This dissertation speculates on culture, social spheres, and programming to gain insight into how computer platforms can be (re)thought and (re)designed around the consciousness and struggles of Latin American communities. This dissertation uses an interdisciplinary methodology emphasizing approaches to live-coding performance, platform design and software development, participatory action research, and interpretive and semiotic analysis. The research in this dissertation starts with the argument that computer languages are influenced by social spheres (e.g., science and arts), economic models (e.g., knowledge economy), communication systems (e.g., natural language), and infrastructures (e.g., software collaboration protocols and institutions). Next, it is discussed how I deployed this argument by ideating and coding a computer language based on specific social spheres (i.e., live coding practice and popular music), communication systems (i.e., Spanish), and infrastructures (i.e., cultural centers and online spaces) of Hispanoamerica. Finally, this computer-music language is compared and contrasted against collective reflections and uses by this dissertation’s author and members of the general public through a series of conversation circles and live coding performances. This research results in developing Seis8s, a computer-music language inflected by Spanish constructs borrowed from Latin dance music. Seis8s blends Latin American music sensibilities and live coding techno-politics to promote critical reflection. Seis8s emphasizes resistance to asymmetric types of computer-music abstraction by bringing Afro-Latin instruments and rhythms to the center of the technology and the performance. Results of this research also include ten public presentations using Seis8s involving individual and collective live coding performances and conference presentations. These public presentations showcased Seis8s and promoted reflection toward universal understandings of bodies, culture, politics, and economies of these technological and artistic milieus. This research also gives insight into mestizaje and latinidad as concepts still present in the belief systems and ways of knowing Spanish speakers in Latin America and, consequently, in the software they develop. Mestizaje and latinidad are challenged collectively by positioning the white-mestizo ideology as a shared problem that could be resisted through reflection on the irreducibility of the Latin American identity and its potential to coexist with other identities. / Dissertation / Doctor of Philosophy (PhD)

Ce mémoire a reçu la mention « exceptionnel » de la part du jury. / Ce mémoire a pour objet d’étude la maison d’édition Abrüpt, dont la variété et l’hybridité des productions interrogent les frontières de la textualité. On retrouve chez Abrüpt un ensemble hétérogène d’objets numériques et imprimés qui ne se limitent guère au codex classique : espaces web dynamiques, feuillets pliables et imprimables à la demande, installations spatiales en réalité virtuelle, robots littéraires – pour ne nommer que ceux-ci. Si de nombreux choix éditoriaux témoignent d’une continuité marquée avec la tradition imprimée, la particularité d’Abrüpt consiste à investir les potentialités créatives des technologies numériques, notamment par l’écriture du code informatique. La singularité de ce projet de maîtrise repose en partie sur l’étude de l’envers technique, laquelle donne à voir le processus de création et le fonctionnement des productions littéraires que l’on peut étudier en accès libre via des archives (« dépôts ») facilement appropriables (« clonables ») sous des conditions permissives (grâce à des « licences libres »). Nous procédons d’abord à une analyse thématique d’un ensemble de manifestes choisis parmi le catalogue de la maison d’édition, ce qui permet d’en révéler les orientations économiques, politiques et idéologiques. Nous interrogeons ensuite l’« implémentation » de telles visions du monde dans deux études de cas, « Naufrages » et « enfer.txt ». Les études critiques du code examinant les régimes « extra-fonctionnels » du code informatique situé dans son contexte sociohistorique, c’est notamment par elle que nous entendons faire émerger un surcroît de sens au texte « numériquement conditionné » et à en actualiser le discours latent. Nous intégrons à notre démarche une approche conceptuelle, en particulier au détour d’un approfondissement de la notion de « programme », et recourons à des heuristiques issues des pratiques computationnelles et de l’interprétation modélisante. / The subject of this dissertation is Abrüpt, a collective publisher whose diverse and hybrid productions question the boundaries of textuality. Its wide range of digital and printed objects are far from limited to the classic codex: dynamic web spaces, leaflets that can be folded and printed on demand, virtual reality installations, literary bots—to name but a few. While many of its editorial decisions remain in line with the printed tradition, the publisher’s particularity lies in its creative use of digital technologies, in particular through the writing of computer code. This master’s project examines the technical slope of Abrüpt’s works, attempting to reveal both the creative process and functioning of these literary productions which can be studied in open access via archives (“repositories”) that can be easily appropriated (“cloned”) under permissive conditions (thanks to “free licenses”). We begin with a thematic analysis of a set of manifestos selected from Abrüpt’s catalog, unveiling the economic, political and ideological orientations of the publisher. We then evaluate the “implementation” of such worldviews in two case studies, “Naufrages” and “enfer.txt”. The method of critical code studies examines the “extrafunctional” significance of computer source code situated in its sociohistorical context. It is through this method in particular that we intend to bring to the surface the additional meanings of these “digitally conditioned” texts, showing some possible actualizations of their latent discourse. We integrate a conceptual approach to our work, in particular through an in-depth examination of the notion of “program”, and draw on heuristics from computational practices and modeling interpretation.