Sat - May 8, 2004

Digital Determinanisms, AfroGEEKS Conference


WOW!!!!!! This is momentous. My first entry in this new blog is coming to you from the AfroGeeks conference organized by Anna Everett at UC Santa Barbara. I wanted to drop a few of the things that people have been talking about, especially around making sure that everyone has access, but also SKILLS to make use of digital technology.

Picture 1.pdf
Go check out the website!
http://research.ucsb.edu/cbs/projects/afrogeeks.html

Just because you can send an e-mail and type a document in a word processing program does not mean that you are digipendent. Just because you might be black does not mean that you live on the wrong side of the digital divide. Just because you get military funding for your project does not mean that you are evil. Just because you are working on digital platforms does not mean that you are making art work. Just because you are coding does not mean that you are not making art. Just cause.

This conference is truly revolutionary in that Thirdspace kinda way. Binaries begone! Well, except for code. One of the more profound agreements among all the panelists is the re-insurgence, or the insistence on corpo-reality in the digital space. Not epidermal reality, but corpo-reality. Digital space is traversed by African descended people who reside in racialized bodies through an insistence on the material reality of their flesh. The body does not become a lump of meat, though we may travel as light through the cables which connect the computers across various nations.

More to come later tonight!
The ND 02 FX (Mayday Upgrade).m4a

Posted at 05:03 PM     Read More  

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