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May 2022 Spring Time Updates from the Lab |
Each year when spring returns to Copenhagen the streets fill with people. One can’t help but wonder: Where have all these people been hiding for the past 6 months?! There is a buzzing feeling of excitement to reclaim the public spaces - an enchantment with the city, if you will. As spring has well and truly arrived in Copenhagen, we return from our little newsletter hiatus. Much has happened since we last wrote to you all, and we are excited to catch you up on all things ETHOS. |
Embroidered rhythms of returning ~ The lab community convened on March 16th in an embroidery workshop to reflect on and materialise rhythms and temporalities of returning to campus after the corona lockdown measures were undone in the beginning of February. Additionally, the workshop served to welcome a new member, Brother NV870 Special Edition embroidery machine, into the lab. Textile arts and textile manufacture have a long and well documented social and technological history interwoven with computation. Lara Reime and Marisa Cohn prompted the participants to choreograph the machine, and Mace Ojala guided us through TurtleStitch, a visual programming language for turtle-based graphics especially adapted for embroidery machines. Everyone's designs were compiled together, and the workshop concluded with us observing the machine embroidering it. The performance was surprisingly musical, and pleasant to listen to. The resulting textile is now on the lab wall, and we look forward to threading embroidery into our future research projects. |
ETHOS Lab will further explore the theme of data materialisation through a workshop accepted to the Design Research Society conference held in Bilbao, Spain in late June. The workshop, “Materializing Bodily Relations to Data Worlds Through Knotting,” has been developed in collaboration with Vasiliki Tsaknakis from AIR Lab, Lara Reime from Technologies in Practice, and Taina Pérez-Bustos founder of Artesenal Tecnológica and Associate Professor at Universidad Nacional de Colombia. At the workshop, which we will pilot in the ETHOS Lab on May 20th, we will work with knotting techniques as a tangible approach to materialise bodily experiences found in data residues and traces during the time of the pandemic. Shifting from visualisation to materialisation offers a way to broaden from the representation of working with data to a focus on the labour of physical making and the affective and emotional dimensions of our personal data. We will work with knotting methods of Quipu, a historical data storage and archival technique developed by the Inca. |
Python Study Group (PSG) has returned for another round of weekly coding sessions. This semester we have extended the amount of sessions to a total of 10 sessions. Having more time with the attendees the PSG team saw an opportunity to introduce a new initiative called PSG Talks. The idea behind PSG Talks is to present some universal programming concept the attendees either have or will experience in their programming journey. The event only consists of a brief ‘snack size’ introduction to a subject, given that PSG is a study group where attendees explore and learn with and from each other and not (another) course. The theme for PSG Talks for this semester was “Errors” and “Error handling”. The talks were 15 minutes each and were held in March, with the first one introducing the concept of errors, and the second focusing on some practical techniques for how to discover and handle errors. The attendees have shown great interest in the initiative, and a continuation of PSG Talks for coming semesters will be discussed. |
On April 1st we were joined by our new Lab Manager Henriette Friis (she/her). She joins the ETHOS community with a background in design, sustainability and feminist organising. Henriette recently moved back to Copenhagen after finishing her MA in Creative Sustainability from Aalto University in Finland, where she focused her efforts on social and political sustainability. At Aalto she was a core member of the Crisis Interrogatives research collective and assisted with the creation of a new course on Critical AI and Data Justice in Society. Last spring she lead the efforts to organise the Feminist Futures Helsinki hackathon - a hackathon which centered feminist values and theories to imagine alternative futures for Finnish society. Since her BA in Industrial Design at the Royal Danish Academy Henriette has been interested in bringing an ethnographic approach to her design work - something that proved extremely useful during various fieldwork trips in Nepal and Mexico, as well as in her work as a service- and organisational design consultant. Henriette hopes to enable the ETHOS spirit to reach further beyond the walls of the university and to establish mutually beneficial community collaborations. |
In an effort to nurture our goal to cultivate enchantment, we gathered at the end of April for a creative writing retreat in Christianshavn. The purpose of the retreat was to experiment with collaborative writing formats as a lab community. The retreat was structured around a set of invitations to collaborative writing that we all, as participants, brought to the day. We workshopped a number of writing ideas which may turn into papers, blog posts, website verbiage, manuals or reading group proposals. We explored different themes such as maging as a method we employ in the lab, the ETHOS solar server project, and technofeminist digital methods. |
On May 10th we will gather for the final Pitch & Play of this academic year. The four Junior Researchers, Isabella Engelke, Teresa Beata Bundgård, Hanna Karin Wideman Grue, and David Søbæk Olsen, will be showcasing the findings of their research projects and engaging with the ETHOS community to receive feedback. |
On May 11th 09:30 – 11:45 we will meet for an introduction session with our new 3D printer. We will begin with a short introduction to the machine (Prusa i3 MKS+), we’ll get some hands-on experience by printing some small objects to be used in the lab at later events, and we’ll come up with some guidelines on how/when to use the printer. No preparation required, but you will need your laptops during the event. |
Also coming up at the end of May, ETHOS is co-sponsoring an event on critical mapping at Folkets Hus. ETHOS affiliate researcher Adam Veng is one of the organisers. The Power of Mapping: A gathering for critical mapping methods and their radical potential ~ “Throughout history mapping and cartography-making has been deeply embedded in the mechanisms of power. We see this in the on-going theft of Indigenous land, in European colonisation throughout the world, and in how city and state councils use maps to gentrify and evict marginalised communities. Yet maps are also used by artists, activists and communities to draw themselves, their histories, struggles and hopes onto their own self-determined maps. We are inviting you - activists, citizen groups, artists, researchers, intrigued people and mapmakers - for a workshop on May 22nd 12:00 - 20:00 to discuss, play around with, and learn more about this loaded tool. We will be joined by a group of skilled and inspiring people from Denmark and abroad to engage us in how they use mapping as a critical and collaborative practice. See Facebook event for list of workshop facilitators, program, sign-up and other details”. |
By Teresa Beata Bundgård Experiences of Sexism in the Crypto-Space On a late autumn day, I sit down in front of my computer and open Zoom - a trusted friend and help in the time of covid-19. The questions are ready, and the background research has been done, notes neatly written in my notebook, with a cup of freshly brewed …
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By Hanna Karin Wideman Grue Failing is seeing? An initial association This first paragraph is a parenthesis about my featured image above. The image itself is the materialization of my failed attempt to make a generic collage of children and tech in schools. Why did I fail? Well. I turned to www to collect images for a collage with children … Read more. |
By David Søbæk Olsen Six months before the publication of this blog post, I began my time as a Junior Researcher (JR) with the question “What interests me?”. I had recently completed a Bachelor thesis which focused on the use of digital methods in valuing cultural effects in the service sector. During the six-month project period, I was simultaneously following …
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ETHOS Lab Open Hours The Lab has regular opening hours throughout the semester on Thursdays from 10 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! |
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