Abstract

Human life today is enmeshed with network organisms. What we value, the ways we talk, and the subject matter we pay attention to are all dependent on and depended upon by the networks that dominate our imagination. The internet, private social platforms, and the virtual and physical supply chains that create the hardware, software, and memetic abstractions with which we think are all examples of network organisms. Each has found a viability mechanism that permits it to survive and thrive in the present moment. Each viability mechanism creates its own unique incentives for self-perpetuation, which drive the outward appearances with which we are familiar. These incentives manifest as product forms, interface abstractions, and socially optimized beliefs and identities. To grapple with what drives the abstractions these network organisms output, this dissertation builds a worldview for seeing and making with computational networks. Computing machines are composed of abstractions, simulate abstractions, and project their abstractions onto the world. Creating in this medium requires resources that can be acquired through attention manipulation and fashion performance. The text culminates in an appendix documenting ewaste club, an art research-creation project that combines wearable cameras, supply chain inspired fashion, and disposable computers. Through a mixture of practical projects, historical analysis, and technical explanation, this dissertation proposes several new concepts linking fashion, the arts, and computation to making in the time of networks.