Network Interfacing
Parsons School of Design
Art, Media & Technology
PSAM 3050, Collab: Network Interfacing; CRN 2062
Spring 2019
January 22, 2019 – May 7, 2019
Tuesdays, 12:10pm – 2:50pm
6 East 16th Street, Rm. 1618
Callil Capuozzo – capuozzc@newschool.edu
Lukas Eigler-Harding – eigll343@newschool.edu
April 30
In-class
Assignment
- Update your links on the spreadsheet to a dat url for your Interface and your Feature.
- Finalize your Interface and Feature and prepare for presentation.
- Make sure your Interface lists all your responses to the Prompts throughout the semester.
April 23
In-class
- Next Steps and Resolution
- Work session + Individual Check-ins
Assignment
April 16
In-class:
Assignment
- Based off of today’s reflection and feedback, continue to improve your interface design for further review next week.
- Additionally continue to develop your feature and the narrative around it.
Prompt
- Take a moment and review the prompts from the semester. Make sure you’re up-to-date!
April 9
In-class:
- Virtual People, IRL Spaces Discussion
- Building Filters workshop w/ Callil
- American Interfaces Lecture w/ Ed
Assignments
- Continue developing your feature
- Now that you’ve installed a feature, fully integrate it into your interface and use it for the upcoming prompt (for next class, we will fully review the features and their implementations):
Prompt
Reflect on the feature you’ve installed: Why have you chosen it? Are there variations of the feature present on networks you’re familiar with? What kind of customizations (prescribed or ad-hoc) have you introduced while integrating the feature into your interface?
April 2
In-class:
- Feature Presentations
- Installation Session
Assignment
- Install and use at least two features other than your own. Acquaint yourself with the feature’s code and take notes on questions and improvements you have in preparation for next class.
March 26
In-class:
- Enhancement and Documentation Review/Finalization
- Preparing for crit
Assignment
- Enhancement, prepare presentation/documentation for next week.
For a full timeline, check out the Enhancement Timeline
Prompt
Look at a photo you took over break, what networks are present in it? How are they present? Where do they converge?
March 12
In-class:
Assignment
- Enhancement assignment. Finalize your function and continue developing your documentation.
March 5
In-class:
Assignment
- Continue developing your feature. Take some time this week to prepare a mock-up of documentation/installation instructions. Consider how you will frame this feature to fellow network-users. What benefit does your feature offer? How is it used? How is it installed? Is it customizable (if so, how do you show this?)?
Prompt
Find a fellow network user’s post and create a post in reaction to it.
February 26
In-class:
- Class discussion in response to Turing Complete User and Black Gooey Universe
- Individual check-ins and work session
(Use this in-class setting to pair up and plan out strategies for building your site. Solicit advice regarding how your feature should be customizable (i.e. what variables do you pass into your function)).
Reading:
Assignment
- Continue clarifying and building out your core feature. Clarify its use-case, what variables user’s might be able to manipulate, and how it might influence our network as a whole.
February 19
In-class:
Reading:
Assignment:
Enhancement, Week 2
Choose a feature and begin developing it. Take note of questions and problems you run into.
Prompt:
Watch a few (at least 3) friends interact with the same interface and document their behaviour. How have they made the interface theirs? What behaviours are consistent? How does their interaction-flows differ?
February 12
In-class:
Reading:
Assignment:
- Research and prepare three distinct functions/features/futures for our network. Full assignment description can be found here.
Prompt:
Describe a fictional interface you recently came in contact with. What features felt familiar (and how were the signified)? What felt like hyperbole?
February 5
In-class:
Reading:
Assignment:
Complete your group’s in-class assignment for review next class.
Prompt:
Which interface influences you the most? Howcome?
January 29
In-class:
- Assignment review, questions, and group conversation regarding reading
- In a group of three: let’s re-do the first exercise and post to the network through your interface.
- DatArchive and Sprint 2 introduction
Reading:
My website is a shifting house next to a river of knowledge. What could yours be? by Laurel Schwulst
Assignment:
DatArchive API
Build / publish a stand-alone dat website. Consider, what would you want to host in a distributed network? What is the format of the medium best suited for?
- If you are comfortable, use the DatArchive API to read and write a JSON file (i.e. your website should read the contents and append it to the DOM. Your site should also offer some sort of interface that can update the file).
- Goal
This sprint should be used to become more comfortable with the concepts of the Dat network and the DatArchive API. Feel free to play around with the API’s different methods.
Prompt:
Networks in New York. Document (via writing, photography, sketching) a physical network you encounter. Pay attention to the stops and passages, points of collective and individual behaviours, and how the physical directs the network’s behaviour.
January 22
In-class:
Dat url spreadsheet for in-class exercise.
Boilerplate for Sprint 1.
Reading:
Thoughtless Acts by Jane Fulton Suri (here’s the are.na channel)
watch this lecture about dat and the beaker browser.
Assignment:
Please spend some time restyling and digging through the boilerplate files. Note what areas you’re confused by so we can cover them in class next week. Remember to follow the set up outlined in the readme.md file. Your restyling should focus on:
- Your profile display (loadProfile())
- your post display (
loadPosts(), loadPostContent()),
- your post submission interface (
isOwner(), writePost())
- (don’t worry about pulling in other users just yet, we’ll go over this in our next class!)
- once you’re done, please also add your website’s dat url to the spreadsheet.
Class Resources
Prompts
- (April 16) Interface Reflection
- (April 9) Reflect on the feature you’ve installed: Why have you chosen it? Are there variations of the feature present on networks you’re familiar with? What kind of customizations (prescribed or ad-hoc) have you introduced while integrating the feature into your interface?
- (March 26) Look at a photo you took over break, what networks are present in it? How are they present? Where do they converge?
- (March 5) Find a fellow network user’s post and create a post in reaction to it.
- (February 19) Watch a few (at least 3) friends interact with the same interface and document their behaviour. How have they made the interface theirs? What behaviours are consistent? How doe their interaction-flows differ?
- (February 12) Describe a fictional interface you recently came in contact with. What features felt familiar (and how were the signified)? What felt like hyperbole?
- (February 5) Which interface influences you the most? Howcome?
- (January 29) Networks in New York. Document (via writing, photography, sketching) a physical network you encounter. Pay attention to the stops and passages, points of collective and individual behaviours, and how the physical directs the network’s behaviour.
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