Socioplastics 11802 Formats Carry Their Own Politics
A cultural event enters public circulation through formats that capture, sort and summarise it. EncodingTransit follows these changes from lived practice to database, platform and institutional report. A participatory performance might be recorded as gestures and discussion, reduced to attendance totals and publicity images, then translated into categories for a funding report. Each stage carries some relations forward and gives others a different form. Lev Manovich’s account of new media and database culture clarifies how digital formats organise information. McKenzie Wark connects information to property, labour and class. Their conjunction sharpens the inquiry: how do technical transformations and institutional choices shape what becomes visible? Compression can be necessary for a report; selection also determines which features receive recognition, whose work is credited and what evidence supports future decisions. A study could trace one cultural event through its full documentary chain. At each transition, it would record who controls the format, which details are retained, what categories are introduced and what forms of labour become less visible. The comparison would distinguish technical operations such as image compression from political decisions such as omitting participant testimony. It would also identify where consent, authorship and access conditions need to travel with the record. EncodingTransit makes circulation available for analysis as a sequence of material translations. The method supports public communication while preserving a clear account of how an event became administratively legible. Its result is a traceable relation between practice, representation and institutional use. A version log can preserve the sequence for future researchers, while clear permissions help participants understand where their contributions will appear and how they may be reused. The audience for the report should also be recorded, since circulation helps determine which parts of the event acquire institutional consequence.
REFERENCES
Manovich, L. (2001) The Language of New Media. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.
Wark, M. (2004) A Hacker Manifesto. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.
CITE AS
Lloveras, A. (2026) Socioplastics, LAPIEZA-LAB, Madrid.
https://antolloveras.blogspot.com/p/socioplastics-project-index.html