Below are the offical proceedings of the 080808 conference, which is the justifications from each bit, ordered by time.


bit #1

Greg Niemeyer
08/02/08
In the beginning there was nothingness.

bit #27

Monica Lam
08/02/08
I like pink.

bit #33

Joseph McKay
08/02/08
I choose 1 because 0 is not to be trusted. Add any number to itself and you get another number - any number but the unnatural 0. "But" you say, "But it's just a place holder between 1 and -1, it ain't hurtin' nobody". Fool, take a look at your phone - is 0 before the 1? No, they've got it sequestered off in a little jail cell between the # and the * where it can do no harm. To dance with 0 is to dance with the devil.

bit #17

Gokce Kinayoglu
08/04/08
"In computing, the most significant bit (msb) is the bit position in a binary number having the greatest value. The msb is sometimes referred to as the left-most bit, due to the convention in positional notation of writing more significant digits further to the left." (Wikipedia)

Given this, it is important that the MSB is only as significant as the sum of the other bits + 1 divided by 2^n, which is always 1/2. The LSB, however loses quantitative significance as the number of bits increase, ultimately safelanding on a 0.+ limit.

bit #73

Andy Carle
08/05/08
I, for one, will take a stand for dark red. Said color has been my favorite since /long/ before it had any acknowledged political affiliations. (Not that I approve of the right absconding with my color...) Besides, in my part of the design world we're quite fond of horrible clashing.

That said, choosing a 1 was imperative. Though, 0 is not the devil -- that distinction is reserved for the positive even numbers. 0 is merely the Switzerland of the integers, and this conference seems like a time to jump right into the fray.

bit #84

Ken Goldberg
08/05/08
The significant digits of a number are those digits that carry meaning contributing to its accuracy. Generally this includes all digits except:

* leading and trailing zeros where they serve merely as placeholders to indicate the scale of the number
* spurious digits introduced, for example, by calculations carried out to greater accuracy than that of the original data, or measurements reported to a greater precision than the equipment supports.

The concept of significant figures is often used in connection with rounding. Rounding to n significant figures is a more general-purpose technique than rounding to n decimal places, since it handles numbers of different scales in a uniform way. Computer representations of floating point numbers typically use a form of rounding to significant figures, but with binary numbers.

(from Wikipedia)

bit #57

Richard Rinehart
08/05/08
Justification not set.

bit #2

Patricia Iannuzzi
08/05/08
My personal energy is an electric blue -- one could even say neon - but then I live in Vegas! Also - 0 is not the number for playing with the devil -- it's a wonderful roulette number -- sitting between 2 and 28 on the wheel -- and providing the option to "play green" for 0 and 00 -- I always bet the 0's and always win on them. 1 on the other hand is a number that seldom turns up and is infrequently played.

bit #9

hawkeye parker
08/05/08
I like things blue. I like the ocean, and being under the ocean. My car is blue, and her name is Deep Blue. If I owned my own home, I would paint the walls inside blue, maybe. So, turn of green, see....

bit #35

Rare Bit Ultra Gig
08/06/08
Actually, I set my bit to 1 by accident, but was able to swap bits with a stranger. I wanted to be a 0 because zero is so magical, it is nothing and everything. But then I was a 1 and it felt right... I ... 1 ... I ... 1 and I thought about oneness and wholeness and singularity and solitude and it felt good too. Then my bit was flipped and I'm a 0 again. That's 0-1-0, does that make me now a 2? Or an F? Or a K? O, how simple life was when I was just a 0...

bit #65

Matthew Jennings
08/06/08
Bit 65 is associated with the second of the three stripes on the shirt. Like my birth order, it does not represent the adventurous first nor the trailing last. Instead, the cautious but persistent second stripe situates itself the orderly center, never alone, with the ability to derive its chromatic uniqueness and beauty from its bordering neighbors.

I set my bit to 1, not because I feel any animosity towards 0, but because 1 represents forward motion in a particular direction from 0. I In fact, 0 is anything but nothing or the absence of something. The fact that we identify it, measure it, and name it, makes it so. Still, I simply identify more with 1.

bit #95

Kimiko Ryokai
08/07/08
A bit of randomness and nothingness at 2am...

bit #89

Dorottya Hegedus
08/07/08
Justification not set.

bit #5

Kat Marlowe
08/07/08
0 because it represents the pause; the moment of reflection before the leap. It's rests between notes, the blankness of a fresh canvas and the blackness of the theatre just before the curtain raises. It is excitement within the stillness and promise of OFF before the movement and chaos of ON begins.

bit #10

balz mueller
08/07/08
The Color ?
Put on . . . (*)
Just a click -> 10
Just a click -> 1
Take away the 0 = 1 T-shirt . . . !

(*) 1 Color, 2 Color, 3 Color

bit #64

Sally McKay
08/07/08
Abstract: this justification takes up the excellent work already being done by bit #s 10, 17, 33, 57, 65, 73, 84 and 96, all whom have excelled in the fields of being, rejecting nought in favour of instantiation and manifest agency. Thus far, bit 64 has hue-based affinities with bits #s 33, 57 and 84, and tone-based affinities with bit #96. Our research is still largely speculative. Granted, being far to the right, we expect to exert only minimal influence in our field, but there is much work to be done in the grey areas, whether or not it is widely recognized.

bit #69

antero garcia
08/07/08
I am hopelessly colorblind. I fear color change as it often means I won't be able to experience or acknowledge it. I was once laughed at, in third grade, for my picture of a green bear.

My zero represents a denial of change. I look forward to maintaining the status quo as it is currently made manifest. I urge all conference attendees to select vibrant and hugely different colors. I will not be a silent victim in this conference of anxiety!

With my zero I smite the green bear once and for all.

bit #70

suburbankid
08/08/08
-> Color (&) 2
of men's quest (or) request
to blind + to secure
= Dual process

-> bit by bit (&) 70
7 is lucky (or) is to be save
0 pursue + avoiding
= 0 out come ! !

-> 0 Value (&) justifying
to be crazy to (or) to be lazy
Maximize + minimizes
= speed (of) unknown

-> Not to do it (&) 7 Values
just hope to (or) to expect to
process order + stop specify
= to see size of L . . . ? ? (*)

-------

(*) Luck or Love

Color of men's blind quest to dual process bit by bit, 7 is lucky 0 pursue 0 out come!
0 value to be crazy to maximize speed to not do it, just hope to process order to see size of Luck?

2 requests to secure dual process. 70 is to be save avoiding 0 out come!
Justifying to be lazy minimizes unknown 7 values to expect to stop specify to see size of Love?

bit #18

Dan Perkel
08/08/08
This will undoubtedly amuse the two creators of this project, perhaps others as well, as it is so typically me (and Greg and Nick will recognize this I think).

My setting of this bit was a mistake. Actually it came after two mistakes.

Before signing in I was having so much fun playing with the colors. But as soon as I clicked on one after signing in, I suddenly realized that I may have just gotten locked into it.

So, i changed it from 1 to 0 and back again and made my second mistake. I think I realized that I liked 0 better 1. But just then, I had this sudden idea that maybe I could start over by just not "saving" my decision.

If there was a way to make that starting over possible, I didn't figure it out. So here we go: bit 18 set to 1.

But, it may all be worthwhile. We can predict, but our often wrong, about the consequences of our intentional actions. The same is true of our mistakes. These may have been two great mistakes. Looking forward to seeing the consequences.

bit #74

Madelyn Covey
08/08/08
Red is my favorite color, and I like adding more red to the world! ^___^

bit #49

Ryan Shaw
08/08/08
I didn't choose to set bit 49 to zero--at least not intentionally. As so often happens with technology, glitches made my choice for me. Now I must justify a decision encoded within a PHP function I've never seen. I plead ignorance!

bit #25

Maurice Vertical
08/08/08
I was thinking of choosing a O cause of it looks like a Yonic symbol - a divine passage, the great magic circle and all that sexy mystic shit. I guess my thinksing was that my bit should reflect the great cosmic cycle of desire and suffering in some symbolic way, and plus add as a good luck charm so that I can get laid. Check it out;

But then I noticed that Gregorius the Gregt had chosen a font where the zero has a slash line through its empty space. Now, if you know the G-man the way I know the G-man, you'd know that he is like some kind of fontmonster, so I figure that he doesn't take this kind of thing lightly.
Let me tell you - I don't want no stinking 0 with a slash through it. I think that this is the #1 reason why the unstoppable electronic retrograde karma engine has wrest control from JAHmmies & garden people of the pot-leaf galaxy. Our basic problem is that we are visuoconceptualizing our zeros as containing ones. Talk about patriachy! The zeros should belong to GAIA and the interdimensional glittereyed bootyshaking love monsters alone. There is supposed to be ONE hole in a ZERO and ZERO holes in a ONE.
There is ZERO such thing as the dialectic, and the trialectic is completely off the table. The next thing you know you'll be morphing the slashedthruzero some kind of a fucked up figure 8, and while that might please Georg Cantor, and while I want to see smoke pouring out of all the calculators, all the pencilpoints cracked over the quizzes, I don't want to smash the unity. In the beginning there was only nothing, whole and perfect, then an editing error introduced an asymmetry that set the whole universe banging. Now, I think this universe is nice and all - there are certain advantages to having ones and zeros in different places - it's a curvalicious spacetime cuntinuum with wicked parties - but it's not all that nice that I want to crack more nothings to make more universes. There's too much damn suffering in this multiverse already. I guess we are slowly turning everything into information, weight for weight, chance for chance, dark energy for gravity, one for zero. But I don't want no part of a universe where the door to the divine passage is locked, obstructed, surveilled or otherwise reduced in breadth or accessibility.
So, by default I choose one; the deepest hole in the world falls through the tallest one, a rock.
And YOU SHOULD TOO!!!
Plus a word to prevaricators, flip-floppers, and busy bitties; this is what happens to yoo;

bit #83

Dexter Dong
08/08/08
Yellow is the color of summer squash, blonde hair and banana milkshakes... it is the essence of smiles

bit #81

Omar Khan
08/08/08
i purposefully came in late in the game. let everyone else set the theme of the shirt, and then guarantee a few things. so, by setting this bit to 0, i think the shirt looks very retro -- this forces and orangey/brown in the third color, which i prefer.

at the same time, i'm very fearful of this choice. i haven't looked at this color choice on anything but my thinkpad, and i know that orangey colors look quite different on thinkpads vs apples vs printouts. so i'm really looking forward to seeing how this actually appears on the shirt. what kind of fidelity do we get, going screen to shirt? will i get my money back ;)

bit #41

Laura Britt Greig
08/08/08
If this bit were set to 0, gray would no longer be possible.

bit #23

Jesse J. Clark
08/08/08
1 is the maximum value

bit #60

Steven Lybeck
08/08/08
Brightening things up, just a small touch.

Middle bits are all about subtlety - we're painting with fine brushes here, working the broad swaths into a beautiful harmony.

Or perhaps I just closed my eyes and clicked.

bit #96

Nick Reid
08/08/08
I choose 1 because I'm the bit hiding in the corner.

This is not just because of how the page is laid out, but because being the 8th bit in my hue, I represent 0 or 1.

The biggest problem for me is that I cant tell the difference between being a 1 or a 0 . . . because the color change is too slight for my human vision to notice.

Im choosing to be 1 not because 0 is the devil, but because I want to be something . . . even though because of where I am, its nothing.

bit #90

Michelle Morris
08/08/08
First I wanted to be on the background color, with the movers and the shakers of course. But I was too late for the best locations and I wasn't feeling what they were doing with the blue. So I moved south where I could do my own little thing.

bit #11

Ka-Ping Yee
08/09/08
Justification not set.

bit #24

Justin Ross
08/09/08
0 is round and circular. You always end up where you start(at). It doesn't offend anyone.
Zero is a stalwart digit which is immutable and invasive. It transforms those around it to itself.
A zero is a rock. As a zero you can expect to be like a rock. With motion or not there is a solid presence of a zero.
Also, I've always wanted to be fat, or maybe just a little round.


bit #32

Clau Salamanca
08/09/08
What can I read as a 0 outside the computer? A hula hoop? A hole from a hole puncher over a piece of paper? Sometimes I think that the line that crosses the 0, like the one in our interface, is just trying to avoid any confusion: -This is not a hula hoop, this is a zero! Let’s think of a punch card. Punch cards were sheets for storing data by perforating holes on a surface, usually card board -a non conductive material. I bring this example maybe because the interface by which I am interacting here, reminds me of such a device. The elements in both –here and in the punch card- have a relation to each other and to the whole. I can jump through a hula hoop, I can go down a rabbit hole or like in a punch card, the hole allows the current to pass through in order to achieve a mechanical output. My 0 is a threshold, a point of entry, in the upper right corner of the four matrices of RGB values.

bit #3

Please change your name
08/09/08
Justification not set.

bit #8

Mara Hancock
08/10/08
I don't know why. It just felt right, this being 080808 and all...

bit #92

Nikolaos Hanselmann
08/10/08
The result of a program that I wrote to randomly select and set the bit. I ran it 8 times.

bit #4

C.E.B. Reas
08/11/08
I think color perception is highly subjective, and this is how I feel right now...

bit #19

Django Hepburn
08/11/08
Well, I'm having a tough time with this one. Not sure which way to go....

Right now, I'm thinking 1, but it's not %100, y'know? Could go either way. Remarkably difficult decision, this one. It's like there are two implicit forces inside of me, just beyond the grasp of my concious awareness, and they're really, really at odds. Something from my childhood, something sexual, maybe. I dunno. Kinda makes me feel like I should've been something at the office by now.... But with the wife, and the kids.... *Big Sigh*. another *Big Sigh*.

bit #12

Hercule Van Damme
08/11/08
Just seemed appropriate since there were two 1's to my left, I just like the balance of 0110, which is also 6 in decimal, which is nice because my daughter, Audrey, is also 6. I like to think of her as fairly balanced. My partner and I have made a real effort to practice contingent, collaborative communication with her, you know, in a really kindof explicit way. We're striving for unconditional love, I guess. It may sound overbearing, but we do try to be intentionally contingent, giving her plenty of space when it seems she needs it. Being a parent is really hard, yeah, so any kind of balance we can get helps. 6, our number of love and balance for the day, just like Sesame Street!