S+T+ARTS Panel: Making Collective Datasets for Justice

At PublicSpaces Conference 2023
June 27th 2023
11:00-12:00 hrs
Pakhuis de Zwijger in Amsterdam

Datasets are often made with data that carry harmful biases. But can we make datasets collectively for social and environmental justice? If so, how? In this panel, we invite two collectives and one artist whose works have been nominated for S+T+ARTS Prize 2023, an annual award for critical and creative projects in the intersection of science, technology, and arts.

First, Anna Berti Suman will explain the initiative Sensing for Justice, and explore the questions such as how to create collective dataset of civic evidence of environmental harm and use it in litigation. Afterwards, artist collective Superposition will discuss their project Inside the NYPD’s Surveillance Machine, an interactive data visualisation for Amnesty International revealing the shocking reach of facial recognition technology in the city of New York. They will explain how to collectively gather this data about surveillance cameras for justice, and how translating data into visualisation can raise awareness and evoke civic action against the violation of privacy and right to protest.

Artist Egor Kraft will talk about his project Hashd0x | Proof of War, a tactical software that is designed to combat widespread disinformation technics. He will explore the questions such as how to distinguish citizen generated data from disinformation, and what kind of evidence capture and forensics tools we need in humanitarian crisis affected areas such as war zones. The session will end with a moderated discussion and Q&A.