A Is For Another sparks reflection in how we think about what AI is, and what else it might be. A creative-pedagogical platform and resource for learners (and teachers) from diverse traditions, it expands knowledge about how we think about AI; how we think about making connections between different domains of knowledge about AI. This dictionary does not assemble theories for a new computational approach to AI, rather, it inspires the (re)imagination of this technology through diverse epistemes and epistemologies.
The first iteration of A Is For was based on contributions from participants in response to a public seminar about AI at the Berlin-based School of Disobedience in Winter 2020. This next iteration will take place a little differently: as a series of public talks online serving as prompts and provocations for short dictionary entries that any talk attendee can author.
We are thrilled to host talks by Pedro Oliveira (13/4), Nelly Y. Pinkrah (28/4), and Mushon Zer Aviv (29/4). All talks are open to the public and will be hosted on Big Blue Button, a web-based video platform that requires no installation. More information below about talks and speakers, registration, and how to contribute to the dictionary.
Thanks in part to a small research grant from the Mellon-Sawyer Histories of AI Seminar at the University of Cambridge, we can expand A Is For Another by paying our speakers, developer Pratyush Raman, event organiser Teena Lange, and four contributors.
Pedro’s talk will start with describing his recent artistic research practice about the German government’s past and current experiments with accent/dialect classification and recognition technologies. Since 2017 the German Federal Office for Migration and Refugees systematically applies these technologies to help verify asylum seekers’ identities and determine the validity of their claims; however, the history of Germany’s attempt to connect language and identity stretches over a century towards the past. Oliveira will connect these histories of listening to speech with the current fascination with AI as an attempt to replicate human sensing and perception, or ‘intelligence’. He argues that rather than AI’s attempt to overcome human listening, the problem is more fundamental: That AI seeks to understand what ‘the human’ is by constituting that the voice is anchored to the body, and that the body is the sole responsible for determining ‘human-ness’. Drawing on the work of Sylvia Wynter and Denise Ferreira da Silva, Oliveira will discuss how the aural history of colonialism has aided in the construction of ‘the human’. And if human-ness is more than speaking and listening, then what is it? To think ‘the human’ and human intelligence beyond quantifiable sensing and perception, Oliveira leads us through insights offered by Gloria Anzaldúa into thinking from, as, and within the border to complicate the boundaries of voice, accent, speech, and listening.
In my work, I am tracing what I refer to as the ‘technogenetic’ substances of Édouard Glissant’s thinking and writing to understand the disruptive histories of race, media (and) technology that inform contemporary life. I will set the scene by taking us to the secret communication networks of the Haitian Revolution that are expressed, and embodied even, in the title of Julius Scott’s brilliant book »The Common Wind« (2018). In the imperialists’ communications control this common wind caused a disruption, and by means of Glissantian terms I want to show how to rethink histories of media (and) technology, and thus contemporary imaginaries of what it means to relate, and form a commons. This work attempts to diffract the histories that underlie media technologies such as AI and how we believe they narrate stories about us.
“Recalculating route” the synthetic voice says, as the navigation app detects that the driver has strayed off the shortest path it predicted. It queries the server and suggests a new route, and with it a new ETA (Estimated Time of Arrival). Mushon Zer-Aviv, who previously designed maps for Waze, argues that a lot is happening within these few moments between the driver’s disobedient turn, and the new path and ETA predicted by the app. In this talk he will discuss this adversarial negotiation between driver and app/algorithm as a unique matter of dialogue, and agency. Mushon will also talk about the case of political disinformation bots in Israel, and the ‘Shabbos Goy’ as different metaphors of AI, and the shaky boundaries between how we classify the ‘human’, and the ‘machine’.
Written contributions to the dictionary are not just summaries of the talks. Each entry is the contributor’s own reflection as prompted by the talk, and written with the intention of clarifying or going deeper into a topic. Think of it as ‘paying forward’ your understanding and knowledge to someone else who wants to learn. Anyone can contribute an entry, however, only four contributions of 400-500 words can be remunerated Eur 50 each. We particularly invite students to contribute entries. Dictionary entries typically take a few weeks to put together. Each entry will be edited for consistency. Be in touch with Maya (hello@aisforanother.net) by May 20, 2021 to write an entry.
Pedro Oliveira is a researcher, sound artist, and educator whose work advances a (de)colonizing inquiry of listening and the materiality of sound. His current artistic and academic research focuses on the deployment of so-called "accent recognition software" in the asylum system of Germany. He holds a PhD from the University of the Arts Berlin, and is a PostDoctoral fellow at the Helsinki Collegium for Advanced Studies.
Mushon Zer-Aviv is a designer, researcher, educator and media activist based in Tel Aviv. His love/hate relationship with data informs his design work, art pieces, activism, research, teaching, workshops & city life. He is the Co-founder of Shual design studio and previously held design leadership positions at Localize, Waze maps and the Public Knowledge Workshop. His recent self-initiated projects are: The Normalizing Machine, that explores algorithmic prejudice; the AdNauseam extension, ‘clicking ads so you don’t have to’; and Speculative Tourism, a series of audio tours through urban futures. Mushon is a senior faculty member at Shenkar School of Engineering and Design. Previously he taught at NYU, Parsons the New School of Design and Bezalel Academy of Art & Design. Mushon is an alumnus of Eyebeam, an art + technology center in New York City.
Nelly Y. Pinkrah is a cultural and media theorist and political activist, mainly involved in anti-racist, empowerment, and community-building projects. In addition to writing about racism & gender, technology for mainstream media newspapers and magazines, Nelly also gives workshops on these topics. She is working on her doctoral thesis about Édouard Glissant and cybernetics at the DFG Research Training Group »Cultures of Critique« at Leuphana University Lüneburg. Nelly is the assistant to the Chair of Media Theory and History here, and is associated with the Centre for Digital Cultures. From October 2018 to May 2019 she was a Doctoral Fellow at the Global Emergent Media Lab at Concordia University, Montréal. In 2019, she organized the first Stanford Leuphana Summer Academy on Media Studies. Her latest publication is Critique and the Digital co-edited with Erich Hörl and Lotte Warnsholdt (2020) published by diaphanes Verlag, Zurich and Chicago University Press.
Teena Lange is supporting the organisation of the Spring 2021 talks. She is performance art curator, producer and facilitator of public events, researcher and artistic director of the project space Grüntaler9 since 2011. Recely she co-initiated a participatory and cross-generational program at the largest public library in Berlin. Since 2016 she has been a member of the Berlin Arts Council (Rat für die Künste). As a program coordinator and research associate she worked at the International Research Center “Interweaving Performance Cultures” at the Freie Universität Berlin. Her work includes (performance) art projects for Pixxelpoint Nova Gorica, Savvy Contemporary Berlin, Berlin Art Week, Brooklyn International Performance Art Festival, Musrara Mix Festival Jerusalem, Supermarket Stockholm, Bern Biennale and more.