Cyberdeck Diary with Whisper
Building cute, custom computers has taken over TikTok. The press has called these devices an “anti-AI gadget” (Wired), “the most punk thing you can do right now” (Dazed), and the hobby of “the coolest girls you know” (RUSSH). What does the trend tell us about a broader cultural yearning for digital autonomy? Are these computers for using, or is their purpose to be posted online?
Cyberdeck Diary is a performative lecture by artist and hacker Whisper on the contemporary trend of building custom, single-purpose computers, told through three devices: an open source sound computer, an archive terminal in a Pelican case, and a ten-year-old laptop. Treating the server as a site for radical exchange, Whisper demonstrates how to make computers out of trash. Through e-waste, open source tools, and DIY servers, Cyberdeck Diary asks how the quest for individualized computing might bring us closer to reimagining collective rituals of computation.
Whisper is an artist and a core member of Secret Server Club, an LA collective working at the intersection of art, technology, and solidarity, whose website runs on small community-hosted servers. Through poetry, performance, software, and hardware, her practice centers living differently with technology. She teaches at Stanford and has been customizing computers since 2015, and they have been central to her art practice since 2022.
Whisper is an artist based in Los Angeles, who dreams of computing that feels like augmented presence, cultivated through generations of loving care. Through poetry, performance, software, and hardware, her practice centers living differently with technology. She stewards a network of servers and websites with the collective Secret Server Club, and with her partner Hal as Resonant.love. She is also co-founder of New Art City Virtual Art Space.
