This is a free, virtual event with professional live captions, open to the public.

This talk explores how usefulness is a necessary metaphor for design and art to critique technology, create spaces of provocation and activism. Within this talk, I will be expanding up usefulness, critical design and art, and focusing on two projects that embody this, Feminist Data Set and CAre B0t.

This talk will also dive into theories and inspiration behind rsearch drive art. Usefulness, and interdisciplinary work are key and necessary parts of a research driven arts practice, and it is directly, extremely inspired by Tania Brugerua’s arte util methodology, which means utilitarian art. Arte Útil draws on artistic thinking to imagine, create and implement tactics that change how we act in society, again heavily focused on usefulness, on tool building, and on communities. Critic and Curator Nora Khan highlights the strengths of work stretching across domains, making art a necessary trojan horse to discuss useful change. Research driven art, embodying activism and or utilitarianism are artists and practices such as American Artist, Francis Tseng, Joanna Moll, Adam Harvey, Mimi Onuoha, Forensic Architecture and others. Artistic research practices don’t exist just to bear witness, though that alone would be worthwhile; they question, provocate and offer a solution to a problem. This should not be viewed as a form of techno-solutionism however; the ‘solutions’ the artists provide are not meant to create an end to all other potential solutions, but serve to offer rather, temporary or open-source fixes for gaps in equity and violence created by society and thus are poetic witnesses of those gaps.

Caroline Sinders is a machine-learning-design researcher and artist. For the past few years, she has been examining the intersections of technology’s impact in society, interface design, artificial intelligence, abuse, and politics in digital, conversational spaces. Sinders is the founder of Convocation Design + Research, an agency focusing on the intersections of machine learning, user research, designing for public good, and solving difficult communication problems. As a designer and researcher, she has worked with Amnesty International, Intel, IBM Watson, the Wikimedia Foundation, and others.

Sinders has held fellowships with the Harvard Kennedy School, the Mozilla Foundation, Yerba Buena Center for the Arts, Eyebeam, STUDIO for Creative Inquiry, and the International Center of Photography. Her work has been supported by the Ford Foundation, Omidyar Network, the Open Technology Fund and the Knight Foundation. Her work has been featured in the Tate Exchange in Tate Modern, Victoria and Albert Museum, MoMA PS1, LABoral, Ars Electronica, the Houston Center for Contemporary Craft, Slate, Quartz, Wired, as well as others. Sinders holds a Masters from New York University’s Interactive Telecommunications Program.

This event is part of the 2nd Season of the Feminist and Accessible Publishing and Communications Technologies Speaker and Workshop Series (https://www.feministandaccessiblepublishingandtechnology.com), organized by Dr. Alex Ketchum. This series was made possible thanks to our sponsors: SSHRC (and the Initiative for Digital Citizen Research), the Institute for Gender, Sexuality, and Feminist Studies (IGSF), Milieux, Initiative for Indigenous Futures, Algorithmic Media Observatory, MILA, Cinema Politics, McGill’s Department of History and Classical Studies, Black Feminist Futures Working Group, the Sustainability Projects Fund, Moving Image Research Laboratory, The McGill Writing Centre, MUTEK IMG, the Intersectionality Research Hub, and Machine Agencies.

There is no fee required to attend this event. We will provide live professional captions. The event will be recorded and the video will be made available on our website a few days after the event.