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Complication of the Computer Mouse

Emma Norton

Complication of the Computer Mouse is a lecture that unpacks the shifts in computation and how gender is enacted through computation by exploring the history of the computer mouse as an object.

https://spaghettimeatballsbecomereallyfrightening.online/the-computer-mouse

Description

This project is a lecture in which I will present months worth of research through written word and visuals. What you see in the video is a sample of the lecture with the slides. I would like to argue that the invention of the computer mouse helped to shift perceptions of computation and how gender is enacted through computation. I believe the mouse to be powerful in its potential to reroute perceptions and create new meaning. The mouse can also be seen as a site of contradictions within the history of computing. I would like to leverage these contradictions in order to complicate its history so that I can retell its story while it’s still here and still ubiquitous. Since the early days of computing, there has been a shift from being “close to the metal” to coding software within and for software. From women as programmers to women as typists. From men as mouse users to men as programmers. Are programmers not just glorified typists? Perhaps, these shifts can be unpacked through a deep understanding of the mouse as an object. The 1968 invention of the mouse by Doug Engelbart did not appear in tandem with the technologies before it. Instead, it interrupted them. In step with theorist Sadie Plant, I see the mouse as unlike its techno-phallic predecessors, the joystick and the light gun. It is not deterministic in its shape. Rather, it is a shape that responds to your body. You do not hold it, but it holds you. From the keyboard. From the cyclical command and response of you to your computer. To move your hand onto the mouse, and then, off of it, and then onto it, again. Those seconds in between hold you. They are about your body and how your body sits in this world not the world you imagine in your screen.

Classes

Project Development Studio

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Human Body as a Machine

Julia Rich

A disembodied heart that beats for you

https://

Description

As you move closer to the programmable air powered silicone heart, it beats faster as if it has a crush on you. It is a part of a larger experiment in integrating motors and sensors into my prosthetics work. My final steps with this project are to finish the stand in which it sits.

Classes

Project Development Studio

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Conveyor

Hannah Tardie

This work is a networked pulley system about infrastructure, time, and what it means to take up space.

http://www.hannahtardie.com/conveyor

Description

This work is a networked pulley system about infrastructure and what it means to take up space. It uses custom hardware and is programmed according to the amount of time it will be installed. During its installation, it will complete 2 laps or cycles per day. Some laps will be done at a high speed in a matter of minutes, while others may take hours. This project was created based on an interest in erratic and uncontrollable temporalities. While the material of the project remains the same throughout its duration, its movement through space at specific times qualifies the material. In the same way, this project adds a temporality and infrastructure to the space it inhabits, creating a relationship to its position in space with ways of keeping time. While it can be thought of as a physical network, transmitting information from room to room, it can also be considered a meditation on what it means to occupy space. In one way, the piece takes up more space than any other project in the show, inhabiting multiple rooms. In another way, it takes up the least amount of space as it does not touch the floor, and is out of typical human field of view. Viewers must look up at the ceiling in order to perceive the work.

Classes

Homemade Hardware, Project Development Studio