Remixing the Hack – Annie, Aly, Stephen
Remixing the Hack is a collaborative public art project that utilizes hacking as a method of entry point into an inaccessible text, and scales it, moving it from the classroom into public space. Our project consists of both a public art piece and a digital website. The physical installation resides in the library. The digital platform contains the theoretical basis for the project including a discussion of mirroring/windowing and the ways in which this project disrupts the hierarchy of binaries. The website also hosts the plan of action we followed and the photographic documentation of the public hack. Additionally, the website contains a synthesis and reflection on the overall process as well as an analysis of the works hacked.
The Website: http://kendrickhack.stephenjpacheco.com
Late Edit(4/26): Our Instagram is @publichack (I think you need an instagram account to view)
Works Cited:
Bishop, R.S. 1990. Mirrors, windows, and sliding glass doors. Perspectives: Choosing and Using Books for the Classroom, 6(3).
Dyer, Richard. 2005. “The Matter of Whiteness.” In White: Essays on Race and Culture. New York: Routledge.
Lamar, Kendrick. 2015. To Pimp a Butterfly. [Explicit version]. Santa Monica, CA: Aftermath Entertainment.
Sciurba, Katie. 2014. Texts as Mirrors, Texts as Windows: Black Adolescent Boys and the Complexities of Textual Relevance, 58(4), 308–316.
Tschida, Christina M., Caitlin L. Ryan & Anne Swenson Ticknor. “Building on Windows and Mirrors: Encouraging the Disruption of “Single Stories” Through Children’s Literature.” http://www.childrensliteratureassembly.org/docs/JCL-40-1-Article_Tschida.pdf
Waheed, Nayyirah. 2013. Salt. San Bernardino, California: Nayyirah Waheed.
OH MY GOSH YOUR WEBSITE IS SO PRETTY.
Put that under the “What I like category.”
But seriously, the layout is totally accessible and lovely to look at. I also like the fact that you give us the poems/lyrics to read without the hacking on them first, so we can form our own opinions of the texts if we like before going on to see how they have been hacked. One thing I will say to cover my general feeling of this project – CLEAR. Everything was very clear, organized, understandable, starting from the explanation of why you all decided to do this project. It’s very powerful. I feel like you took this thing that made people in our class very uncomfortable and rather than backing off from it you blew it open and examined its insides (to use a dissection metaphor; that’s disgusting I’m sorry).
I think I’ll combine my “what I received from this piece” and “something to think about” into one. This quote from one of your essays really struck me:
“It is critical that texts reflecting experiences of individuals who hold minority identities are infused into spaces that traditionally reflect narratives of those who hold dominant identities.”
I feel like that’s what you were doing with this project. Infusing this space with these words and what these words mean. Asking people to engage with them. Setting them in common areas, putting them where they can be seen. It’s not just a project of annotation, it’s a form of activism! (DAVIDSON NEEDS MORE ACTIVISM) Rewriting the space. Recreating the space. Asking the people in the space to think about the space. Infusing the space with the discomfort it needs to be reimagined.
That’s cool.
Hi guys-
I agree with Graham on a lot of things. The website is great! super user friendly and easy to navigate. The hacks are so beautiful and thoughtful, I’m super impressed with what students came up with and I’m proud to share a community with people like that. I think the front page could be REALLY beautiful if it just showed images of the hacked texts, and that would be a great way to get people quickly interested in your site content.
Your direction here is super clear- you state and restate it a lot throughout your framework section of the site, making all of your goals very clear to the audience. I really like when you go through all the different binaries you are trying to break.
i perceive this project as an experiment in underrepresented narratives in literature and its position in public spaces, how this changes the effect of the text and the space it is in, and how people interact with it.
In you framework section you focus a lot on the dominant reader and how the appearance of a text that is inaccessible to them in a public space and the ability to hack it affectes their experience of space and text- which is great and definitely important because it is very important for these narratives to be read and grappled with by the privileged. However a question your project raised in me was what happens when the underprivileged reader experiences a text that is accessible to them, relates to it, and hacks it in a public sphere. Is it always empowering? you touch on it a little bit, how not all readers of color will necessarily relate to a text on microagression… but definitely something worth thinking more about.
Great work guys. I really love it.
I swear, every single time I went to the Davidsoniana room (my chosen finals home) this past week and a half, I walked past your board and thought to myself (and sometimes said out loud to my friends), “This is so freakin cool and I love it so much” (and then proceeded to get inordinately stressed about my own Word Art project).
I think you’ve done an exceptional job taking and lifting our work with the Citizen hack and making it bigger, more public, and more accessible to the world at large. In fact that’s how I view this project — an exercise in accessibility. By putting this big clear whiteboard smack-dab in the middle of people’s lives, you open up the chance for people to engage, even if you’re asking people to hack texts that might be relatively inaccessible to them. As you put it, “reverse the public-private space binary and thus bring the private race discussion to a public space” — I think that was very well conceived and executed.
Like Graham and Sam, I found the website really easy to navigate. I love reading the reflection about people’s hacks and comments; I think it was great to include the notecards, and I’m curious what people wrote on them. I also really love what you had to say about the people who you saw study the board but not participate in the hacking — and I would agree that those silent relationships are still valuable, just in different ways. Honestly, just putting the board up and causing that discomfort even without people actively interacting/hacking is activist in and of itself, and worth experiencing. (Did anyone say anything on Yik Yak???)
Awesome job.
This hybrid project embodies and exemplifies the ethos that I hoped this crazy class called Word-Art might engender. Your deep reflections, both during the process and after, have generated important insights not only about words and images, but also about race, privilege, art, appropriation, and your own positions as white students in a racially fraught world.
Annie’s insight into a “failure” of the project demonstrates just how fraught the territory is that you courageously entered: even the urge to activism can entail a privilege in its “assumption that racial identity does not factor into a daily lived experience.” Yet rather than being silenced or paralyzed by guilt and self-consciousness, you forged ahead, refining your goals and heightening your awareness in ways that empowered rather than curtailed your activism. As Stephen notes, “Everything that appeared at first to be a setback turned into a learning experience and chance for both our project and ourselves to grow and become stronger.” Aly insights about the shifting leadership in various phases of the project demonstrates that the project enabled you to grow and get stronger both individually and as a team. You’ve exemplified collaboration (not only with each other but with everyone you had to meet and coordinate with, including the people who participated in your hack) in the best possible ways.
The project was thoughtfully conceived, carefully facilitated, and beautifully represented in a website that embodies your collective imaginations, intellects, and ethical engagement. I love so many things about it: the minimalist layout that allows the work to stand for itself, the intuitive navigability that allows me to move through the work on multiple paths, the lucid framing of the project with clear definitions of terms and delineations of binaries to be challenged, and the collective reflection that is an essential part of the process and product.
You have challenged yourself and the community, learned important and lasting lessons, and broken down the classroom walls and limits, and, as Graham points out, eroded the boundaries between academic inquiry and activism.