This is a work in progress proposal, originally written for Data and Society Fellowship

Definition: Technically speaking, data is the discrete source of information that ‘generates the message, symbol by symbol.’[1] In an everyday definition, data is the thing that knows about you. It is your inbox, your whereabouts, your photo from the holidays. Data is also the thing you want to know about. It is your search history, relentless updates in the social network and news feeds.

Context: Data is often intangible until it’s rendered visible. It is similar to Kuroko, stagehands in traditional Japanese theater, who dress all in black. Their constrained movements make their presence invisible to the audience. Since our interaction with data is primarily temporal, we often forget that data has bodies too. The hyper-accurate time and nearly instant communication across the globe, are possible due to the massive computational machines. Such an unfathomable machine is sometimes called Capitalism. Gilles Deleuze, in Postscript on the Societies of Control, states “in a society of control, the corporation has replaced the factory, and the corporation is a spirit, a gas.”[2]

Hypothesis: The machine learns through an automated systems of classifications. The machine shares its responsibilities, divided into a million different actors (who have, theoretically, contributed a millionth of the liability). The machine considers a secret and its values, based on the demands for its data. It is the world where a person is no longer a body, but a complex collection of data and its applications.

Question: What bodies are considered the normal, safe, worthy body in the machine? Who gets accounted for in the database? Who can afford to generate and consume data? What happens to the person with bodies that refuse the classification? “Disability is the other other that helps make otherness imaginable.”[3] How can we, the ‘others’ have an agency of our data?

Proposition: Human mind is unmeasurable. Although much of the latest technology attempts in quantifying the inner mechanics of the body, it fails in examining the faculty of minds. It’s this impossibility of fully understanding, replicating human body, that will be our reason for considering the body as an apparatus for examining the reality. It is possible to return our focus back to the body and reconsider its capacity to subvert the infrastructure. “sous le pave: la plage” (under the pavement: the beach), as the angry citizens yelled at the police in Paris, 1968.

Goal: Together with the researchers and fellows at the Data and Society, I’d like to think about the future of community and data. JK Gibson-Graham imagined and exercised a kind of Post-Capitalism and cooperation based on mutual support. I’d like to help unlock the key to gaining individual and collective agency for justice in data. I believe this will begin by resisting the compliance with the Capitalist Machine with our body. Data begins from the body and ends in the body. We can imagine a data in common space which correlates freedom of movement, engagement and habituation in society.

Logistics: I want to publish a bi-monthly graphic novel on the Data & Society website. I would like to base the narrative on the topics I explored in my class “Poetics and Politics of Computation.” I want to participate in lectures and workshops at the at the Data & Society. I think my participation in the public events and internal workshops will enrich the narrative and back the scientific facts. I’d like to work with cohorts of the Data & Society fellows as well as the distinguished alumni.

[1]: Shannon, Claude Elwood, and Warren Weaver. The Mathematical Theory of Communication. Urbana: U of Illinois, 1949. Print.

[2]: Thornham, Sue, Caroline Bassett, and Paul Marris. Media studies: a reader. New York: New York University Press, 2009. Print.

[3]: Siebers, Tobin. Disability Theory. Ann Arbor: U of Michigan, 2008. 48. Print.

##Topics body, biopolitics, privacy, graphic novel

##Reference Project 1: Handmade Computer Link: http://taeyoonchoi.com/projects/handmadecomputer/

I created a 8-Bit computer by hand wiring transistors and logic gates. Building a computer by hand, I grew appreciation about the history from learning about how the computers evolved over time. Making electronic circuits feels like you’re creating a tiny city, each component a neighborhood with its own energy, timing, and unique personality. By making our own computer from scratch with discrete components, perhaps we can imagine creating alternative urban spaces for recuperation? And by questioning how the computers are made, we can shed light on how to make spaces closer to the world we want to live?

Technical information https://github.com/tchoi8/handmadecomputer

##Reference Project 2: Signing Coders

Link: http://taeyoonchoi.com/teaching/signing-coders/

Description: Signing Coders is a series of workshops on creative expression with computer programming, art and poetry that focuses reaching out to youth who are deaf or hard of hearing. As an educational initiative for accessibility and diversity, the workshops are free and open to people of all age and ability. To ensure inclusive learning experience, real-time transcription will be provided along with ASL interpretation.

##Reference Project 3: Poetics and Politics of Computation

Link: https://tchoi8.github.io/poetic-computation-16/slides/#/

Description: Poetics and politics of computation is a class for students to build conceptual tools and critical perspective for art and technology. In this class, students will learn about the history and critical theory of art and contemporary issues with a specific focus on the cultural significance of computation. Class at the School for poetic computation.