A Peer-Reviewed Journal About

Toward a Minor Tech

Christian Ulrik Andersen, Geoff Cox — Thu, 07 Sep 2023 00:00:00 +0200

This journal issue addresses what we are calling "minor tech" making reference to Gilles Deleuze and Félix Guattari's essay "Kafka: Toward a Minor Literature" (written in 1975). They propose the concept of minor literature as opposed to great or established literature — the use of a major language that subverts it from within. "Becoming-minitorian" in this sense — to use a related concept from A Thousand Plateaus — involves the recognition of particular instances of power and the ability of the repressed minority to gain some degree of autonomy of expression. For our purpose, this notion of the minor is a relative position to major (or big) tech.

About wiki-to-print

Manetta Berends, Simon Browne — Thu, 07 Sep 2023 00:00:00 +0200

This journal is made with wiki-to-print, a collective publishing environment based on MediaWiki software, Paged Media CSS techniques and the JavaScript library Paged.js, which renders a preview of the PDF in the browser. Using wiki-to-print allows us to work shoulder-to-shoulder as collaborative writers, editors, designers, developers, in a non-linear publishing workflow where design and content unfolds at the same time, allowing the one to shape the other.

Scaling Up, Scaling Down

Camille Crichlow — Thu, 07 Sep 2023 00:00:00 +0200

This article explores the shifting perceptual scales of racial epistemology and anti-blackness in predictive policing technology. Following Paul Gilroy, I argue that the historical production of racism and anti-blackness has always been deeply entwined with questions of scale and perception. Where racialisation was once bound to the anatomical scale of the body, Thao Than and Scott Wark’s conceptualisation of “racial formations as data formations” inform insights into the ways in which “race”, or its 21^st century successor, is increasingly being produced as a cultivation of post-visual, data-driven abstractions. I build upon analysis of this phenomena in the context of predictive policing, where analytically derived “patrol zones” produce virtual barriers that divide civilian from suspect. Beyond a “garbage in, garbage out” critique, I explore the ways in which predictive policing instils racialisation as an epiphenomenon of data-generated proxies. By way of conclusion, I analyse American Artist’s 21-minute video installation 2015 (2019), which depicts the point of view of a police patrol car equipped with a predictive policing device, to parse the scales upon which algorithmic regimes of racial domination are produced and resisted.

Minor Tech and Counter-revolution

Jack Wilson — Thu, 07 Sep 2023 00:00:00 +0200

Following repeated assertions by QAnon promoters that to understand the phenomenon one must ‘do your own research’ this article seeks to unpack how ‘research’ is understood within QAnon, and how this understanding is operationalised in the production of particular tools. Drawing on exemplar literature internal to the phenomenon, it examines discourses on question of QAnon’s epistemology with particular reference to the stated purpose of ‘research’ and its difference to an allegedly hegemonic (or ‘mainstream’) episteme. The article then turns to how these discourses are operationalised in the research tools QAnon.pub and QAgg.news (‘QAgg’). Finally, it concludes by way of a reflection on how QAnon’s aggressively counter-revolutionary strategies and infrastructures can trouble the concept of the ‘minor’ in minor tech.

Rendering Post-Anthropocentric Visions

Teodora Sinziana Fartan — Thu, 07 Sep 2023 00:00:00 +0200

This paper formulates a strategic activation of speculative-computational practices of worlding by situating them as networked epistemologies of resistance. Through the integration of Deleuze and Guattari's concept of a ‘minor literature’ with the distributed software ontologies of algorithmic worlds, a tentative politics for thinking-with worlds is mapped, anchored in the potential of worlding to counter the dominant narratives of our techno-capitalist cultural imaginary. With particular attention to the ways in which the affordances of software can become operative and offer alternative scales of engagement with modes of being-otherwise, an initial theoretical mapping of how worlding operates as a multi-faceted and critical storytelling practice is formulated.

Weaving and Computation

Jung-Ah Kim — Thu, 07 Sep 2023 00:00:00 +0200

This essay explores the intersection of computation and traditional craft, focusing specifically on weaving and the Korean traditional woolen carpet, modam. While both weaving and computers operate in binary terms, the essay acknowledges that weaving encompasses more than just binary logic, considering factors such as materiality, embodiment, and imagination. It seeks to explore the deeper connection between weaving and computation, beyond specific devices like punched cards, and how modam and its cultural context can shed light on this relationship. The essay also highlights the historical role of women in both weaving and computing, drawing parallels between weavers and the (gendered) body as components of early computational processes. By examining the historical, cultural, and technological nuances of modam production, this exploration aims to reveal insights into our present technology and our interaction with it.

Glitchy, Caring, Tactical

Freja Kir — Thu, 07 Sep 2023 00:00:00 +0200

This paper directs attention to the parameters of creative resistance to large-scale commercial digital platforms. It does so by enhancing the understanding of minor tech through the analysis and case study of the artwork, VPN. While minor tech might sound unfamiliar to the many, examples of its existence are at the same time incredibly familiar through examples of digital commoning, sharing of skills, and organisational systems. In the case of VPN, the work existed as a growing emancipatory multimedia archive, executed as a transparent server architecture revealing its technical workings to its users. This format exemplified tactics of intentional glitches through an artful inclusion of persons, space, and objects. By identifying the elements of tactics and care within the VPN, the paper draws parallels of overlapping tendencies within the movement of minor tech. Drawing on Olga Gorionova's research on 'Shadow librarians' and including former digital examples of knowledge sharing furthermore assists in sketching a web development towards the nature of minor tech and VPN. By analysing the significance of these initiatives, the paper raises the questions: What are the drives across creative resistance practices? And (how) do such creative contributions help to critically nuance various existing understandings of large-scale digital platforms?

Spirit Tactics

xenodata co-operative, (Alexandra Anikina, Yasemin Keskintepe) — Thu, 07 Sep 2023 00:00:00 +0200

Speculative narratives of (techno)magic such as those offered by feminist technoscience, cyberwitches and techno-shamanism come from knowledge systems long marginalised in a hyper-optimised and hard-science-reliant capitalist discourse. Aiming to de-centre Western rational imaginaries of technology, they speak from decolonial and translocal perspectives, in which the relations between humans and technology are reconfigured in terms of care, relationality and multiplicity of epistemic positions. In this paper, we consider (techno)magic as an act of transgressing a knowledge system plus relational ethics plus capacity to act beyond the constraints of the current capitalist belief system. (Techno)magic is about disentangling from commodified forms of belief and knowledge and instead cultivating solidarity, relationality, common spaces and trust with non-humans: becoming-familiar with the machine. What critical approaches, epistemic and aesthetic procedures do these speculative practices enable in media art and resistant tech? In what ways does “magic” act as an alternative political imaginary in the age of hegemonic Western epistemologies? Drawing on feminist STS and the works of artists such as Choy Ka Fai, Omsk Social Club, Ian Cheng, Suzanne Treister and others, we propose to address (techno)magic seriously as an ethical and epistemic practice.

Lurking in the Gap between Philosophy of Mind and the Planetary

Alasdair Milne — Thu, 07 Sep 2023 00:00:00 +0200

This article outlines an emerging tendency prominent in the theory and practice of the art & technology domain to ‘horseshoe’ the urgencies of planetary-scale technology with questions traditionally associated with the philosophy of mind, conventionally placed at a much lower level-of-analysis. It delineates and problematises this trend in the theoretical plane, before considering the ‘interpersonal’, stemming from the work of Hannah Arendt, as a mediatory level of analysis, and ground from which to reconcile these contemporary concerns. This intervention acts as a methodological clarification. The implications of this shift are explored for the theorisation of ‘minor tech’ projects as scalable systems which originate at the interpersonal, but can leverage change upscale.

The Bigger the Better?

Susanne Förster — Thu, 07 Sep 2023 00:00:00 +0200

This article looks at a controversy over the ‘better’ architecture for conversational AI that unfolds initially along the question of the ‘right’ size of models. Current generative models such as ChatGPT and DALL-E follow the imperative of the largest possible, ever more highly scalable, training dataset. I therefore first describe the technical structure of large language models and then address the problems of these models which are known for reproducing societal biases or so-called hallucinations. As an ‘alternative’, computer scientists and AI experts call for the development of much smaller language models linked to external databases, that should minimize the issues mentioned above. As this paper will show, the presentation of this structure as ‘alternative’ adheres to a simplistic juxtaposition of different architectures that follows the imperative of a computable reality, thereby causing problems analogous to the ones it tried to circumvent.

AI for All?

Inga Luchs — Thu, 07 Sep 2023 00:00:00 +0200

Research in artificial intelligence (AI) is heavily shaped by big tech today. In the US context, companies such as Google and Microsoft profit from a tremendous position of power due to their control over cloud computing, large data sets and AI talent. In light of this dominance, many media researchers and activists demand open infrastructures and community-led approaches to provide alternative perspectives – however, it is exactly this discourse that companies are appropriating for their expansion strategies. In recent years, big tech has taken up the narrative of democratizing AI by open-sourcing their machine learning (ML) tools, simplifying and automating the application of AI and offering free educational ML resources. The question that remains is how an alternative approach to ML infrastructures – and to the development of ML systems – can still be possible. What are the implications of big tech’s strive for infrastructural expansion under the umbrella of ‘democratization’? And what would a true democratization of ML entail? I will trace these two questions by critically examining, first, the open-source discourse advanced by big tech, as well as, second, the discourse around the AI open-source community Hugging Face that sees AI ethics and democratization at the heart of their endeavour. Lastly, I will show how ML algorithms need to be considered beyond their instrumental notion. It is thus not enough to simply hand over the technology to the community – we need to think about how we can conceptualize a radically different approach to the creation of ML systems.

Time Enclosures and the Scales of Optimisation

Sandy Di Yu — Thu, 07 Sep 2023 00:00:00 +0200

This paper looks at the cluster of phenomena that aggregates into what has been called a crisis of time, where experiences of time have become at once stretched to perpetuity and compressed to negligibility. The former results from the perceived endurance of digital media that feign everlasting memory and recall, whilst the latter is due to the speeds at which information is processed, making wait times feel intolerable. In either case, digital technologies have seemingly rendered time into something unrecognisable on a human scale.

Whilst there are several competing theories on elements that contribute to this, such literature has largely been confined to the discourse on speed, acceleration, and standardisation. What has been so far overlooked is the logic of optimisation, a mode of operation that is endemic to digitality. Optimisation, which captures aspects of digitality that exceed the scope of efficiency, is particularly insidious within the digital milieu due to the abstraction necessitated by digital processes. I analyse optimisation as it surfaces in capitalist history in the form of land privatisation and imperialism, tracing it through to the digital milieu, producing what I term “time enclosures”. This term parallels the land enclosures that were the historical preconditions of capitalism in order to articulate a specific element of privatisation and commercial value in the crisis of time. Finally, I relate optimisation to the entwined values and histories of imperialism that are premised on linearity and progress to explore the thread that corrupts our sense of time through digital technology’s effects on retention and protention.

Towards DAOs of Difference

Inte Gloerich — Thu, 07 Sep 2023 00:00:00 +0200

With this article, I explore the connections between blockchain technology, coloniality, and decolonial practices. Drawing on Sylvia Wynter’s thought on the interdependent systems of colonialism, capitalism, and knowledge, as well as more recent work on the coloniality of digital technologies, I argue that blockchain-based systems reproduce certain dynamics at work in historical colonialism. Additionally, Wynter’s decolonial propositions provide a generative framework to understand countercultural practices with. Inspired by Wynter, Patricia de Vries explores the notion of “plot work as artistic praxis” to ask how artistic work, implicated as it is in capitalist logics, can create space for relating differently in the context of the exploitations of those dominant logics. I apply this notion to examine how Decentralised Autonomous Organisations (DAOs) in the countercultural blockchain space might contribute to this praxis.

Calling the User

Shusha Niederberger — Thu, 07 Sep 2023 00:00:00 +0200

In recent years, a large body of work has analyzed the cultural and social ramifications of data-driven digital environments that currently structure digital practice. However, the position of the user has scarcely been developed in this field.

In this paper I discuss how user subject positions are invoked by digital infrastructures as an alternative to big technology platforms. With subject positions I mean a shared and often unarticulated understanding of what kind of technological practice is meant when we talk about users: user as a cultural form. I start with the analysis of a crisis in user subjectivity as it manifested in the migratory waves from Twitter to Mastodon at the end of 2022, after Elon Musk bought Twitter. Like Twitter, Mastodon is a microblogging service, but it operates as a network of connected servers run by nonprofit organizations and communities. I argue that Mastodon—by way of its infrastructural organization around servers and communities—invokes a different subject position of the user than the self-contained autonomous liberal subject, one that is based on a relationship with a community. In a second case study, I discuss how the artistic activist practices of Trans*Feminist Servers create a territory to rethink relations to technology itself, most prominently through raising questions of servitude: what does it mean to serve and to be served? I argue that through this, Trans*Feminist Servers are able to reformulate use as part of relations of care and maintenance and implement them in their technological practice. As I conclude, both Mastodon and Trans*Feminist Servers project a user exceeding the neoliberal subject. While Mastodon does so by proposing a subject position related to a community first, Trans*feminist Servers go a step further and moreover open use as a practice beyond consumption, thus operate on relations to infrastructure itself.

From Feminist Servers to Feminist Federation

nate wessalowski, Mara Karagianni — Thu, 07 Sep 2023 00:00:00 +0200

Situated within the technofeminist care practices of feminist servers, this text explores the possibilities of feminist federation. Speaking from our collective practice of system administration, we start by introducing Systerserver, laying out the feminist pedagogies that inform our practice of learning and doing together with technologies and the politics of maintenance and care. We then revisit the identity politics of feminist servers as more than safe/r spaces in the cis-male-dominated domain of free/libre and open source software communities. Finally, we reflect on our experiences of building and federating a feminist video platform with the PeerTube software on Systerserver. Facing the techno-social challenges around the protocol of federation and adapting the software alongside our federating practice, we focus on sustainable and care-oriented alternatives to ‘scaling up’ the affective infrastructures of our feminist servers.

Contributors

Christian Ulrik Andersen — Thu, 07 Sep 2023 00:00:00 +0200

Camille Crichlow is a PhD Researcher at the Sarah Parker Remond Centre for the Study of Racism and Racialisation (University College London). Her research interrogates how the historical and socio-cultural narrative of race manifests in contemporary algorithmic technologies.

Teodora Sinziana Fartan is a researcher, computational artist and writer based in London, UK. Her research-artistic practice explores the new spaces of possibility opened up by collaborations between software and storytelling, with a particular focus on the new modes of relational and affective experience rendered into being by the networked data exchanges scripted into interfaces. Driven by speculative fiction, Teodora’s practice explores the immersive, interactive and intelligent more-than-human entanglements that can take shape within algorithmically-mediated spaces. Teodora is currently a PhD Researcher at the Centre for the Study of the Networked Image at London South Bank University and a Lecturer at the University of the Arts London.

Susanne Förster is a PhD candidate and research associate in the project “Agentic Media: Formations of Semi-Autonomy” at the University of Siegen. Her work deals with imaginaries and infrastructures of conversational artificial agents. Previously, she coordinated exhibitions at Haus der Kulturen der Welt (HKW), Berlin.

Inte Gloerich (PhD researcher at Utrecht University and Institute of Network Cultures) explores sociotechnical imaginaries around blockchain technology. Her work involves the politics, artistic imagination, and (counter)cultures surrounding digital technology. She co-edited MoneyLab Reader 2: Overcoming the Hype, State Machines: Reflections and Actions at the Edge of Digital Citizenship, and Feminist Finance Zine & Syllabus.

Mara Karagianni is an artist, software developer and system administrator. Their work involves computational and analogue media for publishing, python programming, making technical user manuals & drawings, and writing about the internet, FOSS and feminism.

Freja Kir is researching across intersections of artistic methods, spatial publishing and digital media environments. Creatively directing fanfare – collective for visual communication. Contributing to stanza – studio for critical publishing. PhD researcher, University of West London.

Jung-Ah Kim is a PhD researcher in Screen Cultures and Curatorial Studies at Queen’s University. She explores various aspects of traditional Korean textiles, including their technology, production, cultural heritage, diaspora, and more.

Inga Luchs is a PhD candidate in Media Studies at the University of Groningen. Inga has obtained her B.A. and M.A. in cultural studies and digital culture at Leuphana University, Lüneburg. Departing from the problem of algorithmic discrimination, she seeks to investigate the key technical principles of machine learning to uncover underlying assumptions and beliefs. ORCID ID: 0000-0002-2731-0549

Alasdair Milne is a PhD researcher with Serpentine Galleries’ Creative AI Lab and King’s College London. His work focuses on the collaborative systems that emerge around new technologies.

Shusha Niederberger is a PhD student at Zurich University of the Arts / Hamburg University of Fine Arts and working on user subject positions in datafied environments (https://latentspaces.zhdk.ch). She has a background in media art practice and art education, and has been researching on digital artistic practices and the commons (http://creatingcommons.zhdk.ch) before.

nate wessalowski is a PhD student and technofeminist researcher at the University of Münster working on alternative data practices in collaboration with feminist server collectives. Based on a background in cultural studies and digital cultures (Universities of Hildesheim and Lüneburg), their work focuses on the epistemologies of datafication, the history and futures of online commons and, most recently, a feminist critique of cybersecurity.

Jack Wilson is a PhD researcher at the University of Warwick’s Centre for Interdisciplinary Methodologies. He is not a conspiracy theorist.

xenodata co-operative investigates image politics, algorithmic culture and technological conditions of knowledge production and governance through art and media practices. The collective was established by curator Yasemin Keskintepe and artist-researcher Sasha Anikina. Together with Luba Elliott, they co-curated the IMPAKT festival 2018 entitled "Algorithmic Superstructures". Alexandra (Sasha) Anikina is a media scholar, artist and film-maker, currently a Senior Lecturer in Media Practices at Winchester School of Art (University of Southampton). Yasemin Keskintepe has curated exhibitions on the politics and poetics of technology at ZKM and German Hygiene-Museum among others, and is currently a PhD candidate at the University of Potsdam.

Sandy Di Yu is a PhD researcher at the University of Sussex and co-managing editor of DiSCo Journal (www.discojournal.com), using digital artist critique to examine shifting experiences of time.