Bureaucracktic Bedtime Stories

Bureaucracktic ouija sessions — Simon Browne

Simon Browne (Simon Browne)

Through the medium of a multi-user whiteboard drawing on Big Blue Button, we will conjure stories by drawing on characters that spell out our bureaucracktic concerns, desires and dreams. This will require a medium who asks questions, and spirits, who answer them by editing an image on the whiteboard.

(∩ᄑ_ᄑ)⊃━☆ﾟ･｡･:≡( ε:) simoon proposes: bureaucracktive ouija seances ☆’ﾟ･::･｡'★’ﾟ･::･｡: ﾉ(>ω<ﾉ)

15 min BBB sessions, held intermittently throughout Friday afternoon

[setting up the board: 5 mins]

We join a breakout room/temporary room in BBB, which has an uploaded image that acts as our "divining background" (thanks @brendan)
We decide who wants to ask questions (the medium), and who wants to answer them (spirits)

[séance: 10 mins]

The medium asks spirits questions; these are best formulated ad lib to the spirits' responses
Spirits use the interactive whiteboard features to respond (e.g. drawing/erasing/writing/hovering/moving etc) with microphone on mute
The séance ends with the medium thanking spirits for their guidance

Transcription of séance held on December 12th, 2020: I welcome any good spirits who are near to join our circle. Please make your presence known. I'd like to ask you about some things that have been on my mind over the past week.

Where are the "cracks" in bureaucracksy?
Are they thin lines, or deep divides?
What falls into these cracks?
What is forgotten?
What is remembered?

Do you fear bureaucracy?
Do you embrace it?
Does it bring you pleasure?

Are you a number?
If so, which one?
What is the feeling of being a number?
Do you feel it can go on forever?
Where does the counting end?

Do you have dreams, or nightmares about red tape?
Do you dream of smooth, efficient systems and processes?
What hope is there for bureaucracy?

Is there a style guide for bureaucracy?
Is bureaucracy an aesthetic performance?
Does it follow the latest trends, or is it in need of a makeover?
What colours does it dress in?
What does it wear on the weekend?
Does it shop on the high street?
Can I see the receipts?

Is bureaucracy a species?
Can it evolve?
Does it mutate?
Does it have a life expectancy?
What is the smallest unit of bureaucratic biology?
Is it entropic, or negentropic?

Can your experiences fit easily into a list, a grid, a table, a box?
Does it help you, or those around you, to organise them in these structures?
Are rules made just to be broken?

I thank you spirits for coming to our circle and sharing your guidance.

Delicious User Guide — Jonathan McHugh

Jonathan McHugh (Jonathan McHugh)

Part 1: Introduction

I have had a lot of misgivings regarding the allure of 'Web 2.0' services - they always seemed so deficient to me.

In 2007, after years of researching and writing about the power of information systems I had the opportunity to have hands on experimentation - in this instance for providing monitoring infrastructure and monitoring of news/public affairs articles. The social bookmarking service, Delicious seemed the perfect vehicle for documenting and annotating. While I could have used Word documents or a Blog to document it lacked depth.

Most notably, there was no recursive searching of tags. Having the ability to search only one tag meant that people could not dig deep into a story. They would have to make a choice between choosing the tag with the closest precision (so that the searching within the tag was less - though with risks that the tag was not kept) or choosing the tag with the broadest categorisation (with the trade off being that more time would be spent looking through results from the tag). The ability to be able to inspect one tag and see a list of other tags which exist within their selection (and the number) was liberating. This reward provided the encouragement to annotate tags properly.

Naturally, over the months the scale and sophistication of the notes and volume of different tags created the need to improve myself to improve my workflow and navigation across the knowledge repository. An annotation tool was launched with CTRL-D, presenting the relevant URI, a 1000 character box and tag options. Within the tag field, the limitations of using only A-Z characters became increasingly clear. Always an enthusiast for touch typing, I hit upon the idea for using the non-alphanumeric characters (found just to the left of the RETURN key) - this seemed useful for theming tags. For example, hitting '[' would provide a list of politics related tags and ']' economics. The "'" button would carry locations, with the number of single quotes providing abstraction levels.

As well thought out a product Delicious was, I considered the 'social' aspect of its bookmarking utility intriguing and revolutionary. Annotations for a specific URL intersected, as multiple users were capable of providing a note with differing motivations or emphases. If I looked as an annotation, it would provide their note, tags. It was an entry point into other peoples heads in way which the ego driven and synchronous modes of FaceBook and Twitter could not touch - it was centered around the need to understand rather than be 'acknowledge oneself', with a precision to interrogate the facets of the individuals knowledge (if valuable rather than their complete form).

It was not immediately rewarding poring through the individual RSS tags of users: I would have to ignore some tags as being too noisy, too voluminous (the fire hose) or not entirely relevant to my employers requirements. However, because I was annotating all the RSS tags of other users I was getting very clean lines of information. Becoming aware of the distinctions between taxonomies and folksonomies at a practical level (over ~ 10,000 user profiles) have given me a deep understanding regarding what language is and how it is plastic, tactile and inherently ambiguous.

The glue was to integrate the RSS feeds with Yahoo Pipes (Delicious was also one of their products), which was a WYSIWYG way of mixing content. The tool was a bit of a toy, designed to allow anybody to mix content in different ways, using parameters. My account had classified RSS feeds as RollingNews; Delicious had recursive searching of tags; Delicious provided 'private' RSS feeds to be called - all this funneled into a tool with aggregating and recursive functions provides a workflow more powerful than many would expect.

As a consequence a collection of ~200 people for unconnected reasons and perspectives were pumping information that would have been beyond the capabilities of a single researcher or (inhouse) a medium sized enterprise. I still believe in the logic of having tools and communities to be supplied by ones own civil service. Later, I discovered that 200 is both the optimum number for both Athenian democracy gatherings and social media interactions - small world.... The scale and granularity of information I collected exceeded anything publicly available on the internet for the knowledge domain. Naturally, there could be 'knowledge rot', as users dropped off the map. However, over time the quality of information found was improving, as I was reaching comprehensiveness in terms of topic areas and the communities which interacted with them. Future colleagues appreciated the work and the scale. The hunt for knowledge leaders and tethering them into a cohesive infrastructure was rather addictive.

Alas, the golden age was declining around the time I was moving onto a different employer. Yahoo was a golden boy of the early Internet but its financial success was not a consequence of it understanding its services potential - rather than providing a well oiled machine for monitising the Internet (see this article for context http://www.paulgraham.com/yahoo.html). It did not realise how awesome the Trinity of Delicious, Yahoo Pipes and Flickr were. It sold off Delicious to some bullshit enterprise which altered its back-end so that tags beginning with non alphanumeric characters did not work (worse if killed the thousands of tags uncerimoniously). Eventually it gave up, neither operator had an idea for (directly!) commercialising it. The Internet is turning well shit, most services we are encouraged/required to use are exploiting us. This was a more innocent apex where there was a feeling that knowledge systems could be around topics rather than tribes.

Monitoring can often be mistreated as a treadmill activity, which when mixed with communications and marketing can result in people propagating to one and all. This distinction has always made me seem very alien to most Comms professionals, they have a cognitive dissonance regarding how their role should be structured. My Cover Letters must have been written in Kriptonite, as my activity and justifications would not even arouse the curiosity for a 1st round interview. (I suppose hammers only seek nails).

I eventually spent years mastering Drupal (5-7), creating (uncommercialised) knowledge portals to represent such knowledge hubs. Only later on did my autodidactism direct me to the advantage of proper coding to interpret information and knowledge flows effectively. The workflows for generating knowledge and identifying leaders is still in my apparatus, though I have usually only directed them towards things such as activism. The burning need to represent the complexities of knowledge and purpose continue, with me devoting about 7+ years with folksonomy techniques - after eating a lot of dog food it mutated into Qiuy, a 'Recursive Modeling Language', which will remain molten for a long time will eventually represent for me a concrete representations and delineations regarding the intersection of state and purpose.

Part 2: Mermaids Folksong&me

Ate#se, (oo]wind bre#z, %%%%%%%%%%%%%
RSS feeds abundant, %%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%
Forfar,sure!fo]ksonome#z, %%%%%%%%%%%
Whoso ]ist t2-hunt, %%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%

Before de-RTRN k#yz, %%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%
Extend-ripp]e,down-dune, %%%%%%%%%%%%
de]imtrs-und-parenths#yz, %%%%%%%%%%%
beech@night,beach@noon, %%%%%%%%%%%%%

A]phas make rough-grain, %%%%%%%%%%%%
-(ast- into the-sure, %%%%%%%%%%%%%%%
Re(ursive]y sandy-(hain, %%%%%%%%%%%%
Annotating#more&more, %%%%%%%%%%%%%%%

[po]itics {(ulture a]] yeah! %%%%%%%%
She]]#4my ]earning senses, %%%%%%%%%%
Over 1+kay tagstid-ing ther#, %%%%%%%
Shear(hre a]] re]ent]ess, %%%%%%%%%%%

Ripp]ing a]] th`m (ora] feeds, %%%%%%
Another (#mmunity is th#r` be]ow, %%%
Piping the f]ows form-e-needs, %%%%%%
Demar(ations 4d#se in the kn#w, %%%%%

B#gg]er, b#gg]er. Putput. %%%%%%%%%%%
winds-(#mmercia] pivot (o]d. %%%%%%%%

    Kite (r#sher r#t. %%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%


is-de sm]]yfishin' f]eet. %%%%%%%%%%%

B#gg]er, b#gg]er. Putput. %%%%%%%%%%%
Benchmarking against bo]d. %%%%%%%%%%
Unput put *#gg]er snot. %%%%%%%%%%%%%
Feedail #db bawbag s]eet. %%%%%%%%%%%

T$$#much#noise, 1++ pi]]er peari$h#t,
Water-in-symmetry awash-runes, %%%%%%
unbanktd poise, purput wyatt-cos#t, %
Bnnked know]edge on-da- dunes, %%%%%%

M#rmaids an#otations s]eep, %%%%%%%%%
whearto be ]ent in scope, %%%%%%%%%%%
I (ast and s(im ank]e deep, %%%%%%%%%

    memory of urchins' hope, %%%%%%%%%%%


%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%% Jonathan McHugh

Part 3: Delicious user guide

Part One: Accessing the System

1a) To log in visit: https://secure.delicious.com/login?jump=ub

The user name is: squirreltrumpet The password is: PASSWORDEXAMPLE

Please take care to check whether you intend to keep the account signed in for two weeks. I recommend that it should only be checked for office computers and private laptops when in the house or office.

to log into the site in order to then log yourself out, as carelessness risks data theft.

The automatic log in system is for two weeks, so similarly try not to forget the password either!

1b) Delicious operates a clean design to enable you to explore safely without hassle. However, the system can easily fail, as this system is depended on effective social processes. People being inconsistent or failing to work according to the same guidelines is likely to create losses of information and therefore an ineffective system. So continuing reading on (particularly the section on tagging), referencing the material in the future and updating this guide, as effective use should reap dividends.

Part Two: Searching for Information

2a) The top bar (above) serves as the general dashboard for searching. You can click on the search piece Type another tag to find key tag words. However, this may always find the information you require as a result of human input error (this will be discussed later). Sorting the information below that bar by Most Recent, Alphabetically or Reverse Order should enable to sort the information more conveniently, depending on your needs. The information on the left hand side determines how much information is shown on the links displayed below.

2b) Clicking on SquirrelTrumpet (or also the very top rear the right of the screen) will enable you to return to the main section if you have decided that you need to search again. Next to SquirrelTrumpet can be grey boxes containing tag choices that you are currently searching with. To remove these search choices, click on the x next to the terms.

The right hand bar (right) should be your first point of call for navigating this system, as its folder based ordering structure should guide you gently to your information, as well as reinforcing the thought process that exists so that you input the most accurate data

2c) To find existing tags first click in order to open and close the available information within each category. The key two folders are Tag Bundles and Related Tags.

Opening Tag Bundles (right), you get a range of categories which collect information (again organised within information groups as tags). Clicking next to EU Institutions provides a list of internally collected tags considered as being relevant to XXXXX in relation to EU public affairs.

2d) The main bundle groups are:

EU Initiatives
- Covering key European projects
EU Institutions
- Covering the major EU political pillars and relevant EU institutions
Events
- Covering key meetings and events
Music Content, Labels, etc
- Covering information on record labels
Music Distributors
- Covering P2P sites, radio stations, social networks, and key media players
Music initiatives
- Covering non technologically based issues
Music Public Affairs
- Covering key organisations and topics in public affairs
National Initiatives
- Covering key debates in local countries
News Aggregators
- Covering all third party bookmarks contributing to SquirrelTrumpet
News Journalists
- Covering a list of journalists or references that have had their contact details recorded
News Sources
- Covering all the sites contributing to SquirrelTrumpet
Office Information
- Covering information on hotels, travel, etc
Technology Companies
- Covering technology based companies not associated as content providers or disruptors of music
Technology Public Affairs
- Covering key debates that have a technological slant, as well as physical and digital product information and debates

2e) Click on EUCommission. This will pull up a list of all the articles or links containing the tag EUCommission (right). When selecting , you should be able to see the date the link was created, the title, short description, all of the tags that each link contains and whether other users across the Delicious network also happen to have the link in their bookmarks.

There are 36 links in this case, which may be too broad for research purposes. With Delicious it is possible to search within two terms at the same time, enabling you to narrow down your search through creating connections.

There are two ways to do this, either clicking on one of the boxes inside one of the links at the bottom of each link box.

2f) The other method is to use the Related Tags section on the right bar (right). It contains all tags which have a connection with the tag EUCommission, as indicated by the image "+" before the title. In this example, click on copyright. You should now be reading all the links associated with both the European Commission and copyright.

It is possible also to narrow down the search in other ways or even deeper. The Related Tags section is broad, as it contains all related information. This may act as a distraction but can also allow you to search by location, source, committee or whether the information is a link to a single story or a collection of information (more to be discussed later). Play around with the system to familiarise yourself.

As mentioned before, if you make a wrong turning click on SquirrelTrumpet or an "x" on the term that is no longer required.

2g) If you still struggle to find what you are looking for try opening the All Tags folder. Then use your browser's find option to find the term. Otherwise attempt to use different terms. The Tagging guide will attempt to provide a grammatical system for labelling information, as well as highlighting where errors may have occurred. As a result, it is worth reading to aid your searching. If after consulting with your colleagues you can not find the information try reverting to more traditional forms of finding information, remembering to leave breadcrumbs so that future research is more fruitful.

Part Three: Adding Links

3a) There are two methods to adding links to Delicious. The first method is to add a tool to your Internet browser. To do this visit http://delicious.com/help/tools and click on the appropriate link. This will provide you with three buttons (right). The left opens SquirrelTrumpet, the middle button opens the bookmarks and the right button opens a box to record the page you are currently using to SquirrelTrumpet.

Alternatively, when in SquirrelTrumpet you need to use the blue box on the right hand bar of the website (right). To save a link click on Save a new bookmark. Next, insert the URL and then Next.

3b) The next screen (right) provides a form for creating the background information behind the link you are recording, including Title, Notes, Tags and whether the link is public to the world or not. Remember, data security is imperative as we do not intend to release this data publicly. As a result, always make sure that the Do Not Share box is ticked, so that only SquirrelMail users can access the material.

Tags are a collection of key words chosen by the user to provide key descriptors so that they and others can access them later. This system has many pros and cons to it, although a system which works in a uniform fashion is likely to be fruitful. Below are some key rules which will help you to maximise this tool.

Spacing, Plurals and Errors

Unlike most other tag based systems Delicious does not separate tags by commas, relying on keyboard spaces. As a result, "EU Commission" would produce two tags, "EU" and "Commission". There are many alternative solutions to this but the recommended approach is to group the words into one, making the first letters of each word capitalised. In this case the correct tag would be "EUCommission".
Unless explicitly shown, illogical or only existing in the singular, assume that tags are used in the plural. Therefore, "radio" and "EUCommission" are used in the singular, while Glastonbury would exist under "festivals", as it belongs to a group which contains numerous festivals.
Please check the spelling carefully, as "EEUComissiion" creates a tag completely separate from "EUCommission" and is unlikely to be found in searches until the error is corrected.

Source

It is important to include the source of the link so that it would be possible to choose the source of material that the link belongs to. In this example the piece comes from The European Voice. In this example "+EuropeanVoice" is typed as the source descriptor.
There is a code to highlight the source and denote whether it will be original or merely aggregating news stories from other places. If the article or link is to original content, the source descriptor would contain a "+" at the front of the tag. If it links to unoriginal content, then a "-" preceeds the tag.
Sometimes it is unclear what to include from some websites, as www.nortonspeel.wordpress.com could be either NortonsPeel or Wordpress. Similarly, www.europarl.europa.eu could be Europarl or Europa. Dealing with such situations, it is best to bear in mind whether the sub section of the website operates as part of a collective or individually from the rest of the site. In the first example, Nortons Peel operates independently of Wordpress, so "-NortonsPeel" would be chosen (the "-" is used because it aggregates stories, rather than creates them). In our second example, even though Europarl operates independently or Europa, it's reporting still fits within the remit of EU institutational related affairs so becomes lumped with the tag "Europa".

Location

It is useful to highlight the geographical relevance of any story but not helpful to provide historical settings. So for example, MIDEM is held in France but its effect is EU wide. As a result, its preferable to put EU rather than France or Cannes.
When discussing national issues, as well as a tag describing the country it is useful to provide a descriptor highlighting the emphasis of the story. For example, a UK story describing a minister commenting on copyright would be tagged both "UK" and "UKPolitics", while a story on a decline in French music sales would be "France" and "FranceEconomy".
The location information should also bear in mind rotating Council Presidencies, including the emphasis and the position. So, for example a story on the European Independence arena which was held under the French Presidency would also include "France", "FrancePolitics" and "FrancePresidency" as well as any European descriptors.

Key Actors

Documenting the key actors within any story or link is key to finding relevant material in future research. Many stories mention side players but it is important to bear in mind the posterity intention of this system. An article going through lists of other companies and individuals mentioned merely in passion will create too much search noise if processed as additional tags.
Although key individuals are likely to be important it is best to restrict the information to positions. So rather than creating a "CharlieMcCreevy" tag, create a tag entitled "EUCommissionInternalMarket"
It is important to get the correct level of abstraction at the same time. For example, for a story regarding copyright it is necessary to include "EUCommissionInternalMarket" should include "EUCommissionInternalMarket" and "EUCommission", as people may look for copyright issues from a variety of EU Commission perspectives. In a similar way MySpace Music issues may not always be similar to MySpace issues. Therefore, either "MySpace" and "MySpaceMusic" gets used or just "MySpace", depending on the issues.
If the Actor concerned is a public affairs organisation then include the label "organisation" to highlight the information.

Key Topic Points

Gaining the most out of this area will take great care in the choice of topic descriptors. If unsure, it is best to search out previous examples to find the key terms to use.
If still unsure, include the tag "TOPICFLAG" to highlight to the designated staff member in charge of managing the system the problem. An RSS feed can be put into play so the staff member automatically receives an email (still to be done).
Getting the correct level of abstraction needs attention just like before. For example, a radio station would be classed as "RadioStations" and "radio".
The end topics should also contain key branch points. In the case of "radio" branches should also include such info as "music" or even "Internet" "MP3s" or "streaming", depending on the contexts the links contain.

Initiatives and Issues

Insert the tag "initiatives" to highlight that the link refers to a project of some sort, either envisaged or active, such as the ThreeStrikesRule.
Insert the tag "issues" to highlight an ongoing affair that effects the music industry, such as P2P, piracy, or antitrust.
The terms Public Affairs and Organisations have been used but their value is uncertain, its perhaps worth examination their benefit over time

Rolling News, Single Stories, Information or Directive?

This database contains a broad base of information types. It is useful to highlight this when writing tags so that people will be quickly able to hunt down information depending on their reasoning.
Rolling News is used to describe links where there is a collection of news stories (or more links) connected to a specific area. The rule of thumb is that there should be at least three relevant stories over the space of six month to be classed like this. Through reference if this rule is broken the tag should be removed by whoever notices this lapse in contributions.
Single Stories is used to describe link to a one off story that is worth reading in the future.
Information is used to describe a key point of information of some sort.
Directive is used to describe a key legislative text, such as an EU document. Also include the tag "information".

Organisational Codes

The tag *RSS references whether the link is included (or can be included) as part of the RSS feeder. The tag *chk means that the link does not provide a suitable RSS feed.
The tag *2rl signifies a link that needs exploring later for whatever reason
Although not started, a system for inserting signals as to who made a link or personal relevance could be useful, such as *JT, *HS and suchlike for quick reference and personalisation of the system.

Journalism Codes

The # code indicates that the author (or at least publication in the right instance or news aggregator) has had their information recorded.
In the future, this can enable targeted mailouts that reach the most accurate audience possible rather than a homogeneous mass mailout, through combining topics with # to generate a list of key contactable stakeholders.
Subsequent additions may include codes relating to specific mailouts and even responses. This can be used as a method to measuring success of campaigns.
For links which clearly relate to a specific journalist or writer within a news source, please include a # with their name, so readers can quickly ascertain the originator. This should be especially employed for Single News pieces.

Part Four: Managing Tags and Tag Bundles

4a) Clicking the on Tag Options on the blue bar on the right-hand side (right) opens a list of options on tag viewing and tag editing. To the familiar user editing tags information should not be too complicated, as well as the viewing settings.

4b) Clicking on manage tag bundles enables the user to add new bundles and add or remove new tags within bundles. The tag bundles form system works in a similar way to before. Below are some tips on getting effective use of the bundles.

Abstraction

Bundles are designed to carry all the key information points for people searching within a certain topic area. However, there is no need to provide all tags which relate to the topic area.
If the abstraction rule in the tags section is obeyed it should mean that it is unnecessary to include all topics, as RadioStations can be found through clicking on radios. This helps to both avoid noise when searching through areas but also to reinforce systematic searching approaches.

Missing Tags

When a new tag is created there is no guarantee that it will be found directly from people if they start looking through a bundle. It is necessary to systematically check to see if there are tags that need inserting into bundles, although the emergence of new tags will decline over time as greater areas of information are covered.
To search for unused tags click on Unbundled Tags on the right-hand sidebar, below the other tag bundle categories

Inaccurately Placed Tags

Although perhaps beneficial to check systematically for misplaced tags it is perhaps easier to weed out improper uses whilst people are working.

Part Five: Expanding The Database

5a) To keep the database fresh it is useful to find people with similar reading interests. The most beneficial approach is to find the readers who have bookmarked a link prior to XXXXX.

Click on the tag Single Stories. These are the key stories within our remit, so they are the perfect vehicle for expanding our knowledge pool. Above is a typical news story. On the top right hand corner is the number 4. Open the figure in a new tab.

5b) This will provide a list of the profiles (above) of relevant users. Right click them and save their profiles to Delicious using the tag *del. At a convenient time you should then spend time going through their relevant tags. Make sure to check whether or not this user has already been included within SquirrelTrumpet or not, as it would be a duplication of effort. The quickest method is to search within SquirrelTrumpet to see whether the users tag is in the All Tags section.

When searching, attempt to find single tags which provide over 3 relevant stories to XXXXX within the space of 6 months. If this is the case, save the bookmark like any other tag, including information on content, source and the fact that it is Rolling News.

The user name will be included in the Unbundled Tags section. Periodically please update them, placing them within the News Aggregator section.

All Delicious tags are compatible as RSS feeds. They should be included in the RSS feeder and then given the *rss tag within Delicious. To find news aggregators that have not been inputted into the RSS feeder they should contain the *NA tag but not *RSS. If done systematically, the difference should be apparent when searching chronologically.

Hum bureau (Bureaucratic frequencies) — Eric Snodgrass

Eric Snodgrass (Eric Snodgrass)

Notes on humming and bureaucratic modes of perception/counter-perception gathered during the Bureaucracksy event and discussed further in the accompanying sound file.

hummingbird clock, Lawrence Abu Hamdan

For over 10 years the UK government has been using the humming sound of the electrical mains as a surveillance tool and forensic clock to authenticate recordings — to determine their time and date, and whether they have been edited or otherwise altered. They call this technique, invented by Dr Catalin Grigoras, “electrical frequency network (ENF) analysis.” It can be effectively used as a time stamp for almost any recording made within earshot of electricity, which is always — almost silently — humming. This use of the sound of the electrical grid as a fingerprint of the nation's time has only ever been used by the police as a tool of state level surveillance, and yet everyone has access to this same buzz... As the secondhand turns around The Hummingbird Clock like a seismograph it draws the line of the UK's fluctuating mains current and this pattern of fluctuation is being recorded and archived every second 24/7... Digital recordings almost always have mains hum on them, either because the device was plugged in to the mains or because it inducts it off nearby cables, lights and appliances in a room. The Hummingbird Clock is able to automatically match the fingerprint of the mains hum on a given recording with it's database of the buzzing mains, and therefore tell you exactly when the recorded event occurred or if the recording itself has been tampered with and edited. The archiving of the mains power supply begins on the 7th July 2016 so we can only analyse recorded events made from this date forward.
http://www.hummingbirdclock.info/about/what-is-the-hummingbird-clock
-- buzzing mains as humming, (forensic) frequencies
-- time(stamp) element of this frequency
-- hum perceived as constant yet unique and indexical, as in some senses with bureaucracy
-- Technical - Frequency related (top item - Hummingbird clock): To find a cable in the wall, you use a coil or an inductor, which is amplified to the sound realm. To be able to find the utility frequency of 50 hz. Electricity flowing becomes sound.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Utility_frequency

bureaucratic frequencies, hummings
the waiting room clock, ticking and ticking
steps in corridors, shufflings, tappings, small ongoing echoes, reverberations
typing, pens and ballpoints scrawling, rolling over surfaces of inscription, sounds of bureacratic input
the oral “hmmmm” of a bureaucrat taking forward and examining one's case/query/answer
heightened senses to such sounds and sensory inputs in extended and enforced forms of waiting within bureaucratic spaces
the ongoing din of electricity, lights, generators, cicadas... punctuated by moments of bureaucratic activity and execution - e.g. the stamp of approval/denial, opening/shutting of a door, calling of a name

Tina Campt on serial bureaucratic grammar + quiet frequencies
...The albums serialize and aggregate the criminal body through photographs that standardize individuals and assign them a number. Organized externally and internally by the date of the photo session, each page of the album assigns a criminal identity and visual uniformity indexed through the following information:

name
serial number
clothing
pose
sequential date of photo

A fifth haptic temporality is the temporality of my own archival contact with the images and the albums. The albums have a sensuousness that, to me, felt almost illicit. It felt wrong to have access to intimate details of bodily markings, illnesses, whippings, closest relatives, attempted and successful escapes. It was overwhelming to track these men from one ledger to the next and resist the seductions of the data and descriptions the albums contained. In fact, it was frustratingly easy to succumb to the original intent of the archive: to reduce the individuals to statistics. And it was literally dizzying to shift back and forth between the four tables Ericka had assigned me, on which I had placed the three ledgers corresponding to the photos of inmates in each album. As I wheeled myself on a rolling chair from one table to the next to connect each black or brown face with the compromised details of an identity assigned to him through the categories of the ledgers, this haptic encounter forced me to encounter them through a different sensory modality in an attempt to resist the silencing effects of the serial bureaucratic grammar of the archive. It forced me to attend to the quiet frequencies of austere images that reverberate between images, statistical data, and state practices of social regulation.
-- reverberations, encountering through different sensory modalities, quiet soundings and frequencies that have been flattened out through imposed and enforced bureaucratic standardizations/violences -- figure/ground nature of such frequencies

humming as blocking out
“We no longer like to think about bureaucracy, yet it informs every aspect of our existence. It's as if, as a planetary civilization, we have decided to clap our hands over our ears and start humming whenever the topic comes up.”* (David Graeber, The Utopia of Rules, p.5)
--humming as denial

humming along
--humming along when things work, keeping things humming along, when operations and procedures being carried out experienced as working and agreeable for doing so, humming with the “utopia of rules... the regularity and predictability of bureaucratic procedures, and the routinization of force” (Graeber), happy humming bureaucrat when bereaucratic apparatus operating as should (Kafka execution machine operator), a “stable” hum of a machine executing as it should without much noticeable audible stress on the machine
--but see also humming as blocking out, humming so as not to think too much about what the procedure is actually achieving, nervous humming, pensive, willingly oblivious or from simple habit having carried out the procedure so many times
--sigh of relief after a successful negotiation through a bureaucratic encounter - sigh as contrast to humming
--my driving instructor humming songs to himself whenever i was doing something wrong during driving lessons
--humming along to music, work, etc. attunement with the rhyhtms
--physicality of humming and sound(waves) - bones in the ear, rattling of skull while humming, physical encounters with objects - humming while feet walking across the hospital corridor, while operating a physical machine/object

Elin Már Øyen Vister (http://nidacolony.lt/images/docs/February_2020/DOTT-pub-small2.pdf)
“The deep frequency of the oceanic hum is shaped by the acoustic realities it is born out of; the geology below the surface and the global weather systems. The hum enters our bodies as sonic vibrations; through our ears (unless we are hearing-impaired) and through our bones. The low frequency hum even massages our guts. Our guts are even making sound themselves. A complex, ever-changing organic hum carries potentials for healing. Mammals, such as us humans, are born into a thirty-seven degrees Celsius ocean and begin to listen to the soundscape that surround them in their mother's womb when their ears become 'ripe' around the fourth month. Their soundscape includes filtered sound from the 'outside', and inner 'noise', such as the hum of the bloodstream and their mother's digestive system, as well as the heartbeat and breath.”
--ryhthms of a bureaucracy humming, heartbeats, bloodstreams, breaths, digestions, guts... how these hums enter bodies in bureaucratic encounters and their acoustic realities
--Pauline Oliveros deep listening in relation to humming... deep humming
--“Oliveros was born in Houston, Texas, on May 30 1932. Her mother was a piano teacher and songwriter, her father a dancer. Her most vivid memories of her upbringing were acoustic --- the crackle of her father's short wave radio, birdsong in the suburban trees, the blending of her parents' voices with the hum of the engine during car journeys.”

ASMR hums
ASMR 4 bureaucrats
...

figure/ground, signal/noise: bureaucracy + breakdown
--bureaucracy and breakdown, same with writing on *black box and also infrastructural breakdown
--Graeber on bureaucracy telling no stories except when not working:
“As a corollary: in fantasy, as in heroic societies, political life is largely about the creation of stories. Narratives are embedded inside narratives; the storyline of a typical fantasy is often itself about the process of telling stories, interpreting stories, and creating material for new ones. This is in dramatic contrast with the mechanical nature of bureaucratic operations. Administrative procedures are very much not about the creation of stories; in a bureaucratic setting, stories appear when something goes wrong. When things run smoothly, there's no narrative arc of any sort at all.”
--the process of telling stories, the (non-heroic) machine designed not to tell its own stories, annotator and accountant rather than storyteller
--ground becoming figure (not quite) in extended enforced waiting or negotiation with bureaucracy
--Shahram Khosravi on waiting, being out of time with standard waiting and living times, “belatedness”, the oppressiveness of the hum that ignores and denies*

Legal situation around wood trade — An Mertens

An Mertens (An Mertens)

A collection of links that offer a start to read up on the legal situation around woodtrade.
“The EU Timber Regulation (EUTR) set out in 2013 to target companies importing timber and do something about the problem of illegal logging that rapidly destroys the world’s forests. In spite of noble intentions, the EUTR has created a lot of challenges within the European timber trade, because it’s hard to figure out exactly what it is you need to do to stay clear of trouble. (...)”
(Preferred by nature.org, continue reading in the first link)

The EU page on it:
https://ec.europa.eu/environment/forests/index_en.htm
A 'translation' of the too complicated EU regulation:
https://preferredbynature.org/newsroom/460-timber-traders-across-europe-learned-how-dodge-risk-importing-illegal-timber
The regulation measures per country & their risk assessment - every country is given a quota!
https://preferredbynature.org/sourcinghub/timber
An activist organisation doing research on specific cases:
https://eia-international.org
A fact sheet of 2009:
https://wwfeu.awsassets.panda.org/downloads/wwf_foe_poll_factsheet.pdf
Forest Europe, a platform organisation organising conferences for the 47 ministers of EU countries (46+EU):
https://foresteurope.org/
A paper from 2002:
https://www.researchgate.net/publication/265197445_Deforestation_the_timber_trade_and_illegal_logging/link/5a0b17c1a6fdccc69ed9f9a7/download

Participatory music — Temporary Bureaucracksy Collective

Temporary Bureaucracksy Collective (Temporary Bureaucracksy Collective)

A sound edit of deliberate sound contributions to online breaks improvised together in the Bureaucracksy digital environment.

Pageants and Pleasures — Brendan Howell, Caterina M, Simon Browne

Warming up to Bureaucracy;
A choreography to find pleasure in procedure.

Table Media Meditation — Francis Hunger

Francis Hunger (Francis Hunger)

June 6, 2021

Listen to your breath. Breathe in. Breathe out. Once again: Breathe in. Breathe out. Try not to control your breathing let the flow come naturally as it happens. Now call an image to your inner eye. Call it very slowly.

The image is an image of an empty table. You can think of your spreadsheet application like Excel or Google Tables or Open Office table. You may also think of the ancient table that is printed in a book. To release the energy of the day, make sure you are thinking of an empty table.

All your work today is done. You don't need to fill in anything. You don't need to fill in data, you don't have to think about table headings, you don't have to think about format, and you don't have to think about operations like summarize or sort alphabetically. You have before you in this relaxing table media meditation just an empty table. It is the end of the day. You don't need to fill the table. It can remain empty. You're just seeing a grid and the grid provides security, stability, order, borders, and overview.

Listen to your breath while your inner eye gazes over the emptiness of the table. Try to avoid thoughts of the tasks which should be recorded in the table. Avoid thinking of the processes which you usually formalize in such a table. Make sure the table in front of you stays empty. All your work today is done. All your work today has been a success. Try to get rid of negative emotions. Inside the table space everything is positive. If you observe any negative emotions, send them gracefully away, beyond the tables borders.

You can relax now. Listen to your breath. Evoke once again the image of an empty table. Enjoy its emptiness, the quiet and the rigidness of the grid. It provides security. Keep this security with you.

Thank you for being with me in this table media meditation. It ends now. Go to sleep the day is over.

Dearest <>, We Want Access! — MELT (Ren Loren Britton & Isabel Paehr)

Dearest <institution>,
I was hoping to visit the <event>, as the work of <person, group> has inspired my practice as <interest, job>. However, your website does not state if <access need>. Are you providing <access>? I hope to hear back from you soon.
Yours, <access seeker>

ACCESS SERVER is a digital arts tool that systematically disrupts an ableist status quo. Consisting of a website and email server, ACCESS SERVER provides email templates and 20€ per email to support disabled people’s access requests thereby acknowledging the labor of asking spaces and institutions for access. By collectivizing these 'individual' emails, the ACCESS SERVER transforms institutions' relationship to access. The project is an interface between disabled people who email for access to events and organizers who need information on how to reduce barriers and create access. All emails routed through the server will link to the website in the footer, and automatically cite previous access requests to the same institution. This creates care, engagement, community and networking, shared knowledge about access, and hopefully fewer barriers.

Through the ACCESS SERVER, institutions will have a wave of emails from disabled people who will have more energy resources (because they will be paid for this labor), and more sense that they are not the ‘only one asking’ (because of the compounding of requests generated by the server) to send their access requests. This email chain, and the capacity for more persistent requests will disrupt ableism as usual and require institutions and independent spaces to consider their relationship to disability access.

The ACCESS SERVER was shocked into existence during Kate Rich’s Feral Budget Generator where our 210 character abstract won 900€ by random selection. Since then we have been looking for further funding and reserved the existing budget as a fund for future access emails.

Dearest <conference organizer>,
thank you for your replies, but I think you misunderstand what I mean by <access request>. If you want me to contribute to your event, I need my <talk, workshop> to be accessible to other <disabled> people. Please consider these <resources, links>. I hope to hear back from you soon.
Yours, <access seeker>

Participatory music — Temporary Bureaucracksy Collective

Temporary Bureaucracksy Collective (Temporary Bureaucracksy Collective)

A sound edit of deliberate sound contributions to online breaks improvised together in the Bureaucracksy digital environment.

Chewing on meaning — Laura Oriol, Peter Westenberg

Laura Oriol, Peter Westenberg (Laura Oriol, Peter Westenberg)

Constant uses for its activities a set of descriptions of how working together is imagined to take place. These 'Guidelines for collaboration' are regularly updated by people in and around Constant. Before a large activity such as a work-session, the process is temporarily frozen in a stable version. In the period before the Bureaucracksy work-session, Laura Oriol worked intensively on this editing process.

The introduction paragraph to the 'Guidelines' motivates its existence: “Departing from feminisms means for Constant to be attentive to the sometimes generative, often oppressive arrangements of power, privilege and difference. We understand these arrangements to be related to gender and always to intersect with issues of for example class, race and ability. Finding ways to come to terms with the long colonial history of computation, the way technology impacts ecology, and the relations between them, deserves our ongoing attention.” And: “Even if some of the guidelines sound obvious, we have experienced that being together can be complicated. Work-sessions are intensive trans-disciplinary situations to which participants from all over the world contribute. Because of the intensity of exchanges and interactions during work-sessions, there can be moments of disagreement and discomfort. These moments need to be acknowledged and discussed, within your own limits. We have written these guidelines to think of ways to be together comfortably and attentively.”

The guidelines can be found here:
https://constantvzw.org/wefts/orientationspourcollaboration.en.html

Peter: Laura, how did you experience the process of working on the guidelines ? How was it for you to encounter the guidelines and the body of thought and discussions that come with it ? Laura: I thought it was a trustful and vulnerable gesture to give that work to an external person. To let me as an intern come in and chew on the guidelines was a gift to some extend. A gift because I felt given a task that was about caring about the relations in the group and the relations that are coming from the outside. The guidelines as I saw them had been the product of a lot of work and personal investment by many people. And then to be invited to bring in my personal view, there was trust involved. During the process of going through together with the team, discussing different elements, word choice, phrasing, I realized that people in Constant have an intimate and emotional relationship with these guidelines; something I wasn't that much aware of beforehand.

P: Did working on the guidelines influence the way you approach collaborations, working with others ? L: I had worked in groups before, but that did not involve a detailed attempt to spell out the conditions of the collaboration. But this was the first time that I worked with guidelines, in which intentions are clearly formulated. And the manipulation of language is an important part of that. Weighing words, intensively reflecting on which language to use and how. There are tensions and intentions that are interior to a group process and they surface through this text. The guidelines make space for holding on to these tensions / intentions which creates possibilities for other groups and individuals to connect to them. The fact that the history of the etherpad page is kept in versions guarantees that the differences are accessible, even when they are not entering a stable version. The evolution shows room for languages to be reworked, to be fine-tuned or to radically alter. It is an ongoing process. The guidelines are able to carry the conversations that are happening. I like this Lacan saying: “There is no such thing as communication, there is only miscommunication.” Firstly that sounds a bit sad. We never really reach each other, we never attribute the same meaning to words, we always communicate through this medium that doesn't help us to establish encounters. But I think it is actually quite beautiful, there is beauty in what could be seen as a failure to understand each other. it makes you realize that encountering comes with a lot of work.

P: How would you see the relation between a sense of comfort of being together or a shared experience of freedom that can grow in a group in relation to a document that proposes orientations, outlines and delineations such as the guidelines ? L: I am definitely a fan of freedom that is created through structure and the guidelines are doing that. I am not much in favor of assuming liberty to simply exist or that it can emerge by itself. Having no guidelines can limit a group and forms of oppression can arise without the group realizing this happening. I feel like every group needs a discussion on words, to formulate together what these words mean in a specific context. This also makes it possible to consciously change direction, to bend the course of the path that you are taking together. Words that were initially used in a group have a tendency to stick around but their meaning might change and that blocks an active re-orientation.

P: The guidelines also extend to partner organizations Constant works with. How do you think different organizational models, cultures and sizes play a role ? L: Hierarchies are part of the fabric of any organization. In larger organizations there are different kind of workers involved next to the art-workers and artistic team. The cleaning persons, the technicians. Having common intentions might prevent from harm to happen and can also be a point of reference in moments of internal conflicts. It might render possibilities to stand together as people and institution on common values. It could give a worker lower in the hierarchy a means to stand for the institution and its values in case of observed misbehavior or harassment, that can be very powerful. In this way having guidelines can be an inspiration, institutions don't have to be ruled by politics that hey do not agree with. And it is good to have instruments to counter balance misbehavior of some big shot artists you might have to work with because they bring in the money. When working with partner organizations such as Kaaitheater, it was good to see that the work on the guidelines, which is done by a very small organization together with a larger circle of connected individuals, can have an echo in larger institutions.

P: How necessary is this kind of bureaucracy, the work of noting down the process, of administering an evolution of changes in a document .. ? L: When I think of administrators, I think of applying rules that don't always relate to reality. In that sense I didn't feel like what I did as being associated with the notion of Bureaucracy. I felt more like an archaeologist, I learned about peoples lives and work and attachments.

Let me give two examples of points of contingencies in the text. On could say that they are discussions about details but it is at those points where the experienced practice of living with collectively written conditions starts shining through. In Guidelines for Collaboration version two, there was this one sentence with a strong ‘NO’: “NO (to) sexism, racism, queerphobia, ableism, ageism and other kinds of oppression.” In the version I worked on, that NO has been changed to “Refusing and deconstructing”. I proposed this change because I wanted to explicit what the “no” actually meant. In my perception, it produced a lack of invitation and it didn't reflect on what work needed to happen. It was backed by some of the team, but not by others who thought the ‘no’ marks a clear endpoint of what is acceptable and what is not. The different opinions are still there, I don't think we reached consensus. So to make this change gave way to both positions, and it didn't egalise the viewpoints. To experiment with the form in which a sentence is phrased, and to see what it means to live with a different wording for a while, is a good way to reflect on what is written. It was the most charged change in the current version. It is an example of welcoming and keeping the difference, the discomfort of living with something that you don't fully agree with.

The other part in the text I would like to point at is the sentence that was changed from: “Realizing that saying something has different meanings and consequences for everyone.” to: “Recognizing that words and ways of speaking impact people in various ways.” When I was trying to understand this sentence, people gave me different explanations. It was a nice example of meaningful miscommunication, that could be confusing for someone coming from the outside, but interesting because it could carry a bit of messiness. The fact that I am a native English speaker probably played up in wanting to opt for more specific wordings. Using “Recognize” in the sense of ‘acknowledging,’ “words and ways of speaking” instead of “saying something.” But while working with Constant for a while, and being in different group constellations with predominantly non-native English speakers, I see that English is more used as a communication language and that correctness is not the only thing that matters. And then there is translation to other languages, that has an influence as well. ‘Consequence’ is maybe more confusing than ‘impact’, but perhaps that is also fine.

untitled — \_

\_ (\_)

This is a nightmare.

It starts with a picture:

A hallway inside a modern building. There is a long white paper on the floor stretching into the distance with several columns filled with words, but they are not legible. A few people in bureaucractic clothes are standing on the side of the list. They are not touching the paper except one person further away in the hallway. Their shadows fall over the list while one of them points a mobile phone at the paper and takes a picture or maybe answers a message.

There is a caption:

"100 meter long list with the names of the 17306 people drowned in the #Mediterranean in an attempt to emigrate. The list was put on the ground so European MPs are forced to walk on it when entering parliament."

It is not a nightmare.

Facing the list. Unrolling the long, very long white paper. Reading line after line. Spending two hours with it, or as long as it takes.

Taking a picture. For later.

Walking on the list. To go somewhere else.

Voting for the reinforcement, management and security of EU's external borders.

Saying: "The ultimate goal is to sustain a safe and secure area of freedom, security and justice." Repeat.

Searching the list for people you might know. 1 result found

Thinking of the ones you don't know. 11.086 'unknown' found

Deciding how many columns the list should have, and what vocabulary to use for describing these different deaths.

add 45.000 rows

Thinking to update the caption with the latest number. 40.555

Worrying about the right number. Dying, or dying by drowning.

Wondering how to count, who counts. Who knows what happened?

Deciding to stop updating the document.

Adding names.

Always more rows, never less, never none.

Top of the list & (Human centric) frequencies — Elements and Animals, Wendy Van Wynsberghe

Often in a bureaucracktic procedure, your place on the list is of great importance, whether it goes from access to housing to getting an asylum procedure to advance. These lists sometimes get mythical and mystical properties. Do they exists? Is there the ultimate list? Can we see this list? Can we change or influence it? Melt it? As humans on the obscure side of the list we don't get access to the order. But apparently as animals, the list access is better [1]. But then, how to influence this list if you don't communicate in human frequencies? Implement the rights of nature into the constitution? [2] What does nature write?

>> text and sound are preferably read sequentially

Fragments of [1]

We analysed LIFE projects focused on animals from 1992 to 2018 and found that investment in vertebrates was six times higher than that for invertebrates (€970 versus €150 million), with birds and mammals alone accounting for 72% of species and 75% of the total budget. In relative terms, investment per species towards vertebrates has been 468 times higher than that for invertebrates. Using a trait- based approach, we show that conservation effort is primarily explained by species' popularity rather than extinction risk or body size.

Tables – Queries

We extracted information on the amount of funding allocated to various species using the LIFE projects database (https://ec.europa.eu; accessed between February and May 2020). Note that we focused here on a species-level conservation approach [9], in contrast with other more general conservation measures (such as socio- ecological approaches [15,16] and others [17]) that are only indirectly covered by LIFE projects. We first filtered LIFE projects specifically aimed at species conservation, using the query STRAND = ‘All’; YEAR = ‘All’; COUNTRY = ‘All'; THEMES = ‘Species’; SUB-THEMES = ‘Amphibians’; ‘Birds’; ‘Fish’; ‘Invertebrates’; ‘Mammals’; ‘Reptiles’. This query resulted in 819 LIFE projects that met the search criteria. A second query focused on THEMES = ‘Biodiversity issues’; SUB-THEMES = ‘Ecological coherence’; ‘Invasive species’; ‘Urban biodiversity’, which matched an additional 298 LIFE projects.

[...]
The top 30 invertebrate species, in terms of LIFE funds allocation, were coleopterans [beetles and weevils], butterflies, dragonflies, and a few molluscs (figure 1c); but this funding is miniscule, given invertebrate diversity and the current rate of declines across diverse habitats [37–39]. Even within invertebrates, the biases are notorious, with widespread, large, and/or colourful species being dominant [40]. Among vertebrates, 54% of species covered by LIFE projects were birds (accounting for 46% of the budget allocated) and 18% mammals (24% of the budget), with only 8 out of the 30 most protected vertebrate species not belonging to these two groups (figure 1c).

[...]
However, based on past investment and taking the Habitats Directive and LIFE projects as a proxy, it seems likely that a few charismatic species will receive almost all the attention in the context of species-based conservation funding. When striving to assign the status of protected area to 30% of the EU's territory and halt the documented trends in species extinction [9], especially the silent extinctions of invertebrates [38], it is essential to overcome the prevailing taxonomic [34] and other [46] biases. We, therefore, propose a roadmap for more equitable species-focused conservation investments in the next decade.

Fragments of [2]

— the politics of the rights of nature were gradually forged in Ecuador. “When we approved the rights of nature in the Constitution, this process implied a reflection on what exactly nature is,” explained ecologist Esperanza Martínez: For science it is one thing, for the indigenous people another, for law another one, and for capitalism yet another. For capitalism nature is environment: a place where one extracts resources within certain limits. The indigenous people have a distinct notion: nature is not only the ecosystem, but also spiritual beings. In the case of biological sciences, it depends from which scientific paradigm you depart: are human beings included inside nature or not? So we are not speaking about the same thing. When we decided to adopt the term Pachamama, it was foremost an act of acknowledging the wisdom of those who are so closely tied to the earth. It was also a critical act in relation to the classical notions of environment and nature.

[...]
Pachamama — usually interpreted as Madre Tierra, “Mother Earth," a mythical deity entity that is omnipresent in Andean indigenous cultures — was the chosen concept to guarantee that Amerindian cosmologies were politically represented withinconstitutional law. “If modernity has adopted a single paradigm, one single rationality, one sole model of nature,” Martínez concluded, “what we are saying is that there is not only one but many, as many as there are cultures.”

Credits:

(Human Centric) Frequencies was recorded in 2020 and 2021, somewhere in Houyet and Schaarbeek, Belgium.

[1] Towards a taxonomically unbiased European Union biodiverity strategy for 2030
https://royalsocietypublishing.org/doi/10.1098/rspb.2020.2166

Authors' contributions:

M.L.-L., N.R., R.S., S.M., and V.P. conceived the idea. N.R. mined data from LIFE projects. R.C. extracted data from IUCN and the cultural value of species. N.R., R.S., and S.M. extracted species body size from different sources. S.M. performed analyses and prepared figures. R.S. and S.M. wrote the first draft of the paper. All authors critically contributed to the writing of the paper through comment, additions, and revisions.

Competing interests
We declare we have no competing interests.

Funding
R.C. is funded by the Helsinki Institute of Sustainability Science (HELSUS) and the University of Helsinki. S.M. is supported by the European Union's Horizon 2020 research and innovation programme under grant agreement no. 882221.

Published by the Royal Society under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/, which permits unrestricted use, provided the original author and source are credited.

[2] Nonhuman Rights
Contributor: Paulo Tavares
in: Forensis: the architecture of public truth, edited by Forensic Architecture
https://www.paulotavares.net/nonhuman

Dear Hans — Lucia Palladino

Lucia Palladino (Lucia Palladino)

Lucia wrote a letter to Hans Lammerant, who presented his counter-bureaucratic peace work researching arms trade during the Bureaucracksy worksession. “Bureaucratic practices enable the state or large corporations to observe and act. Through documents and data they can track goods and people, and monitor all sorts of activities. Reason enough for kafkaian fears and suspicions. But nowadays a lot of these administrative traces and open(ed) data becomes available to everyone, turning the world into a large administrative database. This can be used to develop new forms of human rights and conflict monitoring and to create feedback into the political and legal system with independent counter-bureaucracies.”
The presentation of Hans to which this letter reacts, can be found on this link.

“Bureaucratic practices enable the state or large corporations to observe and act. Through documents and data they can track goods and people, and monitor all sorts of activities. Reason enough for kafkaian fears and suspicions. But nowadays a lot of these administrative traces and open(ed) data becomes available to everyone, turning the world into a large administrative database. This can be used to develop new forms of human rights and conflict monitoring and to create feedback into the political and legal system with independent counter-bureaucracies.”

dear hans,

this letter is a little bit for you but not only. and it is a letter but also a piece of a dream.
I am a very shy person and, if you can, take this letter as an attempt to contribute to a discourse that we try to build together into a conversation, me from the position of an alien while looking at your work for the first time, from this other planet where I come from in which even english is clumsy.

thank you very much. your work throws me into another “way” of the world. I immediately feel guilty for not being engaged in such important issues. really. and I honestly don't know anything about arms trade. nothing. and therefore I feel that I am not allowed to say anything about it because this not knowing is equivalent to not having the right to say. I should study for a long time first, over and over again. or at least this is the cultural background from which I come.

but if I linger a little longer, while I think of you, and the photos on the internet, and the tracking ... then other word-bodies and thought-bodies begin to emerge (building other structures of knowledge that I still can't name).
In chat I asked you where the informations you use come from. as your narration and reality is based on these informations, they become the elements of your hypothesis and thesis. But then I didn't know how to articulate well my own question. It was a real question, without provocation. I was trying to understand from where they come from to guess what kind of knowledge they produce. Comparing the data and observing the points where these data cross each other is thrilling. they begin to have a strong tendency to become proof of something important in "that" world. And then I start to believe you. But while listening to your story I imagine it in one dimension only. I think of the phantom zone, in superman.

I think about it, I reflect / refract, and then I fall apart.

I pick up the pieces of the mirror in which I was trapped and I start thinking about what it would mean and what it would produce comparing data from different worlds, from different dimensions and different materials. something tells me that referring to a single system of knowledge is not enough. and what does it involve to carry out an operation using data that come from the same matter, dimension and world?
and what if we compared data from different knowledge systems? what tendencies of knowledge production would these two operations have? suddenly the idea of having to deal with only one type of material of information and data makes me visualize expanses of intensive cultivation of sameness. I wonder if analyzing data concerning a single world deals with “relationships” in the world, if the world itself is made up of complexity.

I am certainly seduced when I listen to you, I believe you, and yet still, when I observe the one-dimensional image of the phantom zone, I strongly desire to enter at least one arm inside the square in flight in the universe and pass to the other side, crossing worlds.

and related to that, how much is:

a tank + a photo on the web - a flood = ?

warmly,

lucia

Participatory music — Temporary Bureaucracksy Collective

Temporary Bureaucracksy Collective (Temporary Bureaucracksy Collective)

A sound edit of deliberate sound contributions to online breaks improvised together in the Bureaucracksy digital environment.

Joint Intelligence — O.J.A.I.

O.J.A.I. (O.J.A.I.)

Prison Ordinance — Muslin Brothers

Muslin Brothers (Muslin Brothers)

Hello !

Tonight we are going to share with you a list of rules we have curated. This is a collection of prison ordinances and other regulations that outline a partial protocol of the style of incarcerated bodies. They are quoted from diverse state laws, international conventions, and specific correctional facilities. Originating from foreign languages, these articles have been translated by a language “know it all” oracle and might contain light grammar issues.

We invite you to listen to what shapes the appearance or disappearance, to envision the color, cut and choreography of overlooked bodies, wearables, spaces and objects of incarceration.

Stacking as a strategy — Elodie Mugrefya

Elodie Mugrefya (Elodie Mugrefya)

“Stacking as a strategy” is a statement my sister made as we were having a discussion on how the bureaucratic apparatus in Belgium impacts people who are considered as ‘foreigners.’ As a lawyer in Foreigners’ law, she sees the stacking as a strategy because it is a way of adding bureaucratic procedures onto bureaucratic procedures to people who are already in precarious situation. According to her, it is unclear where this tendency comes from. Whether it’s a fully conscious and intended practice from administrations and/or their workers or not, it does affect the ones having to face that system. It is interesting to see that procedures sometimes do not even follow the law; so the bureaucratic apparatus that is supposedly unmovable because of a stiffness inherited from rules and laws can sometimes bend under an undetermined pressure. After that discussion, I wrote a poem on this accumulation of strange uncountable matter that is sometimes inflexible and other times fluid. Here I’ve put this poem in discussion with my sister’s words from our discussion.


Stacks, layers, strata; aggregation of matter. Seemingly unmovable.
There used to be a provision in the general Law on the right to stay stating that foreigners’ children would inherit their parents’ rights.
A special instrument might be necessary in order to perforate its deep crust. From one angle.
Now, this provision is deleted from the law. Consequently, certain administrations have started to change their procedures.
Another instrument extracts the matter. But if you find the good angle tho.
In certain administration, and this is apparently spreading, there’s no inheritance of rights anymore. Consequently a procedure of inheritance must be started
It renders up the stacking Not especially close nor far
This is not an overtly complicated procedure but it’s an addition of procedures for people who are already dealing a lot with administrations from a very vulnerable position.
It's difficult to count anything. Some things are moving.
Because of this legal grey area, there’s more space given for administrations to decide on how to proceed.
As the limits are not very clear. Tiny elements whirling among hardness.
There is a clear tendency to complicate things for people who are ‘foreigners’ even if they are legally staying in the country.
It's dense and living Slowly growing.

Participatory music — Temporary Bureaucracksy Collective

Temporary Bureaucracksy Collective (Temporary Bureaucracksy Collective)

A sound edit of deliberate sound contributions to online breaks improvised together in the Bureaucracksy digital environment.

Open-Source Borders — Richard Wheeler

Richard Wheeler (Richard Wheeler)

In Open Source Borders for “Bureaucracksy Bed Time Stories”, I invite you to watch clips from some of these programs and answer questions about them. This may be the first time that you've had an opportunity to look at parts of the border apparatus not as a participant being controlled as you move through it, but instead as an observer. What do you see?

richardwheeler.com/open-source-borders/

Whispered Meditations on the Algorithmisation of Bureaucracies — Loup Cellard

Loup Cellard (Loup Cellard)

Introduction

The whispered meditations on the algorithmisation of bureaucracies is a collection of thoughts reflecting on the technological transformation of States taking place through a data-saturated regime of computational procedurality. The meditations are an occasion to reflect on the figure of the “algorithm” as a material technology but also as an invasive rhetorical agent spreading through bureaucracies. These thoughts take the form of: dark mantras; poetic speculations; principles for refining our analytical attention; curious statements waiting for further investigations; problematic questions and other paradoxes. The meditations interrupt the streams of massive data we are living in by forcing us to stop our thinking on dense but incomplete proposals. We invite readers to let their streams of consciousness navigate between the different meditations grouped together by themes. Alternatively, readers may also want to whisper these meditations to their partners or favorite line managers.

1. General Analytical Attention:

1.1. A bureaucratic algorithm is the complex translation, adaptation and codification of legal rules.

1.2. Be careful, a warning is breaking the loop: “human and non-human entities bring energy, warm randomness and relational contingencies”.

1.3 The bureaucratic algorithm problematically transformed qualitative attributes into quantitative measures.

1.4. Divided attributes of (non) humans create a grammar feeding the process of automation.

1.5. There is no algorithm but a tentacular infrastructure of procedurality. A data(set), an information model and an algorithm always operate together.

1.6. Mundane bureaucratic algorithms get individuated and personalised in frictions with software layers.

2. Discourses:

2.1. Seduced by the sublime metaphor of the algorithm, the Prince is locked in its own secret machinations.

2.2. The bureaucratic algorithm is a figure of rhetoric stuck in a fable and acting as a fetish.

2.3. Figuring algorithms is an attempt to reconfigure the imaginaries of systems, procedures, orders and biological recursivity.

2.4. If you are tired of endless debates about “black boxes”, feel free to click on the “reset” button at the bottom of these meditations.

3. Problematisation:

3.1. Bureaucratic algorithms act as delegates compensating the moral deficiencies of civil servants.

3.2. The bureaucratic algorithm (re)opens policy problems more than it resolves them.

3.3. It matters to know which expertises and persons are legitimized to formulate the problems and solutions to algorithmic harms.

3.4. The excess of engineering solutions to cope with algorithmic harms is a spectacle naturalising the expansion of their use in any corner of our lives.

3.5. It is with our diverse hands, tools and methods that we will be able to navigate the spaces of computational problems.

4. Organisation:

4.1. Bureaucracy is the first of all artificial intelligence.

4.2. Within and beyond a bureaucratic algorithm we find hidden bureaucrats, dismantled social groups and overlapping organisations.

4.3. The bureaucratic algorithm does not belong to public or private organisations, it is a “by-default” mechanics of ordering.

4.4. Internally, the bureaucratic algorithm is virtually too big, externally, we only see the wandering of inputs and outputs.

5. Temporality:

5.1. The bureaucratic algorithm is old but vigorous — we need to envision the State as a living archive.

5.2. Please, pay attention to the (non) recursive rhythm of this algorithm.

5.3. Surprised by all these contestations, it is difficult to know when we have to care for “black boxes”.

5.4. What needs to be made accountable is never a “thing”, but an excess of relationships coming one after another.

6. Subjectivities:

6.1. Our personal stories of bureaucratic encounters are full of grey mazes and grotesque kings.

6.2. The bureaucratic algorithm triggers many identity switchings: I am a singular citizen, a standardised user and a datafied subject filled by attributes coming from others.

6.3. The bureaucratic algorithm is haunted by computational methods of optimisation and personalisation.

6.4. Late at night — in the shadows of missing data — we are fugitives dreaming of the uncomputable.

6.5. If at this stage you do not see the algorithm, can you hear the never-ending loops of waiting room music?

*Acknowledgements: I would like to thank the participants of the Bureaucracksy work session that inspired these meditations. My gratitude to Francis Hunger (Bauhaus University, GE) who inspired me meditation 1.5. Some of these thoughts also emerged in discussions with Danny Lammerhirt (Siegen University, GE), and Michael Castelle (Warwick University, UK) especially meditation 4.1 is from him.

What is Bureaucracksy? — Sarrita Hunn

Sarrita Hunn (Sarrita Hunn)

The term “bureaucracksy” combines the French word bureau — desk or office — and the Greek word κράτος (kratos) — rule or political power — with the Old English cracian — to make an explosive noise.

Bureaucracksy is a solution to a problem, the performance of a task, or a “fix” for a group of interacting or interrelated entities (comprised of one or more people and having a particular purpose) that form a unified whole. Bureaucracksy includes the activities of setting the strategy and coordinating the efforts of its entities to accomplish its objectives through the application of available resources (such as financial, natural, technological, human and nonhuman), which is inelegant (“hacky”), or even incomprehensible, but which somehow works.

Surrounded and influenced by its environment, a bureaucracksy is described by its boundaries, structure and purpose and expressed in its functioning. People may deliberately create individual or formal bureaucracksies, but the development and function of bureaucracksy in society in general may be regarded as an instance of emergence. That is, bureaucracksies arise, develop and function in a pattern of social self-organization beyond conscious intentions of the individuals involved.

Various commentators have noted the necessity of bureaucracksies in modern society. Bureaucracksy is often used to modify a working system, to ensure backwards compatibility, and as a quick solution to a frustrating problem. Bureaucracksy explores methods for breaching defenses and exploiting weaknesses in a system or network — similar to a workaround, but quick and sometimes ugly. Accordingly, the term bears strong connotations that are favorable or pejorative, depending on the context.

Note: This definition was developed during the Bureaucracksy work-session organized by Constant in December 2020 by Sarrita Hunn and others using a process she called “(Inter)subjective Editing” which combines Uncreative Writing (Kenneth Goldsmith) and Critical Fabulations (Saidiya Hartman) with the Situationists’ method of détournement. In other words, topics are first approached from existing texts (in this case wikipedia) and then critically edited together in fabulous ways that embrace “subjective” repurposing. As described by McKenzie Wark, this “collective appropriation and modification of cultural material,” is particularly helpful towards reimagining, “the space of knowledge outside of private [intellectual] property.” (The Beach Beneath the Street, 42)

Enrolling in Bureaucracktic Bedtime Stories — Constant

Constant (Constant)

If you want to enjoy the Bureaucracktic Bedtime Stories cycle, there are several ways to subscribe:

At 20:30 CET, you will be presented one story per day, 21 days in a row. Once you have received all contributions, you will have to unregister. Unless you want to enjoy another cycle !

Subscribe before 1 june 2022, by

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