Conclusion/Introduction

Finished the MRes.
Now something different.

Stolen from me

There's questions of intention in my work.

Last week, my laptop, with the majority of my research contained within it, was stolen from my flat.
Luckily I had contents insurance, and therefore now I am typing this on my lovely new replacement.

(It's pearly white, as opposed to my previous one which was black. I have since christened it: The Stig.)

Anyway.

We* live in a world defined by a logic of the binary. On or off. 1 or 0.
As such, we are commonly faced with the decision of either saving something, or not saving something.

This 'not saving' option also takes up a binary position. Do we actively 'delete' something, or do we passively 'forget' about it.

Have our computers taken that passive ability away from us however? Most of my application save things automatically, no intent needed on my part.
But then my laptop was stolen.

Various things had been backed up to the cloud, yes. But a lot wasn't. And as such a lot of faded away. Countless PDF's and notes, most of which I've now ironically forgotten.

Some of my work has all but been deleted, without my consent.

This is just a stream of consciousness now.

What is the difference between actively deleting and passively forgetting? Surely if we are aware of the passively forgetting, then it becomes active. We choose to forget. Therefore then, if we are not aware of the passive forgetting, how does it matter? What I don't know, I don't know.


Is there a 3rd way? A form of digital erasure that is neither active deletion or passive forgetting. Instead, an act of creative endeavour, that aims to not analyse what does not remain, but rather what does remain.

*Disclaimer: It is incredibly lazy to use the generic pronoun of 'we'. Who is we? Is the writer speaking on behalf of the reader? How is the writer aware of the nature of the reader?
I should really clarify that when I use 'we' in this article, I mean those (of us) who live in a world where digital interactions are quite prolific.

Save the world

One line of code at a time.

Show as trailer. Trailer as show.

I have an idea of a film trailer for a theatre production.

Trailers for theatre shows are stupid anyway because no one really watches them and they never give a good indication for the show anyway.

But what if there was a trailer that was actually the show?
As in, its an hour long, intercut with 'starring by' and 'directed by' frames, but over the course of an hour.
And the show is cut apart like a trailer anyway. It doesn't offer much narrative exporation, and concentrates on the exciting bits, or the funny bits. The best jokes are always in the trailer anyway.

And this theatre show has to actually have never been able to happen anyway. In one 'scene' we cut to two characters watching the audience and gasping and laughing at all the best bits like a fail compilation. One asks for some popcorn to enjoy it more and a huge bucket of popcorn falls from the ceiling and the the character catches it. Popcorn falls everywhere thought and makes a huge mess.

Cut to 'starring BLAH BLAH BLAH'

Cut back to the stage and all the popcorn is gone but instead the stage now has a huge castle built out of cardboard in the back and the two characters are fighting like macbeth and macduff.

And so on.

The stage is consistent. The same.
Everything else changes from cut to cut.
It's an hour long, advertising a show that if it were to be live would take days, if not weeks to really construct.

The show never exists, of course. It doesn't need to.

The art of description is replaced with the accuracy of photography and video—more exact, less compelling.

B: So
C: Little
B: Red
C: Riding
B: Hood
C: Went to see her granny
C/B: Full stop
B: Granny lived in the forest
C/B: Full stop
C: And the young girl was scared
C/B: Shit-less hyphen
B: Because of the wolves
C/B: Ahhh full stop
C: When she got to the cottage
B: Granny was still in bed
C/B: Question mark
C: And Granny looked
B: Dif
C: Er
B:Ren
C/B: T open quotation marks
C: What big ears you have
B: Granny
C: All the better to hear you with
C/B: Comma
B: My dear
C: What big eyes you have
B: Granny
C: All the better to see you with
C/B: Comma
B: My dear
C: What big teeth you have
B: Granny
C: All the better to eat you with
C/B: CAPITAL LETTERS
B: MY DEAR
C/B: Close quotation marks
New Bit
C And the wolf jumped at the girl and sunk his yellow teeth into her body full stop
B Grad
C du
B aly comma
 C he began to swallow the little girl
B Bit by
C bit
B colon
C Head
B and shoulder
C knees and toes comma
B Knees and toes til there was nothing left
C dot dot dot
B but here’s the thing little red riding hood’s dad suddenly turned up
C Exclamation mark
B Thank the lord and all his angels
C And he saw the bulge in grandma’s tummy
B Open inverted commas You having a baby grandma question mark close inverted commas
C Open inverted comma yes my dear twins close inverted commas
B But dad knew knew he was the wolf and taking his axe he skillfully opened the animal’s tummy and the little girl popped out and her granny too full stop
C They were a bit smelly like old fish in a bin but they were happy comma
B like very happy and everything was alright and
C Okey
B dokey
C and hunky
B dory and fine
C and dandy


And the wolf stole away dot dot dot dot dot dot dot

L And
And
And where do I begin?
There was a man; Bluebeard.
He had had many wives.
And they had disappeared. One by one. And no one knew where or how or why.
Now Bluebeard wanted another wife.
So he invited Stella, as she was called, to a party
It was in his fine castle overlooking the sea. It had many splendid rooms
And Stella was curious….
As the party got under way, Bluebeard started to drink his favourite wine made from his favourite grapes.
And when he danced his heavy dance
He dropped his hat
And Stella picked it up.
In the lining of the hat she found a key.
When Bluebeard got drunker
Stella decided to take a look around the castle
And to try out the key.
It fitted the very first door she came to
She turned the lock and looked up
There -on the ceiling -she saw four wives with pale skins
Hanging from hooks.
In her shock she dropped the key
Onto the bloody floor
She picked it up and put it back into the hat
And returned quickly to the party.
Bluebeard welcomed her, kissed her, took the hat and put it on.
But a drop of blood from the key ran down his cheek and plop… into his glass.
He gulped the bloody drink and smiled at his new wife…
B Full stop
C No. Dot dot dot
They leave to walk to the back position. Leah stays looking forward
B Or question mark. Like (mysteriously) Question mark Dot dot dot.
C Don’t question me.
B Don’t stop me
L As I was saying – He drank the bloody wine. But -as we all know -blood and alcohol do not mix –particularly in the stomach of an ogre. The drink becomes an acid. It burns and eats away at all the vital organs. And so Bluebeard fell to the ground in perfect agony. He was dead.
All FULL STOP!
…And Stella lived happily ever after; and opened a small café on the sea front.
C And we went there just yesterday
B we did.
C Took the table by the window.
B I had a chelsea bun and you had a generous portion of
B/C bakewell tart.
B She had a marvellous selection of beverages. I chose the Camomille with spearmint whereas you stuck to
C Darjeeling
B As always

'Reverse Hangman'

The post below is a literature review that I finished in November last year. It was used to document my current reading and ideas around my research topic.

The reason I have taken so long to post it, is because it doesn't function as a simple read-only document.

When you press a letter key on your keyboard (apologies mobile users, this won't work with you) the corresponding letter will disappear from the document. At least mostly. If it doesn't disappear completely then do it again. Sometimes it won't work at all to be honest. Sometimes it will freeze. But most of the time it completely removes that character from the page.

Go try.

I've attempted to make a programme that could delete itself in a particular way. Many thanks to my friends James Fawkes and Jack Anstey for helping me achieve it.

The process was driven by the question, 'how do we perform deletion?'

I wrote that question a while back, and still haven't answered it fully. I probably won't be able to.
The way the document below functions, is one attempt to explore it though.

Tangent: The way I used 'we' in the question troubled me. Who is 'we'? Was I hoping to speak on behalf of all civilisation? Western civilisation? British people? Plymouthians? My peers?
I could never assume to speak on behalf of anyone else, thus I saw it fit to make my programme interactive. I can't say how 'you' will interact with the document, but whilst exploring it yourself, you might observe how you delete it. 'How do we perform deletion?' became 'how can I facilitate an exploration of performing deletion?'.

The programme deletes in a (almost) precise and complete way. When a letter is pressed, it disappears. It can't be undone. You can't delete the deletion.
Except when you refresh the page. Which returns the document back to its original state and you must start again.

What does this mean? The ability to refresh everything and all of your deletion work is deleted, and all of my academic work is restored.

Does this mean that you are truly deleting? Or are you simply creating a different document, that looks very similar to my document, except without any W's? or S's? Or A's? And then when refresh is pressed, all of the hard work is deleted via restoration?

Is that the case with all digital documents perhaps? Once something is clicked or pressed or typed, can it ever be removed? If a code is typed in the internet but no one sees it does it ever exist. An impossible question I suppose.


The document used was chosen for a specific reason. It was my first piece written for my current degree and exists as a piece of work thats intention is to both let others know what I am attempting to store as my own knowledge as well as providing a handy reference point for myself, to look back on and remember what I know.
The document has only ever existed in a digital format. If that means anything. It also doesn't just exist on this blog. It's on www.jackanstey.co.uk/ConorMRes and my computer and my USB stick and on the university's sites. All roughly the same code. Aside from the deletion aspect of course.

This document was made for, and exists, in an academic context. Academia, by its nature, is about remembering.

Does this document, perchance, subvert that? Does it now (with the deletion aspect) function as more or less stable, or complete?

Food for thought. For me.


EDIT: I've figured out why pressing 'b' or 'r' makes it go a little haywire.
In order to input a break in between all of the paragraphs, there is a little bit of hidden code that looks like this: <br>
This stands for break.
When 'r' is pressed, that becomes <b> which makes everything bold!
When 'b' is pressed after that, it becomes <>, which then stops being a piece of invisible code, and is visible in the document.