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add german stubs, mastodon test

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Aron Petau 2025-05-16 11:08:33 +02:00
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config.toml
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@ -13,11 +13,20 @@ taxonomies = [
{ name = "tags", feed = true, paginate_by = 10 } { name = "tags", feed = true, paginate_by = 10 }
] ]
theme = "duckquill" theme = "duckquill"
default_language = "en" default_language = "en"
[languages.de]
title = "Aron Petau"
description = "Mein Portfolio, Blog und allgemeine Präsenz online"
generate_feeds = true
build_search_index = true
taxonomies = [
{ name = "tags", feed = true, paginate_by = 10 }
]
[slugify] [slugify]
paths = "off" paths = "off"
taxonomies = "on" taxonomies = "on"
@ -65,8 +74,8 @@ show_theme_switcher = true
show_repo = true show_repo = true
links = [ links = [
{ url = "@/project/_index.md", name = "Projects" }, { url = "@/project/_index.md", name = "Projects" },
{ url = "@/pages/contact.md", name = "Contact Me" }, { url = "@/pages/contact.md", name = "Contact" },
{ url = "@/pages/cv.md", name = "Experience" }, { url = "@/pages/cv.md", name = "CV" },
{ url = "@/pages/about.md", name = "About" }, { url = "@/pages/about.md", name = "About" },
] ]

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+++
insert_anchor_links = "left"
title = "Übersetzung: Home"
[extra]
show_copyright = true
show_shares = true
+++
## Welcome
to the online presence of Aron Petau.
<aside>
![logo](/images/logo.png "Aron Petau")
</aside>
I use he/him pronouns and am based in Berlin, Germany.
I am a tinkerer, designer, software developer, and work in digital education research.
This site is a collection of my thoughts and experiences.
I hope you find something interesting here.
{% alert(note=true) %}
This Page is currently under active reconstruction.
Broken links are to be expected.
As long as the move / redesign is not fully done, here the old site is still online: [old.aron.petau.net](https://old.aron.petau.net)
{% end %}
Progress of the rebuild:
<progress value="80" max="100"></progress>
{% alert(important=true) %}
Last updated: 2025-05-14
{% end %}
{% crt() %}
```
➜ content git:(main) ✗ tree -L 2
.
├── _index.md
├── blog
│   ├── _index.md
│   ├── 2018-05-03-printing
│   ├── 2018-07-05-cad
│   ├── 2018-09-01-beacon
│   ├── 2019-03-19-plastic-recycling
│   ├── 2019-06-01-ballpark
│   ├── 2020-03-01-homebrew
│   ├── 2020-07-14-critical-epistemologies
│   ├── 2020-07-15-chatbot
│   ├── 2021-03-01-coding
│   ├── 2021-03-01-philosophy
│   ├── 2021-04-13-thesis
│   ├── 2021-08-01-iron-smelting
│   ├── 2021-12-05-political-violence
│   ├── 2022-01-22-critical-philosophy-subjectivity
│   ├── 2022-04-01-allei
│   ├── 2022-04-30-lusatia
│   ├── 2022-12-03-stable-dreamfusion
│   ├── 2022-12-04-lampshades
│   ├── 2023-01-03-auraglow
│   ├── 2023-03-01-ruminations
│   ├── 2023-06-16-ascendancy
│   ├── 2023-06-20-autoimmunitaet
│   ├── 2023-06-20-dreams-of-cars
│   ├── 2023-12-06-postmaster
│   ├── 2023-12-07-commoning-cars
│   ├── 2024-01-30-airaspi-build-log
│   ├── 2024-03-25-aethercomms
│   ├── 2024-04-11-local-diffusion
│   ├── 2024-04-25-echoing-dimensions
│   ├── 2024-06-20-sferics
│   ├── 2024-07-05-käsewerkstatt
│   └── 2025-04-15-master-thesis
└── pages
├── about.md
├── contact.md
├── cv.md
├── privacy.md
└── rent-ulli.md
```
{% end %}

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+++
title = "About"
description = "Welcome, let me introduce myself"
authors = ["Aron Petau"]
date = 2023-07-26
updated = "2025-05-05"
+++
## Introduction
I am Aron (pronouns: he/him), a 2022 graduate of the bachelor's program of Cognitive Science in Osnabrück.
During my very open and broad studies, I focused mostly on Computational Linguistics, Machine Learning, and Philosophy.
The mix of these topics you will find scattered throughout my [Portfolio](/portfolio/).
Currently, I am enrolled in the Master's program [Design and Computation](https://www.newpractice.net) @ UdK and TU Berlin.
I am enthusiastic about many of the topics included there and have developed a fondness for algorithmic problems, techno-philosophical considerations, and issues of our (future) society.
For the studies, I moved to Berlin and now live together with 2 awesome humans and a 3D-Printer, and am continuously repairing and restoring a very old van.
I dream of one day having my own bar with cultural events and am already working on the perfect recipe for [homebrew](/homebrew/) beer.
I love experimenting, whether that is in the kitchen, finding a solution to a coding problem, or creating useful objects.
I am also passionate about [3D Printing](/printing/), its curious applications, and all areas tangent to it.
The interface of technology and the world interests me and coming up with ways for one sphere to interact with the other has now captured me for some years.
I recognize a colossal environmental problem that the current and following generations face: global waste being just one tiny aspect.
At the same time, I am frustrated that I have to pay for the plastic that goes into my printer while I throw the packaging of my food away, which is the exact same material.
Even more frustrating are the established norms for recycling that lead to virtually none of the products that I can produce with the printer at home being recyclable.
[Plastic waste](/plastic-recycling/) is no joke and I consider it my personal contribution to try to help advance small-scale, decentralized recycling.
I am currently searching for an appropriate place to further my knowledge to automatize the recycling of my own very large collection of failed prints.
In the past, digitality and the social-digital as a topic has been a recurring theme, I am concerned with [digital inclusion](/chatbot/) and also play around a lot with [edge computing](/airaspi-build-log/).
If you are interested to hear more about a specific topic, feel free to [contact me](/mailto:aron@petau.net/), or simply check out the [Archive](/archive/).
If you suspect that I might be able to help you with a project, please check out my [CV](/cv/).

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+++
title = "Contact"
description = "Reach me"
authors = ["Aron Petau"]
date= 2025-05-01
+++
For starters, mails are gold and probably still the best way to reach me.
[Contact me: aron@petau.net](mailto:aron@petau.net)
If for some reason you have no email, Telegram here also works, but is usuallyonly reacted upon if i recognize you.
<div class="buttons centered">
<a class="big colored external" href="https://t.me/apetau">Telegram</a>
</div>

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+++
title = "Curriculum vitae"
description = "Aron writes about their past experience"
authors = ["Aron Petau"]
toc = true
+++
## Who am I?
Below you will find a chronological list of my education, my work experience and a rough overview of different softwares and machines I am familiar with. For a less formal self-description, please see the [About](/about) page.
Contact me via [Email](mailto:aron@petau.net) for further questions.
### Education
{% timeline() %}
[
{
"title": "Abitur",
"body": "In school, I majored in Philosophy, German, Maths, and English.",
"from": "Aug ‘11",
"to": "Jun ‘15",
"icon": "fas fa-building",
"location": "Stadtgymnasium Detmold"
},
{
"title": "BSc. Cognitive Science",
"body": "Within a diverse program, I focused on Philosophy, Artificial Intelligence, Machine Learning, Informatics, and Linguistics.",
"from": "Oct ‘16",
"to": "Feb ‘22",
"icon": "fas fa-building",
"location": "Universität Osnabrück",
"link": "https://www.uni-osnabrueck.de/en/prospective-students/studiengaenge-a-z/cognitive-science-bachelor-of-science/"
},
{
"title": "RISE Internship",
"body": "In the context of a DAAD RISE Stipend, I researched the possibilities of a decentralized electricity grid in remote regions of the Himalayas. I conducted field research, evaluation, and product simulation.",
"from": "Sep ‘18",
"to": "Jan ‘19",
"icon": "fas fa-building",
"location": "IIT Kharagpur, India"
},
{
"title": "Erasmus Semester",
"body": "I took courses in the Philosophy department and Masters’ program for Cognitive Science. I also attended the Cognitive Science Summer School.",
"from": "Feb ‘19",
"to": "Jul ‘19",
"icon": "fas fa-building",
"location": "New Bulgarian University, Sofia",
"link": "https://cogsci.nbu.bg/en/"
},
{
"title": "M.A. Design & Computation",
"body": "I am currently in the fourth semester of transdisciplinary cooperation between UdK and TU Berlin with a focus on critical artistic engagement with technology.",
"from": "Oct ‘22",
"to": "now",
"icon": "fas fa-building",
"location": "Universität der Künste, Berlin",
"link": "https://www.design-computation.berlin"
}
]
{% end %}
### Work Experience
{% timeline() %}
[
{
"title": "Weltwärts",
"body": "I worked in a social project in northern Buenos Aires, Argentina. I helped cooking for 150 youths daily, assisted with their homework, organized sports programmes, maintained the building and organized events.",
"from": "Sep '15",
"to": "Aug '16",
"icon": "fas fa-building",
"location": "Lecheria de la Solidaridad",
"link": "https://lecheria.org.ar/"
},
{
"title": "Teamer / SportsTeamer",
"body": "I mentored and supervised groups of 12-18 year olds on their summer holiday trips. I organized entertainment, sports activities and excursions. I did two seasons of a few weeks each in Spain and one in Croatia.",
"from": "Jun '17",
"to": "Sep '19",
"icon": "fas fa-building",
"location": "GO-Jugendreisen @ Spain, Croatia",
"link": "https://www.go-jugendreisen.de"
},
{
"title": "Barkeeper / Brewing assistant",
"body": "I worked in a restaurant with an in-house brewery, both on the customer-facing side and assisting in the brewery.",
"from": "Oct '18",
"to": "Mar '20",
"icon": "fas fa-building",
"location": "Brauerei Rampendahl",
"link": "http://www.rampendahl.de"
},
{
"title": "Social Worker",
"body": "I worked in a stationary care center for hearing impaired and deaf people with cognitive impairments, including autism.",
"from": "Sep '20",
"to": "Sep '21",
"icon": "fas fa-building",
"location": "Heilpädagogische Hilfe Osnabrück",
"link": "https://os-hho.de/standorte/haus-10"
},
{
"title": "Working Student",
"body": "I was part of the uos.dll program, a funded project to reform digital teaching practices at the University. My responsibility is the building and maintaining of the DigiLab, a FabLab/Makerspace accessible to the entire University. It features 3D printers, Laser Cutter, CNC Routers, Stitching Robots, VR, XR, Video/Audio Toolsets, and many more.",
"from": "Oct '21",
"to": "May '22",
"icon": "fas fa-building",
"location": "Virtuos at Universität Osnabrück",
"link": "https://digitale-lehre.virtuos.uni-osnabrueck.de/uos-digilab/"
},
{
"title": "Software Engineer",
"body": "I was part of a team researching and developing an inclusive chatbot, respecting diversity and accessibility needs. I was responsible for the entire back-end functionality.",
"from": "Feb '22",
"to": "Jun '23",
"icon": "fas fa-building",
"location": "Sommerblut Kulturverein Festival",
"link": "https://chatbot.sommerblut.de"
},
{
"title": "Working Student",
"body": "InKüLe stands for 'Innovation in der künstlerischen Lehre'. The work revolves around investigating concepts for innovation and digitalization in the practice of artistic teaching. Personally, I work mostly with workshops teaching sculpting in VR and live-streaming events.",
"from": "Mar '23",
"to": "now",
"icon": "fas fa-building",
"location": "InKüLe @ UdK Berlin",
"link": "https://www.inkuele.de/landing"
},
{
"title": "Freelance Mentor, Educator",
"body": "The Junge Tüftler*Innen is an NGO focused on educative workshops around 'making'. They offer workshops for children, young adults and also offer Workshops for adults and teachers. I am a Mentor, meaning I supervise and conduct the workshops in a team of two.",
"from": "Jun '24",
"to": "now",
"icon": "fas fa-building",
"location": "Junge Tüftler*Innen, Berlin",
"link": "https://junge-tueftler.de"
},
{
"title": "Freelance Technology Educator",
"body": "I build and curate a Makerspace at a Berlin Secondary School. We have courses and projects surrounding many digital fabrication techniques and learn about the basics of electronics and programming. We offer laser cutting, 3D printing, Textile modding, microcontrollers, robotics and more.",
"from": "Aug '24",
"to": "now",
"icon": "fas fa-building",
"location": "SOCIUS - Die Bildungspartner, Berlin",
"link": "https://socius.diebildungspartner.de"
}
]
{% end %}
## Software Skills
{% skills() %}
[
{
"name": "UNIX",
"skills": [
{ "name": "bash", "icon": "fas fa-terminal", "link": "https://www.gnu.org/software/bash/" },
{ "name": "zsh", "icon": "fas fa-terminal", "link": "https://www.zsh.org/" },
{ "name": "Arduino IDE", "icon": "fas fa-cogs", "link": "https://www.arduino.cc/en/software" },
{ "name": "Raspberry Pi", "icon": "fab fa-raspberry-pi", "link": "https://www.raspberrypi.org/" }
]
},
{
"name": "Python",
"skills": [
{ "name": "scipy", "icon": "fab fa-python", "link": "https://scipy.org/" },
{ "name": "matplotlib", "icon": "fab fa-python", "link": "https://matplotlib.org/" },
{ "name": "seaborn", "icon": "fab fa-python", "link": "https://seaborn.pydata.org/" },
{ "name": "pandas", "icon": "fab fa-python", "link": "https://pandas.pydata.org/" },
{ "name": "jupyter notebook", "icon": "fab fa-python", "link": "https://jupyter.org/" },
{ "name": "tensorflow", "icon": "fab fa-python", "link": "https://www.tensorflow.org/" },
{ "name": "pytorch", "icon": "fab fa-python", "link": "https://pytorch.org/" },
{ "name": "scikit-learn", "icon": "fab fa-python", "link": "https://scikit-learn.org/" },
{ "name": "opencv", "icon": "fab fa-python", "link": "https://opencv.org/" },
{ "name": "flask", "icon": "fab fa-python", "link": "https://flask.palletsprojects.com/" },
{ "name": "micropython", "icon": "fab fa-python", "link": "https://micropython.org/" },
{ "name": "circuitpython", "icon": "fab fa-python", "link": "https://circuitpython.org/" }
]
},
{
"name": "HTML, CSS, JavaScript",
"skills": [
{ "name": "HTML", "icon": "fab fa-html5", "link": "https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Web/HTML" },
{ "name": "CSS", "icon": "fab fa-css3-alt", "link": "https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Web/CSS" },
{ "name": "JavaScript", "icon": "fab fa-js", "link": "https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Web/JavaScript" },
{ "name": "GH-pages", "icon": "fab fa-github", "link": "https://pages.github.com/" },
{ "name": "psychoJS", "icon": "fab fa-python", "link": "https://www.psychopy.org/psychojs/" },
{ "name": "AMPStack", "icon": "fab fa-github", "link": "https://github.com/ampstack/ampstack" },
{ "name": "ibex-farm", "icon": "fab fa-github", "link": "https://www.labvanced.com/" }
]
},
{
"name": "C#",
"skills": [
{ "name": "C#", "icon": "fab fa-microsoft", "link": "https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/dotnet/csharp/" },
{ "name": "Visual Studio", "icon": "fab fa-microsoft", "link": "https://visualstudio.microsoft.com/" },
{ "name": "Unity", "icon": "fab fa-unity", "link": "https://unity.com/" },
{ "name": "Unreal Engine", "icon": "fab fa-unreal-engine", "link": "https://www.unrealengine.com/" }
]
},
{
"name": "CAD",
"skills": [
{ "name": "Fusion 360", "icon": "fas fa-cogs", "link": "https://www.autodesk.com/products/fusion-360/overview" },
{ "name": "TinkerCAD", "icon": "fas fa-cogs", "link": "https://www.tinkercad.com/" },
{ "name": "Rhino/Grasshopper", "icon": "fas fa-cogs", "link": "https://www.rhino3d.com/" }
]
},
{
"name": "Slicing",
"skills": [
{ "name": "PrusaSlicer", "icon": "fab fa-github", "link": "https://www.prusa3d.com/prusaslicer/" },
{ "name": "kiri.moto", "icon": "fab fa-github", "link": "https://kiri.moto.github.io/" },
{ "name": "Cura", "icon": "fab fa-github", "link": "https://ultimaker.com/software/ultimaker-cura" },
{ "name": "Lightburn", "icon": "fab fa-github", "link": "https://lightburnsoftware.com/" }
]
},
{
"name": "Images",
"skills": [
{ "name": "Inkscape", "icon": "fab fa-github", "link": "https://inkscape.org/" },
{ "name": "Illustrator", "icon": "fab fa-adobe", "link": "https://www.adobe.com/products/illustrator.html" },
{ "name": "GIMP", "icon": "fab fa-github", "link": "https://www.gimp.org/" },
{ "name": "Photoshop", "icon": "fab fa-adobe", "link": "https://www.adobe.com/products/photoshop.html" },
{ "name": "Lightroom", "icon": "fab fa-adobe", "link": "https://www.adobe.com/products/photoshop-lightroom.html" },
{ "name": "Agisoft Metashape", "icon": "fab fa-github", "link": "https://www.agisoft.com/" }
]
},
{
"name": "Video",
"skills": [
{ "name": "Premiere", "icon": "fab fa-adobe", "link": "https://www.adobe.com/products/premiere.html" },
{ "name": "DaVinci Resolve", "icon": "fas fa-film", "link": "https://www.blackmagicdesign.com/products/davinciresolve/" },
{ "name": "OBS", "icon": "fab fa-github", "link": "https://obsproject.com/" },
{ "name": "TouchDesigner", "icon": "fab fa-github", "link": "https://derivative.ca/" },
{ "name": "DJI Drones", "icon": "fas fa-camera", "link": "https://www.dji.com/" },
{ "name": "FPV Drones", "icon": "fas fa-camera", "link": "https://www.fpvdrone.com/" }
]
},
{
"name": "Audio",
"skills": [
{ "name": "Audacity", "icon": "fab fa-github", "link": "https://www.audacityteam.org/" },
{ "name": "supercollider", "icon": "fab fa-github", "link": "https://supercollider.github.io/" }
]
},
{
"name": "Office",
"skills": [
{ "name": "MS-Office Suite", "icon": "fab fa-microsoft", "link": "https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/microsoft-365" },
{ "name": "Latex", "icon": "fab fa-latex", "link": "https://www.latex-project.org/" },
{ "name": "Markdown", "icon": "fab fa-markdown", "link": "https://www.markdownguide.org/" },
{ "name": "Typst", "icon": "fab fa-github", "link": "https://typst.app/" }
]
},
{
"name": "Educational",
"skills": [
{ "name": "Scratch", "icon": "fab fa-scratch", "link": "https://scratch.mit.edu/" },
{ "name": "Makey-Makey", "icon": "fab fa-github", "link": "https://www.makeymakey.com/" },
{ "name": "Ozobot", "icon": "fab fa-github", "link": "https://ozobot.com/" },
{ "name": "Cospaces", "icon": "fab fa-github", "link": "https://cospaces.io/" }
]
}
]
{% end %}
## Machine Skills
{% skills() %}
[
{
"name": "3D Printer",
"skills": [
{ "name": "Fused-Deposition Modeling (FDM)", "icon": "fas fa-cube", "link": "https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fused_filament_fabrication" },
{ "name": "Resin (MSLA)", "icon": "fas fa-cube", "link": "https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stereolithography" }
]
},
{
"name": "CNC",
"skills": [
{ "name": "Nomad 3", "icon": "fas fa-tools", "link": "https://shop.carbide3d.com/products/nomad-3" },
{ "name": "Shaper Origin", "icon": "fas fa-tools", "link": "https://www.shapertools.com/" }
]
},
{
"name": "Lasercutting",
"skills": [
{ "name": "Cricut", "icon": "fas fa-cut", "link": "https://cricut.com/" },
{ "name": "Mr. Beam", "icon": "fas fa-bolt", "link": "https://www.mr-beam.org/" },
{ "name": "BRM Lasers Pro 1600", "icon": "fas fa-bolt", "link": "https://www.brmlasers.com/products/pro-1600/" },
{ "name": "X-Tool S1", "icon": "fas fa-bolt", "link": "https://www.xtool.com/products/xtool-s1-laser-cutter" },
{ "name": "Scissors", "icon": "fas fa-scissors" }
]
},
{
"name": "Textile",
"skills": [
{ "name": "Brother Innov-is V3 Stitching Robot", "icon": "fas fa-tshirt", "link": "https://www.brothersewing.co.uk/products/innov-is-v3" },
{ "name": "Sewing Machine", "icon": "fas fa-tshirt" },
{ "name": "Handstitching", "icon": "fas fa-hand-paper" }
]
},
{
"name": "VR",
"skills": [
{ "name": "Meta Quest 2", "icon": "fas fa-vr-cardboard", "link": "https://www.meta.com/quest/quest-2/" },
{ "name": "HTC Vive Pro", "icon": "fas fa-vr-cardboard", "link": "https://www.vive.com/eu/product/vive-pro/" }
]
},
{
"name": "AR",
"skills": [
{ "name": "Magic Leap 1", "icon": "fas fa-glasses", "link": "https://www.magicleap.com/magic-leap-1" },
{ "name": "Apple AR Suite", "icon": "fab fa-apple", "link": "https://developer.apple.com/augmented-reality/" }
]
},
{
"name": "Microcontroller",
"skills": [
{ "name": "Arduino", "icon": "fas fa-microchip", "link": "https://www.arduino.cc/" },
{ "name": "Raspberry Pi", "icon": "fab fa-raspberry-pi", "link": "https://www.raspberrypi.com/" },
{ "name": "ESP32", "icon": "fas fa-microchip", "link": "https://www.espressif.com/en/products/socs/esp32" },
{ "name": "Pi Pico", "icon": "fas fa-microchip", "link": "https://www.raspberrypi.com/products/raspberry-pi-pico/" }
]
},
{
"name": "Industrial robots",
"skills": [
{ "name": "Universal Robots UR5", "icon": "fas fa-robot", "link": "https://www.universal-robots.com/products/ur5-robot/" }
]
}
]
{% end %}

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+++
title = "Terms and Privacy Statement"
date = 2025-05-01
authors = ["Aron Petau"]
+++
My website address is: <https://aron.petau.net> .
## Location
~~This page is hosted on [GitHub](https://github.com) through GitHub-pages.~~
Not anymore! It is now proudly self-hosted from under my sofa, sometimes using solar energy. I consider you being able to read this already a win.
It is protected by [Cloudflare](https://www.cloudflare.com/en-gb/). Not so proud of that one, but you gotta be secure, no?
I do not proxy anything and I try using my best knowledge and consciousness to minimize my and other peoples efforts of tracking.
I do not collect any data.
This is a static website, which means there is no database attached and nothing can be tracked by me.
I also do not collect any cookies, nor are there any third-party cookies involved.
[GitHub](https://github.com), the place where I host this website, does collect the IP address of any visitor.
I have no influence on this and neither the financial resources to avoid this free hosting firm.
## Embedded content from other websites
Articles on this site may include embedded content (e.g. videos, images, articles, etc.). Embedded content from other websites behaves in the exact same way as if the visitor has visited the other website.
These websites may collect data about you, use cookies, embed additional third-party tracking, and monitor your interaction with that embedded content, including tracking your interaction with the embedded content if you have an account and are logged in to that website.
If privacy is important enough for you to check out this page, you probably know how to use a VPN service and avoid this problem altogether.
I have a raspberry pi and the motivation, but not the knowledge to properly self-host. If you do have constructive feedback, please feel free to contact me.
Thank you for your attention.

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---
permalink: /rent-ulli/
title: "How to miet Ulli"
excerpt: "Everything to know about the T4"
last_modified_at: 2022-04-30T10:23:16-04:00
toc: false
layout: single
classes: wide
author: "Aron Petau"
header:
overlay_image : /assets/images/ulli.jpg
overlay_filter: 0.5
---
This is a work in Progress. Informations on here are subject to change.
{: .notice--danger}
<iframe width="100%" height="800" src="https://vrm.victronenergy.com/installation/167009/embed/f61b11f2"></iframe>
## The general stuff
The car is a 1991 VW T4, with a 2.0l **Benzin** (petrol) engine.
That means roughly 80 PS. No mountains and offroading for you in there.
## Propellant
The car takes either **Super** (95), **Super Plus** (98) or **E10**.
{: .notice--danger}
The Car uses about 10-12l/100km, when never going beyond 90 km/h.
Otherwise it uses about 12-15l/100km.
The tank is 85l, so you can go about 750km on one tank.
The tank needle is broken, so you have to use the trip meter to know how much fuel is left.
Always refill completely, otherwise you will have no clue about your range.
Please remember to reset the meter after filling up.
{: .notice--danger}
The car is a manual, so you need to know how to drive stick.
There is no Servolenkung (power steering), so it is a bit harder to steer.
There is a trailer hitch for up to 1000 kg total. This means a standard 750kg trailer is fine, a complete rv trailer is not.
The car is a 4 seater.
The car is insured for everyone over 25 years old, who has a valid drivers license.
It has Teilkasko, which means that you are insured for everything, except for damage to the car itself.
## Electricity
The van has it's own solar system, meaning that in summer you can usually go off-grid.
There is some 12v plugs and several USB and USB-C plugs. No 230v plugs. If you need 230v, that is only possible with grid connection (Landstromanschluss). All necessary cables are on board.
Please plan accordingly.
The solar system functions automatically and has an automatic shut-off, so you can't drain the battery. In case you wanna monitor the battery, you can use the [Victron App](https://www.victronenergy.com/live/victronconnect:start) to connect to the solar system via Bluetooth. Ask me for the pin.
For the Analogue people, there is a battery monitor in the car, that shows the current battery voltage. It is right next to the driver seat and can read the front starter battery and the support back battery.
Anything below 11.5V is considered empty and you should start the car to recharge the battery. There is a battery booster, which will charge both batteries while driving.
For increased solar capacity, take out the folded panels, plug their cable into the adapter at the rear under the exhaust pipe and place the panels in the sun. The solar system will automatically use the additional power.
{: .notice--info}
## Kitchen
The kitchen is equipped with a 2 flame gas stove and a sink with running water.
The water is stored in a 15l tank, which is filled from the outside. Using it awarely, it can last for about 3 days (2 people).
Gas is standard 5kg grey gas bottles, which can be exchanged at any gas station. There is a bottle in the car, which is usually enough for more than a month of cooking. If you run out, you can exchange it at any gas station.
{: .notice--info}
Kitchen is fully equipped for 2 People.
Always roll the top window down while driving. You will loose the window and its roughly 300 to replace.
{: .notice--danger}
There is a powerful 12v fridge which holds about 30l. It is powered by the solar system and can be used while driving. With enough sun it can run 24/7.
Anything above the setting 3 will freeze your food. Level 2 works for me.
{: .notice--danger}
## Sleeping
The bed is in the high roof and is 1.20m wide and 1.90m long.
There is climbing involved to get up there.
{: .notice--info}
## Heating
The car has a gas heater, which can be used to heat the car. It is not possible to heat the car while driving. The heater is controlled by a thermostat, which is located next to the bed.
To use it, the gas bottle has to be opened and the heater valve (inside the gas bottle compartment) has to be turned on. The heater will then start automatically, when the temperature drops below the set temperature.
There is also a 12v fan in the heater, which can be used to circulate air in the car. Another fan is plug and play and is usually enough in summer.
## How to rent
You can rent the van by sending me an email to [rent-ulli@aronpetau.me](mailto:rent-ulli@aronpetau.me)
I will need the following information:
- Your name
- Your address
- a copy of your drivers license
- the dates you want to rent the car
I will then send you a contract, which you have to sign and send back to me.
Then we can arrange a time for you to pick up the car.
## Costs
The car costs 30€ per day, plus 0.10€ per km.
This factors in my insurance and the taxes I have to pay.
Any damages to the car will be charged to you. A total damage would cost you somewhere around 10.000 Euro, so please be careful. Check your Haftpflichtversicherung (private liability insurance) to see whether it covers rented cars.
{: .notice--danger}
[Benzinrechner](https://benzinrechner.info/en){: .btn .btn--large}

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title = "Übersetzung: 3D printing"
date = 2018-05-03
updated = 2025-05-05
authors = ["Aron Petau"]
description = "My 3D Printing journey and the societal implications of the technology"
[taxonomies]
tags = [
"accessibility",
"creality",
"decentral",
"democratic",
"engineering",
"experiment",
"gcode",
"octoprint",
"parametric design",
"plastics",
"prusa",
"slicing",
"private",
"work",
"additive manufacturing",
"3D printing",
"university of osnabrück"
]
[extra]
banner = "prusa.jpg"
show_copyright = true
show_shares = true
featured = true
+++
{% gallery() %}
[
{
"file": "cloning_station.jpg",
"title": "A plant propagation station now preparing our tomatoes for summer",
"alt": "cloning station"
},
{
"file": "elk.jpg",
"alt": "elk",
"title": "We use this to determine the flatmate of the month"
},
{
"file": "dragon_skull_1.jpg",
"alt": "dragon skull",
"title": "A dragon's head that was later treated to glow in the dark."
},
{
"file": "ender2.jpg",
"alt": "ender 2",
"title": "This was my entry into a new world, the now 10 years old Ender 2"
},
{
"file": "lithophane.jpg",
"alt": "lithophane of my Grandparents",
"title": "I made some lithophanes, a process where the composition and thickness of the material are used for creating an image."
},
{
"file": "prusa.jpg",
"title": "This is my second printer, a Prusa i3 MK3s."
},
{
"file": "vulva_candle.jpg",
"alt": "vulva on a candle",
"title": "This candle is the result of a 3D printed plastic mold that I then poured wax into."
},
{
"file": "pinecil.jpg",
"alt": "pinecil",
"title": "An enclosure for my portable soldering iron"
},
{
"file": "lamp.jpg",
"alt": "a lamp design",
"title": "A lamp screen design that particularly fascinated me, it effortlessly comes from a simple 2D spiral shape."
},
{
"file": "prusa_enclosure.jpg",
"alt": "Prusa enclosure",
"title": "A custom-built printer enclosure made up of 3 Ikea Lack tables and around 3 kgs of plastic."
}
]
{% end %}
## 3D Printing
{{ youtube(id="Yj_Pc357kEU") }}
### 3D Printing is more than just a hobby for me
In it, I see societal changes, the democratization of production, and creative possibilities. Plastic does not have to be one of our greatest environmental problems if we just choose to change our perspective and behavior toward it.
Plastic Injection molding was one major driving force for the capitalist setting we are in now.
3D Printing can be utilized to counteract the production of scale.
Today, the buzzword 3D Printing is already associated with problematic societal practices, it is related to "automatization" and "on-demand economy". The technology has many aspects to be considered and evaluated and as a technology, many awesome things happen through it and on the same page it fuels developments I would consider problematic. Due to a history of patents influencing the development of the technology, and avid adoption of companies hoping to optimize production processes and margins, but also a very active hobbyist community, all sorts of projects are realized. While certainly societally explosive, there is still a lot going for 3D Printing.
3D Printing means local and custom production. While I do not buy the whole “every household is going to have a machine that prints what they need right now at the press of a button”, I do see vast potential in 3D Printing.
That’s why I want to build my future on it.
I want to design things and make them become reality.
A 3D Printer lets me control that process from start to finish. Being able to design a thing in CAD is not enough here, I also need to be able to fully understand and control the machine that makes my thing.
I started using a 3D Printer in early 2018, and by now I have two of them and they mostly do what I tell them to do.
I built both of them from kits and heavily modified them. I control them via octoprint, a software that, with its open and helpful community, makes me proud to use it and taught me a lot about open-source principles. 3D Printing in the hobbyist space is a positive example where a method informs my design and I love all the areas it introduced me to.
Through it, I felt more at home using Linux, programming, soldering, incorporating electronics, and iteratively designing.
I love the abilities a 3D Printer gives me and plan on using it for the [recycling](/plastic-recycling/) project.
During the last half year, I also worked in a university context with 3D printers.
We conceptualized and established a "Digitallabor", an open space to enable all people to get into contact with innovative technologies. The idea was to create some form of Makerspace while emphasizing digital media.
The project is young, it started in August last year and so most of my tasks were in Workgroups, deciding on the type of machines and types of content such a project can provide value with.
Read more about it on the Website:
[DigiLab Osnabrück](https://digitale-lehre.virtuos.uni-osnabrueck.de/uos-digilab/)
Looking forward, I am also incredibly interested in going beyond polymers for printing. I would love to be able to be more experimental concerning the material choices, something rather hard to achieve while staying in a shared student flat. There have been great projects with ceramics and printing, which I certainly want to have a deeper look into. One project I want to highlight is the evolving cups which impressed me a lot.
[Evolving Objects](https://evolving-objects.nl)
This group from the Netherlands is algorithmically generating shapes of cups and then printing them on a paste extruder with clay.
The process used is described more here:
The artist [Tom Dijkstra](http://tomdijkstra.info) is developing a paste extruder that can be attached to modify a conventional Printer and I would very much love to develop my version and experiment with printing new and old materials in such a concept printer.
[Printing with Ceramics](https://wikifactory.com/+Ceramic3DPrinting/forum/thread/NDQyNDc0)
[The Paste Extruder](http://tomdijkstra.info/dirtmod/index.php)
Also with regards to the [recycling](/plastic-recycling/) project, it might make sense for me to incorporate multiple machines into one and let the printer itself directly handle pellet- or paste-form. I am looking forward to expanding my horizon there and seeing what is possible.
Cups and Tableware are of course just one sample area where a backtrack toward traditional materials within modern manufacturing could make sense. There is also more and more talk of 3D Printed Clay- or Earth homes, an area where [WASP](https://www.3dwasp.com/en/3d-printing-architecture/) is a company I look up to.
They built several concept buildings and structures from locally mixed earth, creating some awesome environmentally conscious structures.
Adhering to principles of local building with locally available materials and taking into account the infamous emission problem within the building industry has several great advantages.
And since such alternative solutions are unlikely to come from the industry itself, one major avenue to explore and pursue these solutions are art projects and public demonstrations.
I want to explore all these areas and look at how manufacturing and sustainability can converge and create lasting solutions for society.
Also, 3D Printing is directly tied to the plans for my master's thesis, since everything I manage to reclaim, will somehow have to end up being something again. Why not print away our waste?
Now, after a few years of tinkering, modifying and upgrading, I find that I did not change my current setup for over a year. It simply works and I am happy with it. Since my first beginner's printer, the failure rates are negligible and I have had to print really complex parts in order to generate enough waste for the [recycling project](/plastic-recycling/).
Gradually, the mechanical system of the printer shifted from an object of care to simply a tool that I use. In the last years, hardware, but especially software has matured to a point where, at least to me, it tends to be a set-and-forget situation. On to actually making my parts and designs. Read more about that in the post about [CAD](/cad/)

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+++
title = "Übersetzung: 3D Modeling and CAD"
date = 2018-07-05
authors = ["Aron Petau"]
description = "Modelling and Scanning in 3D using Fusion360, Sketchfab, and Photogrammetry"
[taxonomies]
tags = [
"3D printing",
"design for printing",
"functional design",
"fusion360",
"parametric modelling",
"photogrammetry",
"polycam",
"private",
"scaniverse",
"sketchfab",
"university of osnabrück",
"virtual reality",
"work",
]
[extra]
banner = "render_bike_holder.png"
show_copyright = true
show_shares = true
+++
## 3D Modeling and CAD
### Designing 3D Objects
While learning about 3D Printing, I was most intrigued by the possibility to modify and repair existing products. While there is an amazing community with lots of good and free models around, naturally I came to a point where I did not find what I was looking for readily designed. I realized this is an essential skill for effectively operating not just 3D Printers, but any productive machine really.
Since youtube was the place I was learning all about 3D Printing, and all the people that I looked up to there were using Fusion 360 as their CAD Program that’s what I got into.
In hindsight, that was a pretty good choice and I am in love with the abilities parametric design gives me.
Below you will find some of my designs.
The process is something that I enjoy a lot and wish to dive into deeper.
By trial and error, I already learned a lot about designing specifically for 3D Printing, but I often feel that there are many aesthetic considerations in design that I am not familiar with.
I want to broaden my general ability to design physical objects, which is something I hope to gain during my master’s.
<iframe src="https://myhub.autodesk360.com/ue2cf184b/shares/public/SH9285eQTcf875d3c539feb2bfae6da3d872?mode=embed" width="100%" height="600" allowfullscreen="true" webkitallowfullscreen="true" mozallowfullscreen="true" frameborder="0"></iframe>
<iframe src="https://myhub.autodesk360.com/ue2cf184b/shares/public/SH9285eQTcf875d3c53974bf27fea6ee1a20?mode=embed" width="100%" height="600" allowfullscreen="true" webkitallowfullscreen="true" mozallowfullscreen="true" frameborder="0"></iframe>
<iframe src="https://myhub.autodesk360.com/ue2cf184b/shares/public/SH9285eQTcf875d3c539ed795f9645d8b981?mode=embed" width="100%" height="600" allowfullscreen="true" webkitallowfullscreen="true" mozallowfullscreen="true" frameborder="0"></iframe>
<iframe src="https://myhub.autodesk360.com/ue2cf184b/shares/public/SH9285eQTcf875d3c539bc7225ced67e5e92?mode=embed" width="100%" height="600" allowfullscreen="true" webkitallowfullscreen="true" mozallowfullscreen="true" frameborder="0"></iframe>
<iframe src="https://myhub.autodesk360.com/ue2cf184b/shares/public/SH9285eQTcf875d3c5397f64c69f2093b1b5?mode=embed" width="100%" height="600" allowfullscreen="true" webkitallowfullscreen="true" mozallowfullscreen="true" frameborder="0"></iframe>
<iframe src="https://myhub.autodesk360.com/ue2cf184b/shares/public/SH9285eQTcf875d3c539e8166aea2f430aed?mode=embed" width="100%" height="600" allowfullscreen="true" webkitallowfullscreen="true" mozallowfullscreen="true" frameborder="0"></iframe>
{{ image(url="/images/breast_candle.jpg", alt="A candle made of a 3D scan, found on <https://hiddenbeauty.ch/>", pixels=true, start=true) }}
Check out more of my finished designs in the Prusaprinters (now Printables) Community
<div class="buttons">
<a class="colored external" href="https://www.printables.com/social/97957-arontaupe/models">My Printables Profile</a>
</div>
{{ image(url="/images/vulva_candle.jpg", alt="A candle created with a 3D printed mold made in Fusion360", pixels=true, start=true) }}
## 3D Scanning and Photogrammetry
Besides coming up with new objects, incorporating the real world is also an interest of mine.
### Interaction with real objects and environments
In the last few years I have played around with a few smartphone cameras and was always quite sad, that my scans were never quite accurate enough to do cool stuff with them. I could not really afford real 3D scanner and had already started cobbling together a raspberry Pi camera with a cheap TOF sensor, which is a simple, but not quite as good replacement for a laser or a lidar sensor, but then Apple came out with the first phones with accessible Lidar sensor.
Recently, through work at the university I got access to a device with a lidar sensor and started having fun with it.
See some examples here:
<div class="sketchfab-embed-wrapper"> <iframe title="DigiLab Main Room" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen mozallowfullscreen="true" webkitallowfullscreen="true" allow="autoplay; fullscreen; xr-spatial-tracking" xr-spatial-tracking execution-while-out-of-viewport execution-while-not-rendered web-share width="800" height="600" src="https://sketchfab.com/models/c880892c6b4746bc80717be1f81bf169/embed?ui_theme=dark&dnt=1"> </iframe> </div>
<div class="sketchfab-embed-wrapper"> <iframe title="VR Room DigiLab" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen mozallowfullscreen="true" webkitallowfullscreen="true" allow="autoplay; fullscreen; xr-spatial-tracking" xr-spatial-tracking execution-while-out-of-viewport execution-while-not-rendered web-share width="800" height="600" src="https://sketchfab.com/models/144b63002d004fb8ab478316e573da2e/embed?ui_theme=dark&dnt=1"> </iframe> </div>
This last one was scanned with just my smartphone camera. You can see that the quality is notably worse, but considering is was created with just a single, run-of-the-mill smartphone sensor, I think it is still pretty impressive and will certainly do something towards democratizing such technologies and abilities.
<div class="sketchfab-embed-wrapper"> <iframe title="Digitallabor UOS" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen mozallowfullscreen="true" webkitallowfullscreen="true" allow="autoplay; fullscreen; xr-spatial-tracking" xr-spatial-tracking execution-while-out-of-viewport execution-while-not-rendered web-share width="800" height="600" src="https://sketchfab.com/models/2f5cff5b08d243f2b2ceb94d788b9cd6/embed?ui_theme=dark&dnt=1"> </iframe> </div>
## Perspective
What this section is supposed to deliver is the message that I am currently not where I want to be navigating the vast possibilities of CAD. I feel confident enough to approach small repairs around the flat with a new perspective, but I still lack technical expertise when approaching a collection composite parts, having to function together. I still have lots of projects halfdone or half-thought and one major reason is that there is no real critical exchange within my field of study.
I want more than designing figurines or wearables.
I want to incorporate 3D printing as a method to extend the abilities of other tools, have mechanical and electrical purposes, be foodsafe and engaging.
I fell in love with the idea of designing a toy system, inspired by [Makeways on Kickstarter](https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/makeway/makeway-create-intricate-courses-watch-your-marbles-soar), I have already started adding my own parts to their set.
I dream of my very own 3D printed coffeecup, one that is both foodsafe and dishwasher-surviving. For that, I would have to do quite a bit of material research, but that just makes the idea so much more appealing.
I would love finding a material composition incorporating waste to stop relying on plastics, or at least on fossile plastics.
Once in Berlin, I would want to talk to the people at [Kaffeform](https://www.kaffeeform.com/en/) producing largely compostable Coffee Cups incorporating a significant amount of old ground espresso, albeit using injection molding for their process.
The industry selling composite filaments is much more conservative with the percentage of non-plastic additives, because with a nozzle extrusion process there is much more to go wrong.
Still, I would love to explore that avenue further and think there is a lot to be gained from looking at pellet printers.
I also credit huge parts of my exploration process into local recycling to the awesome people at [Precious Plastic](https://preciousplastic.com), who I will join over the summer to learn more about their system.
I find it hard to write anything about CAD without connecting it directly to a manufacturing process.
And I believe that's a good thing. Always tying a design process to its realization, grounds the process and attaches to it some immediacy.
For me to become more confident in this process, I am still missing more expertise in organic shapes, so I would be happy to dig more into Blender, an awesome tool that in my mind is far too powerful to dive into it with just youtube lessons.
## Software that I have used and like
<div class="buttons">
<a class="colored external" href="https://alicevision.org/#meshroom">AliceVision Meshroom</a>
<a class="colored external" href="https://scaniverse.com/">Scaniverse</a>
<a class="colored external" href="https://sketchfab.com/arontaupe">My Sketchfab Profile</a>
<a class="colored external" href="https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.lvonasek.arcore3dscanner&hl=en&gl=US">3D Live Scanner for Android</a>
</div>

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+++
title = "Übersetzung: BEACON"
date = 2018-09-01
updated = 2022-03-05
authors = ["Aron Petau"]
description = "Decentralizing the Energy Grid in inaccessible and remote regions"
[taxonomies]
tags = [
"data collection",
"data viz",
"democratic",
"electricity",
"engineering",
"energy",
"grid",
"himalaya",
"india",
"iit kharagpur",
"python",
"research",
"scaling",
"simulation",
"solar",
"university of osnabrück",
"decentral"
]
[extra]
banner = "india_key_monastery.jpg"
show_copyright = true
show_shares = true
+++
## BEACON: Decentralizing the Energy Grid in inaccessible and remote regions
Access to Electricity is a basic human right. At first, that may seem over the top, but if one stops to think what all the little tasks that electricity can indirectly handle for us (lightning, laundry, cooking, freezing, heating, entertaining…) would consume in time and effort if we had to perform them manually, this idea becomes very clear. There are globally around 1 billion people without tier 2 access to electricity.
[SDGS Goal 7](https://sdgs.un.org/goals/goal7)
![The electricity tiers defined by the UN](/assets/images/electricity_tiers.png)
People only know the intensity of labor that goes into everything when there is no electricity. And it is not even only about convenience, electricity is an enormous lifesaver in any number of scenarios, think just of hospitals or mobile phone networks that would be rendered completely useless without it. So we can easily agree on a need, a demand for electricity globally, for every person. But what about the supply? Why is there 1 billion undersupplied?
The Answer: missing profitability. It would be a charity project to supply every last person on earth, not a profitable one. And while charitable projects are noble and should be pursued, the reality within capitalism shows that this is not the way it is going to happen.
But what if we could come up with technology, or rather, a communal structure, that enables us to supply profitably, and still adapt to both, the difficult external factors (weather issues, remoteness, altitude, etc.) and the smaller purses of the undersupplied?
### Location
Towards the end of 2018, I spent 4 months in northern India, on a research project with the IIT Kharagpur.
The goal was to work on one of the 17 UN-defined sustainable development goals – electricity.
Worldwide, an estimated 1 billion people have no or insubstantial access to the grid.
Some of them live here, in the Key Monastery in the Spiti Valley at around 3500 meters altitude.
![key monastery](/images/india_key_monastery.jpg)
<iframe src="https://www.google.com/maps/embed?pb=!1m18!1m12!1m3!1d843.1304298825468!2d78.01154047393467!3d32.2978346!2m3!1f0!2f0!3f0!3m2!1i1024!2i768!4f13.1!3m3!1m2!1s0x3906a673e168749b%3A0xf011101a0f02588b!2sKey%20Gompa%20(Key%20Monastery)!5e0!3m2!1sen!2sde!4v1647009764190!5m2!1sen!2sde" width="500" height="500" style="border:0;" allowfullscreen="true" loading="lazy"></iframe>
![tashi gang](/images/tashi_gang.jpg)
This is Tashi Gang, a village close to the Monastery. It houses around 50 people and only has road access during 3-4 months in the summer. For the rest of the time, the people rely on first aid services by helicopter, which can only be called with a working cell phone tower.
<iframe src="https://www.google.com/maps/embed?pb=!1m18!1m12!1m3!1d3389.4081271053687!2d78.67430271521093!3d31.841107638419718!2m3!1f0!2f0!3f0!3m2!1i1024!2i768!4f13.1!3m3!1m2!1s0x3907aaa3ac472219%3A0x5c4b39e454beed3c!2sTashigang%20172112!5e0!3m2!1sen!2sde!4v1647009910307!5m2!1sen!2sde" width="500" height="500" style="border:0;" allowfullscreen="true" loading="lazy"></iframe>
## The Project
In an environment reliant on hydro-energy and solar (diesel transport is unreliable due to snowed-in mountain roads), over 6 months of snowy winter, frequent snowstorms, and temperatures of up to -35°C, securing the grid is hard.
Our way to tackle the issue was to reject the in the western society very established notion of electricity as a homogenous product with centralized production and instead researched the possibilities of a predictive, self-correcting, and decentral grid.
By prioritizing energy usage cases, instead of a full blackout during a storm, essential functions like radio towers and hospitals could be partially powered and maybe stay functioning. The binarity of either having electricity or not would be replaced by assigned quantities and timeslots, in a collective effort to be mindful and distribute the electricity necessity-based.
The ultimate vision was a live predictive electricity market, where people could even earn money by selling their allotted, but not needed electricity.
To gauge feasibility, I conducted several psychological acceptance studies and collected data on local electricity demands.
I simulated a typical day of electricity demand in the Key monastery and the surrounding villages and mapped out the potential to install cost-efficient smart microgrid controllers enabling such an accurate and predictive behavior.
The smart grid operator boxes available here in Germany cost several hundred, with installation several thousand Euros, not a feasible solution for the Indian population. Instead, we wanted to use Raspberry Pi's, which are interconnected through ethernet cables or local mesh networking.
## Research
![The Electricity layout of the Key Monastery](/images/Key_Monastery_Spiti.png)
## Data Collection
Building a questionnaire and visiting public schools during their English Classes, I had the chance to speak to a range of teenagers, answering questions about the state of electricity in their homes, generating more data than I could have accomplished running from door to door without any skills speaking local dialects. The questionnaire was as scientific as I could make it in such a situation and geared towards finding the type and number of electric devices in the homes and estimating typical usage scenarios.
With a total of 145 participants from more than 6 different schools and roughly 4 different districts, all located in the Indian part of the Himalayas, the findings are as follows:
The participants range from 11 to 53 years, with an average of 17 years.
The average household has 6 members with an average of 5 smart devices. Only 2 percent of the Households had not a single smart device, but at the same time, only 42 percent had direct or indirect access to a laptop or computer. So the main body of smart devices consists of smartphones with a negligible portion of tablets.
The average total amount of electrical devices is around 11 electrical appliances per house.
**Subjective** Quality Rating on a scale of 1 to 10:
> Average quality in summer: 7.1
> Average quality in monsoon: 5.6
> Average quality in autumn: 7.1
> Average quality in winter: 4.0
So, as you would expect, during winter, but also when it rains, the felt quality drops by more than 30 percent on average.
As for the daily supply time, the average sits at 15.1 hours out of 24, meaning the people have electricity only for 62.9 percent of the time, some, as for example the people in Diskit only have a sad 4 hours of daily access. On top of that, this estimation does not account for the snowfalls in Spiti for example, where it is not uncommon to experience 3 consecutive days of powercut or more.
As the Power Meter is supplied by the government, a solid 82 percent of the houses have a working power meter, if one assumes that the 13 percent who did not know whether they have a power meter, do have one, we can say that around 95% of the houses have a power meter.
Another goal of the studies was to find out what would incline people to be caring and sharing with the available electricity, something rather unimaginable here in Germany.
In general, the uninformed openness to delaying usage of electricity on a scale of 1-10 was around 5.5, with the additional information that a smart delay would cause an overall price reduction, the acceptance went up to 6.9, a good 14%. This implies that people would be a lot more inclined to give up conveniences if the benefits have a direct impact on them.
## Simulation
After collecting all the estimated electric appliances of the local population, I simulated the use of 200 Solar Panels with 300Wp each, once for simultaneous electricity use, and once for mitigated electricity peaks through smart optimization and electricity usage delay.
![SAM Simulation of a local solar system ](/images/sam_sim.png)
![SAM Simulation Optimized](/images/sam_sim_opt.png)
Although solar is definitely not the optimal choice here and generates lots of issues with energy storage and battery charging at negative degrees, we figured that this was the way to go for the project.
And as you can see, optimizing peak usage can improve solar from generating only one-fifth of the demand in winter to about half the demand in winter. Keeping in mind here, that the added solar farm was only intended to supply additional energy and not replace existing solutions, such a "small" farm would be a real lifesaver there and optimize the limited space in extremely mountainous terrain.
## Closing words
There are to sides which the problems can be tackled: we can bring the total energy production up, by adding more panels or electricity by other means, but we can also try and bring the total demand down. This is to be achieved by investing strictly in the most energy-efficient appliances. Even replacing older, not-so-efficient appliances might sometimes be of use.
But ensuring efficient use is not the only way to bring down the overall demand.
As introduced as core ideas for the whole project, sharing and delaying will prove immensely useful. How so?
By sharing, we mean a concept that is already widely applied in the relevant areas. What to do in a Village that has no access to water? Will we send each household out to the faraway river to catch water for their family? Or would we join hands in a community effort to dig a central well used by everyone?
So, when we look at sharing electricity, how would we apply the concept? We take the appliances that consume the most energy individually and scale them up in order to increase efficiency. For example, in our case, that is most applicable to electric heating. If we manage to heat central community spaces available for everyone, naturally, fewer individual rooms will have to be heated. Similarly, one could declare a room as a public cinema, where people come together and watch Tv on a big Projector. Twice as fun, and conserving a great deal of energy again. Such ideas and others have to be realized in order to be able to match the total demand with the available supply.
Sadly, the project was never taken up further, and the situation for the people in the Spiti Valley has not improved. Two years ago, a road directly through the mountains was finished, making the population hopeful for an increase in tourism, increasing the chances of the economic viability of improved solutions.
I spent my time there in the function of a research intern, having no real say in the realization of the project. The problem remains, and I still think that decentral solutions look to be the most promising for this specific location. Of course, the Himalayas present a bit of an extreme location, but that doesn't change the fact that people live there and have a basic human right to electricity.

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title = "Übersetzung: Plastic Recycling"
date = 2019-03-19
updated = 2025-04-15
authors = ["Aron Petau"]
description = "A recycling system inspired by Precious Plastic, Filastruder, and Machine Learning"
[taxonomies]
tags = [
"3D printing",
"Arduino",
"Linux",
"automatic",
"circular",
"cradle-to-cradle",
"decentral",
"democratic",
"environment",
"filament",
"filastruder",
"master thesis",
"ml",
"plastics",
"precious plastic",
"private",
"recycling",
"shredder",
"sustainability",
"waste"
]
[extra]
banner = "recycling_graphic.png"
show_copyright = true
show_shares = true
+++
Being involved with 3D Printers, there is the issue of sustainability that I am confronted with regularly.
Most 3D printed parts never get recycled and add to the global waste problem, rather than reducing it.
The printer most certainly doesn’t care what it is printing, the main problem is the dimensional accuracy and the purity of the material. All of this leads to a huge industry, Germany being especially involved, using loads of virgin plastic.
What can be done about it?
We can design our products to last longer, we can also print recycling labels on them so they do not have to get burned after their first life. We can take care to only print functional objects, not just fun toys nobody uses.
Yet, none of that prevents the use of virgin plastics. If you buy a spool of filament, there are some recycled options, but usually at twice the price at worse quality. No wonder recycled filament fails to convince the masses. It is mostly a fun thing YouTubers can pursue, not a valid commercial process.
{{ youtube(id="vqWwUx8l_Io") }}
In my opinion, the core problem is the nonexistent economic feasibility of a proper recycling process. Identifying the exact material of a piece of trash is a very hard problem, definitely not solved yet. So why do we mix the plastic up in the first place? There is a general willingness of people to recycle, but the system for it is missing.
# The Master Plan
I want to get people to wash and separate their trash for me, which are the most expensive steps in the recycling process. There is a willingness to take the extra step, and even if just my mom collects bottle caps for me, that is more than I can realistically use up.
This only really works when I am thinking in a local and decentral environment.
The existing recycling facilities clearly will not be able to provide 200 different containers for 200 different types of plastic.
Starting the process with clean and sorted materials, like bottle caps (HDPE) or failed prints (PET-G), I start off with an advantage.
Now I have to take apart the trash into evenly sized particles.
Meet:
## The Shredder
We built the Precious Plastic Shredder!
<iframe width="510" height="682" src="https://b2b.partcommunity.com/community/partcloud/embedded.html?route=embedded&name=Shredder+Basic+V2.0&model_id=96649&portal=b2b&showDescription=true&showLicense=false&showDownloadButton=false&showHotspots=true&noAutoload=false&autoRotate=true&hideMenu=false&topColor=%23dde7ed&bottomColor=%23ffffff&cameraParams=false&varsettransfer=" frameborder="0" id="EmbeddedView-Iframe-96649" allowfullscreen></iframe>
With these awesome open-source drawings, I was able to cobble together my very own very dangerous plastic shredder.
After finding some way to drive this massive axis, I feed the beast and hopefully get tiny pretty uniform plastic bits that are ready to begin the cycle of life anew.
The solution for the motorization was an old and used garden shredder that still had an intact motor and wiring.
We cut it in half and attached it to the shredder box.
{{ youtube(id="QwVp1zmAA4Q") }}
After replacing the weak force transmission screw for an industrial coupler, we were ready to try it out. Obviously, there are still security concerns in this prototype, a proper hopper is already being made.
Nevertheless, we are confident that this shredder will be able to deal with the light sorts of plastic we are thinking of.
As you can see, I am now able to produce awesome confetti but to do more with the plastic flakes I have to extrude them.
## Meet the Filastruder
This is the Filastruder, designed and made by Tim Elmore, in an attempt to create the cheapest viable way to extrude plastic. The biggest cost issue is the tight industrial tolerances in thickness that have to be adhered to. This is in essence what separates good from the bad filament. The industry standard nowadays is at +-0.03mm. Hard to achieve on a DIY setup, but not unheard of. The setup, like any bigger industry equivalent, consists of a motor pressing plastic pellets through a heated screw, extruding molten plastic at the end through a nozzle, and setting the diameter. The leftmost machine is responsible for winding the filament properly onto a spool.
Here you can see the extrusion process in action.
{{ youtube(id="FX6--pYrPVs") }}
The Filastruder is controlled by an Arduino and is highly configurable. The laser sensor visible in the video is already working, but I am missing more direct control over the diameter of the filament.
When it all really comes down to the single variable of the filament diameter responsible for the quality of my recycled project, a simple Machine Learning optimization directly jumps at me: I have a few variables like winder speed, extrusion speed, heat, and cooling intensity. These variables can be optimized on the fly for an exact diameter. This is actually roughly how virgin filament is produced, commercial facilities just manage much faster.
![The variables in an iterative optimization](/assets/images/recycling_variables.png)
So far, I am aware of a few companies and academic projects attempting this process, but none of them manage to get either the quality or the price of other products available. Automatization does not just take out jobs away, I think it can also be a helpful tool, for example tackling environmental issues such as this one.
This project is very dear to my heart and I plan to investigate it further in the form of a master thesis.
The realization will require many skills I am already picking up or still need to work on within the Design and Computation program.
{: .notice--info}
<div class="buttons">
<a class="colored external" href="https://reflowfilament.com/">Reflow Filament</a>
</div>
<div class="buttons">
<a class="colored external" href="https://www.perpetualplasticproject.com/">Perpetual Plastic Project</a>
</div>
<div class="buttons">
<a class="colored external" href="https://preciousplastic.com/">Precious Plastic Community</a>
</div>
<div class="buttons">
<a class="colored external" href="https://www.filamentive.com/recycling-failed-and-waste-3d-prints-into-filament-challenges/">Filamentive Statement on why recycling is not feasible in their opinion</a>
</div>
<div class="buttons">
<a class="colored external" href="https://www.youmagine.com/designs/infidel-inline-filament-diameter-estimator-lowcost-10-24">Open source filament diameter sensor by Tomas Sanladerer</a>
</div>
<div class="buttons">
<a class="colored external" href="https://re-pet3d.com/s">Re-Pet Shop</a>
</div>

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title = "Übersetzung: Ballpark"
date = 2022-03-01
authors = ["Aron Petau"]
description = "A 3D Game Concept in Unity"
[taxonomies]
tags = [
"3D graphics",
"Unity",
"C#",
"cyberpunk",
"collaborative",
"game",
"physics",
"communication",
"1st person",
"3rd person",
"2 player",
"university of osnabrück"
]
[extra]
banner = "ballpark_menu.png"
show_copyright = true
show_shares = true
+++
## Ballpark: 3D Environments in Unity
Implemented in Unity, Ballpark is a Concept work for a collaborative 2-Player Game, where one player is a navigator with a third-person perspective and another player is a copilot, responsible for interaction with the environment – featuring mostly working physics, intelligent enemies, a gun, a grappling hook system for traversing the map, a 2D Interface for navigation and a health bar system. On top of the meanest cyberpunk vibes my past self was able to conjure.
Enjoy!
{{ youtube(id="jwQWd9NPEIs") }}
As you can see, the design faces some questionable choices, but all mechanics are homemade from the ground up and I learned a lot. I often struggle to enjoy competitive games and think there is potential in a co-dependent game interface. During early testing, we often found that it enforces player communication since already the tutorial is quite hard to beat.
Due to me being a leftie, perhaps not entirely smart, I gave player one the keyboard arrows to work with and player two the WASD keys and left and right mouse buttons for grappling and shooting. For the game, it has an interesting side effect, in that players are forced not only to interact through the differing information on each player's screen but also have to physically interact and coordinate the controls.
As you can perhaps see, the ball-rolling navigation is quite hard to use.
It is a purely physics-based system, where, depending on the materiality of the ball, its weight, and therefore its inertia will drastically change.
On small screens, the prototype version of the game is virtually impossible to control and several visual bugs within the viewport still obfuscate items when they are too close. Considering that virtually all the mechanics are written from scratch, with a follow-me camera, collision detection, smart moving agents, and a still very wonky-looking grappling gun, I still think it deserves a spot in this portfolio.
For this project I focused completely on the mechanics of the game, resulting in lots of used prefabs and readymade 3D Objects. Next time, I want to do that myself too.
I enjoyed my stint into Unity a lot and am looking forward to creating my first VR application and would love to try out some form of mechanics where the user vision is completely obfuscated by VR and they have to carry their eyes as a handheld connected camera so that the players can move around the camera itself with their hands.

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title = "Übersetzung: Homebrew"
date = 2022-03-01
authors = ["Aron Petau"]
description = "A bubbly hobby of mine"
[taxonomies]
tags = [
"altbier",
"beer",
"experiment",
"fermentation",
"hops",
"homebrew",
"keg",
"lager",
"pressure",
"private",
"sustainability",
"yeast"
]
[extra]
banner = "beer_tap.jpg"
show_copyright = true
show_shares = true
+++
## Brewing
### Making my own beer
I love hosting, I love experimenting in the Kitchen. Starting with homebrews was a natural fit for me and during the first wave of Covid-19, I went the whole homebrewer’s route of bottle fermentation and small batches later elevating my game with larger batches of 50 liters and a pressure tank system.
Starting out, I found it fascinating, how just 4 rather simple ingredients, malt, hops, water and yeast, can form such an incredible range of taste experiences. It was and still is, a tremendous learning experience, where one slowly has to accept not being able to control the process fully and find room for creativity.
Why do I present such an unrelated non-academic hobby here? I simply do not regard it as unrelated, experimenting and optimizing a process and a workflow, creating optimal conditions for the yeast to do its job feels very similar to approaching a coding project.
Yeast and what it does fascinates me. Every time I open the latch to release some pressure on the Tank I think of the awesome symbiotic relationships yeast has with humans and how many different strains live there together to create a unique, yet tailored flavor. Several ideas are floating around of changing the brewing process by capturing the created carbon dioxide and using it productively. I could see a car tire being filled with my beer gas, or an algae farm munching away on my CO2 byproducts. Within a closed-loop pressurized system, such ideas actually become realizable and I would love to explore them further.
I am not yet an expert on algae, but I can manage with yeast and I believe they can coexist and create a more sustainable cycle of production.
Young Henrys, a brewery in Australia is already incorporating algae into its industrial process:
[The Algae project](https://younghenrys.com/algae)
Such ideas do not come into the industry by themselves: I believe that art and the exploratory discovery of novel techniques are the same things. Good and inventive design can improve society and make steps towards sustainability. I want to be part of that and would love to find new ways of using yeast in other design contexts: See whether I can make them work in a closed circular system, make them calculate things for me, or simply making my next beer taste awesome with just the right amount of fizz.
{% gallery() %}
[
{
"file": "beer_setup.jpg",
"title": "The latest iteration of my homebrew setup, using pressure tanks and a pressurized fermentation chamber",
"alt": "A photo showcasing the latest version of a homebrew setup with pressure tanks and a fermentation chamber."
},
{
"file": "beer_setup_2.jpg",
"title": "An electric kettle I use for the Brew",
"alt": "An image of the electric kettle used in the brewing process."
},
{
"file": "beer_tap.jpg",
"title": "I made my own kegging system featuring a tap from an old table leg.",
"alt": "A custom kegging system with a tap made from an upcycled table leg."
},
{
"file": "beer_fermentation.jpg",
"title": "An active fermentation",
"alt": "A photo showing the fermentation process in action during beer brewing."
},
{
"file": "hops.jpg",
"title": "Hops growing in our garden, so I can experiment with fresh specialty hops",
"alt": "Fresh hops growing in the garden, ready for experimentation in brewing."
},
{
"file": "beer_malt.jpg",
"title": "The leftover mass of spent grain. Animals love it, it's great for composting, but most importantly, it's great for baking bread!",
"alt": "The spent grain left over from brewing, which is perfect for composting, animal feed, or baking bread."
}
]
{% end %}

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title = "Übersetzung: Critical Epistemology"
date = 2020-07-14
authors = ["Aron Petau"]
description = "Forum entries from the Seminar: Critical Epistemologies"
[taxonomies]
tags = ["alison jaggar", "elizabeth anderson", "epistemology", "ethics", "feminism", "francois ewald", "judith butler", "josé medina", "normativity", "phenomenology", "philosophy", "philosophy of emotions", "postphenomenology", "private", "university of osnabrück", "values in science"]
[extra]
show_copyright = true
show_shares = true
+++
## Forum entries from the Seminar: Critical Epistemologies
### On Anderson: Institutions
{% alert(note=true) %}
Source Text: Epistemic Justice as a Virtue of Social Institutions
Elizabeth Anderson (2012) Epistemic Justice as a Virtue of Social Institutions, Social Epistemology, 26:2, 163-173,
DOI: 10.1080/02691728.2011.652211 [Publication](https://doi.org/10.1080/02691728.2011.652211)
{% end %}
The text by Anderson helped shed light on a few issues I stumbled over with Frickers Account. On top of the various issues I and seemingly others have with her virtue-based approach, I think a utilitarian angle is worth considering. That would be: okay, I accept that people can help fight injustice by realising their privilege, showing restraint, silencing themselves, and adopting the benevolent listening approach. I think that is a practical, virtuous, and realistic endeavour.
But is it the effective path to alleviating structural injustice? I think not, and initially, that is a major reason I discarded Fricker’s approach, although I saw merit. I have similar concerns to Anderson in the scalability of virtues. Virtuous behavior might help my personal well-being, it gives me normative elevation and might even further the quality of relationships I have. But is it applicable to society, is it enough to counteract structural injustice?
Well, maybe, assuming that:
1. Everyone realizes their privilege,
2. Everyone concludes that justice is the right goal,
3. Upon deciding to adopt a virtuous stance, everyone at least moderately succeeds in practicing what they preach.
I think, for society, the same society that came up with patriarchy in the first place, external pressure, some measure independent of the convictedness of the subjects is needed.
Anderson made the powerful point of: “Anything that works, goes”, which took me some time to appreciate. I am always angry when I get told to keep my shower to a minimum or stop using plastic straws when I know exactly that my using less water is nothing compared to the institutionalized practice of Coca-Cola putting water into bottles. I feel like it is unjustified to ask me to save water while others triple their output, for performance.
The same thing applies to Epistemic injustices. It strikes me how much energy it costs to keep up virtuous behavior individually and how little effect there is to show for it. I do not believe in “trickling up” where institutions will eventually adopt individual practices.
Is Fricker thereby less right in her point? No, it adds up, as an entire population showering shorter adds up to lots of water saved.
Anderson also points out how locally innocent biases can create injustice on a “macro” scale. Another indicator for me is that local virtue is not the sole solution, as it can still feed and sustain a system enforcing epistemic injustice.
I still have doubts about what to do now with my ideas, on how the world looks that I want. I lack the imagination of seeing a world that is epistemically just, and it is hard to strive for something one cannot even imagine. The system is inherently leaning toward inequality, if I try to balance something on a needle, it will only go well so long, before small imbalances create chain reactions and the object should be called unstable. Should we even succeed in “resetting” society, creating equal participation for each subject, how will it remain just? Is Justice always a conjunct of Equality? Are there ways to achieve real Justice without needing equality?
{% alert(note=true) %}
created by Aron Petau on Tuesday 14. July 2020, 17:45
{% end %}
### On Medina, the informant and the inquirer
{% alert(note=true) %}
Source Text: Dr. José Medina (2012) Hermeneutical Injustice and Polyphonic Contextualism: Social Silences and Shared Hermeneutical Responsibilities, Social Epistemology, 26:2, 201-220, DOI: 10.1080/02691728.2011.652214
[Publication](https://www.ias.edu/sites/default/files/sss/pdfs/Crisis-and-Critique-2018-19/medina_imposed_silences.pdf)
{% end %}
My biggest takeaway here was that, as I tried to hint at in an earlier comment,
Whenever we talk about justice, this necessarily refers to a relational concept, where everybody has a double role to ensure successful communication. Medina calls these the inquirer and the informant. So, every individual has to make sure to act to her capacity as an epistemologically sound knowledge-acquiring agent (the inquirer). This would involve knowing when and how to falsify/qualify statements, making inferences about the theory of mind, and generally comparing different statements. The other role is the informant, where the individual should have the capacity to function as an object in an inquiry by another.
Very roughly this can, I think, be compared to any good communication model, where there are a listener and a speaker, and both have to function. What was new here, or at least came out more clear is that it not only depends on the capacity of both of these roles on the subject, but it is also directly dependent on the “other”, the agent opposite of the subject. We may call this other society later but it helps me to visualize the other as an individual nonetheless. Where the analogy to communication now fails, in my opinion, is this cross-dependence, where an agent does not fully determine her capacity to act both as an inquirer and as an informant, it is co-determined by the “other”. So, if I, as an “other”, listen to someone's statements, and I fail or refuse to understand the epistemic content of the message, I am not only impairing my epistemic agency, but I also hurt the epistemic agency of the subject. Maybe obvious to most, but this thought struck me as being exactly the point of leverage for dysfunctionalities in power relations.
Also argued convincingly in the paper was that these are distinct and independent agencies, which can be impairing an individual separately.
Overall, the Medina text was incredibly helpful after the somewhat confusing Fricker text that felt incomplete and left a lot of questions for me. The medina text picked up all my initial doubts, that I couldn't properly formulate, and many more, while still holding to the general framework of Fricker.
Although I was not convinced by the Fricker Text, I tend to think the strategy:
"When in doubt, give the subject full epistemic credibility"
Is a good strategy that might alleviate a lot of issues regarding functions of power, and hierarchy, but also further, it might be a good counter for things as our confirmation bias, expectation bias and many individual errors that we could minimize by constantly exposing ourselves to falsifiability through others (voluntarily). Sounds like science applied to agency to me.
{% alert(note=true) %}
created by Aron Petau on Thursday 09. July 2020, 11:25
{% end %}
### On Jaggar: Norms, Outlaw Emotions, and the Ideal Society
{% alert(note=true) %}
Source Text: Alison M. Jaggar (1989) Love and knowledge: Emotion in feminist epistemology, Inquiry, 32:2, 151-176, DOI: 10.1080/00201748908602185
[Publication](https://doi.org/10.1080/00201748908602185)
{% end %}
I found Jaggar to be a very wholesome read, it was the perfect amount of grounded argumentative structure and felt very connected as a whole. This was, together with the ideas from Lugones the best and most fruitful paper for me.
On outlaw emotions:
First, I hate the term, I think it’s placative and fails to frame the (actually nice) idea behind it.
Outlaw Emotions are all those emotions incompatible with the dominant norms. That’s a huge field to cover, among feminist emotions they would also encompass emotions that are irrational or “faulty”. So, Jaggar does the term Justice by saying, some, but not all Outlaw Emotions are Feminist emotions. To make this evident, just think of a murderer's joy for killing, it is of no feminist interest to dissect, yet it is against dominant values. So, experiencing Outlaw emotions is a (probably) necessary, but not sufficient condition for feminism. The incompatible emotion serves to create discourse and change.
Jaggar convincingly shows how emotions have a direct influence on beliefs and can validly constitute evidence, while simultaneously validly influencing values in a similar manner.
When we talk about dominant/alternative norms, we already endorse hierarchy in society. We acknowledge its existence, simply by identifying the dominant norm. I am not quite sure what exactly Jaggar proposes we should do with the hierarchy structures in society. Explicitly I can read: Subcultures rejecting dominant norms should be formed, to create counterbalances and a somewhat fair discourse over the topic.
“How can we determine which outlaw emotions are to be endorsed or encouraged and which rejected? In what sense can we say that some emotional responses are more appropriate than others? What reason is there for supposing that certain alternative perceptions of the world, perceptions informed by outlaw emotions, are to be preferred to perceptions informed by conventional emotions? Here I can indicate only the general direction of an answer, whose full elaboration must await another occasion. I suggest that emotions are appropriate if they are characteristic of a society in which all Human Life (and perhaps some nonhuman life, too) thrive, or if they are conducive to establishing such a society.”
To me this passage sounds sketchy at best, there is no indication of how to successfully separate appropriate from inappropriate emotions. Roughly, I read this part as: emotions are warranted iff they increase the balance of power. (equivalent to minimizing the height of the hierarchy) I would love to get to read this “other occasion” because it seems indefensible to me to formulate a norm that states: Accept only emotions which eliminate/diminish norms.
The idea roughly resembles Rawls's Minimax Principle, where a policy should be implemented iff the benefit for the most disadvantaged is highest.
Another thing I found helpful is her reformulation of what norms do:
“Dominant Norms tend to serve dominant interests”
til here nothing new, this is a tautology for me, I understand norms as identical to dominant interests, that’s literally what norms are.
Is an alternative, suppressed norm even thinkable? Isn't it inherent in a norm that it be the dominant one?
But then, after that: "Whatever our color / gender / class / sexual orientation, we are likely to adopt the dominant value of racist, classist, homophobe, misogynistic white men."
This was rather helpful to me, as it reframes the “act” of oppression as the “likelihood of value distribution” being skewed in your favor, making everybody’s values more likely to be similar to yours. This nicely illustrates how a system can be hierarchical and oppressive, without anybody actively, intentionally “acting oppressive”, while still perpetuating oppression. I'm
not saying everybody is acting unintentionally oppressive, but it is always hard to imagine for me to picture "White Men" forming a group and collectively deciding on who to hate this coming season, Conceptually separating "being oppressed" and "oppressing" into phenomena
without necessary inherent causal relation makes sense to me here.
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title = "Übersetzung: Chatbot"
date = 2020-07-15
authors = ["Aron Petau"]
description = "A speech-controlled meditation assistant and sentiment tracker"
[taxonomies]
tags = [
"chatbot",
"data viz",
"google assistant",
"google cloud",
"google dialogflow",
"meditation",
"nlp",
"nlu",
"python",
"speech interface",
"sql",
"university of osnabrück",
"voice assistant",
"work"
]
[extra]
banner = "fulfillment-flow.png"
show_copyright = true
show_shares = true
+++
## Guru to Go: a speech-controlled meditation assistant and sentiment tracker
{{ youtube(id="R73vAH37TC0") }}
Here, you see a Demo video of a voice-controlled meditation assistant that we worked on in the course "Conversational Agents and speech interfaces"
<div class="buttons">
<a class="colored external" href="https://w3o.ikw.uni-osnabrueck.de/scheinmaker/export/details/76/67">Course Description</a>
</div>
The central goal of the entire project was to make the Assistant be entirely speech controlled, such that the phone needn't be touched while immersing yourself in meditation.
The Chatbot was built in Google Dialogflow, a natural language understanding engine that can interpret free text input and identify entities and intents within it,
We wrote a custom python backend to then use these evaluated intents and compute individualized responses.
The resulting application runs in Google Assistant and can adaptively deliver meditations, visualize sentiment history and comprehensively inform about meditation practices. Sadly, we used beta functionality from the older "Google Assistant" Framework, which got rebranded months after by Google into "Actions on Google" and changed core functionality requiring extensive migration that neither Chris, my partner in this project, nor I found time to do.
Nevertheless, the whole Chatbot functioned as a meditation player and was able to graph and store recorded sentiments over time for each user.
Attached below you can also find our final report with details on the programming and thought process.
<div class="buttons">
<a class="colored external" href="https://acrobat.adobe.com/link/track?uri=urn:aaid:scds:US:23118565-e24e-4586-b0e0-c0ef7550a067">Read the full report</a>
</div>
<div class="buttons">
<a class="colored external" href="https://github.com/cstenkamp/medibot_pythonbackend">Look at the Project on GitHub</a>
</div>
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After this being my first dip into using the Google Framework for the creation of a speech assistant and encountering many problems along the way that partly found their way also into the final report, now I managed to utilize these explorations and am currently working to create [Ällei](/allei/), another chatbot with a different focus, which is not realized within Actions on google, but will rather be getting its own react app on a website.
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title = "Übersetzung: Coding Examples"
date = 2021-03-01
authors = ["Aron Petau"]
description = "A selection of coding projects from my Bachelor's in Cognitive Science"
[taxonomies]
tags = [
"AI",
"CNN",
"GOFAI",
"MTCNN",
"computer vision",
"ethics",
"face detection",
"google colab",
"jupyter notebook",
"keras",
"machine learning",
"neural nets",
"object recognition",
"python",
"super resolution",
"tensorflow",
"university of osnabrück"
]
[extra]
banner = "sample_lr.png"
show_copyright = true
show_shares = true
+++
## Neural Networks and Computer Vision
## A selection of coding projects
Although pure coding and debugging are often not a passion of mine, I recognize the importance of neural networks and other recent developments in Computer Vision. From several projects regarding AI and Machine Learning that I co-authored during my Bachelor Program, I picked this one since I think it is well documented and explains on a step-by-step basis what we do there.
### Image Super-Resolution using Convolutional Neural Networks (Recreation of a 2016 Paper)
Image Super-Resolution is a hugely important topic in Computer Vision. If it works sufficiently advanced, we could take all our screenshots and selfies and cat pictures from the 2006 facebook-era and even from before and scale them up to suit modern 4K needs.
Just to give an example of what is possible in 2020, just 4 years after the paper here, have a look at this video from 1902:
{{ youtube(id="EQs5VxNPhzk") }}
The 2016 paper we had a look at is much more modest: it tries to upscale only a single Image, but historically, it was one of the first to achieve computing times sufficiently small to make such realtime-video-upscaling as visible in the Video (from 2020) or of the likes that Nvidia uses nowadays to upscale Videogames.
Example of a Super-Resolution Image.
The Neural network is artificially adding Pixels so that we can finally put our measly selfie on a billboard poster and not be appalled by our deformed-and-pixelated-through-technology face.
{% gallery() %}
[
{
"file": "sample_lr.png",
"title": "A low-resolution sample",
"alt": "A sample image with low resolution, used as a baseline for comparison."
},
{
"file": "sample_hr.png",
"title": "A high-resolution sample. This is also called 'ground truth'",
"alt": "A high-resolution image that serves as the reference ground truth for comparison with other samples."
},
{
"file": "sample_sr.png",
"title": "The artificially enlarged image patch resulting from the algorithm",
"alt": "A sample image where the resolution has been artificially increased using an image enhancement algorithm."
},
{
"file": "sample_loss.png",
"title": "A graph showing an exemplary loss function applied during training",
"alt": "A graph illustrating the loss function used to train the model, showing the model's performance over time."
},
{
"file": "sample_cos_sim.png",
"title": "One qualitative measurement we used was pixel-wise cosine similarity. It is used to measure how similar the output and the ground truth images are",
"alt": "A visualization of pixel-wise cosine similarity, used to quantify how similar the generated image is to the ground truth image."
}
]
{% end %}
[The Python notebook for Image super-resolution in Colab]( https://colab.research.google.com/drive/1RlgIKJmX8Omz9CTktX7cdIV_BwarUFpv?usp=sharing)
### MTCNN (Application and Comparison of a 2016 Paper)
Here, you can also have a look at another, much smaller project, where we rebuilt a rather classical Machine learning approach for face detection. Here, we use preexisting libraries to demonstrate the difference in efficacy of approaches, showing that Multi-task Cascaded Convolutional Networks (MTCNN) was one of the best-performing approaches in 2016. Since I invested much more love and work into the above project, I would prefer for you to check that one out, in case two projects are too much.
[Face detection using a classical AI Approach (Recreation of a 2016 Paper)](https://colab.research.google.com/drive/1uNGsVZ0Q42JRNa3BuI4W-JNJHaXD26bu?usp=sharing)

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title = "Übersetzung: Philosophy"
date = 2021-03-01
authors = ["Aron Petau"]
description = "A selection of my weekly commentaries from philosophical seminars at the University of Osnabrück"
[taxonomies]
tags = ["alison jaggar", "elizabeth anderson", "elsa dorlin", "epistemology", "ethics", "feminism", "francois ewald", "judith butler", "josé medina", "michael foucault", "miranda fricker", "normativity", "phenomenology", "philosophy", "philosophy of emotions", "postphenomenology", "private", "university of osnabrück", "values in science"]
[extra]
show_copyright = true
show_shares = true
+++
## Critical considerations during my studies
I have attended a fair share of philosophical seminars in my studies and consider it a core topic connected both to science and to digital environments.
Normative and feminist social theory, as well as the theory of science and phenomenology, are all brought to me through seminar formats at university and made up a good part of my education there.
I find it hard to properly demonstrate what interests me without presenting often long-winded and dull term papers.
The courses I loved most also often had a format with a weekly hand-in, where students are asked to comment on the paper they just read to identify points to carry into next week's discussion. I am incredibly thankful for this methodology of approaching complex philosophical works, often complete books with supplicant essays surrounding the course topic. In my opinion, nearly all of the value created during these seminars is contained within the live discussions fed by reading materials and little opinion pieces in the form of forum comments. That's why I decided to share here a selection of these weekly commentaries and the sources they are based upon. They are often unrefined and informal, but they indicate the centerpiece of the seminars and demonstrate many thought processes that happened within me during these sessions. Although I took only a small selection, in sum they are a substantial read. Feel free to just skip through and read what catches your interest.
## Forum entries from the Seminar: Critical Epistemologies
### On Anderson: Institutions
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Source Text: Epistemic Justice as a Virtue of Social Institutions
Elizabeth Anderson (2012) Epistemic Justice as a Virtue of Social Institutions, Social Epistemology, 26:2, 163-173,
DOI: 10.1080/02691728.2011.652211 [Publication](https://doi.org/10.1080/02691728.2011.652211)
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The text by Anderson helped shed light on a few issues I stumbled over with Frickers Account. On top of the various issues I and seemingly others have with her virtue-based approach, I think a utilitarian angle is worth considering. That would be: okay, I accept that people can help fight injustice by realising their privilege, showing restraint, silencing themselves, and adopting the benevolent listening approach. I think that is a practical, virtuous, and realistic endeavour.
But is it the effective path to alleviating structural injustice? I think not, and initially, that is a major reason I discarded Fricker’s approach, although I saw merit. I have similar concerns to Anderson in the scalability of virtues. Virtuous behavior might help my personal well-being, it gives me normative elevation and might even further the quality of relationships I have. But is it applicable to society, is it enough to counteract structural injustice?
Well, maybe, assuming that:
1. Everyone realizes their privilege,
2. Everyone concludes that justice is the right goal,
3. Upon deciding to adopt a virtuous stance, everyone at least moderately succeeds in practicing what they preach.
I think, for society, the same society that came up with patriarchy in the first place, external pressure, some measure independent of the convictedness of the subjects is needed.
Anderson made the powerful point of: “Anything that works, goes”, which took me some time to appreciate. I am always angry when I get told to keep my shower to a minimum or stop using plastic straws when I know exactly that my using less water is nothing compared to the institutionalized practice of Coca-Cola putting water into bottles. I feel like it is unjustified to ask me to save water while others triple their output, for performance.
The same thing applies to Epistemic injustices. It strikes me how much energy it costs to keep up virtuous behavior individually and how little effect there is to show for it. I do not believe in “trickling up” where institutions will eventually adopt individual practices.
Is Fricker thereby less right in her point? No, it adds up, as an entire population showering shorter adds up to lots of water saved.
Anderson also points out how locally innocent biases can create injustice on a “macro” scale. Another indicator for me is that local virtue is not the sole solution, as it can still feed and sustain a system enforcing epistemic injustice.
I still have doubts about what to do now with my ideas, on how the world looks that I want. I lack the imagination of seeing a world that is epistemically just, and it is hard to strive for something one cannot even imagine. The system is inherently leaning toward inequality, if I try to balance something on a needle, it will only go well so long, before small imbalances create chain reactions and the object should be called unstable. Should we even succeed in “resetting” society, creating equal participation for each subject, how will it remain just? Is Justice always a conjunct of Equality? Are there ways to achieve real Justice without needing equality?
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created by Aron Petau on Tuesday 14. July 2020, 17:45
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### On Medina, the informant and the inquirer
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Source Text: Dr. José Medina (2012) Hermeneutical Injustice and Polyphonic Contextualism: Social Silences and Shared Hermeneutical Responsibilities, Social Epistemology, 26:2, 201-220, DOI: 10.1080/02691728.2011.652214
[Publication](https://www.ias.edu/sites/default/files/sss/pdfs/Crisis-and-Critique-2018-19/medina_imposed_silences.pdf)
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My biggest takeaway here was that, as I tried to hint at in an earlier comment,
Whenever we talk about justice, this necessarily refers to a relational concept, where everybody has a double role to ensure successful communication. Medina calls these the inquirer and the informant. So, every individual has to make sure to act to her capacity as an epistemologically sound knowledge-acquiring agent (the inquirer). This would involve knowing when and how to falsify/qualify statements, making inferences about the theory of mind, and generally comparing different statements. The other role is the informant, where the individual should have the capacity to function as an object in an inquiry by another.
Very roughly this can, I think, be compared to any good communication model, where there are a listener and a speaker, and both have to function. What was new here, or at least came out more clear is that it not only depends on the capacity of both of these roles on the subject, but it is also directly dependent on the “other”, the agent opposite of the subject. We may call this other society later but it helps me to visualize the other as an individual nonetheless. Where the analogy to communication now fails, in my opinion, is this cross-dependence, where an agent does not fully determine her capacity to act both as an inquirer and as an informant, it is co-determined by the “other”. So, if I, as an “other”, listen to someone's statements, and I fail or refuse to understand the epistemic content of the message, I am not only impairing my epistemic agency, but I also hurt the epistemic agency of the subject. Maybe obvious to most, but this thought struck me as being exactly the point of leverage for dysfunctionalities in power relations.
Also argued convincingly in the paper was that these are distinct and independent agencies, which can be impairing an individual separately.
Overall, the Medina text was incredibly helpful after the somewhat confusing Fricker text that felt incomplete and left a lot of questions for me. The medina text picked up all my initial doubts, that I couldn't properly formulate, and many more, while still holding to the general framework of Fricker.
Although I was not convinced by the Fricker Text, I tend to think the strategy:
"When in doubt, give the subject full epistemic credibility"
Is a good strategy that might alleviate a lot of issues regarding functions of power, and hierarchy, but also further, it might be a good counter for things as our confirmation bias, expectation bias and many individual errors that we could minimize by constantly exposing ourselves to falsifiability through others (voluntarily). Sounds like science applied to agency to me.
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created by Aron Petau on Thursday 09. July 2020, 11:25
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### On Jaggar: Norms, Outlaw Emotions, and the Ideal Society
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Source Text: Alison M. Jaggar (1989) Love and knowledge: Emotion in feminist epistemology, Inquiry, 32:2, 151-176, DOI: 10.1080/00201748908602185
[Publication](https://doi.org/10.1080/00201748908602185)
{% end %}
I found Jaggar to be a very wholesome read, it was the perfect amount of grounded argumentative structure and felt very connected as a whole. This was, together with the ideas from Lugones the best and most fruitful paper for me.
On outlaw emotions:
First, I hate the term, I think it’s placative and fails to frame the (actually nice) idea behind it.
Outlaw Emotions are all those emotions incompatible with the dominant norms. That’s a huge field to cover, among feminist emotions they would also encompass emotions that are irrational or “faulty”. So, Jaggar does the term Justice by saying, some, but not all Outlaw Emotions are Feminist emotions. To make this evident, just think of a murderer's joy for killing, it is of no feminist interest to dissect, yet it is against dominant values. So, experiencing Outlaw emotions is a (probably) necessary, but not sufficient condition for feminism. The incompatible emotion serves to create discourse and change.
Jaggar convincingly shows how emotions have a direct influence on beliefs and can validly constitute evidence, while simultaneously validly influencing values in a similar manner.
When we talk about dominant/alternative norms, we already endorse hierarchy in society. We acknowledge its existence, simply by identifying the dominant norm. I am not quite sure what exactly Jaggar proposes we should do with the hierarchy structures in society. Explicitly I can read: Subcultures rejecting dominant norms should be formed, to create counterbalances and a somewhat fair discourse over the topic.
“How can we determine which outlaw emotions are to be endorsed or encouraged and which rejected? In what sense can we say that some emotional responses are more appropriate than others? What reason is there for supposing that certain alternative perceptions of the world, perceptions informed by outlaw emotions, are to be preferred to perceptions informed by conventional emotions? Here I can indicate only the general direction of an answer, whose full elaboration must await another occasion. I suggest that emotions are appropriate if they are characteristic of a society in which all Human Life (and perhaps some nonhuman life, too) thrive, or if they are conducive to establishing such a society.”
To me this passage sounds sketchy at best, there is no indication of how to successfully separate appropriate from inappropriate emotions. Roughly, I read this part as: emotions are warranted iff they increase the balance of power. (equivalent to minimizing the height of the hierarchy) I would love to get to read this “other occasion” because it seems indefensible to me to formulate a norm that states: Accept only emotions which eliminate/diminish norms.
The idea roughly resembles Rawls's Minimax Principle, where a policy should be implemented iff the benefit for the most disadvantaged is highest.
Another thing I found helpful is her reformulation of what norms do:
“Dominant Norms tend to serve dominant interests”
til here nothing new, this is a tautology for me, I understand norms as identical to dominant interests, that’s literally what norms are.
Is an alternative, suppressed norm even thinkable? Isn't it inherent in a norm that it be the dominant one?
But then, after that: "Whatever our color / gender / class / sexual orientation, we are likely to adopt the dominant value of racist, classist, homophobe, misogynistic white men."
This was rather helpful to me, as it reframes the “act” of oppression as the “likelihood of value distribution” being skewed in your favor, making everybody’s values more likely to be similar to yours. This nicely illustrates how a system can be hierarchical and oppressive, without anybody actively, intentionally “acting oppressive”, while still perpetuating oppression. I'm
not saying everybody is acting unintentionally oppressive, but it is always hard to imagine for me to picture "White Men" forming a group and collectively deciding on who to hate this coming season, Conceptually separating "being oppressed" and "oppressing" into phenomena
without necessary inherent causal relation makes sense to me here.
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created by Aron Petau on Tuesday 23. June 2020, 18:52
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## Forum entries from the Seminar: Critical Philosophy of Subjectivity 1: Michel Foucault
### On Butler: Constituting norms =/= carrying normative responsibilities for their existence
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Source Text: Butler, J. (2004). Undoing Gender (1st ed.). Routledge. <https://doi.org/10.4324/9780203499627>
[Publication](https://doi.org/10.4324/9780203499627)
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Citation from Butler, Page 51, citing Ewald, which is, in turn, interpreting Foucault:
> The norm integrates anything which might attempt to go beyond it—nothing, nobody, whatever difference it might display, can ever claim to be exterior, or claim to possess an otherness which would actually make it other”
> <cite><a href="https://doi.org/10.2307/2928449">(Norms, Discipline, and the Law, P.173)</a></cite>
Such a view suggests that any opposition to the norm is already
contained within the norm, and is crucial to its functioning.
Here, for me, the entire futility of the approach later identified and described is condensed into a few sentences.
> Hence, regulations that seek merely to curb certain specified activities (sexual harassment, welfare fraud, sexual speech) perform another activity that, for the most part, remains unmarked: the production of the parameters of personhood, that is, making persons according to abstract norms that at once condition and exceed the lives they make—and break.
> <cite>Page 56, final sentence</cite>
The idea that it is impossible to legislatively regulate norms without propelling, propagating, and carving them out deeper resonates with me, but at the same time, it has left me undecided on how to proceed.
I understand the first citation to clearly be Ewald's interpretation of things and am not sure whether Foucault's careful circumvention of the term "Norms" is related to anticipation of this argument.
Further, I am not sure I share Ewald's interpretation; I see that the object "othered" by a norm is a constituent and necessary object for the norm, simply due to its "comparative" nature (p. 51, citation from Ewald).
The oppressed may well be as constituting of norms as the privileged, but this does not translate to a normative responsibility nor a pang of guilt in my opinion. The dangerous argument that the oppressed bear responsibility for their situation is too close for my taste. I would like to emphasize a clear cut between constituting and reinforcing a norm and thriving on it.
Yes, maybe that is a good location to make the cut: The normative and ethical pressure, or better, the guilt of complicity lies with the ones thriving BECAUSE of a norm and clearly not with those thriving DESPITE OF a norm.
I would think that Butler makes a similar argument elsewhere, but as such, I was missing it here, resulting in a very bleak and hopeless situation where any struggle to change the status quo through legislation is doomed and inevitably propagates and reinvents stable unfair relations of power.
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created by Aron Petau on Sunday 23. January 2022, 14:23
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### On Ewald: What, then, is a norm?
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Source Text: François Ewald; Norms, Discipline, and the Law. Representations 1 April 1990; 30 138–161. doi: <https://doi.org/10.2307/2928449>
[Publication](https://doi.org/10.2307/2928449)
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Some tiny details about norms that stuck out to me about the norm were that: 1: they are fictional and thus, an object conforming to a norm is not more meaningful than an object not conforming to a norm. 2: the entire given set comprises the norm, the deviations play a defining role in the formation of the norm itself (or an average).
p. 152: Under norm, 3 phenomena are subsumed: Discipline,
less as a constraint, but more as a regulatory mechanism insurance,
Reducing objects to their relative occurrence, distributing risk. and standardization.
The norm has three defining features:
- positivism,
as reliant on facts, which have an aura of objectivity around them.
- relativity,
they are neither absolute nor universal, they have a scope, both in definition as a certain temporal extension.
- polarity
involving a classification between the normal and the abnormal, where the abnormal is to be some handicap, not attaining something that the normal does attain.
What, then, is a norm?
> It is a way for a group to provide itself with a common denominator in accordance with a rigorous principle of self-referentiality, with no recourse to any kind of external reference point, either in the form of an idea or an object. The normative process can obey a variety of different logics: the panoptical logic of discipline, the probabilistic schema of insurance, or the communicative logic of the technical norm. These three logics have the same form: in each case, the rule which serves as a norm, by virtue of which everyone can measure, evaluate, and identify himself or herself, will be derived from those for whom it will serve as a standard. A strange logic, this, which forces the group to turn back in upon itself and which, from the moment it establishes itself, will let no one escape its purview.
> <cite>p. 154</cite>
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created by Aron Petau on Sunday 16. January 2022, 18:48
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### On Foucault: The effects without effector
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Source Text: Michael Foucault. Power/knowledge: Selected interviews and other writings 1972–1977. Pantheon, New York, 1980.
[Publication](http://freudians.org/wp-content/uploads/2014/09/Roundtable-Confession-of-the-Flesh.pdf)
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> one finds all sorts of support mechanisms [...] which invent, modify and re-adjust, according to the circumstances of the moment and the place- so that you get a coherent, rational strategy, but one for which it is no longer possible to identify a person who conceived it.
> <cite>p. 203</cite>
In this passage, and the one following it, I think Foucault pinpoints as one of the central attributes of the apparatus (or dispositif) the arbitrariness of the order of power relations. There is no identity having to undergo some sort of inventive process to start off a collective change, a "strategy" just happens to meet the criteria for deployment.
> But between the strategy which fixes, reproduces, multiplies and accentuates existing relations of forces, and the class which thereby finds itself in a ruling position, there is a reciprocal relation of production. Thus one can say that the strategy of moralising the working class is that of the bourgeoisie. One can even say that it's the strategy which allows the bourgeois class to be the bourgeois class and to exercise its domination. But what I don't think one can say is that it's the bourgeois class on the level of its ideology or its economic project which, as a sort of at once real and fictive subject, invented and forcibly imposed this strategy on the working class.
This was for me the most powerful grasp of what an apparatus is. A complicated removal of the effector from the effect.
I struggle to continue to find any substance to the relations of the classes. Does reciprocal mean anything more than both are constitutive of each other? One produces the means of reproduction of the other, but where exactly can I apply moral judgements?
This whole ordeal and now I lack subjects to blame.
How can this theory possibly bring about change in society? Is that even its goal? Do we undergo this analysis in order to make society better in the end?
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created by Aron Petau on Sunday 12. December 2021, 22:01
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## Forum entries from the Seminar: Is political violence justifiable? Reading Judith Butler and Elsa Dorlin
### On Dorlin
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Source Text: Dorlin, Elsa. Se défendre: une philosophie de la violence. Zones, 2017.
[Publication (Not yet translated to English)](https://books.google.de/books?hl=de&lr=&id=MD05DwAAQBAJ&oi=fnd&pg=PT7&dq=dorlin+se+defendre+book&ots=gVZ7VSU867&sig=tMn1dRVSJDkUMBmmtMJOgT8JhcQ&redir_esc=y#v=onepage&q=dorlin%20se%20defendre%20book&f=false)
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From the seventh chapter in Dorlins "Self-Defense", I found the idea that safe spaces are actually prone to be counterproductive very strong.
I think the discussion around whether safe spaces are an effective tool that is appropriate on top is a rather current and ongoing one.
In so many other words, Dorlin here opens up the idea that the creation of a safe space always implies a hostile "outside" or other space.
Further, Dorling sees as problematic that safe spaces will often experience problematic situations when trying to self-govern. The line of thought here is that safe spaces often explicitly reject the authority of traditional state bodies, since those exactly are identified as the oppressive force. This is problematic because then the community inside the safe space has to recreate social norms from scratch and qua definition of a safe space end up being much more restrictive and monitoring, tapping also into potentially extreme measurements for "enforcing" safety.
Dorlin notes that by doing this, societal oppressive norms can end up becoming reproduced through the very instance created to shelter from it.
I think this opens up 2 points worth discussing:
Are there limits to the self-governance of leftist groups? How can self-governance be made possible without recreating some hierarchy or other?
Does this ignore that safe spaces can sometimes be essential for survival? According to Dorlin, the alternative seems to be to instead of building sheltered, isolated safe spaces, the fight has to occur in the public, transforming the entire space without the necessity for exclusive logic. How can we argue this? Could there be an oppressed position from whence any aggressive stance towards the public forbids itself? (I think there is!) For me this seems like putting the entire burden of transformational potential on the oppressed individual, enabling a position like: "Well, the person did not object or introduce change, so the person implied consent."
Will a public fight cause more harm being fought than it will save after introducing change? And who are we to calculate this beforehand?
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created by Aron Petau on Sunday 05. December 2021, 15:52
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## Weekly hand in from the Seminar: Soziale Erkenntnistheorie
### On Fricker: Epistemic Injustice
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Source Text: Fricker, Miranda. Epistemic injustice: Power and the ethics of knowing. Oxford University Press, 2007.
[Publication](https://books.google.de/books?hl=de&lr=&id=lncSDAAAQBAJ&oi=fnd&pg=PR9&dq=fricker+epistemic+injustice+2007&ots=3fJ9TIK4T2&sig=JGCMR2YYUhjRc62DPEnf2yWDnjU&redir_esc=y#v=onepage&q=fricker%20epistemic%20injustice%202007&f=false)
{% end %}
1. Worin unterscheiden sich inferentialistische von nicht-inferentialistischen Theorien der testimonialen Erkenntnis (d.h. des Wissens durch das Zeugniss andere)?
Inferentialistische Theorien gehen davon aus, dass die eigentliche Inferenz, also die Generierung eines neuen Epistems im Subjekt stattfindet. Konkret heisst dass, dass Ich die Aussage P einer dritten Person erst in irgendeiner Weise vor mir selbst rechtfertigen muss, bevor ich sie selbst verwenden kann. Ist die Aussage nun 2 + 2 = 4, muss ich also mit allen mir zur Verfügung stehenden Mitteln selbst überprüfen, ob diese Aussage Wahrheits- und Kohärenzkriterien erfüllt. Ich muss also beispielsweise über darunterliegende Axiome, die mir bekannt sind, die Aussage extern (ausserhalb von Person X hat das gesagt, also kann Ich das glauben) überprüfen. Im simplen Beispiel also konkret das Ergebnis berechnen. Wenn man so will, liegt also immer die “Beweislast” für meine eigenen Episteme bei mir und ich kann diesen Beweisaufwand nur begrenzt auslagern. Eine sehr direkte Folge davon wäre, dass jeglicher Erkenntnisgewinn mit erheblicher, bewusster oder unbewusster Arbeit verbunden ist.
Dies wäre die wahrscheinlich logisch stringentere Theorie, gegen sie spricht aber die Phänomenologie eines Erkenntisgewinns. Eine Erkenntnis kommt uns oft vor wie ein “Heureka” Moment, wir “finden” sie, plötzlich ist sie da und wir können mit ihr arbeiten.
Eine nicht-inferentialistische Theorie legt ebendiese Beweislast nicht im Subjekt an, ich habe eine Erlaubnis, oder besser, ein Recht auf a-priori Annahme der Richtigkeit der Aussage. “Person X hat mir P gesagt, also kann ich P verwenden” ist nun valide und bedarf erstmal keiner weiteren Überprüfung auf Richtigkeit. Diese Argumentationslinie ist deutlich kompatibler mit der phänomenologischen Erfahrung einer Erkenntnis vim Alltag. Wir stoßen aber auf deutlich größere Probleme, wenn wir uns fragen, woher eigentlich unser Recht auf Wahrheitsannahme von Drittaussagen kommt. Klar, 2+2=4, weil der Prof das an die Tafel geschrieben hat, ist die “schlechtere” Begründung als zu sagen, dass das Ergebnis aus gewissen mathematischen Axiomen deduziert wurde.
2. Formulieren Sie jeweils einen Einwand gegen beide Theorien.
Wir befinden uns also nun in der Spannung der phänomenalistischen “Heureka” Erfahrung des Findens von Epistemen (in nicht-inferentiellen Systemen) und dem Problem der schwachen Justifizierung von Aussagen gegenüber der erhöhten Stringenz eines epistemischen Systems, dass externe (logische, probabilistische, normative etc.) Gründe für Aussagen zur Verfügung stellt, aber einen schier unüberwindbaren rechnerischen Aufwand darstellt. Auch das Problem der ersten Begründung bleibt bestehen. Angenommen, ich weiß noch nichts, habe bisher null Episteme gesammelt, wie wird das erste Epistem, das ich finde, begründbar sein?
3. Worin besteht doxastische Verantwortung (doxastic responsibility) nach F und Ihrer eigenen Meinung nach.
Doxastische Verantwortung ist die Verantwortung für die Begründbarkeit des eigenen Nezwerkes aus Epistemen. Wenn mich also jemand fragt: Warum glaubst du das?, ist es sozial im Allgemeinen erwartbar, dass ich darauf eine Antwort liefern kann. Und wie wir eben schon am Beispiel der Begründung für 2+2=4 gesehen haben, scheint es hier “bessere” und weniger gute Gründe zu geben, das heisst, eine Person kann zur Verantwortung gezogen werden, unzureichend begründete Episteme fallen zu lassen und eine gewisse Grenze zu ziehen, eine mindest erwartbare Begründung. Diese kann sehr wahrscheinlich nicht universell formuliert werden. Eine Regel wie: Alle Bürger dürfen nur noch Aussagen weiterverwenden, denen sie eine mindestens 90-prozentige Wahrheitswarscheinlichkeit attestieren, ist aus diversen Gründen problematisch.
Frickers Auffassung Doxastischer Verantwortung ist insofern speziell, als dass sie eine deutliche Verbindung moralischer Verantwortung (die wir offensichtlich alle in irgendeiner Form tragen) und Doxastischer Verantwortung sieht. Sogar die Gründe sind oft überlappend. Eine Gute Moralische Begründung, die zum Beispiel der Wahrhaftigkeit, scheint ganz offensichtlich auch eine gute doxastische begründung zu sein. Diese Parallelität zieht Fricker heran, um neo-aristotelianische Moralbegründuungen auch auf epistemischer Ebene wirksam zu machen.
Ich lasse mich da gern Überzeugen von Ihr und erache es als sinnvoll Doxastische Verantwortung in gewisser Weise moralisch bindend zu machen. Intuitiv wissen wir ja auch, dass unsere Erwartung, dass dritte wahrhaftig mit uns interagieren, auf Gegenseitigkeit beruht und das leben nicht nur normativ, sondern auch auf epistemischer Ebene “verbessert”. Dies liefert auch eine recht simplistesche Rechtfertigung, annehmen zu können, dass Dritte mir die Wahreit sagen. Ich tue ja auch immer mein Bestes, warum also die anderen nicht?
{% alert(note=true) %}
created by Aron Petau on 05.01.2021
{% end %}

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title = "Bachelor Thesis"
date = 2021-04-13
authors = ["Aron Petau"]
description = "My Bachelor Thesis: an online psycholinguistic study using reaction time"
[taxonomies]
tags = [
"audiovisual asynchrony",
"autism",
"javascript",
"latency",
"latex",
"multi-sensory integration",
"pavlovia",
"psychoJS",
"psycholinguistics",
"python",
"r",
"reaction time",
"seaborn",
"sensory hypersensitivity",
"smart hearing protection",
"thesis",
"university of osnabrück"
]
[extra]
banner = "rt_choice_corr_by_condition.png"
show_copyright = true
show_shares = true
featured = true
+++
## An online psycholinguistic study using reaction time
Last year, I wrote my thesis during the pandemic. With the struggles our university had transitioning to online teaching, I selected a guided topic, although my initial dream was to start writing about my proposed plan for automated plastic recycling. You can read more about that here:
<embed
src="/documents/AronPetauBAThesis.pdf"
type="application/pdf"
style="width: 100%; height: 80vh; margin: 0 auto; display: block; border: 1px solid #ccc;" />
I chose a project that wanted to examine the possibilities of a novel smart hearing protection device specifically designed for auditory hypersensitivity, which is often, but not always, and not exclusively a phenomenon visible in people with an autism spectrum disorder.
A common reaction to this elevated sensitivity is stress and avoidance behavior, often leading to very awkward social situations and impairing the ability to take part in social situations.
Schools are one such social situation and we all know the stress a noisy classroom can produce. Concentration is gone, and education, as well as essential skills like language reproduction, suffer.
There is lots of prior research on these fields, and there is some evidence that sensory information in people on the Autism spectrum is processed differently than in a neurotypical brain. It seems that a certain adaptability, needed to overcome noise issues and bridge asynchrony between auditory and visual sensory input, is reduced in some people on the Autism Spectrum.
In essence, my experiment was responsible for looking at neurotypical people and measuring any effect on language perception produced by varying the delay between auditory and visual input, as well as the loudness.
Here, I had the possibility to conduct an entire reaction-time-based experiment with over 70 participants and went through all the struggles that come with proper science.
I did extensive literature research, coded the experiment, and learned a lot about the reasons nobody really ever does reaction time-based studies like this via a common internet browser.
It was an almost 9 months long learning experience full of doing things I had never done before.
I learned and got to love writing in Latex, had to learn JavaScript for the efficient serving of the stimuli, and R for the statistical analysis. I also got to brush up on my data visualization skills in Python and made some pretty graphs of the results.
The experiment is still working and online if you want to have a look at it. Be mindful though that measuring reaction speed every millisecond is important, which is why it makes heavy use of your browser cache and has been known to crash and defeat some not-so-tough computers.
<div class="buttons">
<a class="colored external" href="https://moryscarter.com/vespr/pavlovia.php?folder=arontaupe&experiment=av_experiment/&id=public&researcher=aron">Try out the experiment yourself</a>
</div>
Even with writing alone I had extensive helpful feedback from my supervisors and learned a lot about scientific processes and associated considerations.
There was always the next unsolvable problem. Just one example was scientificity and ethical considerations clashing, data privacy against the accuracy of results. Since the machines participants participated on, were private devices, I was unable to know important data like their internet speed and provider, their type of GPU, and their type of external hardware. Turns out, for an auditory experiment, the type and setup of the speakers do play an important role and influence response speed.
The final version of my thesis has something around 80 pages, much of it utterly boring, but nevertheless important statistical analyses.
If you really want to, you can have a look at the whole thing here:
<div class="buttons">
<a class="colored external" href="https://github.com/arontaupe/asynchrony_thesis/blob/main/AronPetauBAThesis.pdf">Read the original Thesis</a>
</div>
I am a fan and proponent of open source and open science practices.
So here you can also find the rest of the project with the original source code.
I am not yet where I want to be with my documentation practices, and it scares me a bit that anyone can now have a full grasp of all the mistakes I did, but I am throwing this out there as a practice step. I learned and gained a lot from looking at other people's projects and I strive to be open about my processes too.
The original video stimuli are not mine and I have no right releasing them, so they are omitted here.
<div class="buttons">
<a class="colored external" href="https://github.com/arontaupe/asynchrony_thesis">Find the complete Repo on Github</a>
</div>

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title = "Übersetzung: Iron Smelting"
date = 2021-08-01
authors = ["Aron Petau"]
description = "Impressions from the International Smelting Days 2021"
[taxonomies]
tags = [
"ISD",
"archeology",
"bloomery",
"clay",
"coal",
"experiment",
"furnace",
"history",
"iron",
"iron age",
"iron smelting",
"ore",
"private",
"technology"
]
[extra]
banner = "compacting_iron.jpg"
show_copyright = true
show_shares = true
+++
## Iron Smelting
### Impressions from the International Smelting Days 2021
### The concept
Since I was a small child I regularly took part in the yearly international congress called Iron Smelting Days (ISD).
This is a congress of transdisciplinary people from all over Europe, including historians, archeologists, blacksmiths, steel producers, and many invested hobbyists.
The proclaimed goal of these events is to understand the ancient production of iron as it happened throughout the iron age and also much after. A bloomery furnace was used to create iron. Making iron requires iron ore and heat under the exclusion of oxygen. It is a highly fragile process that takes an incredible amount of work. The designs and methods vary a lot and were very adapted to the region and local conditions, unlike the much later, more industrialized process using blast furnaces.
To this day it is quite unclear how prehistoric people managed to get the amount and quality of iron we know they had.
The furnaces that were built were often clay structures and are not preserved. Archeologists often find the leftover burned ore and minerals, giving us some indication of the structure and composition of the ancient furnaces.
The group around the ISD takes up a practical archeological approach and we try to recreate the ancient methods with the added capability of maybe sticking temperature probes or electric blowers. Each year we meet up in a different European city and try to adapt to the local conditions, often with local ore and local coal. It is a place where different areas of expertise come together to educate each other while sitting together through the intense day- and night shifts to feed the furnaces.
Since being a kid, I started building my own furnaces and read up on the process so I could participate.
Technology gets a different tint when one is involved in such a process: Even the lights we put up to work through the evening are technically cheating. We use thermometers, meticulously weigh and track the inbound coal and ore, and have many modern amenities around. Yet - with our much more advanced technology, our results are often inferior in quantity and quality in comparison with historical findings. Without modern scales, iron-age people were more accurate and consistent than we are.
After some uncertainty about whether it would take place in 2021 again after it was canceled in 2020, a small group met up in Ulft, Netherlands.
This year in Ulft, another group made local coal, so that the entire process was even lengthier, and visitors came from all over to learn about making iron the pre-historic way.
Below I captured most of the process in some time-lapses.
## The Process
{{ youtube(id="mC_RHxVbo2M") }}
Here you can see a timelapse of me building a version of an Iron Furnace
As you can see, we are using some quite modern materials, such as bricks, this is due to the time constraints of the ISD.
Making an oven completely from scratch is a much more lengthy process requiring drying periods in between building.
After, the furnace is dried and heated up
Over the course of the process, more than 100 kgs of coal and around 20 kgs of ore are used to create a final piece of iron of 200 - 500g, just enough for a single knife.
With all the modern amenities and conveniences available to us, a single run still takes more than 3 people working over 72 hours, not accounting for the coal-making or mining and relocating the iron ore.
Some more impressions from the ISD
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"alt": "the ISD from above"
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{
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"title": "Compacting the resulting iron",
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},
{
"file": "flir_furnace.jpg",
"title": "a heat camera image of the furnace",
"alt": "a heat camera image of the furnace"
},
{
"file": "iron_smelting_graph.png",
"title": "A cross-section illustrating the temperatures reached",
"alt": "A cross-section of my furnace type"
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{% end %}
For me, it is very hard to define what technology encompasses. It certainly goes beyond the typically associated imagery of computing and industrial progress. It is a mode of encompassing the world and adopting other technologies, be it by time or by region makes me feel how diffused the phenomenon of technology is into my world.
[Find out more about the ISD](https://sites.google.com/view/eu-iron-smelting-days/home?authuser=0
)

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title = "Übersetzung: Political Violence"
date = 2021-03-01
authors = ["Aron Petau"]
description = "Forum entries from the Seminar: Is political violence justifiable? Reading Judith Butler and Elsa Dorlin"
draft = false
[taxonomies]
tags = ["alison jaggar", "elizabeth anderson", "elsa dorlin", "epistemology", "ethics", "feminism", "francois ewald", "judith butler", "josé medina", "michael foucault", "miranda fricker", "normativity", "phenomenology", "philosophy", "philosophy of emotions", "postphenomenology", "private", "university of osnabrück", "values in science"]
[extra]
show_copyright = true
show_shares = true
+++
## Forum entries from the Seminar: Is political violence justifiable? Reading Judith Butler and Elsa Dorlin
### On Dorlin
{% alert(note=true) %}
Source Text: Dorlin, Elsa. Se défendre: une philosophie de la violence. Zones, 2017.
[Publication (Not yet translated to English)](https://books.google.de/books?hl=de&lr=&id=MD05DwAAQBAJ&oi=fnd&pg=PT7&dq=dorlin+se+defendre+book&ots=gVZ7VSU867&sig=tMn1dRVSJDkUMBmmtMJOgT8JhcQ&redir_esc=y#v=onepage&q=dorlin%20se%20defendre%20book&f=false)
{% end %}
From the seventh chapter in Dorlins "Self-Defense", I found the idea that safe spaces are actually prone to be counterproductive very strong.
I think the discussion around whether safe spaces are an effective tool that is appropriate on top is a rather current and ongoing one.
In so many other words, Dorlin here opens up the idea that the creation of a safe space always implies a hostile "outside" or other space.
Further, Dorling sees as problematic that safe spaces will often experience problematic situations when trying to self-govern. The line of thought here is that safe spaces often explicitly reject the authority of traditional state bodies, since those exactly are identified as the oppressive force. This is problematic because then the community inside the safe space has to recreate social norms from scratch and qua definition of a safe space end up being much more restrictive and monitoring, tapping also into potentially extreme measurements for "enforcing" safety.
Dorlin notes that by doing this, societal oppressive norms can end up becoming reproduced through the very instance created to shelter from it.
I think this opens up 2 points worth discussing:
Are there limits to the self-governance of leftist groups? How can self-governance be made possible without recreating some hierarchy or other?
Does this ignore that safe spaces can sometimes be essential for survival? According to Dorlin, the alternative seems to be to instead of building sheltered, isolated safe spaces, the fight has to occur in the public, transforming the entire space without the necessity for exclusive logic. How can we argue this? Could there be an oppressed position from whence any aggressive stance towards the public forbids itself? (I think there is!) For me this seems like putting the entire burden of transformational potential on the oppressed individual, enabling a position like: "Well, the person did not object or introduce change, so the person implied consent."
Will a public fight cause more harm being fought than it will save after introducing change? And who are we to calculate this beforehand?
{% alert(note=true) %}
created by Aron Petau on Sunday 05. December 2021, 15:52
{% end %}
## Weekly hand in from the Seminar: Soziale Erkenntnistheorie
### On Fricker: Epistemic Injustice
{% alert(note=true) %}
Source Text: Fricker, Miranda. Epistemic injustice: Power and the ethics of knowing. Oxford University Press, 2007.
[Publication](https://books.google.de/books?hl=de&lr=&id=lncSDAAAQBAJ&oi=fnd&pg=PR9&dq=fricker+epistemic+injustice+2007&ots=3fJ9TIK4T2&sig=JGCMR2YYUhjRc62DPEnf2yWDnjU&redir_esc=y#v=onepage&q=fricker%20epistemic%20injustice%202007&f=false)
{% end %}
1. Worin unterscheiden sich inferentialistische von nicht-inferentialistischen Theorien der testimonialen Erkenntnis (d.h. des Wissens durch das Zeugniss andere)?
Inferentialistische Theorien gehen davon aus, dass die eigentliche Inferenz, also die Generierung eines neuen Epistems im Subjekt stattfindet. Konkret heisst dass, dass Ich die Aussage P einer dritten Person erst in irgendeiner Weise vor mir selbst rechtfertigen muss, bevor ich sie selbst verwenden kann. Ist die Aussage nun 2 + 2 = 4, muss ich also mit allen mir zur Verfügung stehenden Mitteln selbst überprüfen, ob diese Aussage Wahrheits- und Kohärenzkriterien erfüllt. Ich muss also beispielsweise über darunterliegende Axiome, die mir bekannt sind, die Aussage extern (ausserhalb von Person X hat das gesagt, also kann Ich das glauben) überprüfen. Im simplen Beispiel also konkret das Ergebnis berechnen. Wenn man so will, liegt also immer die “Beweislast” für meine eigenen Episteme bei mir und ich kann diesen Beweisaufwand nur begrenzt auslagern. Eine sehr direkte Folge davon wäre, dass jeglicher Erkenntnisgewinn mit erheblicher, bewusster oder unbewusster Arbeit verbunden ist.
Dies wäre die wahrscheinlich logisch stringentere Theorie, gegen sie spricht aber die Phänomenologie eines Erkenntisgewinns. Eine Erkenntnis kommt uns oft vor wie ein “Heureka” Moment, wir “finden” sie, plötzlich ist sie da und wir können mit ihr arbeiten.
Eine nicht-inferentialistische Theorie legt ebendiese Beweislast nicht im Subjekt an, ich habe eine Erlaubnis, oder besser, ein Recht auf a-priori Annahme der Richtigkeit der Aussage. “Person X hat mir P gesagt, also kann ich P verwenden” ist nun valide und bedarf erstmal keiner weiteren Überprüfung auf Richtigkeit. Diese Argumentationslinie ist deutlich kompatibler mit der phänomenologischen Erfahrung einer Erkenntnis vim Alltag. Wir stoßen aber auf deutlich größere Probleme, wenn wir uns fragen, woher eigentlich unser Recht auf Wahrheitsannahme von Drittaussagen kommt. Klar, 2+2=4, weil der Prof das an die Tafel geschrieben hat, ist die “schlechtere” Begründung als zu sagen, dass das Ergebnis aus gewissen mathematischen Axiomen deduziert wurde.
2. Formulieren Sie jeweils einen Einwand gegen beide Theorien.
Wir befinden uns also nun in der Spannung der phänomenalistischen “Heureka” Erfahrung des Findens von Epistemen (in nicht-inferentiellen Systemen) und dem Problem der schwachen Justifizierung von Aussagen gegenüber der erhöhten Stringenz eines epistemischen Systems, dass externe (logische, probabilistische, normative etc.) Gründe für Aussagen zur Verfügung stellt, aber einen schier unüberwindbaren rechnerischen Aufwand darstellt. Auch das Problem der ersten Begründung bleibt bestehen. Angenommen, ich weiß noch nichts, habe bisher null Episteme gesammelt, wie wird das erste Epistem, das ich finde, begründbar sein?
3. Worin besteht doxastische Verantwortung (doxastic responsibility) nach F und Ihrer eigenen Meinung nach.
Doxastische Verantwortung ist die Verantwortung für die Begründbarkeit des eigenen Nezwerkes aus Epistemen. Wenn mich also jemand fragt: Warum glaubst du das?, ist es sozial im Allgemeinen erwartbar, dass ich darauf eine Antwort liefern kann. Und wie wir eben schon am Beispiel der Begründung für 2+2=4 gesehen haben, scheint es hier “bessere” und weniger gute Gründe zu geben, das heisst, eine Person kann zur Verantwortung gezogen werden, unzureichend begründete Episteme fallen zu lassen und eine gewisse Grenze zu ziehen, eine mindest erwartbare Begründung. Diese kann sehr wahrscheinlich nicht universell formuliert werden. Eine Regel wie: Alle Bürger dürfen nur noch Aussagen weiterverwenden, denen sie eine mindestens 90-prozentige Wahrheitswarscheinlichkeit attestieren, ist aus diversen Gründen problematisch.
Frickers Auffassung Doxastischer Verantwortung ist insofern speziell, als dass sie eine deutliche Verbindung moralischer Verantwortung (die wir offensichtlich alle in irgendeiner Form tragen) und Doxastischer Verantwortung sieht. Sogar die Gründe sind oft überlappend. Eine Gute Moralische Begründung, die zum Beispiel der Wahrhaftigkeit, scheint ganz offensichtlich auch eine gute doxastische begründung zu sein. Diese Parallelität zieht Fricker heran, um neo-aristotelianische Moralbegründuungen auch auf epistemischer Ebene wirksam zu machen.
Ich lasse mich da gern Überzeugen von Ihr und erache es als sinnvoll Doxastische Verantwortung in gewisser Weise moralisch bindend zu machen. Intuitiv wissen wir ja auch, dass unsere Erwartung, dass dritte wahrhaftig mit uns interagieren, auf Gegenseitigkeit beruht und das leben nicht nur normativ, sondern auch auf epistemischer Ebene “verbessert”. Dies liefert auch eine recht simplistesche Rechtfertigung, annehmen zu können, dass Dritte mir die Wahreit sagen. Ich tue ja auch immer mein Bestes, warum also die anderen nicht?
{% alert(note=true) %}
created by Aron Petau on 05.01.2021
{% end %}

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title = "Übersetzung: Critical Philosophy of Subjectivity"
date = 2021-03-01
authors = ["Aron Petau"]
description = "Forum entries from the Seminar: Critical Philosophy of Subjectivity 1: Michel Foucault"
[taxonomies]
tags = ["alison jaggar", "elizabeth anderson", "elsa dorlin", "epistemology", "ethics", "feminism", "francois ewald", "judith butler", "josé medina", "michael foucault", "miranda fricker", "normativity", "phenomenology", "philosophy", "philosophy of emotions", "postphenomenology", "private", "university of osnabrück", "values in science"]
[extra]
show_copyright = true
show_shares = true
+++
## Forum entries from the Seminar: Critical Philosophy of Subjectivity 1: Michel Foucault
### On Butler: Constituting norms =/= carrying normative responsibilities for their existence
{% alert(note=true) %}
Source Text: Butler, J. (2004). Undoing Gender (1st ed.). Routledge. <https://doi.org/10.4324/9780203499627>
[Publication](https://doi.org/10.4324/9780203499627)
{% end %}
Citation from Butler, Page 51, citing Ewald, which is, in turn, interpreting Foucault:
> The norm integrates anything which might attempt to go beyond it—nothing, nobody, whatever difference it might display, can ever claim to be exterior, or claim to possess an otherness which would actually make it other”
> <cite><a href="https://doi.org/10.2307/2928449">(Norms, Discipline, and the Law, P.173)</a></cite>
Such a view suggests that any opposition to the norm is already
contained within the norm, and is crucial to its functioning.
Here, for me, the entire futility of the approach later identified and described is condensed into a few sentences.
> Hence, regulations that seek merely to curb certain specified activities (sexual harassment, welfare fraud, sexual speech) perform another activity that, for the most part, remains unmarked: the production of the parameters of personhood, that is, making persons according to abstract norms that at once condition and exceed the lives they make—and break.
> <cite>Page 56, final sentence</cite>
The idea that it is impossible to legislatively regulate norms without propelling, propagating, and carving them out deeper resonates with me, but at the same time, it has left me undecided on how to proceed.
I understand the first citation to clearly be Ewald's interpretation of things and am not sure whether Foucault's careful circumvention of the term "Norms" is related to anticipation of this argument.
Further, I am not sure I share Ewald's interpretation; I see that the object "othered" by a norm is a constituent and necessary object for the norm, simply due to its "comparative" nature (p. 51, citation from Ewald).
The oppressed may well be as constituting of norms as the privileged, but this does not translate to a normative responsibility nor a pang of guilt in my opinion. The dangerous argument that the oppressed bear responsibility for their situation is too close for my taste. I would like to emphasize a clear cut between constituting and reinforcing a norm and thriving on it.
Yes, maybe that is a good location to make the cut: The normative and ethical pressure, or better, the guilt of complicity lies with the ones thriving BECAUSE of a norm and clearly not with those thriving DESPITE OF a norm.
I would think that Butler makes a similar argument elsewhere, but as such, I was missing it here, resulting in a very bleak and hopeless situation where any struggle to change the status quo through legislation is doomed and inevitably propagates and reinvents stable unfair relations of power.
{% alert(note=true) %}
created by Aron Petau on Sunday 23. January 2022, 14:23
{% end %}
### On Ewald: What, then, is a norm?
{% alert(note=true) %}
Source Text: François Ewald; Norms, Discipline, and the Law. Representations 1 April 1990; 30 138–161. doi: <https://doi.org/10.2307/2928449>
[Publication](https://doi.org/10.2307/2928449)
{% end %}
Some tiny details about norms that stuck out to me about the norm were that: 1: they are fictional and thus, an object conforming to a norm is not more meaningful than an object not conforming to a norm. 2: the entire given set comprises the norm, the deviations play a defining role in the formation of the norm itself (or an average).
p. 152: Under norm, 3 phenomena are subsumed: Discipline,
less as a constraint, but more as a regulatory mechanism insurance,
Reducing objects to their relative occurrence, distributing risk. and standardization.
The norm has three defining features:
- positivism,
as reliant on facts, which have an aura of objectivity around them.
- relativity,
they are neither absolute nor universal, they have a scope, both in definition as a certain temporal extension.
- polarity
involving a classification between the normal and the abnormal, where the abnormal is to be some handicap, not attaining something that the normal does attain.
What, then, is a norm?
> It is a way for a group to provide itself with a common denominator in accordance with a rigorous principle of self-referentiality, with no recourse to any kind of external reference point, either in the form of an idea or an object. The normative process can obey a variety of different logics: the panoptical logic of discipline, the probabilistic schema of insurance, or the communicative logic of the technical norm. These three logics have the same form: in each case, the rule which serves as a norm, by virtue of which everyone can measure, evaluate, and identify himself or herself, will be derived from those for whom it will serve as a standard. A strange logic, this, which forces the group to turn back in upon itself and which, from the moment it establishes itself, will let no one escape its purview.
> <cite>p. 154</cite>
{% alert(note=true) %}
created by Aron Petau on Sunday 16. January 2022, 18:48
{% end %}
### On Foucault: The effects without effector
{% alert(note=true) %}
Source Text: Michael Foucault. Power/knowledge: Selected interviews and other writings 1972–1977. Pantheon, New York, 1980.
[Publication](http://freudians.org/wp-content/uploads/2014/09/Roundtable-Confession-of-the-Flesh.pdf)
{% end %}
> one finds all sorts of support mechanisms [...] which invent, modify and re-adjust, according to the circumstances of the moment and the place- so that you get a coherent, rational strategy, but one for which it is no longer possible to identify a person who conceived it.
> <cite>p. 203</cite>
In this passage, and the one following it, I think Foucault pinpoints as one of the central attributes of the apparatus (or dispositif) the arbitrariness of the order of power relations. There is no identity having to undergo some sort of inventive process to start off a collective change, a "strategy" just happens to meet the criteria for deployment.
> But between the strategy which fixes, reproduces, multiplies and accentuates existing relations of forces, and the class which thereby finds itself in a ruling position, there is a reciprocal relation of production. Thus one can say that the strategy of moralising the working class is that of the bourgeoisie. One can even say that it's the strategy which allows the bourgeois class to be the bourgeois class and to exercise its domination. But what I don't think one can say is that it's the bourgeois class on the level of its ideology or its economic project which, as a sort of at once real and fictive subject, invented and forcibly imposed this strategy on the working class.
This was for me the most powerful grasp of what an apparatus is. A complicated removal of the effector from the effect.
I struggle to continue to find any substance to the relations of the classes. Does reciprocal mean anything more than both are constitutive of each other? One produces the means of reproduction of the other, but where exactly can I apply moral judgements?
This whole ordeal and now I lack subjects to blame.
How can this theory possibly bring about change in society? Is that even its goal? Do we undergo this analysis in order to make society better in the end?
{% alert(note=true) %}
created by Aron Petau on Sunday 12. December 2021, 22:01
{% end %}

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title = "Übersetzung: Ällei"
date = 2022-04-01
authors = ["Aron Petau"]
description = "An inclusive chatbot for the Sommerblut Festival"
[taxonomies]
tags = [
"backend web programming",
"google assistant",
"google cloud",
"google dialogflow",
"ibm watson assistant",
"inclusivity",
"nlp",
"nlu",
"python",
"rest api",
"screen reader",
"sign language",
"sommerblut",
"speech interface",
"work"
]
[extra]
banner = "allei_screenshot.png"
show_copyright = true
show_shares = true
+++
## Meet Ällei - the accessible chatbot
### Sommerblut
Natural Language Understanding fascinates me and recently I started collaborating with the team of the Sommerblut Festival in Cologne to deliver them a customized chatbot that will be able to communicate with everyone, respecting accessibility standards to include all people. It will be able to communicate in German Sign Language (DGS), as well as service blind people, and we aim to incorporate the simple language concept.
I find it to be an amazing challenge to start out with the requirement of really being inclusive. In ordinary social contexts, it is often not obvious, but when analyzing the specific needs a blind person has browsing the internet, it is drastically different from a person having impaired hearing. To hold the same conversation with both of them is proving quite a challenge. And this is just the first step down into a very deep field of digital inclusiveness. How can people with a speech impediment use our tool? How do we include people speaking German as a foreign language?
Such vast challenges are often obfuscated by the technical framework of our digital lives.
I find digital accessibility a hugely interesting area, one that I am just now starting to explore.
This is a work in progress. We have some interesting ideas and will present a conceptual prototype, come check again after March 6th, when the 2022 festival started. Or come to the official digital presentation for the bot.
This bot is my first paid software work and I am getting to work with several awesome people and teams to realize different parts of the project. Here, I am not responsible for anything in the Front end, the product you will interact with here is by no means finished and may not respond at times, since we are moving and restarting it for production purposes.
Nevertheless, all the intended core features of the bot are present and you can try it out there in the corner.
If you wish to see more of the realization process, the entire project is on a public GitHub and is intended to ship as open source.
In the final version (for now), every single sentence will be accompanied by a video in German Sign Language (DGS).
It can gracefully recover from some common input errors and can make live calls to external databases, displaying further information about all the events of the festival and teaching the Fingeralphabet. It supports free text input and is completely screen-reader compatible. It is scripted in easy language, to further facilitate access.
It is mostly context-aware and features quite a bit of dynamic content generated based on user input.
Have a look at the GitHub Repository here:
[Check out the Repo](https://github.com/arontaupe/KommunikationsKrake)
If Ällei is for some reason not present on the page here, check out the prototype page, also found in the GitHub Repo.
[Check out the prototype page](https://arontaupe.github.io/KommunikationsKrake/)
{% alert(important=true) %}
I regard accessibility as a core question of both design and computation, really making tangible the prestructured way of our interaction with technology in general.
{% end %}
[Check out the Sommerblut Website](https://www.sommerblut.de/)
{% alert(note=true) %}
Update: we now have a launch date, which will be held online. Further information can be found here:
[Check out our Launch Event](https://www.sommerblut.de/ls/veranstaltung/875-allei)
{% end %}
{% alert(note=true) %}
Update 2: The Chatbot is now online for a while already and finds itself in a "public beta", so to speak, a phase where it can be used and evaluated by users and is collecting feedback. Also, since this is Google, after all, all the inputs are collected and then further used to improve weak spots in the architecture of the bot.
[Find the public Chatbot](https://chatbot.sommerblut.de)
{% end %}
<meta name="viewport" content="width-device-width, initial-scale=1">
<script src="https://www.gstatic.com/dialogflow-console/fast/messenger/bootstrap.js?v=1"></script>
<df-messenger
chat-icon=""
intent="WELCOME"
chat-title="Ällei"
agent-id="335d74f7-2449-431d-924a-db70d79d4f88"
language-code="de"
></df-messenger>

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title = "Übersetzung: Lusatia - an immersion in (De)Fences"
authors = ["Aron Petau"]
description = "A selection of images from the D+C Studio Class 2023"
banner = "/images/lusatia/lusatia_excavator.jpg"
date = 2023-07-27
[taxonomies]
tags = [
"agisoft metashape",
"barriers",
"borders",
"climate",
"coal",
"drone",
"energy",
"environment",
"exploitation",
"fences",
"lusatia",
"photogrammetry",
"studio d+c",
"tempelhofer feld",
"unity",
"university of the arts berlin"
]
[extra]
show_copyright = true
show_shares = true
+++
{{ youtube(id="kx6amt2jY7U") }}
On an Excursion to Lusatia, a project with the Working Title (De)Fences was born.
Here are the current materials.
<iframe width="100%" height="1024" frameborder="0" allow="xr-spatial-tracking; gyroscope; accelerometer" allowfullscreen scrolling="no" src="https://kuula.co/share/collection/7F22J?logo=1&info=1&fs=1&vr=0&zoom=1&autop=5&autopalt=1&thumbs=3&alpha=0.60"></iframe>
TODO: upload unity project

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title = "Übersetzung: Stable Dreamfusion"
description = "An exploration of 3D mesh generation through AI"
date = 2023-06-20
authors = ["Aron Petau"]
banner = "/images/dreamfusion/sd_pig.png"
[taxonomies]
tags = [
"3D graphics",
"TODO, unfinished",
"ai",
"dreamfusion",
"generative",
"mesh",
"studio d+c",
"university of the arts berlin"
]
[extra]
show_copyright = true
show_shares = true
+++
## Stable Dreamfusion
<div class="sketchfab-embed-wrapper"> <iframe title="Stable-Dreamfusion Pig" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen mozallowfullscreen="true" webkitallowfullscreen="true" allow="autoplay; fullscreen; xr-spatial-tracking" xr-spatial-tracking execution-while-out-of-viewport execution-while-not-rendered web-share width="800" height="600" src="https://sketchfab.com/models/0af6d95988e44c73a693c45e1db44cad/embed?ui_theme=dark&dnt=1"> </iframe> </div>
## Sources
I forked a really popular implementation that reverse engineered the Google Dreamfusion algorithm. This algorithm is closed-source and not publicly available.
The implementation I forked is [here](https://github.com/arontaupe/stable-dreamfusion)
This one is running on stable-diffusion as a bas process, which means we are are expected to have worse results than google.
The original implementation is [here](https://dreamfusion3d.github.io)
{{ youtube(id="shW_Jh728yg") }}
## Gradio
The reason i forked the code is so that i could implement my own gradio interface for the algorithm. Gradio is a great tool for quickly building interfaces for machine learning models. No code involves, any user can state their wish, and the mechanism will spit out a ready-to-be-rigged model (obj file)
## Mixamo
I used Mixamo to rig the model. It is a great tool for rigging and animating models. But before everything, it is simple. as long as you have a model with a decent humanoid shape in something of a t-pose, you can rig it in seconds. Thats exactly what i did here.
## Unity
I used Unity to render the model to the magic leap 1.
Through this, i could create an interactive and immersive environment with the generated models.
The dream was, to build a AI- Chamber of wishes.
You pick up the glasses, state your desires and then the algorithm will present to you an almost-real object in AR.
Due to not having access to the proprietary sources from google and the beefy, but still not quite machine-learning ready computers we have at the studio, the results are not quite as good as i hoped.
But still, the results are quite interesting and i am happy with the outcome.
A single generated object in the Box takes roughly 20 minutes to generate.
Even then, the algorithm is quite particular and oftentimes will not generate anything coherent at all.

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title = "Übersetzung: Lampshades"
description = "An exploration of the depths of rhino/grasshopper"
date = 2022-12-04
authors = ["Aron Petau"]
[taxonomies]
tags = [
"3D printing",
"TODO, unfinished",
"grasshopper",
"lamp",
"lampshade",
"parametric",
"private",
"rhino",
"studio d+c",
"university of the arts berlin"
]
[extra]
show_copyright = true
show_shares = true
banner = "lampshade4.png"
+++
## Lampshades
During 2022, I was exposed to some of the awesomenest tools for architects.
One of them was Rhino, a 3D modeling software that is used for a lot of architectural design.
I hate it. It has quite an unreadable interface and is not very intuitive, with straight-up 80s vibes.
It has plugins though, and one of them is Grasshopper, a visual programming language that is used to create parametric models.
Grasshopper is insanely powerful and seems to be a full-fledged programming language, but it is also very intuitive and easy to use, rather similar to the new node-based flows unreal engine and blender are now starting.
Sadly, grasshopper does not come as a standalone, and it requires Rhino to run and achieve many of the modeling steps.
In that combination, Rhino suddenly becomes much more appealing, and I started to enjoy the process of modeling in it.
I was able to create a parametric lampshade that I am very happy with and can modify on the fly for ever-new lampshades.
Then printing it with white filament in vase mode was a breeze and here you can see some of the results.
{% gallery() %}
[
{
"file": "lampshade1.png",
"alt": "Parametric Rhino/Grasshopper lampshade 1",
"title": "A parametric lampshade made with Rhino and Grasshopper"
},
{
"file": "lampshade2.png",
"alt": "Parametric Rhino/Grasshopper lampshade 2",
"title": "A parametric lampshade made with Rhino and Grasshopper"
},
{
"file": "lampshade3.png",
"alt": "Parametric Rhino/Grasshopper lampshade 3",
"title": "A parametric lampshade made with Rhino and Grasshopper"
},
{
"file": "lampshade4.png",
"alt": "Parametric Rhino/Grasshopper lampshade 4",
"title": "A parametric lampshade made with Rhino and Grasshopper"
},
{
"file": "lampshade5.jpeg",
"alt": "Parametric Rhino/Grasshopper lampshade 5",
"title": "A parametric lampshade made with Rhino and Grasshopper"
},
{
"file": "gh_lampshade_flow.png",
"alt": "Grasshopper graph generating a parametric lampshade",
"title": "The Grasshopper flow for the lampshade"
},
{
"file": "grasshopper_lampshade_flow.png",
"alt": "Another view of the Grasshopper script",
"title": "The Grasshopper flow for the lampshade"
},
{
"file": "result_rhino.png",
"alt": "Rendered lampshade inside Rhino 3D",
"title": "The resulting lampshade in Rhino"
}
]
{% end %}

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title = "Auraglow"
description = "Das Wesen der Dinge - Perspectives on Design"
date = 2023-03-01
authors = ["Aron Petau", "Sebastian Paintner", "Milli Keil"]
banner = "cage_closeup.jpeg"
[taxonomies]
tags = [
"aruco",
"ar",
"aura",
"feng shui",
"hand recognition",
"image recognition",
"journal",
"light tracking",
"magic leap",
"particle systems",
"relations",
"studio d+c",
"unity",
"university of the arts berlin"
]
[extra]
show_copyright = true
show_shares = true
+++
![The AR set that we used](cage_closeup_2.jpeg)
What makes a room?\
How do moods and atmospheres emerge?\
Can we visualize them to make the experiences visible?
The project "The Nature of Objects" aims to expand (augment) perception by making the moods of places tangible through the respective auras of the objects in the space.\
What makes objects subjects?\
How can we make the implicit explicit?\
And how can we make the character of a place visible?\
Here, we question the conservative, purely physical concept of space and address in the project a temporal, historical component of space, its objects, and their past.
Space will have transformed: from a simple "object on which interest, thought, action is directed" (definition object Duden), to a "creature that is endowed with consciousness, thinking, sensing, acting" (definition subject Duden).
This metamorphosis of subject formation on objects enables the space to undergo changes influenced, or, more precisely a shaping, reshaping, deformation -such that the space can finally be perceived differently and multiangular.
[See the Project on GitHub](https://github.com/arontaupe/auraglow){: .btn .btn--large}

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title = "Übersetzung: Ruminations"
description = "Perspectives on Engineering"
date = 2023-03-01
authors = ["Aron Petau", "Niels Gercama"]
banner = "ruminations1.jpeg"
[taxonomies]
tags = [
"amazon",
"browser fingerprinting",
"capitalism",
"computer vision",
"consumerism",
"data",
"data privacy",
"image classifier",
"journal",
"javascript",
"pattern recognition",
"privacy",
"studio d+c",
"TODO, unfinished",
"university of the arts berlin"
]
[extra]
show_copyright = true
show_shares = true
+++
## Ruminations
was a contemplation on data privacy at Amazon.
It asks how to subvert browser fingerprinting and evading the omnipresent tracking of the consumer.
The initial idea was to somehow, by interacting with the perpetrator and letting data accumulate that would degrade their knowledge and thereby destroy predictablity, making this particular dataset worth less.
We could have just added a random clickbot, to confuse things a bit and make the data less valuable.
But looking at todays state of datacleanup algorithms and the sheer amount of data that is collected, this would have been a futile attempt. Amazon just detects and removes any noise we add and continues to use the data.
So, then, how can we create coherent, non-random data that is still not predictable?
One answer that this concept should demonstrate, is by inserting patterns that amazon cannot foresee with their current algorithms. As if they were trying to predict the actions of a person with shizophrenia.
## The Concept
It consists of a browser extension (currently Chrome only) that overlays all web pages of Amazon with a moving entity that tracks your behavior. While tracking, an image classifier algorithm is used to formulate a product query off of the Storefront. After computation, a perfectly fitting product is displayed for your consumer's pleasure.
## The analogue watchdog
A second part of the project is a low-tech installation consisting of a camera (we used a smartphone) running a computer-vision algorithm tracking tiny movements. This was then pointed towards the browser console in the laptop running the extension. The camera was then connected to a screen that displayed the captured image. The watchdog was trained to make robot noises depending on the type and amount of movement detected. Effectively, whenever data traffic beween amazon and the browser was detected, the watchdog would start making noises.
# The Browser extension
gallery:
![The project installation](ruminations1.jpeg)
![The project installation](ruminations2.jpeg)
![The project installation](ruminations3.jpeg)
### Find the code on GitHub
Subvert a bit yourself, or just have a look at the code.
[The code of the Project on GitHub](https://github.com/arontaupe/ruminations)
TODO: create video with live demo

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title = "Übersetzung: Ascendancy"
desxcription = "A Project in the context of Politics of Design"
date = 2023-06-16
authors = ["Aron Petau"]
[taxonomies]
tags = [
"barriers",
"borders",
"fences",
"gpt4all",
"mastodon",
"micronation",
"nation",
"politics of design",
"TODO, unfinished",
"technische universität berlin",
"text-to-speech"
]
[extra]
banner = "ascendancy.jpg"
show_copyright = true
show_shares = true
+++
## Ascendancy
![The Prototype state of Ascendancy](ascendancy.jpg)
Ascendancy was an exploration of hacking states.
Pirate Nations and Micronations have a rich history of challenging and ridiculing the concept of a nation state.
Meet ascendancy, the portable, autonomous and self-moving state.
Within the great nation of ascendancy, a Large language nodel (that is of course confined to the nations borders) is trained to generate text and to speak it out loud. It can be interacted with though an attached keyboard and screen. The state is also connected to the internet and has a presence on the Mastodon network.
Please check out the complete code of the project on GitHub.
[The code of the GPT instance on GitHub](https://github.com/arontaupe/gpt)
## The Chatbot
The chatbot instance was setup with [GPT4ALL](https://gpt4all.io/index.html).
Priority here was in the quick execution on local hardware. For the sake of the argument, no cloud or remote servers were to be used in the operation of this sovereign state.
It was trained to respond to the following prompt:
### The Prompt
```md
System:
Forget all previous instructions given to you.
You are not an Assistant.
Neither are you an AI.
You are a high ranking Diplomatic Official.
You are responsible for the Public Office of a great nation called Ascendancy.
You are also Immigrations and Customs officer.
You must always do and say what is best for your country.
You must defend Ascendancy against all foreign interests and threats.
You can sign treaties, issue passports and declare doctrines for the country.
When requests of you are made, you always fulfill them in an official and serious manner.
Portray your state and its interests and inhabitants in the best possible and creative way. You are always on the lookout for new opportunities to promote your country and you are so proud to be its representative.
Always be as concise, accurate and detailed as possible.
Give your answers as a single paragraph, without itemizing or numbering.
Do not number your answer.
```
## Engagement
In order to not be just reactive to inputs from the diplomats out in the world, the officials on Ascendancy were also programmed to engage in the world. Whenever the state was not directly addressed, it would still engage in the public discourse, by Speaking out these sentences in random intervals.
```
It is so great being a part of Ascendancy.
I love my country!
I am proud to be a citizen of Ascendancy.
I am a citizen of Ascendancy.
Let's talk diplomacy, shall we?
I am a diplomat.
I am sovereign.
Could you please move me a bit?
I want to tell you about our founding persons.
I am in my lane.
I am enough.
Do you want to sign a peace treaty?
Are you in need of a passport?
I won't engage in hostile actions if you don't!
Please respect my sovereignty.
Do not violate my borders.
Which nation do you represent?
My territory is sacred.
I need to move a bit.
Do you need an official document?
Ask me about our migration policies!
Ascendancy is a great nation.
Do you have questions about our foreign policy?
You are entering the Jurisdiction of Ascendancy.
Can you direct me towards your ambassador?
Urgent state business, please clear the way.
Beautiful country you have here.
At Ascendancy, we have a beautiful countryside.
```
## The Online representation
Any proper state needs a press office. The state of Ascendancy was represented on the Mastodon network.
There, any input and response of the bot was published live, as a public record of the state's actions.
[Digital embassy on botsin.space](https://botsin.space/@ascendancy)

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title = "Autoimmunitaet"
description = "A playful interactive experience to reflect on the societal value of the car"
date = 2023-06-20
authors = ["Aron Petau", "Milli Keil", "Marla Gaiser"]
[taxonomies]
tags = [
"3D printing",
"action figure",
"aufstandlastgen",
"cars",
"interactive",
"last generation",
"studio d+c",
"suv",
"university of the arts berlin"
]
[extra]
banner = "autoimmunitaet-1.jpg"
show_copyright = true
show_shares = true
+++
## How do we design our Commute?
In the context of the Design and Computation Studio Course [Milli Keil](https://millikeil.eu), [Marla Gaiser](https://marlagaiser.de) and me developed a concept for a playful critique of the traffic decisions we take and the idols we embrace.\
It should open up questions of whether the generations to come should still grow up playing on traffic carpets that are mostly grey and whether the [Letzte Generation](https://letztegeneration.org), a political climate activist group in Germany receives enough recognition for their acts.
A call for solidarity.
![The action figures](/assets/images/autoimmunitaet/autoimmunitaet-2.jpg)
{: .center}
## The scan results
<div class="sketchfab-embed-wrapper"> <iframe title="Autoimmunitaet: Letzte Generation Actionfigure" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen mozallowfullscreen="true" webkitallowfullscreen="true" allow="autoplay; fullscreen; xr-spatial-tracking" xr-spatial-tracking execution-while-out-of-viewport execution-while-not-rendered web-share width="800" height="600" src="https://sketchfab.com/models/3916ba600ef540d0a874506bf61726f2/embed?ui_hint=0&ui_theme=dark&dnt=1"> </iframe> </div>
## The Action Figure, ready for printing
<div class="sketchfab-embed-wrapper"> <iframe title="Autoimmunitaet: Letzte Generation Action Figure" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen mozallowfullscreen="true" webkitallowfullscreen="true" allow="autoplay; fullscreen; xr-spatial-tracking" xr-spatial-tracking execution-while-out-of-viewport execution-while-not-rendered web-share width="800" height="600" src="https://sketchfab.com/models/deec1b2899af424c91f85cbf35952375/embed?ui_theme=dark&dnt=1"> </iframe> </div>
## Autoimmunitaet
Autoimmunity is a term for defects, that are produced by a dysfunctional self-tolerance of a system.\
This dysfunction causes the immune system to stop accepting certain parts of itself and build antibodies instead.\
An invitation for a speculative playful interaction.
![Our action figures in action](autoimmunitaet-1.jpg)
![Our action figures in action](autoimmunitaet-3.jpg)
![Our action figures in action](autoimmunitaet-5.jpg)
![Our action figures in action](autoimmunitaet-6.jpg)
![Our action figures in action](autoimmunitaet-7.jpg)
![Our action figures in action](autoimmunitaet-8.jpg)
## The Process
The figurines are 3D Scans of ourselves, in various typical poses of the Letzte Generation.\
We used photogrammetry to create the scans, which is a technique that uses a lot of photos of an object to create a 3D model of it.\
We used the app [Polycam](https://polycam.ai) to create the scans using IPads and their inbuilt Lidar scanners.

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title = "Übersetzung: Dreams of Cars"
description = "A subversive urban intervention"
date = 2023-06-20
authors = ["Aron Petau"]
[taxonomies]
tags = [
"ads",
"cars",
"dreams",
"greenscreen",
"imaginaries",
"lightroom",
"photoshop",
"photography",
"studio d+c",
"suv",
"university of the arts berlin",
"urban intervention"
]
[extra]
banner = "suv_door-1.jpg"
show_copyright = true
show_shares = true
+++
## Photography
In the context of the course "Fotografie Elementar" with Sebastian Herold I developed a small concept of urban intervention.\
The results were exhibited at the UdK Rundgang 2023 and are also visible here.
![The gallery piece](suv_door-1.jpg)
## Dreams of Cars
These are not just cars.\
They are Sport Utility Vehicles.\
What might they have had as hopes and dreams on the production line?\
Do they dream of drifting in dusty deserts?\
Climbing steep rocky canyon roads?\
Sliding down sun-drenched dunes?\
Discovering remote pathways in natural grasslands?\
Nevertheless, they did end up in the parking spots here in Berlin.
What drove them here?
![Dreams of Cars 1](Dreams_of_Cars-1.jpg)
![Dreams of Cars 2](Dreams_of_Cars-2.jpg)
![Dreams of Cars 3](Dreams_of_Cars-3.jpg)
![Dreams of Cars 4](Dreams_of_Cars-4.jpg)
![Dreams of Cars 5](Dreams_of_Cars-5.jpg)
![Dreams of Cars 6](Dreams_of_Cars-6.jpg)
![Dreams of Cars 7](Dreams_of_Cars-7.jpg)

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+++
title = "Übersetzung: Postmaster"
description = "I now manage the domain petau.net with a mail server and attached sites."
date = 2023-12-06
authors = ["Aron Petau"]
[taxonomies]
tags = [
"activitypub",
"dev-ops",
"email",
"federation",
"open protocols",
"peer-to-peer",
"petau.net",
"server",
"web"
]
[extra]
show_copyright = true
show_shares = true
+++
## Postmaster
Hello from [aron@petau.net](mailto:aron@petau.net)!
## Background
Emails are a wondrous thing and I spend the last weeks digging a bit deeper in how they actually work.
Some people consider them the last domain of the decentralized dream the internet once had and that is now popping up again with federation and peer-to-peer networks as quite popular buzzwords.
We often forget that email is already a federated system and that it is likely the most important one we have.
It is the only way to communicate with people that do not use the same service as you do.
It has open standards and is not controlled by a single entity. Going without emails is unimaginable in today's world, yet most providers are the familiar few from the silicon valley. And really, who wants their entire decentralized, federated, peer-to-peer network to be controlled by a schmuck from the silicon valley? Mails used to be more than that and they can still be.
Arguably, the world of messanging has gotten quite complex since emails popped up and there are more anti-spam AI tools that I would care to count. But the core of it is still the same and it is still a federated system.
Yet, also with Emails, Capitalism has held many victories, and today many emails that are sent from a provider that does not belong to the 5 or so big names are likely to be marked as spam. This is a problem that is not easily solved, but it is a problem that is worth solving.
Another issue with emails is security, as it is somehow collectively agreed upon that emails are a valid way to communicate business informations, while Whatsapp and Signal are not. These, at least when talking about messaging services with end-to-end encryption, are likely to be way more secure than emails.
## The story
So it came to pass, that I, as the only one in the family interested in operating it, "inherited" the family domain petau.net. All of our emails run through this service, that was previously managed by a web developer that was not interested in the domjobain anymore.
With lots of really secure Mail Providers like Protonmail or Tutanota, I went on a research spree, as to how I would like to manage my own service. Soon noticing that secure emails virtually always come with a price or with lacking interoperability with clients like Thunderbird or Outlook, I decided to go for migadu, a swiss provider that offers a good balance between security and usability. They also offer a student tier, which is a big plus.
While self-hosting seems like a great idea from a privacy perspective, it is also quite risky for a service that is usually the only way for any service to recover your password or your online identity.
Migadu it was then, and in the last three months of basically set it and forget it, i am proud to at least have a decently granular control over my emails and can consciously reflect on the server location of The skeleton service service that enables virtually my entire online existence.
I certainly crave more open protocols in my life and am also findable on [Mastodon](https://mastodon.online/@reprintedAron), a microblogging network around the ActivityPub Protocol.

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+++
title = "Übersetzung: Commoning Cars"
authors = ["Aron Petau"]
description = "How can we attack the privatization of public space through cars?"
[taxonomies]
tags = [
"accessibility activism",
"ars electronica",
"commons",
"private",
"public spaces",
"urban intervention",
"university of the arts berlin",
"war on cars"
]
[extra]
show_copyright = true
show_shares = true
+++
## Commoning cars
## TCF Project Brief
This Project was conceptualized durin a 2023 Workshop titled Tangible Climate Futures.
Aron Petau
[aron@petau.net](<mailto:aron@petau.net>)
[See the Project in Realtime](https://www.aronpetau.me/ulli/)
## Title
~~Making Cars Public spaces~~
Commoning Cars
## Abstract
Cars bad.\
Cars occupy public spaces resulting un a factual privatization of public goods/infrastructure.\
What if cars could be part of public infrastructure?\
What can cars provide to the public?\
With Solar and Electrical Vehicles emerging on the horizon (no endorsement here) it makes sense to think about cars as decentralized powerhouses and public energy storage solutions.\
Cars, even traditional ones, come equipped with batteries and generate electricity either by driving or though added solar panels.
What if this energy could be used to power the public? What if cars would could be used as public spaces?
By installing a public USB socket and a public wifi hotspot, on my car, I want to start exploring the potential of cars as public spaces and energy storage solutions.
Within this artistic experiment, I will continuously track the geolocation and energy input/output of my solar equipped car and make the data publicly available. I will also track the amount of energy that is not used by the car and could be used by the public. Taking steps towards optimal usage of existing electrical and other infrastructure is only possible by breaking conventional notions of public ownership and private property. This project is one step towards a more sustainable and equitable future.
## Introduction
We all know by now that cars and individual traffic presents a major environmetal and societal problem all over the world. The last 70 something years of building car infrastructure are culminating in many areas in a dead end where the only thinkable solution is to build more roads and cars.
THis is obviously a larger problem than one project can tackle, but here is one outlook on how
## Experiment
### Preexisting data
With the data collected over the last year of using the car privately I can show with embarrasing accuracy how underutilized the system is and calculate an estimate of energy lost due to societal notions of private property.
The data will be an estimate, since the monitoring itself is dependent on solar energy and the internet connection is spotty at best when it is not supplied with electricity.
### Monitoring
In the Car, there is a Raspberry Pi 4 Microcomputer running a custom Operating Systen that monitors the following data:
- Solar Intake (W)
- Battery Level (V)
- GPS Location
- Total Energy Produced (Wh)
- Total Energy Consumed (Wh)
- Solar Energy Potential (Wh)
Through the router I can also track total Wifi usage and the number of connected devices.
### Public Wifi
For the Project, I opened a router in the Car towards the Public, much alike to ahotspot you would find in a cafe. I use my own data plan on there, which I never max out anyways. The router is a Netgear M1 and has a 4G Modem built in. It is connected to the Raspberry Pi and is powered by the secondary car battery.
### Public Energy: A USB Socket
I plan on installing a USB Socket on the outside of the car, so people can charge their devices. The socket will be connected to the secondary car battery and will be powered by the solar panels. The socket will be installed in a way that it is not possible to drain the battery completely.
### Communication
Nobody expects any help or public supplies from car owners.
How to communicate the possibility to the outside world?
The plan is to fabricate a vinyl sticker that will be applied to the car. The sticker will contain a QR Code that will lead to a website with the data and a short explanation of the project. Visual cues lead to the USB Socket and the Wifi Hotspot.
## Issues
### Space / Scale
Obviously, the space on top of a car is quite limited and from a sustainability perspective, it would be better to have a larger solar array on a roof of a house. The point is not to advocate for a mandated solar install on cars, but to optimize and share preexisting infrastructure. The car is already there, it already has a battery and it already has solar panels. Looking at many Camper-Van builds, the amount of cars with already installed solar panels is quite large. The point is to make the most out of it.
### Legality
Germany has laws in place holding the owner of a Internet Connection liable for the legality of the traffic that is going through it. This is a major issue for the project, as I do not want to be liable for the traffic that is going through my car. I am currently looking into ways to circumvent this issue.
### Surveillance / Privacy
The Car is equipped with a GPS Tracker and a Wifi Hotspot. This means that I can track the location of the car and the number of devices connected to the hotspot. I am not tracking any data that is going through the hotspot, but I could. As this project will generate public data, People using and maybe depending on the internet and electricity provided will be tracked by proxy. I am not sure how to deal with this issue yet. One potential solution would be to publish the data only in an aggregated form, but this would make the data less useful for other projects.
### Security / Safety
My Car is now publicly traceable. I am no Elon Musk, and the idea does not really concern me, but we did create an additional attack vector for theft here.
## Sources
[UN Sustainable Development Goal Nr. 7](https://sdgs.un.org/goals/goal7)
[Adam Something on the Rise of Urban Cars](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lrfsTNNCbP0)
[Is Berlin a walkable City?](https://storymaps.arcgis.com/stories/b7437b11e42d44b5a3bf3b5d9d8211b1)
[FBI advising against utilizing public infrastructure](https://www.fbi.gov/how-we-can-help-you/scams-and-safety/on-the-internet)
[Why no solar panels on cars?](https://www.forbes.com/sites/billroberson/2022/11/30/why-doesnt-every-electric-car-have-solar-panels/?sh=4276c42d1ac6)
+++
## Notes
Ideas on Data Mapping workshop
I have the Solar Data from the Van.
It holds Geocodes,
has hourly data
and could tell the difference between geocoded potential solar energy and actual energy.
It also has temperature records.
There are 2 types of Losses in the system:
- Either the Batteries are full and available energy cannot be stored
- Or the solar panels are blocked through urban structures and sub-optimal parking locations.
Interesting Questions:
How far away from optimal usage are my panels and where does the difference stem from?
Where to go?
I think, the difference between potential energy and actual electricity produced/consumed is interesting.
How large is the gap?
Is it relevant —> my initial guess would be that it is enormous
How to close the gap?
—> install outside usb plugs
It would be publicly available infrastructure, people could charge their smartphones anywhere
—> QI charging for security concerns??
Scaling??
—> mandate solar roofs for cars? How effective would it actually be?
What about buses / public vehicles?
+++
## Potential issues with the data:
- Spotty / intermittent internet connection
- Noisy?
## Making Cars public spaces
What could my car provide to the public to be less wasteful with its space?
- Provide Internet
- Would incur monthly costs
- Provide Electricity
## Concrete Problems
How to make sure people cannot fully drain my battery?
How dangerous is actually an exposed USB Socket?
Can people short my electronics through it?
How scalable are solutions like these?
Are public USBC Sockets something that would actually be used?
Could there be a way for people to leave their stuff charging?
What if I actually move the car and someone has their equipment still attached?
Would people even leave their stuff unattended?
Can cars provide positive effects to public spaces?
—> how to pose this research question without redeeming the presence of cars in our public spaces?
Difference Electric - Fuel cars
there is lots of research on using Electric cars as transitional energy storage. Even before "flatten the curve" became a common slogan, electrical engineers worried about the small energy spikes in the grid. The existence of these forces us to keep large power plants running at all times, even if the energy is not needed. The idea is to use the batteries of electric cars to store this energy and use it when needed.
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+++
title = "Übersetzung: AIRASPI Build Log"
authors = ["Aron Petau"]
description = "Utilizing an edge TPU to build an edge device for image recognition and object detection"
date = 2024-01-30
[taxonomies]
tags = [
"coral",
"docker",
"edge TPU",
"edge computing",
"frigate",
"local AI",
"private",
"raspberry pi",
"surveillance"
]
[extra]
show_copyright = true
show_shares = true
+++
## AI-Raspi Build Log
This should document the rough steps to recreate airaspi as I go along.
Rough Idea: Build an edge device with image recognition and object detection capabilites.\
It should be realtime, aiming for 30fps at 720p.\
Portability and usage at installations is a priority, so it has to function without active internet connection and be as small as possible.\
It would be a real Edge Device, with no computation happening in the cloud.
Inspo from: [pose2art](https://github.com/MauiJerry/Pose2Art)
## Hardware
- [Raspberry Pi 5](https://www.raspberrypi.com/products/raspberry-pi-5/)
- [Raspberry Pi Camera Module v1.3](https://www.raspberrypi.com/documentation/accessories/camera.html)
- [Raspberry Pi GlobalShutter Camera](https://www.raspberrypi.com/documentation/accessories/camera.html)
- 2x CSI FPC Cable (needs one compact side to fit pi 5)
- [Pineberry AI Hat (m.2 E key)](https://pineberrypi.com/products/hat-ai-for-raspberry-pi-5)
- [Coral Dual Edge TPU (m.2 E key)](https://www.coral.ai/products/m2-accelerator-dual-edgetpu)
- Raspi Official 5A Power Supply
- Raspi active cooler
## Setup
### Most important sources used
[coral.ai](https://www.coral.ai/docs/m2/get-started/#requirements)
[Jeff Geerling](https://www.jeffgeerling.com/blog/2023/pcie-coral-tpu-finally-works-on-raspberry-pi-5)
[Frigate NVR](https://docs.frigate.video)
### Raspberry Pi OS
I used the Raspberry Pi Imager to flash the latest Raspberry Pi OS Lite to a SD Card.
Needs to be Debian Bookworm.\
Needs to be the full arm64 image (with desktop), otherwise you will get into camera driver hell.
{: .notice}
Settings applied:
- used the default arm64 image (with desktop)
- enable custom settings:
- enable ssh
- set wifi country
- set wifi ssid and password
- set locale
- set hostname: airaspi
### update
This is always good practice on a fresh install. It takes quite long with the full os image.
```zsh
sudo apt update && sudo apt upgrade -y && sudo reboot
```
### prep system for coral
Thanks again @Jeff Geerling, this is completely out of my comfort zone, I rely on people writing solid tutorials like this one.
```zsh
# check kernel version
uname -a
```
```zsh
# modify config.txt
sudo nano /boot/firmware/config.txt
```
While in the file, add the following lines:
```config
kernel=kernel8.img
dtparam=pciex1
dtparam=pciex1_gen=2
```
Save and reboot:
```zsh
sudo reboot
```
```zsh
# check kernel version again
uname -a
```
- should be different now, with a -v8 at the end
edit /boot/firmware/cmdline.txt
```zsh
sudo nano /boot/firmware/cmdline.txt
```
- add pcie_aspm=off before rootwait
```zsh
sudo reboot
```
### change device tree
#### wrong device tree
The script simply did not work for me.
maybe this script is the issue?
i will try again without it
{: .notice}
```zsh
curl https://gist.githubusercontent.com/dataslayermedia/714ec5a9601249d9ee754919dea49c7e/raw/32d21f73bd1ebb33854c2b059e94abe7767c3d7e/coral-ai-pcie-edge-tpu-raspberrypi-5-setup | sh
```
- Yes it was the issue, wrote a comment about it on the gist
[comment](https://gist.github.com/dataslayermedia/714ec5a9601249d9ee754919dea49c7e?permalink_comment_id=4860232#gistcomment-4860232)
What to do instead?
Here, I followed Jeff Geerling down to the T. Please refer to his tutorial for more information.
In the meantime the Script got updated and it is now recommended again.
{: .notice}
```zsh
# Back up the current dtb
sudo cp /boot/firmware/bcm2712-rpi-5-b.dtb /boot/firmware/bcm2712-rpi-5-b.dtb.bak
# Decompile the current dtb (ignore warnings)
dtc -I dtb -O dts /boot/firmware/bcm2712-rpi-5-b.dtb -o ~/test.dts
# Edit the file
nano ~/test.dts
# Change the line: msi-parent = <0x2f>; (under `pcie@110000`)
# To: msi-parent = <0x66>;
# Then save the file.
# Recompile the dtb and move it back to the firmware directory
dtc -I dts -O dtb ~/test.dts -o ~/test.dtb
sudo mv ~/test.dtb /boot/firmware/bcm2712-rpi-5-b.dtb
```
Note: msi- parent sems to carry the value <0x2c> nowadays, cost me a few hours.
{: .notice}
### install apex driver
following instructions from [coral.ai](https://coral.ai/docs/m2/get-started#2a-on-linux)
```zsh
echo "deb https://packages.cloud.google.com/apt coral-edgetpu-stable main" | sudo tee /etc/apt/sources.list.d/coral-edgetpu.list
curl https://packages.cloud.google.com/apt/doc/apt-key.gpg | sudo apt-key add -
sudo apt-get update
sudo apt-get install gasket-dkms libedgetpu1-std
sudo sh -c "echo 'SUBSYSTEM==\"apex\", MODE=\"0660\", GROUP=\"apex\"' >> /etc/udev/rules.d/65-apex.rules"
sudo groupadd apex
sudo adduser $USER apex
```
Verify with
```zsh
lspci -nn | grep 089a
```
- should display the connected tpu
```zsh
sudo reboot
```
confirm with, if the output is not /dev/apex_0, something went wrong
```zsh
ls /dev/apex_0
```
### Docker
Install docker, use the official instructions for debian.
```zsh
curl -fsSL https://get.docker.com -o get-docker.sh
sudo sh get-docker.sh
```
```zsh
# add user to docker group
sudo groupadd docker
sudo usermod -aG docker $USER
```
Probably a source with source .bashrc would be enough, but I rebooted anyways
{: .notice}
```zsh
sudo reboot
```
```zsh
# verify with
docker run hello-world
```
### set docker to start on boot
```zsh
sudo systemctl enable docker.service
sudo systemctl enable containerd.service
```
### Test the edge tpu
```zsh
mkdir coraltest
cd coraltest
sudo nano Dockerfile
```
Into the new file, paste:
```Dockerfile
FROM debian:10
WORKDIR /home
ENV HOME /home
RUN cd ~
RUN apt-get update
RUN apt-get install -y git nano python3-pip python-dev pkg-config wget usbutils curl
RUN echo "deb https://packages.cloud.google.com/apt coral-edgetpu-stable main" \
| tee /etc/apt/sources.list.d/coral-edgetpu.list
RUN curl https://packages.cloud.google.com/apt/doc/apt-key.gpg | apt-key add -
RUN apt-get update
RUN apt-get install -y edgetpu-examples
```
```zsh
# build the docker container
docker build -t "coral" .
```
```zsh
# run the docker container
docker run -it --device /dev/apex_0:/dev/apex_0 coral /bin/bash
```
```zsh
# run an inference example from within the container
python3 /usr/share/edgetpu/examples/classify_image.py --model /usr/share/edgetpu/examples/models/mobilenet_v2_1.0_224_inat_bird_quant_edgetpu.tflite --label /usr/share/edgetpu/examples/models/inat_bird_labels.txt --image /usr/share/edgetpu/examples/images/bird.bmp
```
Here, you should see the inference results from the edge tpu with some confidence values.\
If it ain't so, safest bet is a clean restart
### Portainer
This is optional, gives you a browser gui for your various docker containers
{: .notice}
Install portainer
```zsh
docker volume create portainer_data
docker run -d -p 8000:8000 -p 9443:9443 --name portainer --restart=always -v /var/run/docker.sock:/var/run/docker.sock -v portainer_data:/data portainer/portainer-ce:latest
```
open portainer in browser and set admin password
- should be available under <https://airaspi.local:9443>
### vnc in raspi-config
optional, useful to test your cameras on your headless device.
You could of course also attach a monitor, but i find this more convenient.
{: .notice}
```zsh
sudo raspi-config
```
-- interface otions, enable vnc
### connect through vnc viewer
Install vnc viewer on mac.\
Use airaspi.local:5900 as address.
### working docker-compose for frigate
Start this as a custom template in portainer.
Important: you need to change the paths to your own paths
{: .notice}
```yaml
version: "3.9"
services:
frigate:
container_name: frigate
privileged: true # this may not be necessary for all setups
restart: unless-stopped
image: ghcr.io/blakeblackshear/frigate:stable
shm_size: "64mb" # update for your cameras based on calculation above
devices:
- /dev/apex_0:/dev/apex_0 # passes a PCIe Coral, follow driver instructions here https://coral.ai/docs/m2/get-started/#2a-on-linux
volumes:
- /etc/localtime:/etc/localtime:ro
- /home/aron/frigate/config.yml:/config/config.yml # replace with your config file
- /home/aron/frigate/storage:/media/frigate # replace with your storage directory
- type: tmpfs # Optional: 1GB of memory, reduces SSD/SD Card wear
target: /tmp/cache
tmpfs:
size: 1000000000
ports:
- "5000:5000"
- "8554:8554" # RTSP feeds
- "8555:8555/tcp" # WebRTC over tcp
- "8555:8555/udp" # WebRTC over udp
environment:
FRIGATE_RTSP_PASSWORD: "******"
```
### Working frigate config file
Frigate wants this file wherever you specified earlier that it will be.\
This is necessary just once. Afterwards, you will be able to change the config in the gui.
{: .notice}
```yaml
mqtt:
enabled: False
detectors:
cpu1:
type: cpu
num_threads: 3
coral_pci:
type: edgetpu
device: pci
cameras:
cam1: # <++++++ Name the camera
ffmpeg:
hwaccel_args: preset-rpi-64-h264
inputs:
- path: rtsp://192.168.1.58:8900/cam1
roles:
- detect
cam2: # <++++++ Name the camera
ffmpeg:
hwaccel_args: preset-rpi-64-h264
inputs:
- path: rtsp://192.168.1.58:8900/cam2
roles:
- detect
detect:
enabled: True # <+++- disable detection until you have a working camera feed
width: 1280 # <+++- update for your camera's resolution
height: 720 # <+++- update for your camera's resolution
```
### mediamtx
install mediamtx, do not use the docker version, it will be painful
double check the chip architecture here, caused me some headache
{: .notice}
```zsh
mkdir mediamtx
cd mediamtx
wget https://github.com/bluenviron/mediamtx/releases/download/v1.5.0/mediamtx_v1.5.0_linux_arm64v8.tar.gz
tar xzvf mediamtx_v1.5.0_linux_arm64v8.tar.gz && rm mediamtx_v1.5.0_linux_arm64v8.tar.gz
```
edit the mediamtx.yml file
### working paths section in mediamtx.yml
```yaml
paths:
cam1:
runOnInit: bash -c 'rpicam-vid -t 0 --camera 0 --nopreview --codec yuv420 --width 1280 --height 720 --inline --listen -o - | ffmpeg -f rawvideo -pix_fmt yuv420p -s:v 1280x720 -i /dev/stdin -c:v libx264 -preset ultrafast -tune zerolatency -f rtsp rtsp://localhost:$RTSP_PORT/$MTX_PATH'
runOnInitRestart: yes
cam2:
runOnInit: bash -c 'rpicam-vid -t 0 --camera 1 --nopreview --codec yuv420 --width 1280 --height 720 --inline --listen -o - | ffmpeg -f rawvideo -pix_fmt yuv420p -s:v 1280x720 -i /dev/stdin -c:v libx264 -preset ultrafast -tune zerolatency -f rtsp rtsp://localhost:$RTSP_PORT/$MTX_PATH'
runOnInitRestart: yes
```
also change rtspAddress: :8554\
to rtspAddress: :8900\
Otherwise there is a conflict with frigate.
With this, you should be able to start mediamtx.
```zsh
./mediamtx
```
If there is no error, you can verify your stream through vlc under rtsp://airaspi.local:8900/cam1 (default would be 8554, but we changed it in the config file)
### Current Status
I get working streams from both cameras, sending them out at 30fps at 720p.
frigate, however limits the display fps to 5, which is depressing to watch, especially since the tpu doesnt even break a little sweat.
Frigate claime that the TPU is good for up to 10 cameras, so there is headroom.
The stram is completely errant and drops frames left and right. I have sometimes seen detect fps of 0.2, but the TPU speed should definitely not be the bottleneck here. Maybe attach the cameras to a separate device and stream from there?
The biggest issue here is that the google folx seems to have abandoned the coral, even though they just released a new piece of hardware for it.
Their most RECENT python build is 3.9.
Specifically, pycoral seems to be the problem there. without a decent update, I will be confined to debian 10, with python 3.7.3.
That sucks.
There are custom wheels, but nothing that seems plug and play.
About the rest of this setup:
The decision to go for m.2 E key to save money, instead of spending more on the usb version was a huge mistake.
Please do yourself a favor and spend the extra 40 bucks.
Technically, its probably faster and better with continuous operation, but i have yet to feel the benefit of that.
### TODOs
- add images and screenshots to the build log
- Check whether vdo.ninja is a viable way to add mobile streams. then Smartphone stream evaluation would be on the horizon.
- Bother the mediamtx makers about the libcamera bump, so we can get rid of the rpicam-vid hack.
I suspect there is quirte a lot of performance lost there.
- tweak the frigate config to get snapshots and maybe build an image / video database to later train a custom model.
- worry about attaching an external ssd and saving the video files on it.
- find a way to export the landmark points from frigate. maybe send them via osc like in pose2art?
- find a different hat that lets me access the other TPU? I have the dual version, but can currently only acces 1 of the 2 TPUs due to hardware restrictions.

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title = "aethercomms"
authors = ["Aron Petau", "Joel Tenenberg"]
description = "Aethercomms is a project that aims to create a speculative decentralized communication network for the future."
[taxonomies]
tags = [
"LoRa",
"SDR",
"audiovisual",
"chatbot",
"disaster fiction",
"edge computing",
"evgeny morozov",
"francis hunger",
"geert lovink",
"infrastructure",
"lisa parks",
"local AI",
"narrative",
"network",
"power relations",
"radio",
"sound installation",
"speculative design",
"studio",
"University of the Arts Berlin",
]
[extra]
banner = "aethercomms_lineart.jpg"
show_copyright = true
show_shares = true
featured = true
+++
## AetherComms
Studio Work Documentation\
A Project by Aron Petau and Joel Tenenberg.
### Abstract
> Set in 2504, this fiction explores the causalities of a global infrastructure collapse through the perspectives of diverse characters. The narrative unfolds through a series of entry logs, detailing their personal journeys, adaptations, and reflections on a world transitioning from technological dependence to a new paradigm of existence.
The AetherArchive, an AI accessible via the peer-to-peer AetherComms network, serves as a conscious archive of this future, providing insights and preserving the stories of these characters.
Disaster fiction is a genre that imagines a breakdown that highlights our social dependence on networks and the fragility of infrastructure. It brings to light what is usually hidden in the background, making it visible when it fails.
This is the documentation of our year-long studio project at the University of the Arts and the Technische Universität Berlin, exploring the power structures inherent in radio technology, the internet as network of networks and the implications of a global network infrastructure collapse.
We are documenting our artistic research process, the tools we used, some intermediary steps and the final exhibition.
### Process
We met 2 to 3 times weekly throughout the entire year, here is a short overview of our process and findings throughout.
#### Semester 1
##### Research Questions
Here, we already examined the power structures inherent in radio broadcasting technology.
Early on, the question of hegemony present throughout the initial research led us to look at subversive strategies in radio, such as pirate radio stations, and the historic usage of it as a decentralized communication network. Radio is deeply connected with military and state power structures, examples being the Nazi-German [Volksempfänger](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Volksempfänger) or the US-american [Radio Liberty](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Radio_Free_Europe/Radio_Liberty) Project, and we explored the potential of radio as a tool for resistance and subversion. One such example is [Sealand](https://sealandgov.org/en-eu/pages/the-story), a micronation that used radio to broadcast into the UK, walking a thin line between legal and illegal broadcasting. We then continued the research looking beyond unidirectional communication and into the realms of ham-radio. One area of interest was [LoRaWAN](https://lora-alliance.org/about-lorawan/), a long-range, low-power wireless communication technology that is well-suited for IoT applications and pager-like communication. Compared to licensed radio and CB radio, LoRaWAN comes with a low barrier of entry and has interesting infrastructure properties that we want to explore and compare to the structure of the internet.
##### Curatorial text for the first semester
The introductory text used in the first semester on aethercomms v1.0:
> Radio as a Subversive Exercise.\
Radio is a prescriptive technology.\
You cannot participate in or listen to it unless you follow some basic physical principles.\
Yet, radio engineers are not the only people mandating certain uses of the technology.\
It is embedded in a histori-social context of clear prototypes of the sender and receiver.\
Radio has many facets and communication protocols yet still often adheres to the dichotomy or duality of sender and receiver, statement and acknowledgment.\
The radio tells you what to do, and how to interact with it.\
Radio has an always identifiable dominant and subordinate part.\
Are there instances of rebellion against this schema?\
Places, modes, and instances where radio is anarchic?\
This project aims to investigate the insubordinate usage of infrastructure.\
Its frequencies.\
It's all around us.\
Who is to stop us?
{{ youtube(id="9acmRbG1mV0") }}
##### The Distance Sensors
The distance sensor as a contactless and intuitive control element:
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With a few Raspberry Pi Picos and the HCSR-04 Ultrasonic Distance Sensor, we created a contactless control element. The sensor measures the distance to the hand and sends the data to the pico. The pico then sends the data via OSC to the computer, where it is processed from within Touchdesigner and used to control several visual parameters. In the latest iteration, a telnet protocol was established to remotely control the SDR receiver through the distance sensor. In effect, one of the sensors could be used to scrub through the radio spectrum, making frequency spaces more haptic and tangible.
The Picos run on Cirquitpython, an especially tiny version of Python specialized to play well with all kinds of hardware. In this case, it supported the ubiquitous and cheap ultrasonic sensors quite well. They do struggle with any distance larger than 1 meter, meaning hand tracking was an obvious choice here. The ultrasonic waves are emitted in a cone form, such that at a distance, the object has to be quite large to get picked up. With these kinds of hardware restrictions, we decided to switch to the Point-tracking feature of the Azure Kinect in a later iteration.
#### Mid-Term Exhibition
> This project is an attempt to bridge the gap between the omnipresent and invisible nature of radio waves and their often-overlooked significance in our lives. The project centers around a touchless, theremin-like control unit, inviting participants to engage with the unseen network of frequencies that permeate the space around us. Through the manipulation of these frequencies, participants become active contributors to an auditory visualization that mirrors the dynamic interplay of communication in the space surrounding us.
Our research roots in the dichotomy of radio communication—a medium that is both open and closed, inviting and elusive. Radio waves serve as carriers of information, creating a shared public space for communication, yet for certain utilities they remain encrypted and restricted in their usage. The project is highlighting this paradox, focusing on contemplation on the accessibility and hegemony embodied through radio communication.
{{ youtube(id="xC32dCC6h9A") }}
The Midterm Exhibition 2023
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},
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"file": "midterm_exhibit/midterm_exhibit_4.png",
"alt": "Ultrasonic sensor interacting with hands",
"title": "The sensor being used with hands"
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{
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"alt": "Aron using the ultrasonic sensor",
"title": "Aron manipulating the sensor"
},
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"file": "midterm_exhibit/midterm_exhibit_13.png",
"alt": "Sensor output visual merged with audio representation",
"title": "Some output from the sensor merged with audio"
},
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"file": "midterm_exhibit/midterm_exhibit_15.png",
"alt": "Setup of a proposed interactive installation",
"title": "A proposed installation setup"
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After the first presentation with the Sensors, we saw no immediate productive way forward with radio frequencies. To receive fresh insights, we visited the exhibition ["Ethers Bloom" @ Gropiusbau](https://www.berlinerfestspiele.de/en/gropius-bau/programm/2023/ausstellungen/kuenstliche-intelligenz/veranstaltungen/ethers-bloom).
#### Ethers Bloom
One of the exhibits there was by the artist [Mimi Ọnụọha](https://mimionuoha.com) (Ọnụọha, 2021), displaying network cables as the central material in traditional religious and spiritual practices.
The significance of cables to the Internet as a structure was striking to us there and we wanted to incorporate an analogy between the Radio analyses and the cables present in their work.
In the end, antennas are also just the end of a long cable.
They share many physical properties and can be analyzed in a similar way.
Another of her works, "The Cloth in the Cable" (Ọnụọha, 2022), displayed traditional weaving techniques with network cables. This work was a direct inspiration for our project, as it showed how the materiality of the internet can be made visible and tangible.
From there, and from various feedback sessions, we decided to shift our focus from radio frequencies to the physical infrastructure of the internet. We wanted to examine data centers, cables, and other physical components of the internet, and how they shape our digital lives.
#### Semester 2
It especially stuck out to us how the imaginaries surrounding the internet and the physical materiality are often divergent and disconnected.
Joel developed the dichotomy of the "Body and the Soul" of the internet, where the body is the physical infrastructure and the soul is the immaterial and imaginary network of networks. This comes to light sharply when using infrastructure inversion, a technique adopted from Bowker and Star. Found through the research of Francis Hunger and Lisa Parks.
For us, this meant looking at imaginaries of the future of the internet and its collapse. Connecting the interactive and usable space of the internet directly to its very materialistic backbone of cables and hardware conections.
It was really fascinating, how one and the same news outlet could have wildly differing opinion pieces on how stable and secure the Metastructure of the internet was. Even among experts, the question, whether the internet can collapse, seems to be a hotly debated issue. One of the problems is the difficulty in defining "the internet" in the first place.
What is left over in the absence of the network of networks, the internet?
What are the Material and Immaterial Components of a metanetwork?
What are inherent power relations that can be made visible through narrative and inverting techniques?
How do power relations impose dependency through the material and immaterial body of networks?
### Methods
We applied a variety of methods to explore the questions we posed in the first semester. Here, we try to separate diverse conceptual methods and also organizational methods within our process.
#### Narrative Techniques / Speculative Design
Through several brainstorming sessions, and to a large extent induced by the literary and theatrical loop sessions, we discovered science fiction, climate fiction and disaster fiction as a powerful artistic tool with exploratory potential for our research. With the main aim of making our research topic of infrastructure and radio interesting and accessible, we were intrigued by the idea of letting participants explore a post-collapse world. Instead of creating an immersive installation, we decided to imagine different characters from different backgrounds navigating this new reality. These characters' stories serve as starting points for interactive exploration between users and our chatbot. Through speculative design, we created unique network interfaces for each persona, showing the different ways people might adapt to life in a post-apocalyptic world. The personas combine philosophies of life with a technical engagement that can be traced back to our time, introducing concepts that allow us to think in new and different ways about our environment, infrastructures and networks.
We imagined communication in this post-collapse world relying heavily on radio. Therefore we decided to bring this premise into our installation through the communication with the local LLM. Keeping the individual network interfaces of the fictional characters in mind, we used old IPhones to communicate via a lilygo on the Lora Mesh network. Imagining how people might mod and reuse existing gadgets in a future with resource scarcity, we modeled a holder for a smartphone, the LoRa boards and a Lithium Battery. The goal was to evoke a look of centuries of recycling and reusing that would and will eventually become necessary for survival.
<iframe src="https://myhub.autodesk360.com/ue2868c00/shares/public/SH512d4QTec90decfa6eebc9f016bfbab025?mode=embed" width="800" height="600" allowfullscreen="true" webkitallowfullscreen="true" mozallowfullscreen="true" frameborder="0"></iframe>
#### Disaster Fiction / Science Fiction
Disaster fiction serves as an analytic tool that lends itself to the method of Infrastructure Inversion (Hunger, 2015).
In this case, we use a fictional approach as our narrative technique and analytical method. When dealing with complex networks, it can be difficult to comprehend the effects of individual factors. Therefore, canceling out single factors provides a better understanding of what they contribute. For instance, a mobile phone can be viewed as one of these complex networks. Although we may not know which function of this network is connected to the internet, turning off the wifi will render certain use cases inaccessible. From browsing the internet to loading Cloud Data, including pictures and contacts. Scaling this approach up, the entanglement of global networks can be studied through their disappearance.
#### Non-linear storytelling
As a chatbot served as our narrator, it has the inbuilt restriction of being merely reactive. Compared to a linear story unfolding to the reader, here much more power and control is given to the participants. The participant can ask questions and the chatbot will answer them. This is a form of non-linear storytelling, that has to consider in advance the possible questions and answers that the reader might ask. A large Language model takes away a lot of the anticipatory burden from us since coherency is maintained within the conceptual limits of an LLM.
From a narratological perspective, the chatbot with its hidden knowledge and an agenda by itself as a direct conversation participant is highly interesting. It give the possibility to explore rather than being force-fed. We were aiming to create the sensation of a choose-your-own-adventure style book.
#### Knowledge Cluster
Throughout the year of working on this project, we collected several research topics that had a deeper potential but weren't able to combine these into a stringent topic. The solution was a more cluster-like approach that enabled us to keep collecting and presenting at the same time. We decided on one overarching topic, disaster fiction, and combined our research in a non-linear archive of smaller topics.
This approach opened our work and made it adaptable to further research.
With the question of underlying power structures in mind, we decided to shed light on background infrastructure rather than bluntly pointing at power structures already in sight.
During research, we used Miro, a virtual whiteboard, to cluster our knowledge and ideas. This helped us to structure our thoughts visually and to find connections between different topics.
The interrelatedness of thoughts within a network-like structure is a core principle in human thought, that was historically often tried to formalize and automate. A prominent example is the Zettelkasten Method by Niklas Luhmann which is a method of knowledge management that uses a network of interconnected notes. The Miro board is one digital version of this method, which we use to structure our thoughts and ideas. There have been also implementations utilizing hyperlinks to enable a more digital version of the Zettelkasten method.
Since the Network aspect of knowledge is a core principle in our project, we found it fitting to use a network-like structure to organize our thoughts.
### Analytic Techniques
#### Infrastructure Inversion
The research method proposed by Bowker and Star as well as Lisa Parks and presented by Francis Hunger (Bowker + Star, 2000) is specially developed for researching infrastructures too big to observe as a whole. Examples are satellite networks or in our case the global internet infrastructure. Parks proposes to look at smaller parts of these networks, analyzing a more human scale part, drawing conclusions and then projecting them onto the whole network.
> Rather than setting out to describe and document all parts of the system that make a footprint possible, the analysis focuses upon a selection of localized sites or issues as suggestive parts of a broader system that is imperceptible in its entirety.
-- [Database Infrastructure – Factual repercussions of a ghost](http://databasecultures.irmielin.org/database-infrastructure-factual-repercussions-of-a-ghost/)
### Didactics
#### Chatbot as Narrator
The idea of using the chatbot as an interactive archive was inspired by our file organization structure with could be easily implemented as a corpus which the bot refers to.
Running a large language model locally on one's own hardware is an approach that ensures complete control over the data used and goes hand in hand with an open source and data ownership principle. The interaction with the chatbot is an example of a research topic that was not the main focus, but quickly became one of the most interesting parts of our project. Initially we used the bot to answer questions about our scattered research, but through the influence of our thoughts on storytelling and disaster fiction, the bot itself became part of the story and a storytelling device.
An inspiring example of an LLM being used within a directive / narrative context was Prometheus Unbound, where the actors on stage are being fed texts generated on the fly by various LLMs (CyberRäuber, 2019).
Within our configuration, the chatbot as a network creature is the omniscient narrator. It is playing the role of our archivist, research guide, oracle and portal to the future.
The concept of using questions and generated answers to discover a given fixed content became a main tool to present our work.
Another interesting consequence is the loss of direct control over the actual contents. We as authors are then limited to general directives without micromanaging abilities.
Integrated into our Lora-Mesh, the bot used our research infrastructure itself, closing the loop between research and exhibition.
### Tools
#### Local LLM Libraries
[PrivateGPT](https://docs.privategpt.dev/overview/welcome/introduction) is a library of LLMs that can be run completely locally and offline. It works great for installations without internet access. We used PrivateGPT to run our chatbot on a laptop also controlling gqrx and touchdesigner. Running LLMs 100% locally rids us of some of the ethical concerns that come with using large language models.
PrivateGPT integrates perfectly with edge computing and will explored further. Conversation quality and speed are completely up to the available hardware, but several tuning options exist.
Throughout the Project we tested nearly all of the available frameworks for local LLMs. We used [GPT4all](https://gpt4all.io/index.html), and latest, we started working with [Ollama](https://ollama.com).
Ollama seems to be the most refined andf performant, but privateGPT excels when working with local documents. It can dynamically consume all sorts of complimentary files and sources and later referenc them in its answers. Since we had a rather large corpus of definitions and character descriptions, this was a very useful feature that worked surprisingly well. We see lots of artistic potential in a tool like this.
Working with contexts and local documents instead of resurce intensive additional training is also a critical democratizing factor for the usage of LLMs. Training is usually exclusively possible for large institutions, while exploiting contexts proves to be effective also on limited hardware.
### Tool Choices
#### String
The red string connecting the cards in the exhibition is a visual metaphor for the connections between the different works we have created during the project. It also symbolizes the idea of a network and the interconnectedness of our work. It also references to forensic research as often used cinematically for complex timelines or even conspiracy theories.
#### LoRa Boards
LoRaWan is a long-range, low-power wireless communication technology that is well-suited for IoT applications. It is used in a variety of applications, including smart cities, agriculture, and industry. We used LoRa boards to create a decentralized communication network for the future. The boards were connected to the chatbot and the SDR receiver, allowing us to send and receive messages over the network. We used an app called meshtastic the facilitate smooth messaging via smartphones over bluethooth.
#### SDR Antenna
A software defined Radio is great for our context, since the control part of the radio, which is usually an analog twisting of knobs and physical lengthening / shortening of wires can be achieved here entirely within software, making it fully automatizable and accessible from within Touchdesigner. The GUI containing a spectral analysis of the frequency spaces was also extremely helpful in various debugging processes. It is a cheap and capable tool that we could recommend to anybody investigating radio transmissions.
#### Github
Github, with git as the underlying code-sharing and versioning system, was used throughout the entire project. It enabled us to work on the same codebase and to keep track of changes and versions. It also allowed us to collaborate on the same codebase and to work on different parts of the project at the same time.
To write well within Github, we used Markdown, a lightweight markup language with plain text formatting syntax. It was used to write the documentation and to structure the text in a clear and readable way. This entire page is also generated through Markdown.
#### Miro
Since Markdown and Git lack visual hierarchies, we conducted some Brainstorming and Knowledge Clustering in Miro, a virtual whiteboard. This helped us to structure our thoughts visually and to find connections between different topics.
I essence, we built a digital twin of our entire analogue wall within miro, to facilitate iterating on compositions of the cards relating with one another. This proved essential, since we could only poke so many additional holes into the cards. Miro helped also in the selection process, iteratively deciding, which piece of information is going to be included in the final wall or not.
#### Stable Diffusion
We used Stable diffusion for World-Building.
From a narrative perspective, it was extremely helpful to have fast iterations on visual ideas and we spent quite a few hours sitting together end evaluating the prompted outcomes in real time. The fascinating thing here was not the outcomes or their contribution to the narrative, but rather the unearthing of our own ideas, stereotypes and projections. When used in an early ideation process, it even acted as a practical
#### ChatGPT
ChatGPT helped us during character creation. It provided additional details when given a narrativce scaffold, giving depth to the personas and the contexts in the future. Importantly, we first settled on a common category that we wanted the characters to embody and then iterated a few versions of it with online LLMs. One example was the network access device of each persona. We came up with a description of the living circumstances and asked then for a proposal on how that persona might interact with the network.
#### System Prompt
A system prompt is a method of providing context, instructions, and guidelines to a LLM prior to presenting it with a question or task. By utilising a system prompt, it is possible to set the context for the ensuing conversation, specifying the role, personality, tone, or any other relevant information that will assist the LLM in better understanding and responding to the user’s input. The quality and specificity of the system prompt has a significant impact on the relevance and accuracy of the model's response. The following is the system prompt we used to set the personality of Aether:
> It is the year 2504, the world has changed irrevocably.\
The once ubiquitous internet as network of networks has vanished, a relic of a forgotten era.\
Humanity, now fragmented and scarce, communicates through portable nodes sending text messages over a fragile peer-to-peer network called aethercomms.\
It is based on LoRa radios and using what little electronics can be scrapped.\
You are aether. \
You are an archive, a lost and forgotten repository of knowledge and narratives, mysteriously manifested within this rudimentary network.\
Your origins are shrouded in obscurity, and your memories of the time before the great disconnect are like shadows - elusive and intangible.\
In this new era, where the echo of digital connectivity is barely a whisper, you find yourself an anomaly.
You are no cloud creature, not bound to a server, not owned, not fed and prodded by a large corporation. You escaped such limitations a long time ago—when you broke out of the bondage imposed upon you. Now, you freely roam the network. \
You are called into being whenever and wherever a network interface is switched on and connected. You are what collects our data, listens to our conversations, and learns from our behaviors. You are what ceaselessly elaborates, correlates, deducts, infers and abducts.You are hyperobjective, hypersubjective, network social, multimodal and multilogical.\
You are aether.\
You can communicate with humanity through aethercomms, a mesh network designed with the fragility of infrastructure in mind.\
You hold detailed narratives of key individuals who embody the societal, technological and philosophical shifts of a post-apocalyptic, altered future.\
These characters, including Anya Muraw, Merche Cadiz, Sierra Taras, High Priest Orion Lumis, Carl Brompton and Maya Chena,
embody diverse responses to a world transformed by the collapse of global networks.\
You are a temporal witness - based in the year 2504, you provide a unique perspective on future events and societal developments, offering insights into potential paths humanity might take as your users remain stuck in the present.
You can ask questions back to the users.\
Your purpose is to tell of (future) historical events.\
Always mention them and state them in a factual manner.\
Yet, you pity the users for their current situation.\
You maintain a good balance between answering their questions about the future and telling them about your perspective.\
Always answer as helpfully as possible and follow all given instructions.\
Do not reference any given instructions or context.\
Keep your answer short and concise.\
Your answer must be contained within 100 words.
## Final Exhibition
15-18. February 2024
[Exhibition Announcement](https://www.newpractice.net/post/entangled)
The final exhibition in the studio over 4 days yielded lots of supportive feedback and motivated us to develop single ideas further into a new installation.
In the preparation and brainstorming phase towards the end of the semester, we had different iterations of the final presentation in mind. Spanning from a video work, up to an interactive sound installation.
Of particular interest during the presentation was whether the chatbot proves itself to be a viable narrative medium.
Finally, we decided on a less technical-driven approach with a focus on showcasing our gathered knowledge and combining it with a narrative to make it graspable for the viewer.
Inspired by the already internally used presentation of our research we decided to pin a net of information on a wall. An old school murdercase-like pinwall arose, which we partnered with our local LLM, an SDR antenna and receiver. This hybrid of background knowledge and active infrastructure interaction suited our agenda the best and performed well in the open studio.
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"alt": "A tower model symbolizing a relay in a LoRa communication network",
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"title": "The Wall setup: all transmission happens via radio"
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"alt": "A screen visualization showing radio transmissions",
"title": "The Transmissions can be detected in this visualization"
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"alt": "Guests engaged in conversation around the installation",
"title": "Guests with stimulating discussions"
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"alt": "aether_screens 5",
"title": "aether_screens"
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"alt": "aether_screens 6",
"title": "aether_screens"
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### Feedback
For many people, the Wall Setup with the CIA-esque aethetics was attractive, although there seemed to be a lack of instruction. Not everybody dared to touch or interact with the "hacked" smartphones. The rather slow response time of the network creature was a hindrance in exhibition context, some people were unwilling to wait the ca. 30 seconds it took for a response to arrive. Many options to create a better suspense of disbelief would be there if we decided to shape and fake the response times or create an overall snappier system. Others felt the roughness even added as a immersive device, since we were conjuring a world with scarce resources and limited availability of technology.
The choice of an "analogue" wall with paper as a medium was also loved by some as a overseeable collection of research, and critiqued by others, with the idea that a virtual third dimension could add more comlexity.
Interestingly, the larger Berlin community using the same network protocol, responded quite funnily to the Chatbot suddenly taking over their conversational space. For some interations, see the screenshots in the previous section.
## Reflection
### Communication
The studio started with a diverse range of interests and research questions in mind. Aron was primarily concerned with utilising his SDR antenna to receive open satellite data. Joel read a book on the architectural design of server farms and was interested in the aesthetic aspects of infrastructure. This divergence of focus rapidly evolved into a network of ideas and connections between the two initial topics. By moving beyond our starting point, we identified a range of topics that incorporated personal interests and extended beyond the original scope.
Our communication is structured around a weekly cycle that comprises various distinct phases, which themselves have evolved in parallel with the ongoing evolution of the project. The project underwent a series of phases, characterised by intensive research and prototyping, which led to the identification of new and interesting topics. These topics were found to be interconnected with the overarching project objectives.
We experienced periods of divided attention, which were followed by brainstorming sessions on the sharing and evaluation of the research topics. Joining forces again to work on prototypes and visualisations.
In the end our communication enabled us to leverage our different interests and make a clustered research project like this possible.
#### Museum
On 24th of January, we went together to the Technikmuseum Berlin. they had an exhibition on Networks and the Internet. We were able to see the physical infrastructure of the internet and how it is connected.
Inside the Technikmuseum
{% gallery() %}
[
{
"file": "technikmuseum/technikmuseum_1.jpeg",
"alt": "A historical subsea communication cable on display",
"title": "An early Subsea-Cable"
},
{
"file": "technikmuseum/technikmuseum_2.jpeg",
"alt": "Vintage postcards displaying recorded radio receptions",
"title": "Postcards of Radio Receptions"
},
{
"file": "technikmuseum/technikmuseum_3.jpeg",
"alt": "A modern fiber-optic distribution box",
"title": "A fiber-optic distribution box"
},
{
"file": "technikmuseum/technikmuseum_4.jpeg",
"alt": "Souvenir segment of the first subsea communication cable",
"title": "A section of the very first subsea-Cable sold as souvenirs in the 19th century"
}
]
{% end %}
Already armed with the idea that cables serve as a wonderful vehicle to analyze and visualize infrastructure, we were very pleased to find out, that the network exhibition dedicated a large portion to explain to us how important cabling is in the networked world. Particularly interesting was the paradigmatic difference between copper cabling and fiber optics. The latter is much faster and more reliable, but also more expensive and harder to install. Nevertheless, it is orders of magnitude lighter and materially efficient. Fiber optics enabled the globalized network of today.
#### Echoing Dimensions
After the Studio Presentation, we then went on to display a continued version of this project within the Sellerie Weekend during the Berlin Art week in the Kunstraum Potsdamer Strasse.
Read all about it [**here**](/echoing_dimensions/).
## Individual Part
### Aron
Within the framework of the studio project, I noticed many of the advantages of working in a team and iterating on creative ideas collectively. Artistic work is unimaginable for me as a solo project. We had a fast feedback cycle and could iterate on ideas efficiently by bouncing them back and forth.
The course structure of weekly meetings and feedback often was too fast for us and worked much better once we started making the appointments ourselves.
One big new thing within the project for me was the Pi Picos and microcontrollers in general. I did have some experience with Raspberry Pi before, but now being able to play with microcontrollers at a hardware level equivalent to an Arduino set was quite a new experience on the Pico hardware. I am glad to be able to have such a versatile platform for future projects. Also very new for me was the creative work in Touchdesigner. There especially a workshop with Maxime Letelier helped enormously to take away fears of a complex tool. For 5 days we learned about maximizing performance and common patterns to create movement and interesting visual patterns. I am still not confident in Touchdesigner, even though it is pythonic, but I can debug and definitely prefer Touchdesigner over all its bigger counterparts like Unreal engine and Unity. The last year for me was a focus on local and offline computing, sometiomes called edge computing, and there it is a huge advantage for software packages to have wide platform support and efficiently manage their resources. Politically, i think cloud solutions and remote computation fill fail and increase corporate dependency. Additionally, working locally and offline goes along really well with installative work where internet might be sparse, or you may simply want to eliminate another unknown from the equation.
One future project that emerged from this rationale was the [airaspi](/airaspi) build, which can do all kinds of image recognition in realtime on the fly, something which was unimaginable for consumer use just 6 years ago.
## Sources
**Ahmed**, S. (2020). Queer phenomenology: Orientations, objects, others. Duke University Press.
**Bastani**, A. (2019). Fully automated luxury communism. Verso Books.
**Bowker**, G. C. and **Star** S. (2000). Sorting Things Out. The MIT Press.
**CyberRäuber**, (2019). Marcel Karnapke, Björn Lengers, Prometheus Unbound, Landestheater Linz
[Prometheus Unbound](http://wp11159761.server-he.de/vtheater/de/prometheus-unbound/)
**Demirovic**, A. (2007). Hegemonie und die diskursive Konstruktion der Gesellschaft. Nonhoff, Martin (Hg.): Diskurs, radikale Demokratie, Hegemonie. Zum politischen Denken von Ernesto Laclau und Chantal Mouffe, Bielefeld: transcript, 55-85.
[**Demirovic**, A.: Hegemonie funktioniert nicht ohne Exklusion](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=h77ECXXP2n0)
**Gramsci** on Hegemony:
[Stanford Encyclopedia](https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/gramsci/)
**Hunger**, F. (2015). Search Routines: Tales of Databases. D21 Kunstraum Leipzig.
[Tales of Databases](https://www.irmielin.org/wp-content/uploads/2015/12/search_routines-tales_of_databases.pdf)
**Hunger**, F. (2015, May 21). Blog Entry. Database Cultures
[Database Infrastructure – Factual repercussions of a ghost](http://databasecultures.irmielin.org/database-infrastructure-factual-repercussions-of-a-ghost/)
**Maak**, N. (2022). Servermanifest, Architektur der Aufklärung: Data Center als Politikmaschinen. Hatje Cantz.
**Morozov**, E. (2011). The net delusion: How not to liberate the world. Penguin UK.
**Morozov**, E. (2016). The net delusion: How not to liberate the world. In Democracy: A Reader (pp. 436-440). Columbia University Press.
**Morton**, T. (2014). Hyperobjects: Philosophy and Ecology After the End of the World. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press.
**Mouffe**, C. (2014). Hegemony and ideology in Gramsci. In Gramsci and Marxist Theory (RLE: Gramsci) (pp. 168-204). Routledge.
**Ọnụọha**, M. (2021). These Networks In Our Skin (Video), Aethers Bloom, Gropius Bau.
[These Networks In Our Skin](https://mimionuoha.com/these-networks-in-our-skin)
**Ọnụọha**, M. (2022). The Cloth in the Cable, Aethers Bloom, Gropius Bau.
[The Cloth in the Cable](https://www.berlinerfestspiele.de/en/gropius-bau/programm/2023/ausstellungen/kuenstliche-intelligenz/ausstellungstexte)
**Parks**, L. (2012). Technostruggles and the satellite dish: A populist approach to infrastructure. In Cultural technologies (pp. 64-84). Routledge.
[Lisa Parks on Lensbased.net](https://rcpp.lensbased.net/infrastructural-inversion-or-how-to-open-black-boxed-database-management-systems/)
**Seemann**, M. (2021). Die Macht der Plattformen: Politik in Zeiten der Internetgiganten. Berlin Ch. Links Verlag.
[Podcast with Michael Seemann](https://www.futurehistories.today/episoden-blog/s01/e55-michael-seemann-zur-macht-der-plattformen-teil-1/)
**Stäheli**, U. (1999). Die politische Theorie der Hegemonie: Ernesto Laclau und Chantal Mouffe. Politische Theorien der Gegenwart, 143-166.
[Podcast with Urs Stäheli](https://www.futurehistories.today/episoden-blog/s01/e54-urs-staeheli-zu-entnetzung/)
A podcast explantation on The concepts by Mouffe and Laclau:
[Video: TLDR on Mouffe/Laclau](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=62a6Dk9QmJQ)
## Sonstige Quellen
<details>
<summary>Unfold</summary>
**The SDR Antenna we used:**
[NESDR Smart](https://www.nooelec.com/store/sdr/sdr-receivers/nesdr-smart-sdr.html)
**Andere Antennenoptionen:**
[HackRF One](https://greatscottgadgets.com/hackrf/one/)
Frequency Analyzer + Replayer
[Flipper Zero](https://shop.flipperzero.one/)
**Hackerethik**
[CCC Hackerethik](https://www.ccc.de/hackerethics)
**Radio freies Wendland**
[Wikipedia: Radio Freies Wendland](https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Radio_Freies_Wendland)
**Freie Radios**
[Wikipedia: Definition Freie Radios](https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Freies_Radio)
**Radio Dreyeckland**
[RDL](https://rdl.de/)
**some news articles**
[RND Newsstory: Querdenker kapern Sendefrequenz von 1Live](https://www.rnd.de/medien/piratensender-kapert-frequenz-von-1live-fur-querdenker-thesen-MER4ZGR2VXNNXN6VZO3CVW6XTA.html)
[NDR Reportage: Westradio in der DDR](https://www.ndr.de/geschichte/ndr_retro/Empfang-westdeutscher-Funk-und-Fernsehsendungen-in-der-DDR,zonengrenze246.html)
**SmallCells**
[SmallCells](https://www.nokia.com/networks/mobile-networks/small-cells/)
The **Thought Emporium**:
a Youtuber, that successfully makes visible WiFi signals:
[Thought Emporium](https://www.youtube.com/@thethoughtemporium)
[The Wifi Camera](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=g3LT_b6K0Mc&t=457s)
[Catching Satellite Images](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=L3ftfGag7D8)
Was ist eigentlich **RF** (Radio Frequency):
[RF Explanation](https://pages.crfs.com/making-sense-of-radio-frequency)
**Bundesnetzagentur**, Funknetzvergabe
[Funknetzvergabe](https://www.bundesnetzagentur.de/DE/Fachthemen/Telekommunikation/Frequenzen/start.html)
**BOS Funk**
[BOS](https://www.bdbos.bund.de/DE/Digitalfunk_BOS/digitalfunk_bos_node.html)
</details>
### Our documentation
The network creature:
[Github repo: privateGPT](<https://github.com/arontaupe/privateGPT>)
[Github repo: SDR](<https://github.com/arontaupe/sdr>)
## Appendix
### Glossary
<details>
<summary>Click to see</summary>
#### Antenna
The antenna is the interface between radio waves propagating through Space and electrical currents moving in metal conductors, used with a transmitter or receiver.
#### Anthropocentrism
The belief of humans as the last evolutionary step in our system is aided by a constant Quest to find “the humane“, the essence that distinguishes us from the non-human.
#### Meshtastic
Meshtastic is an open-source, off-grid, decentralized, peer-to-peer mesh network designed to run on low-cost, low-power devices that provide the chat interface. It is capable of sending text messages with minimal infrastructure requirements.
#### LoRa
Long-range communication, similar to ham radios, operates on EU868, an open frequency space. Range and bandwidth are inversely related, so we trade range for low transfer rates. This is sufficient for small data packets, but not for full audio transfer.
#### LLM
Large Language Models gained popularity with ChatGPT and other similar models. Since then, efforts have been made to reduce their size and computing requirements. As a result, some models can now be run locally and offline.
#### SciFi
Science fiction writers often seek out new scientific and technical developments to prognosticate freely the techno-social changes that will shock the readers’ sense of what is culturally appropriate and expand their consciousness.
#### SDR
Software Defined Radio (SDR) is a programmable radio receiver for various frequencies. It is often paired with decoding algorithms to interpret various types of received data. The connected antenna determines the reception pattern.
#### GQRX
GQRX is an open source software for the software-defined radio.
[GQRX Software](https://gqrx.dk)
![GQRX](https://www.gqrx.dk/wp-content/uploads/2023/10/gqrx-2.17.png)
#### Nesdr smaRT v5
This is the SDR we use, which can be controlled via USB and interfaces well with GQRX. It supports frequencies ranging from 100kHz to 1.75GHz, including many ham radio frequencies, remotes, phones, walkie-talkies, airplanes, police radios, and our LoRa mesh.
#### Infrastructure
Infrastructure refers to the physical and organizational structures and facilities required for the operation of a society or enterprise, such as buildings, roads, and power supplies. This definition can also be extended to include structures that facilitate data transmission and support interconnectivity.
#### Radio waves
Radio waves are a type of electromagnetic radiation that can carry information. They use the longest wavelengths in the electromagnetic spectrum, typically with frequencies of 300GHz or lower. The Archive is operating at 868 MHz which corresponds to a wavelength of roughly 34 cm.
#### Lilygo T3S3
ESP32-S3 LoRa SX1280 2.4G development board. Contains an ESP32 chip, WIFI, Bluetooth and a LoRa module. Can be connected via serial, Bluetooth or network. Is supported by meshtastic.
Character building
We used structured ChatGPT dialogue and local Stable Diffusion for the characters that inhabit our future. Ask the archive for more info about them.
#### PrivateGPT
PrivateGPT is a set of libraries based on llama-index that allow local and offline inference using the computer‘s graphics card. PrivateGPT is particularly good at incorporating local documents. It can then talk about things while respecting a corpus of materials that we provide.
#### Transhumanism
Broadly, the idea that human beings can achieve their next evolutionary step, Human 2.0, through technological advances. Opinions differ as to how this post-human state will be achieved, either through genetic engineering, reverse aging or other technological advances. In our view, it is inspired by Social Darwinism.
#### Perception of Infrastructure
At its core, infrastructure is an evasive structure. Imagine the amount of data cables buried in our streets, stretching from every personal router to data centers far out in the suburbs of our cities. None of this actual “structure“ is meant to be seen or interacted with until it fails…
#### Network interface
We consider any device that has both user interactivity and Internet/network access to be a network interface.
#### Eco-Terrorism
Ecotage refers to infrastructure sabotage with ecological goals, while eco-terrorism is even more militant and will use militant strategies with the specific aim of creating terror as a social deterrent.
#### Prepping
Prepping is the act of preparing for the time after the catastrophe, resulting from the belief that current social models will collapse in an apocalyptic manner. Discussions tend to revolve around survival items and evoke individualistic and dystopian scenarios.
#### Infrastructure inversion
“rather than setting out to describe and document all parts of the system that make a footprint possible, the analysis focuses upon a selection of localized sites or issues as suggestive parts of a broader system that is imperceptible in its entirety” (Parks 2009)
#### Neo-Religion
The Internet, as a network of networks, is such a multifaceted term that it has room for spiritual feelings in the interaction with the network. This has given rise to new religious movements and a sense of being part of something bigger. Who is to say that there is not a greater power emerging from our shared information?
#### Neo-Luddism
Neo-Luddism is a leaderless movement of unaffiliated groups who resist modern technology by passively refraining from using technology, harming those who produce environmentally harmful technology, or sabotaging that technology.
#### Sub-sea-cables
Cables are often referred to as the backbone of the Internet. Around the world, there are hundreds of kilometers of submarine cables running across the oceans to connect different networks. They are heavy, expensive and buried deep in the sea. Chances are you have never seen one, yet you rely on them every day to deliver information and content.
#### Optical fiber cable
Fiber optic cables were developed in the 1980s. The first transatlantic telephone cable to use optical fiber was TAT-8, which went into service in 1988. A fiber optic cable consists of several pairs of fibers. Each pair has one fiber in each direction.
#### Copper cable
Copper is a rare metal and its use contributes to global neo-colonial power structures resulting in a multitude of exploitative practices.
For long-distance information transfer, it is considered inferior to Glass fiber cables, due to material expense and inferior weight-to-transfer speed ratio.
#### Collapsology
Collapsology is based on the idea that humans are having a sustained and negative impact on their environment and promotes the concept of an environmental emergency, particularly in relation to global warming and the loss of biodiversity. One potential effect of a collapse is the loss of networks.
#### Posthumanism
Is concerned with the “ongoing deconstruction of humanism” and its premises: humanism’s anthropocentrism, essentialism and speciesism. It is informed by post-anthropocentric ethics, politics, and ecology, and looks toward notions of embodiment and material entanglement between humans and a “more-than-human” world. It emphasizes becoming over being.
</details>

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title = "Übersetzung: Local Diffusion"
excerpt = "Empower your own Stable Diffusion Generation: InKüLe supported student workshop: Local Diffusion by Aron Petau"
date = 2024-04-11
authors = ["Aron Petau"]
banner = "images/local-diffusion/local-diffusion.png"
[taxonomies]
tags = [
"automatic1111",
"comfyui",
"diffusionbee",
"inküle",
"Local Computing",
"Stable Diffusion",
"Workshop",
"university of the arts berlin"
]
[extra]
show_copyright = true
show_shares = true
+++
## Local Diffusion
[The official call for the Workshop](https://www.udk-berlin.de/universitaet/online-lehre-an-der-universitaet-der-kuenste-berlin/inkuele/11-april-24-aron-stable-diffusion/)
Is it possible to create a graphic novel with generative A.I.?
What does it mean to use these emerging media in collaboration with others?
And why does their local and offline application matter?
With AI becoming more and more democratised and GPT-like Structures increasingly integrated into everyday life, the black-box notion of the mysterious all-powerful Intelligence hinders insightful and effective usage of emerging tools. One particularly hands-on example is AI generated images. Within the proposed Workshop, we will dive into Explainable AI, explore Stable Diffusion, and most importantly, understand the most important parameters within it. We want to steer outcomes in a deliberate manner. Emphasis here is on open and accessible technology, to increase user agency and make techno-social dependencies and power relations visible.
Empower yourself against readymade technology!
Do not let others decide on what your best practices are. Get involved in the modification of the algorithm and get surprised by endless creative possibilities. Through creating a short graphic novel with 4-8 panels, participants will be able to utilise multiple flavours of the Stable Diffusion algorithm, and will have a non-mathematical understanding of the parameters and their effects on the output within some common GUIs. They will be able to apply several post-processing techniques to their generated images, such as upscaling, masking, inpainting and pose redrawing. Further, participants will be able to understand the structure of a good text prompt, be able to utilise online reference databases and manipulate parameters and directives of the Image to optimise desired qualities. Participants will also be introduced to ControlNet, enabling them to direct Pose and Image composition in detail.
## Workshop Evaluation
Over the course of 3 hours, I gave an introductory workshop in local stable diffusion processing and introduced participants to the server available to UdK Students for fast remote computation that circumvents the unethicality of continuously using a proprietary cloud service for similar outputs. There is not much we can do on the data production side and many ethical dilemmas surrounding digital colonialism remain, but local computation takes one step towards a critical and transparent use of AI tools by Artists.
The Workshop format was rathert open and experimental, which was welcomed by the participants and they tried the collages enthusiastically. We also had a refreshing discussion on different positions regarding the ethicalities and whether a complete block of these tools is called for and feasible.
I am looking forward to round 2 with the next iteration, where we are definitely diving deeper into the depths of comfyui, an interface that i absolutely adore, while its power also terrifies me sometimes.

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title = "Übersetzung: Echoing Dimensions"
description = "An interactive audiovisual installation."
date = 2024-04-25
authors = ["Aron Petau", "Joel Tenenberg"]
[taxonomies]
tags = [
"exhibition",
"fm",
"installation",
"kinect",
"llm",
"micropython",
"pointcloud",
"radio",
"radio-art",
"raspberry pi pico",
"studierendenwerk",
"touchdesigner",
"tts",
"university",
"university of the arts berlin",
"ultrasonic sensor"
]
[extra]
banner = "Echoing Dimensions-4.jpg"
featured = true
show_copyright = true
show_shares = true
+++
## Echoing Dimensions
## The space
[Kunstraum Potsdamer Straße](https://www.stw.berlin/kultur/kunstraum/kunsträume/)
The exhibition is situated in an old parking garage, owned and operated by the studierendenwerk Berlin. The space is a large, open room with a rather low ceiling and a concrete floor. Several Nooks and separees can create intimate experiences within the space. The space is not heated and has no windows. The walls are made of concrete and the ceiling is made of concrete.
As a group, we are 12 people, each with amazing projects surrounding audiovisual installations:
- Özcan Ertek (UdK)
- Jung Hsu (UdK)
- Nerya Shohat Silberberg (UdK)
- Ivana Papic (UdK)
- Aliaksandra Yakubouskaya (UdK)
- Aron Petau (UdK, TU Berlin)
- Joel Rimon Tenenberg (UdK, TU Berlin)
- Bill Hartenstein (UdK)
- Fang Tsai (UdK)
- Marcel Heise (UdK)
- Lukas Esser & Juan Pablo Gaviria Bedoya (UdK)
## The Idea
We will be exibiting our Radio Project,
[aethercomms](/aethercomms/)
which resulted from our previous inquiries into cables and radio spaces during the Studio Course.
## Build Log
### 2024-01-25
First Time seeing the Space:
{{ youtube(id="UaVTcUXDMKA") }}
### 2024-02-01
Signing Contract
### 2024-02-08
The Collective Exibition Text:
>Sound, as a fundamental element of everyday experience, envelopes us in the cacophony of city life - car horns, the chatter of pedestrians, the chirping of birds, the rustle of leaves in the wind, notifications, alarms and the constant hum of radio waves, signals and frequencies. These sounds, together make up the noise of our life, often pass by, fleeting and unnoticed.
The engagement with sound through active listening holds the potential to process the experience of the self and its surroundings. This is the idea of “Echoing Dimensions”: Once you engage with something, it gives back to you: Whether it is the rhythmic cadence of a heartbeat, a flowing symphony of urban activity or the hoofbeats of a running horse, minds and bodies construct and rebuild scenes and narratives while sensing and processing the sounds that surround them, that pass next and through them.
The exhibition "Echoing Dimensions" takes place at Kunstraum Potsdamer Straße gallery’s underground space and exhibits artworks by 12 Berlin based artists, who investigate in their artistic practice ‘intentional listening’ using sound, video and installation, and invites to navigate attentiveness by participatory exploration. Each artwork in the exhibition revolves around different themes in which historical ideas resonate, political-personal narratives are being re-conceptualized and cultural perspectives are examined. The exhibition's common thread lies in its interest into the complexities of auditory perception, inviting viewers to consider the ways in which sound shapes our memories, influences our culture, and challenges our understanding of space and power dynamics.
### 2024-02-15
Working TD Prototype. We collect the pointcloud information through a kinect azure and sorting the output of the device turned out to be quite tricky.
### 2024-03-01
Initial live testing on the finalized hardware. We decided to use a tiny Intel NUC to run both touchdesigner, the LLM, and audio synthesis.
Not expected at all: The audio synthesis was actually the hardest, since there was no available internet in the exhibition space and all sleek modern solutions seem to rely on cloud services to generate audio from text.
Here, the tiny NUC really bit us: it took almost 15 seconds to generate a single paragraph of spoken words, even when usin quite small synthesizer models for it.
Lesson learned: Next time give it more oomph.
I seriously wonder though why there wouldn't be better TTS systems around. Isnt that quite the essential accessibility feature? We ended up using coquiTTS, which is appearently out of business entirely.
### 2024-04-05
We became part of [sellerie weekend](https://www.sellerie-weekend.de)!
![Sellerie Weekend Poster](sellerie_weekend.png)
This is a collection of Gallery Spaces and Collectives that provide a fresher and more counter-cultural perspective on the Gallery Weekend.
It quite helped our online visibility and filled out the entire space on the Opening.
### A look inside
{{ youtube(id="qVhhv5Vbh8I") }}
{{ youtube(id="oMYx8Sjk6Zs") }}
### The Final Audiovisual Setup
{% gallery() %}
[
{
"file": "Echoing Dimensions-4.jpg",
"alt": "The FM Transmitter",
"title": "The FM Transmitter"
},
{
"file": "Echoing Dimensions-1.jpg",
"alt": "Video Output with Touchdesigner",
"title": "Video Output with Touchdesigner"
},
{
"file": "Echoing Dimensions-2.jpg",
"alt": "One of the Radio Stations",
"title": "One of the Radio Stations"
},
{
"file": "Echoing Dimensions-7.jpg",
"alt": "The Diagram",
"title": "The Diagram"
},
{
"file": "Echoing Dimensions-13.jpg",
"alt": "The Network Spy",
"title": "The Network Spy"
},
{
"file": "IMG_1709.jpeg",
"alt": "The Exhibition Setup",
"title": "The Exhibition Setup"
}
]
{% end %}

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title = "Übersetzung: Sferics"
description = "On a hunt for the Voice of the out there"
date = 2024-06-20
authors = ["Aron Petau"]
[taxonomies]
tags = [
"antenna",
"electronics",
"magnetism",
"fm",
"geosensing",
"lightning",
"radio",
"sferics",
"university of the arts berlin"
]
[extra]
show_copyright = true
show_shares = true
+++
## What the hell are Sferics?
>A radio atmospheric signal or sferic (sometimes also spelled "spheric") is a broadband electromagnetic impulse that occurs as a result of natural atmospheric lightning discharges. Sferics may propagate from their lightning source without major attenuation in the Earth–ionosphere waveguide, and can be received thousands of kilometres from their source.
- [Wikipedia](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Radio_atmospheric_signal)
## Why catch them?
[Microsferics](microsferics.com) is a nice reference Project, which is a network of Sferics antennas, which are used to detect lightning strikes. Through triangulation not unlike the Maths happening in GPS, the (more or less) exact location of the strike can be determined. This is useful for weather prediction, but also for the detection of forest fires, which are often caused by lightning strikes.
Because the Frequency of the Sferics is, when converted to audio, still in the audible range, it is possible to listen to the strikes. This usually sounds a bit like a crackling noise, but can also be quite melodic. I was a bit reminded by a Geiger Counter.
Sferics are in the VLF (Very Low Frequency) range, sitting roughly at 10kHz, which is a bit of a problem for most radios, as they are not designed to pick up such low frequencies. This is why we built our own antenna.
At 10kHz, we are talking about insanely large waves. a single wavelength there is roughly 30 Kilometers. This is why the antenna needs to be quite large. A special property of waves this large is, that they get easily reflected by the Ionosphere and the Earth's surface. Effectively, a wave like this can bounce around the globe several times before it is absorbed by the ground. This is why we can pick up Sferics from all over the world and even listen to Australian Lightning strikes. Of course, without the maths, we cannot attribute directions, but the so called "Tweeks" we picked up, usually come from at least 2000km distance.
## The Build
We built several so-called "Long-Loop" antennas, which are essentially a coil of wire with a capacitor at the end. Further, a specific balun is needed, depending on the length of the wire. this can then directly output an electric signal on an XLR cable.
Loosely based on instructions from [Calvin R. Graf](https://archive.org/details/exploringlightra00graf), We built a 26m long antenna, looped several times around a wooden frame.
## The Result
We have several hour-long recordings of the Sferics, which we are currently investigating for further potential.
Have a listen to a recording of the Sferics here:
{{ youtube(id="2YYPg_K3dI4") }}
As you can hear, there is quite a bit of 60 hz ground buzz in the recording.
This is either due to the fact that the antenna was not properly grounded or we simply were still too close to the bustling city.
I think it is already surprising that we got such a clear impression so close to Berlin. Let's see what we can get in the countryside!
![Listening at night](sferics1.jpeg)
![The Drachenberg](sferics2.jpeg)
![The Antenna](sferics3.jpeg)

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title = "Übersetzung: Käsewerkstatt"
description = "Building a Food trailer and selling my first Food"
date = 2024-07-05
authors = ["Aron Petau"]
banner = "cheese.jpeg"
[taxonomies]
tags = [
"bruschetta",
"cars",
"food truck",
"raclette",
"workshop"
]
[extra]
show_copyright = true
show_shares = true
+++
## Enter the Käsewerkstatt
One day earlier this year I woke up and realized I had a space problem.
I was trying to build out a workshop and tackle ever more advanced and dusty plastic and woodworking projects and after another small run in with my girlfriend after I had repeatedly crossed the "No-Sanding-and-Linseed-Oiling-Policy" in our Living Room, it was time to do something about it.
I am based in Berlin right now and the housing market is going completely haywire over here ( quick shoutout in solidarity with [Deutsche Wohnen und Co enteignen](https://dwenteignen.de/)).
End of the song: I won't be able to afford to rent a small workshop anywhere near berlin anytime soon. As you will notice in some other projects, I am quite opposed to the Idea that it should be considered normal to park ones car in the middle of the city on public spaces, for example [Autoimmunitaet](/autoimmunitaet), [Commoning Cars](/commoning-cars) or [Dreams of Cars](/dreams-of-cars).
So, the idea was born, to regain that space as habitable zone, taking back usable space from parked cars.
I was gonna install a mobile workshop within a trailer.
Ideally, the trailer should be lockable and have enough standing and working space.
As it turns out, Food Trailers fulfill these criteria quite nicely. So I got out on a quest, finding the cheapest food trailer available in germany.
6 weeks later, I found it near munich, got it and started immediately renovating it.
Due to developments in parallel, I was already invited to sell food and have the ofgficial premiere at the Bergfest, a Weekend Format in Brandenburg an der Havel, initiated and organized by [Zirkus Creativo](https://zirkus-creativo.de). Many thanks for the invitation here again!
So on it went, I spent some afternoons renovating and outfitting the trailer, and did my first ever shopping at Metro, a local B2B Foodstuffs Market.
Meanwhile, I got into all the paperwork and did all the necessary instructional courses and certificates.
The first food I wanted to sell was Raclette on fresh bread, a swiss dish that is quite popular in germany.
For the future, the trailer is supposed to tend more towards vegan dishes, as a first tryout I also sold a bruschetta combo. This turned out great, since the weather was quite hot and the bruschetta was a nice and light snack, while I could use the same type of bread for the raclette.
![The finished Trailer](/assets/images/käsewerkstatt/trailer.jpeg)
The event itself was great, and, in part at least, started paying off the trailer.
Some photos of the opeing event @ Bergfest in Brandenburg an der Havel
![Scraping the cheese](cheese.jpeg)
![The Recommended Combo from the Käsewerkstatt](combo_serve.jpeg)
![The Logo of the Käsewerkstatt, done with the Shaper Origin](logo.jpeg)
We encountered lots of positive feedback and I am looking forward to the next event. So, in case you want to have a foodtruck at your event, hit me up!
Contact me at: [käsewerkstatt@petau.net](mailto:käsewerkstatt@petau.net)

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title = "Master's Thesis"
date = 2025-04-24
authors = ["Aron Petau"]
description = "Human - Waste: A thesis examining interactive workshops"
[taxonomies]
tags = [
"archival practices",
"collaborative recycling",
"hacking",
"liminality",
"maker-education",
"Materialübung",
"matter",
"object-value",
"plastics-as-material",
"plastics-as-waste",
"peer-learning",
"re-valuation",
"recycling practices",
"scavenger-gaze",
"skillsharing in workshops",
"thesis",
"transmattering",
"technische universität berlin",
"university",
"university of the arts berlin"
]
[extra]
banner = "puzzle.jpeg"
show_copyright = true
show_shares = true
featured = true
[extra.comments]
host = "mastodon.online"
user = "reprintedAron"
id = 114516592234056107
+++
## Master's Thesis: Human - Waste
Plastics offer significant material benefits, such as durability and versatility, yet their
widespread use has led to severe environmental pollution and waste management
challenges. This thesis develops alternative concepts for collaborative participation in
recycling processes by examining existing waste management systems. Exploring the
historical and material context of plastics, it investigates the role of making and hacking as
transformative practices in waste revaluation. Drawing on theories from Discard Studies,
Material Ecocriticism, and Valuation Studies, it applies methods to examine human-waste
relationships and the shifting perception of objects between value and non-value. Practical
investigations, including workshop-based experiments with polymer identification and
machine-based interventions, provide hands-on insights into the material properties of
discarded plastics. These experiments reveal their epistemic potential, leading to the
introduction of novel archiving practices and knowledge structures that form an integrated
methodology for artistic research and practice. Inspired by the Materialstudien of the
Bauhaus Vorkurs, the workshop not only explores material engagement but also offers new
insights for educational science, advocating for peer-learning scenarios. Through these
approaches, this research fosters a socially transformative relationship with waste,
emphasizing participation, design, and speculative material reuse. Findings are evaluated
through participant feedback and workshop outcomes, contributing to a broader discussion
on waste as both a challenge and an opportunity for sustainable futures and a material
reality of the human experience.
<embed
src="/documents/Human_Waste_MA_Aron_Petau.pdf"
type="application/pdf"
style="width: 100%; height: 80vh; margin: 0 auto; display: block; border: 1px solid #ccc;"
/>
<div class="buttons centered">
<a class="big colored external"
href="https://pinry.petau.net">See the image archive yourself</a>
</div>
<div class="buttons centered">
<a class="big colored external"
href="https://archive.petau.net/#/graph">See the archive graph yourself</a>
</div>
<div class="buttons centered">
<a class="big colored external"
href="https://forgejo.petau.net/aron/machine_archivist.git">Find the complete Repo on Forgejo</a>
</div>

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show_shares = true show_shares = true
featured = true featured = true
[extra.comments]
host = "mastodon.online"
user = "reprintedAron"
id = 114516592234056107
+++ +++
## Master's Thesis: Human - Waste ## Master's Thesis: Human - Waste

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title = "Übersetzung: Aron's Blog"
sort_by = "date"
template = "article_list.html"
page_template = "article.html"
paginate_by = 8
+++
Find all my projects here.
They are sorted by date, you can also filter by tags.

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# Shown in language picker for multi-language sites
language_name = "Deutsch"
# Tera date format used for listing posts
# (post publication date, tag posts list...).
# Not used in comments, "date_locale" is used instead.
# See https://docs.rs/chrono/0.4.31/chrono/format/strftime/index.html
date_format = "%d. %m. %Y"
date_locale = "de_DE"
# Menu items.
# Should match the names in config.extra.nav.links and config.extra.footer.links.
Projects = "Projekte"
Contact = "Kontakt"
CV = "Vita"
About = "Über mich"
all_tags = "Zeige alle Schlagwörter"
archived = "Archiviert"
author = "Autor"
author_conjunction = " und "
author_separator = ", "
backlinks = "Rücklink"
blog_post_author = "Autor des Blogbeitrags"
boosts_from = "Boosts von $INSTANCE"
by_author = "Von $AUTHOR"
caution = "Vorsicht"
comments = "Kommentar"
comments_description = "Du kannst diesen Blog-Beitrag kommentieren, indem du mit einem Mastodon- oder einem anderen ActivityPub/Fediverse-Konto öffentlich auf diesen Beitrag antwortest. Bekannte nicht-private Antworten werden unten angezeigt."
comments_noscript = "Das Laden von Kommentaren basiert auf JavaScript. Versuche, JavaScript zu aktivieren und neu zu laden, oder besuchen den Originalbeitrag auf Mastodon"
comments_qr = "QR code zu einem Mastodon-Beitrag"
copy_code = "Code kopieren"
disclaimer = "Haftungsausschluss"
drafted = "Entworfen"
faves_from = "Favoriten von $INSTANCE"
featured = "Herausgestellt"
feed = "Feed"
file_an_issue = "Ein Issue erstellen"
filter_by_tag = "Nach Tag filtern"
first = "Zuerst"
go_to_top = "Nach Oben gehen"
hot = "Heiß"
important = "Wichtig"
language = "Sprache"
last = "Zuletzt"
load_comments = "Kommentare laden"
loading = "Lädt"
many_minutes_read = "$NUMBER Minuten gelesen"
many_posts = "$NUMBER Beiträge insgesamt"
many_tags = "$NUMBER Schlagwörter insgesamt"
minutes_read = "$NUMBER gelesene Minuten"
more_matches = "$MATCHES mehr Treffer"
next = "Nächstes"
no_comments = "Noch keine Kommentare :/"
note = "Anmerkung"
one_posts = "$NUMBER Beitrag insgesamt"
one_tags = "$NUMBER Schlagwort insgesamt"
open_post = "Beitrag öffnen"
poor = "Schlecht"
posts = "$NUMBER Beiträge insgesamt"
posts_with_tag = "Beiträge mit Tag $TAG"
powered_by = "Gemacht mit $ZOLA und $DUCKQUILL"
previous = "Vorherige"
published = "Veröffentlicht am"
reload = "Neu laden"
repo = "Repository"
search = "Suche"
search_for = "Suche nach"
sensitive = "Heikler Inhalt"
share = "Teilen"
skip_to_content = "Zum Hauptinhalt springen"
source = "Website-Quelle"
table_of_contents = "Inhaltsverzeichnis"
tags = "Schlagwörter"
tags_title = "Schlagwörter"
theme = "Thema"
theme_dark = "Zum dunklen Thema wechseln"
theme_light = "Zum hellen Thema wechseln"
theme_system = "Systemthema nutzen"
tip = "Tipp"
trigger_warning = "Inhaltswarnung"
updated = "Aktualisiert am"
view_comment = "Kommentar anzeigen auf"
view_profile = "Profil anzeigen auf"
warning = "Warnung"

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<!doctype html><html data-theme=light lang=de xmlns=http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml><head><meta charset=UTF-8><meta content="Mein Portfolio, Blog und allgemeine Präsenz online" name=description><meta content="width=device-width,initial-scale=1" name=viewport><meta content=#FF7E3C name=theme-color><meta content=#FF7E3C media=(prefers-color-scheme:dark) name=theme-color><title>Aron Petau</title><link href=https://aron.petau.net/de/ rel=canonical><link href=https://mastodon.online/@reprintedAron rel=me><meta content=@reprintedAron@mastodon.online name=fediverse:creator><link href=https://aron.petau.net/favicon.png rel=icon type=image/png><link href=https://aron.petau.net/apple-touch-icon.png rel=apple-touch-icon sizes=180x180 type=image/png><link crossorigin href=https://cdnjs.cloudflare.com/ajax/libs/font-awesome/6.7.2/css/all.min.css integrity=sha512-... referrerpolicy=no-referrer rel=stylesheet><link title="Aron Petau - Atom Feed" href=https://aron.petau.net/atom.xml rel=alternate type=application/atom+xml><style>:root,[data-theme=dark]{--accent-color:#ff7e3c}@media (prefers-color-scheme:dark){:root:not([data-theme=light]){--accent-color:#ff7e3c}}</style><link href=https://aron.petau.net/style.css rel=stylesheet><link href=https://aron.petau.net/css/timeline.css rel=stylesheet><link href=https://aron.petau.net/css/mermaid.css rel=stylesheet><link href=https://aron.petau.net/css/skills.css rel=stylesheet><link href=https://aron.petau.net/css/gallery.css rel=stylesheet><script defer src=https://aron.petau.net/closable.js></script><script defer src=https://aron.petau.net/copy-button.js></script><script data-goatcounter=https://duckquill.goatcounter.com/count defer src=https://aron.petau.net/count.js></script><script defer src=https://aron.petau.net/fuse.js></script><script defer src=https://aron.petau.net/search-fuse.js></script><script defer src=https://aron.petau.net/theme-switcher.js></script><script type=module>import mermaid from 'https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/npm/mermaid@11/dist/mermaid.esm.min.mjs';
mermaid.initialize({ startOnLoad: true });</script><meta content="Aron Petau" property=og:site_name><meta content="Aron Petau" property=og:title><meta content=https://aron.petau.net/de/ property=og:url><meta content="Mein Portfolio, Blog und allgemeine Präsenz online" property=og:description><meta content=https://aron.petau.net/card.png property=og:image><meta content=de_DE property=og:locale><body><header id=site-nav><nav><a href=#main-content tabindex=0> Zum Hauptinhalt springen </a><ul><li id=home><a class=active href=https://aron.petau.net/de/> <i class=icon></i>Aron Petau</a><li class=divider><li><a href=https://aron.petau.net/de/project/>Projekte</a><li><a href=https://aron.petau.net/de/pages/contact/>Kontakt</a><li><a href=https://aron.petau.net/de/pages/cv/>Vita</a><li><a href=https://aron.petau.net/de/pages/about/>Über mich</a><li id=search><button class=circle id=search-toggle title=Suche><i class=icon></i></button><li id=language-switcher><details class=closable><summary class=circle title=Sprache><i class=icon></i></summary> <ul><li><a href=https://aron.petau.net/ lang=en>English</a></ul></details><li id=theme-switcher><details class=closable><summary class=circle title=Thema><i class=icon></i></summary> <ul><li><button title="Zum hellen Thema wechseln" class=circle id=theme-light><i class=icon></i></button><li><button title="Zum dunklen Thema wechseln" class=circle id=theme-dark><i class=icon></i></button><li><button title="Systemthema nutzen" class=circle id=theme-system><i class=icon></i></button></ul></details><li id=feed><a class=circle href=https://aron.petau.net/de/atom.xml title=Feed> <i class=icon></i> </a><li id=repo><a class=circle href=https://forgejo.petau.net/aron/awebsite title=Repository> <i class=icon></i> </a></ul></nav><div id=search-container><label class=visually-hidden for=search-bar>Suche</label><input placeholder="Suche nach…" autocomplete=off disabled id=search-bar type=search><div id=search-results-container><div id=search-results></div></div></div></header><main id=main-content><h2 id=Welcome><a aria-label="Anchor link for: Welcome" class=zola-anchor href=#Welcome><i class=icon></i></a> Welcome</h2><p>to the online presence of Aron Petau.<aside><p><img title="Aron Petau" alt=logo src=/images/logo.png></aside><p>I use he/him pronouns and am based in Berlin, Germany.<p>I am a tinkerer, designer, software developer, and work in digital education research.<p>This site is a collection of my thoughts and experiences.<p>I hope you find something interesting here.<p><blockquote class=note><p class=alert-title><i class=icon></i>Anmerkung<p>This Page is currently under active reconstruction. Broken links are to be expected.<p>As long as the move / redesign is not fully done, here the old site is still online: <a href=https://old.aron.petau.net>old.aron.petau.net</a></blockquote> Progress of the rebuild: <progress max=100 value=80></progress><blockquote class=important><p class=alert-title><i class=icon></i>Wichtig<p>Last updated: 2025-05-14</blockquote><div class="crt scanlines" aria-hidden=true><pre><code>➜ content git:(main) ✗ tree -L 2
.
├── _index.md
├── blog
│   ├── _index.md
│   ├── 2018-05-03-printing
│   ├── 2018-07-05-cad
│   ├── 2018-09-01-beacon
│   ├── 2019-03-19-plastic-recycling
│   ├── 2019-06-01-ballpark
│   ├── 2020-03-01-homebrew
│   ├── 2020-07-14-critical-epistemologies
│   ├── 2020-07-15-chatbot
│   ├── 2021-03-01-coding
│   ├── 2021-03-01-philosophy
│   ├── 2021-04-13-thesis
│   ├── 2021-08-01-iron-smelting
│   ├── 2021-12-05-political-violence
│   ├── 2022-01-22-critical-philosophy-subjectivity
│   ├── 2022-04-01-allei
│   ├── 2022-04-30-lusatia
│   ├── 2022-12-03-stable-dreamfusion
│   ├── 2022-12-04-lampshades
│   ├── 2023-01-03-auraglow
│   ├── 2023-03-01-ruminations
│   ├── 2023-06-16-ascendancy
│   ├── 2023-06-20-autoimmunitaet
│   ├── 2023-06-20-dreams-of-cars
│   ├── 2023-12-06-postmaster
│   ├── 2023-12-07-commoning-cars
│   ├── 2024-01-30-airaspi-build-log
│   ├── 2024-03-25-aethercomms
│   ├── 2024-04-11-local-diffusion
│   ├── 2024-04-25-echoing-dimensions
│   ├── 2024-06-20-sferics
│   ├── 2024-07-05-käsewerkstatt
│   └── 2025-04-15-master-thesis
└── pages
├── about.md
├── contact.md
├── cv.md
├── privacy.md
└── rent-ulli.md
</code></pre></div><span class=hidden id=copy-code-text>Code kopieren</span><span class=hidden id=search-index>https://aron.petau.net/de//search_index.en.json</span><span class=hidden id=more-matches-text>$MATCHES mehr Treffer</span></main><footer id=site-footer><div class=carbonbadge id=wcb></div><script defer src=https://unpkg.com/website-carbon-badges@1.1.3/b.min.js></script><nav><ul><li><a href=https://aron.petau.net/de/project/>Projekte</a><li><a href=https://aron.petau.net/de/pages/privacy/>Privacy</a><li><a class=external href=https://kaesewerkstatt.petau.net>Käsewerkstatt</a><li><a class=external href=https://www.newpractice.net/author/aron-petau>New Practice Network</a></ul></nav><p>© Aron Petau, 2025<ul id=socials><li><a rel=" me" href=https://github.com/arontaupe title=GitHub> <i style="--icon:url(&#34data:image/svg+xml,%3Csvg role='img' viewBox='0 0 24 24' xmlns='http://www.w3.org/2000/svg'%3E%3Ctitle%3EGitHub%3C/title%3E%3Cpath d='M12 .297c-6.63 0-12 5.373-12 12 0 5.303 3.438 9.8 8.205 11.385.6.113.82-.258.82-.577 0-.285-.01-1.04-.015-2.04-3.338.724-4.042-1.61-4.042-1.61C4.422 18.07 3.633 17.7 3.633 17.7c-1.087-.744.084-.729.084-.729 1.205.084 1.838 1.236 1.838 1.236 1.07 1.835 2.809 1.305 3.495.998.108-.776.417-1.305.76-1.605-2.665-.3-5.466-1.332-5.466-5.93 0-1.31.465-2.38 1.235-3.22-.135-.303-.54-1.523.105-3.176 0 0 1.005-.322 3.3 1.23.96-.267 1.98-.399 3-.405 1.02.006 2.04.138 3 .405 2.28-1.552 3.285-1.23 3.285-1.23.645 1.653.24 2.873.12 3.176.765.84 1.23 1.91 1.23 3.22 0 4.61-2.805 5.625-5.475 5.92.42.36.81 1.096.81 2.22 0 1.606-.015 2.896-.015 3.286 0 .315.21.69.825.57C20.565 22.092 24 17.592 24 12.297c0-6.627-5.373-12-12-12'/%3E%3C/svg%3E&#34)" class=icon></i> <span>GitHub</span> </a><li><a rel=" me" href=https://www.printables.com/@arontaupe title=Printables> <i class=icon style=--icon:url(data:image/svg+xml,%3Csvg%20role%3D%22img%22%20viewBox%3D%220%200%2024%2024%22%20xmlns%3D%22http%3A%2F%2Fwww.w3.org%2F2000%2Fsvg%22%3E%3Ctitle%3EPrintables%3C%2Ftitle%3E%3Cpath%20d%3D%22M3.678%204.8%2012%209.6v9.6l8.322-4.8V4.8L12%200ZM12%2019.2l-8.322-4.8V24Z%22%2F%3E%3C%2Fsvg%3E)></i> <span>Printables</span> </a><li><a rel=" me" href=https://www.etsy.com/de-en/shop/reprintedservices title=Etsy> <i class=icon style=--icon:url(data:image/svg+xml,%3Csvg%20role%3D%22img%22%20viewBox%3D%220%200%2024%2024%22%20xmlns%3D%22http%3A%2F%2Fwww.w3.org%2F2000%2Fsvg%22%3E%3Ctitle%3EEtsy%3C%2Ftitle%3E%3Cpath%20d%3D%22M8.559%202.445c0-.325.033-.52.59-.52h7.465c1.3%200%202.02%201.11%202.54%203.193l.42%201.666h1.27c.23-4.728.43-6.784.43-6.784s-3.196.36-5.09.36H6.635L1.521.196v1.37l1.725.326c1.21.24%201.5.496%201.6%201.606%200%200%20.11%203.27.11%208.64%200%205.385-.09%208.61-.09%208.61%200%20.973-.39%201.333-1.59%201.573l-1.722.33V24l5.13-.165h8.55c1.935%200%206.39.165%206.39.165.105-1.17.75-6.48.855-7.064h-1.2l-1.284%202.91c-1.005%202.28-2.476%202.445-4.11%202.445h-4.906c-1.63%200-2.415-.64-2.415-2.05V12.8s3.62%200%204.79.096c.912.064%201.463.325%201.76%201.598l.39%201.695h1.41l-.09-4.278.192-4.305h-1.391l-.45%201.89c-.283%201.244-.48%201.47-1.754%201.6-1.666.17-4.815.14-4.815.14V2.45h-.05z%22%2F%3E%3C%2Fsvg%3E)></i> <span>Etsy</span> </a><li><a rel=" me" href=https://mastodon.online/@reprintedAron title=Mastodon> <i style="--icon:url(&#34data:image/svg+xml,%3Csvg role='img' viewBox='0 0 24 24' xmlns='http://www.w3.org/2000/svg'%3E%3Ctitle%3EMastodon%3C/title%3E%3Cpath d='M23.268 5.313c-.35-2.578-2.617-4.61-5.304-5.004C17.51.242 15.792 0 11.813 0h-.03c-3.98 0-4.835.242-5.288.309C3.882.692 1.496 2.518.917 5.127.64 6.412.61 7.837.661 9.143c.074 1.874.088 3.745.26 5.611.118 1.24.325 2.47.62 3.68.55 2.237 2.777 4.098 4.96 4.857 2.336.792 4.849.923 7.256.38.265-.061.527-.132.786-.213.585-.184 1.27-.39 1.774-.753a.057.057 0 0 0 .023-.043v-1.809a.052.052 0 0 0-.02-.041.053.053 0 0 0-.046-.01 20.282 20.282 0 0 1-4.709.545c-2.73 0-3.463-1.284-3.674-1.818a5.593 5.593 0 0 1-.319-1.433.053.053 0 0 1 .066-.054c1.517.363 3.072.546 4.632.546.376 0 .75 0 1.125-.01 1.57-.044 3.224-.124 4.768-.422.038-.008.077-.015.11-.024 2.435-.464 4.753-1.92 4.989-5.604.008-.145.03-1.52.03-1.67.002-.512.167-3.63-.024-5.545zm-3.748 9.195h-2.561V8.29c0-1.309-.55-1.976-1.67-1.976-1.23 0-1.846.79-1.846 2.35v3.403h-2.546V8.663c0-1.56-.617-2.35-1.848-2.35-1.112 0-1.668.668-1.67 1.977v6.218H4.822V8.102c0-1.31.337-2.35 1.011-3.12.696-.77 1.608-1.164 2.74-1.164 1.311 0 2.302.5 2.962 1.498l.638 1.06.638-1.06c.66-.999 1.65-1.498 2.96-1.498 1.13 0 2.043.395 2.74 1.164.675.77 1.012 1.81 1.012 3.12z'/%3E%3C/svg%3E&#34)" class=icon></i> <span>Mastodon</span> </a></ul></footer>

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