*No matter how difficult life may be as an “artmaker,” there’s always someone else who has it worse.<\/p>\n
*This meditation on “adversarial interoperability” is from Cory Doctorow’s “Pluralistic” list.<\/p>\n
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Today’s links<\/strong><\/p>\n * Prisoners’ Inventions: The unmissable new edition of a maker classic<\/strong><\/p>\n for a carceral nation.<\/strong><\/p>\n * This day in history: 2006, 2011, 2016, 2020<\/strong><\/p>\n * Colophon: Recent publications, upcoming\/recent appearances, current<\/strong><\/p>\n writing projects, current reading<\/strong><\/p>\n _,.-‘~’-.,__,.-‘~’-.,__,.-‘~’-.,__,.-‘~’-.,__,.-‘~’-.,_<\/strong><\/p>\n ?\ufe0f Prisoners’ Inventions<\/strong><\/p>\n 2003’s PRISONERS INVENTIONS is an underground classic, a high-stakes<\/strong><\/p>\n precursor to MAKE Magazine, combining ingenuity, adversarial<\/strong><\/p>\n interoperability, and user-centered design. After 13 years out of print,<\/strong><\/p>\n Half Letter Press published a new, expanded edition.<\/strong><\/p>\n https:\/\/halfletterpress.com\/prisoners-inventions-new-edition\/<\/a><\/strong><\/p>\n Prisoners’ Inventions was created by Angelo, a pseudonymous,<\/strong><\/p>\n long-serving incarcerated American who entered into a collaboration with<\/strong><\/p>\n the Temporary Services collective, who both published Angelo’s work and<\/strong><\/p>\n staged multiple gallery showings of his work.<\/strong><\/p>\n For these shows, museum workers followed Angelo’s finely drafted,<\/strong><\/p>\n detailed drawings and notes to recreate the inventions he’d documented,<\/strong><\/p>\n recreating his cell from the floorplans and elevations he’d supplied.<\/strong><\/p>\n The new edition documents these showings, and the absurd ways that<\/strong><\/p>\n Angelo experienced them – for example, when a guard discovered a<\/strong><\/p>\n postcard with a recreation of Angelo’s cell, he was convinced that this<\/strong><\/p>\n was evidence that someone had smuggled a digital camera into the prison.<\/strong><\/p>\n So realistic was the reproduction – so precise and faithful were<\/strong><\/p>\n Angelo’s plans – that the warden took extensive persuading to be<\/strong><\/p>\n convinced that the digital camera theory was a paranoid guard’s fantasy.<\/strong><\/p>\n The anaecdote illustrates the core attraction of PRISONERS’ INVENTIONS:<\/strong><\/p>\n not just that Angelo has a fine, expressive draftsman’s hand, nor that<\/strong><\/p>\n his accompanying text makes for an economical, shrewdly observed<\/strong><\/p>\n ethnography of the tools and their users.<\/strong><\/p>\n But rather that this ingenuity is an act of survival and resistance,<\/strong><\/p>\n created under harsh conditions where each inventor must create the tools<\/strong><\/p>\n to fashion the tools – under adversarial conditions where all-powerful<\/strong><\/p>\n enemies can smash everything and set the makers back to zero.<\/strong><\/p>\n In some regards, it’s like a for-real version of those neo-neolithic<\/strong><\/p>\n Youtubers who show how to bootstrap advanced tooling from raw materials.<\/strong><\/p>\n In others, it’s a physical version of the beloved first-person accounts<\/strong><\/p>\n of daring feats recounted in the pages of 2600.<\/strong><\/p>\n This is true adversarial interoperability – treating the environment as<\/strong><\/p>\n a puzzle and a challenge, to be deconstructed and reconfigured by<\/strong><\/p>\n toolsmiths for their users’ benefit, overcoming both user-hostile<\/strong><\/p>\n designs and policing by the original designers’ armed enforcers.<\/strong><\/p>\n Reading Angelo’s accounts of his fellow toolsmiths’ ingenuity, I was<\/strong><\/p>\n forcibly reminded of the thrill and dread I experience every time I<\/strong><\/p>\n re-read James Clavell’s debut novel, KING RAT, a fictionalized account<\/strong><\/p>\n of his incarceration in the infamous Changi death-camp.<\/strong><\/p>\n https:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/King_Rat_%28Clavell_novel%29<\/a><\/strong><\/p>\n I always lingered over Clavell’s description of the POWs’ ingenuity,<\/strong><\/p>\n from the contraband radio inside hidden water-bottle compartments that<\/strong><\/p>\n had to be clipped together when the conspirators gathered to tune into<\/strong><\/p>\n war news, or how tailors practiced their trade behind the wire.<\/strong><\/p>\n This is the true hacker mindset, the combination of playfulness, lateral<\/strong><\/p>\n thinking, user-centered design, and pitting your wits against brutal<\/strong><\/p>\n authority. It’s part of a lineage that includes classics like STEAL THIS<\/strong><\/p>\n BOOK.<\/strong><\/p>\n http:\/\/mindcontrol-research.net\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/09\/32_IV_HoffmanAbbie_StealThisBook_NewYork_PirateEditionsGrovePress_1971.pdf<\/a><\/strong><\/p>\n The illustrations in Steal This Book are strikingly similar to those in<\/strong><\/p>\n Prisoners’ Inventions, though Angelo’s prose is sharper and less<\/strong><\/p>\n self-indulgent.<\/strong><\/p>\n Equally, Prisoners’ Inventions recalls wartime pamphlets like the famous<\/strong><\/p>\n MEND AND MAKE DO, with their emphasis on thrift and finding creature<\/strong><\/p>\n comforts under conditions of indefinite hardship and privation.<\/strong><\/p>\n https:\/\/www.bl.uk\/learning\/timeline\/item106365.html<\/a><\/strong><\/p>\n Many of the inventions Angelo catalogues are about creating space for<\/strong><\/p>\n comfort out of miserable conditions. The prisoners who make<\/strong><\/p>\n greeting-card pigments by scraping ink off magazine ads and mixing it<\/strong><\/p>\n with body-lotion embrace the Mend and Make Do ethos as much as anyone.<\/strong><\/p>\n Prisoners’ Inventions deserves a spot on your shelf between your MAKE<\/strong><\/p>\n Magazines and your copy of PRISON RAMEN, a bridge between those two world.<\/strong><\/p>\n https:\/\/www.bbc.com\/news\/world-us-canada-37164279<\/a><\/strong><\/p>\n I long treasured my 2003 copy of the original. Last year, my office<\/strong><\/p>\n flooded and I lost my whole bottom shelf of books. I salvaged just two:<\/strong><\/p>\n that 2003 edition and the illustrated history of Dachau my parents gave<\/strong><\/p>\n me when we visited the camp when I was 12.<\/strong><\/p>\n Both books recorded prisoners’ resistance, the humanity of caged people<\/strong><\/p>\n in inhumane circumstances – and both do so from the perspective of the<\/strong><\/p>\n incarcerated, just as King Rat does. These are powerful stories that<\/strong><\/p>\n shaped my view of the world and are never far from my mind.<\/strong><\/p>\n As the new edition’s introduction notes, Angelo died in Dec 2016 in LA,<\/strong><\/p>\n three years after his release from more than two decades of<\/strong><\/p>\n incarceration. He was days away from his 73rd birthday.<\/strong><\/p>\n https:\/\/us6.campaign-archive.com\/?u=b8471866234ee0d53940f266d&id=ec274824dd&e=7d41a18bd2<\/a><\/strong><\/p>\n He spent his brief years of freedom watching and cataloging films he<\/strong><\/p>\n sourced from thrift stores and other secondary sources, living a quiet<\/strong><\/p>\n and mostly solitary life.<\/strong><\/p>\n The new edition is a tribute to Angelo. America continues to incarcerate<\/strong><\/p>\n more people than any nation in human history.<\/strong><\/p>\n _,.-‘~’-.,__,.-‘~’-.,__,.-‘~’-.,__,.-‘~’-.,__,.-‘~’-.,_<\/strong><\/p>\n _,.-‘~’-.,__,.-‘~’-.,__,.-‘~’-.,__,.-‘~’-.,__,.-‘~’-.,_<\/strong><\/p>\n ?\ufe0f How to get Pluralistic:<\/strong><\/p>\n Blog (no ads, tracking, or data-collection):<\/strong><\/p>\n Pluralistic.net<\/a><\/strong><\/p>\n Newsletter (no ads, tracking, or data-collection):<\/strong><\/p>\n https:\/\/pluralistic.net\/plura-list<\/a><\/strong><\/p>\n Mastodon (no ads, tracking, or data-collection):<\/strong><\/p>\n https:\/\/mamot.fr\/web\/accounts\/303320<\/a><\/strong><\/p>\n Medium (no ads, paywalled):<\/strong><\/p>\n https:\/\/doctorow.medium.com\/<\/a><\/strong><\/p>\n (Latest Medium column: “The Rent\u2019s Too Damned High,” about the long con<\/strong><\/p>\n of convincing Americans that they will grow prosperous through housing<\/strong><\/p>\n wealth, not labor rights<\/strong><\/p>\n https:\/\/doctorow.medium.com\/the-rents-too-damned-high-520f958d5ec5<\/a>)<\/strong><\/p>\n Twitter (mass-scale, unrestricted, third-party surveillance and<\/strong><\/p>\n advertising):<\/strong><\/p>\n