I started off this project by buying a raspberry pi not quite sure what I would do with it but excited to try a new form of technology. in the meantime i've been thinking a lot about how to activate my practice in my local community in the bronx. as part of my art practice i'm studying internet infrastructure, and reimagining the relationship between technology, community, and nature through computing terminology. i have been documenting this study in my recently launched newsletter, new terms & conditions, and would like to move into creating public engagements that help relate this study to community. this growing compilation of terms and conditions will become a framework and A Glossary for an Anti-colonial Black Feminist Critical Media Ecology — or abc glossary for short.
caption: image featured in my first newsletter, "preface," for New Terms & Conditions
i truly want this project to be a collective study and resource. i have been grappling with how to crowdsource terms from my community for this study and the glossary, through a reflective process on their relationships to tech, community, and nature. i have wanted a questionnaire as part of the glossary that most importantly doesn't feel like a clinical form and is an emboded experience. a few sites have been inspiring: a website is a room by nancy wu, making a poetic web(site) by chia amisola, and chimeric worlding by tiger dingsun. the sites are a mix of meditative prompts, ad public archive and education. i'll be working with a web designer/dev to help me build the questionnaire to encompass these qualities.
a list of initial guiding questions:
- what does place mean to the people in my community?
- what is my community's relationship to computing?
- how do we want to be connected?
- what relationships to technology and nature do my community desire?
- can the raspberry pi be a time capsule for this project? if so, how do i make it accessible?
- who are the caretakers/stewards in my community?
- where is the internet in my community?
- how do we create a sensory experience of the internet, and in that process reconnect with humanity and nature?
- what do you think the internet is? what do you want it to be/do? what would that version of the internet look like?
- how do you want to web together, inclusive of our bodies and the land that lives with data?
- what does seasonality and temporality look like on the internet? how can the questionnaire embody that?
- how do I bring the community into this study beyond the newsletter?
- how do I build a questionnaire that invites hapticality, poetics, and meditation while accessible to my community?
- how would a server practice serve this project?
since concluding the solidarity infrastructure course i've released the abc questionnaire (now available at abcglossary.xyz), a series of exercises invite you to map your local area network (LAN), locate your server, go for an internet walk, study your network, create a short manifesto, and to imagine new “terms & conditions.” these prompts are an introduction into how we can begin a practice of refusal that acknowledges our ability to choose, once empowered with our right to information, and to repair through the breaking of oppressive systems and reimagining our relationships to and between the internet, our natural environment, and our surrounding community networks.
caption: screenshot of the abc questionnaire page at abcglossary.xyz
thenext challenge i'm interested in wrestling with is creating the container for place-based in-person engagement with these exercises. I want to bring people along on a meditative process and journey, that builds more just (re)connection to the infrastructure that is intertwined with our natural world. all of this is a work-in-progress, but through this process i came to the idea of creating an internet walking tour within my community (like bird-watching but for the internet) , that begins at my local library followed by an exploratory look, walk, and reflection of where the internet, nature, and community intersect.
we read a chapter from Networks of New York: An Illustrated Field Guide to Urban Internet Infrastructure, which offers a great foundation for identifying internet infrastructure. i'd like the walking tours to inform a set of excercises or score for moving through this exploratory looking, walking, and reflection that can also exist inside of the questionnaire. here is what i'm beginning to envision for walking tours:
STEP 1: meet at the local library (in-person walking tour)
STEP 2: collectively ground (in-person/online prompts)
- what does place mean to you?
- what is your relationship to computing?
- how do we want to be connected?
- how do we as a community want to be connected?
- what relationships to technology and nature does my community desire?
STEP 3: go on walking tour (in-person/online prompts
- OBSERVE (where is the internet? what do you think the internet is?)
- TAKE PICS
- MAP (how do you want to web together, inclusive of our bodies and the land that lives with data?)
- REIMAGINE (what do you want the internet to be/do? what would that version of the internet look like?)
STEP 4: submit to the ABC Glossary Questionnaire
- AT THE END submit a new term & condition to the ABC Glossary Questionnaire
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about the author:
ravon ruffin feliz (she/they) is a new york-based cyber anthropologist and artist who thinks about computing, archives, and nature with/on/for/at the internet. i can be found archiving on are.na, writing my newsletter, and archiving @citation.studio on instagram.