Please join Caroline Sinders and Dilettante Army for a workshop and discussion of Feminist Data Set. This session coincides with the launch of Dilettante Army’s newest online issue, Plot, which includes an essay by Sinders. For an initial discussion of queer aesthetic data points, Sinders will be joined by her fellow Plot contributor Rebecca Ariel Porte and by artist LJ Roberts.

This session will investigate varying methods of creating a feminist data set. What is feminist data inside of social networks, algorithms, and big data? A feminist data set queers the archive, the spreadsheet, and the data set. It moves beyond a white and male space, forcing the technology to reflect the community. A feminist data set acts as a means to combat bias and introduce the possibility of data collection as a feminist practice, aiming to produce a slice of data to intervene in larger civic and private networks.  Exploring its potential to disrupt larger systems by generating new forms of agency, the session asks: can data collection itself function as an artwork? How can we create data to be an act of protest against algorithms?

Participants are invited to name digital content such as images, gifs, videos, sound, music and texts, which they feel is feminist and queer in nature, to feed into the data set, which teaches an AI system to recognize such. Queer data is art, interviews, and writing by queer and trans folx, with special attention paid to the work of people of color data (examples: the Combahee River Collective’s “A Black Feminist Statement,” “I Want a Dyke for President,” the sculptures of Simone Leigh, Janet Mock’s Redefining Realness, etc.). This process raises questions concerning qualitative data collection and requires the group to reflect on categories supposed to capture feminism.

If possible, please bring your own laptop! This will help you research data points and share any files you find.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Caroline Sinders is a machine learning design researcher and artist. For the past few years, she has been focusing on the intersections of natural language processing, artificial intelligence, abuse, online harassment and politics in digital, as well as conversational spaces. Caroline is the principal designer and founder of Convocation Design + Research, a design and research agency focusing on the intersections of product design, user research, AI, emerging technology and public good.

Caroline has held fellowships with the Yerba Buena Centers of the Arts, Eyebeam, the Studio for Creative Inquiry and the International Center of Photography. Her work has been featured at MoMA PS1, the Houston Center for Contemporary Art, Slate, Quartz, the Channels Biennale, as well as others. Caroline holds a masters from New York University’s Interactive Telecommunications Program.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Rebecca Ariel Porte (Ph.D., University of Michigan, Ann Arbor) is a member of the Core Faculty at the Brooklyn Institute for Social Research, where she teaches a spectrum of courses in literature, philosophy, and theory across centuries, cultures, and canons. She is currently at work on a book about paradise, Arcadia, and the Golden Age.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

LJ Roberts creates large-scale textile installations, intricate embroideries, artist books, and collages. Their work investigates overlaps of queer and trans politics, activism, protest, narrative, and craft. LJ’s work has been shown at such venues as The Brooklyn Museum, The Smithsonian Museum of American Art, Museum of Arts and Design, Yerba Buena Center of the Arts, The Victoria and Albert Museum, The 8th Floor, Vox Populi, The Orange County Museum of Art, The Leslie-Lohman Museum of Gay and Lesbian Art, The Oakland Museum of California, The DePaul Art Museum, The ONE National Gay and Lesbian Archives, Los Angeles Contemporary Exhibitions, The Bowdoin College Museum of Art, and The Museum of the City of New York.

LJ has been the past recipient of The Fountainhead Fellowship at Virginia Commonwealth University, and residencies at IASPIS-Stockholm, The MacDowell Colony, QueensLab, Ox-Bow School of Art, ACRE, The Textile Arts Center, and The Bag Factory in Johannesburg, South Africa.

In 2015 LJ was one of nine recipients of The White House Champions of Change Award for LGBTQI Artists.

LJ lives and works in Brooklyn, NY.