You can now watch the full seminar on “Global Digital Inequalities”, featuring Nishant Shah and Padmini Ray Murray
How does digitisation reshape the distribution of cultural, economic, and political resources around the globe? Over the past decades, this has been a central question in activist, scholarly, and policy debate. In this webinar, feminist technologist Nishant Shah and creative practitioner Padmini Ray Murray will discuss the current state of this debate. How is digital inequality framed in different parts of the world and what are the consequences of this framing? What can be the pitfalls of certain rhetorics of inclusion? And what are the current challenges for a politics of design directed at social justice? In light of the rapid development of artificial intelligence and the ongoing (dis-)information crisis, the question of global digital inequality has taken on new urgency.
Chair: Guillén Torres Sepulveda
Speakers:
Nishant Shah is Director of Research & Outreach and Professor Aesthetics and Culture of Technologies at ArtEZ University of the Arts, The Netherlands. His work is at the intersections of body, identity, digital technologies, artistic practice, and activism, with a specific focus on non-canonical geographies. His current interest is in thinking through questions of artificial intelligence, digital subjectivity, and misinformation towards building inclusive, diverse, resilient, and equitable societies. His new book Really Fake is out in Spring 2021 with University of Minnesota Press. https://nishantshah.online/
Padmini Ray Murray is the founder of Design Beku, a collective emerging from a desire to explore how technology and design can be decolonial, local, and ethical. As a creative practitioner, Padmini creates new media work which reflects her research and interests, such as Darshan Diversion (with KV Ketan and Joel Johnson), a feminist videogame about the Sabarimala temple controversy (2016); Visualising Cybersecurity, a project which aims to alter how cybersecurity is depicted and discussed in the media (2019); a speculative comic on the personal data protection bill, “Designing for Democracy” (with Paulanthony George, 2020); and is currently working on a digital performance piece funded by the Goethe Institut, an adaptation of Ionesco’s ‘The Leader’, which explores the themes of misinformation, the attention economy and fake news. https://hcommons.org/members/padminirm/
