Utopia Swim Club

As human experience is increasingly digitally mediated, encounters with texts, media, space, form, and even reality itself are now produced by algorithms: step-by-step procedures, authored by a select few and then executed by computers. For the user, the reader, the citizen, and the audience, sense is computed–hidden calculations determine what rises to awareness. As a scholarly response, we call into being a new multidisciplinary group, the Utopia Swim Club. We will develop new forms of collaboration, combining traditional humanistic scholarship with other creative practices.

This project asks: What can be done to reveal algorithms at work and unearth elements of their operation that are otherwise inaccessible? The computer algorithm will be our topic and our tool: In Lucy Suchman’s phrasing, algorithms can be "both a method through which things are made and a resource for their analysis and un/remaking." We will write new algorithms to reveal what is hidden within existing ones, a matryoshka of the digital. Our group will take the organizational form of an art collective to join together art, design, music, architecture, cultural studies, computer programming, the digital humanities, and humanistic scholarly critique. We will combine the talents of undergraduates, graduate students, and both junior and senior faculty. Our collective will produce a series of pieces in different forms and modes, including material objects, essays, and computer programs. Our outputs will mix traditional and other forms: publication, exhibition, workshops, and creative practice. These will be documented via the Web, conversations with audiences and peers, and a new podcasting effort.


USC:

Christian Sandvig, School of Information

Sophia Brueckner, Penny W. Stamps School of Art & Design

William A. Calvo-Quirós, LSA American Culture and Latina/o Studies

Catie Newell, Taubman College of Architecture and Urban Planning

Tsz Lam (Natalie) Ngai, LSA, Communication and Media

The above video is a a draft version. It will be updated soon.
Vidoegrapher: Peter Leix
Sample library for sound design: Nicholas Warren