Over the past seven years, the Center for Spatial Research (CSR) has collaborated with colleagues using computational tools and methods linking the humanities and the data sciences. Our projects have centered on conflict urbanism and spatial inequality, and our interest has been in the environments and mediums through which they are propagated. We have looked at a variety of topics (climate, language, migration, networks, racism, urban warfare, vulnerability) not just by using spatial data but by attending to the ways in which that data shapes the fields it represents and vice versa.
In this two day workshop, we are bringing together a multidisciplinary group of activists, artists, academics, journalists, computer scientists, data scientists, social scientists, and designers to share their approaches to research-through-practice. We will have conversations around public interest technologies, algorithmic auditing, contextualizing and validating data, protection against algorithmic censorship, the creation of more inclusive models for marginalized communities, and more. Through these conversations, our aim is to collectively examine and create and/or collect a variety of tools, tutorials, and approaches to counter- and critical- AI, cartography, and data visualization.
The outcome of the workshop will be determined by the workshop and the results will be published in a format we all agree upon. The small size of the workshop including its audience will ensure an intimate conversation. For longevity, the presentations will be recorded (with your permission) and our team will be taking notes on recurring themes, methods, and tools discussed throughout the day. In the following weeks, we will formulate questions to assist speakers in reflecting on the workshop and providing a framework or set of approaches or techniques or methods used in the range of projects.
CSR has been supported by a grant from the Mellon Foundation. Now, in the culminating year of that grant, the workshop will be a space to reflect on CSR’s work as well as the methodologies developed through our many collaborations, and to chart new paths for future projects.