Critical Technical Practices
1 Follower
Recent papers in Critical Technical Practices
Talk series in which to present FRAUD's research project Carbon Derivatives. It started with the Design Residency whose partners included Helsinki Design Week (HDW) and Aalto University, and it is organised and supported by Helsinki... more
Talk series in which to present FRAUD's research project Carbon Derivatives. It started with the Design Residency whose partners included Helsinki Design Week (HDW) and Aalto University, and it is organised and supported by Helsinki International Artist Program (HIAP) and the British Council.
Carbon Derivatives is an art-led inquiry into the collapse between forestry and financialization. We investigate the genealogy of carbon and its derivatives, from the carbon stored in trees, the lichens that grow on them, its distilled form in pine tar (terva), to fossil fuels and their nancialisation in emission trading systems. This project positions art and design as a radical tool to unfold hegemonic discourses and engender critical thinking.
In the 19th century, forests were conceptualised as large climatic moderators, regulating humidity, rain and rivers. Earlier, forests in continental Europe represented the foundation of political power, from the recreation of state power in ‘royal forests’ (designated hunting grounds for aristocracy), to the contriving of wood shortage through placing restrictions on forest use for financial gain. Congruously, in 1954, Thorsten Streyffert describes the history of forest policy as “the history of growing scarcity of wood”. More recently, contemporary capitalism privileges ow oriented ontologies and network structures. The northern forests are seen as a great cycle of flows, whereby carbon circulation, exchange and storage function as nominal abstractions.
Does understanding the boreal as a space of flows obfuscate embedded histories of cultural conflicts, subaltern knowledges, and environmental violence? In the green economy, a tree is the ultimate siphon between the exhaust of a sweatshop and the IPCC database; the Paimio chair is a sleek apparatus for carbon storage.
This residency took place in May and August-September.
Several stakeholders involved in forest and carbon questions were:
The British Embassy
BIOS/Mustarinda (artistic research group)
LUKE research institute
Aalto University (partners)
Helsinki Foundation (developing a legal model of forest conservation)
Arctic Design
Metsahallitus
Reindeer Herders Association
Snowchange Cooperative (traditional knowledge systems)
Helsinki Contemporary Gallery
Sinne Gallery
University of Lapland
Talo Design
Pilke Science Center
Helsinki University
and The National Archives of Finland
Carbon Derivatives is an art-led inquiry into the collapse between forestry and financialization. We investigate the genealogy of carbon and its derivatives, from the carbon stored in trees, the lichens that grow on them, its distilled form in pine tar (terva), to fossil fuels and their nancialisation in emission trading systems. This project positions art and design as a radical tool to unfold hegemonic discourses and engender critical thinking.
In the 19th century, forests were conceptualised as large climatic moderators, regulating humidity, rain and rivers. Earlier, forests in continental Europe represented the foundation of political power, from the recreation of state power in ‘royal forests’ (designated hunting grounds for aristocracy), to the contriving of wood shortage through placing restrictions on forest use for financial gain. Congruously, in 1954, Thorsten Streyffert describes the history of forest policy as “the history of growing scarcity of wood”. More recently, contemporary capitalism privileges ow oriented ontologies and network structures. The northern forests are seen as a great cycle of flows, whereby carbon circulation, exchange and storage function as nominal abstractions.
Does understanding the boreal as a space of flows obfuscate embedded histories of cultural conflicts, subaltern knowledges, and environmental violence? In the green economy, a tree is the ultimate siphon between the exhaust of a sweatshop and the IPCC database; the Paimio chair is a sleek apparatus for carbon storage.
This residency took place in May and August-September.
Several stakeholders involved in forest and carbon questions were:
The British Embassy
BIOS/Mustarinda (artistic research group)
LUKE research institute
Aalto University (partners)
Helsinki Foundation (developing a legal model of forest conservation)
Arctic Design
Metsahallitus
Reindeer Herders Association
Snowchange Cooperative (traditional knowledge systems)
Helsinki Contemporary Gallery
Sinne Gallery
University of Lapland
Talo Design
Pilke Science Center
Helsinki University
and The National Archives of Finland
The article addresses the issue of the digital divide in Ecuador and illustrates how artefacts from television material heritage might be transformed into digital libraries to provide marginalized communities with access to digital... more
The article addresses the issue of the digital divide in Ecuador and illustrates how artefacts from television material heritage might be transformed into digital libraries to provide marginalized communities with access to digital information. It describes an ongoing socio-technical project which aims at providing Ecuadorian rural communities with access to digital information through the re-functioning of analogue TV sets and other complementary technologies that will become obsolete due to Ecuador's switch from an analogue to digital broadcasting signal. On one hand, the project is discussed with reference to the contemporary debate in the fields of Media and Television Studies on the obsolescence and renewal of technology; And on the other, it is discussed on the background of earlier projects focusing on the design of digital libraries to circulate information and improve digital literacy in rural contexts. Finally, the prototype created is discussed from a technical and conceptual point of view.
“Critical making” is an umbrella term for various distinctive practices that link traditional scholarship in the humanities and social sciences to forms of material engagement in order to explore new ways of studying the relationship... more
“Critical making” is an umbrella term for various distinctive practices that link traditional scholarship in the humanities and social sciences to forms of material engagement in order to explore new ways of studying the relationship between technologies and social life by bridging the gap between physical and conceptual exploration (Ratto, 2011). The aim of critical making is “to articulate and develop novel modes of intervention into dominant systems of information exchange and knowledge generation” that “focus on assembling rather than deconstructing within the modern technological society” (Ratto, Wilie and Jalbert, 2014: 85). In order to reach this goal, critical making practices “theoretically and pragmatically connect two modes of engagement with the world that are often held separate - critical thinking, typically understood as conceptually and linguistically based, and physical “making,” goal-based material work” (Ratto, 2011: 253). Such practices can thus be conceived as engagements between design and social research, implying the exploration of societal issues and social theories through the fabrication of material, interactive prototypes.
Drawing upon the critical making approach, we have developed a project called “Game of ANT”, which focuses on the fabrication of a series of Arduino-based interactive devices reproducing the behaviour of actor-networks within the socio-technical world. “Game of ANT” adopts the Latourian vision of technoscience as war (Latour, 1987) and physically embodies this idea by proposing a sort of war game during which participants play the roles of human or non-human actors engaging with the dynamics of socio-technical life. Using pre-assembled and coded components, participants construct and play with simple, electronic actors/actants that are able to associate and dissociate with each other, thus forming multiple actor-networks that compete for gaining power within an imagined socio-technical world. To win the game, an actor-network needs to crystallize and become a “black box”. The working of the game thus reproduces the basic principles of actor-network theory (ANT) and “translates” the sociology of translation into a gaming experience through which scholars and students can conceptually-materially engage with ANT, hence exploring and approaching it from novel points of view.
Bibliography
Latour, B. (1987) Science in Action, Cambridge (MA): Harvard University Press.
Ratto, M. (2011) “Critical Making: Conceptual and Material Studies in Technology and Social Life”, The Information Society, 27: 252–260.
Ratto, M., Wilie, S.A. and Jalbert, K. (2014) “Introduction to the Special Forum on Critical Making as Research Program”, The Information Society, 30: 85–95.
Drawing upon the critical making approach, we have developed a project called “Game of ANT”, which focuses on the fabrication of a series of Arduino-based interactive devices reproducing the behaviour of actor-networks within the socio-technical world. “Game of ANT” adopts the Latourian vision of technoscience as war (Latour, 1987) and physically embodies this idea by proposing a sort of war game during which participants play the roles of human or non-human actors engaging with the dynamics of socio-technical life. Using pre-assembled and coded components, participants construct and play with simple, electronic actors/actants that are able to associate and dissociate with each other, thus forming multiple actor-networks that compete for gaining power within an imagined socio-technical world. To win the game, an actor-network needs to crystallize and become a “black box”. The working of the game thus reproduces the basic principles of actor-network theory (ANT) and “translates” the sociology of translation into a gaming experience through which scholars and students can conceptually-materially engage with ANT, hence exploring and approaching it from novel points of view.
Bibliography
Latour, B. (1987) Science in Action, Cambridge (MA): Harvard University Press.
Ratto, M. (2011) “Critical Making: Conceptual and Material Studies in Technology and Social Life”, The Information Society, 27: 252–260.
Ratto, M., Wilie, S.A. and Jalbert, K. (2014) “Introduction to the Special Forum on Critical Making as Research Program”, The Information Society, 30: 85–95.
The presentation addresses the issue of digital divide in Ecuador. It describes an ongoing socio-technical project which aims at providing rural communities with access to digital knowledge through the re-functioning of analog TV sets and... more
The presentation addresses the issue of digital divide in Ecuador. It describes an ongoing socio-technical project which aims at providing rural communities with access to digital knowledge through the re-functioning of analog TV sets and other complementary technologies that are going to become obsolete on June 2018 due to Ecuador’s switch from analog to digital broadcasting signal. The prototype created is discussed from a technical and conceptual point of view.
Related Topics