 Hi, everyone, and welcome to Discovery Night Foundation's online web program live streamed show about arts, society, and today technology and the world online. Our guests today are Dorothy Santos of Processing Foundation and of Refresh, and Adi Milenciano of Afrotectopia. I'm your host today, Chris Barr. I'm director of art and technology innovation at Night Foundation, where we think about a lot of the ways that technology impacts art institutions, new ways that artists are using technology. And so I'm really excited to be able to talk to Dorothy and Adi today and where are they at? If you all want to turn on your video, there they are. Hi, Dorothy and Adi there she is. Hello, welcome to the program. And we wanted to start with really just giving you all an opportunity to introduce some of the things that you do. And we can start with you, Dorothy, if you don't mind. Sure. So my name is Dorothy Santos. Hello, I am in the next slide, please. I am the program manager for Processing Foundation. We are a small but mighty nonprofit focused on software literacy and visual arts and so much more. And the last plus that you see there is accessibility. We are very much focused on accessibility, software accessibility, as well as inclusion. And then the next slide, please. And I am also a member of Refresh, which is a politically engaged art and curatorial platform. We're focused on art, science and tech. I wanted to kind of just make it a little bit short because I felt that Adi, Chris and I have so much to talk about. So those are the organizations I work with and I'm really excited to talk with both of you today. So thank you. Fantastic. And if we just jump over and Adi, if you want to talk a little bit about your work. Hey, thank you again for having me. I just did two slides quickly to introduce some things that I've been up to recently. I, in getting into technology and stemming from a life of loving art, I was really excited to kind of bridge these worlds and think of sound and create new opportunities for people to engage with sound and create sound and new ways to compose music. So a lot of my work considers sound and art and tech and creating machines where people can interact with pieces of art that would traditionally be aesthetic focus like sculpture, but then also turn it into something that's utilitarian and interactive. So these are just some visuals of different sound sculptures that I've created. Whether they're purely like shapes or cultural artifacts that you see in the middle one is a series of work that I did where I'm using black cultural artifacts and infusing them with technology. And then the next slide, as the founder of Afrotiktopia, I just put up some visuals of kind of what the community looks like and what we're up to. And Afrotiktopia is generally a new media festival where we have a gather hundreds of people together and we think about art, design, technology, black culture and racial activism, but we also experience through a school with black youth in New York City and also as an alternative adult school. So the School of Afrotiktopia where we're considering these same intersections. Fantastic. Thank you both for those introductions. I wanna go ahead and switch that off. And I wanted to start the conversation around a community that you are both part of, this sort of creative coding, new media art space, which for even some folks within the art world is a niche area that they maybe don't know a lot about. And what Dorothy didn't mention is she's working on a PhD right now, but I'm gonna pick on her. And this is maybe a bad idea to ask someone who's doing a PhD on this stuff to do a brief intro for us about what is this creative coding space? What should be people be thinking about, about this art and technology space that they might not know about? That's a lot to say, because I'm trying to time myself to do this in like, 60 seconds, no pressure. I mean, the creative coding community is one that has a, wide array of artists, technologists, educators that are invested in looking at how we can look at programming as a medium in and of itself. There's so many possibilities and there's such a wide array of languages out there, but the reason why open source software and the open source software for the arts community is so important to me is it's this investment in knowing that what we do in a lot of ways is not neutral. I was in science for many years and I can honestly say that I don't really believe in objectivity. I feel that there is a need to understand that what we do has motivation. It has experiences embedded in those mediums that we use and code is very much about that too. And code as well as an artistic medium, right? And the kinds of libraries and tools that artists are using, you're suggesting these aren't neutral either, right? And so processing is a really interesting example of that and so much of those communities, those open source arts communities can focus around the code base and the software itself. And one thing that's really impressed me and I'd say lots of others is the way that the processing and the work that you're doing as well, Adi, really opens up to lots of different kinds of contributions beyond just code. And can you guys talk a little bit about beyond sort of the technological component? Where are the spaces that are required? What are the things that we need to do to make these open source communities really ones that are open to lots of contributions from lots of people? Yeah, I mean, I think a lot about that the social justice ecosystem map of these are your different, these are the potential different roles that people can engage in when they're doing things that are social justice oriented. And I think in the beginning of a lot of this social uprising that's most recently happened, people sort of felt like they were being pulled in directions that they're not familiar with because that's not their way of being an activist but it's really recognizing that there's so many forms of being engaged. So when it comes to contributing to something that's open source, like with processing in P5, they really do a great job from what I've been able to observe is show the different ways that you can contribute to a community. I mean, I feel like it's the most inviting open source community I've ever witnessed. And it's showing that people can be someone that is using P5 or processing in their classroom or making a cool sketch and sharing it with their friends. And that's someone that's equally as important to the contributing circle as someone that's creating a new library. And I think with Afrotectopia, it's a similar vein of making sure that people really feel like they have agency and ability to share their own expertise. And the most recent festival, as someone that goes to a lot of different conferences, I observe how they make me feel, how I feel being both a panelist and someone that's listening to a panelist. And I find the most, I learned so much more when it's not, I'm not just, it's not only the opportunity for the panelists to speak but it's the opportunity in the Q&A time when everyone's standing up and asking their own questions and you see who's in the room and what their perspectives are. And so that's something that I honed in on and developing Afrotopia. But it's really not about having a few people that are seen as experts, but it's really elevating as many people as possible in their voices. And so it's finding ways to support as many people. And that's a way of developing a strong contributor kind of circle. And this is also a really wonderful time to mention that we will try our best to do some Q&A. So if you want to drop a question into the question and answer feature, we'll try to get to those at the end of the panel. Dorothy, you know, when we were talking earlier this week, you mentioned this idea around organizing, around creating these spaces about the quiet work. And can you talk a little bit about what is the quiet work that goes into making a really wonderful community experience? Yeah, so, you know, I mean, I really, you know, borrowed this idea and I kind of hold, I hold this kind of in the work that I do. One of my mentors, Soraya Murray, mentioned this to me, this notion of quiet work, which is all the things that you, you can't really post online because it's too complex, there's nuance to it, et cetera. And I remember seeing a tweet, and I feel so awful that I can't remember this, but it was a tweet about how, you know, texting and, you know, updating GDocs and spreadsheets are actually a huge part of what organizing means and what goes into it. And so this is that quiet work that I'm talking about, but it's all the stuff that people don't see. And trying to make these communities, you know, accessible and inclusive is very challenging. This is not an easy task. This is, you know, and I feel in many ways, this, you know, if you do this work, you're in it for the long haul. This is like a lifelong commitment to do this work. And a lot of it is quiet work. And I think it's important to know that because especially under the kind of global health crisis we're in, and as Ari mentioned, the, you know, the uprisings too. And this kind of, what I'm seeing is like seismic shifts happening, you know, it's sometimes the ability also to be quiet with your practice and then being able to be in conversation. And sometimes difficult ones too. I mean, that came up in conversation as well. But that's what, I guess that's kind of the sound bite for that because I don't, I mean, there's so many ways to go with what can be perceived as quiet work and the importance of it. We were talking about it earlier. I mean, you remember Dorothy were mentioning, just like when you're organizing, there's a lot of administrative work. Like it's not glamorous most of the time. So that, but even being someone that's a leader of communities to be a leader of a healthy community, there's a lot of quiet work of research and listening. And that takes a lot of time and a lot of, I mean, I said a lot of different political leaders and one being Stokely Carmichael of, he was something, he was someone that was pretty prominent and a lot of people would see him all the time speaking but he had to step away because you realize when you're constantly speaking and preaching, you don't have as much time to learn and read and have conversations. And so that's a really important thing to make sure that you're as aware because policy and politics are always changing and shifting and you're learning new language. So it's making sure that, if you're leading a community that you're as aware as possible. Yeah, so the creative coding community that you all are involved with, a lot of that work happens online, which is part of why I thought a conversation with you all would be really interesting in a time where everything's happening online, right? So much is happening online now. But a big piece of what you do is getting people together in person and in groups and building relationships that are really, really important in sort of setting group dynamics in place. And I'm curious what you're thinking about or even what you're worried about when you don't have those physical moments to touch base with the community and how you're thinking about the work that your groups and organizations are doing right now in this fully distributed digital moment. For me, when this, the pandemic started happening, I was like, immediately there's no point in planning anything to do a whole, like I know a lot of people were doing virtual and online kind of, or no, it wasn't even at that time. We were just, people were trying to plan after this pandemic would be over, but for me it was like unforeseeable when those would be over. So I just felt it would be best to not even consider planning a group gathering. But as this went on, I started to really get excited about the opportunity that this could allow of we are now becoming more acclimated to gathering in an online spaces. And in being online, there's so much more possibility than being limited to like the way that the venue was designed when you're holding events together. So at first it was discouraging, but shortly after it became a really inspiring moment to consider new ways for us to gather and even watching different panels or conferences that have existed online. People really are able to share and express themselves in ways that they generally aren't when they're in person. Like you see the chat boxes for like YouTube conferences that are just like going and going with all this excitement that you never see when you're in person. So I think it's a really exciting opportunity to think of new ways to gather and use the internet as something that's more artistic and fun and the embodies kind of this physical experience but augments it and enhances it in new forms. So that's kind of the idea right now of thinking of what would AFRICtopia 2020 be online and how to create that space. That's what's being in development. That's great. Yes, and to, no, it's just a little tidbit too. And I mean, I don't know if you share this sentiment but I for one also want to caution individuals to not overdo it. And what I mean by that is I think a lot of I've seen some organizations, this isn't like some broad critique. This is just my own, I'm speaking for myself that not everything is translatable. And so I feel like there's certain things that people need to understand that when the time comes, yes, we have to convene physically because those conversations are so, so valuable. And I say this because I feel that I don't want people to think that just because we are in this space that we're okay, well, we're online that everything can be kind of mediated so and understood and conveyed perfectly. It cannot, so we still have to kind of confront those challenges, but yes, I agree in many ways with kind of the new ways we can have community hangouts, for instance, or processing community day, for example. Yeah, I'm glad you said that because there is definitely a duality to it all. There has to be a balance, yeah. You know, I think both of you are involved in sort of educational efforts, whether that's sort of sharing tutorials online, doing organizing formal education around processing. Can you talk a little bit about the potential that you've found to build community around the sharing of that kind of knowledge and education around art and technology? You know, I know Dorothy, when we were in our conversation earlier this week, you were doting a little bit on Adi and the work that she does in this space and, you know, in mutual fanship. And if you could talk a little bit about the education piece and what can happen there online. Oh gosh, this is, I mean, I feel in many ways there's, it's so challenging to answer that question because we're trying to, even in the education space, to try to replicate, you know, socializing with your classmates and with your professors and not even just that with your teachers and collaborators, that has become a really challenging aspect of it. It's almost as if I myself even feel I have to over-communicate and then I don't want to be, I don't want to do too much, I don't want to do too little and it's all a balance. And I think related to what we're doing is offering, you know, well, at least through Processing Foundation, you know, offering the education portal so different types of curriculums and lesson plans that teachers can kind of take on and use would say the P5.js editor, for example. And, you know, we have a podcast that's actually geared just towards education and educators from K to 12 because we know that that's a much needed, kind of there's resources that are much needed within that space. So that's kind of an example of what, you know, we've been engaged in, but also there are so many, there are so many collectives that are doing what I actually really love sharing with them, with the community. I mean, for example, and then I want Adita to definitely address this, but Asian American feminist collective, they're doing some really incredible zine work. And these are actual like really well researched zines that I would go as far, there are books essentially and created in such a timeframe that I'm astounded, but also equally like just spread this, you know, education. And this has also been coming up a lot lately. You know, there was, you know, a talk given by Fred Mountain and Stefano Harney about, you know, making our own systems. And I think I really kind of love latching on to this idea of how we can do that. And I feel Afro-Tectopia is such a great example of that. You know, so, yeah. Could you reform the question a little or anything? Well, you know, part of what I was thinking about are just, for example, the kind of things you're sharing on YouTube and just, you know, what that kind of contribution, the meaning, how meaningful that kind of contribution is to others who are trying to understand creative code and, you know, how we make artworks out of bits and bytes. Yeah. I mean, I think it's, in teaching creative technology a lot, it's always exciting when students get to see something that they're interested in. Like it's always about making pedagogy culturally relevant. So that's number one. With Afro-Topia Summer Camp, it was showing these black students that technology is not something that's foreign to us at all. It's something that's been ingrained that we've been doing for centuries and it's from African societies to black societies and showing them, the day always started with showing them an innovator, an icon of the African diaspora and the work that they were doing. And then we would learn emerging technologies throughout the day and then we would create our own version of it with these emerging technologies at the end of the day. And I think in stemming and doing that, because coming from a family of educators, I see, I learn from them all the time and they have noticed that when students that are generally catered to, when white students are generally catered to and we're shifting the curriculum in the middle of maybe Hispanic Heritage Month, that these same students, they're not as engaged because the curriculum is not speaking to them in the same way. So it's fully understanding that pedagogy is always political, it's always cultural. And as Dorothy was saying in the beginning, that thing is objective or neutral and it's going into that and making sure that it's speaking to as many people as possible. Great. Well, I wanna go to some of the questions coming in from folks who are watching online. One of those open to anyone, how do you build trust within a creative community, especially one that's happening in this new virtual realm? Can you touch on that aspect of trust? I think there's so much to say. I mean, there's so much to say. Adi, do you wanna go first? I don't have anything yet. Oh, okay, well, I mean, sorry to put you on the spot. I mean, for me, my kind of visceral reaction to that is, it is knowing that this is something that's built over time, you know? I mean, Chris, Adi and I, when we were talking earlier, it's, I mean, my goodness, to even kind of encapsulate what community means. You know, that means such a different thing to so many people. So then when you talk about trust, you know, trust kind of encapsulates so many different things. I don't wanna get all academic here, but there actually was a paper written about race and trust. I can share that with anyone who's interested. See, you see what I did there? It's to expand the conversation. I'll give you my contact information so we can talk about it. But it's knowing that people have these embodied experiences that there's so, imagine, there's over, there's seven billion people in the world. You know, each of us carry our own world inside of some experiences. So to build trust is to be able to kind of sit with discomfort. And this is something Adi brought up earlier, and which I totally wholeheartedly agree with that. It's about being okay, not knowing something, and trusting that if you're open to learning, that that also can build trust with people in a community. Yeah, and it's the silent work that you were, Dorothy, you were talking about earlier, of it's being, it's not, it's, who said it? Was it A.J. Marie Brown of move at the speed of trust? So it's moving slowly. It's making sure that people feel heard. It's making sure that things are sustainable. And it goes a lot against the Western values of quickness and profitability. It's really thinking with your heart and some logic of what's the best way to move forward. Yeah, we have a related question here. And maybe this goes to that idea of trust, which is probably one of the ingredients. Can you all say more about, how do you just organize a good community hangout, right? How do you do that? And online or off, what are the ingredients that you're trying to put into the recipe to make sure that people can become comfortable in a space? I just recently, I mean, I feel like Dorothy will have different answers because it's kind of, it is the duality of like, some things can't be transferred. But I feel like recently I just did a workshop online, and that one, for one, I made sure that everyone had the opportunity to say something in the space. I think often if someone just isn't bold enough to say something, they never really get that push. And I feel like especially when you're in an online environment, it's harder because you can't read each other's physical language or body language. So for one, it's starting off creating a space where it's, you're pulling everyone in. And then I think if people feel like that sort of encouragement and comfort to come in and contribute what they have to say, for me is one major part of it. No, that's, I mean, very similar answer. I think the one thing I would add is having a code of conduct and allowing participants to see this code of conduct and contribute to it. Because when you see what it means to be in a space that is extending itself to you, well, you should be able to see yourself in that space. So a code of conduct is a really huge part of that. Yeah, absolutely. A question about the internet itself, do you consider the internet to be a public space? This is sort of a big question. And therefore, if you do, is web-based art some form of public art? And does that ask us to think about internet art differently? Wow, I mean, we need another five hours. No, because I feel like I have so much to say about that. And it's not easy, especially after I was in conversation with Joanne McNeil for her book, Lurking, where that is explored. And my mind feels it's even more blurred, the public versus private, but Adi, please. Yeah, I've never thought of that at all. So it's like, it's hard to wrap your head around. I don't know, I mean, I feel, I don't know how to formulate what I'm thinking, but I think public art is, I think it's kind of like with the built environment architecture, public spaces, they're supposed to be for the public, but not everyone feels welcome to it and not everyone has access to it. So you can name anything public if you want to, but that doesn't mean that that's who you're trying to serve. I think with the internet, it creates obvious exclusivity with who has access as far as the tools, but it also creates exclusivity with the language and those sorts of things. And there's also different ways of purposely creating exclusivity. I'm working on a project with a group of artists now and we're thinking about, do we want to maybe reverse the situation of generally people, black people are excluded from spaces, maybe we'll find a way to exclude other people from this space because we can do that with technology in a kind of like a satirical kind of way. So I think for one, it's understanding that public is not, as Dorothy has been mentioning earlier, this objective kind of thing that we assume it is, it's always gonna have some sort of exclusivity, but yeah, that's a very complex question that I can't. So I think maybe we can close with just any thoughts you might have as folks who are actively makers, actively organizers involved in open source and technology, anything that you think we should be thinking about as we sort of turn the corner on the next, next chapter of what we're potentially moving into, which is a very different world than three months ago. And maybe if you could start, Dorothy. Well, the first thing that came to mind, dear friend and brilliant scholar, Xiaowei Wang, they are releasing a book, Blockchain Chicken Farm in a few months that I read and it's amazing. But what I will say is something that they brought up was that this kind of the theatrics of technology that we think that technology serves us because there is a theater to it that, oh, well, we're just gonna create this contact tracing tool and then we'll know everybody that has COVID or whatever. And you know what? Sometimes it's actually not about that. It's about thinking about technology in such a way where it forces us to think, how can we ensure safety and protection in the real world, in the real physical world? And technology is supposed to be something that enables us to kind of be more expansive but not be the thing that solves our problems. I mean, another kind of person, another friend, Gaby Shopsson, he has a t-shirt that says, tech won't save us. It sure won't, but we're in it for the long haul. That's kind of conundrum of working in open source and just tech and art and science broadly. Yeah, I think even just considering the ways that we're using technology to replicate the world, like oftentimes it's meant to replicate the way that people function to be more efficient, but it's thinking about what kind of systems do we wanna replicate? I think oftentimes we've talked about this earlier of a lot of work initiatives and things especially in response to what's happening now is very much, it's not considering a power shift, it's more of like an optical form of activism. So thinking, how are we designing systems that are trustworthy, right? We're moving slower and we're also doing, and for those people that are of marginalized communities that we're not redesigning systems that have oppressed us to then oppress others. Great. Well, I wanna thank you both for joining this conversation today. I know we could, we need a part two and a part three to really continue this conversation. We try to do a half hour for people's lunch breaks. We do wanna close out with an artwork of Audie's. Metamorphosis FM is where you can find it online, but can you tell us just a little bit about this before we see it? Yeah, this is meant to be a prototype of another prototype, especially for Afriktopia, thinking how we can exist online and create a space for people to gather. But metamorphosis in its current form is very much in response to the social uprisings of oftentimes we're moving in these protests with constant affirmations that can be negative to our DNA and thinking about epigenetics and how the things that we're experiencing shifts the ways that we are built as far as our DNA. So creating an online environment that's using sounds of different energy centers to realign our DNA and also using African drum patterns that have been historically used in different revolutions like the Haitian Revolution that have been so powerful that slave owners banned them using those kind of instrumentation to make something that's culturally focused on. Thank you, Link, for Black people. Fantastic. Well, thank you both. And I want to thank the team that helps put this together, Justin Cook, Raul Garcia, Alejandro Dionis. And we have some outro music as we close from Theron Brown. If you enjoyed this sort of thing, we encourage you to tune back in if you go to nightfoundation.org slash discovery. You can see past episodes and get updates on what we have coming down the road. And to close us out, this is Metamorphosis FN. ["Metamorphosis FN"] Thanks, everyone.