Lori Emerson

@loriemerson

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Lori Emerson@loriemerson· 10d

I just like documenting beautiful empty swimming pools first thing in the morning set against blue sky and mountains—-

Nearly empty outdoor swimming pool with white and blue flags strung across it. A small mountain and blue sky are visible in the background.

Lori Emerson@loriemerson· 25d

this is probably the most Colorado news headline I've seen in awhile: "Stuck in one of Colorado's abandoned missile silos? This fire department will now charge $5,000 to rescue you."

"Stuck in one of Colorado's abandoned missile silos? This fire department will now charge $5,000 to rescue you."

Lori Emerson@loriemerson· Jul 8

top bits of evidence of a day in Berlin By Boot, as I've been forced to enjoy saying (by fractured foot, which is much less enjoyable to say). spending a couple hours with @chootka.bsky.social was the highlight!

two large white swans and two baby, brown-colored swans lounging on a green field. a dumpster and large, leafy green trees are in the background.

3d printed signage in dark green against a cream-colored wall. sign reads "school of machines. making & make believe."

wall covered in remnants of stickers and posters. in the center of the collage is a black and white sticker or poster that reads "I didn't see it / but / I took the photo." hand drawn image of a face with a camera strapped over its head instead of eyes. face is dripping...something...

Spree River in Berlin featuring the Bode Museum in the background and the Berlin TV tower

Lori Emerson@loriemerson· Jul 7

notes from Berlin: 1) cyclists can pass each other and pass walkers continuously here without ever having to ring a g-d bell or yell about how they’re coming up! on your left! 2) German parks are the best. That’s it. For now.

Park in central Berlin bisected by a wide gravel path with large, green, leafy trees around a meadow covered in equally bright geeen grass

Lori Emerson@loriemerson· Jun 22

tiny photodump from cleaning the @mediaarchaeology.bsky.social today: 1) Zork is cybernetics! 2) Zork is found poetry! read this on the next Open Mic night! 3) fish lips for an old web cam! and 4) "WE SELL CAPABILITIES" from 1978

photocopied page from a book that is a flowchart of different possible outcomes from ZORK I, beginning with "Smelly Room"

photocopied page from a book that is a cheatsheet for playing Zork I. there are 20 steps listed on this page, the first of which reads "/1. Climb Tree. Get Jeweled Egg."

two women posing with fish lips on the green tinted screen of an Apple IIc computer. their image is being captured by an old web cam resting on top of the monitor.

yellowed paper cover of a manual published by COMPUTERWARE SOFTWARE SERVICES that has been stapled together. this manual is for "COMPUTERWARE BASIC / A 6800 STANDARD". their slogan is "WE SELL CAPABILITIES...." and their address is 830 First Street (HWY 101) Encinitas, Calif. 92024.

Lori Emerson@loriemerson· Jun 20

@zeitkunst.bsky.social @inquiline.myatproto.social his charts and graphs are completely bananas and I LOVE them so much

caption reads "Fig. V-5. The successive packets of information presented to the auditor, either semantic (above) or esthetic (below), must be judged in comparison with his apperceptual limit (dotted line). Figure taken from Hiller’s work on this topic."

Lori Emerson@loriemerson· Jun 20

some of you not naming names could be said to be interested in music that is an "agitation of the atmospheric air" (Abraham Moles 1966) #cybernetics

caption reads: "Fig. I-2. Map of the audible area. This is a section, parallel to the L X f plane, of Its limits are infrasounds and ultrasounds, and the the repertoire of sonic elements. sensibility and saturation thresholds. Stippling indicates the areas of various common periodic phenomena; terra incognita indicates zones little or not at all explored with experimental techniques."

Lori Emerson@loriemerson· Jun 19

it's that time of year when we give the @mediaarchaeology.bsky.social a thorough clean & I stumble upon all kinds of delightful things I had forgotten about or that mysteriously materialized - herewith: an Osborne Vixen luggable from 1984, signed by Lee Felsenstein! "I worked on this!"

Osborne Vixen computer sits open on a metal wire shelf. body is dark grey with a light grey keyboard. features a double floppy disk drive.

the top of the Osborne Vixen Computer where "OSBORNE" appears and Lee Felsenstein's signature below in black marker. He wrote in all calls, "I WORKED ON THIS!"

Lori Emerson@loriemerson· Jun 18

things I learned from the L7 / Amyl and the Sniffers show last night: it is essential that one keep rocking (no matter how old or decrepit one feels).

thousands of people at an outdoor music venue under an evening sky. The stage has L7 projected onto it and a live video feed of them on the left and right sides of the stage

Shot of the stage at an outdoor music venue with live video feed of the main singer for Amyl and the Sniffers projected on the back of the stage. She has blonde feathered hair and is wearing a silver bikini top

Lori Emerson@loriemerson· Jun 16

I had the really wonderful opportunity to talk with Sara June on the Barn Raiser podcast (focused on progressive politics in rural America) and for the first time ever got to talk about my family history, especially my great grandmother Ella who was half Sisseton Wahpeton Sioux 1/4

archival document titled "RECEIPT FOR PATENT" dated Oct. 11, 1909 detailing Ella Barse's receipt of 40 acres of land. it states she is of Sisseton and Wahpeton descent.

Lori Emerson@loriemerson· Jun 3

I know very little about Lacan--but nonetheless a bit floored by this tidbit from 1954-55 #cybernetics #ai

highlighted text from a screenshot of a paragraph reads: "When people had become acquainted with thermodynamics. and asked themselves how their machine was going to.pay for itself. they left themselves out. They regarded the machine as the master regards the slave - the machine is there, somewhere else, and it works. They were forgetting only one thing. that it was they who had signed the order form."

Lori Emerson@loriemerson· Jun 3

enjoying returning to concrete poetry that completely rejects semantic content and, for the first time, thinking about it in relation to first order cybernetics notion of information: if a book or even just a page is a communication channel, what is its information capacity? (Lisa Kokin below)

sheet of mostly beige-colored handmade paper on which asemic handwriting has been stitched, creating the appearance of two pages of texts but none of which contains any semantic content

Lori Emerson@loriemerson· Jun 1

happy birthday to one of my favorite humans ever to have lived on planet earth - she would have been 52 years old today, a deep sadness only softened by my sense that she's now chuckling and cracking jokes across the cosmos

pink-tinted black and white photograph of who women sitting on a rooftop and laughing together. the woman on the left has long red hair and is smiling right at the camera while the other woman on the right has short brown hair and is laughing while looking away

Lori Emerson@loriemerson· May 30

post-run-feeling-flattened sympathy cat says “I love you even though you don’t let me murder”

Large grey and white cat with blue eyes and a pink nose laying on top of human and gazing at her and or the camera

Lori Emerson@loriemerson· May 21

HIGHLY RELATABLE (from an article on "Entropy in Thermodynamics and in Information Theory") #cybernetics

Opening a collection of papers on turbulence [9], Academician O.M. Belotserkovsky recalls that when he studied at the Physics Department of Moscow University, lectures on electricity were given by Professor S.G. Kalashnikov, who at his first lecture told the following. One day at an exam he (Kalashnikov) asked a student: “What is electricity?” The student got uneasy, fidgeted, and said: “Just yesterday I knew about it, and now I forgot.” To this, Kalashnikov remarked, sadly: “There was one person who knew, and he forgot!” The situation with entropy is about the same.

Lori Emerson@loriemerson· May 19

god bless the secretaries of yore...it took me ~15 hours to type out the 4800 word long zine @rose-alibi.bsky.social are working on and I can confirm: typing is addictive relaxing mind-numbing nearly impossibly tedious, especially typing out refs & end notes. I sure hope you all like imperfection!

screenshot of scan of page of typewritten text. text reads: "as Techniquie / The Media Archaeology Lab's
OLPC Mesh Network Project. " International Journal of Digital Humanities 1:1 (April 2019): 1-12.
Endnotes
1. Margunn Aaestad provides a useful overview of the history of proposed alternatives (such as computing
within limits, collapse
informatics, judicious digital design, and frugal innovations) to growth in computing in the chapter "Digital Degrowth:
Byond Solutionism. " These alternatives are part of Aaestad's larger argument about how environmental sustainability should become a primary goal in computing research rather than claiming that new technologies will contribute to such sustainability without acknowledging the energy and material resources necessary to produce and maintain new technologies.
2. We haxx have written separately and collectively on the history of the MAI (along with its investment in slowness, smallness, openness, cooperativity, care, and failure) in many publications over the years. See, for example, libi striegl and Lori Emerson's "Anarchive as Technique / The Media Archaeology Lab's OLPC Mesh Network Project" and Emerson's "Reclaiming the Future with 01d Media."
3. Emerson has written about the shift from open and extensible computing to blackboxed computing defined by planned obsolescence in her book Reading Writing
Interfaces."

Lori Emerson@loriemerson· May 14

we are working on another @mediaarchaeology.bsky.social zine! this one is called "How to Take a Decade to Repair a Computer (and Why You Should Too) " and it's written in the context of permacomputing, computing within limits, and degrowth 💚 hopefully ready to mail out this summer #othernetworks

Smith-Corona Electra 120 typewriters sits on a metal desk. yellow floral curtains are in the background. the typewriter has a beige and dark grey metal body and the keys are off-shit and oval-shaped. the text on the sheet of paper reads: "as lesser known or obscure computers and game consoles, one could simply say the MAL is about accessible and sustainable computing, especially when viewed in the context of the "degrowth" movement that has been underway at least since the 1970s along with more recent work on "computing within limits" as well as permacomputing."

Lori Emerson@loriemerson· May 14

I, for one, welcome the return of cute features like the SPACE-O-MATIC, CORONAMATIC, and page gage. forgive the language but fuck “smart” and “intelligent.”

Smith-Corona 2200 electric typewriter sits on a white table. Beige body and brown keyboard. An old mimeograph machine is behind the typewriter.

Lori Emerson@loriemerson· May 13

1986 is still calling - pick up!: "The Coca-Colonization of space is another way to project an ideology down to many. Deep Dish is an attempt to let many voices be heard & create something that has not been tried to date: a democratic, pluralist TV network that shows real people TV" #othernetworks

photograph of passage quoted in post. includes an illustration of satellites in order of degrees of longitude: SBS 2. Telstar 301, SBS 3, WESTAR 3, COMSTAR 3, SATCOM 4, WESTAR 2, COMSTAR 1 & 2, GALAXY 2

Lori Emerson@loriemerson· May 13

1986: "The importance of public access cannot be underestimated at a time when the communications industry...is controlled by fewer & fewer corporations. New technologies have generally served to aid the few in their efforts to dominate the distribution of information to the many." #othernetworks 💚

drawing illustrating "THE DEEP DISH PROCESS" whereby anyone can make a video tape, send it to Deep Dish TV in NYC, they "sort it", send it to an uplink facility which sends it to a satellite, the satellite sends it back to earth where it is picked up by people with dishes, public access studios can tape it and send it to the cable companies and have it shown on public access time, and finally people at home can tape it and show it when they want

cover for the "Deep Dish Directory: A Resource guide for grass roots television producers, programmers, activists and cultural workers" from 1986. dark blue background with white text and white drawings of little televisions and several satellites.

Lori Emerson@loriemerson· May 9

first and last day of the ski season for me at rowdy A-Basin spent enjoying booing at empty chair lifts and getting hit with snowballs from the suckers below, with the irreplaceable @elikaortega.bsky.social

Two women in helmets and goggles smiling in front of several snow capped mountains on a ski hill

Panorama view of Arapahoe Basin - snow capped mountains surrounding a valley below with blue ski and a few scattered clouds

Lori Emerson@loriemerson· Apr 23

next up is this incredible small, black book by Mindy Seu the size of a smartphone that turns Instagram Stories (which evolved into a live lecture-performance) into a performance script. it is a deeply moving, feminist account of the early Web that includes some painfully pointed moments 1/2

light skinned left hand holds a small black book the size of a smartphone. the only text that appears on the cover (in silver) reads "A SEXUAL HISTORY OF THE INTERNET / MINDY SEU"

a light skinned hand holds open a book containing black pages and silver-colored text. the left page indicates the time elapsed in the original performance: 03:35. the text on the right page reads, "I'm looking for my third wife, and you'd make a great option."

Lori Emerson@loriemerson· Apr 23

now the semester is almost over, I have a bit of time to dwell with the beautiful, compelling books accumulating on my desk. the next object of my admiration: Internet Phone Book / a directory for exploring the vast poetic web...almost like the hidden #othernetworks in the web itself

light skinned left hand holds up a bright yellow book titled "Internet Phone Book: a directory for exploring the vast poetic web". Issue One, 2025. features a small black pen drawing of digital devices and a plant

hand holds open a book with a page on the left dedicated to websites related to ecology. the page on the right features the black outline of a rectangle inside of which appears "Bring all your sites or make something new on glitch.com." below the text are two drawings--one of two fish connected to each other and the other of a man with a mustache wearing a chef's hat and winking as his right hand gives the sign for "ok"

Lori Emerson@loriemerson· Apr 23

what a delight to finally have a chance to read Jazmyn Crosby's beautiful addition to the #othernetworks universe: an interspecies communication operations manual! she made this gorgeous hand-bound zine as part of her residency at the @mediaarchaeology.bsky.social 💚

a light skinned human hand holds up a copy of a zine titled "Other Networks: Interspecies Communication Operations Manual" by Jazmyn Crosby. it has been created using a Risograph on cream-colored paper with a blue ink drawing of a telephone handset connected to 2 different insect-like creatures. on the left side of the front cover are a series of reddish photographic images of wire, trees, a fence, and a butterfly

Lori Emerson@loriemerson· Apr 20

this is how we do open house hours at the @mediaarchaeology.bsky.social lab

White Apple eMac and black keyboard rest on a metal desk colored in wood vinyl. A word document is open and in large text the document reads “Cooper is in the back! Down the hallway, past the library, and to the left 🙂”

Lori Emerson@loriemerson· Apr 19

and speaking of which, here's a great piece titled "AI Is Trash" from my colleague @apasek.bsky.social ---> drive.google.com/file/d/1gg9P...

"All in all, this points to a coalitional approach to anti-AI activism. Trash AI is worth naming and opposing across its multiple registers, and with the multiple constituencies that it impacts. This implies a necessarily coalitional politics, one where it’s never strategic to speak of the environmental impacts of technology without also drawing connections to struggles over working conditions, social trust, land use, racism, sexism, and colonialism."

Lori Emerson@loriemerson· Apr 13

is this what happens when Gen Xers are allowed to design toys or is this how kids are actually thinking about being a creator these days?

yellow rectangular box of legos labeled "CREATOR". depicts a pink typewriter with flowers growing out of it, made of lego. also depicts other options for the kit: a pink vase with flowers and pen and pad of paper; and pink musical instrument with a small piano keyboard

Lori Emerson@loriemerson· Apr 10

the @mediaarchaeology.bsky.social has been hosting Berlin artist Clemens Schöll for the past month - tonight he installed his incredible “Artist at Work” while talking about “the right to automation”

Silicon hand covered in white skin is attached to a 3d printer that is used to make the hands roll Instagram as if it were the human artist

Man with long brown hair and light colored skin wearing a black shirt and black pants sits at a desk covered in new and old computers. Grey carpet and gray walls. Floor lamp to the speaker’s right and a bookcase behind him

Lori Emerson@loriemerson· Apr 5

Benjamin wrote his "Theses on the Philosophy of History" in 1940, shortly before he died by suicide escaping the Nazis. Imagine, now, Hannah Arendt reading this aloud to fellow refugees fleeing the Third Reich on the ship that was smuggling them to the U.S.

picture of the 8th thesis. text reads: The tradition of the oppressed teaches us that the "state of emergency" in which we live is not the exception but the rule. We must attain to a conception of history that is in keeping with this insight. Then we shall clearly realize that it is our task to bring about a real state of emergency, and this will improve our position in the struggle against Fascism. One reason why Fascism has a chance is that in the name of progress its opponents treat it as a historical norm. The current amazement that the things we are experiencing are "still" possible in the twentieth century is not philosophical. This amazement is not the beginning of knowledge-unless it is the knowledge that the view of history which gives rise to it is untenable.

Lori Emerson@loriemerson· Apr 2

finally, Wendell Berry's standards for technological innovation--truly as relevant now as they were in 1987 #othernetworks