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Strange times are upon us, when any text or image can be suspiciously perfect and fit the desired measure at the right place and time, thanks to the synthetic “intelligence” of tools like ChatGTP and similar. Ultra-fast statistical parasites, of unbeatable efficiency, overfed with all the cultural content of the past and present that we have been digitizing. From Wikipedia, from online collections and archives, from every forum and every online newspaper and every blog. This is well explained by David M. Berry and James Stockman in their (open access) article “Schumacher in the age of generative AI: Towards a new critique of technology“, where they propose the concept of new “pathologies of knowledge” derived from the use and abuse of AI. There they cite what artist Annie Dorsen argues: how these tools “represent the total corporate capture of the imagination, the most intimate and unpredictable part of the human mind”.
For Dorsen, generative AI does not pose so much a danger or threat to artists, who can continue with the freedom of combinatory techniques (and soon lose interest in something that makes creative decisions on its own), but rather to the rest of society, when we routinely resort to these new services (in increasingly water-thirsty datacenters) to create, produce and imagine stuff. And then the predictable, the uniform, the banal is normally (re)generated. And this is something that is happening (already, right now) at a scale and speed that makes one fear, as Andrew Perfors reflects on creative processes, for the collapse of meaning, the artificiality of learning, the prelude to authoritarianism.
From the constellation of cultural activisms and bibliophile wills of the pliegOS.net project (part of the femProcomuns cooperative family), we have been subscribing, collaborating and promoting the romantic idea for years that paper is not only patient but that printed sheets (booklets in this case, chapbooks, zines, etc.) are and will be the best support to make writing and reading something again authentic, and fun, in this liminal era of digital madness.
Because it is empirically proven that reading on paper is more immersive and enriching than on a screen, as well as the unique tactile qualities of writing by hand or with a typewriter, in an ancient and fertile synchronous connection with our mind. So following our desire to publish and experiment, and to develop useful open source tools for that purpose, three of us embarked a few days ago on a zine-printer van “chapbook” style to participate in the 2024 re:publica festival in Berlin, a conference that since 2007 has addressed key topics in politics, media and digital society.
Our proposal for participatory co-creation (“Chapbooks against the Machine >> On spot co-created zines”) is inspired by previous experiences where we adapted “do-it-yourself” editorial production to public spaces and fair formats, attracting people who pass by and are curious about “retro”, analog and tangible things. What can be touched with hands, what can be written and printed on the spot. To this end, we set up two Olivetti typewriters on a table, encouraging automatic writing, and on another table everything needed to create collages and illustrations with different techniques. On a third table, as paper lures, copies of our collection of old Patufet magazines, along with samples of the diverse literary sheets we carry (and whose digital copies we lovingly treasure): illustrated children’s stories, practical manuals, blogposts on paper, field diaries, postcard-booklets, and a long assortment of our zine experiments to date, between the current and the classic.
The main objective (achieved!) was that each of the three days of re:publica we could collect contributions from people who approached our peculiar “stand.” Deciding the theme on the fly at the beginning of each day, on the first day we produced with more people a zine-sheet following this year’s theme (“I care about…” / “I don’t care about…”); on the second day we collected reactions to the possibilities and threats of AI in music production (which due to the volume of contributions involved publishing a double-pliego issue); and finally, on the third and last day, about the conflict (or rather the war) in Palestine, with massacres like those in Rafah (a topic somehow diluted, uncomfortable in the festival atmosphere).
Thus seeking (mostly) anonymous voices, a (contagious) desire to share and write to see how it goes (not so bad), we achieved not only three editorial “sprints” to assemble and distribute the corresponding zines on the spot, but our (second) objective of activating more conversations and contacts interested in the possibilities of our mobile reading-writing laboratory (whose travelogue also has its own sheet, of course, in Catalan). People who passed by, became interested, participated, and the next day brought more people, in a word-of-mouth about some hyperactive types (we gave it all!) in a printer-van to write and publish on the spot from a remote corner of the conference.
But perhaps what we would highlight most from this new experimental iteration of the pliegOS project, surrounded as we were by a multitude of gurus, talks and “hype” projects (about the latest digital technology, the possibilities of AI for this and that, new tools and apps, etc.; although there were also many critical perspectives and other corners for open source artivism, solidarity economy cultures, social volunteering), was to witness firsthand the renewed attraction of, by and towards the analog. The imperfect, the authentic. The fascination and complicity towards what can be written and read “locally,” as if it were a game of obfuscation to pass under the extractive radars regurgitating everything on remote servers.
However, we were ambitious and left a couple of experiments to edit automatic audio transcription (from a computer not connected to the network) and several improvements and advances in the ghostly-script code that beats unfinished under the Pliego-Maker (here is a summary of its current development state, in Catalan). We also have more experiments pending with a format to send fresh sheets by postal mail (that communication infrastructure as paused as it is underutilized). Luckily, for that and something more, shortly we will have another opportunity with a new printer-station by the end of July, during the EASA congress in Barcelona (Doing and Undoing with Anthropology). Oh, and a few days before, contributing to learning with more ziners and experimenter people in the adventure The city of shades: Ethnography of urban habitability in times of climate mutation.