2021-11-19

opening emacs text editor

typing: C-x C-f /ssh:root@trans.fail:/var/www/trans.fail/211119_journal.md

just wrote that twice.

On short vacation, so I can reflect and read. The premiere is approaching and I have been thinking about the web space, https://trans.fail and its form as a digital garden, a maze. Because that's what I would like it to be intuitively but also to reflect in some way the preocupation of this project with the trans-media aspect of cyborgian present. Because, indeed, we are already cyborgs, and Aral Balkans fight for our rights as cyborgs makes total sense (see https://cyborgrights.eu/). Furthermore I have been fascinated and interested in emergence of movement and pseudo-life using new media and digital networks, specifically programming, hacking, circumventing, reuse of web, textual and audio-visual tools and languages.

So,

brainstorming about the web interface and underlaying algorithmic backend - mostly based on flatfiles. Most probably php parsing the folders+files structure and then in generating partially randomised menu of options, perhaps texts, backgrounds, and fonts, and images could be detached from each other and randomly interchanged. It would be like, there's this navigation there, but it does not obey the clicks always, just most of the time. Or two-thirds of the time. The interface is not consistent, it's less predictable and clear. Note, the distinction between machine and life is totally false. The life-vs-machine distinction is undeleuzian. On one hand there are (we are?) desiring-machines already, the biological, pre-personal underlaying technology of human-animal-plant world, the molecule, the atom, the cell, is a machine, little machines working consistently as programmed. On the other hand, higher level, we are cyborgs anyways already with all the digital extensions.

I'm reading Speaking Code: Coding as Aesthetic and Political Expression By Geoff Cox and Alex McLean with foreword by Franco "Bifo" Berardi. Subtitled 'The aesthetic and political implications of working with code as procedure, expression, and action.'

Programing problem

Programming problem is in essence how to parse text, image, audio, and video files as webpages. There's number of ways to do that and it depends on how the navigation and rendering should function.

The reason I'm sticking with flatfile approach (no database, just files) is that it still seems the easiest way for me, personally, to add content: create a folder, add an image (or more), write a markdown text file, add an audio file, add a video file... The system takes care of everything else.

The design consideration is also responsivness, so that the site looks ok on mobile phones and tablets. This influences how to create basic files with text. Should they be Markdown or txt files?

And so on.