well hello my name is Vinay Valentina
I'm a writer researcher
I'm originally from Chile and I'm based
in Rotterdam the Netherlands first I'd
like to let you know a little bit about
my background and so you know where I'm
coming from
well feminist writer I was born in Chile
and in 2012 I moved to the UK to study
at the University of Bristol and now I
live in Rotterdam where I'm a
postgraduate student in literary studies
the topics of my research are
posthumanist literature altered states
of mind and the cyberspace but to study
all the stuff I needed money to afford
this kind of elitist education so that's
why I have been working since I was very
young to get all sorts of gigs and
scholarships and I've always been around
technology around the internet I started
as a web developer in Santiago and then
as project manager in several advocacy
organizations of digital rights in Chile
and in Brazil after that I joined the
rights of collective I don't know if you
know it is this where we provide secure
communication channels such as encrypted
email encrypted file sharing and we're
mostly oriented to activists all over
the world this journey hasn't been easy
but I think that after all these years
have learned a thing or two about the
internet and at some point I became
progressively more interested in its
artistic literary possibilities and
about how the Internet can become a
source for posthumanist thinking rather
than this worrying completely surveilled
space that we feel the web is
today so in 2018 I joined the Mozilla
Foundation as an open web fellow to
study in non-western non conforming
approaches to digital technologies and
from that experience emerge this the
digital witchcraft project which right
now is an organization registered in the
Netherlands under the name of the
digital witchcraft Institute and well
I'm extremely happy to be here with you
all to present this experience of magic
and technology I'm super grateful that
you invited me to this beautiful
beautiful place and I know this might
not be the usual kind of topic you see
in this Czech conferences especially
because my outputs involved techniques
from humanities and Social Sciences such
as interviews fieldwork critical
discourse analysis so I would like to
invite you to look at this presentation
with an artistic literary lens rather
than something that's coming strictly
from the realm of computer science so
that's my huge disclaimer sorry well
these are witchcraft was a one year it
is I want started as a one year artistic
research project with a strong
connection to activism and notions of
non traditional modes of thinking and
everything started with this quote by
Peter slaughter life he's a very famous
theorist on aesthetics magic is the
mother of technology this means that
every technological advance started as
an idea that seemed like magic in the
first place like something supernatural
and I feel this kind of easy to confirm
this premise for our generation since we
have experienced advanced in relation to
digital technologies in a very fast way
for example picture your 10 year old
self
begin to Siri every morning to ask about
the weather that's what I do almost
every morning after living the UK you
became kind kind of obsessed with the
weather so every morning I'm like hey
Sarah what's the weather today and Siri
replies and I take my decisions for the
day according to series sensor my
younger self will have freaked out
seeing that kind of thing witnessing
that kind of sorcery and I took this
quote magic is the mother of technology
very seriously thought a lot about it
and started to realize that the
supernatural and the mystical references
are all over digital technologies it's
just such as magical references in
software releases the other day someone
told me that there's a Linux
distribution called sorcerer sorcerer
also realistic software exchange I don't
know a makerspace pirating party ideas
of Technol shamanism there's there's
stuff like that all over digital
technologies so with the support of the
Mozilla Foundation I traveled the world
to see examples of this magic and
Technology intersection and to see if
those cases could tell us new insights
for the technologies of the future also
that's the address of my brilliant
witchcraft that works yeah so for this
presentation I selected the following
cases this one it was my first
exploration to this topic
it's about hackers and shamans as you
see in the slide this was a comparative
analysis between the figure of the
hacker and the shaman and I started to
main text the book shamanism by masala
he's one of the most famous scholars on
religious studies and coding freedom
that's an ethnography on hacker
communities written by biella Coleman
through the study I found several
similarities between the two groups to
name a few
there's the use of masks by Chairman's
well the relation to death was something
that I
I always I found very it was very
coherent between the two communities
that have the shamans and the hackers
the first paragraph is it's that
description on how shamans face death
they believe that you need to confront
death in order to come back stronger and
with the answers you were looking for
and after that is this paragraph of a
hacker describing a Linux installation
as a confrontation to death he caused a
larval stage of hacking and describes
the issues like how the he neglects
activities such as food sleep personal
personal hygiene II and it felt very
near death experience in order to return
with the knowledge you were aspiring to
and this thing is a video I did I
presented this on the hope conference in
New York City
have there some planet Earth and this is
an overlap of a shamanic ritual and a
hacking conference the rituals are very
important to both communities maybe we
can look at this the weekend you can
picture yourself work with computers as
some sort of channels maybe
I don't know I always felt like there's
at the sound of the drum and there's
some of the typing in our key words I
kind of miss experience but I also have
other case studies this for example is
something I always highlight it's about
a research trip I did at Havana Cuba
I started street networks in cool there
because of the US embargo among other
reasons the access to Internet is very
slow and very limited so the government
and many autonomous providers built
Wi-Fi networks in selected spots of the
city so people can connect and I was
able to connect the situation with
Santeria practices in Santeria this
religion they have in Kula obfuscation
is at the center
it's a syncretic religion because it has
to disguise juruá beliefs with Christian
imaginary and I realized that of guuuys
in us not connected nation they are very
resourceful and they're computer
scientists have been able to circumvent
all the political limitations to
connectivity just like Santeria in the
picture there's a woman at midnight in
Havana connected to a street network
that's a weird thing to see in Latin
America you cannot go to the squared we
had midnight with your cell phone you'll
get robbed but you can do that in cool
and you see like this small rituals at
night with all this blue hues in
people's faces
I found it very interesting - this was
this is certainly one of the cases that
moves me the most is an Android I met at
the Cudahy temple in Kyoto last year
this Android teaches Buddhists lessons
especially around the concept of
emptiness which in Buddhism is a door to
liberation since you get rid of
everything to me was very important
because it opened the possibility of us
cyborgs spirituality was really cool to
talk with the monks really old monks and
see that they were taking the Android
very seriously it wasn't like a soulless
machine to speak and stuff they consider
the this Android as valid speaker to
them we humans and machines are capable
of emptiness and I found it very
beautiful if you go to Tokyo see this
Android and this is the most recent case
I studied is about jinn or genies like
Robin Williams genie well of course the
origin of genus is not his name these
genes are a supernatural myth from the
Arabic world and the and and that's a
frame of one of my favourite films are
Arabian night by Paolo Pasolini the main
idea around genes is that they're beings
that live between the human and the
otherworldly dimension they can be in
both worlds and I connected this idea
with the notion of interoperability that
free software promoters advocate for
instance I think it will be so cool to
think about some deep interoperability
what about poetry and computer science
spirits and your phone the belief in
genes is still very present in the
Arabic world for example that
there are forums where you see that
testimonies of genes that supposedly
took possession of computers and talk to
you through some kind of chat it's very
appealing to think of a spirit taking
possession of your machines maybe it has
happened to you sometime at some point
in your life but well all of those were
case studies but I had to do something
with all this information because while
I'm a researcher I consider myself an
activist too so I always try to to have
my output reach something more impactful
and my opportunies to promote an
exercise of speculative design and they
started at the Internet freedom festival
last year in Valencia Spain yeah Spain
where with a group of technologists and
activists we developed advanced
technology prototypes and used a
methodology where we have like magical
powers in one side and communities of
our interest in the other and it made
connections between the two like what
this what powers this community might
need and with that with that with those
crosses we reach for prototypes of
advanced technology I did with this
experience I did a film a short film
that was screened in a couple of
galleries in Rotterdam and Amsterdam
it's basically mean reading reading a
poem plus several interviews I did
around the world there's footage from my
research trips and there are the
prototypes that we design it's also in
this website if you want to watch it
someday
I have a collaboration of my friend
andreas Tapia he's an industrial
designer and he actually designed the
prototypes we moved from the stage of
having just an idea to have a material
object I like to share with you some
bits of this short film it starts with
this guy in the Amazon go store in San
Francisco he tries to explain how the
store works the ideas that is a store
with no where you don't use cash or any
form of payment and it's weird because
it's like it's it's supposed to be very
smooth and easy buddy
everyone was super complicated trying to
figure out how this worked
it felt really like one of this Internet
of situation but he was a Curie and
and we started with this kind in in this
situation that we're right now we're in
this in this in the technology is
working weird I'd like to share with you
the the part that Simona he is an
industrial designer from from Italy but
he lives in Shanghai oh sorry
but he lives in Shanghai he is in this
design studio the name is automatic
automata he's super smart he I kind of
had a crush on him he's super super
smart and he designs let me look at him
and he designs with this really
posthumanist vision and in mind where
the human is not at the center so let's
see what Simona says hope this is going
to sound why should you I think taking
the point of view of the objects and
other things is actually very
interesting to look at the future
because and that'll be the problem I
think we had
with design and especially user centered
design that it only looks at the person
has the center but you sometimes lose
the the context and so by if you think
on the field if you think about the
future from the perspective of a Roomba
or a cat or a river what is it and I
think that's that's actually a lot more
it's something that we definitely have
to look at for for now like how do you
go beyond I mean in some ways some
people talk about of course there is
like beyond you as a person in you as
you know whatever like why there is a
hole like inclusion on discussion but I
think there is also like the whole like
beyond human discussion and especially
when you're talking about issues on
technology and things that have agents
in your life we you also need to think
about what is what is that thing doing
what does it see there was a very
beautiful work like years ago from FEMA
had not used to be if you made the whole
super cut of all point of views of
cameras and how do cameras see the world
and so you start to see how you know
there are all these different algorithms
have different ways of determining what
is what and sometimes it's vector
sometimes it's boxes sometimes it's
blobs but if you don't understand how
these things see or have these things
why they behave then it's really hard to
even have the discussion around what's
the problem with AI what's the problem
with ethics in technology unless you
also see
[Music]
this is one of the prototypes that the
weight is trying
some sort of ship
extremely appropriate appropriate for
migration
[Music]
yeah I guess so we did that that kind of
we took that approach to the sign like
think from the far far farm and to the
[Music]
- like the most extreme thing you can
think and then the sign from that rather
than from the things you already have
it's very speculative it's not really
super concrete but we took like this
opposite direction and I I liked it and
I think it it can be very fruitful and
so this is how we're going to be
reaching the end of my presentation
maybe we can reflect a little about the
the impact of thinking this way first I
think it could be important to use this
magical thinking approach to switch the
narratives we used to to think when we
think about tech and switch those from
profit to public interest there's lots
of lots of research that revealed the
bias in tech for example how many
products smart products not really
consider issues such as race or
geographies from the global south I
think is connected to the idea of taking
back the tech that's a concept that
cyber feminists use a lot lady of like
let's reappropriation ology and you said
according to our own ethics and purposes
third I yeah I wrote scientific
innovation has to be adventurous I I
believe that is true and it's important
to to be really reckless about it is not
that I'm proposing to that all of us
have to become
new age or anti-vaxxers not at all I do
believe in scientific in science and in
scientific innovation and this kind of
way I was in California last week and
theirs is full of mystical stuff
psychics
everywhere also the boom on astrology it
seems like there's a lot of people
trying to find something somewhere else
and that that can be problematic because
it can lead to I don't know the scams
stuff like that but it's also saying
that there there is an important group
of people that is trying to think in a
different paradigm that the one we are
living in today and I think as
technologists have to I don't know get
rid of our I don't know strictly
concrete boundaries finally I think that
I have this conversation a lot we kind
of think that the Internet in the past
was kind of more fun we were it had this
feeling that everything was possible you
can you were able to choose your own
identity everything it was anonymous and
but that is not possible anymore and now
is everything everything is super
surveilled is super controlled by a
couple of corporations and I think that
a project like mine and a prig this is
not just me doing this kind of work in
speculative design there's a lot of
people in Europe and South America
working on this and I think it's an
attempt to fall in love with an Internet
again and not look at that as something
I don't know that constrains you my
intuition is that we can achieve that by
[Music]
running away from the
big internet corporations and became
becoming more creative more adventurous
more reckless more magical and that's it
that's what my talk you can reach me at
that email thank you
[Applause]