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about

compudanzas is a research project exploring alternative modes of learning and creating computation.

en español: acerca

acerca

we attempt to transition from a logic of productivity and efficiency, and circuits that destroy life, to dances, rituals, and other types of seemingly useless computers!

we move calmly, patiently, and with curiosity.

we identify with the ideas of permacomputing and computing within limits.

permacomputing

photo of the rite of computing: there is a wiggly row of shapes in the floor, each of them composed of small blocks of wood. a person is crouching, building one of these shapes. other two people are watching, sitting in the floor. there are some cardboard shapes with symbols, also in the floor.

research

the txiemonks describe our vision for the project.

txiemonks

las danzas is our main line of exploration, but we also design and develop coloring computers, and we investigate beans computing.

las danzas

coloring computers

beans computing

we love to share with others in the form of tutorials or talks and workshops.

tutorials

talks and workshops

whenever we write software, we try to do it at a low-level.

low-level

we tend to write some poetry related to these interests, and we also have a couple of more serious publications.

poetry

publications

mission

we enlarge to a human-scale and slow down to a human-speed the processes that give rise to what is understood as computing.

through our experiments we ask: what happens when computers are dances, rituals, games, instead of closed electronic boxes with a high environmental and social cost?

to what extent can we reappropriate these logics to inspire other ways of being in the world?

what can be the role of non-electronic, very slow, human-scale, and seemingly useless computers, in a world that seems to be in collapse?

collapse

are they alternative and empowering didactic materials? performances? puzzles? passtimes? magic tricks? marvelous pursuits?

performances

we see the project existing in these three dimensions:

pedagogic: can we guide others to learn in a critical and embodied way about the fundamentals of computers and digital technologies?
performative: can we play with and inspire through explorations of emerging complexity?
speculative: can we use this practice to imagine alternative present-futures?

photo of pieces of wood in the floor, with some hands manipulating them