Mostrando entradas con la etiqueta femke snelting. Mostrar todas las entradas
Mostrando entradas con la etiqueta femke snelting. Mostrar todas las entradas

23.7.25

We Are Tectonic!

Out now @ Lagoonscapes Journal:
We Are Tectonic! A Queer Geophysics for Intra-Solidarities and Resisting the Cloud Regime

Img: The Underground Division / TITiPI

 

[abstract]

This paper analyses how Big Tech and global consultancy firms are asserting control over carbon removal certification and governance through infrastructure solutions and technical standards. We argue that defining gaps in the underground constitutes a global takeover of material sovereignty, encompassing both knowledge and geological formations. We unearth Big Tech’s strategies of infra-solutionism to demonstrate, drawing on the work of inhuman geographer Kathryn Yusoff, how this takeover reinforces geological grammars and essentialises racialised and sexualised categories that disconnect us from the Earth. Drawing on queer poetry together with work of Marxist agronomist Amílcal Cabral we advocate for resistance to dominant geopower and form transnational solidarities against the cloud regime.


Full article: edizionicafoscari.unive.it/med
 

Cascading animation: ddivision.xyz/rockrepo/crystal

20.6.24

from lost to the river ≠ de perdidos al río

Friday, 28 June 2024, 13:00-17:00

Online workshop organised with maiz & TITiPI

Session in English, informal translations facilitated.
The event is free of charge. Please register by e-mail: kontakt @ maiz.at

 

 

How are digital technologies changing our collective lives? What techno-politics do we practice, and which dependencies can we afford?

In this first episode*, we will look into machine translation tools and how they keep transforming everyday language. Together we will pay attention to the vast systems of capture and extraction that are involved in "saying" things across languages, online.

"From lost to the river" is the machinic translation into English of the Spanish expression "de perdidos al río", which refers to an attitude of not giving up trying, as there's nothing left to lose. We could also think of this expression as a call for finding the courage to imagine other types of digital tools, tools that contribute to social and environmental justice instead of the opposite.

Translation tools, automatic transcription, captioning and algorithmic speech-to-text set up relations full of losses and dependencies but at the same time they open up possibillities for bordercrossings and trans-local organising. How to practice linguistic complexity in daily digital landscapes?

This online workshop is for everyone who aims to crack open the box of digital languaging. We will exchange practices of translation on-line, and study some of the technologies involved. We will also experiment with machinic transcriptions, closed captions and automated translations. Special guest: digital artist Aggeliki Diakrousi.

+ info: https://titipi.org/?projects/fromlosttotheriver

 *from lost to the river ≠ de perdidos al río is a pilot for a series-in-the-making developed by maiz and The Institute for Technology in the Public Interest. Working towards anti-colonial and anti-fascist technologies, the sessions are an occasion to discuss, study and reimagine digital infrastructures across many interests and forms of knowledge. Graphic design: Emma Geslot

19.6.24

a platform report



→  https://hamacaonline.net/media/publicacio/hamaca%20platform%20report.pdf 

Este documento presenta el informe solicitado por Hamaca a Karl Moubarak, Jara Rocha, y Femke Snelting para reunir los principales aspectos que una pagina web de una entidad cultural debería o podría tener en cuenta en torno a criterios de sostenibilidad. El encargo esta vinculado a la renovacion de la pagina web de Hamaca (proyecto que inicia en 2024), pero pretende servir de referencia para cualquier tipo de proyecto que documente y comparta materiales culturales, con una especial dedicacion a los que incorporan vídeo.
 

El documento incluye una reflexion y posicionamiento técnico-político de partida; a
continuacion analiza las distintas dimensiones infraestructurales, de uso y mantenimiento de la web que podrían ser tenidas en cuenta partiendo del caso de estudio hamacaonline.net; por ultimo plantea un cuestionario en torno a criterios que pueden ayudar a tomardecisiones a la hora de reestructurar un servicio web.


→ para leer la version en espanol, ve a la pagina 3


***
Aquest document presenta l’informe sol·licitat per Hamaca a Karl Moubarak, Jara Rocha, i Femke Snelting per a reunir els principals aspectes que una pàgina web d’una entitat cultural deuria o podria tenir en compte entorn de criteris de sostenibilitat. L’encàrrec està vinculat a la renovacio de la pàgina web d’Hamaca (projecte que inicia en 2024), pero pretén servir de referència per a qualsevol tipus de projecte que documenti i comparteixi materials culturals, amb una especial dedicacio als quals incorporen vídeo.
 

El document inclou una reflexio i posicionament tècnic-polític de partida; a continuacio analitza les diferents dimensions infraestructurals, d’us i manteniment de la web que podrien ser tingudes en compte partint del cas d’estudi hamacaonline.net; finalment planteja un qüestionari entorn de criteris que poden ajudar a prendre decisions a l’hora de reestructurar un servei web.
 

→ per a llegir la versio en català, veu a la pàgina 31
 

***
This document presents the report commissioned by Hamaca to Karl Moubarak, Jara Rocha, and Femke Snelting to gather the main aspects that a website of a cultural entity should or could take into account around sustainability criteria. The assignment is linked to the renovation of Hamaca’s website (a project that starts in 2024), but is intended to serve as a reference for any type of project that documents and shares cultural materials, with a special dedication to those that incorporate video. The document includes a reflection and a technical-political starting position; analyzes the different infrastructural, usage and maintenance dimensions of the web that could be taken into account based on the hamacaonline.net case study; finally, it poses a questionnaire around criteria that can help to make decisions when restructuring a web service.
 

→ to read the English version, go to page 58

 

Pdf: https://hamacaonline.net/media/publicacio/hamaca%20platform%20report.pdf


30.11.23

Actividad Done 7 - Métodos sintéticos

En Foto Colectania, jueves 30 de noviembre de 2023, de 18h a 21h 



El primer encuentro de la nueva edición de DONE abordará las mutaciones del ecosistema de la imagen por el repentino auge de nuevos modelos de creación y representaciones sintéticas, entre las que se encuentran las generadas con herramientas de Inteligencia Artificial (IA).

¿Qué métodos podríamos adoptar para entender las imágenes sintéticas? ¿Cómo podemos aprender a convivir con ellas y a intervenirlas? ¿De qué forma podemos reconstruir imaginarios o epistemologías, evolucionando hacia otros modos de ver?

... compartiremos la propuesta ¡Muerte a la frescura mortífera! , resultado de un método sintético co-elaborado con Femke Snelting.

+ info: https://fotocolectania.org/es/activity/414/actividad-done-7-metodos-sinteticos 

30.1.23

[panel] Sublime Depths | transmediale 2023

With Femke Snelting, Georgina Voss, Irene Fubara-Manuel, Jara Rocha

Moderated by Romi Ron Morrison

 


02.02.2023 17:30  Akademie der Künste / Hanseatenweg / Club Room

Volumetric technologies are increasingly sought after commodities in a wide range of contexts from entertainment to city planning to military surveillance. Rendering a reality of their own, instead of the one's captured, volumetric technologies reflect a nested regime of representations, truths, and ideologies, producing an affective computational sublime. Hidden inside glossy renders and visual effects, these representations proliferate explicit politics, taking up space, volume and depth, minimising difference and the modes of representation.

In this conversation, Femke Snelting, Georgina Voss, Irene Fubara-Manuel, and Jara Rocha, with moderator Romi Ron Morrison, discuss the problems and promises of volumetric technologies and their seamless movement between entertainment, shopping, ikea catalogues, smart borders, and wildlife preservation. Unpacking the affects of the computational sublime, their conversation aims to bring bodies and data points and spaces back into relation with each other.


 

+ info: https://2023.transmediale.de/en/event/sublime-depths

 

4.10.22

Booklaunch | Volumetric Regimes: Material Cultures of Quantified Presence

"Volumetric Regimes makes an essential contribution to the ways in which we must rethink matter politically and ecologically. As the book unfolds, ontological questions of intensities, dimensions, and substance are denaturalised as mere properties of matter that can be measured, modified, and thus computed, which today are exemplified by 3D modelling and parametric design, but are shown to be part of processional life-worlds that relational and mutually informed and informing. Not the partitioning of bodies, particles, datapoints, and spaces as techno-capital and techno-science would have it but a material enmeshment that brings the volumetric into presence otherwise." Susan Schuppli

This radical multi-form collective investigation traces the cutting edge of how bodies and subjects are rendered technologically. It proposes multi-dimensional forms of intervention, and claims an experimental horizon of the possible, shattering the mantra of unavoidability.” — Olga Goriunova

 

To download the pdf and/or order a paper copy on-line: 

http://data-browser.net/db08.html

http://www.openhumanitiespress.org/books/titles/volumetric-regimes/ 

Six years of trans*feminist disobedient action-research on 3D technologies, paradigms and procedures culminated in Volumetric Regimes: Material Cultures of Quantified Presence (Open Humanities Press 2022, DATA-browser series, eds. Geoff Cox and Joasia Krysa). Compiled by Possible Bodies (Femke Snelting and Jara Rocha), the publication brings together diverse materials on the political, aesthetic, computational and relational regimes in which volumes are calculated. The book foregrounds technological practices that invite widenings of what is possible. With contributions by Sophie Boiron, Maria Dada, Pierre Huyghebaert, Phil Langley, Nicolas Malevé, Romi Ron Morrison, Simone C. Niquille, Helen V. Pritchard, Jara Rocha, Sina Seifee, Femke Snelting and Kym Ward.

Tuesday 4 October 20:00 – 22:00 @ Varia, Rotterdam (NL)
https://varia.zone/booklaunch-volumetric-regimes.html

The event at Varia celebrates the wiki-to-print paper edition designed and developed by Manetta Berends. It is a special moment in an ongoing multi-local launch, made up of playful contributions, informal responses and interactive formats proposed by comrades in the making of technosciences otherwise.

The evening starts with a performative introduction by the editors, followed by an intervention by designer, artist and researcher Alex Zakkas in conversation with Manetta Berends.


Books will be sold at the event at a reduced price.
All materials have also been published on a dedicated wiki: https://volumetricregimes.xyz/

Volumetric Regimes is produced with support from London South Bank University and Liverpool John Moores University.


(pic by Varia https://varia.zone/archive/2022-10-04-Volumetric-Regimes-booklaunch/)



3.10.21

Ada Lovelace Day: Volumetric Regimes [Madrid]

Volumetric Regimes
Ada Lovelace Day feat. Possible Bodies (Femke Snelting, Jara Rocha)
 
Sábado, 9 de octubre de 16:00 a 21:00h
 
 
[ENG]

What is going on with 3D!? This question, both modest and enormous, triggered six years of trans*feminist research that are about to be published as "Volumetric Regimes: Material Cultures of Quantified Presence" (Possible Bodies, Eds.; forthcoming at Open Humanities Press). The research trajectory was provoked by an intuitive but collective concern about the way 3D computing quite routinely seems to render racist, sexist, ableist, speciest and ageist worlds. Asking about what is up with 3D is especially urgent when observing its application in border-patrol devices, for climate prediction modeling, in advanced biomedical imaging or throughout the gamify-all approach of overarching industries, from education to logistics.

Trans*feminist research (including feminist technosciences) is neither busy with the celebration of the merits of so-called women* nor with the reproduction of binary categorizations. It is rather about radical interdependence, mutual affection and solidary transdisciplinarity. For this edition of Ada Lovelace Day we therefore invited a gang of local thinkers-doers to respond to, re-interpret, critique, remix and problematize materials from "Volumetric Regimes: Material Cultures of Quantified Presence". The event proposes a spacetime of intimacy with the project and its publication, as read through the specific sensibilities of known and unknown comrades in the making of technosciences otherwise. It will include playful contributions, informal responses and interactive formats proposed by Carmen Romero Bachiller, Marta Echaves, Blanca Pujals and Alejandra López Gabrielidis.

*"Ada Lovelace Day (ALD) is an international celebration of the achievements of women in science, technology, engineering and maths (STEM). It aims to increase the profile of women in STEM and, in doing so, create new role models who will encourage more girls into STEM careers and support women already working in STEM."

 
 
[CAST]

¿Qué está pasando con el 3D? Esta pregunta, tan modesta como enorme, desencadenó seis años de una investigación trans*feminista que están a punto de publicarse como "Volumetric Regimes: Material Cultures of Quantified Presence" (Possible Bodies, Eds.; de próxima aparición en Open Humanities Press). La trayectoria de la investigación fue provocada por una preocupación intuitiva pero colectiva sobre el modo en que la computación en 3D parece presentar y representar de forma rutinaria mundos racistas, sexistas, capacitistas, especistas y edadistas. Preguntarse qué pasa con el 3D es especialmente urgente cuando se observa su aplicación en dispositivos de patrullaje fronterizo, para el modelado de predicciones climáticas, en la obtención de imágenes biomédicas avanzadas o en todo el enfoque de gamificación de los procesos industriales en general, aplicado desde la educación hasta la logística.

La investigación trans*feminista (incluidas las tecnociencias feministas) no se ocupa de celebrar los méritos de las llamadas mujeres* ni de reproducir las categorizaciones binarias. Por ello, en esta edición del Ada Lovelace Day se ha invitado a un grupo de pensadoras locales a responder, reinterpretar, criticar, remezclar y problematizar los materiales de esta publicación. El evento plantea un espacio-tiempo de intimidad con el proyecto y su publicación, que será leída a través de las sensibilidades específicas de compañeras conocidas y por conocer en el hacer de las tecnociencias de otra manera. Así, contará con aportaciones experimentales, respuestas informales y formatos interactivos de Marta Echaves, investigadora y comisaria independiente; Alejandra López Gabrielidis, filósofa especializada en arte y tecnologías digitales; la arquitecta, investigadora espacial y escritora Blanca Pujals, y Carmen Romero Bachiller, doctora en Sociología y profesora en la UCM. Cada una de ellas mantendrá un debate posterior con les comisaries, Jara Rocha y Femke Snelting.

La publicación “Volumetric Regimes: Material Cultures of Quantified Presence” surge de Possible Bodies, un proyecto colaborativo sobre la intersección entre la investigación artística y académica que se inició en 2016 para explorar las entidades concretas, y al mismo tiempo complejas y ficticias, de los llamados "cuerpos" en el contexto de la computación 3D. La investigación se centra en las genealogías de cómo los cuerpos y las tecnologías se han constituido mutuamente. La publicación reúne diversos materiales de una conversación en curso entre artistas, desarrolladores de software y teóricos que trabajan con técnicas y tecnologías para detectar, rastrear, imprimir, modelar y renderizar volúmenes.

ADA LOVELACE DAY

Reconocida como la primera programadora de la historia, Ada Augusta Byron King dedujo la capacidad de los ordenadores para ir más allá de los simples cálculos de números, lo que conocemos en la actualidad como “software”. El Día de Ada Lovelace (ALD) es una celebración internacional de los logros de las mujeres en ciencia, tecnología, ingeniería y matemáticas (STEM). Su objetivo es aumentar el perfil de las mujeres en STEM y, al hacerlo, crear nuevos modelos que animen a más niñas a seguir estas carreras y apoyar a las mujeres que ya trabajan en estos campos.

Registro en vídeo del evento completo (a cargo de Raúl):


 

Fotos del evento (a cargo de Lúcas):

flic.kr/p/2mzAcb8


Programa
16:00 Bienvenida y contextualización Volumetric Regimes (Jara Rocha + Femke Snelting)
16:30 Intervención de Alejandra López Gabrielidis
17:30 Intervención de Carmen Romero Bachiller
18:30 Descanso
19:00 Intervención de Marta Echaves
20:00 Intervención de Blanca Pujals
21:00 Fin

http://volumetricregimes.xyz

22.6.20

The Underground Division at live event with Hackers & Desginers' BodyBuilding: A Platform in Transition


On Wednesday 24th of June Hackers & Designers will launch their online platform, a website dedicated to publishing works from the BodyBuilding exhibition commissioned by Tetem. BodyBuilding was a process-driven exhibition curated by H&D, with the aim to investigate the intersection of technology and the agency of the (human, post-human, non-human) body from a maker's perspective. The physical and interactive structure, through which visitors were able to move, view, experience, and interact with the different artworks was on view only for a short duration due to the outbreak of COVID-19.

Join us on 24 June at 19.30 on the self-built streaming platform by H&D for a conversation with The Underground Division (Helen Pritchard, Femke Snelting and Jara Rocha) about their work ROCK REPO - questioning inhuman materialities and how they matter [in] the world, the crushing exploitations and extractions of normative 3D processes of geocomputation, and the act of translating between the 'physical' and the 'digital'. In addition to our conversations, we'll also listen together to a sound recording of 'Ultrasonic dreams of aclinical renderings' by The Underground Division and have a talk by Anja Groten on the notion of the platform and platformization. The audience will be able to join in the conversation via the chat.

With this website launch, and accompanying online event, H&D aims to translate the physical installation at Tetem into a digital space, taking the occasion to discuss digital platforms and hosting initiatives that currently gain a lot of attention. The event will pay attention to self-hosted video streaming and live video chat possibilities, as well as less conventional formats for online encounter, and invites the audience to join the discussion about the importance of challenging proprietary, commercial platforms such as Zoom, Teams and Google Hangouts that exploitat users' reliances on communication infrastructures in times of crisis.

Link to the live event and platform: https://live.hackersanddesigners.nl/

Spread the word and join the conversation!

More info:
https://bit.ly/2BiLOhU

1.4.20

We Have Always Been Geohackers

As the so-called earth spun before us, the universalist geologic commons emerged. A particular regime embedded within the software that imbues the histories of colonial earth-writing and a geologics in which “[e]xtractable matter must be both passive (awaiting extraction and possessing of properties) and able to be activated through the mastery of white men.” In these scenes of turbocapitalism, the making present of fossil fuels and metals as waiting for extraction heavily depend on software tools, such as Gplates, for handling, interpreting and 3-D visualization of geological data. These entangled softwares form an infrastructural complex of mining and measuring. Such tools belong to what we refer to as “the contemporary regime of volumetrics,” meaning the enviro-socio-technical politics––a computational aesthetics––that emerge with the measurement of volumes and generation of 3-D objects. A regime full of bugs. 

We Have Always Been Geohackers, To be published in: How to Relate, UdK (Universität der Künste), Berlin [forthcoming]

+ access to full online version at the Volumetric Regimes wiki.

16.1.20

BodyBuilding: ROCK REPO

The Underground Division (Helen Pritchard, Femke Snelting, and Jara Rocha) contributes to BodyBuilding, an exhibition curated by Hackers & Designers @ Tetem, Enschede. Opening 20 February 2020.

Change detection based on LiDAR data. In: Hutchinson, D. Jean, Matthew Lato, Dave Gauthier, Ryan Kromer, Matthew Ondercin, Megan van Veen, and Rob Harrap. “Applications of remote sensing techniques to managing rock slope instability risk.” In Canadian Geotechnical Conference, Quebec City, pp. 20-23. 2015.     

ROCK REPO

The ROCK REPO is a device built by a team of trans*feminist post-normal scientists for thinking with rock. Managing rock slope instabilities by LiDAR, optimising strata modelling for fracking, rendering cavities in 3D for gaming, and algorithmically smoothed rock shaders are all deposited in the REPO. The REPO inquires into these banal, exquisite, kitsch, static, carbonivourous figurations to fracture the normative 3D processes of geocomputation and their crushing exploitations and extractions.

Through making a collection of ROCKS, The Underground Division gets close to particular ROCKS and their unstable stories, as told through scientific and technological practice. Recognising that rocks have their own lively forces, the unruly team studies rocks’ 3D imaginings, the softwares and hardwares that rocks intervene on and builds new glossaries on the go. Their studies operate as a chipping away at what limits the resistant and destructive capacities of rocks.The ROCK REPO device crosscuts with rocks as ‘bodies’ in a purposeful move away from the somatic corporealities of individual humans. This shift allows the team to ask about inhuman materialities and how they matter [in] the world.

The REPO is an inquiry into what ROCK is, what it could be and the ways in which ROCK is seen or considered as an entity separate from its environment. It works with the ‘deep implicancies’* of this moving between figure and ground, asking what happens as result of this cut, and what other formations could appear. Sharpened by queer and anticolonial sensibilities, investigates the way ROCKS are quarried, measured, quantified, historicized, visualized, predicted, classified, modelled. The REPO as an instrument itself crystallizes other stories of spatial and temporal geologic processes and throws rocks through the glaciated windows of turbocapitalism.

* A term Denise Fereira Da Silva and Arjuna Neuman borrow from forensic genetics to talk about implications and entanglement in a non-linear way.

Also contributing: Kiki Mager and Nazanin Karimi. In collaboration with architect and designer Thomas Rustemeyer, H&D has developed an interactive exhibition structure which will host the works and invite you to actively participate in the (de) constructing the works.

+info: https://tetem.nl/event/bodybuilding/

6.6.19

Volumetric Ecologies: Environments, bodies and mediated worlds / Goldsmiths, U. of London / 14.06.2019


Bringing together researchers, artists and theorists to investigate the implications and possibilities of volumetric imaginaries of environments.
Building up or digging down, simulating more-than-human bodies, imagining new and fantastical volumes or managing resources, volumetrics are continuously figuring and refiguring life and living. From the fossil fuel industry to the so-called creative industries, computational practices are being deployed to imagine and materialise new volumes to exploit and inhabit. Computational arts practices such as 3D Scanning, Rendering and Animation, Augmented Reality and Virtual Reality have been a significant agent in shaping this volumetric turn. Consequently these new volumetric practices are in relentless dialogue with both the calculation and measurement of environments and the extraction and entertainment industries. This event seeks to explore critical volumetric practices capable of generating new political and affective ecologies and challenging dominant forms of geopolitical and industrial volumetric power.

With this in mind, Volumetric Ecologies brings together researchers, artists and theorists to investigate the implications and possibilities of volumetric imaginaries of environments. As part of the volumetric turn we explore more-than-human immersive technologies and the ways in which they figure environments across an expanded field of practice. The workshop will critically reflect on the agency of computational arts practices as a significant force in shaping the volumetric turn. The evening keynote by Deborah Levitt will explore how the world-building capacities of animation and VR technologies bring into being new forms of cosmotechnics. This two-day explorative forum presents a diversity of perspectives and practices which reimagine and recast the constructs of environment, bodies and mediated worlds through the articulation of volumetric practices.

Hosted by ICE, Computational Arts at Goldsmiths, and in partnership with the Vasari Research Centre for Art and Technology at Birkbeck, University of London. Organised by Helen Pritchard, Rachel Falconer and Joel McKim.

Friday June 14
11.00am - 1.00pm | Volumetric Demo open to public | VR Lab
1.00pm - 5.00pm | Workshop | VR Lab

Demo and research workshop providing an opportunity to engage with current practice and research across the volumetric field. Including work by artists and practitioners Nishat Awan, Marta Di Francesco, Clareese Hill, Hyperbation, Hyphen-Labs, Maggie Roberts aka mer, Possible Bodies: The Underground Division (Jara Rocha, Helen Pritchard and Femke Snelting), Jane Prophet and more tba.

With responses from Maria Dada, Claudia Dutson, Rebecca Coleman, Federico Fasce, Deborah Levitt, Joel McKim, Shela Sheikh, Chaired by Rachel Falconer.

+ info https://www.gold.ac.uk/calendar/?id=12597

29.1.19

Optimization and Its Miscontents: Counterpolitics of Surveillance Capitalism | + the case of Panoramic Unknowns

Workshop
Sun, 03.02.2019
10:3018:30
K1
HKW, Berlin
Taking as its starting point a framing of optimization and its miscontents, this one day-long workshop takes a deep dive into the technologies and applications underlying optimization logic. Participants examine artworks and scholarly projects that attempt to gauge and broaden our conception and understanding of optimization systems, and offer techniques to expand our political agency under these circumstances. Through these counter-political strategies, participants situate our relationship with these systems and explore the means at our disposal—be they subversion, queering, resistance, or militancy—for engagement within and outside of the optimization regime.

With: 


Participating contributors: Ramon Amaro, Dia Kayyali, Dmytri Kleiner, Ben Miller, Phoebe V. Moore, Conrad Moriarty-Cole, Rebekah Overdorf, Martin Pasek, Helen Pritchard, Jara Rocha, Clemens Schöll, Femke Snelting

+++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++

Case: Panoramic Unknowns

Proposed by: Possible Bodies (Jara Rocha, Femke Snelting)

Unknown Object Tracking [1] is being applied on an industrial scale in robotics, car traffic control and 'intelligent' surveillance systems; think Amazon warehouses and Google street view. This technique employs panoramic cameras, which provide 360-degree views that are processed by specialised software in order to locate volumes in space. But when surveying areas like factories, big halls, streets or even a single room, there are always many 'blind spots' and 'unknown objects'. Machine Learning is currently being employed to optimize such known unknowns.

Possible Bodies [2] is a collaborative research on the very concrete and at the same time complex and fictional entities that "bodies" are, asking what matter-cultural conditions of possibility render them volumetrically present. For Optimization and its miscontents we invite participants to use their political/aesthetic/technical sensibilities towards the computation of volumetrics. We invite you to attend to Unknown Object Tracking [UOT] as a spacetime mattering that is not necessarily organized from the outside to the inside (as the optimised god-like sight) but from the inside-out, somehow both adjusting to and reversing a 3D paradigm of convergence into a "point of origin". 

The seamlessness that a 360 capture demands is based on the analysis of tiny 'features' that are sophisticatedly attended to by Computer Vision agencies. Features are differences, anomalies, visual anchors, identifiers that are considered to be specific for a single capture.

UOT depends on processing past data and simulations that are kept, learned and trained before being projected into the future, while real time data from the camera is used to adapt to changes. Their predictive claim is based on past measurements that make optimization systems vulnerable to unexpected change and/or wild surprises, as the unknown can only be detected if it falls within the boundaries of the probable. Where is the possible in considering panoramic unknowns? What if we consider the unknown not only as risky but fundamental to an orchestation of spacetime that is not necessarily harmonic and predictable, but also dissonant and accidented?


+ info: https://2019.transmediale.de/content/optimization-and-its-miscontents-counterpolitics-of-surveillance-capitalism

Depths and Densities: A Possible Bodies Workshop at Transmediale 2019


Workshop
Fri, 01.02.2019
15:0018:00
K2
HKW, Berlin

The contemporary infrastructural complex of mining and measuring soil depends on software tools for geological data handling, interpretation, and 3D-vizualisation. Such tools power techno-colonial subsurface exploration with computational techniques and paradigms. Possible Bodies (Jara Rocha, Femke Snelting, and featuring Helen Pritchard) invites you to collectively study open source tools for geo-modelling while attending to the different regimes they operate within. It will inject resistant vocabularies, misuses and/or f(r)ictions that could affect the extractivist bias embedded in the computation of earth’s depths and densities. The workshop is a trans*feminist experiment and an act of affirmative responsibility-taking for this turbocapitalist momentum. Possible Bodies is a collaborative research, interrogating the concrete and, at the same time, the fictional entities of “bodies” in the context of 3D-tracking, -modelling, -rendering and -scanning.

with  Femke Snelting, Helen Pritchard & Jara Rocha


https://possiblebodies.constantvzw.org

Participants are encouraged to bring their laptops for the workshop.

+ info on workshop and festival: https://2019.transmediale.de/content/depths-and-densities-a-possible-bodies-workshop 

13.12.18

[residencia] en Azala, para ir haciendo una película

La semana que viene, en el precioso espacio de Azala (Lasierra, Vitoria), Femke y yo trabajaremos en una película que aún no tiene título. Sí sabemos que tratará sobre las condiciones materiales y culturales de la computación contemporánea de los volúmenes corporales: tomografía por ordenador, procesamiento de geodatos y modelado de criaturas en 3D. A través de una lectura trans*feminista de software cotidiano y más especializado, su arquitectura, vocabulario e interfaces, la película rastreará las formas probables en que el tiempo y la temporalidad (legados, proyecciones, duraciones, mediciones...) operan en la computación. Difractará este vector para permitir que aparezcan otros posibles. Las imágenes se renderizarán computacionalmente (sin lente). El sonido también puede seguir las mismas condiciones.

A  ver.



+ info: http://www.azala.es/es/residencias-artisticas/pagina_1/2018/12/17/una-pelicula-sin-titulo.html

9.1.18

boundaries do not sit still / a.pass (Brussels) january-april 018



[Research centre 18/I curated by Femke Snelting]

In Posthumanist Performativity: Toward an Understanding of How Matter Comes to Matter, feminist theorist Karen Barad examines how apparatuses stabilize and destabilize boundaries. “Apparatuses are dynamic (re)configurings of the world, specific agential practices/intra-actions/performances through which specific exclusionary boundaries are enacted.” she writes.


As an ‘external guest’ invited into the research center from January until April 2018, I would like to turn Barad’s parental advisory into an invitation to experiment, speculate and reflect on the intra-actions through which in- and exclusionary boundaries are performed in a.pass itself.

Boundaries do not sit still follows from a long interest in the interdependent relations between technology and practice, resulting in a series of projects and questions that have been invited into dialogue with a.pass at several occasions.

How do digital tools and artistic research co-construct each other? How are gestures, discourses and behaviours shaped, oriented, communicated and defined through the (digital) apparatuses at work? How is research articulated and in what way are its boundaries enacted through software, infrastructures and devices?

These questions will be addressed in mentorings, informal meetings within/around a.pass and in research activities related to The Possible Bodies inventory. In addition, I will host five Monday Readings (with Martino Morandi, Seda Guerses and Sina Seifee).

 *

At the start of 2018, Possible Bodies is one-and-a-half year under-way. It will have had rotations in an art institution in Stuttgart (Schloss Solitude), a technology-oriented centre for arts production and research (Hangar) and a design college (Bau) in Barcelona. From January onward, we open up the inventory in and to a.pass as a resource to be reworked, annotated, appropriated and expanded. Possible Bodies changes rhythm in order to prepare a fourth rotation in the fall that might take the shape of a publication.

The presence of the Possible Bodies inventory, its methodologies and some of its agents at a.pass can hopefully allow further inquiries into the tensions between ‘probable’ and ‘possible’. As an object of study, we will for example be exploring the workings and worldings of Slicer, an open source software platform for medical image informatics, image processing, and three-dimensional visualization. The software ecology of Slicer interests us because it allows us to explore processes of articulation, dissection, separation, segmentation, segregation and difference.

+info: https://apass.be/boundaries-do-not-sit-still/ + https://apass.be/possible-bodies/

17.7.17

[worksession] Possible Bodies Rotation II: Imagined mishearings



Este verano, el Inventario de Possible Bodies rota hacia Hangar para una residencia de dos semanas. Esta investigación bienal opera a lo largo de un inventario que contiene piezas artísticas, scripts, documentación, manuales, visitas guiadas, interfaces, vocabularios, performances, software – demos, herramientas, objetos físicos, animaciones, conceptos matemáticos, juegos, renders, etc. Esta colección móvil es un contexto para prestar atención a los dispositivos dimensionales, notacionales, escalables y organizativos que hacen que los “llamados cuerpos” aparezcan y se co – relacionen.

La segunda rotación se centra en la imagen biomédica 3D y cómo en torno a ella se modelan, escanean y representan los “cuerpos reales”. A PossibleBodies le preocupa la forma en que las industrias farmacopornográficas, hollywoodianas y militares confunden técnicas y tecnologías. En este paisaje tecnocolonial y heteropatriarcal, violentas representaciones capacitistas, antropocéntricas, misóginas y xenófobas siguen emergiendo. En una serie de fanzines, se van a mutar rendiciones de cuentas ficticias de proyectos reales de código abierto como 3D-Slicer, ITK y echOpen con trabajos teóricos de sensibilidad transfeminista. Queremos preguntarnos: ¿cómo la imagen biomédica, tanto en contextos industriales como DIWO, compone, desplaza y segmenta a los “cuerpos”?



Del 20 al 30 de julio, Possible Bodies trabajará desde Hangar, on y offline, con Mercé Ardévol, Ona Bros, Sara Lafuente, Max Lehner, Nicolas Malevé, Peter Westenberg, Kym Ward y otras compañías, estirando y editando el inventario en una serie de fanzines que serán publicados en la web de Hangar y también distribuidos físicamente tras la residencia.

Si te interesa acercarte, estaremos en La Plaza todos los días. Estás invitada a visitar físicamente el inventario y sumarte al proceso de inventariado. Para dar con nosotras, escribe a [jara at riseup dot net].

El jueves 27 de julio a las 17:00 y a las 18:00, Jara Rocha y Femke Snelting harán visitas guiadas a través de los ítems y discutirán algunos asuntos clave del proyecto. El primer tour explorará críticamente varias técnicas de imaginación biomédica; el segundo (en colaboración con Kym ward) usará la noción de “Circluding” como un dispositivo de (des)orientación. Esta actividad es abierta al público, y la entrada es gratuita.

Possible Bodies Rotation I: Collective Inventorying” tuvo lugar en mayo de 2017 en la Akademie Schloss Solitude / Projektraum Römerstraße, Stuttgart y reunió a performers de software, artistas en bruto, desarrolladoras somáticas, activistas sensibles y académicas desobedientes.

+ info: https://hangar.org/es/residents/activitats-dels-residents/english-possible-bodies-rotation-ii-imagined-mishearings/
+ inventario: http://possiblebodies.constantvzw.org/inventory/?about


9.7.17

[paper] dis-orientation and its aftermath

[EN]

Following Sara Ahmed’s invitation “to think how queer politics might involve disorientation, without legislating disorientation as a politics”, the collective enquiry Possible Bodies research team inventoried three items related to 3D artifacts, following through the implications of the contemporary renderings of “dis-orientation” they invoke. Each in their own way, the items relate to a world that is becoming oblique, where inside and outside, up and down are switching places and where new perspectives become available. They speak of the mutual constitution of technology and bodies, of matter and semiotics, of nature and culture and how orientation and the subjectivities that emerge from it are managed across the technocolonial matrix of representation in turbo-capitalism. The three items allow for a look at tools that represent, track and model “bodies” through diverse cultural means of abstraction, and eventually convoke their aftermath in a call for “disobedient action-research”.

Keywords:
3D, technology, possible bodies, disorientation, inventory

[CAST]

Continuando la invitación de Sara Ahmed a “pensar cómo las políticas queer podrían implicar desorientación, sin legislar la desorientación como una política”, el equipo de la investigación colectiva Possible Bodies inventarió tres ítems relacionados con artefactos 3D, dando seguimiento a las implicaciones que las actualizaciones contemporáneas de “des-orientación” puedan invocar. Cada uno a su modo, los items están en relación con un mundo que está deviniendo oblicuo, donde dentro y fuera o arriba y abajo están cambiando posiciones, y donde nuevas perspectivas se hacen disponibles. Hablan de la mutua constitución de cuerpos y tecnologías, materia y semiótica, naturaleza y cultura; y de cómo la orientación y las subjectividades que de ahí emergen están
gestionadas por medio de la matriz de representación tecnocolonial en el turbocapitalismo. Los tres ítems permiten observar herramientas que representan, monitorizan y modelan “cuerpos”a través de diversos medios culturales de abstracción, y eventualmente convocan sus consecuencias en una llamada a la “investigación-acción desobediente”.

Palabras clave:
tecnología, 3D, cuerpos posibles, desorietación, inventario



DOWNLOAD FULL TEXT / TEXTO COMPLETO PARA DESCARGA:

https://www.inmaterialdesign.com/index.php/mag/article/download/27/22 

INMATERIAL, Vol.2 Num.3 (2017): https://www.inmaterialdesign.com/index.php/mag/issue/view/4





15.3.15

Let's first get things done! at LibrePlanet 2015

The current distance between those who organize their activism to develop “technical infrastructures” and those who bring their struggles becomes especially evident in the pragmatic spirit of getting things done. "Radical" activists may turn to services provided by Fortune 500 companies, while alternative tech initiatives sustained by a select (visionary and male) few may remain insistent on crypto with 9-lives. Through a close study of digital self-defense campaign sites, we want to pause to explore other modes of collaboration.

(present delegates: Seda Gürses & Jara Rocha; 
distant -but close- delegates: Femke Snelting, Miriyam Aouragh)



MIT Stata Center
Cambridge MA
Room 32-155
Saturday, march 21 
16.15h (Session Block 5A)

(for those not present, it will all be streamed from here:  https://libreplanet.org/2015)