This workshop is part of a course at the Ernst Busch Hochschule in Berlin.
It is only open to students of Spiel&&Objekt.

least likely scenario is a 3week course that introduces how computers work and immediately challenges you to imagine how we could interact with them differently.

photos >> https://www.flickr.com/photos/plusea/albums/72157716744404618
download intro zine >> https://www.plusea.at/downloads/spielundobjekt/least-likely_part1-WmC_spreads.pdf
download brief zine >> https://www.plusea.at/downloads/spielundobjekt/lls_BRIEFzine_A7.pdf

as courses go, this one is not so much a journey from A to B, but one that wanders a path in ways that invite you to get lost and be comfortable not always knowing where you are going.
in this part of the journey we will travel by means of re-making things differently in order to understand how things are made and to exercise our imaginations and hands.
while this style of travel may sound leisurely, don’t be fooled. it is not as easy as it sounds to wander aimlessly in search of where your interests lie. documenting where you have been can help you maintain an overview. publishing your documentation becomes a means of sharing your knowledge with the world. what and how you choose to capture your process are also interesting things to consider.

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the course is spread over three weeks:

part1 ::: W O R L D meets C O M P U T E R >>> 2day workshop

part2 ::: Material_Adventures >>> 2day workshop

part3 ::: Least Likely Scenario >>> 5day projectweek

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PART1 ::: W O R L D meets C O M P U T E R

is a 2day workshop about the materials of electronics. how we can craft our own sensors and actuators, and program computers to read from these inputs and write to these outputs so that they can interact with us and our world.

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PART2 ::: Material_Adventures

see >> https://www.plusea.at/?p=6605

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PART3 ::: Least Likely

computers interface with our world through sensors and actu- ators, and understanding how these works allows us to invent our own and in doing so imagine stranger interactions and less likely outcomes.
how many buttons have you pushed today?
how many scrolls scrolled?
swipes swiped?
links clicked? screens tapped? switches flipped?
pushbuttons were invented shortly after we discovered electricity in the 1800s, as a means for human hands to control electricity’s flow and cause things to happen. pushbuttons were marketed as solutions that allowed everybody to inter- act equally. although men were portrayed as powerful button pushers, women as delicate hands and children as mischie- vous souls. the spread of pushbutton technology even caused us to imagine the inner workings of the human body as mecha- nisms triggered by pushbuttons.
today, pushbuttons and other human-computer-interfaces continue to be designed and marketed as technologies that al- low us to easily, discretely, effortlessly trigger all kinds of things with as little use of our (whole) bodies as possible.

project brief

BUT! what if things were different?
what if you had to jump, twirl, pound, kneed,
kick, stretch, crumple, burn or fold technology in order to turn on the light, send a text or navigate the internet?
what if computers demanded more of our whole bodies in order to get things done?
when inventing something new, it can be hard to escape con- ventions. the more we understand about how sensors work, the freer we are to invent stranger interactions.

NOW that you have invented a strange new way of inter- acting with a computer, your input technology will trigger new human behaviours and ideas about the world.
will we see people jumping in the street, twirling their phones, stomping their feet? what are they doing? what are they think- ing?
just as pushbutton technology shaped the kinds of things we could imagine to do with them, a new form of input will cause us to make other things to happen in the world.
what strange new thing does your sensor trigger?
what new behaviours does it entail?
does it lead us to new explainations of how humans function?
trying to imagine things differently is a difficult creative chal- lenge. give it a hard and long think, pull out pencil and paper to doodle, draw, write what comes to your mind….. then take a break and do something strange. maybe treat your feet to a foot mask:-)
take a shower or a walk or have a beer with a friend….
can you formulate in one sentence an idea for what strange new thing / behaviour / explaination your sensor might trigger?
______________________________________
______________________________________
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tomorrow you will receive a box in which you can realize a small diorama depicting the least likely scenario that you are able to imagine would happen based on the sensor/interac- tion you have invented.
if you haven’t yet inveted your sensor, spend this time to do so first. there is no rush, you will have 3days to refine your sensor and build your diorama.

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FURTHER_READING_WATCHING_LISTENING_

PART1: WORLD meets COMPUTER

Getting Started In Electronics_
Forrest M. Mims
>> https://www.academia.edu/9885504/Getting_Started_In_Electronics_-_Forrest_M._Mims

There Are No Electrons: Electronics for Earthlings
Kenn Amdahl
“An off-beat introduction to the workings of electricity for people who wish Richard Brautigan and Kurt Vonnegut had teamed up to explain inductance and capacitance to them. Despite its title, it’s not wild ranting pseudo-science to be dismissed by those with brains. Rather, Amdahl maintains that one need not understand quantum physics to grasp how electricity works in practical applications.” (book review)

ELECTROMAGNETISM (FULL SHOW)
>> https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bht9AJ1eNYc

min 19:40: Left Hand Rule for Coils

Maxwell, The history of Electromagnetism – Documentary
>> https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TfKBKb7Uc9s

The Charge against Electricity_
MIKE ANUSAS and TIM INGOLD
“Electricity has become such a ubiquitous feature of modern life that most of us would have no idea how to manage without it. Interruptions in supply are experienced as unsustainable moments of crisis. The possibility that the supply of electricity might eventually run dry is every government’s worst nightmare and underpins the global politics of energy. Do we blame electricity for having brought us to this state of dependency? Can we hold it responsible for the disempowerment of citizens, for the entrapment of their lives within a state-sponsored grid maintained by corporations? Or does it, on the contrary, hold the potential for emancipation? Is electricity guilty or not guilty? In what follows, we begin with the case for the prosecution. Then we present the case for the defense. You, our readers, are the jury, and we leave the verdict for you to decide.”
>> https://journal.culanth.org/index.php/ca/article/view/ca30.4.03/200

PART2: Material_Adventures

Everything is a Remix
Kirby Ferguson
“Ferguson examines modern attitudes toward intellectual property and how these attitudes rather counterintuitively stifle creativity rather than fostering it.
He illustrates the interconnectedness of our creations and how current laws and norms miss this essential truth.”
https://www.everythingisaremix.info/

The textility of making
Tim Ingold
“Contemporary discussions of art and technology continue to work on theassumption that making entails the imposition of form upon the material world,by an agent with a design in mind. Against thishylomorphicmodel of creation, I arguethat the forms of things arise within fields of force and flows of material. It is byintervening in these force-fields and following the lines of flow that practitionersmake things. In this view, making is a practice of weaving, in which practitionersbind their own pathways or lines of becoming into the texture of material flowscomprising the lifeworld.”
http://sed.ucsd.edu/files/2014/05/Ingold-2009-Textility-of-making.pdf

Object-Oriented Ontology
What is Object-Oriented Ontology? explained by Tadas Vinokur:

Vibrant Matter
A Political Ecology of Things
Jane Bennett
“In Vibrant Matter the political theorist Jane Bennett, renowned for her work on nature, ethics, and affect, shifts her focus from the human experience of things to things themselves. Bennett argues that political theory needs to do a better job of recognizing the active participation of nonhuman forces in events. Toward that end, she theorizes a “vital materiality” that runs through and across bodies, both human and nonhuman.”
https://www.dukeupress.edu/vibrant-matter

Artistry and Agency in a World of Vibrant Matter:

Part3: Least Likely

The Carrier Bag Theory of Fiction
Ursula K. Le Guin
“I’m not telling that story. We’ve heard it, we’ve all heard all about all the sticks spears and swords, the things to bash and poke and hit with, the long, hard things, but we have not heard about the thing to put things in, the container for the thing contained. That is a new story. That is news.”
https://www.academia.edu/17313163/The_Carrier_Bag_Theory_of_Fiction_-_Ursula_K._Le_Guin

Power Button: A History of Pleasure, Panic, and the Politics of Pushing (The MIT Press) 2018
by Rachel Plotnick

Power Button

excerpt: https://medium.com/@mitpress/pleasure-panic-and-the-politics-of-pushing-123b534eaee7
BBC “Thinking Allowed”: http://bbc.co.uk/programmes/m0000mrl
Science Friday: http://sciencefriday.com/segments/why-are-we-obsessed-with-pushing-buttons/
The Verge Science (video about elevator buttons – you’ll see rachel about halfway through): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bH1xAbhlJSo
This is Not a Pipe podcast: https://www.tinapp.org/episodes/powerbutton

Knotty Objects
https://medium.com/mit-media-lab/the-summit-9a632339f56c