Episode 3 for Safety Nets: Let Me Zine

Transcript

Episode 3: Interface, Relation, Connection, and Cloud Workout Done with dianaband

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Safety Nets: Let Me Zine project is funded by Talent Development grant from Stimuleringsfond, Creative Industries Fund NL. Thank you, Stimuleringsfonds and the Netherlands for making this possible.

Nami (Hereafter referred to as N): What is like reflecting the concept of interface by making relations, mediums, situations, rhythms ..? And what is like repurposing objects around us? Welcome to the podcast Safety Nets: Let Me Zine. The 3rd episode is with dianaband, inter-disciplinary artist duo currently based in Seoul, Korea. In this episode, I'd like to introduce the trajectory of dianaband and to learn what they question through their works.

[Intro music]

N: Hi, Wonjung and Dooho. How are you?

Wonjung (Hereafter referred to as W) & Dooho /duho/ (Hereafter referred to as D): Hello, Nami. Hi, everybody.

N: So, let's just be honest. We're a little nervous because we are all not english native speaker. We are just a little nervous cus we don't know how we'll articulate. But I think it's gonna be okay. Let's have fun. So now, I'm in a very interesting place. I see a lot of plants, and there's also a cute lightbulb. So it's your home in 연희동 (Yeonhee-dong). Not so far from Hongik University. We were about to meet at your new studio, because of the weather we thought it'd be nice to meet at a warm place, which is at your home. Thanks for having me.

W: Welcome.

N: I've heard you moved to a new studio. How was the moving?

W: Moving was crazy, wasn't it? Because we had to prepare for two performances and also several events. During that time we also had to pack things from our studio. You know, we treat many objects and things.

N: I know, you have a lot of objects.

W: Exactly, so we couldn't really find time to arrange the moving. Also, the new studio we also at the same time do an interior renovation. Also there were several difficulties in the ceiling and the floor also. We couldn't really manage it. So we really needed help from friends and they helped us a lot. We finally moved out and in.

N: Do you think it's all set there?

W: We need 5 years more.

N: Haha, that is a very nice timeline! Very realistic, right? So now, I'm in Korea and as a part of this project, I'm having you on the radio. So to begin with, I'd like to ask if you could introduce yourself. dianaband, who are you?

D: Hi everyone. We are dianaband, a media artist duo. We've been working together since 2010. We are two people, Wonjung and Dooho (me). I'm coming from an engineering background and I studied Electronic Engineering and Computer Science. Wonjung's background is Arts and Design. For us when we selected the word Media Arts as our field, Media Arts starts with a curiosity about media itself. For me I think the ultimate media is our own body that leads to a sensory organ. How we sense, how we recognise, how we think and understand objects and the world. All kinds of decision making systems… It's all about media. Then it connects to our interest extend including also not only for our own body but also what this happenings are coming from, like the objects, materials, phenomena in general in the world. Also, we are sensing other objects, but sometimes other objects are also stancing us conversely. So the world is full of these interconnected happenings. Then our interest grows into the world itself. And how we are connected.... This sense of connectedness is very important in our works. This sounds like quite complex, entailing many concepts, but it's easier to summarise all these into several keywords; Media, Body, Sensation, Phenomena, World, Response, Relationship, and Connection.

W: So, dianaband actually started back in 2010, which means it's been 15 years now. The two of us first met in Seoul through a reading group that focused on media philosophy. And interestingly, we both had some history with small amateur music bands, like school bands or music bands. I played the base guitar and he played the guitar.

N: What? Did you play the base guitar?

W: Yeah, dung-dung-dung-dung, I like it :) Those experiences were really meaningful to us. There's something special about the kind of relationships that form in a “band.” It's not like family, but we stick each other and exercise and play together for a long time… It can be overwhelming. It's also not cool and not like a business… This kind of work and collaboration is very interesting. And also we can have a session player and have other friends in a band as well. And keep my individuality. But we have to make some big sound or music. We like this format. As for us individually, Dooho has a strong interest and understanding technology, making things, and science. He likes diving deep into one subject and thinking about it thoroughly. I, on the other hand, love connecting unrelated things in strange ways, imagining unusual possibilities, and making odd combinations, it's me. So when we study or research something together, we end up all the time bouncing ideas back and forth in a way that's really fun for both of us. So we can have a longer time to talk and make things. It has been 15 years.

N: Sounds like two different individuals met and each of you has a different work manner but this makes also nice vibes and energy. I'd like to hear about it a little more, but maybe.. it can continue in our dinner time.. :) Ah, and also the title of your artist name, dianaband, what made you name yourself as dianaband?

D: When we were firstly thinking about what is a good name for our project at that time… Mainly I have liked making names. Many times when projects coming, also the team name, cus I like thinking something deeply, maybe it happens in that way. Suddenly I was writing something and I said “What about dianaband”? And then she said “That's good. Great!” Then it was over. So it was named like that. But then after a year, somebody asked to us this question. Who is Diana? Why did you name yourself like that? So at that time we firstly talked about who Diana was at that time.

N: I know a former… how do I say in English? I think she was…

D:A princess.

N: Princess, indeed. She passed away but left deep impression in the world and a lot of people still talk about her. But when you named yourself as dianaband, you didn't really think about her particularly, right?

W: I think that's normal, Nami. But Dooho thought of it differently.

D: So Wonjung's Diana was the princess Diana. The meaning of that was.. some… How do I say?

W: She was always exposed to the media privately and publicly as well. Like on Instagram right now. She's a symbol and an icon of the media, and we do media arts. At that time I studied her and totally believed in like “Diana is that Diana, of course!' I didn't think that he had a different perspective.

D: As for what I meant by Diana… She didn't want to know about it, haha…

Everyone: Hahaha

D: It's totally different. For me Diana is from a Japanese animation.

N: The Red-haired Anne?

D: Yes, Red-haired Anne (from Anne of Green Gables). And her best friend was Diana.

N: Oh, I didn't know that. I watched the animation a bit but didn't know that her best friend's name is Diana.

D: And then this friend was always roaming around and coming and going… And admiring Anne, because of how she's freed out of the system of the society like a school or family system. She was free minded. But Diana was kind of the one following the system.

N: More conforming to society….

D: So I reflected myself to Diana.

N: This is very interesting.

D: I learned engineering and went into the corporate system. I was following the languages of all the systems. But I was also admiring how I could become something else. So then I thought there could be many other people like me who could be symbolised as the vague name, Diana.

N: I like that he thought of Diana in a way how he associated himself with it and he simply suggested to you Wonjung. And then you thought of Diana princess and said 'Yes, let's do that'.

W: Haha, misunderstanding :)

N: Sometimes this kind of misunderstanding makes interesting vibes. So last year.. it was winter. You visited Rotterdam for a part of a project with Hackers and Designer, right? You were performing for Extratonality at Varia, which is a monthly based experimental sound performance event. I still remember your performance, cus it was very impressive. Let me try to describe what I saw… I think one of you, Dooho, was making some sounds with random different objects, and the other of you, Wonjung, was simply drawing something on a sheet of paper with a charcoal or pencil but the paper was connected to something. I think it was a kind of a sensor, maybe I'm not perfectly defining what it is. Maybe it was a kind of switch..? But anyways you were drawing some lines and it was making a channel of sound. You two were making channels of sound. I was having a deep trip, while listening. And also, to have you on my radio, I also studied your other works as well, and I've found that you often work with sound. I was wondering what makes you work particularly with sound? I'm curious in which sense the acting of making sounds resonates with what you explore as artists.

W: Thank you for an articulated question. We love sound. Sound network has a very interesting point. When we pay attention to how we, how our bodies sense sound and relate to it, it becomes incredibly interesting. For example, even right now, there are countless sounds in this room. A car is passing by us as well. There might even be a tiny insect crawling in the far corner of this room. These make a sound too softly so we can't hear but there always sound existing. We're constantly listening, constantly mapping the world through listening sound. Unlike our eyes, we can't simply “close” our ears. In that sense, the sound environment feels like something public, something shared. At the same time, each of us hears differently. According to the shape of your ears… Our ears have different shapes, and the sound we receive at any given moment is unique to our physical position in space. Your position and my position, we hear things differently. But when we try to recall or describe a sound we just heard, it's surprisingly difficult. Maybe it's because sound is nonverbal, and we don't really have a proper container or translation for it in language. So it was very interesting how we perceive the world by sound. We both studied a lot of materials on medium and technology. And sound is very fundamental. Thinking of sound, we could break down our concrete ideas about the world and we really turn to how we perceive the sound. Starting the curiosity in connections and networks, we have naturally found ourselves focusing on more sound networks. Sound-based work fills space and time, but at the same time it blends and interacts with other sounds instantly and effortlessly. Because of this quality, working with sound helps us understand the world as something without a clear center, more like a large, continuous mass of interwoven relationships. Because of this importance we really focus on sound networks.

N: I really love that you just told me, for instance, you love the way you perceive the world by sound. Some weeks ago, I was walking on the street and I forgot to bring my headphones because normally I really stick to the headphones. I don't know, maybe I think the sound on the street is mostly ugly or I want to avoid something in the context. So I always listen to some music I like. I really like walking the streets like that. I was a bit lazy to go back to get it. I was just walking. There were a lot of fallen leaves cus it was between Autumn and Winter. It was like a straight road for 10-ish minutes and I walked there, listening to the crispy sound from the fallen leaves. I felt like I was really walking. If you're walking straight with the headset, you don't really feel the sense of walking. In a way it makes me think of this little episode.

W: True, because of the sound technologies, we always listen to some sound through a headphone or a speaker from a laptop. But you know, sound is everywhere. It's a sphere of circumstance by us. So when I hear some sounding object, with this event I hear and response like 'what is it?', 'who is there?' Also they can listen to me. That happens spontaneously. Through this event, we make relations. By listening by listening, we acknowledge each other. This point is really important to discover the sound technology systems.

N: The next question is also connected to your main medium, sound and performance. Also about the performance that you did at Varia, I've realised it is called Drawing Synths, am I right? That work, but also the other works as well. You work with a lot of playful daily objects. I really can't describe what all of them were. Some of them looked like balls, and some were like.. corn-shaped things. I was wondering what makes you work with these objects and what kinds of messages do you draw with this choice?

D: Mainly these objects are what I've found beside of me. Like in the studio, for example, there are already many objects there. Maybe the corn-shape you mentioned are funnels, many different funnels. We have them in different colours. We have this funnel for some reason. In the past we were making funnel shapes.

N: Phone in Hand?

D: Also Phone in Hand but we also made lamps out of the fernell. We have many different kinds of funnels. Some objects are found on the street. When I walk on some street, I think like, wow it looks exciting. Oh, some broken glasses, it's a pity. It could have been a very beautiful glasses. Then I pick it. So I collect stuff everywhere. What I want to say is that… I don't really want to make something to make a good sound. Instead of that ..

N: Wow

D: Because I'm also not good at that, haha. I'm really not a maker of instruments. I want to get “discovered” by the objects and by the sound world. And into the sound world and into the object. So I take some random objects that I didn't ever expect that it'd sound so great. But then it happens to be with my vibration feedback. Then I see the objects differently again and this object becomes my colleagues. I bring them together to my performances and they become familiar with me. They become my friends. These kinds of objects are something that is not intended in a way. But it happens to be very interesting. But for other people who watched the performance, it looks like just a funnel ceramic blocks and a broken glass piece, but it happens to be used in a different way and makes an interesting sound and then they also find it interesting and look at it differently than how it's used in our daily lives. Maybe that's the reason?

N: It's very inspiring that you give an object a different meaning. It makes me think that maybe we're defining something. This needs to be used in this way, or so. There would be many various ways, if we broaden our angles. This also resonates with the concept of interface that I'm interested in learning more about. But we'll slowly get into it. So to talk to you, I also read an interview journal. I think it was the webzine ACC. That article was introducing some of your projects, Paper Piano, Ring, Ring, Rain, Forget the land, and Phone in hand, etc. And I've realised that all these projects are participatory and interactive. So people are not just listening to the pre-played sound but they are acting somehow and making sound on their own. What does this participatory or interactive format mean to you? What does it mean that you keep working with this format?

D: So when I was thinking about this subject, maybe.. because it happens to be many times in such a way I didn't deeply think of it, but then in this context I've thought maybe because of this. We value connectedness and how to be connected and how we are reaching to each other. It's about people to people but also about people to the machines or people to the objects. Or objects to objects also. All different kinds of actorPeople, technologies, ideas, and objects are all treated as “actants” with the power to influence outcomes and shape the network. in the world, how they relate to each other and communicate and make connections. For me also including myself but also for the participants and audiences, I feel the same way how they find the connections in these collages of networks. So in such a way I want people to feel that they are actually connected into and through this connectedness myriad. What I am touching and how I'm being a part of the network or a 'world'… Then it becomes giving them an interactive interface or when they act on something or when they try to be a part of the work, and this kind of active participation I always value more.

W: Also by being connected to each other and touching each other, we make some strong solidarity. Shared experiences make strong connections. Because in the digital era we are really connected to each other wirelessly, or with an object or with others… experiencing together and sharing some moment or surface, touching each other is very important to us. We do some object installations and performances. And even though in performances people do not do anything but just are listening. But listening is also a strong participatory method, I think. So we all the time think about the world, even in an art gallery, or so, which kind of world we share, which kind of space and which kind of sound network we share, even though not to humans but more to the world level. Sometimes we even think of the universe as well :)

N: According to what you've just said, I was also thinking how you'd deal with some situations. for instance, you made some interactive works at an expo site... But maybe it sometimes doesn't work out as you intend. There's always this kind of friction or conflict. Do you also see that as a part of the interactiveness?

W: It happened a lot to us, because.. not only when we make some media or objects to the one person or to the one audience, but also we make some medium where many audiences work together. For example, as you mentioned, the work Phone in Hand, the technology of the web or smart phones circumstances are just given to us. Everyone uses smartphones. At that time we wanted to make some platforms for this networked world to the individuals, not through the big platforms. It was like a performance where hundreds of people walked in Ansan city. Dooho made a web server and almost a hundred of audiences had to log in the web server and the webpage. And for example, even though we are all through the Internet and everyone has the machine, which is the phones that have speakers… At that time I sang Edelweiss, a song that everyone knows the notes when I sing. Every phone had sounds and the phones were singing along with me. There was a lot of sound around us.. We wanted to make some temporal community under the infrastructure ourselves. But you know we couldn't exercise it ahead in the studio! And that day of the performance, people gathered and we gave the webpages. And then we only knew if it worked or not. But it was interesting to see what would happen.

N: Yeah, I see. Indeed the uncertainty is part of the interaction. Thanks and we can slowly move to the part of the 오운완 (C.W.D.Cloud Workout Done). Another interesting part. So… you really showed up as a surprise when I had a talk at Birdcall some weeks ago. For me it was a moment to introduce HTML Zine Club and my current project Safety Nets: Let Me Zine. You didn't tell me that you were coming and I was really glad. After the talk you, we had a bit of conversations and you told me like 'Nami, we want to invite you to our gathering, 오운완 (C.W.D), which is gonna happen tomorrow. ' And 오운완 (C.W.D) is basically some kind of gathering that you're organising. Maybe every month?

D: Oh no.. 오운완 (C.W.D) is actually more like a set of gatherings that happened before. Only it happened four or five times. The lastest 오운완 (C.W.D) was about building your own service and your own serverA server is a hardware device or software that processes requests sent over a network and replies to them. A client is the device that submits a request and waits for a response from the server. The computer system that accepts requests for online files and transmits those files to the client is referred to as a server in the context of the Internet. at your home. That gathering is continuing until now. Every week casually you can come or you don't also really need to come. It's a casual meet-up every Sunday.

W: Yeah, through Jitsi…

D: From June this year, we have now meeting each other for 6 months.

W: Not face to face, but online. When we invited you, it was really a face to face meet up.

D: It was special that day. We were meeting each other face to face.

N: Ah, I missed something… Anyways It'd be nice to introduce what 오운완 (C.W.D) is to our listeners because we need to contextualise. As far as I know, 오운완 (C.W.D) comes from some meme-ish phrase, 오운완 (C.W.D) simply means 오늘 운동 완료 (Today's Workout Done), right? It means Today's Workout is Done. This 오 is from 'today' in Korean, which is 오늘 and it's taken from its first syllable 오. 운 is from 운동, which means workout in Korean.Of course the first syllable is taken. And 완 is from 완성 (finish) or 완...

D & W: 완료 (finish)

N: Yea, the first syllable came. Thus 오운완 is today's workout is done. But you interpreted it in a different way, especially the second syllable '운'. Which is into clouds. Not as the exercise or workout, because 운 could also means clouds. It's rooted from a Chinese character, right?

D & W:True.

N: Could you please simply introduce in your terms what 오운완 is?

D: Umm I think it happened from how we are going to survive.

W & N: Haha

D: Yeah.. about how we are going to survive in upcoming years? It happened on a snowy day. It was almost the end of the year or start of the year.

W: Three years ago.

D:We were having coffee at a cafe and depressed because of the Ukraine War. Also, climate crisis that is seriously worsening. Also our economic status and many other things…

W: Covid…

D: Yeah, Covid, virus, all these gloomy cloudy situations that we were having. But for us, every this the problem, including the digital GAFAM (Google , Apple, Facebook (Meta), Amazon, and Microsoft) and corporations, huge big tech problems, etc. So at that time we were questioning how to deal with these. We concluded in a way this is not a deal of one single person. All these problems are so big. Also very deep and very long… long-time problems. So it's not that in only one day you can change these. Maybe you want to stop using Google, stop using Amazon in one single day… Wow, you can try.

W & N: Haha

D: Well, I did it. I stopped using Facebook one day and then I kinda regretted it because I lost my friends… Maybe you can instead do stuff slowly per day step-by-step, with not only by yourself so dramatically but with people together. What you value in your communities… Then we thought about this Everyday Workout Done. Everyday a workout for your cloud, environmental, socio-technological, political and climate crisis… Whatever we try, it won't happen in a single day. Then we need to make it rather as an workshop for everyday. Not only by yourself but with other people. I've already seen this mindset shared between my friends. And then we've thought like 'Okay, this could be a good reason that we gather under this name.' So we named it 오운완 (C.W.D)

N: Aha I thought you specifically named it because the 2nd character '운' (Clouds) is often stated in the digital infrastructure context, as the clouds often mean like network, servers, etc. But when you named this gatherings, didn't you really think about this way?

D: Ah no, I totally understand your feeling. But at the time, like fediverseThe Fediverse (commonly shortened to fedi) is a collection of social networking services that can communicate with each other (formally known as federation) using a common protocol. Users of different websites can send and receive status updates, multimedia files and other data across the network. The term Fediverse is a portmanteau of federation and universe. The majority of Fediverse platforms are based on free and open-source software, and create connections between servers using the ActivityPub protocol., how we alternatively connect each other, like your self-hostingSelf-hosting is the practice of running and maintaining a website or service, as well as own servers for e-mail, IM, NTP and so on, using a private server, instead of using a service outside of the administrator's own control. Self-hosting allows users to have more control over their data, privacy, and computing infrastructure, as well as potentially saving costs and improving skills. web server, web building like your html zine-making, all of these kinds of things… I wanted to share these experiences with people. But what I mean is that it was also related to the situations. When we were having bigger situations for us it felt like it was not disconnected. They are all connected in a way. How we communicate is also connected to the situation of how we use the Internet, how we use a server, how we use information… As an artist it's also important.

N: I see, I think I was approaching it in a bit of a narrow minded way. You know my working practice, making alternative websites… That's why I also meet a lot of people doing the self-hosting server or making fun hand-made websites, caring about the digital infrastructure discourses… But you were approaching it from a bigger scope. Of course all things are part of it but yeah.

D: Umm, that's because for me it's a way of living; how we live your life. In that sense why I value the alternatives like fediverse or open source is related to what you value in your life and how you want to live, in which shape. Then they connect to each other in this context.

N: Wow, everything is inspiring. Okay, thanks for introducing 오운완 (C.W.D). So I know that there have been different topics per gathering of 오운완 (C.W.D). For instance, the first gathering was about the small Internet, and the second one was feminist server… I don't remember the third one.

W: Wifi zines..?

N: Aha yeah, Throwie Wifi Zines! And the fourth one was discussing many different web services that people are subscribing to, or the system. I mean I wish you could introduce all of these, but because of the time scope, which is a bit limited, I would like to ask you if you could choose one 오운완 (C.W.D) gathering and introduce it to the listeners?

D: Maybe then I'd choose the last gathering. The name of the gathering is Service and Me: Canceling Subscriptions and Withdrawing Memberships. It's about… many people are wondering, for example, they use expensive services… For example, music artists subscribe, for example, Max/MSP. Or designers subscribe for many Adobe products. And then we want to find a way to cancel these subscriptions. What is the alternative? But there's nothing known to our community. Many of them are also changing their shapes into web services. For example, Autodesk is changing their 3D designing service to a subscription based product. We wanted to try another workout for our community about how we can build our own service. So this gathering just happened for a relatively long time. We've met about 8 times.

W: With 8 people…

D: With 8 people, yes. Everyone is supposed to build their own server with their old computers that are not being used anymore, or if you don't have any you can use my old Odroid SBC (Single Board Computer)Single board computers (SBCs), such as the Raspberry Pi, are small computers that contain on one board their processor, RAM, and either onboard storage (in the form of eMMC flash memory), or a storage connector like a microSD or M.2 slot that allows flash storage to be directly mounted., like a Single Board Computer. Which is very cheap and I happen to have it a lot because of some sad past. And then I could share these with people at a relatively cheap price. It was kind of discontinued. So it's very interesting, rare… And then people build their own small or big servers with leftover computers. Yeah, because it was a really really hard time for everybody because we had to learn what LinuxJust like Windows, iOS, and Mac OS, Linux is an operating system. In fact, one of the most popular platforms on the planet, Android, is powered by the Linux operating system. An operating system is software that manages all of the hardware resources associated with your desktop or laptop. To put it simply, the operating system manages the communication between your software and your hardware. Without the operating system (OS), the software wouldn't function. is and what is terminal, what is the command-line interface… What is a network and what is a computer? It was like reinventing the wheels. It was a lot of information. But what I really wanted to emphasise is that what we are aiming for in these short 8 sessions of the workshops is not really understanding every detail. It's not about learning something. It's more about “having” something. We want to share something. We want to have a working server. That's it. We don't want to understand it.

Everyone: Hahaha

D: You don't need to understand. It's really really hard to understand every detail. It's so complex, because of that, all kinds of different tools and helping instructions are on the Internet. You just try, if it works, just use it. If it doesn't work, maybe try something else. What really matters is about changing your way of living. How you wanna be changed when you have a certain service that is barely running, somehow even though it's half broken, it's somehow useful in a certain way. And if it helps you rethink about how you can consider possibilities of cancelling a single subscription.

N: Ah, so it's not about perfectly learning and knowing how the server is made up and managed but rather you try to change…

D: Change your way of living. The possibility… We want to see the possibility. Okay, for instance the fediverse… interesting.. All these kinds of concepts are interesting. I try and try and people ask me “what is it good for? I'm not really familiar with this.” The familiarity really matters. So if you want to really use the fediverse with your friends in South Korea, you need to bring many people otherwise you're super lonely. Nobody is using it. So I wanted to make up my own community there who wanted to experiment with me. That was the concept. I don't want to make people suffer by learning such complex things. Everyone was excited to learn about the deep scenery in what is happening in the servers. But the main concept I wanted to emphasize was that when we have the service then how our way of thinking and feeling the Internet or the network could be changed because of their own services that they're hosting. At that time everyone was successfully running a single Etherpad instance on their server. And they were able to learn a small file server called FileBrowser, their own NGINXnginx ("engine x") is an HTTP web server, reverse proxy, content cache, load balancer, TCP/UDP proxy server, and mail proxy server. web server that they can show small webpages. Finally I just insisted like 'Let's try this!' and added Hugo, the static site generator with blogging support. We did a lot compared to what we had spent before. So It was really hard but after that, we are gathering…

W: It was 2024. Every two weeks we gathered face to face and it's kind of a workshop. After 2024, it became 2025 and then with people in our community, we were thinking about how we can continue this exercise. Also several people couldn't turn on and off the server.

D: It's about changing the way you live. Of course it will take a lot of time to feel comfortable with it. I felf ok about this gathering even though it was so intense and hard but we achieved a lot, however, many people felt like that they were not really ...

N: Understanding?

D: Yeah, understanding but to feel safe when it comes to running their own servers. I thought the first gathering would be very intense. They felt very fragile. The servers will maybe be broken.

N: I know this feeling. Especially when you make your own server, you need to get used to the terminal, which is what you normally don't know.

W: It's scary.

N: Yes, when you work with this text-based interface for the first time.. somehow there's a bit of sense of fear.

W: Yes.

D: Yeah, and then slowly and slowly maybe people have started to use other people's services. For example, there were a couple and there were two servers. They both were participants. But one server was silenced.

Everyone: Haha…

D: It's not running anymore. And then the other server is more prevalent, like very active…

W: Active.

D: Then this person is using this server. Also together… They have become the user and manager relationship. One person is trying and the other person is using and giving feedback. It was good to experiment to manage your own server. Where we should be heading to is we share a service in our network. Not everybody is running their own server, but we share one of our servers. Thus we try to meet each other regularly to find our next move.

N: I was always aspiring to get familiar with the self-hosting server. But I also had a bit of fear, because I had a feeling like I need to perfectly know this, otherwise I can't do. But because it's a gathering, you do it with other people so you don't need to actually know things perfectly cus the other people can share what she/he/they know. There's also nice efficiency coming from this 'doing things together'. I really love it. It's really a pity that I missed the last meet up.

W: Next time! I really agree with what you're saying now. I tell the people in the gathering that I'm an expert user of Dooho's server. Because when I have to tell him that the server is down like “Now the server is down,” that makes him distressed. So I'm an expert user.

N: Haha

W: I really try to catch how he feels or is situated. And then, I tell him (*gently*) like “The server is down… “ I feel like I'm an expert at it.

N: That's a special position.

W: Also as for interface, it's very important to have users for the manager. So this kind of relationship and exercise are the most important. Also, having an user is a good motivation not to shut down the server. That's important, I think.

N: Okay, when is your next meet up?

D: Umm, it's a bit confusing to call this meet up 오운완 (C.W.D). Because 오운완(C.W.D) is more like a bigger umbrella concept, and this gathering is called Service and Me meet up, and also using the name of Ururu for our studio space, so it could be called Ururu gathering, which will happen this upcoming Sunday. And we have tried to use other European servers to get our gathering, which was great.

W: Blue Button…

D: Big Blue Button server of Constant. We have used it.

N: Ah, the BBB.

D: Yes.

W: The most important thing is our experience, not per say having the server which is working. So we have suggested making some recordings of our experiences by making zines.

N: Documenting…

D: In January, we'd try out some collaborative editing.

D: Something like Octomode to get a.. because Martino (from Constant) gave us a book of 2024 from Constant. It's quite a thick book and he said the book is made out of weeks of collaborative editing.

W: Writings as well.

D: We want to do a similar thing to summarise our six months of talks. Everybody has their own interests to develop in their own projects so we'd maybe have a gathering

W: We don't have a concrete plan to organise a face to face meet up yet, but it would be really great to invite you to this gathering and talk about HTML Zines or some experimental publications like we're going to do. It would be great to meet all together.

N: Yes, please. So… you know what, our recording has been running for quite a while, maybe we can slowly wrap it up, otherwise it'd be very very long. The last question is that.. What are your upcoming plans? Any interesting, fun one?

W: First of all, we need to arrange stuff in our new studio.

N: Hahaha

W: But we have warm water now. We have installed a warm boiler. That's great. And from December until the beginning of the next year, we're going to have a bit of a break, and we have a bit of time to take a rest and read some books. Next year, we're planning to do a residency program, which is run by Seoul Museum of Arts. So before that, we'll try to make our own circles and communities in Arts or whatever other fields in Hacking or Design, we want to know who they are around us. So we are excited to meet other artists from next year. As we learn from experience, the most important thing is that we collaborate and make collectives. It is important for our research, so we're excited to be in the residency and meet other artists or other people.

N: But before, please make sure you take a nice break. I also personally wish that I could hang out with you haha.

W: Yes!

N: Yay! Wow… thanks for all of the insights. It was really nice cus I truly enjoyed talking with you. This time, I was not really conscious of the recording moment or that it's going to be published, etc. I was really having a great conversation. Thanks for joining me.

W: Thanks for inviting us.

N: Oh yeah, of course. It was my pleasure. So yeah then… let's wrap it up. It's always awkward to finish… I don't know how to… Then shall we maybe say 'bye' in three different languages?

D & W: Yeah

N: I think I could say in Korean “안녕”

D: Au revoir.

W: Ciao!

[Outro music]

Safety Nets: Let Me Zine project is funded by Talent Development grant from Stimuleringsfond, Creative Industries Fund NL. Thank you, Stimuleringsfonds and the Netherlands for making this possible.