ISC Lecture Series: Queer Interceptions: Sonic inquiry, Techno-Poetics, and ML Bias

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Online Via Zoom

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ISC Lecture - Queer Interceptions: Sonic inquiry, Techno-Poetics, and ML Bias

Abstract: Over the past decade, the growth of ML technologies has presented new challenges within everyday life. Prior research has shown that such technologies affect users unevenly or fail to account for some relationships and experiences entirely. Our work investigates the topics of intimacy and bias. Drawing on the experience of queer breakup and a series of experimental classroom activities, we describe a first-person research approach and set of design inquiries exploring issues of temporality, glitch, and shared accountability. With this work, we ask critical questions with audio and material encounters, including: How do algorithmic systems differentiate, hold, and silence? How might we converse with and use ML technologies to think about and reimage bias? And are ML technologies “queer enough”? We end with a discussion of difference, inclusion, and cultures adversarial use to highlight the limitations of both everyday and professional language for describing and analyzing the particulars of queerness and technology design.

Brian Kinnee is a PhD student in Human Centered Design & Engineering (HCDE) at the University of Washington, Seattle and a member of the Tactile & Tactile (TAT) Design Lab in HCDE. Kinnee’s work explores the leaky limits of domestic technologies in queer spaces. Their recent work focuses on questions of queer use among conversational agents and the development of audio experimentation and remixing methods as modes of sociotechnical inquiry.

Daniela Rosner is an Associate Professor in Human Centered Design & Engineering (HCDE) at the University of Washington and co-director of the Tactile and Tactical Design (TAT) Lab. Her research investigates the social, political, and material circumstances of technology development and use, with a longstanding interest in sites of innovation historically marginalized within engineering cultures such as electronics maintenance and needlecraft. Rosner serves as an Editor-in-Chief of Interactions magazine, a bimonthly publication of ACM SIGCHI.

The Internet Studies lecture series presents leading scholars and practitioners whose work challenges and extends our understanding of digital technology and its place in the world.

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Zoom Link
Meeting ID: 849 2847 7175
Passcode: lecture