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Anna Ridler (UK) and Rosalie Yu (TW/US)  met during their science_technology_society residency at Delfina Foundation in autumn 2020. Both artists use data and computational methodologies in a feminist way and were interested in exploring the similarities and differences in their practices whilst placing it in a historical and cultural context. This website is the result. It is a living document of the theoretical and practical underpinnings of using data as part of their artistic practice, and includes interviews with curators and artists that were conducted as part of their residency. Divided into rough sections that examine their different areas of interest, each image provides a link to further work or reading about the subject matter.

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Making Data




Datasheets for Datasets argues that more openness and understanding about what is included (and by extension excluded) from datasets would increase transparency and accountability. Copyright law in the United Kingdom compares databases to literary works due to the level of skill involved in creating them. Data Feminism explores, amongst other things, the hidden labour in Data Science A large part of making my own datasets is deciding which classifications and categories I want to have. Categories drive the ability to create and control the model but these categories often shift even as I write them. It sometimes can be hard to decide if a flower is, for example, white or yellow, pink or red. A dataset once constructed is transformed into a record through machine learning, collapsed and abstracted into a series of numbers – ANNA RIDLER Explores "the emergence of objectivity in the mid-nineteenth-century sciences — and shows how the concept differs from alternatives, truth-to-nature and trained judgment." A workshop in which 35 volunteers performed collaborative photogrammetry, by forming circles and passing a camera between participants to capture a subject from every angle. These images provided the data to form a series of 3D models. (Rosalie Yu, Knowing Together, 2018) Conversation with Surya Mattu. It is sometimes easy to forget in our digital age that information is physical and what we see on a screen once started out in the real world – ANNA RIDLER. 2019 report published by AI Now Institute. A Public Lab project by Eymund Diegel and his team. As described in the book Data Feminism, in the image "the mappers themselves are often visible in the final product in the form of little bodies, gathered in boats or standing in clumps on a shoreline, looking up at the camera above them. The balloon string leads the eye back to their forms. Here the creators are not distanced or absent but represented in the final product. Literally."



Expanded Photography




One artificial intelligence network is trained on a dataset to try to create a realistic version of an image that could potentially come from it. The second AI looks at these created images and decides whether they are real or fake, true or counterfeit, until the first AI learns to mimic imagery to the extent that the “the counterfeits are indistinguishable from the genuine articles” over the course of many cycles of learning. Photogrammetry is the practice of stitching 2D images from multiple angles into a 3D object. The limitations of accessible 3D scanning technology today make it somehow similar to early photography. For example, a subject needs to be completely still for a long duration of time. As with traditional photographs which need to be developed in a dedicated space or darkroom, you can’t immediately see the results of photogrammetry. There is something magical and lonesome about both of these expansive processes. The way a chemical image takes shape on photo paper is similar to the software’s process of stitching photos, connecting a point cloud, and reconstructing a mesh in 3D space. "the sheer resources required to build and sustain such large AI models means they tend to benefit wealthy organizations, while climate change hits marginalized communities hardest." I am working on a project whilst at Delfina Foundation that looks at the connections between machine learning and the oil & gas industries. Although photogrammetry is often treated as a means of achieving mechanical objectivity, the process may also decenter the solitary observer when it is performed as a collaboration. The mechanics of connecting multiple perspectives offers an alternative framework for knowledge formation. (Knowing Together, 2018) A GAN is the process of two intelligences dancing around each other to make images and the unpredictable and unquantifiable results of this dynamic. Conversation with Natalie Kane

Missing Data




COBOL is a coding language fifty years old. The people who know how to use it are often just as old. It underpins the entire financial system and it can’t be removed. A computer language controls the financial life of the world. The Year 2038 problem relates to representing time as seconds passed since 00:00:00 UTC on 1 January 1970 and storing it as a signed 32-bit integer. Such implementations cannot encode times after 03:14:07 UTC on 19 January 2038. Data Interrupted, 2017 by Francesco Fiondella, Catherine Vaughan, and Amir Imani. The 1994 Rwandan genocide left millions dead or displaced. There is one consequence that has gone unreported: the near-total collapse of Rwanda’s ability to gather data, including that related to the weather. Photo by Francesco Fiondella. Library of Missing Datasets by Mimi Onuoha. "Missing data sets" is the term created by the artist for the blank spots that exist in spaces that are otherwise data-saturated. Her interest "stems from the observation that within many spaces where large amounts of data are collected, there are often empty spaces where no data live. Unsurprisingly, this lack of data typically correlates with issues affecting those who are most vulnerable in that context" The capture process for collaborative photogrammetry can last up to 10 minutes, resulting in apparently noisy and incomplete data. Instead of erasing and correcting these 'flaws,' we can preserve and display the untouched data as an unconventional testament to the process. (Knowing Together, 2018). Final Edition is an ongoing artistic project that attempts to create a physical archive and installation of the final edition of every local newspaper across the United States that have closed since 2004. This date, which coincides with the launch of Facebook and the growing popularity of services like Craigslist, also marks the decline and closure of around a fifth of all local newspapers across the United States, whose business models, heavily reliant on advertising revenue, could not compete. These papers, once shuttered and gone, are now impossible to find. We Can NYC by Francesca Berardi and Grga Basic. There is no accurate data on the activity of canning, but people involved in the sector claim that more than 10,000 people pick up empty cans on the streets of New York to make some money. This project mapped the experience of eight of them. Data illustration by Giogia Lupi.



Craft




“Indigenous Circuits: Navajo Women and the Racialization of Early Electronic Manufacture.” Principles of Computation from Carnegie Mellon University Zeros + ones : digital women + the new technoculture. Book by Sadie Plant The software to land on the Moon was woven by hand into core rope memory: wire through a core for a 1 bit, around a core for a 0 bit. Apollo Guidance Computer's ropes held 36K of 15-bit words and used the first amplifier integrated circuits. 'Woman wiring an early IBM computer' from the 'Documenting Science' series (1938-58) by photographer Berenice Abbott Wiring of the core rope was a tedious process that took about 8 weeks and cost $15,000 per module; many of the women building the ropes were hired from the local textile industry for their sewing skills (Photographic Knitting Club, 2020). The name “knitting club” is about community building, and reframes scanning as a digital craft. Instead of using yarn, the participants knit images together. The Crochet Coral Reef is an artwork responding to climate change, an exercise in applied mathematics, and a wooly experiment in evolutionary theory. A project by Christine Wertheim and Margaret Wertheim and the Institute For Figuring. Photo by Rosalie Yu during Venice Biennale 2019. “We may say most aptly that the Analytical Engine weaves algebraic patterns just as the Jacquard loom weaves flowers and leaves.” Ada Lovelace. Image credit: Science Museum Group Collection.



Residency Projects



Sample of dataset of cypress trees for project, taken by Caroline SInders Early tests creating an algorithmic flower clock Deep Time: thinking about mapping time and trees and the environment Other ways of thinking about time: flowers have their own circadian rhythm Early GAN output from Cypress Trees project, trained on photos taken in LA by Caroline Sinders (Building a room size camera, ongoing in collaboration with Charles Berret) Special thanks to Delfina residents Rut Karin Zettergren and Bruno Baptistelli. Capture process. (Building a room size camera, ongoing project in collaboration with Charles Berret) Special thanks to Delfina residents: Rut Karin Zettergren and Bruno Baptistelli. A step by step Tutorial on photogrammetry and other scanning methods. The 3D capture process usually conceals the photographer behind her lens, but by introducing a wall-sized mirror as a controlled anomaly, the appearance of the data collector appears in this model as a “glitch.” (Building a room size camera, ongoing project in collaboration with Charles Berret) A DIY zine containing drawings by the workshop participants, and data portraits that Rosalie created based on their photogrammetry camera data. (Photographic Knitting Club, 2020). (Photographic Knitting Club, 2020). Rosalie stitched together images taken by the participants and then exported the corresponding capture positions where each of the photos were taken. She then wrote a script for the 3D engine Unity, that would connect the dots of these camera positions, creating a pathway to explore how someone moved about the space.