Discomfort in the making of technologies:

(re-) choreographing agency

ECSCW '24: the 22nd European Conference on Computer-Supported Cooperative Work

June 17th-21st @ Rimini, Italy

Organizers

Joana Chicau, Creative Computing Institute, University of the Arts London;

Kristina Popova, Media Technology and Interaction Design , KTH Royal Institute of Technology;

Rebecca Fiebrink, Creative Computing Institute, University of the Arts London;

Rob Comber , KTH Royal Institute of Technology;

Clàudia Figueras , Stockholm University;

Call for participation

We invite CSCW scholars to collaboratively explore discomfort in the practices of technology design and production. As technology practitioners, we are often believed to have responsibility for the development of technology, yet building of technology is always a collective enterprise. We are inviting the workshop participants to explore the collective, embodied, experiential and ecological nature of technology production with the help of choreography-inspired techniques. The first part of the workshop will be devoted to the sharing of participants’ submissions. In the second part, with the help of body-based exercises, we will articulate the discomforts of building and researching technology in the age of surveillance capitalism. The main workshop goal is to facilitate community building among the tech practitioners and researchers, who share the experience of discomfort around topics such as ecological crisis, post-colonialism, and social (in)justice. Our second goal is to explore the limits of individual responsibility in small and large scale technology production. Our third goal is to create a shared data base of methodologies of exploring discomfort and, more broadly, the embodied nature of technology.

Workshop themes

The participants are invited to submit their workshop submissions in relation but not limited to the following themes:

From individual discomfort to collective solidarity — How do we build the structures of solidarity on our shared discomfort? We invite participants to explore alternative structures of co-operation and solidarity, for example, tech labour unions, and other forms of collective organization.

Researching affect and emotion in tech design and production — Emotions have long been excluded from the serious matters of technology development and ethics; we want to bring them back, relying on the recent move towards emotions in technology production (Ruckenstein, 2023; Garrett et al., 2023; Su et al., 2021).

Embodied methods as a way to reflect on technological production — In the field of human-computer interaction there has been an increased interest and attention to bodily, felt experiences and tacit knowledge (Höök, 2018). We welcome critical and reflective approaches that experiment with physical involvement or draw inspiration from theater, performing arts, or somatic practices, among others.

Strategies for resisting extractivism and techno-solutionism — We are interested in learning from existing work that empowers communities and individuals to become more resilient in their relationship with technology, in particular in the workplace.

See how to apply .

Workshop structure

The workshop is structured as a full-day event. In the first part, we will have a round of introductions where workshop participants will present their submissions:

Group mapping exploration: participants will share their reflection on the workshop themes, from their pre-workshop submission. This part will focus on experiences of discomfort as creators of technologies and of resisting extractivist techonologies and the organisational practices that stimulate their development.

In the second part we will conduct an embodied exploration of the issues:

Group design ideation and intervention: With the help of choreographic prompts and body-based exercises, participants will propose forms of countering the issues raised in the first part of the workshop.
Reflective discussion, summary and conclusion: Participants will reflect on their proposals and how these can inform alternative modes of co-operation, solidarity and digital equity rather than technological production driven by extraction and infinite growth.

Workshop Schedule (TBD)

This is a full-day workshop, more details soon.

Read this far? Join our workshop!

We welcome anyone with an interest in the workshop themes, in particular, but not exclusively, discomfort around realising ethical issues in technological development. We are especially interested, but not limited to, practitioners working in areas such as:

Digital Product and Software Development;
Digital Rights and Tech Labour Rights;
Ethics in Technology;
Somaesthetic Design and Interaction;
Sustainability echnological development;
Feminist and Decolonial approaches to HCI and technology;
Pedagogy and Education;
Policy in the field of Technology;

Those interested in taking part in the workshop are invited to send us a short reflection on the workshop themes. We are open to various submission formats, such as a 2-3 written pages, a 3-5min video, a portfolio of artistic practices or a combination of the above.

Please fill-in this form where you will find a section to upload your short reflection as described above.

Note¹: deadline for showing interest is 1st June (registering early helps us plan, but feel free to get in touch after this deadline in case there are still spots available).

Note²: you will also need to register for the ECSCW'24 conference using the online registration system.

If you have any questions, contact Kristina (kpopova@kth.se) and/or Joana (j.chicau@arts.ac.uk).