The gif is ubiquitous. And it’s a mess. A relic from the dial-up web, it was one of the first image formats on the web. It’s become an essential part of the language of online communication, and  it’s become a form of art it own right, it’s even bleeding into other forms of media (see PBS Idea’s discussion of the gif aesthetic in music videos).
Let me ask the naive question, what is a gif? How are they encoded, created, inscribed and rendered by browsers? How can can they be taken apart? How can they be made?

Kittler claims “we do not speak language, but language speaks us – and we have to participate in such systems of language, which are not of our own making. [… T]he practices of language [take] place in the switches and relays, software and hardware, protocols and circuits of which our technical systems are made”. (Parikka 70)

To study the gif, I’ve chosen to approach it both as an engineering project as well as a scholarly one. I want to make a tool to study gifs. Consider Latour’s comments about engineers:

Engineers constantly shift out characters in other spaces and other times, devise positions for human and nonhuman users, break down competences that they then redistribute to many different actants, build complicate narrative programs and sub-programs that are evaluated and judged. (Johnson 309)

The building of this program (or any program) is to engage with this kind of engineering. The engineer conceptualizes actors, spaces, interactions – and then invites the user to participate in that system. Specifically, this tool is an attempt at a kind of media archaeology. I’m interested in cracking video open, and rendering manifest its inner workings.

[M]edia-archaeological theories are interested in going ‘under the hood’ to investigate the material diagrammatics and technologies of how culture is being mediatically stored and transmitted. (Parikka 65)

There are a number of tools that are readily available for creating and viewing gifs. Some even run in the browser (giphy), and many image and video-editing programs can export as gifs (Photoshop, GIMP). If my interest was in simply making a short, embeddable, looping video – these would serve me well.
However, I’m interested in going under the hood, and that means I’m going to have to step away from platforms. It’s not going to be enough to use a set of tools that were developed outside of academia. After all, there are a number of free and open tools that encourage exactly this kind of study.

In relation to our discussion of doors, consider the lock. Specifically, digital locks: DRM. How are we going to do scholarship on media if we are alienated from the tools that produce and embed that media?
Here’s a list of the tools I’m using, along with their licenses:
– Programming: emacs, the text editor whose role in the development of free software is important (Richard Stallman founded the Free Software movement in the wake of a dispute over who owned it). It uses the GPL-3.0 License
– Operating system: linux which uses the GPL-2.0
– Version control: git which also uses GPL-2.0
– Programming language – Lua uses the MIT license
– Framework (for graphics rendering): love uses the zlib/libpng license
– video encoding/decoding – FFmpeg – which exists in a legal gray area (it can decode so many proprietary video formats)

Why the attention to licenses? For one, there is an incredible range of diversity in software licenses. Some of the licenses above are more permissive than others. Particularly, the GPL-3 license requires that if any part of it is used in another program, that other program must also be licensed under the GPL-3. It has been described as virus-like:

In the views of Richard Stallman, Mundie’s metaphor of a “virus” is wrong as software under the GPL does not “attack” or “infect” other software. Stallman believes that comparing the GPL to a virus is an extremely unfriendly thing to say, and that a better metaphor for software under the GPL would be a spider plant: If one takes a piece of it and puts it somewhere else, it grows there too. (Wikipedia)

By using free software, it becomes much easier to “inscribe the act of investigation into the critical work”. (Drucker) Not only because of the way free software licenses resist DRM, but also in that they encourage the kind of remixing and disassembly that’s essential to the critical project:

“When we call software ‘free,’ we mean that it respects the users’ essential freedoms: the freedom to run it, to study and change it, and to redistribute copies with or without changes. […] In a world of digital sounds, images, and words, free software becomes increasingly essential for freedom in general. (FSF)

All of the above software is free.
With a set of tools that I felt were adequately open, here were my guiding principles:

• the practical :: design a simple interface for exploring and creating looping video
• the scholarly :: document the design methodology

So let’s begin.

Once I have a video, I can use ffprobe (a command line tool that’s part of the FFmpeg project)
to get the frame count, frames per second, and resolution of the video. The first step in extracting frames from a video is to choose the time in the video to export frames from.

“We need to be doing user interface design” (Drucker)
To choose the time, I began with a simple slider. The indicator shows the time in seconds:

After selecting a time in the video to load, the program exports ten seconds of frames into png files. The image data from those files is then loaded into the program, where I can display it.
This is a good example of one of the difficulties in trying to program something that uses different processes simultaneously:
I needed to export individual frames from the source video (external process: FFmpeg)
As well as import each of those frames’ image data (internal process: love)
Modern computers have multiple processing units that can be assigned specific tasks (threads). I like the imagery of the word. It gestures towards the origins of computing as a form of weaving (Jaquard looms). By exporting video in one thread, and importing them in another I allowed the program to continue exporting frames while it simultaneously imported the image data.
With the image data accessible to the program, the next step is to navigate through those images. There were two modes of navigation I wanted to implement:
looping playback – the black marker shows the position of the playback
mouse navigation – when the cursor is over the timeline, the frame follows the cursor
this gif illustrates both:

Now that I can navigate through the video, I need to be able to create a loop. A loop necessitates two points in time, so how can I demarcate them and the space between them? There are all kinds of conceptual problems that I ran into here. To enumerate some of them:
What happens when the second point is moved before the first
How to designate which marker is selected when two are overlapping?
Which marker is moved when the timeline is clicked?
I decided to introduce the concept of selection, so that when the timeline is clicked, two markers are created: one on the location that was clicked, and the other is selected and dragged with the mouse until it’s clicked again at another location and the loop is completed.
I’ve illustrated it here:

This last step was difficult, particularly because it meant that each step of creating the loop markers and designating the loop playback period meant a conversion between three axes:
– position of the markers on the timeline (pixels)
– position of the frame in the loop (frames per pixel)
– position of the frame in time (frames per second)
The math is relatively simple to convert from one axis to another, but I found it difficult to juggle the abstractions well enough to put them in relation to each other.

“The easier something is to use, the more work to produce it” (Drucker 34:05)
I felt it keenly in developing this program. I built it around an extremely simple use case, and yet I found it impossible to reason about this object without invoking very specific notions of space and time.
If there’s some trace of a knowledge model in how I approached this project, it’s probably the following: there is an ecology of software. An ecology in the sense that Jane Bennett describes in her discussion of Spinoza’s natura naturans: “a materiality that is always in the process of reinventing itself”.
There’s no guarantee that any of the tools I used to build this project will continue to be maintained – or that they will continue to work with eachother. That’s the nature of software development, it’s in constant reinvention.
There’s plenty more to be with this project:
– make it compatible with OSX and Windows
– create an interface for selecting a source file
– extract, loop and export audio
I feel as though I’ve only just scratched the surface of the this media – and I’m aware that there’s probably not much interest in the programmatic side of the project, nevertheless, I’ve put a link up to the program here, where it will be updated as I continue to work on it.
The hidden cost of free software is learning how to use it. Knowing how to learn new software is a privilege, that’s why I feel it’s so necessary for scholars in the digital humanities to be open about their interface design methodologies.

Works Cited

Bennett, Jane. “The Force of Things: Steps toward an Ecology of Matter.” Political Theory 32.3 (2004): 347-72. Print.

Drucker, Johanna. “Digital Humanities from Speculative to Skeptical.” Concordia University, Montreal. 9 Oct. 2015. Web. <http://www.mediahistoryresearch.com/digital-humanities-from-speculative-to-skeptical/>.

“The Free Software Definition – GNU Project – Free Software Foundation (FSF).” The GNU Operating System. N.p., n.d. Web. 21 Oct. 2015.

Johnson, Jim. “Mixing Humans and Nonhumans Together: The Sociology of a Door-Closer.” Social Problems 35.3 (1988): 298-310. Print.

Parikka, Jussi. What Is Media Archaeology? Cambridge, UK: Polity, 2012. Print.

“Overwhelming and Collective Murder.” YouTube. YouTube, n.d. Web. 21 Oct. 2015. <https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ze9-ARjL-ZA>.

“GNU General Public License.” Https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/GNU_General_Public_License#cite_note-114. N.p., n.d. Web. 21 Oct. 2015.

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Death Grips’ is a difficult music group to describe but many like to call them an “experimental hip hop group”, a category seemingly contrived for a group that resists classification through their mixing of different genres. Although the assignation of a genre is sometimes reductive, the “experimental” part is apt for describing the expansive nature of Death Grips’ approach to building an artistic identity that reflects their engagement with different types of media and internet culture. Their website thirdworlds.net hosts self-made videos, graphics, links to their social media, remixes and many of their albums available for free download. The latter has gotten them into trouble when dealing with traditional band management and music distribution. Since their formation Death Grips have often made their music available to fans free of cost, encouraging them to make use of the raw material of their albums for remixing. This broadened their audience but also complicated matters when they signed with Sony subsidiary Epic Records. Death Grips’ mode of self fashioning as an “open collaboration with the world”[1] didn’t mesh well with a traditional model of music distribution and their fraught relationship with Epic came to a breaking point when they leaked their third album ahead of its release date for free. Not only was the album free but Death Grips placed it under Creative Commons CC by 3.0 which means that the album is free to circulate, remix or even sell by anyone. Needless to say, this led to Death Grips being dropped by the label. However a peculiar part of the story occurred before this break, when an Alternate Reality Game allegedly authored by Death Grips appeared on the internet. What emerged from the union of ARGs and Death Grips is a network of connections that implicates media, music, gaming, cultural technique, art and agency.

In August 2012 Death Grips were completing their anticipated third album. Fans on 4chan’s music forum discovered a mysterious post by an anonymous user. A picture of Death Grips front man MC Ride was posted, accompanied by a link to an encrypted archive file on the TOR network. This was the entry point for a five day trip down the rabbit hole[2] of the Death Grips version of an Alternate Reality Game (ARG). Interested players decrypted the first file which contained an image and a text file, both of which contained coded messages, upon solving these more clues were communicated by an unknown mediator. The knowledge base required to move forward in the game was extensive, including ciphers, various codes (Braille, Morse) and navigating through different browsers and websites. There was even some telephone tag involved. Players communicated their findings, speculations and strategies on the /mu/ forum and tried to determine if the “Event” of October 23 presaged by the mediator was the release of Death Grips’ third album or something more. The game ended with more of a whimper than a bang when the instrumentals for Death Grips’ second album The Money Store were released without further clues or communication. Players were left wondering if the game even had any direct link to Death Grips although the release of previously unavailable music would suggest they had a hand in it.[3]

Death Grips “Guillotine (It goes Ya)”

The Death Grips ARG is takes its cue from existing ARGs in terms of tone, but differs in that it has less of a narrative thread. One of the most successful ARGs called The Beast had this enigmatic quality but still centered around the narrative of a murder mystery. Players themselves may have no particular intent of becoming story tellers but each code cracked by a player unlocks another clue and contributes to the advancement of the plot. One of the reasons why The Beast is still recognized as one of the best ARGs is because the number and skill of the players was such that they were able to get a step ahead of the narrative. These contingencies may also be unaccounted for by the games creators and puppet masters who lay the foundations for the game but may also have to adapt to the direction the game takes by altering the plot. It’s from these moments of narrative swerve that the game takes on a life of its own, that “the symbolic is incorporated into the real.”[4] The game operates on this “hive mind”[5] principle, which is mirrored in Sebastian Vehlken’s elegant analysis of swarm as cultural technique: “Collectives possess certain abilities that are lacking in their component parts. Whereas an individual member of a swarm commands only a limited understanding of its environment, the collective as a whole is able to adapt nearly flawlessly to the changing conditions of its surroundings.”[6] The mobilization of the players through technique makes categories of agency and authorship more diffuse. Players and game creators work together as story-builders. No one has absolute authority over the narrative of the game; rather the narrative is generated by the minute actions and reactions of encoding and decoding between groups. It’s a narrative mode that blurs the distinctions between author and audience, right down to the techniques used. A player may not know how to tell a story but by picking up a phone call or reading code they advance or complicate the story.

Can an ARG be art? If all art can be said to operate and be constituted by a series of operations, than what are the distinctions that elevate other forms of art such as literature and film above hacking, coding and gaming? Siegert discusses the traditional conception of culture as class and text based and looking at techniques and operations as a way to usurp the “sovereignty of the book”.[7] Why is writing text imbued with a spiritual essence that is seen to be lacking in the signs and codes associated with science and mathematics? Kramer and Bredekamp suggest a perceived unintelligibility in formulaic text, “Language surrenders its symbolic power in its pact with numbers and becomes a quasi-diabolic technique.”[8] For Death Grips, the spiritual and symbolic is strengthened and invoked through the technical and non-discursive. As artists they are interested in resisting the relegation of their work to music, calling themselves a “conceptual art project anchored by sound.”[9]Perhaps this is why an ARG appealed to them as a method to connect with their listeners and involve them in the construction of their project. The alternate reality component demonstrates a dialectical relationship with reality. The appeal of an alternate reality game is that operates from both a willful immersion in the fictive elements of the game and a real life component that allows them to physically interact with the game like a letter, text message or taking a call from a public phone. Players have a saying “TINAG”[10] or “This is not a game” a suspension of disbelief that we would employ while reading a novel and a concept that implicitly acknowledges the artifice of technique in its very utterance. The instances where the game crosses into the physical space incites a contemplation and examination of what we take to be reality.[11]

One of the interesting aspects of ARG gaming is the power dynamics involved between player, creator and game. Players react to each new development or clue but they each play a crucial part in advancing the game without much room for evaluation or understanding the ends of the game. In discussing Bourdieu’s concept of ‘habitus’ Sterne suggests the fascistic undertone inherent in organized physical movement in things like marching drills and dances. Although not as extreme, ARGs involve a similar kind of inexorable movement that demands to be enacted before players can fully comprehend what they are participating in. There is a certain disturbing element to this process of creation which moves relentlessly forward, generating itself from repetitive technique. The game is created through what Siegert refers to as “processual”[12]definition. It reproduces itself in game play. So who has agency in this particular field? Who controls the game and to what ends? What kinds of capital influence the game? Although ARGs are touted for their creative, collective approach to social organization and problem solving as well as an integration of art and science, their popularity makes them subject to commodification. McDonalds is one of the latest to recognize a money-making trend and try to capitalize on it with their own ARG. In the case of Death Grips, a group that seemingly cares so little about capital they give their product away it is tempting to see them as rebellious dissemblers of an outdated system. This system has already been fractured by the change in the listening habits of the consumer as the physical interaction with music changes from analog to digital. Although we listen to music we may not see a physical copy of an album anymore or even pay for it. Death Grips could be seen as a wrench in the network of organized actions required to sell records. Rather than fight the current state of music consumption, they adopted the hacker role by releasing their music freely and exposing the limitations of the music by turning the subculture on themselves, getting fans to use their decoding skills to participate in the promotion of their album.

View post on imgur.com

But is this really a subversive technique if it is used for the purposes of marketing? Is this simple appropriation of internet subcultures for an aesthetic or can it be an innovative example of cultural technique that complicates the ‘habitus’ of the music industry and contributes to Death Grips’ claim to artistic integrity? In the case of Death Grips the ARG is part of their aesthetic, but also a marketing tool for their music which targets an audience that belongs to this hacker subculture. Does this appropriation of cultural technique undermine the subversive spirit of hacking? Bourdieu’s concept of ‘habitus’ is described by Sterne as “embodied belief” somewhere between objective and subjective. [13] This is how ARGs as cultural technique operate. When we operate in non-discursive ways does the irresistible forward movement of performing a series of operations limit occasions for critical perspective? Agency? Is it paranoia? Or is it real?

[1] Zach Hill, Pitchfork interview.

[2] Unfiction.com

[3] http://img6.imageshack.us/img6/6638/deathgripsnolovedeepweb.png

[4] Siegert, 60

[5] Volroth, 8

[6] Vehlken, 111

[7] Siegert, 57

[8] Kramer, Bredekamp, 22

[9] http://pitchfork.com/news/55781-death-grips-break-up/

[10] Unfiction.com

[11] Siegert, 62

[12] Siegert, 60

[13] Sterne, 375

References

“Glossary” Unfiction.com Alternate Reality Gaming. Unfiction.com, 2011. Web. 5 Oct 2015.

“Death Grips No Love Deep Web ARG.” Imageshack. Imageshack. Web. 5 Oct 2015.

Berhard, Siegert. “Cultural Techniques: Or the End of the Intellectual Postwar Era in German Media Theory.” Theory, Culture and Society. 30.6 (2013): 48-65. Sage Publishing. Web. 5 Oct 2015.

Clifford, Stephanie. “An Online Game so Mysterious its Famous Sponsor is Hidden.” The New York Times. The New York Times Company, 1 April 2008. Web. 10 Oct 2015.

Death Grips. “Lord of the Game (ft. Mexican Girl).” Exmilitary. Death Grips, 2011. Mp3.

Death Grips. “Guillotine (It goes Ya).” Online music video. Youtube. Youtube, 26 Apr. 2011. Web. 12 Oct 2015.

Hill, Zach. Interview by Jenn Pelly. Pitchfork. Pitchfork Media, 2012. Web. Oct. 6 2015.

Kim, Jeffrey Y., Allen, Jonathan P., Lee, Elan. “Alternate Reality Gaming.” Communications of the ACM. 51.2 (2008): 36-42. ACM Digital Library. Web. 5 Oct 2015.

Kramer, Sybille and Horst Bredekamp. “Culture, Technology, Cultural Techniques- Moving Beyond Text.” Theory, Culture and Society. 30.6 (2013): 20-29. Sage Publishing. Web. 6 Oct 2015.

Larson, Jeremy D. “Turns out you can make money off of Death Grips’ new album NO LOVE DEEP WEB.” Consequence of Sound. Consequence of Sound, 3 Oct 2012. Web. 8 Oct 2015.

Minsker, Evan. “Death Grips Breaks Up.” Pitchfork. Pitchfork Media, 2 July 2014. Web. 5 Oct 2015.

Pocketsonswole. “Birds=Beck??” Reddit.com. Reddit Inc. Web. 12 Oct. 2015.

Sterne, Jonathan. “Bordieu, Technique and Technology.” Cultural Studies. 17.3/4 (2003): 367-389. Routledge Taylor and Francis Group. Web. 5 Oct 2015.

Vehlken, Sebastian. “Zootechnologies: Swarming as Cultural Technique.” Theory Culture and Society. 30.6 (2013): 110-131. Sage Publishing. Web. 5 Oct 2015.

Vollrath, Chad. “Mimetic Totem, Mimetic Taboo: Adorno’s Theory Of Mimetic Experience And Alternate Reality Gaming.” Conference Papers — International Communication Association (2008): 1-29. Communication & Mass Media Complete. Web. 13 Oct. 2015.

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What is ASMR? The neologism is just beginning to creep into contemporary jargon. The first Reddit thread referencing it appeared four years ago and posed this innocuous question — “who else gets this? [head orgasms?]”. For those unfamilar with the ambiguous acronym, it stands for autonomous sensory meridian response, a pleasurable physiological reaction provoked by certain stimuli (common triggers include whispering and tapping, among others). Colloquially, the response is often referred to as “tingles.” While ASMR-related data is highly anecdotal and peer-reviewed research is just beginning to emerge (one article thus far, with more in progress), the community of “ASMRtists” is ever-growing, a bevvy of YouTube moguls whose homemade videos have one goal — to virtually induce this pleasurable, “tingly” brain-bliss in the viewer.

(It’s recommended to watch these videos with headphones to preserve the sound quality.)

One of the most popular ASMRtists, GentleWhispering – this video has over 12 million views. 

Within the last few years, ASMR has gained more widespread momentum and the practice of inducing it has emerged as a viable cultural technique. Traditional media has run exposés like this Atlantic article — “How To Have A Brain Orgasm.” Comedian Russell Brand gained ASMR some global notoriety when he examined the phenomenon, asking, “Is ASMR Just Female Porn? ” There is a distinct language which associates its pleasure with sex and therefore a touch of taboo or illicitness, leading to the colloquialism “braingasm.”

Perhaps a more suggestive ASMR video, as it features kissing sounds. Pretty sure it’s still considered SFW, though I’d imagine your coworkers might look at you awkwardly…

Of course, there is a voyeuristic aspect to watching a video designed to make you feel good. I felt both uneasy and fascinated the first time I viewed one. It reminded me of a Kurt Vonnegut short story, “Welcome to the Monkey House,” in which attractive young women soothe volunteers into willing death. Still, as far as I know, no one has died from inducing ASMR thus far, and many of its artists emphasize an association with the world of sci-fi, using outerworldly theming, 3D sound and 360-degree technology in their videos for immersive experiences. For the most part, ASMR techniques are used to ease anxiety or before sleeping, with 98% of users watching “to relax,” 82% “to sleep,” and only 5% “for sexual stimulation” (Barratt & Davis).

A 360-degree ASMR video with a sci-fi narrative

As Siegert notes, cultural techniques “precede the media concepts they generate” (58), ie. the act of writing predates an organized alphabet. Similarly, the term ASMR “was not coined until 2010 and the biology underlying ASMR has probably existed for millennia” (ASMRuniversity.com). Though Seigert points out the reductionism inherent in Macho’s distinctions between “first-order” and “second-order” techniques, ASMR does perform the act of self-reference or thematizing — like this video on how to make an “ear-tickling” ASMR video.

This particular video is also useful in determining the methodologies of the ASMR technique. The process is always enmeshed with technology — binaural microphones, cameras, and computers are vital in order to create a video containing these “triggers.” This kind of interdependence echoes the “‘always already,’ an ontological entanglement of human and non-human” (Siegert 55). And of course, the platform of YouTube plays a fundamental role. One ASMRtist, Claire Tolan, explained in an interview:

“The role of the ASMRtist and the viewer is defined by the allowances of the YouTube interface. There have been some attempts to create ASMR forums outside of YouTube. These exist but they always kind of fade out.”

The algorithms of YouTube constantly adjusting the rankings of ASMR videos (for example, “suggesting” videos to suitable users, or increasing the artist’s search ranking position). The ASMRtists are aware of the algorithm’s role in their success— the most successful ones use titles and descriptions optimized with keywords like “help sleeping”, “de-stress,” etc. They link to other channels, cultivate subscribers and constantly update their content to prove they’re active. YouTube, conversely, is dependent on both these video creators and their audiences to continue data input — they work in symbiosis, a kind of example of the “ontic operations” Siegert names as generators of cultural techniques. And, because the process is dependent on so many non-human components, the technique/technology lines are blurry.

A German media studies scholar, Geoghegan Bernard Dionysius, writes,

“Every cultural technique (Kulturtechnik) tends towards becoming a cultural technology (Kulturtechnik). Where English sharply distinguishes and opposes these meanings, colloquial German designates their intimate and ontologically elusive conjunction” (69).

I liked this quote because sometimes I find it difficult to conceptualize the distinctions between technique/technology, particularly in cases like this when ASMR videos function as both a technology to induce ASMR and yet as a technique, formed of many different variables, in which the technology is only one component.

There’s also the question of the relative “newness” of ASMR and how it could be researched or legitimized in an academic sense. Dr. Tom Stafford of the University of Sheffield posed some doubts about this in this article:

“It might well be a real thing, but it’s inherently difficult to research. The inner experience is the point of a lot of psychological investigation, but when you’ve got something like this that you can’t see or feel, and it doesn’t happen for everyone, it falls into a blind spot. It’s like synaesthesia – for years it was a myth, then in the 1990s people came up with a reliable way of measuring it.”

So, how can ASMR be measured for validity’s sake? In an interview regarding media cultures, Jussi Parikka speaks of the “questioned notions of the temporality of media culture; instead of a linear, progressive time of media, does it follow cycles or other modes of repetition?” In consideration of Parikka’s question, we can examine the tendencies towards emerging research in ASMR via analytical data. Certainly, some aspects of web analytics appear stripped of temporality (ie. number of subscribers or shares as a measurement of how many people engage with it) but a lot of it is still dependent on a traditional linear narrative, as you can see in the screenshot below. There’s also a variance in how effectiveness can be measured — for example, a human perspective may privilege the physiological reaction provoked from watching, but the inner workings of the YouTube platform would determine ASMR’s “success” very differently in terms of the number of users it drives within the platform, the number of video uploads it receives, etc. Is there a definitive measure of its effectiveness?

Do these statistics mean that ASMR is “real?”

Krämer and Bredekamp make an analogy of calculus which can extend similarly to ASMR practice; they note that the “aesthetic produces and constitutes these kind of ‘objects’ at the moment of their visualization in the first place” — a technique “feeding” a concept into the register of sensory perception (26). In this sense, the ASMR video can be an object/actor which serves as a focal introductory point to enlightening the body’s physiological capabilities for this, while promoting ongoing growth of a lexicon to accompany the technique.

I found Bourdieu’s comments on the body to be useful in analysis of ASMR as well. Bourdieu’s theories of habitus account that “our ways of ‘being in our bodies’ are also socially conditioned” (Sterne 376), with “a certain kind of physicality and social memory to it” (381). The ASMRtists of YouTube appear very similar — at least, the ones with the most subscribers do. I can’t see any published research on it, but scrolling through the YouTube archives, there appears to be one common ASMRtist archetype. ASMRtist Claire Tolan elaborates:

 “In terms of gender roles: the videos are often made by young women . . . the role of the caregiver is so often a feminine role . . . this too-perfect care is not often done but it can be done. Care that is not tethered to any reality . . . “

In terms of social conditioning of the body, the feminine-caretaker trope is a tired one, but it raises the question: what bodies are we conditioned to respond to as “soothing” or “relaxing?” The top-subscribed ASMRtists aren’t a great representation of racial diversity, either, as discussed in this Reddit thread. In this offshoot of YouTube, something so niche and particular, it appears larger social problem-patterns are still influential. Though artists outside this archetype exist, they didn’t surface for me until I kept scrolling for a bit, and they don’t have as many subscribers overall.

Other questions I developed throughout this probe were:

• What other ontic operations played a role in the development of ASMR as technique?
• How can the connotations of “weirdness” re: these videos be examined? Is it connected to a kind of posthuman angst, or is it the very humanity of the central ASMRtists that causes some to feel uncomfortable?
• How will the technique change as its technology changes? If ASMR videos utilized a non-human-generated voice and face, would they gain as many fans? (Until Siri sounds a little less monotone, I’d have to guess not.)

Works Cited

[header image credit: PotLuckBrigand/ Deviantart.com]

ASMRUniversity. “The History of ASMR.” asmruniversity.com. ASMR University, 2014. Web. 11 Oct 2015.

Barratt, Emma L. & Nick J. Davis. “Autonomous Sensory Meridian Response (ASMR): A flow-like mental state.” PeerJ 3:e851 (2015). Web. 11 Oct 2015.

Beck, Julie. “How to Have a ‘Brain Orgasm.'” theatlantic.com. The Atlantic Monthly Group, 16 Dec 2013. Web. 11 Oct 2015.

Brand, Russell. “Is ASMR Just Female Porn?” russellbrand.com. The Trews Ep. 298, 14 April 2015. Web. 11 Oct 2015.

Bredekamp, Horst & Sybille Krämer. “Culture, Technology, Cultural Techniques – Moving Beyond Text.” Theory, Culture & Society 30.2 (2013): 20-29. Web. 16 Oct 2013.

Geoghegan, Bernard Dionysius. “After Kittler: On the Cultural Techniques of Recent German Media Theory.” Theory, Culture and Society 30.6 (2013): 66-82. Web. 11 Oct 2015.

Hugill, Alison. “An Interview with the ASMRtist: Claire Tolan.” berlinartlink.com. Berlin Art Link Productions, 14 July 2015. Web. 11 Oct 2015.

Marsden, Rhodri. “‘Maria spends 20 minutes folding towels:’ Why millions are mesmerized by ASMR videos.” independent.co.uk, 21 July 2012. Web. 11 Oct 2015.

Parikka, Jussi & Garnet Hertz. “CTheory Interview: Archeologies of Media Art.” Resetting Theory 20.0 (2010). Web. 11 Oct 2015.

Siegert, Bernhard. “Cultural Techniques: Or the End of the Intellectual Postwar Era in German Media Theory.” Theory, Culture & Society 30.6 (2013): 48-65. Web.

Sterne, Jonathan. “Bourdieu, Technique and Technology.” Cultural Studies 17.3/4 (2003): 367-389. Web.

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If I can access the human genome, does that make me a scientist? An analysis of scientific tools using the theory of cultural technique to understand how they structure social relations within a network.

Bioinformatics: A Technique Developed to Produce Knowledge

Science is a highly dynamic field of knowledge production. Every so often new technologies emerge that change the conditions necessary to produce knowledge and allow for great advances in our collective understanding. When the International Human Genome Sequencing Consortium (IHGS) published the first of the human reference genome in 2001, they fundamentally changed the field of biology. Through the comprehensive assemblage (map) they produced, scientists were able to demonstrate that the human genome contains only around 20,500 genes, which was much lower than the estimated 60,000 to 140,000 genes (NIH 2015). This meant that contrary to scientific belief, genes were not the source of organismal complexity. This realization forced them to consider that the key to “the Book of Life” might not lie in the genes themselves, but in what was referred to as “junk” DNA, the highly repetitive non-coding sequences of the human genome. In just a few years, the focus of genetic research shifted away from identifying genes to determining the elements that influence gene expression (the epigenome, the proteome, protein modifications, siRNA and other non-coding DNA elements).

As fundamental as this realization was for scientists, the completion of the Human Genome Project would not have been possible without computational analysis. In 1990, when scientists first attempted to sequence the genome in full, they were still using the laborious technique of cloning small sections of genetic code and inserting them into bacterial life forms. At the time, it was only possible to sequence short stretches of DNA using analogic methods. In order to sequence the three billion base pairs of the entire genome, it was necessary to use other techniques. While the project was publicly funded, it wasn’t until Celera, a private company, involved itself in the race for the human genome that computational analysis was used in sequencing techniques. Celera’s CEO, Craig Venter, had invented a new technique of DNA sequencing called “whole genome shotgun sequencing” that sequenced fragments of the entire genome simultaneously and used bioinformatics to reconstruct the sequence. While other sequencing technologies have since been developed, bioinformatics has remained central to the process of data assemblage and analysis.

Since the entire draft of the human genome was published in Nature over ten years ago, app developers have continued to produce platforms that enable users to browse the entire human genome free of charge. Genome browsers “intertextualize” assemblages of the human genome by displaying the different assemblages on tracks that can be configured by the end user. As a product of bioinformatics and the digital age of information sharing, genome browsers allow users to search the genome using gene location and map coordinates and to import their own sequences to compare their objects of study with previously identified genetic elements and their known functions. The use of genome browsers to analyze biological data has become a central practice of molecular biologists in identifying new genes and biological mechanisms.

The Cultural Technique of Genome Browsers: A Question of Accessibility

One way to consider how scientific tools shape social practice, according to the German theories of cultural technique, is to consider the history and development of the object as I have done. Genome browsers were developed in the wake of the Human Genome Project as a method of data analysis. Because of this, discourses of accessibility that emerged during genome mapping are applicable to processes that analyze the maps.

“Essentially, cultural techniques are conceived as operative chains that precede the media concepts they generate.” (Siegert 58)

Discourses of universal accessibility to the information produced by the publicly-funded project were strengthened by the UNESCO declaration in 1997 on the Human Genome and Human Rights. In a press release in 2001, the phrase “The information has been given away freely to the world—a vast and unique gift to celebrate the commonality of humankind” was used by the Sanger Institute, one of the 16 centres that formed the IHGS (Thomson 2001). In 1999, a scientist discussing the Human Genome Project within the context of a course wrote “To be valuable to society, genetic information must be available to all people in need of such information” (Boehm 1999).

In the same vein, the genome browser developed by the University of California-Santa Cruz (UCSC genome browser, 2002) is freely accessible online for educational purposes, and apps like GeneWall developed by Wobblebase, Inc. (2015) and Human Genome by Florence Haseltine (2012) are free to download. But is access the same as accessibility?

These genome browsers come in two flavors: research-oriented, like the UCSC genome browser, and user-friendly, like GeneWall. While these platforms are structurally similar, there are important differences in their infrastructure that determine their intended audience and user accessibility to database information.

UCSC Genome Browser showing the RB1 gene on Chromosome 13.

The UCSC genome browser (pictured above) was developed much earlier than GeneWall’s and is the interface of choice in molecular biology labs. The interface’s native settings allows users to view a region on the genome that spans 26 assemblage tracks. The website allows sequence search and comparison (through tools BLAT) and allow users to navigate and customize the viewing of assembly sequences, mRNA transcripts and other organisms easily and quickly. However, navigating the database is complicated by the lack of explanation and presupposes users have a certain degree of biological literacy.

GeneWall app displaying the Rb1 gene on chromosome 13.

I have described GeneWall as more “user-friendly” because its interface, the iPad, allows users to navigate the assemblages using finger-swipe gestures. With a minimalist and uncluttered design, the descriptive elements for genes and other DNA elements are accessible by tapping on their mapped position. However, the system is in its infancy and is not as well connected to other tools like the UCSC browser. Another limitation of GeneWall is that its structure is centred around already a limited number of sequenced genes with determined functions, as opposed to displaying an array of mapped assemblages to allow users to infer the structure of the mapped region through juxtaposed elements. This user-friendly system also places limitations on the user’s potential production of scientific knowledge by focusing on the biological questions of the Human Genome Project era.

The Cultural Technique of Genome Browsers: A Tool to Limit User Access

These objects are structured to act as “gate-keepers” for scientific knowledge. By limiting the object’s users to “those with biological training” or limiting their databases to established forms of knowledge, developers of genome browsers are restricting the field that produces scientific knowledge. In this sense, the gatekeeping activity of these platforms confers authority to those with scientific training. In “The Growth of Medical Authority,” Paul Starr describes gatekeeping as the basis for professionalization: “The basis of modern professionalism has to be reconstructed around the claim to technical competence, gained through standardized training and evaluation” (475). This is made clear when you consider the access to content in MyGenome, developed by Illumina, a private biotech company: users are readily provided with an example genome, but Illumina will only release their personal sequence to the ordering physician. Despite all the rhetoric of the genome as human heritage that should be readily available, the truth is you can’t access your own genome until it’s been explained to you.

“Technologies are associated with habits and practices, sometimes crystallizing them and sometimes promoting them. They are structured by human practices so that they may in turn promote human practices.” (Sterne 376)

When I began reading media articles written by developers, I realized that they were defining access around infrastructures rather than the information they contain. They view genomics as a “niche product in large part used in and promoted by academia” (Kaganovich 2015) and instead are interested in developing “a wide variety of health and well-being apps and platforms that will be able to do things like connect variants to environmental, lifestyle, dietary, and activity-related factors, guiding both sick and healthy people towards a fundamental quality of life” (Menon 2015). Developers are interested in genomics that can be analyzed and marketed to the consumer without the need for the scientist. They see the future of genome browsers not as scientific tools but as gateways to personalized medicine.

Cultural Technique: A Method of Mapping the Actor-Network

Genome browsers were developed to allow users to access the human reference genome so that scientific knowledge would be advanced through data sharing. However, the limitations placed on users by the system infrastructures only allow users to interact with the information pre-determined by developers.

“When we speak of cultural techniques, therefore, we envisage a more or less complex actor network that comprises technological objects as well as the operative chains they are part of and that configure or constitute them.” (Siegert 58)

In this probe, in order to understand how genome browsers function as cultural techniques, I considered these tools within the context of their development to map the network of actors who interact with them. Actor-developers design these platforms with structures that control and limit the end-users’ possible interactions. This limiting aspect, that I have examined under the guise of “access” and “accessibility,” lends authority to a restricted group of end users who are able to obtain the platform’s information. This example illustrates the mechanisms of a cycle of knowledge production, within which objects are shaped by agent-developers to perform certain cultural actions and in turn shape agent-users by limiting access to information.

Works Cited

Boehm, David. “Applications and Issues of the Human Genome Project.” Plsc 431/631 Intermediate Genetics, ndsu.edu. web. 1999.
Kaganovich, Mark. “Genomics Needs a Killer App.” Crunch Network, techcrunch.com. web. March 27, 2015.
Menon, Prakash. “Coming Soon: An API for the human genome.” Health, venturebeat.com. web. June 27, 2015.
NIH. “An Overview of the Human Genome Project.” National Human Genome Research Institute. web. June 29, 2015.
Siegert, Bernhard. “Cultural Techniques: Or the End of the Intellectual Postwar Era in German Media Theory.” Theory, Culture & Society 30(6) 2013: 48-65.
Starr, Paul. “The Growth of Medical Authority.” Perspectives in Medical Sociology, 4th edition. Ed. Brown P. Long Grove, IL: Waveland Press, pp. 475-482.
Sterne, Jonathan. “Bourdieu, Technique and Technology.” Cultural Studies 17(3/4) 2003: 367-389.
Thomson, Mark. “The first draft of the Book of Humankind has been read.” Wellcome Trust Sanger Institute, sanger.ac.uk. web. June 26, 2001.

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