From Prototyping to Worldbuilding

Jentery Sayers | @jenterysayers | jentery@uvic.ca
Praxis Studio for Comparative Media Studies
Dept. of English | University of Victoria

Lawrence Technological University
Humanity + Technology | CoAD | 25 March 2021

These slides are available online at jentery.github.io/ltu.

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Image care of Tiffany Chan.

Acknowledgements

I respectfully acknowledge that the University of Victoria is located on the unceded territory of the Lkwungen peoples and the Songhees, Esquimalt, and W̱SÁNEĆ First Nations, whose ongoing historical relationships with the land continue to this day.

I would also like to thank Franco Delogu, Paul Jaussen,
Emily Kutil, Guilia Lampis, and Tami Stank at LTU
for making this happen.

Prototyping the Past
(2013-18)

Across the Maker Lab in the Humanities
and the Digital Fabrication Lab in Visual Arts

Researchers: Nina Belojevic, Tiffany Chan, Nicole Clouston, Laura Dosky,
Katherine Goertz, Evan Locke, Shaun Macpherson, Katie McQueston,
Danielle Morgan, Victoria Murawski, Zaqir Virani, and me

Supported by the Canada Foundation for Innovation and
the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council

The Maker Lab is now the Praxis Studio.

Motivations for PTP

Address the labour and material processes of media histories
Add depth and lived experience to those histories
Attend to the contingencies and conjectures of design
Remake tech that no longer exists or existed only as a fiction
Treat prototyping as inquiry (inspired by Daniela Rosner)

For more, see "Prototyping the Past" in Visible Language,
"Design without a Future" in ACM Interactions, and
this MLab video by Teddie Brock, Tiffany Chan, Katherine Goertz,
Danielle Morgan, and Victoria Murawski

Image care of Danielle Morgan

First Example (Brief):
Magnetic Recording

Prototyping a late 19th-c. audio experiment

Research conducted across UVic Humanities and Fine Arts by
Nicole Clouston, Laura Dosky, Katherine Goertz,
Danielle Morgan, Zaqir Virani, and me.

For more, see the Early Magnetic Recording Kit as well as
"Design without a Future" in ACM Interactions.

Second Example (Extended):
Optophonics

Prototyping an early 20th-c. transcription machine

Research conducted across UVic Humanities and Fine Arts by
Tiffany Chan, Danielle Morgan, Victoria Murawski, and me.
Also in collaboration with Mara Mills at New York University.

For more, see the Reading Optophone Kit as well as
"Optophonic Reading, Prototyping Optophones" in Amodern.

Next Step: Wordbuilding

Better attend to contexts and engines
for storytelling (see Sullivan, Nieves, and Snyder)

Better account for conditions that encourage
both capacity and "debility" (see Puar)

Be more inclusive of low-tech
approachess (see Perner-Wilson)

Thank You

Jentery Sayers | UVic English | Praxis Studio
@jenterysayers | jentery@uvic.ca

Slides at jentery.github.io/ltu

With thanks to Franco Delogu, Paul Jaussen, Emily Kutil,
Guilia Lampis, and Tami Stanko at LTU

Image care of Danielle Morgan

Resources:
Infrastructure

MLab Inventory (Spreadsheet)
"The Humanities Lab as a Makerspace" (Initiative)
"An Infrastructural Disposition" (Essay)
"Kits for Cultural History" (Video)

Infrastructure supported by the CFI and
UVic Humanities, English, Visual Arts, Libraries,
and the Humanities Computing and Media Centre

Image care of Danielle Morgan.

Resources:
Teaching

"From Lab to Classroom" (Talk)
"Before You Make a Thing" (Resource)
"Prototyping Texts" (Syllabus)
"What's in a Game?" (Syllabus)
"Paper Computers" (Syllabus)
"Prototyping Pasts and Futures" (Syllabus)
"Things to Think With" (Syllabus)

Courses taught in English as well as Technology and Society at UVic.

Image care of Danielle Morgan.

This is the final slide in the deck.