provotypical tools for thought

I’m inclined to learn only where it is something I can apply. In undertaking my Masters thesis project I was already somewhat familiar with decentralised web technologies as well as embedded in the socio-technological hellscape of Web 2.0. For personal-political reasons I opted to study where precisely I could apply particular ecosystems of technology to my own struggles, and my whim leads me repeatedly to information practises, the study of knowledge, and the internet. I witnessed both in artistic circles, academic circles, activist circles, and my daily brain fog, the need for better personal information tools (or tools for thought) built not for capitalist notions of productivity but along the lines of personal journals and commonplace books.

To this end, I’ve had a long-term practise I long-considered repeated failure, but that I now view more generously. In line with (the queer art of failure), in acceptance of my alternatively subversive capacity (understanding autism through the neurodiversity paradigm), and with new language to express my intentions, I consider much of the private work I’ve been doing as the construction of ‘provotypes’ (2017). In adjacency to prototypes, Smolicki (2017) defines their provotypes as cultural probes “provoking reflection on alternate modes of personal archives, and post-digital memory practices.” (Smolicki, 2017)

My prior practise (often lost, overwritten or deleted in lost train of thought and frustration) was a repeated and recursive search for a combination of simple technologies that could provide a brain-like service I couldn’t find elsewhere but couldn’t quite articulate. Developing a range of half-finished software prototypes whose entire premise was abandoned before their completion is finally actually in service of something - the experiential knowledge left an external mnemonic trace, as in Smolicki’s (2017) discussion of mnemotechniques. As code can self-exemplify and self-document, half-developed and not-quite-working software can act not as an embarrassment but as a trail of thoughts and processes. Moving forward, I’m more inclined to resurrect and archive portions of my work that is reusable and remixable or to archive pieces as artefacts that can themselves cue memories of intent, study, and lapsed skill.