Curating Data: care, commons and networks

Contents

Team Members in alphabetical order

1. Introduction

2. Research Questions

3. Methodology

Collecting - HotGlue

Exploring - case studies / examples

Examining - text/practice analysis

Excersizes - Pirate Care / ToC / Unproductive Solutions

4. Findings

Curating

Care

Commons

Relations

5. Discussion / Conclusion

References

Team Members in alphabetical order

Annet Dekker

Marialaura Ghidini

Asen Ivanov

Theresa Kneppers

Eva Krumm

Kelly Rappleye

Gaia Tedone

Magda Tyzlik-Carver

Marina Valle Noronha

1. Introduction

It is clear that digital networks for a long time have been much more than just communication channels and today they are the very heart of public life. In the context of climate change, world-wide pandemic, increasing commercialization of network infrastructures, and diminishing funding for art and cultural practices, there is a need to establish a framework for understanding current developments in the field of digital curation.

In this project, we focused on digital curation, which we regarded not as an act in the silo of the art world and its institutions but as a networked practice performed daily by social media users, programmers, and algorithms (Tedone 2018; Tyzlik-Carver 2017; Goriunova 2013). In this sense, the meaning of curating has expanded beyond the usual space of the gallery and art institutions and is part of scientific practices of data collection, storing, and presentation. It is a practice of curating content for commerce and function in search optimization algorithms. Rather than lamenting over the fact that today ‘everyone is a curator’ (Kasprzak 2008) or that we are in the midst of ‘curationism’ (Balzer 2015), which supposedly diminishes the value of the practice, we made an in-depth analysis of digital curation to re-address the necessity for care and collaboration (Puig de la Bellacasa 2017, Agostinho 2019, Galloway and Thacker 2006, Tyzlik-Carver forthcoming) in these practices. At the same time, the development of online environments, with their histories, grammars, aesthetics, and ethics of technical, cultural and social changes, calls for a recognition of the fact that digital curatorial discourse moved beyond the field of art and within a wider terrain of networked art and its media and visual cultures. To account for this shift requires a radical rethinking of the notion of aesthetics as simultaneously a major mode of operation for the contemporary society and a practice in a constant process of becoming whose very constitution is being changed by networked technologies (Goriunova 2012). Therefore, in this project we also wanted to address the changes characteristic to digital curatorial practices by starting with the shared recognition that the curatorial function in digital curating has shifted from its focus on the curator as an exhibition maker and a ‘meta curator’ (O’Neill 2007) to a practice embedded in and influenced by socio-technological constructions of networks and their (ir)rational processes. Such forms of curating have been defined as ‘immaterial’ (Krysa 2008), ‘posthuman’ (Tyżlik-Carver 2016 and 2018) and as a set of networked relations (Dekker 2018, Tedone 2019), and they constitute the basis for this project that aims to identify how care manifests in contemporary forms of digital curating, and how commons making is part of this process. Moreover, and coming back to the notion of ‘care’, since curation has always had a close relationship with ‘care and caring for’, in this new constellation a rethinking of care as a practice involving political, economic and institutional power relations (Mol 2008) that has the potential to disrupt existing values (Puig de la Bellacasa 2017), could bring forth new perspectives on digital curation.

By exploring and analyzing several practices of digital and data curation we unpacked the concepts of care and commons and by assessing their functions within digital curation consider how they may help to rethink curatorial practice to address various structures of control, authority, and accountability within these practices. As such, in this project we wanted to critically evaluate the concepts of care and common(ing)s from the perspective of curating data in digital environments.

2. Research questions

What are the strategies adopted by curators to explore care in the context of computer networks and disrupt given human-machine/human-platforms relations?

subquestions:

What is care and how does it manifest?

Where is care situated in digital curating and what is the value of care?

What are contemporary perspectives on curating in and with human/computer networks?

What makes a network caring?

How can 'empathy' and 'sensing' be acknowledged and incorporated when working collaboratively across digital platforms and devices?

3. Methodology

In short, our methodology followed four different methods: 1. exploration of case studies and tools, 2. examination of theoretical texts to create a theoretical framework, 3. exercises to unpack and develop the abstract theoretical constructs, and 4. collecting, to do the work of digital curation.

3.1 Exploring Tools

By exploring several tools we critically reflected on how the entanglement of care and control are introduced in practices of the digital curation of art, data, objects, etc., and how teasing out this tension could be a productive way towards understanding the politics that shape acts of digital curation. Since one of the themes was common(s/ing) we decided that our tools should also reflect the theory that we were researching: using open source tools that would allow collaborative ways of working. We focused our attention on several open-source collaborative discussing and working platforms such as Jitsi, Etherpad (Variapad), and HotGlue (see 3.4).

After starting our first day on Jitsi Meet, which was chosen for its Open Source and non-encrypted video conferencing, issues with connectivity led to a switch to the Zoom Video Conferencing platform. This enabled much clearer and more cohesive communication and collaboration, including screen sharing and the use of separate, private rooms for breakaway groups, while also raising ethical questions on the use of a platform known for its security and privacy issues. Each day we tackled a different core concept, engaging with particular case studies and exercises, and using Hotglue, Variapad, and Zoom to share resources and common readings, and learn from project presentations from various group members. The days were punctuated by ‘screen walks’—visual interludes into the participants' computers—during which specific projects were presented. We also participated in a concluding performative workshop entitled “Unproductive Solutions.”

Another integral tool for our collaborative process was Variapad; an Open Source, non-encrypted digital notepad that allows for real-time writing on one page simultaneously. We used this for daily note-taking, to exchange relevant references and resources, to record discussions of relevant literature and texts, to capture presentations and 'screen talks', to formulate new research questions that emerged from the original ones, and to write this final research report together. Variapad was also used for a particular exercise during our exploration of Commoning, in which we collectively wrote Guidelines and Terms and Conditions and use for our CCCcoop research pages.

Fig. 1 https://pad.vvvvvvaria.org/ccccoop , screenshot 29 June 2020

3.1.1 Exploring Case Studies

The exploration of the tools was informed by several case studies that would help us to explore the mutual implications of care, technology, and tools while questioning the ideology of private property, work, and metrics. An example of a case study was the Pirate Care project and we used their approach to learn more about supporting and activating collective processes of learning.

“Pirate Care considers the assumption that we live in a time in which care, understood as a political and collective capacity of society, is becoming increasingly defunded, discouraged, and criminalized. Neoliberal policies have for the last two decades re-organized the basic care provisions that were previously considered cornerstones of democratic life - healthcare, housing, access to knowledge, right to asylum, freedom of mobility, social benefits, etc. - turning them into tools for surveilling, excluding and punishing the most vulnerable. The name Pirate Care refers to those initiatives that have emerged in opposition to such political climate by self-organizing technologically-enabled care & solidarity networks”.[1]

To become more aware of the complex and intertwined webs of care that support or shape our lives, and to the different kinds of conditions and skills that characterize care labor we discussed the different ways care is understood – in language, in cultural contexts and digital practices such as digital preservation (in relation to defining ‘significant properties’[2]). Based on this approach we set up our preliminary Code of Conduct and Terms of Use (see 3.3.) to consider in (self)practice the question of what is common(s) and how commoning takes place through use and access to common spaces.

3.2 Examining

We conducted qualitative research on digital curation in order to rethink the concepts of care and common(s/ing) to understand how these concepts could help to understand the politics that shape and influence digital curation. We were particularly focusing on the theoretical texts of Magda Tyżlik-Carver and Olga Goriunova to explore the different genealogies and contemporary concepts and usage of the term and practices of (digital) curating, and Maria Puig de la Bellacasa’s in her book Matters of Care to come to a better understanding of the notion and value of care in technological ecologies. By analyzing and comparing these different texts we wanted to come to define what the value of care is in digital curating.

3.3 Exercises

To develop our thinking and test our preliminary findings we introduced several exercises that would help to tease out the abstract concepts in more practical ways. Hence how practice can help to unpack theoretical concepts, as well as how practice can also inform the theoretical development.

3.3.1 Code of Conduct and Terms of Use

By using Variapad, and open source/access website, anyone who knows the link can access the page on which we collected our data. Therefore, by creating the page a new common was created. In our case it was about writing collaboratively, discussing and defining, who we are, what we do, and how we create a sense of community, through the framework of terms and conditions. While this is still work in progress, we consider it to be part of commoning, establishing, and working together on creating resources. However, this raised the question: how do we want to make available (and share) the resources that we created?

3.3.2. Unproductive Solutions

Artist Rebekah Modrak and Marialaura Ghidini presented the performative workshop Unproductive Solutions to complement the discussion about the notion of relationship in the context of digital technology and curating. The workshop started with a presentation of the fictional company Unproductive Solutions by Alex Mastrangelo who introduced himself as the CEO of the Unproductive Solutions and presented the values and aims of the company. He explained that the company's aim was to collectively imagine a technological world with a soul, with humanity as the core of its philosophy, and presented an array of services. What these services had in common was their attempt to liberate people's dependence on algorithmic logic and assumptions, as well as a passive agent in a scenario often dominated by tech-enabled social intelligence. The services were presented as case studies: HumanReply, Undisciplined, and Ulogic. After the presentation, it was revealed that Alex Mastragelo was an actor hired by the Modrak and Ghidini and the fictional company is the curatorial project they are currently working on, which entail working with artists to create artworks-as-services or subsidiary companies to their project. We were then asked to work as a group to think of a technology that would challenge our present relationship with e-services (and the assumptions behind their logic), especially in the light of our discussions about care, commons, and working collaboratively in the context of curating data and digital technology.

3.4 Collecting

In an attempt to also do digital curation, we used the online platform HotGlue to collect and curate our research. HotGlue is a digital tool created by Danja Vasiliev and Gottfried Haider that allows users to create web-pages directly within a web-browser in a collage style, using very simple and straight-forward visual editing tools. We collaboratively used Hotglue as a visual board to gather the questions and findings generated in daily discussions and exercises. Each day, a new HotGlue page would present a set of research questions, and each member would “glue” concepts, images, ideas, and references to the page throughout the day. These pages therefore functioned as an interactive summary of the found definitions and processes. To capture this process, we took screen recordings of our various Hotglue pages to present our explorative process, and track the evolution of the pages.

Fig. 2 https://ccccoop.hotglue.me/, screenshot 30 June 2020

4. Findings

4.1 Curate/curator/curating/curation

The etymology of the noun curator derives from the Latin root cura, meaning ‘overseer’, ‘manager’, and ‘guardian’. The earliest use of the noun leads to Ancient Rome, where curators were senior civil servants in charge of various departments of public works, including oversight of aqueducts, bathhouses, and sewers. From the early fifteenth century, the term was used to describe those in charge of minors, people with mental illness, and the disabled. A ‘curate’ was someone responsible for the spiritual welfare of those in their charge. Similarly, curation, derived from the Latin curatione which meant ‘a taking care, attention, management’, especially ‘medical attention’, which around the mid-seventeenth century translated to ‘management, guardianship’, or an ‘officer in charge of a museum, library, etc.’. Fast-forwarding to the twentieth century and the popularization of the museum, archival and library collections the curator became the person who would organize exhibition displays of selections from these collections. Post World War II, the role of the curator transitioned to become an independent, creative author who entered a centralized position in a globalizing art world. In this transition, the meaning and function of curation shifted from the museum collection department, where the curator was embedded in the institutional curatorial department, to intellectual and institutional independence. An independent curator organized -often large-scale- exhibitions and events of contemporary art to reflect the changing nature of art objects with conceptual and postmodern art movements. Yet, by the early twenty-first century, the conflation of the term curator had set in. Under the guise of ‘avant-garde cool’ and the return to the ‘authentic’ experience, marketing departments recognized the appeal and power of the independent curator and appropriated the term. Soon the slogan ‘everyone’s a curator’ gained prominence and the curator turned filter-feeder (Schleiner 2003) or paid selector, reflecting the era of ‘prosumers’ who preferred to select things rather than produce them.

Fig. 3 Instagram profile of ‘curatewashing’, screenshot 1 July 2020.

In our discussions we explored the definitions of curate, curator, curating and curation. We reflected on the use of the terms and the changing boundaries of what can be curated and by whom. As the agents and objects of curation have expanded the forms of organizing and collecting have also shifted. What this analysis indicates is that curating as a practice in recent years has taken on a broader definition in which curating moves beyond the arts into computational and popular culture domains. We defined ‘curate’ as an action that emphasizes the 'doing' within a specific situation or network, curating as a set of practice or an act, curation has a more blurry definition, moving beyond art and embedded in computational/popular culture and often applied to social media, and finally curator as a storyteller. Though collecting and showcasing different types of art on various platforms, curators shape the time and place in which stories told by the artworks. The new digital world has therefore expanded the reach and capabilities of the curator, as new perspectives on place and time (physical art shows are more limited time-wise than digital shows) have emerged. Especially during the COVID-19 pandemic, these options have been explored since the physical world is shut down for a large part. We agreed that we would focus on the definition of curating as a digital practice that is embedded in an ecology of infrastructural tools and platforms, including humans, technology, and socio-political relations. At the same time, we noticed that curating is always connected to some form of care, but what kind of care? What world are we curating?

Fig. 4 Graph curation versus curating

4.2 Care

Following the initial discussion on the curator as a 'guardian' and as someone who 'takes care' and provides 'attention', the first concept we tackled was precisely that of 'care'. The exploration of this concept was aided by a mapping exercise available on the Pirate Care website (https://syllabus.pirate.care/session/whatiscare/) and by the reading of the work of María Puig de la Bellacasa. As a result of the integration of these two resources, the concept of care was problematized and localized as operating at different levels: at the level of one discrete's curatorial practice; at the level of everyday life, social interactions and dynamics of subject formation; at the level of the management of files and archival systems in conservation practices as well as disguised as the insurance policy of tech companies (i.e. Apple care); and at a theoretical and conceptual level, pushing considerations on the ethics and politics of digital and online curation grounded in feminist scholarship and technoscience. The three dimensions of care emphasized by de la Bellacasa — labor/ work, affect/affections, ethics/politics — were found particularly useful in identifying where care is situated in digital curating and what kind of networks it informs, as well as the notion of the 'speculative', which proved to be generative to frame the networked and processual mode of curating experimented within the group as part of the workshop. Several interesting juxtapositions were discussed to further problematize the concept, namely that between care and critique and care and management. In relation to the latter, some considerations on the gender biases of this binary were addressed and a wider reflection on how similar concepts are 'packaged' by different fields of knowledge and disciplines opened up. The HotGlue page captures the evolution of the discussion and visualizes screenshots of projects researched by the group during the day, including projects by organizations and networks such as Rhizome, Viral Solidarity, etc.

Fig. 5 https://ccccoop.hotglue.me/care/ , screenshot 3 July 2020

4.3 Common/commons/commoning - negotiating terms of use and exploring other commons

We navigated through the relation between digital curating and commons with a set of references to curatorial projects that specifically address commons and its digital context (Carpenter 2008, Tyzlik-Carver 2010, Sollfrank et al 2019). Following the suggestion to think through commons/curating relations we considered the verb to common as referring to the act of commoning understood as being together, creating resources, negotiating, and sharing them (Linebaugh 2008, 2010; De Angelis and Stavrides 2010).

One way in which we practically considered the space we curated for Digital Methods Summer School (DMI SS2020), was to explore the idea of commons as a practice of 1) negotiating conditions for use of resources, which we created together during this one week of DMI SS2020, and 2) writing together and articulating terms of use for us and for others who might want to engage with this space in the future. This is still unfinished and perhaps the very nature of creating terms of use is that the project of writing them is always open. Following this, our first step was to look at different examples of code of conduct. These included different projects such as http://creatingcommons.zhdk.ch/collective-conditions-cocktail-bar/, https://pad.constantvzw.org/p/guidelines.questions, http://constantvzw.org/collectiveconditions/no_u_in_dump/etherdump/pictures_recordings.diff.html, https://www.contributor-covenant.org/, http://citizencodeofconduct.org/ (which we couldn't access), and https://www.djangoproject.com/conduct/ .

Fig. 6 https://ccccoop.hotglue.me/common/ , screenshot 1 July 2020

Each of these terms of use defined guidelines about what kind of behavior is not welcome in the spaces the terms refer to. Importantly, however, each of these guidelines also simultaneously defines the very conditions on which these documents are developed. For example in guidelines by Constant, Brussels-based art organization, we can read: “When writing dossiers, we try to avoid negative statements and negative language. Is there a way to approach the guidelines with a similar attitude?” https://pad.constantvzw.org/p/guidelines.questions, this is then followed by a set of propositions, that answer to this question. In another example of commoning, the very concept of commons as a universal term is also questioned. QuoMo(a/w)ning!?, a commoning score developed for OPEN SCORES: How to Program the Commons exhibition (http://creatingcommons.zhdk.ch/open-scores/ ) is based on projects curated by Z.Blace where commons appear to be a space that is not safe for all at the same time. The questions which accompany our exploration of these terms of use are: 1) what are the terms of use for? What is the aim of defining them? 2) For who are they developed? and 3) How to make them useful and usable? Going through the exercise of writing Terms of Use for our project was helpful to address these questions together during the day.

Fig. 7 Zach Blace, QomMo(a/w)ning?!… (2019) Score #7 for OPEN SCORES: How to program the commons

http://creatingcommons.zhdk.ch/qommoa-wning/

While Terms of Use was one of the ways in which we specifically considered a question of what is common(s) and how commoning takes place through use and access to common spaces, we also shared our independent research, by presenting its process and findings. For example, Marina Vale Noronha shared her infographics created as part of her research on digital access to museum objects. Gaia Tedone in her screen walk presented the case of circulation of the networked image and its invisible power networks. She explored the idea of network curating with specific reference to the Cuban context where access to information networks is limited and media content circulates weekly via a localized hard disk of 1 terabyte, el Cuban Paquete Semanal. El Cuban Paquete is considered as 'a common good' by local users and operates in a grey area between a legal and a pirate practice.

Against the idea of commons as universal, we finished the day recognizing how commons are differently created and how it is continuously established through negotiations, different practices, moments of refusal, and different energies and commitments to generate other spaces and conditions to accommodate the commons we want.

4.4 Relations

We started the day by looking at the material collected on the Relation page of our HotGlue site, and we briefly discussed we a web platform or digital service is never neutral. They are always part of a system of relations that is economic, social, political, and technical. For example, we looked at the case of the TikTok apps in Asia and how it recently became entangled with political discourses -- the app has recently been banned by the Indian government as a consequence of the tensions with China over their Himalayan border. TikTok is an interesting example of a communication app in India. Differently from Facebook or Instagram, this app has allowed for the participation of millions of people from rural areas in mainstream social issues, who are usually underrepresented and whose voices (and languages) are rarely heard in the public domain. The HotGlue Relation page proposed excerpts of articles discussing self-help apps and their entanglement with solutionism, or about the consequences of entertaining a frictionless relationship with technology, or about the role of positioning when telling narratives. The page also included snippets about the social consequences of the pandemic lockdowns, from social and class division to the rise of collective spiritual practices that have been aided by internet technology.

After this, we explored the question: What are consequences for ethics and care when collaborating in socio-technical assemblages that transform methods, collaborations, and human-machine relations? We looked at what we mean by socio-technical assemblages and how the practice of curating can be used as a means to nurture discussion and exploring this idea, especially in the context of curating online and curating projects that moves between online and offline spaces (Ghidini, 2019). We looked at different projects organized by Marialaura Ghidini with the aim to look at how relations can take place in the digital realm, and within the merging of online and offline spaces and contexts. With the project or-bits.com we looked at the idea of the interface, and how different understandings of it can lead to different forms of creating art, disseminate it, and collaboratively discussing ideas. We then moved onto looking at how an online marketplace can be used to produce an exhibition with the project #exstrange, which saw the commission and presentation of artworks-as-actions with the aim to rethink the relations between artists, collectors, and curators. We also looked at how the use of simple digital technology in the context of performance art can nurture the coming together of people with different backgrounds and languages, and we looked at the documentation of the work Unknown Cloud by the Swedish duo Lundal&Seitl that was presented simultaneously in Stockholm and Bangalore. The last example we looked at was related to exploring how digital technology changes our relationship with the environment (people, places, nature), and how this is largely affecting megalopolis in India, their socio-cultural diversity and their public spaces. This was discussed in relation to the publishing project Silicon Plateau.

After discussing how actions on web platforms and devices are often taken for granted whereby terms and conditions are also accepted without thinking about implications and consequences, we looked at the role of the curator operating online and the fact that online projects, in the history of curating web-based platforms, have often pointed at this problems, and often imagined scenarios in which our relationship with them could be different. In this sense, the history of curating online sheds light on ethical and more political approaches to using technology, and ways of imbuing them with new narratives. These notions came together during the Unproductive Solutions workshop (see also 3.3.2). As a group, we worked to create our own Unproductive Solutions app, one that rethought the distribution of the energy used while inserting itself in the area of wellness apps, such as apps for meditation and recreation that are promoted as effective tools to be mindful in our daily lives. We started to look at the logic behind wellness apps and looked at the fact that they promote the idea that is one's responsibility to improve their wellbeing. We decided to try to subvert this logic by proposing the idea that collective problems require collective solutions. The logic behind the service that we proposed was based on leveraging the time and effort that one is spending working on themselves and apply it to address a collective problem, such as that of energy and consumption of natural resources.

5. Discussion & Conclusion

5.1 Methodology

As the use of "the same page" methodology might seem controversial, the pros and cons of the usage of the platforms and thus the method we used will be discussed. First, the Zoom platform is very user friendly and is found to be a great alternative for collaboration if it is not possible to gather in a physical space. The program is flexible in the sense that there are various ways of communicating possible (video, audio, screen sharing, chat etc.) This makes communicating fast and easy. However, there are some downsides as well. Due to not being in the same space, conversations can feel a bit static. You can not look someone in the eye to show that you want to say something, which makes conversating much harder dan giving a monologue. Also, as mentioned in the methodology, Zoom can record the conversation, causing privacy and security issues. Secondly, HotGlue was very functional for its purpose; visualizing the brainstorms while all working on the same page. HotGlue works well if you want to use different types of imagery (e.g. youtube videos and GIFS) on one single page as it supports various hyperlinks. As there is no ‘owner’ of a page, there is no hierarchy which makes it easy to work collectively. It takes a while to learn how to work with all the functions, but it is worth the one-time struggle. However, the program still contains some glitches which are unpleasurable as they impact the smoothness of collaborating at the same time. You cannot see who is working where which might cause images and text to overlap. Also, sometimes someone’s work gets lost in the process, which is a big con. Lastly, the Variapad was very useful to gather written information and was a pleasant medium to work simultaneously in real-time. Conducting the terms of conduct helped to establish who we were talking for and to, creating a better understanding of the communing we were involved with. However, the vague description and little influence we had on who would use the pad made it hard to form the restrictions and consequences.

In conclusion, the platforms created a good mixture of different ways of reporting and communicating, making sure an all-round view was constantly upheld throughout the data-gathering process. Combining the different platforms made sure we could explore, collect, and examine various types of data without losing track. As the platforms, all served a different purpose the drawbacks of one were taken care of through the other. This is what made this methodology so useful for collaborative working. The one thing which could be done differently is making sure that every team member familiarizes themselves with the programs beforehand, which could be done in case of more time as ours was very limited.

5.2 Code of Conduct and Terms of Use

As mentioned, we used commoning as a verb that is about the act of commoning, being together, and creating resources and sharing them. By using the open/accessible pad we needed to establish a Code of Conduct and Terms of Use. Together, we decided on a couple of ground rules, such as treating others with respect (i.e. no offensive language, and not deleting some else’s work without permission. In this process, we noted that a lot of terms needed to be specified to make people outside our project to understand them, showing one of the first difficulties in commoning. To make sure that the common is used in the decided ‘proper way’ the ground rules need to be clear to everyone which can be very challenging as a lot of words are subjective in meaning. For example, what might not seem to be ‘offensive language’ to one, might be offensive to someone else.

This also raised the next challenge of commoning; what to do if someone violates our set codes of conduct/terms of use? The first step would be to talk to the person violating the rule, pointing out the violation and asking them to remove it and not repeat the violation. However, there is no guarantee that the ‘right action will be taken by the participant. Should we then punish them? And if so, how? As the page is accessible to everyone it was not sure if we could exclude anyone from the page, which seems to be the most logical punishment. This left us with the idea that there might be no real way to uphold the code of conduct/terms of use in the end. Nevertheless, we still wanted to keep the rules. This raised the question: why do we want to keep rules in commons which we cannot uphold if someone is very unwilling to cooperate? The answer is a topic discussed before; because we want to take care of our common environment. All the commons are made and produced in order to share, and the willingness to maintain the shared and openly accessible aspect of communing is what makes it so unique. Therefore, rules to protect (take care of) the commons and the people communing are set. Hence, care is a crucial aspect of making the concept of commoning work.

Fig 8. The Code of Conduct, in process (screenshot 30 June 2020)

5.3 Unproductive Solutions

While the group focused on self-help apps that promise to assist in managing personal mental health through meditation or affirmations. We identified the issue of cultural appropriation in many of these apps, which often pick and choose from Eastern religious and spiritual traditions, while often presenting anglicized representations that reduce meditation to gamification. We also identified the contradictory logic of a mental health app which is connected to one’s smart device, even though it’s often identified as a large source of stress and mental duress. This led us to an exploration of the hypocritical nature of mental health apps which promise to quantify mental wellness, and individualized mental health struggles as a problem for individuals to solve on their own through self-help methods, thereby naturalizing societal inequity, including wealth inequality and poor working conditions in neoliberal capitalist societies, as well as structural racism and gender inequities, which are often causing mental health issues. We developed a solution to this issue with an app that could de-individualize mental health through connecting an individual to a larger community or societal cause, while also providing the user with some mental health solace or exercise to support their immediate need.

By envisioning an app called “Shake-It-Up”, a meditation app that guides people away from their devices, since this as a stressor in itself, it would allow participants to share the energy created from this moment of restoration with a collective social cause of their choosing, through donating their data or phone energy for the duration of their meditation. In “Shake-It-Up”, users can choose to either engage in a slow, quiet guided meditation, during which their unused data will be provided to a cause-specific organization (such as providing internet to students without digital access or protestors needing to communicate); or they can choose a dancing, energetic meditation, in which the energy collated from their physical efforts would again be harnessed for the use of a collective need. We hoped this intervention would simultaneously allow people to feel connected to a collective cause, and not blamed for their own mental health “failures”, while also disconnecting people from devices and allowing them to have a therapeutic break when they might need it. The function of choosing which type of meditation to engage in, and which community to send ones energy and data to, also creates a therapeutic relationship of care between the participant, their device, and their chosen community, through an act of curation, which we felt powerfully illustrated the themes our research.

Fig. 9 https://ccccoop.hotglue.me/relation , Shake-It-Up!, screenshot 2 July 2020

5.3 Research questions

We reflect and answered our (sub)questions during this week: about care and how it manifests in different ways, what the relevance was of commons/commoning, and how relations could be both productive and a hindrance. As for the practice on Curating [digital] Data, we signaled different strategies being deployed by analyzing the cases, and looking and discussing others. In all these cases we noticed how curating data is an entanglement of our core concepts: care, commons, and relations. At the same time, we also noticed how most of these projects follow a similar pattern in which at times technology and human work productively, but most of the time there are also unproductive interactions. Following this outcome, we were inspired by the final exercise we did with Unproductive Solutions as it allowed us to speculate, and imagine how to turn unproductive time into something more productive. It emerged that speculation is one of the guiding forces in curating data and curating in the digital context. To speculate one envisages a scenario and asks how it works to imagine something different, but the “how” is often tied to some sort of subjective assumptions. Recognizing this, and going for what one cannot imagine by setting up a scenario that evolves through time, and in collaboration with others, is what allows curators to develop projects that provide rooms for reimagining.

The care aspect of curating was mostly shaped by the earlier tasks of people named curators (or something close) as this always implicated they had to take care of something or someone. As the function of curating has changed to what it is now -that is, independently taking care of anything that can be considered art- the perception of how to take care as a curator has changed with it. As found through an exercise on the Pirate Care website, we concluded that care in curating digital data is mostly set in policies and the politics of websites. Through rule-setting to usage and storage, the work is protected and therefore 'taken care of'.

References

Agostinho, Daniela. 2019. ‘Archival Encounters. Rethinking Access and Care in Digital Colonial Archives.’ Archival Science, 19(2), 141-165.

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