Savic, Selena
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Making Arguments with Data: Resisting Appropriation and Assumption of Access / Reason in Machine Learning Training Processes
This article presents an approach to practicing ethics when working with large datasets and designing data representations. Inspired by feminist critique of technoscience and recent problematizations of digital literacy, we argue that machine learning models can be navigated in a multi-narrative manner when access to training data is well articulated and understood. We programmed and used web-based interfaces to sort, organize, and explore a community-run digital archive of radio signals. An additional perspective on the question of working with datasets is offered from the experience of teaching image synthesis with freely accessible online tools. We hold that the main challenge to social transformations related to digital technologies comes from lingering forms of colonialism and extractive relationships that easily move in and out of the digital domain. To counter both the unfounded narratives of techno-optimismand the universalizing critique of technology, we discuss an approachto data and networks that enables a situated critique of datafication and correlationism from within.
Common Objects / Gewöhnliche Objekte
The present intervention is a temporary engagement with the exhibition Curious Communication. Unusual Objects and Stories from the Collection, which stages uncommon objects and rituals pertaining to telecommunication. We seek to complement this perspective with objects that are everyday, yet hidden in the heights of telecommunication masts and towers, such as 4G and 5G antennas, and satellite receptors. Proliferation naturalises them as mundane infrastructure, sometimes even mimicking nature. Antennas are objects that increasingly re-naturalise electromagnetism: engineered to facilitate communication between people, they put to use the disposition of metals to resonate with radio waves, picking up both human-made and natural emissions, and figuring in urban and rural landscapes to secure global interconnectivity.
CAD optimism. How Architects Interested in Media and Computation Talk about Design
"Great new design" is a phrase that emerges from simple counting of words in social media discourse among architects and designers working with computation and interactive technologies. With an underlying concern for the narrative of optimism and efficiency that propagates in practice of working with CAD tools, I study the way Media Architecture is discussed within the community of architects, designers, researchers and policy makers. The bi-yearly event, Media Architecture Biennale, organised by the Media Architecture Institute gathers a large community of architects, designers and engineers interested in using and understanding computational tools in the context of design of media architecture (and media facades more specifically). I combine text-mining techniques of Twitter posts with practical knowledge of architectural profession and review of computational concepts in literature (Dalsgaard et al, Tomitsch et al, Brynskov et al but also Easterling, Bratton and Parisi). Using some of the digital humanities techniques, I identify a network of social media profiles that belong to architects, engineers, community managers and policy makers, with a mixed presence of practitioners and academics. I identify important concepts and patterns in this prolific communication stream, which I then critically examine through the way these conversations, literature and practice inform each other. I take social media as a rich, and digitally documented communication channel that relies on a multitude of media and forms. What can we infer from opinions on digital infrastructures, networked places and hybrid public spaces about their implications for practice of architecture, and methods architects use in design? Which occlusions and blind spots can be observed in the discourse? By looking at how contemporary practice is discussed, we can identify and offer a critical perspective on certain social and cultural aspects within the community.
Es wird ungemütlich. Unpleasant Design in der Stadt
Unpleasant Design (unangenehmes Design) ist jede absichtlich eingesetzte Gestaltungsform und jeder Gegenstand oder Effekt, der die Nutzung von Gegenständen oder Räumen für eine bestimmte Gruppe von Menschen unmöglich oder schwierig macht. Am häufigsten begegnen wir dem Phänomen bei Stadtmöbeln, deren Gestaltung darauf abzielt, Obdachlose vom Schlafen im öffentlichen Raum abzuhalten: Dazu zählen mittig angebrachte Armlehnen auf Park- oder Bushaltestellenbänken sowie alle Arten von Spitzen und unregelmäßigen, oder auch rutschigen Oberflächen. Auch hochfrequente Geräusche, mit denen Jugendliche irritiert werden sollen, oder blaues Licht, das die Sichtbarkeit von Venen verringert und damit vom Gebrauch von Infektionsdrogen abhalten soll, sind Varianten der Unpleasant Design. Zudem manifestiert sich dieses auf vielen anderen Ebenen, von der Gestaltung von Schaufenstern über ganze Straßenzüge und Stadtteile bis hinein in den digitalen Bereich. Eines der Hauptmerkmale von Unpleasant Design liegt darin, dass es sich auf bestimmte soziale und demografische Bevölkerungsgruppen bezieht: Jugendliche, Drogenabhängige und Obdachlose sind häufig der offizielle Anlass für diese Form des Designs im öffentlichen Raum. Die Strategien treten oft an der Schnittstelle von öffentlichem und privatem Raum auf und ihr Wesen besteht darin, jede Art von Verhandlung zu unterbinden, indem sie gewünschtes Verhalten und die Nutzung des Raumes von vornherein vorschreiben. In den politischen Programmen der Regierungen würde es zwar niemals so formuliert werden: Dennoch ist Unpleasant Design im Grunde eine Top-down-Lösung, die impliziert, dass Bürgerbeteiligung bei der Gestaltung von öffentlich zugänglichen Räumen und Dienstleistungen keine Rolle spielt.
Making Arguments with Data
Whether we are discussing measures in order to "flatten the curve" in a pandemic or what to wear given the most recent weather forecast, we base arguments on patterns observed in data. This article presents an approach to practicing ethics when working with large datasets and designing data representations. We programmed and used web-based interfaces to sort, organize, and explore a community-run archive of radio signals. Inspired by feminist critique of technoscience and recent problematizations of digital literacy, we argue that one can navigate machine learning models in a multi-narrative manner. We hold that the main challenge to sovereignty comes from lingering forms of colonialism and extractive relationships that easily move in and out of the digital domain. Countering both narratives of techno-optimism and the universalizing critique of technology, we discuss an approach to data and networks that enables a situated critique of datafication and correlationism from within.
Pollution topologies. Can extinction have measure?
This text is a parable on extinction and pollution and how they can be measured. In Inanimate Species, Joana Moll expresses extinction and pollution[1] quite literally in terms of analogy: the encroachment of microchips is compared to the extinction of insects. The comparison between these two visually similar[2] groups of beings is a measure of artificiality of pollution, as well as of inherent inconsistencies in methods of measurement. The attempt to taxonomize microchips following the rules of taxonomy for living organisms – an already artificial method applied to nature – suggests a possible way of forging an agreement on shared measures and values.
Modulating Matters of Computation, Modelling and Hyper-Separations
We engage in a conversation with critical ecofeminism, which proposed to transform the colonialism-racism-capitalism-patriarchalism induced environmental crisis by non-essentialist countering of oppressions and hyper-separations produced by human/nature dualism. We modulate the critical ecofeminist approach by countering a similar dualism, namely that of nature/technology. Furthermore, our theoretical balance-act has a praxis-oriented side: we believe that computation can be included in ecofeminist action. By providing alternative forms of engagement to instrumentalization, we trace pathways to different futures, countering the binary narratives of technology but also its moralizing of socio-cultural mediation. We take an intersectional approach to outcomes of computational modelling (simulations, visualisations, forecasts) and discuss the ecofeminist method of synthesis as a way to include different perspectives into computational processes. We work with two ‘modulated models’ that pay attention to assumptions, observations and thinking about urban commoning initiatives, and amateur knowledge of radio telecommunications. We aspire to provoke discussions about different modes of inclusion in communities and archives that are centred on shared, environment-friendly, solidarity oriented life-style and mutual care. Our approach engages with feminist arguments and inquiries into ways patriarchalism is embedded in our relationship to technoscience and engineering. We explore modes of resistance by proposing skilled and alternative uses of these techniques.
Slime Mold and Network Imaginaries: An Experimental Approach to Communication
Physarum polycephalum, or slime mold, is an acellular organism extensively studied in scientific experiments and artistic engagements. Artist and critical engineer Sarah Grant collaborates with architect and researcher Selena Savic on hybrid bio-networking experiments with slime mold as an approximation of a computer network. They study communication as an organic process, rethinking networks’ inherent technicity through encounters with a living organism. They discuss network imaginaries situated in the way slime mold forages for food: at once transmitting and materializing its experiences, constrained and conditioned by the environment. The results of this work are imaginative accounts of adaptive network infrastructure and protocols.
Articulating nomadic identities of radio signals
This article presents a new materialist approach to artificial neural networks, based on experimental research in categorization of data on radio signals. Picking up on Rossi Braidotti’s nomadic theory and a number of new materialist perspectives on informatics, the article presents identification of radio signals as a process of articulating identities with data: nomadic identities that are informed by all the others, always established anew. As a resistance to the dominant understanding of data as discreet, the experiments discussed here demonstrate a way to work with a digital archive in a materialist and non-essentialist way. The output of experiments, data observatories, shows the capacity of machine learning techniques to challenge fixed dichotomies, such as human/nature, and their role in the way we think of identities. A data observatory is a navigation apparatus which can be used to orient oneself in the vast landscape of data on radio transmissions based on computable similarity. Nomadic identities render materiality of radio signals as digital information.
Modulating matters of computation, modelling and hyper-separations
We engage in a conversation with critical ecofeminism, which proposed to transform the colonialism-racism-capitalism-patriarchalism induced environmental crisis by non-essentialist countering of oppressions and hyper-separations produced by human/nature dualism. We modulate the critical ecofeminist approach by countering a similar dualism, namely that of nature/technology. Furthermore, our theoretical balance-act has a praxis-oriented side: we believe that computation can be included in ecofeminist action. By providing alternative forms of engagement to instrumentalization, we trace pathways to different futures, countering the binary narratives of technology but also its moralizing of socio-cultural mediation. We take an intersectional approach to outcomes of computational modelling (simulations, visualisations, forecasts) and discuss the ecofeminist method of synthesis as a way to include different perspectives into computational processes. We work with two ‘modulated models’ that pay attention to assumptions, observations and thinking about urban commoning initiatives, and amateur knowledge of radio telecommunications. We aspire to provoke discussions about different modes of inclusion in communities and archives that are centred on shared, environment-friendly, solidarity oriented life-style and mutual care. Our approach engages with feminist arguments and inquiries into ways patriarchalism is embedded in our relationship to technoscience and engineering. We explore modes of resistance by proposing skilled and alternative uses of these techniques.