The poject is part of SHAPE - Shaping Digital Citizenship, addressing and working with partner project under the theme of 'knowledge'
The shift toward digitization and reliance on knowledge produced by Big Tech corporate services raise important societal concerns: Search algorithms and AI models can inadvertently create information bias by prioritizing certain sources or viewpoints; users may be exposed to a limited or exclusive range of perspectives on issues of e.g., race, class or gender; the quality and accuracy of information can vary significantly; misinformation, biased content, or low-quality sources might be presented alongside reliable information, making it challenging for users to discern what is accurate. Moreover, digital services involve collecting vast amounts of user data that not only improve personalization but also raise important privacy concerns.
Knowledge Servers:
In this project, we investigate the growing reliance on corporate knowledge services and the associated risk of diminishing critical thinking abilities. The shift toward digitization and dependence on knowledge generated by e.g., Big Tech corporations’ AI services, as well as repositories of knowledge in popular culture and academia, raises concerns. When knowledge is delivered as a service, it comes with the risk of obscuring the conditions of knowledge production. Which knowledge is prioritized? Whose knowledge is represented? What labour goes into the production of knowledge, including, e.g., the ‘ghost work’ in training AI models? How many natural resources, what materials and how much emission of CO2? These questions point at the material, political, and organizational aspects of knowledge production.
We therefore ask the following research questions:
What cultural and technical strategies can foster democratic, socially and environmentally sustainable knowledge infrastructures?
How do these strategies facilitate collective examination of tensions inherent in the technologies themselves?
How can social collectives, connecting academia and grassroots movements, foster the creation of autonomous services and infrastructures that enhance knowledge, participation, and political immediacy?
Using theories and experimental methods from the humanities and social sciences we study how certain digital grassroots communities, often overlooked, offer alternative collective, reflective and autonomous participation models. In collaboration with communities, we develop and explore how these models inspire radical visions for knowledge infrastructures – operating on a smaller, peer-to-peer scale (rather than relying solely on client-server models), and attentive to minorities, diversity, equity, and sustainability.
The project benefits to the public in the following ways:
It raises awareness about the relation of infrastructure and knowledge through practical experimentation and therefore makes it easier for an audience to grasp a complex issue and its implications.
It increases literacy about these issues and establishes a common vocabulary to discuss these problems publicly.
It offers a methodology and a conceptual toolbox to do so.
By connecting different collectives and communities of practice, the project itself engages with a participative democratic practice.
The project unfolds as a series of activities around the creation of knowledge servers and services, with grassroots and community partners.
Research/knowledge servers, involving:
The creation and maintenance of a self-hosted research community server, hosting collaborative tools such as etherpad and a calibre web library.
Guidelines to ease the negotiation between institutional procedures, external grassroots partners, policies in IT department/support, and research and teaching needs.
A series of public workshops on the creation and maintenance self-hosting community servers (with external partners).
Community ‘shadow’ libraries, involving:
The creation and maintenance of a self-hosted web library, specifically focused on collective knowledge making.
The creation of a ‘federation’ of community driven web libraries, connecting likeminded knowledge-based shadow libraries.
A workshop format and series of workshops addressing the shadow library as communal knowledge space.
Community networks for publication, involving:
The creation of a community driven autonomous network (ServPub) for experimental publishing.
A series of workshops on community practices of print making using web-to-print techniques.
The publication of a ‘field guide’ using these techniques, on how to run autonomous servers, services, and knowledge infrastructures
Community-driven AI:
The creation of a sustainable autonomous server for AI image generation.
A workshop format and series of workshops on image generation, targeted local communities, using community data, and aiming at collective reflection on generative images and AI models as spaces of knowledge.
Selected publications:
Andersen, C. U., and Geoff Cox (eds). “Content/Form,” APRJA, volume 13, issue 1, 2024 (forthcoming).
Andersen, C. U., and Geoff Cox (eds). “Minor Tech,” APRJA, volume 12, issue 1, 2023.
Andersen, C. U., and Geoff Cox (eds). “Rendering Research,” APRJA, volume 11, issue 1, 2022.
Andersen, C. U. “Techniques of the face – on video conferencing art and politics.” Electronic Literature Organization, 2022.
Andersen, C. U., and S. Pold. “Protest and Aesthetics in The Metainterface Spectacle.” ISEA – International Symposium on Electronic Arts, 2022.
Andersen, C.U. & S. Pold, S. B. “Aesthetic Computational Criticism – How to critically and technically engage with the Climate Crisis.” In Miguel Carvalhais, André Rangel, Luísa Ribas, Mario Verdicchio (eds.). The Book of X. i2ADS: Research Institute in Art, Design and Society, 2022. DOI: 10.24840/978-989-9049-26-0
