Author: Paloma St. Clair

“The struggle for liberation is not a struggle for diversity and inclusion — it is a struggle for decolonization, reparations, and self-determination” (Hassein)

I think this quote is extremely powerful. I realized during summer 2020, that a lot of corporations’ plans to end systemic racism consisted of creating 1 diversity and inclusion program and hiring a few black people in their attempt to be anti-racist. While I think diversity and inclusion are important, I think the way companies are going about is not productive. Placing black employees in corporate places where they still have to combat racism is not the answer. When companies or schools just hire more minorities without doing any work to change their racist, sexist or homophobic culture, they are simply subjecting these minorities to violent spaces where they will have to fight for their rights/lives every day. Then when the minority has had enough mental trauma from working in such a violently oppressive environment, the company will turn around and say “see we tried to recruit *insert group of marginalized people* they just don’t want to work”. It’s not about hiring more minorities to be forced to navigate these oppressive systems, it’s about destroying the current system and rebuilding it with people of all backgrounds in mind. That is the real work. That is the real solution. However, in order for this to happen, certain people in high places will lose money, and then power. 

” It is equally clear to me that no technology under police control will be used to hold police accountable or to benefit Black folks or other oppressed people” (Hassein)

I’m quite troubled by the increase in surveillance technology given to the police. It’s extremely problematic knowing that this technology is going into the hands of crooked and racist cops who will use this technology to harass oppressed people. Once again, you cannot throw new shiny technologies at century-old problems and expect them to not be used oppressively when work hasn’t been done to deconstruct the issues in our society. 

For my second research post, I chose to look at the work of Mimi Onuoha, a Nigerian American artist and researcher who centers a lot of her work around visualizing data relating to black, queer, and marginalized folks who are often underrepresented or left out of data. I found her work to be very interesting and powerful. She is able to represent inequalities that the algorithms that are used in our daily lives. I think this work is so important because tech spaces are mostly dominated by men, white men at that. This causes bias, intentionally or unintentionally, to be coded into these algorithms. The data visualization piece I chose to focus on was her piece called In Absentia. In this piece, Onuoha highlights the work of W.E.B. Dubois. W.E.B. Dubois was a famous sociologist and civil rights activist who centered his work around black liberation and anti-racism. In the early 1900’s he was requested by the US Government to go to a rural county in Alabama to gather data about the black population. After interviewing over 20,000 black residents, and gathering data and maps about the experiences of the black population in that area, the study was never published. The data gathered by Dubois, went against the narratives the Beauru of Statistics wanted to hear. Dubois’ data highlighted the inequalities and hardships black people in the south were facing post-civil rights era, regarding employment, land ownership, and the creation of wealth. This data highlighted issues systemic issues in the government, that the government did not want the general population to find out. Instead of publishing these statistics, they came up with a series of lies ranging from the manuscript being lost, or it having technical errors, that Dubois went to debunk later on in his career. In her exhibition In Absentia, uses the style of Dubois’ infographics to tell the story about the society we live in, rather than the data that is missing. 

In Absentia emphasizes not the data, but the structures that represent where the data is coming from. Onuoha’s exhibit serves as an homage and a critique of W.E.B. Dubois’ lost work. An homage acknowledging the work that was intentionally destroyed by the government. But also a critique as to why the only way we can acknowledge human suffering is through numbers and data and not simply seeing the obvious pain and suffering. The need to validate pain with numbers and data, when simply the pain that is present should be good enough. I found Onuoha’s piece to be such a brilliant and thought-provoking piece of work. The way she is able to highlight the misfortunes of the government and how they suppressed data that existed in an attempt to not look bad. While also making a greater commentary on how as a society we have been trained to need numbers and charts and data to prove what already exists. Bringing about the bigger question of how can you quantify human suffering? 

Mike Tucker is an Interactive director, designer, and prototyper who works at Magic Leap. His work involves working with spatial computing to create intriguing and captivating designs. I really enjoyed watching his Eyeo talk, I think he did a great job demonstrating his designs to the audience. His use of VR and other mediums is very impressive. I found his work to feel very futuristic. His work also reminds me of Artechouse and Arcadia. While reading his resume, I saw that he worked with Kanye West to make a video game called “Only One” based on Kanye’s mother. http://encyclopediapictura.com/kanye-west/ When looking at the graphics I was very impressed. I know Kanye was very close with his mother, and I think Tucker did a great job at capturing Kanye’s mother in a beautiful and vibrant light. It’s unfortunate that this video game never went into production because I think this is such a cool way to memorialize a dead loved one. Kanye West’s music is very good at taking listeners to another place, to see Tucker enhance that experience with his visual components was very impressive. Another part of the talk that I found impressive was when Tucker was talking about how he is using this technology to help visually impaired people. I am always impressed when people can use art in ways that make the world more accessible to people who need it. Tucker’s work has audio and visual components that work together to create immersive experiences for users. 

I was impressed to find out that Tucker creates a lot of his designs in Unity. I am taking a class on virtual avatars this semester, and we used Unity to animate a walk sequence for our avatars. I am now intrigued to learn more about how Unity can be used to create such captivating visual experiences.