CALL FOR PARTICIPATION



Making Trouble: Techniques for Queering AI and Data Systems




Call for Participation


Do you find Data or AI troubling? Are you tired of normativity, confined to the standards and categories set by others? In our DIS 2024 Workshop, we invite designers, scholars, technologists, artists and anyone else who is interested in unpacking queering as a design technique to trouble the data models defining our world. This workshop will provide a space for a plurality of perspectives to come together and develop a design toolkit of subversion engaged with Queer Theory. 

Interested parties should submit a brief position paper, and we invite participants to take license to queer this format. Each position paper should contain at least 2-3 examples of queering, either in the author’s own work, other works, daily life, or brief encounters in the world. Please submit your papers via our website to be included into a shared repository. Submissions are due June 7th and we will notify participants by June 12 with a registration code for the workshop. We will use these examples as provocations as we map out and abstract techniques of queering we can apply to data, machine learning, and generative AI. Finally,, we will take a hand at prototyping with these techniques to craft speculative artifacts. Join us as we trace alternative pathways from an algorithmically determined world!

Click here for more accessible version of website

Please submit your queer examples here by June 7, 2024: https://forms.gle/i2w1Kr4wugWvS3X86

FOR IDEAS, HERE ARE SOME PROMPTS:
  • Can you share how you have queered something yourself in the past?

  • Can you share something you would like to queer in the future?

  • Is there an example you’ve seen on the internet of someone queering data, AI, or information systems?

  • What’s an example of queering you have read in a book, magazine, or article?

  • Have you ever heard a queer sound? If so, describe it.

  • When have you queered something and how did queering it make you feel?

  • What is the state of queering in DIS as of 2024?

  • Have you or someone you have witnessed resisted systems of counting? Tell us about it.

  • When have you felt miscategorized? Describe it sensorially.

  • Tell us about the last experience of being invisibilized, either by data, systems, or narratives?

  • Have you ever worked with a queer material? How did it feel?

  • What makes something or someone look queer? 

  • Provide an example of queering or transing technologies?

  • What is something that is designed against you?

  • What would you like to co-imagine with AI?

  • Can you share an example of a queer data set? What makes it queer?

  • What is a lesbian technology?

  • What is a gay technology?

  • What is a non-binary technology?

  • What is a trans technology?

  • What is a bisexual technology?

  • What is an aromantic technology?

  • What is an asexual or demisexual technology?

  • What is hijra technology?

  • What is a two-spirit technology?

  • What is a sexual minority technology?

  • What is a gender minority technology?

  • What is a queer, intersectional system?

  • What does it take to render something queer?

  • Describe a queer time and place.

  • Can you explain how uncertainty feels?

Tentative Workshop Agenda:



  1. Introductions and Icebreaker

  2. Presenting and Roughly Mapping our examples - participants will have five minutes to present and share their examples of queering

  3. Amending and Annotating the Map - collectively, we will discuss the constellation of examples in relation to each other to postulate on potential techniques of queering

  4. Scheming a Queer Archive - We will produce an archive of these techniques. This may be a list, or it may take another form.

    BREAK

  5. Produce your own Design Brief - Participants will be divided into groups. They will have an opportunity to talk about either their research, other research, or personal anxieties or uses of Data and AI. They will then select a technique of queering from the archive and produce their own Design Brief for a queer speculative artifact. 

  6. Design Brief Shareback - Each group will then share their Design Briefs with the entire workshop.

  7. Critical Making - We will provide materials for groups to move forward with designing their speculative artifact. This will be open-ended, and can take many forms which we will scaffold by providing a diversity of materials.

  8. Artifact Shareback - Each group will shareback their artifact in whatever medium suits their design

  9. Group Reflection - We will collectively reflect on the workshop, queering, and what we see on the horizon for Data and AI



Organizers

Anh-Ton Tran (he/him) is a PhD candidate in Human Centered Computing (HCC) at Georgia Tech advised by Carl DiSalvo. He earned his MFA in Transdisciplinary Design from Parsons School of Design. His practice is based in design-led research, participatory engagement, and ethnography to interrogate systems. His current work unpacks the intricacies of eviction data and the labor involved making them open and useful to grassroot efforts.

Annabel Rothschild (she/her) is a PhD student in Human Centered Computing (HCC) at Georgia Tech, advised by Betsy DiSalvo and Carl DiSalvo. Her research is focused on resituating datasets used to train AI and ML systems in their original sociotechnical contexts. 

Louie Søs Meyer (she/her, they/them) is a PhD candidate in Human-AI interaction at the IT University of Copenhagen in the Digital Design department. Their doctoral research is advised by Jichen Zhu. Their work investigates digital wellbeing and human-centered methods for designing explainable AI. 

Brian Kinnee (they/he) is a design researcher and PhD candidate at the University of Washington, Seattle in the department of Human Centered Design and Engineering (HCDE). Their doctoral research is co-advised by Dr. Daniela K. Rosner and Dr. Audrey Desjardins. Kinnee’s design research focuses on developing methods for reflection and speculation through design, such as autospeculation. Their dissertation investigates how polyamorous communities use personal data to navigate and cultivate relationships over time. Their work has been published at venues such as DIS, CHI, and Design and Culture. www.briankinnee.com

Jordan Taylor (he/him) is a PhD student in Human-Computer Interaction at Carnegie Mellon University, advised by Haiyi Zhu and Sarah Fox. His research focuses on how queer and fat people appropriate and subvert sociotechnical systems, such as online communities and Generative AI tools, as well as how designers and researchers envision “marginalized users.”

Kay Kender (any pronouns, they/them) is a PhD researcher at the TU Wien Human-Computer Interaction Group, advised by Katta Spiel. Their research focuses on critical and participatory design supporting queer and disabled perspectives. Their thesis project examines design power on social media. They have written a children’s book which they suspect has had more community impact than their academic publications so far. http://kaykender.de/social-media-design-power/
 
Ekat Osipova (they/them) is a researcher and PhD candidate at the TU Wien Human-Computer Interaction (HCI) group. Their doctoral research is advised by Dr. Katta Spiel. Osipova’s dissertation explores how different forms of intimacy materialize within digital interactions with a specific focus on their implications for queer and crip bodies and practices. Additionally, Osipova is a researcher at the Institute for Advanced Studies (IHS) where they are part of a project tracing democratic practices of LGBTQIA+ people in Vienna. Osipova completed a master's degree in Science and Technology Studies (STS).

Ann Light is a design researcher and interaction theorist, specializing in participatory practice, human-technology relations and collaborative future-making. She draws on professional experience from the design sector and qualifications in humanities, arts, artificial intelligence and computer science. She is co-author of Designing Connected Products (O’Reilly, 2015) and has advised the EU on the sharing economy. She is co-creator of the CreaTures Framework, prepared as part of the European Union project Creative Practices for Transformative Futures (CreaTures: https://creaturesframework.org/) and recently completed work on Social Justice in the Digital Economy (https://not-equal.tech/), a UK platform for research into more equal societies.. She also works as a visiting professor of Interaction Design, Social Change and Sustainability at Malmö University in Sweden.

Oliver Haimson (he/him) is an Assistant Professor at University of Michigan School of Information and a recipient of a National Science Foundation CAREER award. He conducts social computing research focused on envisioning and designing trans technologies, social media content moderation and marginalized populations, and changing identities on social media during life transitions. He is the author of the forthcoming book Trans Technologies (MIT Press 2025). 

Carl DiSalvo (he/him) is a Professor in the School of Interactive Computing at the Georgia Institute of Technology. His work combines design, the social sciences, and the humanities to explore the social and political qualities of computing. He is committed to engaged scholarship and partners with communities, civil society, government, and industry throughout his work. He is the author of Adversarial Design (MIT Press 2012) and Design as Democratic Inquiry (MIT Press 2022). In addition, DiSalvo is a co-editor of the MIT Press journal Design Issues, and through the journal, he works to broaden contemporary discussions of design theory and criticism.