video: vimeo.com/267273841
live page: mitchelloliver.com/drift
zipped code: DRIFT9.html
sound generators and effects are based off of examples in the Tone.JS API
draggable thingies are based off of examples in the Interact.JS documentation
Transit JS is also used very basically
also uses JSON IP
I’d like to create a site for networked sound production using tone.js, with the idea that a user could manipulate various inputs (numeric values and buttons would be easy, but I’d like to learn how to integrate sliders and other graphic controls?) which would run through firebase to produce output(sound) for all users. I’m a little cautious with this idea as I’d figured that tons of versions of this already existed but I haven’t been able to find anything yet, and definitely not in a more critical/art context?
That’s my other concern, that it doesn’t have enough of an obvious critical component and can easily be viewed as pretty straightforward entertainment. But as I’ve mentioned in other contexts, I’m tired of [making] work that is so inaccessible (intellectually, spatially, however) as to essentially reinforce status quo by preaching to the same small choir or by being unusable in everyday life. I’m not using this an excuse to go lightweight on theory though, only to explain that there might be a kind of seductive facade.
I see the theory in this being related to the homogenization of music in general through web-based platforms like spotify, where we have the illusion of ‘curating’ our own tastes but really we are selecting off of an increasingly limited top-down menu. On top of the corporate stuff, I’m finding (as someone no longer in niche music scenes) it increasingly rare/difficult to encounter sounds that sound different, on a purely formal level, from everything i hear all the time. Maybe this is a cliche old-guy-vinyl argument, maybe not?
Various points of reference for different reasons:
https://tonejs.github.io/ (three examples below)
http://nexusosc.com/gameofreich/
https://celanajaya.github.io/vGamelan/
https://tothepoweroftom.github.io/xysynth/
https://mynoise.net/NoiseMachines/isochronicBrainwaveGenerator.php
http://weatherwarlock.com/ (from quintron & miss pussycat)
So Kathleen and I have been talking bout things, and it’s hard not to come to the conclusion that the best solution for social media would be to delete all of it. Personally, I’ve sort of had distinct phases of interaction with social media — in high school and undergrad (the early days of FB), facebook was still mostly the students-only, friends-as-people-you-know world, where it was really useful for getting the word out on events and sharing photos, etc. and hadn’t been bombarded with advertising or excessive algorithms or otherwise monetized devices (at least that’s my recollection). After school, social media became part of my job description (literally, at Elsewhere), and I was almost on the other side of things, trying to capitalize on the value of those relationships, obsessing over metrics, etc. Now I barely participate and recognize that omitting myself doesn’t solve any problems, just because “deactivation is the opposite of activism” doesn’t necessarily mean that staying active is activism, either. Activism is activism. So,
1 – somehow tax social media, like cigarettes. fund critical print/web operations
2 – yes definitely bring back some trust-busting, all around
3 – no more algorithmic timelines, go chronological.
4 – removing ads would be nice
5 – locals-only networks (in addition to the current global ones) so that IRL communities can get better? i don’t know
6 – reimburse users for data breaches
I came across a 2-for-1 in my usual pursuits of personal-screen-space offenses and bizarre personal-performance-capitalism. This PC mag article (a lame one) had one of those subscription pop-ups, but unlike the usual ones there was no way to exit out of it at first. My initial response was to refresh the page because I didn’t want to deal with it, and then I realized that I should document it for this. So I scrolled around until it came back (noticing part 2 of this), and I’m not sure if my empty-space email entering prompted the X in the top-right corner, or if there was some kind of automatic time-out. Anyways, sites seem to be getting bolder and/or more desperate with the hijacking of user space-time. The second thing happening here (illustrated by the gif at the bottom) is the redundant progress bar (do some people not have a scroll bar indicator? maybe it’s different on mobile?) across the top of the screen, running horizontally. It’s bold and red and maybe theoretically gives the same satisfaction of a loading bar going to completion, I imagine a certain type of person would really want to scroll/read until they made it all the way.
https://mitchelloliver.com/mashup1
https://mitchelloliver.com/mashup2
https://mitchelloliver.com/mashup3
https://mitchelloliver.com/mashup4
I had some inherent difficulty trying to get a full video-based webpage translated into an instagram post, and I think that’s why I got very little social media engagement. I imagine it could have worked better on Facebook (especially if not the mobile version), but I’m off the FB these days.
A lot of websites blocked the iframe so I had to choose some less-good alternatives (went from the Whitney Museum // Trump to Crystal Bridges // Walmart).
So this first thing is about some kind of life-structuring app that was advertised at me, and I realized that I’m getting more and more sensitive and resistant to attempts at regulating or structuring my time on a minute level. There’s this book “The End of Sleep” by Jonathan Crary that looks at all the ways capitalism is trying to utilize sleep as the last un-tapped human resource, which as someone who loves sleeping, really scared me like 5 years ago. While I agree with the sentiment that we should find ways to suck ourselves out of the rabbit-holes we find ourselves in on the internet, I don’t think intense monitoring/regulation of my daily activity is the right answer. Also “Win The Day” and “GET MORE DONE,” these days all I want to do is lose a day and get nothing done.
ANOTHER ONE!
This may be a bit of a stretch, but my friend curates this telephone pole and I really enjoyed this no-fi reinterpretation of how we find information and become aware of things, along with how we use the web to contextualize ourselves within a specific, local space.
At first I couldn’t get the video embedded in the iframe to play, and I had about 30-60 of these errors, which appears to be a bug in the current version of Chrome about secure connections and content loaded after the initial document loads.
But then I added more stuff to my iframe and I think a key thing was a different way to autoplay (by adding it to the URL). So it still hits the error dozens of times, but now each error/restart starts the audio playing and creates a total cacophony steve reich-style. I chose the counting crows cover version over the original joni mitchell version because it feels like that one is more of a cliche.
The error code:
Zbp6mgIXa64:1 Error parsing header X-XSS-Protection: 1; mode=block; report=https://www.google.com/appserve/security-bugs/log/youtube: insecure reporting URL for secure page at character position 22. The default protections will be applied.
#5 link to webstore
#4 link to webstore
I had a pretty thin smattering of likes for my post on instagram (i did not post at an optimum time) but kathleen still used it (thanks kathleen!).
I’ve been trying to pay more attention to the phrasing and wording of things in addition to the design of things. As visual (or like extra-visual? as in fingerprint logins or facial recognition) elements continue to replace textual ones, I’m interested in the rarity of them and therefore (supposedly, if we believe in scarcity) their increased significance. So when my phone tells me that I “have a new memory,” I realize that there’s a lot going on. I can accept “memories” as another corporately co-opted intimate symbol (“friends” “connections” etc.), but I also think about the sci-fi future of how actual human memory will exist down the line. Lots of folks have already extrapolated this to utopic or dystopic (Total Recall comes to mind), but we’re also already there. When I try to recall a moment to share with someone, sometimes I start by scrolling back through my phone’s photos to try and get to that period of my life.
My idea was to remove the capability to enter information or perform any kind of input so that you had to sit with whatever you typed, unable to “use” it. The biggest pitfall with this code is that i have no idea how to disable the whole ‘press enter’ function of search bars, etc. So that might mean it works a little better for things like email, where in email you have to use command-enter and that may be a little less accessible.
// global applications
ready('button[type="submit"]', rhetorical);
ready('button[type="Submit"]', rhetorical);
ready('input[type="submit"]', rhetorical);
ready('input[type="Submit"]', rhetorical);
ready('#send', rhetorical);
ready('#submit', rhetorical);
ready('.send', rhetorical);
ready('.submit', rhetorical);
// amazon and gmail?
ready('.gbqfi', rhetorical);
ready('#add-to-cart-button', rhetorical);
ready('.global_search-submit_button', rhetorical);
ready('.global_search-search_icon', rhetorical);
ready('.nav-search-submit', rhetorical);
// doodle poll
ready('.d-participateButton', rhetorical);
ready('#d-subscribeToPoll', rhetorical);
// these did things that are now redundant i think
//ready('div center input', rhetorical);
//ready('#hptl', rhetorical);
//ready('div a.gb_b', rhetorical);
//ready('div a.gb_ab', rhetorical);
//ready('#gbqfbb', rhetorical);
//ready('input[value="Google Search"]', rhetorical);
//ready('input[value="I\'m Feeling Lucky"]', rhetorical);
//ready('input[name="btnK"]', rhetorical);
//ready('.gU', rhetorical);
//ready('div a.gb_P', rhetorical);
// global 'contains' THESE WILL OVERRIDE IF FALSE AND FIRST
ready('div[role="button"]', rhetoricaltext);
ready('div center input', rhetoricaltext);
function rhetoricaltext(e) {
// get the text of this <p>
var text = j(e).text();
// test to see if this <p>'s text has what we're looking for
if(text.contains('Send') || text.contains('send') || text.contains('Submit') || text.contains('submit')){
j(e).fadeOut(4400);
}
}
function rhetorical(e) {
j(e).fadeOut(2200);
}
function highlight(e) {
j(e).css('background-color','red');
}
unintended consequences:
After i deleted snapchat, i was of course having conversations with people and they say “didn’t you see my snap?” and i had to explain that i deleted it and we agreed that the update sucked but nevertheless i had to re-download the app to see what my friend had sent so that i could understand the context for the conversation. I was hoping that I’d be able to be a passive consumer of snapchat — receiving messages but not granting any access to the app at all — and found that this wasn’t possible. Once I was logged in again, I couldn’t move past the “oops” message (insinuating i made a mistake when i didn’t) without changing my settings (i tried turning on and off), and then I was constantly receiving other pushes. Also, it seems Snapchat is losing rank already. I like the allcaps IGNORE though.
0 rhetorical google – no buttons to submit anything, go anywhere
1 no hyperlinks (ideally just broken not deleted text)
2 gmail with no send button
3 sponsored content only (deleting everything else, on facebook, google, whatever)
4 hide everything but certain words, phrases, is that possible
5 gmail with no subject or preview text
6 erase all instances of fascists
7 youtube no album art, etc.
// ==UserScript==
// @name Second Userscript
// @namespace mitchell
// @version 0.1
// @description try to take over the world!
// @author You
// @match https://www.google.com/*
// @grant none
// @require http://code.jquery.com/jquery-latest.js
// ==/UserScript==
(function() {
'use strict';
//alert('text text text');
var j = jQuery.noConflict();
j('a').css('background-color','lightpink').css('font-size','25px').fadeOut(5000);
j('.gsfi').fadeOut(3000);
j('#gbqfbb').val('please kill me').css('font-size','40px').css('height','55px');
j('[name=btnK]').val('deke weaver').css('font-size','40px').css('height','55px');
j('a:contains("Gmail")').text('live fast eat ass');
j('canvas').css('opacity','0');
j('.st:first').fadeOut(1000);
j('.st:nth(2)').fadeOut(2000);
j('.st:nth(3)').fadeOut(3000);
})();
i’m finding myself continuing to obsess over this idea of screen space and the interruptions that i endure as a user of things, this time with snapchat. i can’t say whether or not the app was actually capable of being aware that i was looking at my phone for the first time that day (my alarm had just gone off, i grabbed by phone and turned it off, saw the notification and took a screenshot). i was sleepy and not completely coherent so i’m having a hard time remembering how/why the interface looked the way it does, with the app zoomed out and the notification at the bottom? it’s like when you double-tap home to quit apps, but i haven’t been able to recreate or repeat the scenario exactly. i don’t really use snapchat that much these days, and now that they’ve changed the main screen to include stories it feels worse — too needy? desperate? inconsequential?. update: deleted snapchat from my phone
j('img').attr('src','https://i.ytimg.com/vi/HUB2oNbwaEU/maxresdefault.jpg')
j('a').prepend('Apparently, ')
j(".headline").append(', says "What could go wrong?"')
j('a:contains("Fox News")').append(' runs on fear')
j('span:contains("Hot Topics")').prepend('Trump wears ')
j('span:contains("Hot Topics")').append(' new clothing line')
I kind of cheated on this one, but I was trying to find a way to change the button text and I couldn’t seem to do it with prepend
j('[name="btnK"]').val("Don't Google Search, It Hurts Me")
j('#gbqfbb').val("Google Roulette: I'm Feeling Lucky")
j('.sfibbbc').prepend(' please kill me ').css('font-size','26px').css('font-family','comic sans ms')
j('._58mv').append(' We reserve the right to change these terms at any time without notification and we will make opting out very very difficult.')
j('._58mt').append(" is a social construct ")
j('h3:contains("Arts")').css('background-color','lightBlue')
j('a:contains("edit"),.mw-headline').css('border','1px solid green')
j('.a-text-bold p').css('background-color','red')
i wrote one line to replace the background image of an ad with the cutest cat this side of the vermillion and reformat the size and such, and another to get rid of all the text (set opacity to zero.. don’t know if there’s a better way through jquery)
i changed the opacity of the google ad at the top to zero, made trump paragraphs pink, and made a lame weed joke
i maybe obsess over my screen space? not sure how else to explain the quiet rage that i feel when i do this every day. i guess it’s more of an invasion and interruption of privacy, space, thought, etc, and that’s what really gets me. so a parallel between screen space and personal space.
