Research Direction · Aesthetic Computer #
Last updated: 2026-04-06 Author: @jeffrey — ORCID 0009-0007-4460-4913
Current Goals #
- Get all 27 papers to submission quality — integrate platter corpus citations, polish arguments, tighten prose
- Submit to open deadlines: ACM C&C Demos (Apr 16), ICCC Short Papers (Apr 24)
- Build the research moat — use the 87+ readings library and 94-project software history as scholarly foundation
- Establish AC's place in computing history — repo archaeology paper traces the lineage; software history catalogs 94 predecessor projects
- Complete SoSoft readings acquisition — ~55 remaining texts from Casey Reas' Software Art References list (see TODO below)
Per-Paper Revision Plans #
0a. PLORKing the Planet (arXiv — arxiv-plork/plork.tex) #
Status: Working draft, 14 pages with figures, WORKING DRAFT watermark Current citations: ~30 (PLOrk, L2Ork, SLOrk, Attali, Turino, Illich, OLPC, e-waste, surplus pricing, Luckey/Anduril arc) Core argument: PLOrk proved laptop orchestras are musically legitimate but the model is trapped in universities at $1,500+/seat. AC Native OS + surplus hardware ($50/seat) removes the economic barrier entirely — 240M Windows 10 EOL machines = raw material for a planetary laptop orchestra. What's needed:
0b. AC Native OS '26 (arXiv — arxiv-os/os.tex) #
Status: Working draft, ~6 pages, WORKING DRAFT watermark Current citations: ~16 (OLPC, Kittler, McLuhan, Illich, Papert, Ukeles, Raspberry Pi, Sonic Pi, Ted Nelson) Core argument: Flashing surplus commodity laptops with a bare-metal creative OS offers a post-OLPC, post-Apple model of personal computing — deeper personalization at lower cost with zero infrastructure What's needed:
1. Aesthetic Computer '26 (arXiv — arxiv-ac/ac.tex) #
Status: Working draft, 5 pages, WORKING DRAFT watermark ✓ Current citations: ~14 (Processing, p5.js, Scratch, Glitch, Kittler, McLuhan, Ted Nelson, 10 PRINT) — all \cite{} calls wired into prose What's missing from the platter:
2. KidLisp '26 (arXiv — arxiv-kidlisp/kidlisp.tex) #
Status: Working draft, 6 pages, WORKING DRAFT watermark ✓ Current citations: ~16 (Lisp history, creative coding, DSLs, Little Schemer, McCarthy, van Engelen, Joy of Clojure) — all \cite{} calls wired into prose What's missing from the platter:
3. Pieces Not Programs '26 (arXiv — arxiv-pieces/pieces.tex) #
Status: Working draft, 4 pages, WORKING DRAFT watermark ✓ Current citations: ~19 (+ Ted Nelson, 10 PRINT, Shklovsky, Adorno, Langer) — all \cite{} calls wired into prose What's missing from the platter:
4. notepat '26 (arXiv — arxiv-notepat/notepat.tex) #
Status: Working draft, 4 pages, WORKING DRAFT watermark ✓ Current citations: ~6 What's missing from the platter:
5. Aesthetic Computer JOSS (joss-ac/paper.md) #
Status: Working draft, 2 pages, WORKING DRAFT watermark ✓ JOSS focus: Software quality, documentation, community impact, contribution guidelines Revision plan:
6. KidLisp JOSS (joss-kidlisp/paper.md) #
Status: Working draft, 3 pages, WORKING DRAFT watermark ✓ JOSS focus: Software quality, test suite, API documentation Revision plan:
Upcoming Deadlines #
| Deadline | Venue | Submission Type | Paper(s) to Submit |
|---|---|---|---|
| Apr 16, 2026 | ACM C&C 2026 (London) | Demos | AC demo + poster |
| Apr 24, 2026 | ICCC 2026 (Coimbra) | Short Papers | KidLisp as computational creativity |
| TBD | IEEE ICIR 2026 (Pisa) | Late-Breaking / Demos | AC or KidLisp |
Open Research Threads #
Repository Archaeology #
- Working draft published at
papers.aesthetic.computer/ac-repo-archaeology - Traces AC through 4 successive repos (system-ac → disks-ac → 2022.aesthetic.computer → aesthetic-computer)
- Documents 94 predecessor projects with GitHub source links
- Next: Could become a formal paper for a software engineering venue
Software History Lineage #
- 94 projects cataloged in
system/public/assets/papers/readings/text/jas-software-history.txt - Platter at
papers.aesthetic.computer/platter— searchable research hub - Three lineage threads: drawing tools → AC pieces, performance tools → multiplayer, dev infrastructure → hot-reload
Citation Integration (The Moat) #
- 87 readings in
system/public/assets/papers/readings/text/(up from 58 as of 2026-04-06) - 32+ now cited across paper bibliographies (up from 0 as of 2026-03-10)
- Batch added 2026-03-18: Little Schemer, van Engelen, Joy of Clojure, McCarthy 1960, Ted Nelson, 10 PRINT, Kittler, McLuhan, Shklovsky, Adorno, Langer, Fisher across 8 bib files
- Prose citations added 2026-03-18:
\cite{}calls integrated into 6 paper .tex files (ac, kidlisp, pieces, sustainability, os, complex) - Final Tier 1 batch 2026-03-18: Ingold, Strudel (Roos & McLean), Staunæs/Stiegler added to bib files AND cited in prose
- All 6 papers build clean (xelatex + bibtex, 3 passes, no undefined citations)
- Tier 1 complete. All originally identified Tier 1 priorities now have BibTeX entries and prose citations.
- Remaining uncited readings worth considering (Tier 2): Arnheim, Klee (already in
arxiv-whistlegraph), Manovich - Batch 2026-03-28: Ukeles (AC paper), McLuhan (notepat), Moglen/FreedomBox + e-waste stats + ChromeOS Flex (OS paper), post-COVID status + ChucK/SLOrk detail (PLORKing), Jeffrey economic specifics (Who Pays), predecessor tools (notepat)
- Next: Write actual paper prose around citations (currently integrated as single sentences; some could become fuller paragraphs)
Ars Electronica 2026 #
- Submission at
papers/ars-electronica-2026/ demoplay.md,description.md, architecture report- Festival: Sep 9–13, Linz, Austria
Conference Demo Preparation #
- For ACM C&C and ICCC: need a live demo setup
- Consider: notepat live performance, KidLisp collaborative drawing, AC piece gallery walkthrough
- Hardware: phone + laptop + projector (URL-addressable = easy demo)
A Fraserin' Art + Tech (arxiv-fraserin) #
- New research track opened 2026-05-02. Folder:
papers/arxiv-fraserin/. First-pass 7-page draft built same day (fraserin.pdf); PLAN.md tracks the remaining acquisition + revision work. - Methodology essay + literature survey, written in a labor-folk register. Asks: what would it mean to apply Andrea Fraser's institutional-critique grammar to the art-and-tech cluster, and to what extent has it already been done?
- Names the dossier series (
arxiv-rhizome,-eyebeam,-sfpc,-recurse,-pioneer-works,-mellon,-internet-archive,-new-inc,-machine-project,-the-kitchen,-studio-museum,-heavy-manners-library,-hathitrust,-calarts,-ucla-arts) as a single coherent project under that lens. - Six-move grammar drawn from Fraser 2005 Artforum + Museums, Money, and Politics (2018). Folk-tune voice draws on Ukeles, W.A.G.E., Almanac Singers, and the 2019–2024 art-museum staff unionizations.
- Prior-art survey strands: Fraser herself (Strand A), critics inside the cluster (B — Quaranta, Lovink, Bosma, Bazzichelli, Cornell+Halter, Paul, Arns, Baumgärtel), artists doing IC works in art-and-tech venues (C — Dullaart, Cirio, Bitnik, Lialina, Wilson, Steyerl, Paglen, Arcangel, Goldin+Senneby), activist/archival/list work (D — Decolonize This Place, Forensic Architecture, W.A.G.E., MTL), academic IC writing (E — Alberro+Stimson, Bourdieu, Becker, Haacke), AC dossier series (F — proto-Fraser corpus already in the platter), labor / cultural-worker tradition (G — Ukeles, Davis, Ross, Lorusso, Molesworth).
- Next: read Fraser 2005 Artforum essay; inventory existing AC dossier folders for §F status table; draft §2 (grammar) and §F (what's already built) first.
Dedicated-Device Political Economy #
- Thread platterized 2026-05-02 (cited in
arxiv-plork/plork.tex§5.4) - Core observation: "dedicated computing device" is not a politics, it is an architectural pattern. Same fast-boot / single-purpose / sensor-rich / network-native shape can produce Switch, Steam Deck, OP-1, AC OS — or Anduril's Sentry Tower, Roadrunner, Lattice OS, Seabed Sentry.
- Palmer Luckey arc as the canonical case: Oculus VR (2012, consumer creative dedicated device) → $2B Facebook acquisition (2014) → fired over $10K Trump-PAC donation (2017) → $100M buyout → Anduril Industries (June 2017) → $6B+ in government contracts by 2026, IVAS takeover from Microsoft.
- BibTeX in
arxiv-plork/references.bib:cnbc2019luckey(Levy / CNBC),tablet2024vulcan(Solana / Tablet "American Vulcan"),cbs2024luckey(Pelley / 60 Minutes),anduril2026products(anduril.com Mission Autonomy + product pages),wiki2026anduril(Wikipedia consulted May 2026). - Next: Could expand into a stand-alone short paper or extend §8 (Music, Access, and Political Economy) with a parallel "Devices, Authorship, and Political Economy" subsection. Worth tracking adjacent companies (Saronic, Shield AI, Skydio) if the thread grows.
Platter Corpus Summary #
The research platter (papers.aesthetic.computer/platter) contains:
- 27 papers (26 arXiv LaTeX + 2 JOSS Markdown) — up from 20 as of 2026-03-28
- 87 readings (PDFs with text extractions) — up from 58 as of 2026-04-06
- 109 reports (internal markdown)
- 162 plans (internal markdown)
- 8 studies (internal markdown)
- 70+ reference items
- 94-project software history
- Repository archaeology (4-repo evolution)
- API & data source documentation
This corpus is the scholarly foundation. Every paper revision should draw from it.
TODO: SoSoft Readings Acquisition #
Casey Reas' "Software Art References (2000+)" on sosoft.arts.ucla.edu/docs lists 77 texts.
As of 2026-04-06, we have acquired 18 (14 full-text + 4 SoSoft doc digests). ~55 remain.
Acquired (14 full-text conversions from open-access PDFs) #
| # | Author | Title | Lines | Source |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Galloway | Protocol (2004) | 10,498 | asounder.org |
| 2 | Manovich | Software Takes Command (2013) | 13,804 | Monoskop |
| 3 | Fuller | Behind the Blip (2003) | 384 | Monoskop (rough OCR) |
| 4 | Flusser | Into the Universe of Technical Images (2011) | 6,910 | readings.teaching-documents.org |
| 5 | Wark | A Hacker Manifesto (2004) | 6,402 | Monoskop |
| 6 | Kelty | Two Bits (2008) | 15,808 | twobits.net (CC BY-NC-SA) |
| 7 | Chun | "On Software" essay (2005) | 1,133 | Monoskop |
| 8 | McHugh | Post Internet (2019) | 11,839 | Link Editions (CC) |
| 9 | Quaranta | Beyond New Media Art (2013) | 11,337 | Link Editions (CC) |
| 10 | Quaranta | In Your Computer (2011) | 8,511 | Link Editions (CC) |
| 11 | Galanter | "What Is Generative Art?" (2003) | 894 | philipgalanter.com |
| 12 | Raymond | Cathedral and the Bazaar (rev. ed.) | 11,446 | Monoskop (OPL) |
| 13 | Goriunova | Readme 100 (2006) | 5,366 | Monoskop |
| 14 | Wagenknecht | Deep Lab (2014) | 5,482 | Frank-Ratchye STUDIO |
Pending — Fraser track (arxiv-fraserin), added 2026-05-02 #
Cited in arxiv-fraserin/fraserin.tex; none yet extracted to the platter. Priority order (per PLAN.md):
Pending (known open-access, need different extraction) #
Not yet searched (remaining ~55 from Casey's 77) #
Many are commercially published books without known open-access editions. Priority tiers:
Tier 1 — most likely findable (exhibition catalogs, institutional publications)
Tier 2 — commercially published, check Archive.org lending library
Tier 3 — artist monographs, harder to find digitally
Strategy for remaining texts #
- Manual Monoskop download — several blocked texts exist on Monoskop but need browser-based download
- Archive.org lending library — many MIT Press titles available via controlled digital lending
- Institutional access — UCLA library access may cover many MIT Press, Phaidon, Verso titles
- OCR pipeline — install
tesseract-ocrfor scanned PDFs (Manovich Language of New Media) - Exhibition catalog PDFs — many institutions post catalog PDFs; search museum websites directly