Making + Writing Things:
Prototyping as a Compositional Strategy

Jentery Sayers | UVic | MLab | @jenterysayers
Syracuse University | 3 March 2016
Slides Online: jentery.github.io/syracuse/

Why prototypes for humanities research?

Kits for Cultural History

Remake technologies that no longer exist, no longer work,
or cannot be found in museums or archives

"Prototyping the Past" or "Prototyping Absence"

Components of a Kit

Box
Prototype
Model
Supplement

For more, see Hyperrhiz 13

Prototyping Beyond CNC

McPherson on "In and Through" Objects

Rosner on Design

Shipka on Negotiation

Kraus on Conjecture

Four Examples beyond CNC

Hardware

Building, Bending, Hacking, Modding (see Collins)

"Glitch Controls"

By Nina Belojevic + Jon Johnson

Rather than engaging videogames primarily through the screen,
hardware hacking offers a tacit form of interaction
often resistant to symbolic or graphical logic.

Consequences for Writing

Demands Attention to Manufacture (see Belojevic)
Prompts Tangible Awareness of Audience (see Johnson)
Critique through Repair (see Rosner and Ames)
Ground Glitch Theory in Material Particulars (see Kirschenbaum)

Simulations

Rehabilitate or Mimic Events (see Fuller)

"From Grain to Glitch"

By Patrick Close

Continuous movement from the ephemeral click to the stochastic mass
to the pure sine tone and finally to white noise (and back again)

Consequences for Writing

Executability of an Abstraction or Model (see McCarty)
Remediate, Demo, and Communicate Concepts (see Drucker et al.)
Learning through Process Modeling (see Close)
Understand Systems by Reproducing Relations (see Molleindustria)

Indie Games

Games Are Zines (see Anthropy)

"Right"

By Danielle Morgan

In a world of right angles, you search for acuteness.

Consequences for Writing

Manifest Critique through Experiment (see Flanagan)
Game as Evidence for Values (see kopas)
Game Design over Programming (see Fullerton)
Test How Processes Are Persuasive (see Bogost)

Design Fiction

Enact a Technocultural Future through Narrative (see Sterling)

"HyperLit"

By Nina Belojevic + Jon Johnson

Interactions encourage audiences to become aware of
how gamification renders them productive subjects.

Consequences for Writing

Imagine New Tech Beyond Instrumentalism (see Lukens + DiSalvo)
Create Conditions for Narrative and Experience (see Roesler)
Hermeneut Inhabits the System (see Drucker + Nowviskie)
Literature as Source for Cultural Criticism and Humor

Key Issues

Thank You

Jentery Sayers | UVic | Maker Lab | @jenterysayers
Syracuse University | 3 March 2016

Special thanks to Patrick Berry, The Writing Program, The Writing Program’s Student Organization and Composition and Cultural Rhetoric Graduate Circle, the Department of English, Syracuse University Libraries, and the Digital Humanities Working Group of The CNY Humanities Corridor