Savic, Selena

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Savic
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Selena
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Savic, Selena

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Now showing 1 - 7 of 7
  • Publication
    Making Arguments with Data: Resisting Appropriation and Assumption of Access / Reason in Machine Learning Training Processes
    (Weizenbaum Institute for the Networked Society, 30.10.2023) Savic, Selena; Martins, Yann Patrick [in: Weizenbaum Journal of the Digital Society]
    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.
    01A - Beitrag in wissenschaftlicher Zeitschrift
  • Publication
    Techno-optimism and optimization in media architecture practice and theory
    (Routledge, 19.04.2023) Savic, Selena [in: Digital Creativity]
    Media architecture community systematically explores the potentials of computation and digital media to intervene in form-finding, fabrication of buildings and urban data collection processes. Combining social media topic modelling techniques with the review of media architecture-related literature, I discuss methods to locate the media architecture community in social media, conduct initial discourse analysis and pursue a deeper investigation of the topics addressed by community. In the literature, media architecture is presented as an interactive set of technologies for a participative public life. And yet, while a dynamic facade increases possibilities for participation and creative expression, it also facilitates reframing participation as a technical problem. I position optimization and efficiency in media architecture discourse as a form of optimism and offer insights into its political implications. I propose to rethink the shortcut between optimism and optimization by tracing conceptual and professional relations that inform media architecture.
    01A - Beitrag in wissenschaftlicher Zeitschrift
  • Publication
    Slime Mold and Network Imaginaries: An Experimental Approach to Communication
    (MIT Press, 01.10.2022) Savic, Selena; Grant, Sarah [in: Leonardo]
    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.
    01A - Beitrag in wissenschaftlicher Zeitschrift
  • Publication
    Articulating nomadic identities of radio signals
    (Revistes científiques de la Universitat de Barcelona, 25.02.2022) Savic, Selena [in: Matter: Journal of New Materialist Research]
    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.
    01A - Beitrag in wissenschaftlicher Zeitschrift
  • Publication
    Politics and the City: Introduction to Special Issue
    (17.11.2020) Savic, Selena [in: Contour. Journal for interdisciplinary research in architecture, urban design and planning]
    The challenge of this special issue in finding words and coming to terms with contemporary city and contemporary politics is amplified by the difficulty to pin point what and where exactly a city is and how can we perceive political activities in its context. We might be better off asking: what is not city today, which place on Earth is empty of city-ness? This special issue presents four contributions that proceed from the panel City, Civility and Post-political Models of Freedom and Conflict panel held in November 2018 as part of the Scaffolds international symposium organized by ALICE lab from the École polytechnique fédérale de Lausanne, supported by the C I.II.III.IV. A, the Kanal Centre Pompidou, and with the participation of several institutions and university departments from KU Leuven, ULB, TU Delft, and TU Vienna. Without pertaining to comprehensiveness, the present collection captures some points in the debate on city and civility informed by questions that originate in design and architecture.
    01A - Beitrag in wissenschaftlicher Zeitschrift
  • Publication
    Toys for conviviality. Situating ccommoning, computation and modelling
    (De Gruyter, 2020) Savic, Selena; Bedö, Viktor; Büsse, Michaela; Martins, Yann Patrick; Miyazaki, Shintaro [in: Open Cultural Studies]
    This article explores the use of agent-based modelling as a critical and playful form of engagement with cooperative housing organizations. Because of its inherent complexities vis-à-vis decision-making, commoning is a well-suited field of study to explore the potential of humanities-driven experimental design (media) research to provoke critical reflection, problem-finding and productive complication. By introducing two different agent-based models, the interdisciplinary research team discusses their experience with setting up parameters for modelling, their implications, and the possibilities and limits of employing modelling techniques as a basis for decision-making. While it shows that modelling can be helpful in detecting long-term results of decisions or testing out effects of unlikely yet challenging events, modelling might act as a discursive practice uncovering hidden assumptions inherent in the model setup and generating an increase of scientific uncertainty. The project “ThinkingToys for Commoning” thus argues for a critical modelling practice and culture, in which models act as toys for probing alternative modes of living together and explor- ing the constructedness of methods. In countering late forms of capitalism, the resulting situated and critical practice provides avenues for enabling more self-determined forms of governance.
    01A - Beitrag in wissenschaftlicher Zeitschrift
  • Publication
    Feminist Hackerspace as a Place of Infrastructure Production
    (University of Oregon Libraries, 04/2018) Savic, Selena; Wuschitz, Stefanie [in: Ada (Eugene): a journal of gender, new media and technology]
    Work in a (feminist) hackerspace relies on the circulation of knowledge and availability of hardware. In contemporary maker scene, the majority of these resources is created in male-dominated circles and handed over to female identified makers to act upon and appropriate. Attempts to reconcile the disbalance in gender participation with pink-colored microcontrollers only reinforced existing gender and cultural stereotypes. Instead of adding to the growing voice of critique of exclusionist and inclusionist practices, we take a critical stand towards feminist hacking practice itself: we look at what is produced by feminist hackerspaces. Using standpoint theory to analyze the experience of working with one particular self-organized group of feminist artists and developers, this paper looks at practice in feminist hackerspaces as a way to create and share essential infrastructure with female or transgender identified makers. We analyze patterns of mutual self-help through sharing and learning, and their role in creating feminist infrastructure.
    01A - Beitrag in wissenschaftlicher Zeitschrift