Following the series Meet Feminist Tech -Diversifying Insights in Data and AI and Reset the Preset – Reflections on Societal Change and Technological Progress, which were accompanied by lively discussions, we are pleased to invite you to the third part of our colloquium as part of CiticenScience.AI at ScaDS.AI Dresden/Leipzig: Reboot the future – Feminist Perspectives in Human Computer Interaction In August 2024, we offer two dates to read and discuss current publications together with Dr. Sandra Buchmüller, guest researcher for feminist technology research, which show in different ways how perspectives and approaches from Feminist Science and Technology Studies, Critical Design Research and Gender & Queer Studies contribute to making technology research and development more socially just.

We regard this colloquium as an open reading and discussion format in which everyone can participate whenever, wherever and however they would like. Proposal of texts is explicitly encouraged.

Location

The analog venue on the main campus of TUD Dresden University of Technology is:

Merkel-Bau
Helmholtzstraße 14
Room 118
First floor
01069 Dresden
Germany

Events in the series Reboot the future – Feminist Perspectives in Human Computer Interaction

28.10.2024, 1–2:30 p.m.: Milagros Miceli, Martin Schuessler, Tianling Yang (2020); Between Subjectivity and Imposition: Power Dynamics in Data Annotation for Computer Vision

During past meetings, the participants of our colloquium requested that the topic of clickworkers be addressed. The renowned researcher Milagros Miceli is a recognised expert in this field. She leads the research group Data, Algorithmic Systems and Ethics at Weizenbaum-Institut and is a research fellow at the DAIR Institute. As a sociologist and computer scientist, she investigates the ethical and social implications of the development of AI, in particular data work. She examines the production of ground-truth data for machine learning with a particular focus on working conditions and power relations. For an interesting insight into the author’s way of thinking, we recommend the interview with her in the podcast ‘Purple Code – Intersectional feminist perspectives on digital societies’.

21.10.2024, 2:50–4:20 p.m.: Susanne Witzgall; Sympoietic Design as an Ethical Project in Perraudin, L., Winkler, C., Mareis, C., Held, M. (Eds. 2023); Material Trajectories: Designing with Care

The reading of Material Trajectories: Designing with Care will be continued. At the previous meeting, the foreword and an article from the chapter ‘Positioning Care’ were both discussed. This meeting focuses on the article Sympoietic Design as an Ethical Project by Susanne Witzgall from the chapter Sympoietic Futures. Previous readings have led to much discussion about the claim to objectivity of science and the demarcation between the natural sciences, humanities and cultural studies. In this context, we recommend looking into Karen Barad’s concept of Agential Realism, for example as described in Sigrid Schmitz; Karen Barad: Agentieller Realismus als Rahmenwerk für die Science & Technology Studies.

12.08.2024, 1–2:30 p.m.: Material Trajectories: Designing with Care

Reading Anna Crohn’s article, which provides an overview of relevant feminist approaches to digital technology design that we consider to be very abstract and therefore not very application-oriented, has left us with gaps in our understanding of the concepts mentioned and with the question of what exactly is meant by human-computer interaction. This meeting will therefore focus on the practical application of the various concepts from feminist research in the field of human-computer interaction. To this end, we would like to draw on our own experiences and on the following texts:

From the publication Perraudin, L., Winkler, C., Mareis, C., Held, M. (Eds. 2023); Material Trajectories: Designing with Care, the introductory chapters (p. 9 to p. 32) will be discussed and, as an add-on, Joanna Boehnert: Design Politics in the Anthropocene, pp. 75 to 88. This edited volume is the outcome of the 2021 Annual Conference of the German Society for Design Theory and Research (DGTF), organized in cooperation with the Cluster of Excellence Matters of Activity. Image Space Material at the Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin and the Weißensee Kunsthochschule Berlin. We also recommend the following texts as background information by John M. Carroll and Zuhan Pan. Further proposals are strongly encouraged.

05.08.2024, 1–2:30 p.m.: Thinking with care in human-computer-interaction

In our first meeting in August, we discussed Anna Croons Thinking with care in human-computer-interaction from 2022. Anna Croon is an associate professor at the Faculty of Computer Science at Umeå University in Sweden. She is head of the Feminist Technoscience research group, which develops critical perspectives on everyday digital practices based on design-oriented and feminist theories.

In the article presented, human–computer interaction (HCI) is explored as a design-oriented practice. By considering feminist accounts of situated knowledges and touching visions, it is argued that feminist thinking is well on its way to offering real alternatives of great importance for HCI.

Registration

The events will be held in German until further notice. If you wish to discuss certain topics or texts in English, please contact us in person or via email. Please register at pandu@tu-dresden.de and let us know whether you would like to participate digitally or analogue. We will send you the link to the virtual seminar room.