Inke Arns, Marie Lechner (eds.): Computer Grrrls (2021) [German/English]

“Computer Grrrls brings together 23 international artistic positions that negotiate the complex relationship between gender and technology in past and present. The book deals with the link between women and technology from the first human computers to the current revival of technofeminist movements. An illustrated timeline with over 200 entries covers these developments from the 18th century to the present day.

The publication presents artists, hackers, makers and researchers who are working on how to think differently about technology: by questioning the gender bias in big data and artificial intelligence, promoting an open and diversified Internet, and designing utopian technologies.

The perspectives presented here address a broad range of topics: electronic colonialism, the place of minorities on the Internet, the sexist bias of algorithms, the dangerous dominance of white men in the development of artificial intelligence and digital surveillance, but also ideas on how we can change our traditional ways of thinking.

Artists included: Morehshin Allahyari, Manetta Berends, Zach Blas & Jemima Wyman, Nadja Buttendorf, Elisabeth Caravella, Jennifer Chan, Aleksandra Domanović, Louise Drulhe, Elisa Giardina Papa, Darsha Hewitt, Lauren Huret, Hyphen-Labs, Dasha Ilina, Roberte la Rousse, Mary Maggic, Caroline Martel, Lauren Moffatt, Simone C. Niquille, Jenny Odell, Tabita Rezaire, Erica Scourti, Suzanne Treister, Lu Yang.”

Publisher Kettler, Dortmund, and HMKV, Dortmund, May 2021
Open access
ISSN 2629-2629
ISBN 9783862069071
191 pages
HT coco

Publisher
Publisher
Exhibition (HMKV, 2018-2019)

PDF (59 MB)

Winnie Soon, Geoff Cox: Aesthetic Programming: A Handbook of Software Studies (2020)

“Aesthetic Programming explores the technical as well as cultural imaginaries of programming from its insides. It follows the principle that the growing importance of software requires a new kind of cultural thinking — and curriculum — that can account for, and with which to better understand the politics and aesthetics of algorithmic procedures, data processing and abstraction. It takes a particular interest in power relations that are relatively under-acknowledged in technical subjects, concerning class and capitalism, gender and sexuality, as well as race and the legacies of colonialism. This is not only related to the politics of representation but also nonrepresentation: how power differentials are implicit in code in terms of binary logic, hierarchies, naming of the attributes, and how particular worldviews are reinforced and perpetuated through computation.

Using p5.js, it introduces and demonstrates the reflexive practice of aesthetic programming, engaging with learning to program as a way to understand and question existing technological objects and paradigms, and to explore the potential for reprogramming wider eco-socio-technical systems. The book itself follows this approach, and is offered as a computational object open to modification and reversioning.”

Publisher Open Humanities Press, 2020
Creative Commons BY-SA License
ISBN 9781785420948
293 pages

Review: David Young (Computational Culture, 2021).

Project website
Publisher

PDF, PDF
HTML (added on 2021-6-8)
Git

Volume, 49: In Loving Support (2016)

“This publication shows the outcome of a four-day retreat organised by Het Nieuwe Instituut and Volume in June 2016. During this meeting, designers, artists and scientists researched the meaning of artificial intelligence on the practice of cultural research.”

Contributors: Marina Otero Verzier, Klaas Kuitenbrouwer, Luis Rodil-Fernández, Matthew Plummer-Fernandez, Ben Schouten, Nick Axel, Katía Truijen, Lilet Breddels, Merel Noorman, Tamar Shafrir, Füsun Türetken, Femke Snelting, Simone C. Niquille, Dorien Zandbergen.

An insert in Volume #49: Hello World!
Edited by Nick Axel
Publisher Archis Foundation, and Het Nieuwe Instituut, Rotterdam, September 2016
ISSN 1574-9401
32 pages

Publisher
Co-publisher

PDF, PDF