Mutable Studio

Search A series of talks, interactive community events, and critical research which highlight emergent ideas in the critical technology space. Our most recent project, Art Search, is an interactive, individualized montage film representative of what a search engine with a feminist foundation might feel like. We envision that a search engine built with a feminist ethos would acknowledge and challenge bias offer a multiplicity of perspectives informed by an array of identities and lived experiences and encourage interaction, rather than transaction, between technology and its users.The film uses ML and facial recognition to uncover likenesses between participant-viewers and people depicted in film clips originating from 1964 to the present. Art Search calls attention to the multiple entry points of bias in the development of the search result, from representational biases in the production/sourcing of footage to the biases embedded in facial recognition model development and training. An open data call invites audiences to contribute their own footage for the film to incorporate.

Algorithms of the Everyday Through talks, community events, critical research and interactive installations, our program Algorithms of the Everyday explores bringing the algorithms that influence daily lived experience into everyday conversation. In our most recent community series, a cohort of artists, researchers, and developers share their progress developing AI and analog artifacts at the intersection of art and technology. These projects decode harmful biases embedded in tech, and encode more expansive values derived from community members lived experiences. Each project invites audiences to co-craft alternatives to the algorithmic status quo alongside our cohort members. By connecting everyday tech users in the community with artists, researchers, and developers, this series offers multiple entry points to amplify under-supported and under-resourced voices in tech.

Autonomous Bodies An ongoing series which explores the relationships among legislation, geography, safety, and bodily autonomy through talks, community events, critical research and interactive installations. One such project was an interactive new media installation exploring the role of privacy and technology. Many states and countries worldwide are increasingly proposing and passing laws that either affirm or encroach upon the bodily autonomy of various groups, from people who can become pregnant, to LGBTQ folks, to immigrants, to the incarcerated, to unhoused people, to bodies of land and water. This legislation is creating a patchwork in which rights to bodily autonomy and safety vary by state and by country, with historically marginalized groups disproportionately affected. At the same time, digital technologies like telehealth are complicating the geographic reach of such legislation, and might offer a means of claiming and reclaiming rights to bodily autonomy and, thus, to increased safety. Autonomous Bodies offers audiences a means of exploring these contentions.