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1. Critical Code Studies

   Computer source code has become part of popular discourse. Code is read not only by programmers but by lawyers, artists, pundits, reporters, political activists, and literary scholars; it is used in political debate, works of art, popular entertainment, and historical accounts. In this book, Mark Marino argues that code means more than merely what it does; we must also consider what it means. We need to learn to read code critically. Marino presents a series of case studies—ranging from the Climategate scandal to a hactivist art project on the US-Mexico border—as lessons in critical code reading.

   Marino shows how, in the process of its circulation, the meaning of code changes beyond its functional role to include connotations and implications, opening it up to interpretation and inference—and misinterpretation and reappropriation. The Climategate controversy, for example, stemmed from a misreading of a bit of placeholder code as a “smoking gun” that supposedly proved fabrication of climate data. A poetry generator created by Nick Montfort was remixed and reimagined by other poets, and subject to literary interpretation.

   Hannah Ackermans - 07.09.2020 - 14:45

2. Collaborative Reading Praxis

   Marino, Douglass, and Pressman describe their award-winning collaborative project, Reading Project: A Collaborative Analysis of William Poundstone’s Project for Tachistoscope {Bottomless Pit} (2015). Given the novelty of Poundstone’s work and its deviation from traditional forms of print-based literature, the authors break down the methods and platforms that allowed them to respond with new ways of reading—what they call “close reading (reimagined).” Indeed, their respective methods of interpreting Poundstone reminds that the field of e-literature not only brings new literary forms to our critical attention, but also necessitates that hermeneutics adapt to digital contexts as well.

   Hannah Ackermans - 08.09.2020 - 12:20

3. How an Academic Companion Website Makes Media-Specific Arguments

   In this project review, I discuss the companion website criticalcodestudies.com in relation to Mark C. Marino’s book Critical Code Studies (2020). Over the past decades, companion websites have become a small but persistently growing genre in academia, with products ranging from paratextual records to publications in their own right. The Critical Code Studies companion website makes excellent use of content and design to make media-specific arguments that interrogate the research subject, foregrounding a method that oscillates between close reading and contextual reading as well as promotes personal and communal reading practices. The combination of book and companion website successfully makes intellectual interventions into the case studies but also into our conception of source code in general. I review how the companion website reflects, amplifies, and contradicts the arguments made in the book.

   (Author abstract)

   Hannah Ackermans - 27.05.2021 - 18:32