Dear friends and colleagues,
please excuse me for any crosspostings, we're getting ready for a very important thing for us: the Datapoiesis Fall School in November 25-30 2019 at the ex Olivetti factories in Ivrea, Italy.
https://datapoiesis.com/home/?page_id=225"Datapoiesis" is a neologism: it points in the direction of the fact that data (and the computation needed to process it) can bring into existence "things" that did not exist before.
Probably the only way in which we can gather understandings about the planet's complex phenomena (climate change, migrations, markets, energy, health...) is through enormous amounts of data.
But these data are, most of the time, very far from us, living in the separation of data centers, in the spectacularization of dataviz, or at the center of the seriously extractive processes performed by the current data industry.
Datapoiesis explores the possibility to transform these dynamics. In Datapoietic processes, we use art and design to create objects and artworks which are the embodiment of science/tech/art collaborations aimed at using data to approach complex phenomena.
These objects are totemic, meaning that they are designed to be places around which people can gather for discussion, collaboration, solidarity and participatory action, describing neo-rituals for public space, homes, schools, offices, hospitals etc, in which data and computation become the occasion for augmented, performative sensibility to the world's complex issues, individually and as communities, organizations, institutions.
The first object explicitly created to trigger the Datapoiesis phenomenon, named "Obiettivo", deals with the conditions of extreme poverty and uses data from the UN, World Bank, OECD. It also questions all of these data sources, and the strategic, ideological and geopolitical implications of the ways in which these data are collected, interpreted and represented. For example, among the data-rituals which we promote around the artwork, is the possibility to create other copies of it, in which poverty is measured in different ways, or regarding different territories, etc, to enable forms of understandings and awareness that are highly enhanced.
After being presented in May 2019, Obiettivo was acquired by the contemporary art collection of the Farnesina, Italy's Ministry of Foreign Affairs and Cooperation, as an example of "diplomacy through art".
In the Datapoiesis Fall School, we will bring these concepts to Ivrea, inside Olivetti's ex-factories.
Olivetti is Italy's best historically known example of the ways in which business can co-exist together with a positive social and community impact. Furthermore, Olivetti had really interesting strategic intersections with art and design, focused towards these goals. Currently, a series of entrepreneurs are restoring Olivetti's ex-factories to explore the forms in which contemporary businesses can welcome these social and community impacts within their strategies.
The first project which will inhabit these factories is Datapoiesis, promoting a new model for the data and computation industry which is not extractive, but, rather, aimed at creating rich relational ecosystems which are able to promote and support people's and communities' rights, freedoms and well being.
During the Datapoiesis Fall School, people will come together from a variety of different disciplines to understand what form could be assumed by an organization that "does Datapoiesis for a living". What is its legal form? What is its business/sustainability model? What materials, forms of energy, technologies does it use? What is its process? What kind of products/services/experiences does it produce? What approaches does it use to preserve people's rights and freedoms in relation to data, AI biases, data and AI opacity ..., and to enable people and communities to decide how their data is used?
We will also design Obiettivo's next step: the first line of datapoietic objects, which will form a permanent exhibit in the spaces of Olivetti's factories.
The people who will participate to the Fall School will also be the first in line, if they want, to be taken into consideration for joining the Datapoiesis organization, which will form in the beginning of 2020.
The Fall School is free: you only need to come to Ivrea and pay for your accomodation and food.
Feel free to contact me or the team for any further information.
https://datapoiesis.com/home/?page_id=225Thank you very much
Best wishes
Salvatore Iaconesi