A narrative exploration of USB Club

Aaron Lewis

Created 10 months ago • Updated 8 months ago

Beaver 2022, USB Club, 1909 © Sat, Nov 5 e Autumn Worknight 2022

context: Back at home after an eventful NY trip. It's happening — everything, that is. Wanted to take a Before Picture of my USB Club narrative before things pop off and i forget what now feels like.

We want to carry what matters.

The networked computer was supposed to be the pinnacle of hardware evolution. The be-all-end-all climax that would simulate all other devices and put them behind glass. An all-encompassing singularity.

After a decade or so of swiping across smooth rectangular surfaces, what i want is something more tactile and textured. i want a little friction. A speed limit for my information highway. i want to carve out a slower time zone for my digital sharing. With increased distribution costs comes increased intentionality. (Back when it cost a lot of money to send a message, you had to think long & hard about what you wanted to say). Show me you care by bringing it on your USB. Your physical body traveling across space becomes part of the message. More meaningful than a few taps of your thumb.

USB Club is proof of shared presence. The files i carry with me are like my keychain collection-a running log of where i've been and who i've crossed paths with. It turns my most treasured digital objects into a tangible talisman or portable portal to my artistic worlds.

It's funny ... every time i plug my USB into my computer, i get all of these pop ups from Google Drive and Dropbox asking me if i want to upload all of its files to their servers. The cloud monopolies don't want this content to be hardware-gated. They don't want it to be site-specific. They want to suck the locality out of it and put it everywhere. i always click NOT NOW.

USB Club swims against the current of bland digital efficiency, towards a flavored analog energy. My relationship to my USB changed when i decided the other week to add two of my essays to it, in plaintext files. These two essays are the theory i'm practicing — works i published 3 years ago that foreshadow how i'm moving today. They've been living on my personal website. Now i can tangibilize them and carry them with me. When people see my USB, they ask what it's all about. And i can share about my writing and my digital selves-these realms that are normally completely invisible in the spaces i move through. In this way, the USB allows my virtual and physical identities to merge. i'm not a DJ, so i'm wondering — what is the writer or the photographer equivalent of pulling up to a room full of people and sharing your works? What if i could plug in my USB and my writing gets turned into an audio file with a sound track in the background? What if i could unlock my Concept Trust with my USB instead of my wallet?

A USB can become a travel locket and a chain of memory. Imagine if every Campus Complex steward had a USB in their space. As Fellows tour the campus, they pick up a new file from each space to add it to their USB. Proof of shared presence. During orientation, the Batch 03 Fellows receive the Batch 02 Season Pack. Then they go about collecting files as they tour the campus. The memory network slowly compounds over time, growing ever outward like rings on a tree.

Postal (and the entire USB delivery experience) is a Gate through which you enter the world. From the signing to the OST to the files you choose to seed the USB with. A welcome pack that sets the tone of the entire USB Club experience. i wonder how many USBs you have to distribute before you hit critical mass. My goal is to give out all 10 of mine and then assemble the first proper gathering. Each Club will be molded by the environment where it spawns. Like how water takes the shape of its container. USBClub @ NY will have a different texture than USB @ DC even if they share infrastructure.

But despite our differences, we all want to carry what matters.

The Stuff of (A Well-Lived) Life

13 Observations on Ritual

After Authenticity