Year: 2020

Biometrics: Mediating Bodies

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I co-edited a special issue of the journal PUBLIC: Art/Culture/Ideas on Biometrics. This issue maps out some of the ways that bodies have been measured and identified based on biometrics ever since the rise of media technologies, from nineteenth century anthropometry to modern day computational science. From case studies and interventions detailing the history and politics of biometrics, to creative and critical applications and visualizations of the biometric body, the authors and artists included here work across diverse theoretical approaches and disciplinary traditions to engage the machine-readable body. The contributions are organized around five conversations—History of Measurement; Politics and Governance; Aesthetics; Narratives and Experiences; and Design—that reflect the reach of biometrics today. One the one hand, they consider the quantified and objectified body as it becomes part of systems of identification and recognition, such as in contexts of security or surveillance. On the other, they highlight the new narratives, aesthetics, and experiential mediations of the body that surface in fields like health, cinema, media art, and curation. Along the way, these articles take on biometric …

“The Intrinsic Value of Valuable Paper”

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ABSTRACT Authentication devices transform cheap paper into legitimate documents. They are the sensory, informational, and computational features that make up valuable papers like banknotes and passports, and they provide the confidence required in moments of exchange and passage. These devices – which include techniques like watermarks and specialized threads, proprietary substrates and inks, or RFID chips – are the product of security printing, an industry that continuously reinvents the possibilities of paper. Importantly, these components protect paper things from counterfeiting, allowing it to function as an original and authentic copy and to do the logistical work of connecting quotidian materials to global networks. The value of valuable papers is therefore not purely extrinsic, socially or discursively established, but is also performed through its intrinsic material qualities. These are the authentication devices that are read, assessed, and trusted as paper things are circulated, and they are what securely connects paper to infrastructures of mobility. Online First

“Nano-Optical Image-Making”

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This article has been a long time coming* but it is finally available in print form in the April 2020 issue of Leonardo.  Nano-Optical Image-Making: Morphologies, Devices, Speculations ABSTRACT This article provides a technical overview of nano-optical image-making produced between the author, engineering scientists at the Ciber Lab in Vancouver, and the artists Christine Davis and Scott Lyall. It situates the work in relation to other optical technologies like holographs, to the primary application of nano-optical images as authentication devices, and to other artistic practices interested in nanoscale interactions of light and matter. The paper articulates the convergence of visual technologies and designed materials by explaining how the principles of structural color can be used for the production of images. Building a discussion on the shift from device to medium that is anchored around questions of remediation and reproducibility, it concludes with a speculation on informatic matters, or the convergence of mediating functions at the surface of things. *Accepted for Online First publication in January 2018. See on Academia      

Bricolab YR1

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First year at the Bricolab is a success! Here’s a recap of some of the things that went on in the past few months. See you (hopefully) in 2020-2021 for more workshops, talks, demos, etc. Atelier d’écriture speculative   Les micro-contrôleurs : des outils pour la recherche-création   Infrastructures feministes : discours, expérimentation, enjeux Formation : l’impression 3D Recherche-création en réalité virtuelle      

Reading group @ Artefact Lab – winter 2020

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This year we started doing some readings as a lab as a way to focus our monthly meetings. This has been especially useful since individual project topics are very varied. In the fall we read Sarah Sharma’s excellent book In the Meantime: Temporality and Cultural Politics. This winter we are going in quite a different direction, both in terms of topic and approach, and are reading a selection of articles and chapters that bring together animals, space, and media. Our reading list is below.