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Fall 2013 Syllabus
- Kyle McDonald and Lauren McCarthy
- NYU ITP Fall 2013
- Mondays 2:30-5:30, ITP rm 447
- Office hours Fridays 3:30-6:30, ITP adjunct lounge
- github repo - Readme contains course information, repo also serves as a collection of scripts and tools for social hacking.
- google drive - Reading assignments and other docs.
- mailing list - For course announcements and longer form discussions, feedback, questions.
- #socialhacking - For submitting homework links, sharing shorter thoughts with public.
- #socialhacking aggregator
This course explores the structures and systems of social interactions, identity, and self representation as mediated by technology. We will investigate ways that technology can be used to augment, subvert, alter, mediate, and ultimately deepen interaction in a lasting way.
How do the things we build and use limit and expand the way we understand and relate to each other? We'll explore this question by building new tools and creating new situations for breaking us out of existing patterns, and discussing contextual examples from media art, performance art, psychology and pop culture. Technologies explored will include computer vision (face/body/eye tracking with openFrameworks), data representation and glitch, browser extensions and plugins (in Chrome), computer security, mobile platforms, and social automation and APIs (Facebook, Twitter, Mechanical Turk).
Students will develop projects that alter or disrupt social space in an attempt to reveal existing patterns or truths about our experiences and technologies, and possibilities for richer interactions. Different tactics for intervention and performance will be explored, first through a set of short prompts or experiments, and then through a larger, more thorough intervention.
A conviction that creative people can derail society for the best, a deep love for code, and a willingness to explore uncomfortable situations. You should at least have taken Introduction to Computational Media or have similar experience with programming.
This four-point course will meet in the first twelve weeks of the semester.
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Class overview
- Policy regarding auditing: if you come you should be engaged, but we can’t create a situation where we are giving you time instead of students who are registered.
- Policy regarding attendance: you can miss one class, anything else you fail.
- Policy regarding work: we are going to be introducing a variety of techniques and tools, ranging in technical difficulty. our main requirement for work is that it is of high quality -- it need not be hypertechnical, but it does need to be very well thought out and well executed.
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Attendance and contracts.
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What spaces are social? What are rules? How do we test them? What happens when we don’t follow them? How do we misinterpret each other? Failures, communication breakdowns and arguments, ambiguity?
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Breaching experiments, sociology, Garfinkel, Goffman, and Milgram
- Harold Garfinkel
- Breaching experiments
- Nathan for you STDs
- Nathan for you 2 grams
- Oversharer
- Erving Goffman - sociologist studied face-to-face interaction, related to performance
- The Presentation of Self in Everyday Life
- Interaction Ritual
- Stanley Milgram bus experiments
- Matthias Gommel, Delayed
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Glitch
- Glitch is where a system breaks down and reveals something about itself in the process.
- mojibake
- hex editing
- realtime jpg glitch
- “on compression” by Cory Arcangel
- jpg header remix
- 0xed hex editor
- hexfiend hex editor
- datamosh
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Documentation
- Recording/collecting “objective”
- Transcribing/describing “subjective/interpreted”
- Sophie Calle
- install view
- photos
- entering the Louvre
- Deconstructing
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Assignment due 9/16:
- Read NYT: excuse me, may I have your seat?.
- Read p11-16 from the glitch moment(um).
- Post one tweet inspired by each reading, tagged with #socialhacking.
- Create and document a social glitch involving technology, post it and tag it with #socialhacking.
- Review work from past week
- One more related to social glitch - Crying to Dragon
- Creatively (mis)usings APIs and automation
- Custom API
- Mechanical Turk
- Foursquare
- Dating
- SMS
- Death
- Amazon
- Other automation
- Other rules and protocols
- Tools
- General
- www.programmableweb.com - giant list of APIs and resources
- www.kimonolabs.com - easy tool for turning any website into an API
- temboo.com - simple APIs for many services in many languages
- Google scripting
- OAuth 1.0
- https://github.com/bakercp/ofxOAuth - an OF OAuth 1.0 system (via liboauth) with pin-less verification via a mini callback server Examples for Twitter, Tumblr, Vimeo, Fitbit, etc.
- Twitter - https://dev.twitter.com
- https://github.com/drewvergara/ofxTwitter - implementation of Twitter API with OF
- keytweeter source
- Processing examples with Twitter4J
- Facebook - https://developers.facebook.com/
- https://github.com/igiso/ofxFacebook - implementation of FB SDK 3.0 with OF
- Mechanical Turk
- Kitchen Table Coders workshop resouces
- https://github.com/jefftimesten/mturk - nodejs wrapper for MTurk
- https://github.com/mdp/rturk - ruby wrapper for MTurk
- https://github.com/twitter/clockworkraven - webapp for MTurk interface, created by Twitter
- http://aws.amazon.com/code/Amazon-Mechanical-Turk
- IFTTT
- https://ifttt.com/channels
- https://github.com/cido/ifttt-channel-extensions - create custom IFTTT channels
- OkCupid
- https://github.com/trek/lonely_coder - ruby scraper interface
- https://github.com/shawn-simon/OkCupid - nodejs scraper / automated message sender interface
- Computer interaction
- RobotDemo source - using the java robot to type and move the mouse
- EmojiPaster source - using the java robot to paste text
- phantom.js
- General
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Assignment due 9/30:
- Create an HPI (human programming interface) that allows others to control some aspect of your life. By next week (9/23) you should have the system built and in place and ready for a one week trial / performance / experiment.
- Creatively misuse an existing API in order to reveal something about the service.
- Read:
- Dan Moore guest lecture
- HPI presentations and feedback
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Mechanical Turk Farm and discussion
- 20 minutes to make as much money as possible
- all the bounty goes to treats for next week
- Task Rabbit
- Gigwalk
- Automation-related: AirBnb, Craigslist
- Almost human: the surreal cyborg future of telemarketing
- Review HPI and misused API work
- Break
- Discussion: extension and customization
- Extensions change your experience transparently, instead of drawing our attention to the object itself. While an API is something that exposes specific ways of interacting with a system, shielding the system from direct manipulation, an extension is generally something that is integrated directly with a system.
- Remember the Goffman reading. How do these things fit together?
- Examples
- Making an invisible layer on top of normal social space, you have to know the code or have the extension to see it.
- Making the world appear to you the way you want it to be
- Helping you to fit in
- Providing a means of expression not normally possible (body/communication extension)
- Communicate / share your experience with others
- See self through different perspective
- Connecting people in a way they might not normally be connected
- instruction pieces
- Assignment and extension demo (0:30)
- Create an extension for someone else (a specific person).
- http://developer.chrome.com/extensions/getstarted.html
- chrome extension overview: http://developer.chrome.com/extensions/overview.html
- debugging tutorial: http://developer.chrome.com/extensions/tut_debugging.html
- more extension samples: http://developer.chrome.com/extensions/samples.html
- chrome APIs to interact with browser: http://developer.chrome.com/extensions/api_index.html
- other APIs: http://developer.chrome.com/extensions/api_other.html
- chrome extension developers’ guide: http://developer.chrome.com/extensions/devguide.html
- gmail API library
- publishing your extension: https://developers.google.com/chrome/web-store/docs/publish
- Joanne McNeil guest lecture
- David Leonard guest lecture
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What does it mean to be hacked? Can you hack yourself?
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Social engineering, phishing, cross-site scripting, trolling, authenticity.
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Michael Auger guest lecture
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Intro
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Early Work
- Seedbed
- Steve Mann
- Jill Magid
- Sophie Calle
- Surveillance Camera Players
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Recent Work
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Culture
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Intro to hacking
- XSS Vulnerability example
- tcpdump
sudo tcpdump -l -e -I -i en0 'type mgt subtype probe-req'and airport for wireless monitoring - Heartbleed
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Research
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Assignment due 10/28: Do one or more of the following:
- Document (yourself or someone else)
- Share: public/private (share everything wrt one area/situation)
- Intercept
- Impersonate
- Anonymize (present something anonymously)
- Misinterpret/misrepresent (collect too much or curated information, use some of it to tell a fake story)
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Discussion due 10/28: Each pair will prepare one of the following readings ~5 min presentation, 5 min class discussion leading.
- With friends like these... - A tour through some of the art inspired by America’s obsession with enemies-within.
- Art, Activism, and CCTV, Joanne McNeil
- To Infect and Protect - Jacob Appelbaum at 30c3, and transcription
- Social dark matter
- Quantified self
- Steve Mann
- Living offline without being tracked
- What’s in a name? and http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pbxaA6B8tfc
- Bruce Schneier security vs privacy and trading security for convenience
- Bruce Schneier privacy salience and social networking sites and privacy and control
- The flawed psychology of government mass surveillance
- You don’t want your privacy: Disney and the meat space data race
Overview of projects and readings from last week.
Weeks 8-9 (11/4, 11/11): computer vision (face/body/eye tracking with openFrameworks), linguistic analysis
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Discuss midpoint feedback.
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Computer vision overview. We'll be working mainly from a public document called Computer Vision in Interactive Art which is part of a workshop. But there are a few links contained there that are also important references:
- Computer Vision for Artists and Designers by Golan Levin
- Interactive Art and Computational Design by Golan Levin
- Face Tracking Notes for Appropriating New Technologies / Face as Interface workshop
- Eye Tracking Notes for Appropriating New Technologies
- Computer Vision: Algorithms and Applications by Richard Szeliski
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Linguistic analysis
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Reading: Read all of Computer Vision for Artists and Designers by Golan Levin and tweet one thought about something in the essay. For a really great more academic introduction to computer vision that doesn't relate to art, see 3D Computer Vision: Past, Present and Future a presentation by Steve Seitz at Google.
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Assignment: First we'll assign partners. In that group we ask you to create a filter or adapter using computer vision that improves your interaction with each other. A filter is something that only allows certain things through. An adapter is something that changes things that pass through it. For example, if you only wanted to video chat with people with dark skin, a filter would reject any invitations from people with light skin. An adapter would take all the light skinned people and make them darker skinned.
###Weeks 10-12 (11/18, 11/25, 12/2): mobile platforms
- How do we find each other? How do we connect? How do we initially engage?
- How do we interact with each other in public social spaces? What are the patterns and rules and expectations?
- Thinking about... communication, conversation, location awareness, social networking.
- References
- "Classic" Social Media
- Transportation: these afford an opporunity for you as a driver to connect with riders in a way that you would not otherwise be able to.
- Location and proximity to places: can just be a reference, but can take on a new meaning when it modifies your decisions on the spot.
- Foursquare
- Yelp
- Layar
- Google Now
- Checkmark
- "Avoid ghetto" patent
- Commons for 311 reporting
- Crime Sounds
- Dating and proximity to people: some of these are just mobile versions of what otherwise exists online, others add a new dimension by providing extra information about people around you.
- Social Improvement
- Identification and understanding
- Self Tracking
- Using sensors in weird ways?
- Tools
- UI Stencils
- proto.io - mobile prototyping
- ofxiPhoneSocial
- PhoneGap
- PhoneGap emulator
- PhoneGap cloud packager
- Assignment
- We will give one-day assignments for seven days (November 18 to November 24) that involve reflecting on the way you use your phone. We will share and discuss our experiences in class on November 25.
- Day 1 - Delete all contacts you do not plan on contacting again.
- Day 2 - Put your phone in "do not disturb" mode (that is, silence all rings, buzzes, notifications, etc).
- Day 3 - Download an app you've been avoiding and overuse it all day.
- Day 4 - Use your phone in "voice-only" mode (i.e., pretend it's a dumb phone).
- Day 5 - Count how many times you check your phone.
- Day 6 - Don't use your phone.
- Day 7 - Trade your phone with someone else.
- Pick one of the following and document your work before the last class, to be shared in the last class:
- Create an app that fills a void that otherwise fills a void that you would otherwise imagine a person filling.
- Imagine the most difficult social interaction you've ever had, and create an app that would have made it easier.
- Create an app that has an effect on others that aren't using the app.
- Create an app that causes or enables people to meet for a specific purpose.
- We will give one-day assignments for seven days (November 18 to November 24) that involve reflecting on the way you use your phone. We will share and discuss our experiences in class on November 25.
- Reading
- Required: Post one tweet about The Prophet’s Prosthesis: An Interview with Krzysztof Wodiczko and if you want more context for Krzysztof's work read Designing for the City of Strangers
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Recommended:
* Rhizome: locative media revisited
- Mark Skwarek and The AR Art Manifesto
- The Street is the Stage
- Reading list from Urban Hacking / Interventions in Public Space
- Reading list from Mediated Environments
- Introduction to a Critique of Urban Geography
- Architecture, Pervasive Computing, and Environmental Knowing: Embodied Predispositions, Habitual Contexts
- Finding Flow - The Psychology of Engagement with Everyday Life: The Content of Experience
- Redefining the Basemap
- Future City
- Cityness in the Urban Age
- Urban Computing and its Discontents
- Cities in Transition
- The Practice of Everyday Life: Walking in the city, Spatial Stories
- Cyber-animism and augmented dreams
- Are you in the Biennale, or aren't you? Both, thanks to Augmented Reality
- Share phone experiences.
- Talk project ideas.
- More discussion & history
- Augusto Boal, Invisible Theater, Theater of the Oppressed
- Valie Export, tapp und tastkino (tap and touch cinema)
- Adrian Piper, Calling Card, I am not here to pick anyone up
- Tehching Hsieh
- Vito Acconci, Storefront for Art and Architecture, Seedbed
- Lynn Hershman, Robert Breitmore
- Andrea Fraser, Little Frank and His Carp
- Wafaa Bilal, Domestic Tension
- Yes Men
- Improv Everywhere
- Social Practice
- Jae Rhim Lee, Alternatives for Urination
- Man Bartlett, 24 hour tweet series
- Steve Lambert Talk with Anyone
- Graffiti Research Lab, Laser Tag, LED Throwies (compare to Voina)
- Blast Theory, Can you see me now
- Unviewed
- Las madres de la plaza de mayo
- Public Face 1
- Excerpts from public sphere_s by Steve Dietz
- Recommended readings
