1: themes
WEEK 1
These fascinating creatures, windsongs, arrays of thick experiences, juicy research, webs of mind maps, inanimate and animate spontaneous arrangements, all sprawling into many terrains that I want to visit. Layering increases, and anxiety flows in. Laughter is needed.
THEMES
Chatting last week about thesis ideas, or rather thesis clouds, I felt no clear direction, but the cumuli were nicely rounded, and new ones started arriving.
Themes, as per my current mindmap, that are present in my experiments/projects while at ITP:
During the January session with Jamie Allen, Civic Ecologies, I worked on the concept of a Hole Society. The proposal was for a web-based art intervention that included community activities geared toward revealing terra firma as a living thing and part of a continuum with life above-ground. I was drawn to the dynamism of the underground as part of our multispecies community. This interest in ecology and infrastructures will surely inform my thesis.
The focus on data ethics and context-driven approaches to data sourcing addressed in our Local Data course, led by Roopa Vasudevan, aligns with Civic Ecologies’ explorations of the city as a platform/ corporation. The process of gathering data may be pivotal to my thesis.
My Cyborgian Rock (CR) chatbot was made to stimulate animistic imagination in the user. The CR experience is in opposition to our encounters with consumer techno-products. It steers one towards reflections on nature, ancient traditions, and traditional modes of understanding.
QUESTION / CONCEPT MAP
What narratives influence our relationship to nature/non-human entities, and how?
DESIGN IDEAS / SEEDS
1. Working with a physical space to weave in digital interactions, I propose an audio version of national parks viewing scopes.
- Speaker/listening devices are set up for participants to hear the underwater environment live. They are at varied points of distance and elevation and visible from any of the stations. The interactions elicit the collapsing of space, being here but not, crossing bodies of water, going into the unknown. I would set up hydrophones, connect them to speakers, and build an interface that allows the user to select a source.
- A separate but possibly complementary idea is for participants to be taken to the other side in a robo-boat. The robo-boat measures the biometrics of the passenger’s mood. Online participants’ involvement to be determined.
2. Positive absence, as a state of being somewhere without being physically present. This is the paradoxical existence of many refugee and immigrant families that I know who do not feel part of the local community and rely on virtual communication to remain in visual contact with their friends/families back home. This project would start with collaborative data gathering. How much time is spent in communication with Baghdad vs in Brooklyn?
3. I find tiny LCD screens fascinating. Live pocket cameras can provide a feed of a non-human entity such as a rock. The feed would be available for private access via a portable tiny monitoring system equipped with a miniature LCD screen.
PROCESS
- Inclusive, open, collaborative
- Recycling, co-opting, culture jamming
- Live performance
- Questioning normalized interactions
- Sci-fi aspect
- Humor easing difficult discussions
- Critical design
NOTES
- What are the ways in which the LinkNYC Trojan Horse can be exposed?
- How can my privileged visibility be a shield and a resource to those in my community who stay invisible in order to protect their undocumented status?
- How can joy and laughter be used to address serious issues?
- Interaction with technology is a struggle, philosophically speaking. One must be vigilant and aware of ways in which makers and users inherit, propagate, and reinforce oppressive ideologies. Safe spaces are needed.
- Local Data, the re-use of “formal data,” underlining its limitations, countering it with other data.
- There is an inhibition/ discomfort caused by my limitations when it comes to tech skills/ coding that impacts thinking about possible projects. After continued contact with code since we started in July, I had a gap of several weeks of no coding since December. The fear that I forgot how to write a function hangs around!
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Reading the ‘an audio version of national parks viewing scopes’ part made me think of Janet Cardiff’s audio walk in Central Park “Her Long Black Hair” – have you listened to it? https://cardiffmiller.com/walks/her-long-black-hair/
Thanks so much Ruta — you are my first commenter so I am buying you a drink (this year hopefully.) Yes! I liked the layered temporalities, as when a person sat on a bench while narrator was speaking to us and started chatting with the narrator. It also felt somewhat affected, almost joyless at times. I wanted the story to be biographical or autobiographical. Listening stations’ allow one to “eavesdrop” on the underbelly of the water as one navigates perspectives by having a”switch” to hear different locations. The sounds would have to have varied sources. One would see the other listening stations in the distance, but it would not be clear which station is being heard. Just a seed. I know that I want to interact within an ecosystem/nature or its components. Look forward to chatting more:)