SoP 2024 PILL Grantees

[summerofprotocols]

Introducing the PILL SoP 2024 application cohort. Congratulations!

General Track

PILL pitch: "The Mycomancers" Webcomic

This webcomic explores the possibility of mimicking natural phenomena to create a decentralized governance protocol. It follows the journey of a galactic archeology team who discovers the ancient remnants of a highly advanced alien civilization. This civilization left their planet a long time ago, but they left behind records and other information regarding how their society was designed. The aliens in question were known to worship deities resembling fungus, a common form of life on their plan…

PILL: Renotations (or, a musical alternative interpretations kit)

Another post here states that “The history of IT is a history of decoupling,” and arguably, a similar trend was characteristic of mid-century Western art music composition, especially evident in the increased parametric approach to sound qualities by serialist composers (e.g. Pierre Boulez, Karlheinz Stockhausen) and a subsequent generation of musicians applying these principles to performative gesture (for one modern example, Wieland Hoban’s “when the panting STARTS”, a piano work with a stave …

Eternal Forest Protocol

Can a mature forest be reverse engineered? Can its growth be planned from scratch? Accelerated at a hyper-natural rate to a self-sustaining escape velocity? In Japan there are different protocols for growing forests. Some, like the Miyawaki method, aim to produce a simulacrum of a mature forest in a handful of years. In contrast, a 200-year plan underlines the design of the Meiji Jingu forest in Tokyo’s center. Millennia-old shrine forests across the Japanese archipelago serve as reference point…

The Persistence of AI-Mediated Protocols

Protocol PILL RFC 100 word high-concept pitch: In the near future, AI relentlessly optimizes human and AI-agent interactions, weaving strange protocols into the fabric of our lives. Initially perplexing, these protocols soon prove uncannily effective, seamlessly integrating into every facet of human experience. As their influence grows, becoming indelible in the collective consciousness, AI-mediated protocols begin permeating the physical world, reshaping our material culture in profound and u…

Pill: Let's meet on the deep web & tell each other secrets (a tiny game)

Let’s meet on the deep web and tell each other secrets is a tiny browser-based game about intimacy, trust, and establishing connection while being anonymous. The game will tell the story of a person crossing an ocean to meet a stranger, where a player can choose to be either seeking or offering connection. The narrative and choices a player can make will borrow their structure from the way secure rendezvous points are established in the Tor relay system, which support anonymous hosting and view…

PILL: FutureRack

The 19” rack format, first pioneered in 1922, is a ubiquitous protocol for mounting telecom, audio/visual and IT equipment. Devices of varied shapes and sizes fit within racks which may be mounted on walls or on wheels, carried in portable cases by musicians and soldiers, and organized in rows inside our data centers. Advertisements from a fictional manufacturer of rack adapters will aim to amuse online IT and audio engineering communities by illustrating new construction techniques to utilize …

Pill: psa 2.0

The Protocols Don’t Build Pyramids inspired me to think about the amount of protocols that a city has that are badly designed at the very least and that are, above all, not fully leveraging their amazing potential to create more and better outcomes through them. “protocols can be understood as infrastructure plus behavior” I loved this idea and it made me think on how to “hack” some existing protocols to propose a change in behavior to better use such infrastructure and make people living in th…

Meme-Made Protocols: Innovating Community Interactions

We’re reshaping interaction and learning for the digital age. Dive into our exploration of how memes can revolutionize our learning and research community. Can we envision a community of culture and technology communication based on memes? Can we amplify the impact of such meme-based communication? Can new dialogues be generated among participants through memes? Is it possible to create a language or a dialogue protocol based on memes? Our initiative will test the deployment of 100 memes acro…

PILL Pitch: Liquid Democracy Short Story "Liquidity"

This proposal is for a short story that explores the dynamics and tradeoffs of liquid democracy. Liquid democracy is a protocol where voters can delegate their vote to someone they trust, which can then be re-delegated onward. The story focuses on an enthusiastic but naive high-schooler who, after giving a passionate speech on an upcoming ballot proposition, is delegated thousands of votes from her classmates and neighbors. Her delegated votes earn her an invite to a ritzy junket on the topic, …

City of Moveable Feasts

High concept: The author, an anthropologist, visits a city that is run by prediction markets. Every spring, the citizens of the city place their bets on what industry and purpose the city should orient itself toward. Once a direction is picked, all the protocols that run the city shift towards fulfilling that purpose. This re-orientation of protocols happens over six weeks, and it has come to be known as The Moveable Feast. The author is in the city to observe and write about this phenomenon. S…

PILL: Below the API, a short story

Pitch: Marcie is a creative entrepreneur building her dream business selling pottery from her garage studio. She’s got only one problem: she has no customers. So when she wakes up one morning to more than 1000 orders from her craft art shop, she thinks her life has turned around. But when a new law requires her “fans” to disclose their identities as AI agents, Marcie finds herself stumbling deeper and deeper into a commercial underworld run by AI agents with the autonomy — and credit cards — to…

PILL: Feral protocols for science (game engine animation)

What does protocol look like when the laboratories of the future are no longer contained within sanitized architectural spaces, but are growing out in the wild landscape? Whether it’s synthetic biology experiments or geoengineering climate practices, the boundary between the lab and landscape is dissolving. We are bringing experimental studies back into the wild, and we have to. Using a mix of Unreal Engine and (limited use of) AI, I want to make a short non-linear animation about feral protoco…

PILL: Memories of Us - A Short Story

Memories of Us I want to write a short story that explores the role of a memory gardener/librarian as a steward of the protocols and social norms that constrain and enable the inscription, orientation and experience of memory. The story will focus on memories attached/bound to physical reality, for example locations or physical objects. It will also look at the processes of memory creation and remembrance, with a focus on shared, participatory memories rather than those only held by individuals.…

PILL: Protocol Canon Minisite

It let me remember The Network State Dashboard, which previously listed 20 network states and is now open for submission and voting to recommend. I also want to find the 10 protocols that need to be popularized the most, we can find the list together.

Pill: Protocol with uncommunicables

The goal of this program is to design a game to study and explore ways to coordinate and make protocol with incommunicables. The object of the game - irrational, uncommunicative, and troubling to you Game process: During the game process, through the guidance of options, try to let the player coordinate with all non-communication things through the way of making protocol. The options used in the game are researched and appropriated based on existing protocols. Let the player learn how to draft…

GCC Track

PILL: Co-learning protocol: An open-source facilitation framework of collective learning

Learning is ubiquitous in ongoing activity, though often unrecognized as such. ——Jean Lave Our aim is to establish a comprehensive “Co-learning Protocol”, which integrates theoretical research from the field of social pedagogy with practical organizational experiences from the past two years. This open-source protocol will primarily encompass three aspects: principles and ideals, design processes, and toolkits. Our endeavor is to consolidate a practicable framework that provides guidance for…

A Pattern Language for Digital Spaces: a booklet of illustrations

We increasingly live in digital spaces. Ideal digital spaces build connections and nourish minds, collectively owned and changed by us the inhabitants: a form of space more humane than what we have now. To collectively explore and summon dreams into reality, we need a common language. A language made of behavior-shaping patterns in the digital space that have proven to work for us, drawn from the short but vast history of the internet. I will put together a list of patterns, with a similar mul…

PILL: On-chain Data Sculpture Exhibition

The on-chain world is shaped by the data we own, and current data visualization tools are not enough for us to actively connect with our data. Do I understand my data? Can I interact with my data? How can I connect with others through my data? We need more diverse representations of data. Data sculpture applies physical objects to represent data; these can be crafted from various materials, inviting people to interact with them on a different perceptual level. We have lots of narratives on-chai…

PILL: all just fresh-off-the-boat or floating

This is a reality where everyone is always already using the Virtual Private Network to travel between servers and nodes. In the form of a “docu-fiction,” or a “hybrid ethnographic documentary” as they say, a screen-recording video will explore the path-routes and screen-time of those who are masked, dressed in costumes, and encrypted with switchable codes in the disguise through private tunnels, lurking, indulging, surveilling, participating, and disengaging with multiple IP or wallet addresses…

Technium Underground: Visualize the EIPs as a Wood-Wide-Web Dashboard

Foreword: WWW as a Wood Wide Web The concept of the “Technium,” coined by Kevin Kelly, embodies technology as a living, evolving organism—a fusion of “technology” and “organism.” In our era, we witness a transformative shift where machinery takes on animalistic qualities, and biological entities are subject to engineering. This dynamic perspective redefines technology not as static tools but as digital species teeming with vitality, complexity, chaos, and madness. So, think about this - what l…

Reification Synergy: Gear Transmission Link + Math Rock (Touch Designer)

[gear-mechanism-vector-9795312] Envision a scenario where a local community becomes the breeding ground for chaos, echoing the Second Law of Thermodynamics: the inexorable increase in entropy, signifying disorder, is a fundamental, irreversible process. This chaos, akin to layers of discordant noise building upon one another, escalates to a point where it catalyzes a profound transformation. The community, once vibrant, now resembles a perpetually spinning black hole, stabilized yet defined by…

PILL：Bridge of Protocol Gender Horizons Interactive Game

【Background】 In today’s internet age, gender issues often spark intense debates and conflicts. People of different genders often find it difficult to harmoniously coexist, especially those considered to be in “advantaged” gender groups. This situation is particularly pronounced in the online space, leading to many conflicts and unnecessary opposition. 【What We Aim to Do】 Our goal is to create a set of interactive cards that illustrate the cognitive differences between …

PILL: Co-learning protocol: An open-source facilitation framework of collective learning

Learning is ubiquitous in ongoing activity, though often unrecognized as such. ——Jean Lave Our aim is to establish a comprehensive “Co-learning Protocol”, which integrates theoretical research from the field of social pedagogy with practical organizational experiences from the past two years. This open-source protocol will primarily encompass three aspects: principles and ideals, design processes, and toolkits. Our endeavor is to consolidate a practicable framework that provides guidance for…

PILL: Protocol-Cinema, or a Montage Puzzle based on Protocol（协议—影像，或一种基于协议的蒙太奇拼图）

Protocol-Cinema, or a Montage Puzzle based on Protocol Literature and Anthology Hello everyone, my proposal is to create a series of cinema based on protocol, both in a general way and technical way, focusing on protocol and poetics, revolving around the internet. However, please allow me to not discuss any internet ecosystem or non-fungible open currencies first. Let’s turn our gaze back to literature, as this visual reversal is important for this proposal. From Giorgio Agamben’s Homo Sacer ser…

PILL：NFT+Generative Art Creation Economy on Farcaster

Project Inspiration and Concept As an interaction designer, digital artist, and observer of the crypto industry, I have been drawn to the content production methods, token economy model, and the consensus-building mechanisms of the Farcaster platform. It not only serves as a place for interaction but also as a space for “infinite game” of ongoing creation and engagement. In this project, I will use Farcaster as a practical field to explore how the platform mechanisms of Farcaster+Zora influenc…

[elenoosh]

Congrats to the 2024 PILL cohort!