Computers and Computing Cultures

The enclaves of post-industrial capitalism are surrounded by audiovisual panoramas that have emerged from European and American avant garde experiments in composition and multimedia experience. 1960s experiments in democratic media choice, exemplified by the work of John Cage, were transformed within the hyper consumerism of the 1980s, and are now consolidated as commerce within a contemporary algorithmic culture. This essay plots the emergence and commercialisation of interactive music and multimedia - from the 1960s American avant garde, to the globalisation of popular entertainment.
    Visions of a panoptic media culture can appear as oppressive and dystopian, but all-encompassing media events designed by composers and artists during the 1960s were initially intended as participatory, democratic forms of art, in opposition to perceived fascist modes of top down communication. The practice of creating visual panoramas is not new, but American artists and composers associated with the counterculture used emerging technologies to create more fully panoptic and panaural multimedia experiences. John Cage and Lejaren Hiller’s 1969 event HPSCHD was designed to surround audience members with media choice, in order to encourage a sense of democratic participation. Media historian Fred Turner coined the term ‘democratic surround’ to describe these new experiences - performative, multi-image, multi-sound source environments, designed to model and produce a more democratic society. The commercial potential of an all encompassing, immersive media experience was quickly realised, and the primacy of reproducing experiences of democratic choice was replaced with a more total but constrained field of consumer choice. Contemporary mass media is directly connected to the democratic surrounds, but is also an expression of something different - a ‘commercial surround.’ We are surrounded by sound and vision but not in the way that John Cage or La Monte Young envisioned.
    Our current field of panoptic and panaural choice has developed from the collision of avant garde compositional practice with technologies of visualisation and audio production that became more accessible during the postwar period. More than any other medium, video games most fully reproduce the encompassing ideal of the postwar American avant-garde, transfused with the relentless commercialism of the 1980s. Game sound and music is dynamic, it adapts in response to the actions of the player, creating uniquely individualised soundtracks never to be repeated again. Video games surround the player with choice too, but the impetus to design these enveloping audiovisual environments does not come from the confrontation with fascism - it comes from an overarching media and consumer culture. Avant garde experiments in participatory art, and interactive music in games share a genesis in the politics of media participation that developed after World War II, but also in the logic of consumerism and computerisation. The modularity and automation of new media that presents a panorama of uniquely individuated audience experiences is not new, but the meaning of media interaction has been radically transformed within a hyper consumerism that developed towards the end of the millennium.
    By drawing these ideas together and placing them at an intersection between media modes and practices it is possible to understand interactive game music as a vector for ideological expression, where the concepts of ‘choice' and ‘participation’ are reimagined as components of contemporary multimedia consumer culture.

Information and Scholarship (IRIS). Brown's innovative computer environment is now widely recognized. At IRIS we are developing many new tools for teaching and learning. Because Brown is a liberal arts institution the tools that we are trying to develop are not confined to engineering or comput€r science but extend throughout the entire spectrum of the University curriculum. Some of the most enthusiastic users at Brown, actually some of the best academic computer specialists, are in humanities departments, such as Classics and English. Brown's IRIS has as part of its charge finding new ways to enhance research and learning through computer technology and information systems. We feel that intense computerization vrill have far-reaching social and educational consequences, and will eventually result in fundamental changes in the patterns of work in the institution. It will change social relationships at Brown, and will also alter basic definitions of teaching and learning there. Given these feeiings, the Office of Program Analysis was established as a self reflective component of our IRIS. Our charge is to conduct studies of the social, educational, and economic effects of the increased use of computers on campus. Research in the Office of Program Analysis is first concerned with analysis of the basic activity structures in higher education. Research focus centers on two areas: 1) institutions in the higher education environment and 2) work and social activity within the academic community. Secondly, OPA research is directed toward looking at change in these institutions and processes as they are affected by technologl,. We are discovering an interesting, unintended consequence of the study of change. We find that we are not only studying institutions and technological impact on those institutions. We are also studying epistemology-the very structure of knowledge itself. In a way it is not surprising that epistemology becomes the real basis for our studies, because if we are really serious about trying to develop new technologies for education we're also talking about changing the structure of knowledge. Thus we have to examine the original structure of knowledge before we can talk about changing it in any way. Our methodology combines quantitative methods rn'ith intensive ethnography. I'm an anthropologist by training, and our research designs include, alongside traditional surveys, participant observation, intensive interviews, and a great deai of self recording of time use and activities in "diaries" so that we're able to determine exactiy what it is that people are doing on a day-today , sometimes on an hourly basis. Many of our research designs are before-and-after studies. We're trying to record activity patterns before they change and then document them following technological intervention. In the case of educational soft'ivare, for instance, we try to look at a classroom situation

One goal of American and Northern European higher education is to promote acquisition of a pluralistic cognitive style, which has as an important property- non-lineality. This paper investigates the effects of using of an advanced hypertext/hypermedia system, Intermedia, to develop
instructional materials for two university courses in English and Biology intended to promote acquisition of non-lineal thinking. Use of Intermedia is shown to produce significant learning
effects, which are somewhat more pronounced for persons involved in developing materials than for students using the system.

This paper, written in 1987, is a pioneering study of the first hypertext application used in higher education. It is a precursor to the linked documents that are seen in Wikipedia and in every Internet application today.

Hacking Europe traces the user practices of chopping games in Warsaw, hacking software in Athens, creating chaos in Hamburg, producing demos in Turku, and partying with computing in Zagreb and Amsterdam. Focusing on several European countries at the end of the Cold War, the book shows the digital development was not an exclusively American affair. Local hacker communities appropriated the computer and forged new cultures around it like the hackers in Yugoslavia, Poland and Finland, who showed off their tricks and creating distinct “demoscenes.” Together the essays reflect a diverse palette of cultural practices by which European users domesticated computer technologies. Each chapter explores the mediating actors instrumental in introducing and spreading the cultures of computing around Europe. More generally, the “ludological” element--the role of mischief, humor, and play--discussed here as crucial for analysis of hacker culture, opens new vistas for the study of the history of technology.

Information & Culture (2015) “An excellent introduction by the editors frames the issues, periodic illustrations enliven the text, and the extensive bibliography is a treasure trove for further research, the book significantly extends our understanding of countercultural influences on computing. It is a necessary complement to earlier U.S.-centric treatments by John Markoff and Fred Turner.”

European History Quarterly, 46  no 1, 2016: “The wealth, diversity and international character of the contributions makes the volume an extraordinary insightful and entertaining read… Given the popularity of approaches towards social (co-)construction of technology, one can hope that the assembled contributions will spur a stronger interest in the history of home computers, their social meanings, and the subcultures that arose around them. In this domain, this volume will always remain a milestone.”