Monorepo for Aesthetic.Computer
aesthetics
Aesthetics is relevant to many aspects of computing. Here, we are mostly concerned of the superficial visual appearances and their technological bases.
Feeling of Computing
Feeling of Computing is an online community with a welcoming, cooperative, and revolutionary spirit. We are unified in the belief that the computer is tragically less humane than it could be. There’s a world of possibilities that get more beautiful the further away from the norm you go. We’re here to explore this world together, to discuss ideas about theory and practice, and to champion and support our members’ research and development efforts to reimagine the computer.
aesthetic-computer/at at main · whistlegraph/aesthetic-computer
Contribute to whistlegraph/aesthetic-computer development by creating an account on GitHub.
Creative Computing Group by @tgoerke.bsky.social — Grain
Let's start a group at CODIP to explore creative computing. Let's not start by defining creativity nor computing. It would be a trap. Let's collect artifacts instead. Images, text, thoughts,...
Feeling of Computing — Conversations
Permacomputing Aesthetics: Potential and Limits of Constraints in Computational Art, Design and Culture · Ninth Computing within Limits 2023
Permacomputing is a nascent concept and a community of practice centred around design principles that embrace limits and constraints as a positive thing in computational culture, and on creativity with scarce computational resources. As a result, permacomputing aims to provide a countervoice to digital practices that promote maximisation, hyper-consumption and waste. It seeks to encourage practices as an applied critique of contemporary computer technology that privileges maximalist aesthetics where more pixels, more frame rate, more computation and more power equals more potential at any cost and without any consequences. We believe that such a critical practice can be relevant to artists, designers and cultural practitioners working with computer and network technology who are interested in engaging with environmental issues. This is particularly relevant given the tendency in art, design and cultural production to rely on tools and techniques designed to maximise productivity and mass consumption. In this paper, we argue for the potential of permacomputing as a rich framework for exploring creative design constraints building on a long history of applying constraints in art, design and cultural practices. Because of the need to reconfigure the modes of production and organisation within computational practices, this calls for a different understanding of aesthetics, one that goes beyond the formal evaluation of how things look, but addresses how aesthetics can also be systems of relations, sensing and making sense that are already present in the process of making. We will also discuss the challenges faced by permacomputing practitioners, such as the complicated link with retro-computing, post-digital culture and nostalgia, as well as the problem of constraints in relation to the aesthetisation of poverty, and more generally what it means to work with self-imposed limits in a more privileged socioeconomic context.
Intertwingler
The central premise of Intertwingler is that the computer is underutilized as an expressive medium. That may seem wild at first to say, but if you look around, you can find copious examples of the computer as a tool for preparing media, or as a vehicle for transporting or rendering media, but the actual content of the media in question would work just as well as if it had been made a hundred years ago:
Retrocomputing as a Model for Sustainable and Cognitive Computing: Lessons from Low-Resource Systems
This paper argues that retrocomputing constitutes a conceptually productive model for rethinking sustainability in contemporary computing. Early computing systems operated under strict hardware constraints, necessitating efficiency, clarity, and minimalism in both software and interaction design. In contrast, contemporary systems are frequently characterised by computational excess, software bloat, and attention-fragmenting interfaces. Drawing on examples from early home computing and command-line environments, this paper analyses how low-resource systems make visible forms of computational minimalism with relevance to present-day design challenges. A central theoretical contribution is the distinction between interface-level and system-structure-level design analysis, which demonstrates that cognitive effects arise not only from visual and interactional surface features but from deeper computational organisation. The discussion integrates perspectives from human-computer interaction and cognitive science, particularly in relation to attention, cognitive load, and user experience. The paper adopts a conceptual and exploratory approach grounded in systematic literature review, aiming to identify design-relevant patterns rather than to provide empirical validation. It introduces the concepts of computational minimalism and cognitive sustainability as complementary analytical frameworks, and derives five principles for sustainable system design. Crucially, the paper also address
feeling of computing, london
💞 welcome to the london branch of the feeling of computing community. 💞
at · Aesthetic Computer
A self-hosted ATProto Personal Data Server for the Aesthetic Computer community — paintings, moods, code, tapes, papers, and more.
Alexander Obenauer
Exploring new and renewed ideas for how personal computing and the interfaces we think with can better serve people’s lives – expanding opportunity, agency, curiosity, and creativity.
A Common Sense Guide to Selection Of A Computer System
A vast amount of computer equipment is being dumped on the Australian landscape. The glossy advertisements illustrate microcomputers everywhere. Hurtling through space. Nestled on the moon's surface. Artfully sharp in a 21st century space home. Peering out from foliage in a contrived jungle setting. Just occasionally they are even depicted in a practical business environment. How does a business person with little appreciation of this new technology go about rationally deciding what is for the best?Is a computer necessary?How should it be evaluated? Is one ‘system’ as good as another? What are the pitfalls? How is a Selection criteria established? The task of selecting an appropriate computer system from the plethora of possibilities is not easy, but it need not be prohibitive. What is needed is common sense information. UnderstandableandobjectiveanswerstothemanyquestionsyounodoubthaveareprovidedinthisCommon Sense Guide to the Selection of aComputer System!
