together.
- Latour mentions about the notion of actant, addressing nonhuman agency in an explicit way Source of an action: if you think about computation, e.g computer code it can be regarded as actant - In other words, It is not necessarily human imposed an intention on entity.
- One of the important concept that latour has mentioned is blackbox. Processes and things that happen inside a box…usually get ignored. He said: The word black box is used by cyberneticians whenever a piece of machinery or a set of commands is too complex. In its place they draw a little box about which they need to know nothing but its input and output (Latour 1987:2-3) He argues that the objects inside a blacbox is no longer passive, but instead plays an active role.
- The notion of translation in ANT, offering a way to think of objects/entties as a constantly changing relations. Just take the gunman as an example again if you think of nonhuman objects that they meet together for example: data and program code meet becomes hybrids of new types of being. If you think about computation – it includes code, library, databases, various input etc Give an example: same text on print, on web, on kindle -> become a hybrids of nature and culture. It uses different source code, algorithm…. The object of text is always in relation in the case, to form something else.
- Jane Benneet has also discussed the notion of actant in her book vibrant matter. [read quote…] Bennett highlight the notion of vibrancy or she calls it as vitality in matter in her book. In particular, she is looking into the political side of things. thing power. Her concept of agency/actants is highly influenced by Latour. If you think about computational system, entitiles such as code, data, databases, network protocols, interface become actants. It produce an effect. She reminds that (p.21) an actant never really acts alone. Its efficacy or agency always depends on collaboration, cooperation, or interactive interference of many bodies and forces” On how she defines agency, she said “not fully predictable encounters between multiple kinds of actants”: focusing on the power of thing that we might not aware of.
- These are the terms constantly appear in her book. Thing power -> she gave an example about a collection of trash that has the power to become something else. if I have to illustrate with an understandable example: a collection of data has the power to become something else… Far from being a property a fixed attributes of a thing Inter-act The agency of things that produce (helpful, harmful) effects in human and other bodies.
- She elaborates: [read the quote…] If I have to give an example to easily illustrate bennett idea – japan tsunami nuclear power plant leakage which I think is a good example, we cannot even systematically to examine the plant structure and property, things with a power. destroy health. suggest paying attention to the aliveness of matter. p.4-5: capacity of these bodies was not restricted to a passive intractabiltiy also include the ability to make things happen, to produce effects. (makes the difference) become a force And she suggests us to begin with the recognition of things To think about thing that produce effect and affect
- - Bennett focuses on what things could be rather than focusing on the properties or what is it…my argument then instead is how could we know what things could be without the understanding of what things are about? - It is not only about cause and effect - Social and cultural practice that constantly shifts what is it, and what things could be…at least it would be helpful in thinking about thing-power with the understanding of a thing. Although bennett rejects the focus on objects, or stable property of a thing, however, I would argue that understand the process of how things are coming/forming/interacting together, might lead us to understand the thing power. Since individual actant has its own property/affordances that always in a relations, but we need to know them in details, at a material level.
- I bring in the third materialist thinker and scholar : David Berry, who is also influenced by Actor Network Theory. This has shown in his earlier book – The philosophy of software in 2011. The book is a critical introduction to code and software develops an understand its social and philosophical implications in digital age. He suggest a method ‘close reading of code’ code may inscribe particular values and norms or drive particular political /cultural impact reading code and understand how it operates. [align with the blackbox concept from latour] computation becomes important now in our daily lives, becomes a blackbox, and we need to develop a way to analyze it.
- Similar to the thinking of actor network theory code as part of a network [read out the quotes] >> Include social practices Socio-technical assemblages: “code lies on a plane of immanent connections and consequently, …it has a large number of connections.”
- You can see how berry thinks about materiality – software seems something regards as non physical, you cannot touch it. But if you draw upon the earlier concept about actant – thinking about the source of action. Then you will understand software when it executes, it does thing, it connects with other things. Think about everyday computational system: facebook, ATM machines, gps google map, wikipedia etc..
- Double articulation of code, as both symbol and material, Methodological speaking: Not only read the source code, but also documents, commentry etc. He also suggests reading is a code practice. My argument is that reading is code practice, but reading is not enough -> writing is also important too. [articulate why writing is important] -> read/write practice Writing is also a reflexive practice, allow oneself to aware what the logics and connections and the politics in computational practices, for example: why you have chosen this library but not the others? How database is constructed and how data is being retrieved through API what’s the cultural practices of API?
- If we have to think about computational practices – day to day software that we encounters, or even artworks that includes such socio-technical network as code/network/data. Of course there are lots of actants that connect / associate with these. For example command lines, API, database, security, so on…. From what I have observed, a lot of nowadays systems for example internet of things, streaming data -> highly include this triangular relation of code execution. How might we begins to examine these beyond technical functionality? What are the social practices of computation? How does this relation form new relations? What are the things power? Capacity or unpredictable possibliity?
- To end the presentation, I ask an open question: