Utopia Swim Club
As human experience is increasingly digitally mediated, encounters with texts,
media, space, form, and even reality itself are now produced by algorithms:
step-by-step procedures, authored by a select few and then executed by computers.
For the user, the reader, the citizen, and the audience, sense is computed–hidden
calculations determine what rises to awareness. As a scholarly response, we
call into being a new multidisciplinary group, the Utopia Swim Club. We will develop
new forms of collaboration, combining traditional humanistic scholarship
with other creative practices.
This project asks: What can be done to reveal algorithms at work and
unearth elements of their operation that are otherwise inaccessible? The computer
algorithm will be our topic and our tool: In Lucy Suchman’s phrasing, algorithms can be
"both a method through which things are made and a resource for their analysis and
un/remaking." We will write new algorithms to reveal what is hidden within existing
ones, a matryoshka of the digital. Our group will take the organizational form of an
art collective to join together art, design, music, architecture, cultural studies,
computer programming, the digital humanities, and humanistic scholarly critique.
We will combine the talents of undergraduates, graduate students, and both junior
and senior faculty. Our collective will produce a series of pieces in different
forms and modes, including material objects, essays, and computer programs. Our
outputs will mix traditional and other forms: publication, exhibition, workshops,
and creative practice. These will be documented via the Web, conversations with
audiences and peers, and a new podcasting effort.
USC:
Christian Sandvig, School of Information
Sophia Brueckner, Penny W. Stamps School of Art & Design
William A. Calvo-Quirós, LSA American Culture and Latina/o Studies
Catie Newell, Taubman College of Architecture and Urban Planning
Tsz Lam (Natalie) Ngai, LSA, Communication and Media
The above video is a a draft version. It will be updated soon.
Vidoegrapher: Peter Leix
Sample library for sound design: Nicholas Warren