Mark C. Marino
Welcome to the proceedings of the first in-person conference on Critical Code Studies. "In-person" refers to "in the flesh" here because the online Critical Code Studies Working group (CCSWG) was, in a sense, both the first conference and the proving grounds for the gathering at USC -- though only a small portion of the CCSWG were able to attend and present. In these proceedings you will find some of the first public theorizations of Critcal Code Studies, though the work represents the independent research of the scholars. Together with the CCSWG discussion threads published in electronic book review, these proceedings offer a sense of the energy, enthusiasm, and eclectic mix of those gathering to work in this emerging interdisciplinary area.
The conference brought together programmers who had built extensive systems, collaborators working on the analysis of a single line of code, as well as many close readings of code and new theorizations. Over the course of just one day, provocations were issued and conversations grew heated. Brett Stalbaum even took the opportunity to release the code for Transborder Immigrant Tool publicly. Though a number of presenters had done some programming, we had two guests from computer science who helped us work on the interdisciplinary bridges so necessary to the future of CCS. We also had a stirring provocation in our keynote from Wendy Chun, who spoke to the reason that CCS is emerging now.
We are happy to be publishing these proceedings as the HASTAC Scholars discussion of Critical Code Studies are generating even more conversation and development. The conversation will continue there, here, on the Critical Code Studies blog, and if MLA 2011 or any of the last few years of SLSA are any indication, in conferences and in online forums across the country and around the globe.
Why Thoughtmesh?
CCS has found a very sympatico publishing environment in Thoughtmesh under the banner of USC's ground-breaking multimedia journal Vectors. Here you will find a unique publishing environment being developed by Jon Ippolito, John Bell, Chirag Mehta, and Craig Dietrich, who was an active member in both the conference and CCSWG.
Thoughtmesh represents a paradigm shift in publication. Rather than presenting the proceedings to you one-by-one as disconnected essays, Thoughtmesh recreates the vital interconnectivity and dialogue of the conference itself. By breaking the articles into particular blocks of ideas and then linking like-portions together, Thoughtmesh allows the readers to either explore a given talk or read across a connection, for example, by reading all the articles that discuss Latour or Java. The articles have also been "meshed" with the growing collections within the broader Thoughtmesh collection. One of the main themes of our recent conversations at HASTAC has been the necessity to read code always in its context. Thoughtmesh is a publishing environment that foreground connections in an academic discourse network.
Thoughtmesh also allows readers to join the discussion through the "peer review" tab. Any visitor who registers for an account can comment on any of the presentations and begin a dialogue with other visitors. In this way, the conference continues to evolve well beyond that one moment in time and space.
In addition to the text of the talks, thanks to the Institute of Multimedia Literacy at USC, one of our sponsors, we also have videos of all of the talks and panels, incuding the keynote. Since those are uploaded to Vimeo, visitors are free to share and re-post them. Those are also useful for the pieces whose text has been published elsewhere, such as Tara McPherson's and John Williams' essays.
All of these elements give visitors not just an opportunity to catch up on what they missed at the conference but also a chance to join in the ongoing continuation of these ideas. Vectors and Thoughtmesh are making this possible.
I would like to conclude by thanking Craig and especially Max Feinstein, who has put in so many hours to bring the Working Group, the conference, the HASTAC forum, and these proceedings to life.
Now, proceed!
