2023-04-19, Savic, Selena

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.

2021-09-15, Savic, Selena, Miyazaki, Shintaro

We engage in a conversation with critical ecofeminism, which proposes to transform the colonialism-racism-capitalism-patriarchalism induced environmental crisis by a 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 inquires into ways patriarchalism is embedded in our relationship to technoscience and engineering. We explore modes of resistance through proposing skilled and alternative uses of these techniques.

2022-12, Savic, Selena, Metzner-Szigeth, Andreas

The imaginary of travelling in data traces interdisciplinary concerns for technical artefacts. Focusing on data collection on radio signals gathered by a community of radio amateurs and enthusiasts, informational tools – ‘data observatories’ – render signals commensurable through their different visual representations. What can pixel distribution in a sound spectrogram tell us about a radio signal? Following Haraway’s insistence on the importance and persistence of vision as an embodied gaze enabling a new doctrine of objectivity, this study proceeds by extracting and organizing radio signal qualities using a machine-learning algorithm to expose them again to the visual faculty of subjective observers. Vision and travel constitute methodical tools to unfold disciplinary concerns starting from specific data in a way that favours interactional expertise.

2020-07, Savic, Selena

Das vom SNF geförderte Forschungsprojekt ‹Denk-Spielzeug für Commoning› am Institut für Experimen- telle Design- und Medienkulturen (IXDM), HGK FHNW, thematisiert die Komplexität des nachhaltigen Lebens mit explorativen und spielerischen Ansätzen zur Computermodellierung. Wir arbeiten mit drei Schweizer Woh- nungsgenossenschaften zusammen, die Nachhaltigkeit, Selbstversorgung und Nicht-Wachstum fördern. Auf der Grundlage von Informationen, die Genos- senschaften bereitstellen, formulieren wir verschiedene Prinzipien in Bezug auf Zusammenarbeit und Entschei- dungsfindung und kodieren diese in agentenbasierte Modelle von Gemeinschaftssituationen. Wir verwenden das Modell und seine verschiedenen Erscheinungsformen, um mehr über zukünftige Verhaltensweisen und Verstrickungen in der Gemeinschaft zu erfahren. Wir entwerfen Modellschnittstellen als Denkspielzeug: Artefakte, die es Forschenden und Mitgliedern der Community ermöglichen, zukünftige Strategien zu erkennen. Mit den Denkspielzeugen untersuchen wir die Rolle von Artefakten bei der Schaffung von Wissen.

2022-06-09, Savic, Selena, Martins, Yann Patrick

Whether we are discussing measures in order to ‘flatten the curve’ in the ongoing pandemic, or what to wear in face of the most recent weather forecast, we make arguments based on patterns and trends observed in data. What makes these patterns observable? Making arguments with data requires critical engagement with datasets, as well as computational processes to gather data, to organize and model their relationships. This article presents an approach to practicing ethics when working with large datasets and designing data representations. The arguments we make are based on the development and use of a computational instrument, and working with digital archives. We programmed and used web-based interfaces to sort, organize and explore a community-ran 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, and that knowledge of radio signals or any other technical artefact transgresses domains. We propose visual explorations of complex data structures that enable storytelling and an understanding of datasets that resists extraction of discrete identities from the data. 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 the unbased 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.