#Coding: Workshops

Day 1 | Day 2

The New Alphabet School is a collaborative format for artistic, curatorial, poetic and activist research practices. Over the course of two years and in eleven editions, the School will open up a space for research going beyond academic and disciplinary boundaries. Workshop participants become a part of the New Alphabet School and are invited to contribute to the programming of all subsequent editions.

For the edition #Coding, two workshops will investigate the coded and algorithmic knowledge inherent in networking structures and data sets and explore the possibilities of re-mapping or un-training existing data-body relations.

In association with The Common Room

The Common Room Foundation
287-288 Dhan Mill Compound, 100 ft. road
110074 Chattarpur, New Delhi

9.30 am Welcome
10–10.30 am Introduction
10.30 am–6 pm Workshops
6–7 pm Final Discussion

Workshop #1

Code, Layers, Infrastructures

Convened by Loren Britton, Isabel Paehr, Jörn Röder and Kamran Behrouz (via Skype)

Current centralized, entangled corporeal and governmental internet infrastructures tend towards exploitation and surveillance. By experimenting with embodying and coding networks that are decentral, anonymous, temporary, specific and/or collective, this workshop contributes to the digital commons. Together, participants will use the metaphor of the layer to question existing networked structures and collectively imagine and develop alternative tools of navigation. Convened by artists, coders and game designers, this workshop will look at individual layers of computational abstraction and small-scale networks within our everyday use of connective devices (such as smartphones, laptops, smart speakers, wearables). Starting from the everyday layers of computational networks, participants of this workshop will go on computational walks in the neighborhood and map the interconnections and relations between small-scale and global-scale infrastructures and networks.

Workshop #2

The Untraining Playground: Edit-a-thon on the Metabolism of Bodies and Data

Convened by Fabian Hesse and Mitra Wakil

The workshop will engage participants in the exploration and re-editing of 3D point cloud data to create a collective un-training data set. Point clouds are sets of data points in space and can create 3D models of certain data structures for visualization and – in this workshop – imagination: In a ubiquitous testing field of mutual measuring and optimization, amplified by artificial intelligence as well as what some call artificial stupidity, this workshop takes a look into the raw data of the 3D meshes of everyday digital infrastructures. With the help of smartphones and software, sensors and senses, participants will not only scan common data, but also the complex interconnected meshes between agencies of molecular bodies, an Internet of Things, mobile phones and larger infrastructures. These scans will be captured and translated into common editable point clouds. What are the conditions of such a data set and how do they differ from traditional training data sets for AI? Which speculative and queer utopia can be produced in these assemblages and how sustainable are they?
Participants will be provided beforehand with preparatory material such as 3D applications and selected text material. In order to participate, no technological in-depth knowledge is required.

Day 1 | Day 2