Liudan Wang's Personal Reflection

Week 2: Creating and Hosting a Website

📝 Pre-Class Preparation

Before the workshop, I prepared by exploring the basics of web hosting and file management. My goals were:

• Researching FTP: I watched tutorials on how File Transfer Protocol works to understand how files move from local to server.
• Environment Setup: I installed Visual Studio Code and FileZilla on my laptop to ensure I was ready for the practical tasks.
• Initial Doubts: I was curious about how the 'public_html' folder differs from a regular folder on my desktop.

This week's workshop, 'Creating and Hosting a Website,' was a key starting point for my practical learning. It helped me move from just learning code to actually publishing a website online.

Key Learnings and Deployment:

• My biggest learning was definitely mastering the publishing pipeline. I successfully activated my `leedsnewmedia.net` hosting account and learned how to use SFTP (like FileZilla).
• This tool acts as a bridge, linking my computer files to the public `public_html` folder on the remote server.

Code Practice and Standards:

• Regarding the code itself, I focused on basic HTML structure. I practiced semantic organization by using correct heading levels (H1, H2, etc.).
• I also learned the simple but vital step of using the <link> tag to connect my HTML file with an external CSS stylesheet.

Insights and Conclusion:

At the beginning, setting up the FTP connection and making sure all file paths were exactly right was a bit confusing. But the feeling of success when I saw my simple page live online for the first time was huge.

Overall, the main lesson this week is clear: a website must be not only written well but also successfully uploaded and stable. This project has immediately changed from just homework into the start of my continuous online portfolio, which I will use to show my digital media skills over the course.

Week 4: Data, Ethics, and Critical Practice

This week’s course shifted our focus from coding and content publishing to data itself—specifically, how to design and examine the data collection process from a critical perspective.

Shifting Perspectives: World-Building and Quantification

Our group task was to design a survey based on a commercial scenario. The exercise taught me that data collection is never neutral; we had to constantly align our questions with the "commercial goal" of developing new products. The challenge of quantifying subjective experiences (like 'discipline' or 'frequency of use') revealed how platforms and social systems often "reduce the complexity of human life into finite, measurable categories" for marketing or control purposes.

• Understanding "World-Building": As emphasized in the course, designing a survey is an act of "world-building". Thinking in this outcome-oriented way was more challenging than simply writing code.
• Limits of Data Collection: The requirement to use numerical variables highlighted the "inherent limitations and potential biases" built into any attempt to quantify complex human behavior.

Key Insight: The Responsibility of Data Design

In summary, Week 4 marked a significant shift from a "technical mindset" to a "data mindset". We didn’t just learn how to design a survey—more importantly, we learned that data collection is a "critical and ethically responsible practice". Every piece of data recorded reflects the purpose and perspective of the collector, emphasizing the need for "fairness and transparency" in data design and its subsequent use in social systems and platform development.

Sample Survey Questions:

1. What level of education are you in right now? (Single choice: High school, Undergraduate, Graduate student, Others)
2. What's your discipline?
3. How often do you need to create websites for your studies or projects?(Scale: Very often, Sometimes, Rarely, Never)

Week 6: Identity, Algorithms, and Data

This week, the course explored the crucial concept of "algorithmic identity" and the mechanisms platforms use to categorize us. The goal was to move beyond simply using digital platforms to critically investigate how these systems understand and constrain our online actions.

Data Profile: Input and Output Analysis (Citing Gillespie and Cheney-Lippold)

The discussion reinforced "Gillespie's (2014)" definition of algorithms as procedures that select what is "most relevant from a corpus of data composed of traces of our activities." This data collection feeds a dynamic and fluid "algorithmic identity" (Cheney-Lippold, 2017).

• Input Investigation: I investigated my own data settings on a chosen social media platform, highlighting that platforms prioritize quantifiable activities and networks, often *not counting* complex non-conforming behaviors.
• Output Analysis: By examining my Google and social media ad profiles, I observed the 'output' of these algorithms. These categories, while intended to personalize advertising, often felt simplified or inaccurate, emphasizing the 'black box' problem—the processing logic remains hidden.

Deconstructing the Process: Manual Scraping and Limits

To try and understand the 'black box,' we undertook a practical exercise based on David Sumpter’s method. This involved a form of "manual scraping".

• The Task: I manually categorized 15 recent posts from 32 friends on a platform. The process immediately highlighted the "subjectivity and limits of data analysis". I faced challenges in assigning complex posts to only one category and realized that the initial categories were insufficient for capturing friends' diverse identities.
• Societal Insight: This exercise revealed how easily nuanced online behavior is "flattened into simple categories" for consumption and control, providing insight into the mechanisms behind modern "surveillance capitalism" and social sorting systems.

Conclusion: Data and Responsibility

Overall, Week 6 marked a necessary shift to the "political, social, and ethical implications" of algorithms. The most powerful takeaway is that our online identity is not static; it is constantly being shaped by the algorithmic classifications that condition our digital experiences. As digital media students, we must understand the mechanics of this 'world-building' and the responsibility that comes with interpreting or designing data processes.

Week 8: Digital Ecologies in Practice - Sensing More-than-Human Relations

This workshop provided a unique field practice at Kirkgate Market, guiding us beyond the digital screen to use our senses and digital tools to explore the "entanglements of human-food ecologies". The core aim was to understand how "Digital Ecologies" and our tools mediate our perception of the "more-than-human" world.

1. Entanglement of Senses and Digital Mediation

We practiced sensing the market with our bodies and capturing the environment with our phones (camera, recorder). This practice highlighted how digital technology shapes our experience:

• Digital Focus: My attention was primarily drawn to capturing "visually perfect" food items or the "textual information" on packaging (e.g., origin, brand). This demonstrates how digital tools inherently favor visual and textual data, often silencing other senses.
• Sensory Shaping: As shown in Figure 2, I noticed the "warm yellow lighting" in the bakery was used to evoke feelings of warmth and appetite (visual design). While my phone captured the color, it could not record the heat or smell of the baked goods. This confirms "Davies et al.'s (2024)" argument that digitization amplifies certain senses while suppressing others.
• Embodied Entanglement: The entire market experience was not isolated. It was an entangled process where "me", my phone, the food, the light, the sound, and the ambient scent were all interconnected, forming a holistic ecological experience.

2. Uncovering More-than-Human Narratives and Inequity

By asking critical questions like "Where are these foods from? Who picked them?" I was forced to consider the complex more-than-human relations behind the food and the systemic flows of power.

• The Power of Data on the Package: The clear "origin information" (e.g., "From Africa") on the packaging is commercially designed and selectively presented data. The "unrecorded information" (e.g., labor conditions of pickers, carbon footprint of transport) is often intentionally hidden. This links back to the "data gaps and power asymmetry" discussed in Weeks 4 and 6.
• Artistic Intervention: Observing the spice installations, I reflected on "Bellet & Morgan's (2024)" methodology: how digital and artistic practices can be used to repair the human-food relationships simplified by commerce, fostering recognition of "multispecies entanglements".

3. Conclusion and Digital Media Responsibility

Week 8 significantly expanded my critical practice horizon. It serves as a reminder that as digital media students, our tools (cameras, recording apps, design software) are not just for creating content; they are "powerful mediators" that shape how we perceive and understand the world.

Our responsibility is to "critically employ these tools" to capture the simplified or overlooked sensory details and non-human narratives, thereby revealing the "systemic inequalities" hidden behind market, food, and technology.

Week 10: Interactive Narratives and Ergodic Authorship

This workshop introduced "Interactive Narratives" using Twine, focusing on how digital media enables non-linear storytelling. The session centered on the concept of "Cybertext" (Aarseth, 1997) and "Ergodic Literature", where the reader's "nontrivial effort" actively shapes the story's progress and outcome.

1. Deconstructing Ergodic Literature

By completing sample Twine stories (like "Space Frog"), I analyzed how procedural authorship fundamentally differs from traditional linear narrative.

• Procedural Authorship: The original author (Murray, 1997) acts as the "choreographer", setting the context, rhythms, and possible steps. The reader, however, becomes the "improviser", making choices that define a unique performance within the system.
• Medium as Message: The power of "Cybertext" lies in its mechanical organization, where "hyperlinks and non-linear connections" are integral to the meaning. The number of choices available and the structural complexity (decision trees) directly control the reader's perceived agency.

2. Practical Creation with Twine

The group task required us to create our own interactive narrative about the Kirkgate Market visit (Week 8) using Twine, which formalized the theoretical concepts into practice.

• Engineering Narrative Flow: Planning the story structure required a decision tree template to plot multiple passages and ensure every interaction led to a clear (and sometimes surprising) destination. This exposed the technical difficulty of managing "non-linear complexity" without creating broken paths.
• Digital Storytelling Techniques: We implemented mandatory elements (ten passages, two fonts, one image) to learn Twine's basic functionalities for visual and structural variation. This demonstrated how simple "hyperlinks" become the primary mechanical tool for conveying meaning and allowing the 'reader' to traverse the text.

3. Conclusion: The Digital Author's Responsibility

Week 10 underscored the unique role of the digital author. Our responsibility extends beyond just writing compelling content; we must also procedurally choreograph the entire experience. This means:

• Anticipating Interaction: Designing the system to anticipate every possible choice the interactor might make.
• Ethical Pathing: Being aware that the narrative structure (the architecture of the possibilities) has ethical implications, controlling what information the reader receives and what consequences their choices bear.