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"For the field of art and cultural production, we argue that such permacomputing aesthetics could facilitate a transition from a system in which practitioners use the latest digital tools and media regardless of the environmental consequences, to a more strategic system in which digital tools and media of all generations, are carefully combined, crafted and used to form a less extractive practice."
Material limitations can also be the source of great creative solutions, like the use of fog in Silent Hill because the graphics couldn’t load fast enough. This created the iconic atmosphere and visuals of the game that wouldn’t have been explored if it had no technical limitations.
"We call this maximalist techno-aesthetics, that is, aesthetics that are the manifestation of technologies driven by the myth of perpetual growth and infinite resources, aesthetics based on the ever increasing complexity and resource consumption of digital devices that seek to justify growth through self-referential legitimisation regardless of necessity or ability to even function properly."
→ Problems with growth for growths sake, maybe going forward growth can be more intentional and thought out instead of boundless.
"But how to introduce a notion of technological constraint when artists, designers and cultural workers are encouraged, pressured, and trained to constantly create with the latest and greatest mainstream hardware and software tools?"
Good point, I sometimes wonder if it's possible to get work as a designer without using the mainstream tools. It probably is but you might have to occupy a certain niche or it atleast isn't as straightforward.
"More generally, self-imposed constraints in this context become facilitators and amplifiers of creativity, so it is also possible to refer to them as fabric,[39], or to redirect the discussion by emphasising the process."
Art is the one field that already tends to utilize limitations as an opportunity for exploration (many exhibitions and works of art have reframing something familiar by putting limitations on it as a method to create the art). Creative problem solving happens when there’s limitations or problems, pushing human creativity to further extremes. When focusing on pushing technology to its extremes instead it can distract from this goal and make art in a way frictionless. The technology smooths out the whole creative process that makes the art. But at the same time it also creates more problems.
"The idea is that, by forming a community of practice around these two strands—first, an incentive to reuse and repurpose existing computer technology and materials to create new work; and second, a list of continuously evolving design principles, to guide that very reuse and repurposing—there will, we hope, be a process of both individuation and collective learning, mutual aid and inspiration."
This reminds me of the videogame console modding community and how Nintendo has tried to brick consoles if people try to mod it, which is insane because people bought the device to own it. Makes me wonder if in the future, when permacomputing gains more prominence, will corporations retaliate in such ways and limit these acts of “permacomputing” because they see it as a threat to controlling consumers.
"it has been normalised that any use of so-called outdated computing devices that have exhausted their economic value, can only be of a nostalgic nature, because such use makes no sense from the perspective of systems of constant production, consumption, creative destruction and reproduction."
Interesting point, especially because at the current time when things are getting worse people will yearn for a romanticized version of the “better old days”, and even this nostalgia has been co-opted by capitalism and is used as a marketing point for more products. This paints the past tech as nostalgia to be repackaged and sold instead of looking at it for its intrinsic value.
"From a permacomputing perspective, it is impossible to long for a time when computer technology was better, because there never was such a day."
Really good point, technology may have been better in terms of longevity etc. but it has always relied on extractive and unethical sources.
"In truth, permacomputing sees abandoned computing devices and e-waste as many different instruments waiting to be brought back to life, turned upside down and rediscovered to simply create new things. We believe that the end of a computer product’s lifecycle should be seen as a moment of celebration, a moment when its socioeconomic context can finally be reclaimed, rather than put behind a glass and condemned to run the same old code forever as a consumerist trophy or fetish."
→Good point that also explains permacomputing well, in case it was still unclear
"Worse still, the introduction of permacomputing into art and design education without proper contextualisation could lead to a form of romanticism close to the failure of the arts and crafts movement, which could end up reinforcing a bourgeois understanding of permacomputing craft as a luxurious and elitist product, thus preventing its radical potential as a popular cultural practice that could also exist outside of professional art and design circuits."
→Won’t this happen regardless because of capitalism? To an extent, everything will be distorted because of it but that doesn’t mean that it shouldn’t be promoted at all, it has a lot of potential. I guess the question is if it will do more damage than good in the long run? It’s hard to imagine it would do more damage than the current system already though. However, it is definitely something to be considered when implementing permacomputing into art education.
"...aesthetics of repair that can also admit that not everything should be repaired, and that perhaps sometimes things really do need to be left broken in order to escape the status quo of bargaining and negotiation that leads nowhere?"
"But it does mean that permacomputing is walking on thin ice and needs a lot of work to understand its own situatedness to avoid it ending up as a mere hobby for the most privileged, a romanticisation and aestheticisation of poverty, like many low-tech practices in high-income countries that end up as leisure activities."