D+TM #27 Helen Pritchard

D+TM #27 Helen Pritchard

What: Thinking with the Animal Hacker
When: Monday 30th of March, 12-3pm
Where: Parsons Paris room 500
Who: Helen Pritchard

The “Animal Hacker” is a set of interconnected (queer) stories about sheep, cows, famous cats, transgenic fish, computation, capitalism and environments. In this talk I will discuss my technofeminist inquiry into the ways in which “animal hackers” emerge, from the entanglements of animals and computers. Examining the practices of “environmental data” that emerge from dairy cows monitored by remote cameras in a “big data” environmental observatory, participatory urban sensing by an internet-famous cat and the genetic engineering of transgenic fish to monitor water quality. The diffractive figure of the ‘Animal-Hacker’ is used to consider activities of sensing not as measuring or writing the other, but instead as co-writing with articulate nonhumans. The talk focuses on how the animal is inscripted with, and by technology and the practices that we need in order to take seriously the participation of nonhuman animals in computational systems.

I am an artist and researcher whose interdisciplinary work brings together the fields of Computational Aesthetics, Software Studies, Environmental Practice and Feminist TechnoScience. My practice is both one of writing and making and these two modes mutually inform each other in order to consider the impact of computational regimes. Central to my work is the consideration of co-research, participation and the performativity of code in computational ecologies. My practice sometimes emerges as workshops, collaborative events and computational art. As an artist I have shown work internationally including DA Fest International festival of Digital Art, (Bulgaria), Spacex (UK), Microwave Festival (Hong Kong, ACA Florida, (USA), Arnolfini Online (UK). I am currently a Research Fellow in the Department of Sociology at Goldsmiths, University of London, on the European Research Council Project, Citizen Sensing and Environmental Practice. [www.citizensense.net]

www.helenpritchard.info