Hello! It’s us again, Oriana Persico and Salvatore Iaconesi from HER: She Loves data, ready for our non invasive newsletter with our adventures in the world of Nuovo Abitare, our condition, where data and computation are part of our everyday life and from data and computation depend so many of our rights and liberties.
This first half of 2021, for us, is really about Nuovo Abitare: we created a brand new not-for-profit association, and in the next months we will tell you how it will be possible to join in.
In this newsletter you will find:
“Di Protoni e Dati”, a new immersive artwork that visualizes very special forms of medical data;
“U-DATInos”, a new datapoietic artwork that lets you experience the health of river Oreto in Palermo/Sicily;
“Queer Data, Queer AI, Community AI”, demonstrating that different forms of Artificial Intelligence are possible;
“Impacting Rome”, a new cultural ecosystem for the city of Rome
“A new We”: a new publication, exploring new alliances with Data and Computation, for Nuovo Abitare (New living)
“European Data Governance: new possible alliances with data and computation”, on AgCult
“Antitesi”: our young plant-AI lifeform that actively fights climate change will soon have new life between Turin and Naples
and the Things We Liked since we last spoke
If you haven’t already: why don’t you subscribe to our newsletter? Less than monthly, not invasive, it includes news from us and from the world of critical data and computation:
Let’s begin!
Di Protoni e Dati
This artwork deals with our research on the new possible rituals for health, and has a nice story behind it. Di Protoni e Dati transforms medical data coming from radiotherapeutic and protontherapeuthic treatments into spatialized sounds, so that their physical propagation model can be perceived in space.
Why?
Well, for many possible reasons among which are
the possibility for patients to gain a better understanding of the ways in which radiation is affecting their bodies;
to be able to design ways in which patient’s bodies can be more comfortable during treatments, breathe better and stay more still more easily, through taylor-made physical soundscapes that can influence bodies in positive ways;
to transform a condition which usually separates patients from their families and friends (who are completely alone during the treatments) into occasions for sharing and conversation, by transforming the treatments’ data into aesthetic cultural artifacts.
We consider this to be an important prototype for new rituals of health which bring together Sciences, Technology and Society, through Art. We are currently searching to form an European consortium to use available funding opportunities to finance further research. Feel free to contact us if you and your organization are interested.
you can visit the Di Protoni e Dati project’s page
we had the first screening on March 27th 2021
U-DATInos
Udatinos is a new Datapoietic artwork to develop a new sensibility towards the health of the Oreto river in Palermo, and the creation of new social roles and rituals in the city, empowered by generative data and computation.
The project is supported by the italian Direzione Generale Creatività Contemporanea (General Directorate for Contemporary Creativity) of Ministero della Cultura (the italian Ministry of Culture), through its Creative Living Lab II edition programme.
The project partners are Ecomuseo Mare Memoria Viva and HER: She Loves Data.
It has been, for us, a wonderful process in which a new social role was created, complete with its data-enabled rituals which create a new sensibility in society: “andare a raccogliere i dati al fiume” (going to the river to collect data) drives the creation of a digital commons which has its social, aesthetic manifestation in the dapoietic plant at the museum, a fragile, mortal artwork which needs people’s care to survivre, as its feeds on the data collected by the city’s Custodi dell’Acqua (the Custodians of the Waters, the name of the social role).
here you can see the U-DATInos project page
and here is the project’s website
Queer Data, Queer AI, Community AI
A new peer reviewed publication is out which documents our research on what we’re calling Community AI, starting from our first experiences in 2006 with Angel_F, and arriving to the IAQOS project in Torpignattara/Rome.
This is an important step, as for the first time the concepts of Queer Data and Queer AI are introduced in this context, hopefully opening up new dialogues and opportunities for collaboration.
We feel that this is an important step towards contrasting the cultural hegemony about what Data and AI can be in our societies, and in proposing viable, accessible, inclusive alternatives.
We invite researchers, activists, social entrepreneurs and groups of citizens to get in touch with us for further information and to start collaboration.
Impacting Rome
The Impacting Rome project is financed by Fund for Social Innovation of the Department of Public Service (Fondo di Innovazione Sociale del Dipartimento della Funzione Pubblica) a three-year program that aims to strengthen the capacity of public administrations in carrying out interventions that meet social needs (Europe 2020 Strategy).
The partners of the project are
The initiative aims to improve the quality of services and the well-being of citizens in the areas of cultural animation and work inclusion. The goal is to implement the cultural participation of some categories of citizens and the training of new professional figures capable of creating a digital platform inspired by the principles of network science,which uses the evidence provided by multiple data collected on the territory in an innovative way.
With HER: She Loves Data we are curating IR Lab, a shared laboratory for education, practices and networking, which will be among the main elements of the impact strategy.
go to the project’s website
A new We
A new English text text explaining the why, what, how, where and who of Nuovo Abitare, together with the first actions.
European Data Governance: new possible alliances with data and computation
Important article by Salvatore Iaconesi on AgCult, among Italy’s most important sources of news and information about culture and heritage.
Here is the abstract:
The discussion around the upcoming regulation for the governance of data at the European Parliament calls for fundamental considerations about digital identity, the current extractive models of data and computation, and about their community dimensions. It is a big mistake to consider data as the new oil: this extractive perspective is highly problematic. Data and computation can, instead, be considered as generative phenomena in society. This concept calls for new, needed, alliances: 'il Nuovo Abitare', a New Living, in which data is the common ground between human beings, animals, plants, building, cities, forests, organizations and computational agents, to be able to form new relationships and new sensibilities. To this extent, the role of those forms of art which will be able to collaborate with sciences, technologies and society, will be of crucial importance.
read the article on AgCult: “Il Nuovo Abitare. La governance europea dei dati: nuove possibili alleanze con i dati e la computazione”
Antitesi
Antitesi is a love story between a plant and an Artificial Intelligence, united against Climate Change. We had presented the first prototype in occasion of the HER: She Loves San Lorenzo festival for Arts Data and AI.
Now, Antitesi will come to life once again, in occasion of Flower Power at Polo del ‘900 in Turin, part of the I Venti dell’Ambiente cultural program, on June 15th and 16th.
Then, Antitesi will continue to live. After the show in Turin, Antitesi will head to Naples, where the artwork will be acquired by Università degli Studi di Napoli Federico II for RuralHack, the living lab dedicated to Agritech with the rural communities of SocietingLAB, so that in September it will be possible to further enhance the concept by including it in the education, research and social action processes of the lab.
Stay tuned for more updates.
The Things We Liked
And last: here is a selection of the things we liked most since our last newsletter:
New Extractivism: An assemblage of concepts and allegories. By Vladan Joler
Interspecies communication between humans and bats. By MAEID.
How much can we afford to forget, if we train machines to remember?
Dutch MPs in video conference with deep fake imitation of Navalny's Chief of Staff
Disturbance and Plausibility in a Virtual Rock Concert: A Pilot Study
A View Of The Future Of Our Data: welcome to the era of data coalitions