*New podcast: Flemish artist and designer Femke Snelting talks about
Possible Bodies <
https://rwm.macba.cat/en/sonia/sonia-344-femke-snelting>,
a collective research problematising 3D technologies*
Link:
https://rwm.macba.cat/en/sonia/sonia-344-femke-snelting
Femke Snelting <
https://rwm.macba.cat/en/sonia/sonia-344-femke-snelting> is
a Flemish artist and designer, who works at the intersection of design,
feminism and Free Software. She is a member of Constant, a non-profit,
artist-run organisation based in Brussels. She is also part of Possible
Bodies, a collaborative research project developed in collaboration with
Jara Rocha, which is the main topic of our conversation.
Possible Bodies questions and problematises the formulation, conception,
and rendering of bodies across different 3D technologies such as modelling,
tracking and scanning. Their affirmative critical research draws attention
to the ways in which these techniques end up implementing and even
amplifying a host of prejudices based on race, gender, class, age and
ability which, far from being circumstantial, are woven into the actual
source code of all sorts of applications. Snelting, Rocha, and their
collaborators collect and document instances of these problems, as a
strategy for thinking about their roots and implications, and also to
eventually file what they call “bug-reports”. As Snelting says, it’s not
about making algorithms fair, it’s about changing the systems that enable
those algorithms to operate in the first place.
We talk to Femke Snelting about embodiments, optimisation, and 3D
disasters, about the possible and the probable, parametric interfaces, and
open standards, and about disobedient action research.
*E/N/J/O/Y!*