|
|
|
|
October 2023 Entering Autumn: Lab Updates |
Hi there, We’ve got a ton of updates for you this month, so I’ll keep this intro extra short. (Writing this newsletter has also made me realise why I've been feeling like we've been running extra fast lately). It also feels like a troubling time to send out a newsletter like this, showcasing ‘life as usual’ when the world around us is anything but. I hope that wherever this newsletter finds you, you have community around you. And I hope that wherever you are, you take action to support your fellow humans in struggle - near and far. - Henriette We’d always love to hear your feedback on the newsletter. Reach us here: ethos@itu.dk |
Overview Affect
Marisa Cohn joined as an invited participant to the first of two Overview Affect workshops hosted at Stockholm University organised to explore how to incorporate a greater emphasis on repair, care, and maintenance as part of STEM education programs, particularly space science education. The workshop drew together researchers, educators, artists and activists whose work engages with space science infrastructures from critical, feminist, and postcolonial perspectives. |
On (not quite) Leaving the Lab - by Jessamy Perriam
When we as a lab set our 2023 theme as Shifting Inevitabilities, I wasn’t realistically expecting an international shift to be on the cards. And yet, here I am writing a quick newsletter note from the Australian National University in Canberra, where I have taken up a role as Senior Lecturer in the School of Cybernetics. As a result, I’ve stepped back from co-directing the best lab at ITU (and probably in the world, in my biased opinion) to become an enthusiastic lab member. I’m really proud of everything we as the lab have managed to achieve in the last few years that I’ve been there, we’ve weathered a pandemic, strengthened our student-facing work, built our academic community and, partnered with some amazing projects and organisations. While I’m really sad that I won’t be there day to day to witness some of our plans come to fruition, I am cheering the lab on from afar, and I do hope to visit from time to time. Thanks for trusting me to look after the lab for the time I was there! From everyone at the lab, we’d like to thank Jess for her countless contributions to life at the lab. Her daily presence will be so dearly missed, but we look forward to reuniting in the spring. |
New Junior Researchers in the Lab
We are very happy to announce our new cohort of Junior Researchers. A big warm welcome to Anna Shams Ili, David Lund Herum, Mia Selina Roberta Hoell, Anna Mørch Folkmann, Sonja Anna Sartys, Marcus Skjold Pedersen, and Emma Kirk Jeppesen. The JRs are already well on their way with their projects, and in just a couple of weeks, they will be sharing their progress with the lab community in their first Research Pitch. |
Visiting Researcher: Sandra Jeppesen
In October we had the great pleasure of spending time with Sandra Jeppesen from Lakehead University in Ontario, Canada. Sandra joined us as part of ‘the Smart[er] Cities Project’, and we were so pleased to gain insights into the important work around contesting the implementation of smart technologies in cities that do not serve the needs and wishes of the people who call that place home. |
ETHOS’ Autumn Writing Retreat
On October 5th the lab members gathered for the semesterly writing retreat - this time in Folkehuset Absalon’s tower room. It was a productive (and fun) day, where we worked on writings around our work with mageing, cannibalistic optimism, the feminist futures hackathon, sustainable software, feminist approaches to digital cities, decolonial and Indigenous protocols, and feminist digital methods. |
Ada Lovelace day - In Copenhagen
On October 10th, as per tradition, we celebrated Ada Lovelace day in the lab. This year we saw colleagues from across the university and beyond come together to create erasure poetry on the EU AI Act. The event began with a presentation on ETHOS’ work on erasure poetry by lab co-director Marisa Cohn, followed by a hands-on workshop with markers, stickers, scissors, and string. Finally, we shared our poetry with each other - and had cake… of course. Thanks to everyone who joined us. |
Ada Lovelace day - In Osaka
On October 12th at Osaka University in Japan, an ETHOS-spirited Ada Lovelace day unfolded as part of a visiting fellowship held by Rachel Douglas-Jones during her sabbatical. The event had two parts: first, a critical pedagogies roundtable hosted by Asli Kemiksiz and Atsuro Morita, with Rachel participating from ETHOS and Hugo Reinert participating from the Oslo School of Environmental Humanities (OSEH), Norway. Uniting the different settings was the theme of crisis, left open to definition by participants. The roundtable was then followed by a multilingual poetry workshop, using the EU AI regulation and three pieces of guidance on AI from Japan’s advisory commission. You can read much more about the event in Rachel’s blogpost linked at the bottom of this newsletter. |
Symposium for a Just Future
On October 11th lab manager Henriette Friis was invited to take part in the second iteration of Symposium for a Just Future, hosted by In Futurum. The symposium series centres around environmental justice in Europe and saw activists, academics, practitioners, and artists come together for a series of critical conversations around the intersections of racism, colonialism, classicism, and other isms - and how they stall the progress for environmental justice. The symposium featured talks and panels with Aka Hansen, Mikaela Loach, Sheena Anderson, Anni-Sofia Niittyvuopio, Rune Hjarnø, Naiha Khiljee, Carla Cammilla Hjort, Selma de Montgomery, Pireeni Sundaralingam, and Vasna Ramasar. A big thank you to In Futurum for hosting these important conversations. |
Designing with the Ruins
On October 23rd the lab was lucky enough to co-host a workshop with designer and researcher Simona Mancusi. “In the age of the service economy, we have been programmed to design with intangible institutions and infrastructures. We have become exceptionally good at mapping flows of money, data and information. But there's a trap, we do all this as if it were to happen in a vacuum. By rendering the materials of design abstract, we deny the physical reality behind our service economy. The embodied labour, land and biophysical resources employed (and exploited) necessary to keep the machine running. To quote Silvia Federici: "[...] the tremendous leap in technology required by the computerization of work and the integration of information into the work process has been paid at the cost of a tremendous increase of exploitation at the other end of the process." Hiding the material reality of our (service) economy means contributing to justifying the capitalistic exploitation and appropriation happening at the so-called "peripheries". Therefore, in this workshop, we want to bring time and space back into the design discourse, acknowledging territories and their histories as key elements of the landscapes we design with and in. Particularly, we are going to immerse ourselves in the current landscapes of decay and capitalistic ruins. Through a speculative hands-on exploration, we will prototype answers to this question: in a landscape of decay, what is our positionality and what ruins do we want to leave behind?” If you missed this workshop but would be interested in participating in a second iteration, do reach out! |
Stay up-to-date on LinkedIn and Instagram
Since this newsletter only comes out once a month-ish, and our planning sometimes moves a lot faster than that I would encourage you to follow the lab on LinkedIn and Instagram so you don’t miss any of our fantastic future events! |
Feminist Technoscience in Practice - series
More recently, we have launched our mini-series on Feminist Technoscience. The events focus on the practical application of digital and critical feminist methods. The series consists of three events that feature talks by guest speakers followed by workshops that invite you to experiment with the methods that are presented during the talks. The events are rooted in technical practices but are tailored to accommodate any level of technical experience. The Feminist Technoscience in Practice series is spearheaded by our Lab TA Louie Meyer, and the first event in the series welcomed researcher Sofie Burgos-Thorsen. Sofie gave a talk on The Urban Belonging Project followed by a workshop in which participants got to experiment with data visualization methods. A big thank you to Sofie for sharing the critical work done in the Urban Belonging Project as well as in Sofie’s PhD thesis. |
Feminist Technoscience in Practice - more workshops
We’ve got two more workshops coming up, and there’s still time to sign up! Assistive Technologies
November 7th, 15:30-17:30 at the IT University
The second event in the series welcomes our excellent guest speaker Mai Hartmann, Digital Accessibility Specialist and Lecturer. She will give a talk on how assistive technologies mediates user experience and discuss potential pitfalls of empathy.
The workshop invites participants to explore and interact with assistive technology, particularly the screen readers that are inherent to their own device(s). Furthermore, this workshop explores differences in HTML boilerplates and how the code and application of semantic tags influence the experience of using a screen reader. Sign up here! |
Image generation: A trans perspective
November 14th, 15:30-17:30 at the IT University
This is the third and last event (at least for now) in our series. We are excited to welcome our exceptional guest speaker Ada Ada Ada. Ada Ada Ada is an algorithmic artist, who works within an intersectional eco-feminist framework. She will give a talk on image generations, and perform live prompting with Stable Diffusion to illustrate and discuss limitations of the technology.
With inspiration from the talk by Ada Ada Ada, the workshop invites participants to experiment with phrasing of prompts, particularly focusing on minority groups. We have set up a Jupyter Notebook for participants to work from in Google Colab with suggested flows of prompting. We encourage you to bring your laptop to the event. Sign up here! We hope to see you there! |
Text and photos by Rachel Douglas-Jones. On October 12th at Osaka University in Japan, an ETHOS-spirited Ada Lovelace day unfolded as part of a visiting fellowship held by Rachel Douglas-Jones during her sabbatical. The event had two parts: first, a critical pedagogies roundtable hosted by Asli Kemiksiz and Atsuro Morita, with Rachel participating from ETHOS and Hugo Reinert participating … Read more. |
ETHOS Lab Open Hours The Lab has regular opening hours throughout the semester on Thursdays from 11 to 14,
allowing for a lunch break around noon. The opening hours are co-working time for the Lab staff, as well as an opportunity for impromptu meetings and informal encounters for the community of faculty and students. This is an opening for bouncing off ideas, getting feedback, and work in the Lab. Everyone is welcome, just pop by! |
|
|
|
|
|
|
