Header

Re:Coding Algorithmic Culture

Project publications

Playing the Code / Matters of Touch
Taking a Walk through a Computer
Accessibility for r-calc.net
World Wide Wet
On Being Turned Off: An Un_Timely Lab

About

This website is a contribution of the academic research project Re:Coding Algorithmic Culture. The project took up its work in October 2019, was funded by the VW Stiftung within the funding line Original - isn't it? New Options for the Humanities and Cultural Studies, and included researchers from work groups Theory & Practice of Visual Communication at the Kunsthochschule Kassel and Sociology of Diversity as well as Gender/Diversity in Informatics Systems at the University of Kassel, Germany.

We investigated the question of how algorithmically based collections, classifications and interpretations of data can perpetuate existing social inequalities/discrimination – in order to challenge, if not redefine them. Our research centered on experimenting with technological practices towards building accessible spaces for collective learning and action. We also put an emphasis on technological metaphors, practices and physical structures as constitutive for specific realities. As a means of intervention, we organized five labs between October 2019 till February 2021. The topics of these labs included the question of temporality, governance and autonomy, social distancing regulations in the times of pandemic, prevalent/hegemonic discourses and their physical materialisation in file systems. Furthermore, we questioned and reworked the process of game-making as a part of normative social rules and their algorithmic cultural codes. By bringing our different disciplinary perspectives on method and methodology in conversation, in these collective labs, we critically interrogated the dominant structures of “algorithmic governmentality” and created spaces not only to criticize but also to imagine the possibilities of disturbing those algorithmic regulations.

For the website, considerations of accessibility were a core aspect of designing, coding and writing. Our decision to publish our work as a website derives from our wish to contribute to digital spaces with queer- and transfeminist, antiableist, antiracist perspectives. We do however recognize that this is a fine line to walk for a production within hegemonic, european-western academic institutions. We present an overview from our public labs, as well as collective and individual research of project participants.

The project was funded by the VW Stiftung within the funding line ‚Original – isn’t it? New Options for the Humanities and Cultural Studies’. It took place over 18 months, from September 2019 to February 2021. Project Participants were (alphabetically) Claude Draude, Elisabeth Tuider, Eunice Njoki, Ipek Burçak, Isabel Paehr, Johanna Schaffer, Loren Britton, Nicole spiders, Pinar Tuzcu and Tom Fixemer. The website was designed and developed by Ipek Burçak, Isabel Paehr, Johanna Schaffer, Loren Britton and Nicole spiders.

„Algorithmic gouvernementality“ is a concept developed by Antoinette Rouvroy and Thomas Berns in ‚Algorithmic governmentality and prospects of emancipation. Disparateness as a precondition for individuation through relationships?’, translated from French into English by Elizabeth Libbrecht, published in Réseaux, Volume 177, Issue 1, 2013, pp. 163 - 196.