“Intimate Fields is an installation work that brings together ‘near field’ technologies from markedly different eras to argue that secrecy, absence, and distance are constituting features of felt human intimacy. Looking back to the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, our project expands to digital technologies the concept of ‘the posy’ and the practice of its creation and dissemination. Posies are short poems designed to be inscribed on gifted objects, most frequently rings. These bespoke accessories are meant to be worn on the body and to signify or transact amorous relations, act as memento mori, or even enable private and subversive modes of religious devotion. Posies and their objects were widely held to act as reminders of intimacy or as portals to memory. At the same time, the inscriptions themselves, particularly on courtship rings, are often generic and were collected and published in printed books for use and adaptation. By inter-animating today’s methods of near field communication and early modern wearables, this project explores how text and code technologies and the languages they carry can create, interrupt, or re-shape interpersonal connection.

Intimate Fields allows users to explore these potentials through a compact installation work that can be placed on a small table for display. The installation consists of a wooden laser cut box with multiple compartments. The box is bundled with an NFC (near field communication) reader connected to an Arduino Flora microcontroller and miniature thermal printer. Items in the box include printed scrolls and notes containing NFC stickers, textile items containing knotted codes, and a series of six ceramic/steel rings with embedded NFC chips. On touching the scrolls, notes and rings to the NFC reader, scripts are triggered to generate brief affectively charged poems remixed from a range of historical and contemporary texts. An accompanying bot posts remixed versions of posies to Twitter at regular intervals.

Intimate Fields was inspired by the work of Jentery Sayers and the MLab at the University of Victoria. There, Sayers curates a series of maker-inspired digital humanities projects called ‘Kits for Cultural History,’ in which our project resides as Volume 4 in the series. The mandate for Sayers’ original Early Wearables Kit was to create what he called a ‘fluxkit for scholarly communication,’ drawing on the Fluxus model in which boxes are assembled of inexpensive materials to create a shareable art object. Sayers imagined using this model to create what he calls ‘small boxes of inexpensive materials assembled for media history’—kits that can be shared and recreated as scholarly objects that both reveal aspects of material history as well as ‘prototype speculations about the past’ based on absences in what we know—in other words, to build objects that ‘recover, repair, and re-contextualize the stuff of history.’ The Kits are designed to be reproducible and executable—shareable like code, while simultaneously being executed on a local material platform (in code’s case, a desktop computer; in the Kit’s case, a 3D printer, laser cutter, etc). Indeed, Intimate Fields makes use of some of the digital lasercutter schematics from the original Early Wearables kit; it is a fork, in Github’s vernacular, in which project files are copied, modified, and either given a new space (in this case, the repository for Intimate Fields) or pushed back to the original.

As a work in the Kits for Cultural History series, Intimate Fields seeks to share in some of these ideas: reproducibility, prototyping, speculation, play. As a work of media history, its aim is to reveal how media objects conveyed secrets in the early modern period, and extend ‘media objects’ as a term to encompass the smell of rosemary and rosewater, the tactility and luster of linen and handspun silks, the intimate feel of a ring hugging the finger or laying suspended from a thread next to the skin. At the same time, it is clearly a creature of our own moment in history: the inclusion of Near Field Communication chips and an electronic reader shift the reader’s awareness into the now, even while drawing attention to the way in which media objects have always held secrets, if only we knew how to read them. The NFC chip and its forerunner, the RFID system, bring to the forefront the idea of intimacy. There is a secret message here, in this seemingly unreadable and yet strangely beautiful object with its spiraling copper coils and magnifying-glass chip. But we can only ‘read’ it if we place it in intimate proximity to a reader, tuned to the right frequency, coded to find the right blocks of data on the chip. The reader induces a current in the coil, much as opening a secret message induces an affective current in the heart—anticipation, longing, release. Induction, magnetization. 13.56 Mhz of electric love. Typical visual representations of a NFC transaction—and it usually is a transaction, between a mobile device and a payment terminal—represent the moment of communication as a kind of ‘ray-gun,’ beaming information from active device to passive reader. But that’s not how NFC works at all. The reader itself induces current, creating a communicative field that, if it could be seen, would be more accurately characterized as a kind of ‘fountain’ of energy, moving through the chip, inducing new current, and spiraling back to the reader like the roil of the earth’s molten iron core. Magnetism has its own aesthetic.

Intimate Fields also bears witness to Sayers’ observation that reproduction is inevitably an act of situated practice, in which the embodied act of prototyping necessarily changes the act of interpretation. The specific instance of Intimate Fields built for exhibit at the Conference festival here betrays our own particular passions, sourcing materials that speak to us in specific ways (for Maggie, the magic of finding specific letter-folding techniques and reproducing them in specific papers; for Helen, the snagging of raw silk fiber on skin, the twirl of the spindle’s whorl). Here, we offer two boxes: one that is ‘executed,’ complete, and imbued with our own bodily labor and affects, and a second one that is a schematic, a range of possibilities, a kind of historical narrative recipe for reconstructing secrets. In this way, Intimate Fields is a ‘kit for e-Literature’: a kit for reconstructing potential texts that include both material and electronic, hard and soft elements.”

Post by Jentery Sayers, attached to the KitsForCulture and Makerspace projects, with the news tag. Featured image for this post care of Helen J. Burgess and Margaret Simon. Visit the website and repo for Intimate Fields.

Thanks again to UVic, Robert Baker (Blinds Veterans UK), Mara Mills (NYU), Matthew Rubery (QMUL), Bill Turkel (Western), Paul Walde (UVic), Fiona Keenan (U. of York), SSHRC, and CFI for their support. Thanks to Rah Bras for the music.

Post by Teddie Brock, attached to the Makerspace and KitsForCulture projects, with the news tag. Featured video for this post care of Teddie Brock, Tiffany Chan, Katherine Goertz, Danielle Morgan, and Victoria Murawski.

Research Reels (Screening and Awards)
MacLaurin Building (MAC) A144
March 7th at 5:00pm
IdeaFest at UVic

Hope to see you there!

Post by Jentery Sayers, attached to the Makerspace and KitsForCulture projects, with the news, fabrication, and physcomp tags. Image for this post care of IdeaFest at UVic.

Post by Tiffany Chan and Jentery Sayers, attached to the KitsForCulture and ReadingOptophone projects, with the fabrication, news, and physcomp tags.

Kat Piecing Together Our Guide (photo by Maasa Lebus)

Research Leads, Contributors, and Support

Since August 2016, the following researchers have contributed to An Illustrated Guide to Prototyping the Past: Teddie Brock, Tiffany Chan, Katherine Goertz, Maasa Lebus, Evan Locke, Danielle Morgan, and Jentery Sayers, based on research by Nina Belojevic, Nicole Clouston, Laura Dosky, Devon Elliott, Jonathan O. Johnson, Shaun Macpherson, Kaitlynn McQueston, Victoria Murawski, William J. Turkel, and Zaqir Virani. The Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council, the Canada Foundation for Innovation, and the British Columbia Knowledge Development Fund supported this research.

Early Sketch for the Guide (by Danielle)

Project Status

This project is ongoing, and completion is expected in 2017. An Illustrated Guide to Prototyping the Past will be available in print and also electronically (open access). To follow the project as it progresses, see the stream of posts below.

Post by Danielle Morgan, attached to the KitsForCulture project, with the fabrication, physcomp, and projects tags. Featured image for this post, of Kat, Tiffany, Teddie, and Jentery working on Chapter 1 of our Illustrated Guide, also by Danielle.

The “Optophone” (ca. 1921): a reading device for the blind. Credit: Matthew Rubery, Heather Tilley, Wellcome Library, London, and Wellcome Images.

Today, optophones are interpreted as precursors to optical character recognition (OCR), or the automated conversion of images into machine-readable text (e.g., Google uses OCR to make large amounts of digitized print material searchable on the web). Many origin stories about the optophone stress its invention without attending to key figures and contributions involved in using, maintaining, and developing the reading optophone over time.

Mary Jameson reading Anthony Trollope’s The Warden on an optophone, ca. 1921, care of Blind Veterans UK.

For example, Mary Jameson was one of the optophone’s earliest and longstanding users and demonstrators. But as Victoria, Jentery, and I have argued elsewhere, existing descriptions of Jameson’s work diminish her contributions to the reading optophone’s development. Prototyping the optophone highlights Jameson’s unrecognized labour and that of other optophone users in ways that archival materials, current scholarship, and popular accounts do not. For more on the prototyping process and its implications, see my talks at HASTAC 2016 and Digital Humanities 2016. We have also created a repository for the Reading Optophone Kit.

Research Leads, Contributors, and Support

Since 2015, the following researchers have contributed to the Reading Optophone Kit: Tiffany Chan, Katherine Goertz, Evan Locke, Danielle Morgan, Victoria Murawski, and Jentery Sayers. Many thanks to Robert Baker (Blind Veterans UK), Mara Mills (NYU), and Matthew Rubery (Queen Mary University London) for their support and feedback. The Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council, the Canada Foundation for Innovation, and the British Columbia Knowledge Development Fund have supported this research.

Tracing letters and punctuation marks to create a Python script for the Reading Optophone Kit

Project Status

This project is ongoing, with plans for completion and exhibition in 2017. For more on the project as it develops, see the stream of posts below. You may also visit our reading optophone repository, which contains code and other associated files.

Post by Tiffany Chan, attached to the KitsForCulture project, with the projects, fabrication, and physcomp tags.

Designing without a future positions prototyping as a negotiation with histories of media rather than as a speculation about possible futures. It also recognizes how many of the technologies we remake are no longer accessible and likely never will be again: they are broken, lost, missing, or not in circulation. Remaking them is thus about the contingencies of experience and interpretation, not ideal forms or designs.

Thanks to Daniela Rosner for feedback on drafts of this publication. A photograph of the cover is above.

Post by Tiffany Chan, attached to the KitsForCulture and EarlyMagneticRecording projects, with the news tag. Featured image care of Interactions. 

Iron filings reveal impressions of sound on piano wire (image by Danielle Morgan)

Research Leads, Contributors, and Support

Since 2013, the following researchers have contributed to the Early Wire Recording Kit: Teddie Brock, Tiffany Chan, Laura Dosky, Katherine Goertz, Danielle Morgan, Victoria Murawski, Jentery Sayers, Zaqir Virani, and William J. Turkel. The Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council, the Canada Foundation for Innovation, the British Columbia Knowledge Development Fund, and the University of Michigan Press supported this research.

“Jacob: Recording on Wire” exhibit at UVic’s Audain Gallery (image by Danielle Morgan)

Project Status

This project was completed in June 2016 with an exhibit, “Jacob: Recording on Wire,” at UVic’s Audain Gallery, based on existing research published in American Literature. The lab also published a public repository containing files related to the experiment. To learn more about the kit, see the stream of posts below. Please do not hesitate to either comment on a post or email maker@uvic.ca with feedback.

Post by Danielle Morgan, attached to the KitsForCulture project, with the fabrication, exhibits, physcomp, and projects tags. Featured image for this post, of Katherine Goertz with the lab’s recording trolley and mechanism, care of Danielle Morgan.

Model and Manufacture of the Electro-Mobile Skull Stick Pin (image care of Nina Belojevic, Shaun Macpherson, and Danielle Morgan)

Research Leads, Contributors, and Support

Since 2013, the following researchers have contributed to the Early Wearables Kit: Nina Belojevic, Tiffany Chan, Nicole Clouston, Devon Elliott, Katherine Goertz, Shaun Macpherson, Kaitlynn McQueston, Danielle Morgan, Victoria Murawski, Jentery Sayers, and William J. Turkel. The Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council, the Canada Foundation for Innovation, and the British Columbia Knowledge Development Fund supported this research.

The Kit Exhibited at Rutgers (image care of Danielle Morgan)

Project Status

This project was completed in October 2015 and exhibited at Rutgers University, with publications in Hyperrhiz and Visible Language and a CBC Radio interview that same year. The lab also created a public repository containing all files related to the kit. To learn more about the kit, see the stream of posts below. Please do not hesitate to either comment on a post or email maker@uvic.ca with feedback.

Post by Katherine Goertz, attached to the KitsForCulture project, with the fabrication and projects tags.

Consider the process of remaking an optophone, a reading aid for the blind developed and used during the 20th century (1910s-60s) that converted text into sound. Here, difficulty emerges in three ways: at the levels of 1) the archive, 2) trial-and-error remaking or rapid prototyping, and 3) interface design.

To create a schema for converting text to sound, I printed out, traced, and diagrammed letterforms to determine which tones played and for how long. This process is fraught with critical decisions. For example, a serif font might return different results than a sans-serif font, and it’s more than likely that the type produced by my word processor differs significantly from typefaces commonly produced during the optophone’s use. In cases where letters contain sloped lines that ascend or descend (e.g., A, K, M), splitting the letters into more segments would create a smoother transition from high to low tones or vice versa—similar to how having more pixels in an image makes the image appear smoother overall. (For more on the process of converting type to sound, see my previous post on the optophonic schema.)

But there are also cases where my schema differs from the diagrams found in historical documents. These differences could be a function of my word processor, or of a particular optophone illustrated by a historical diagram. But the more informative realization might be that such diagrams were probably, in one way or another, simplifications. To put it differently, historical sources (written or otherwise) are interpretations in and of themselves, subject to redaction, occlusion, or omission. Framed for particular audiences, they are imbued with values and biases that may only have emerged through past testing, use, and experimentation in the same way that they emerge through prototyping now.

To prototype the tracer (the optophone mechanism that converted printed material into an electrical signal and then into sound) and simulate its behaviours, we’re using a Raspberry Pi and a camera similar to a laptop cam. However, there are aspects of the tracer that cannot be expressed through simulation. For example, operators of early optophones could select the pace and location of reading with a much higher degree of control than is possible with our current setup. They could scan the same spot repeatedly or move the handle to a different reading location at any point in the process. By contrast, the Raspberry Pi prototype (which is designed to scan discretely, character by character, instead of continuously) cannot account for this kind of fine-grained control or manual feedback. By this measure, it is, perhaps ironically, the newer technology that seems inefficient and inadequate. Exposing the limitations of current technologies in recreating past ones disputes the common assumption that innovation progresses teleologically or straightforwardly towards a brighter future.

Moreover, we might ask what an appropriate technical goal or stopping point might be in terms of usability. One impulse might be to design and recreate an optophone where tones would be as easy to distinguish and interpret as possible. But this desire, to remake an ideal optophone, aligns with commercial attitudes towards technology that require devices to be rigorously optimized. By this logic, technologies are—and always should be—faster, cleaner, and easier to use than their predecessors; that is the stuff of progress. But such an optophone never existed, at least according to historical accounts.

Historical sources suggest that Mary Jameson, after two hundred hours of practice, was able to read at a speed of one word per minute at a public demonstration. After years of practice, she was able to read sixty words per minute while most operators were able to read at a speed of around twenty words per minute. Using the optophone required an enormous amount of sustained practice, effort, and labour, which goes unrecognized except as a measure or proof of the optophone’s efficiency.

Moreover, sighted people concentrated on the conversion process itself (of text to sound), at the expense of the other processes involved in setting up and operating the optophone frame. For example, before an operator could even begin listening to tones, she or he would have to plug in the optophone, place the book on the frame and line up the tracer with the first line of type, and “tune” the optophone with a knob (presumably to the correct font height). Furthermore, certain design features of the optophone suggest that blind operators were able and expected to operate it independently, without help. For instance, the connectors (plugs) on the sides of the frame were different sizes so that they couldn’t be confused, and at least one knob had nicks to enable the operator to count how far it had turned.

Illustration of the Optophone’s Features (care of S.W. Clatworthy, in Popular Science Monthly, 1920)

When prototyping or remaking, we are often faced with instances of limitation, frustration, absence, and surprise: aspects of history we cannot access or know for sure. Prototyping the past might be one way to approach such instances, not necessarily as a problem of technical ability or engineering—that is, not as a problem of tools or competence—but as a deeply cultural question, or even as a question of design. When and how might we want to communicate difficulty or labour? When might failure and frustration not be barriers to overcome, but rather ways to probe and understand the contexts that shape our limitations and how we came to understand them? We might also approach the question of absence or limitation as an ethical question, or a question of care.

To consider prototyping as a way of doing history is to also consider how prototyping may challenge historical narratives by rewriting the record and attending to previously ignored figures such as Mary Jameson. Jameson (who the historical documentation only describes as a “user” or demonstrator, if it mentions her at all) played a central role in optophone development that is unrecognized in histories of the optophone and optical character recognition (OCR) today. Prototyping the optophone with Jameson in mind offers us a way to stress maintenance, development, and incremental change in contrast to masculine, “make or break” narratives of innovation and hyperbole.

Asserting Jameson as a key developer in the history of OCR counters dominant myths about innovators: who they typically are and in what contexts innovation emerges. In fact, prototyping becomes a way to interrogate innovation itself, including, as in the case of the optophone, where it intersects with issues of gender and ability and their role in practice, both yesterday and today.

Post by Tiffany Chan, attached to the KitsForCulture, with the physcomp and fabrication tags. Featured image care of Tiffany Chan. Thanks to Robert Baker (Blind Veterans UK), Mara Mills (New York University), and Matthew Rubery (Queen Mary University of London) for their support and feedback on this research. Research conducted with Katherine Goertz, Danielle Morgan, Victoria Murawski, and Jentery Sayers.