HDSA 2016 projectplan

work in progress

Hackers & Designers Summer Academy 2016

Title: At work

Subtitle If you are so smart why are you so poor? About labor, digital economies and techno-societies.

Date: July 25th - August 5th 2016

Location:

De PUNT (1st block), WAAG (2nd block), Weekend excursion: Rotterdam, End presentation and lecture night De PUNT (?),

Price:

Full program inclusive an informal welcome dinner, daily lunch, free access to the public programs, an arduino kit: €350,00 (excl. BTW) Price one program block: €200,00 (excl. BTW) Price public program: €5,00 entrance

Total amount of participants: 200-250 participants Of which: Full workshop program: 50-60 participants Each workshop program: 30-35 participants Saving 5 spots for members of We are here Academy

                       & Hack your Future.

Lecture program: 100 participants Film screening: 60 participants

Introduction

If you are so smart, why are you so poor? The Hackers & Designers Summer Academy 2016 will explore labor, alternative economies and societies in it’s second edition. Or (“If you are so smart why are you so poor? About labor, digital economies and techno-societies.”).

Designers and hackers are both stake holders in immaterial labor and the knowledge based economies where some of their actions include activities not traditionally seen as work. These actions do, however, fit definition of labor in that they are including: contributions to creative commons and open source, self-initiated research projects, community organization, social networking, blogging, vlogging, and mojo (mobile journalism)… all in a first world landscape of collapsing corporate structure, the rise of self-employment, a revolution in domestic work, gender income misbalance, and permeable state boarders. There is a growing in-come gap between rich and poor where the majority of the wealth in the world is tied up in mysterious murky derivative contracts and additionally complex wealth distributions which are beyond the realm of standard education.

A lot of this labor is happening in and around new digital and internet technology but at the same time enabled by the same technology. This creates a strange feedback loop of exponential proportions that makes understanding, legislating, and evolving solutions extremely difficult. New concepts like encryption, crypto-currency, post-scarcity, deep/dark webs, etc., arise in dated and slow to change hierarchical social, corporate, and political constructs hundreds of years old.

How do you assist the elderly or how do you employ immigrants in a world where multiple intertwined exponential functions including population, food distribution, income inequality, and more continue to out grow the linear ability of human understanding?

Hackers & Designers desires to, over a 10-day period of workshops, to create an environment where students can workshop and create the labor, economy and society of the future.

What is Hackers & Designers?

Hackers & Designers is a non-profit cross-disciplinary community of programmers, engineers, designers, and artists. H&D started in 2013 and has been organizing meetups where collaborative and inclusive workshops (1-3 hours) are given. In 2015 H&D launched the first edition of the Hackers & Designers Summer Academy. About Bugs, Bots & Bytes.

In the Summer of 2016 H&D organizes a second edition of the H&D Summer Academy with the title “If you are so smart why are you so poor? About labor, digital economies and techno-societies.” (working title).

The hands-on program consists of workshops with a hands-on approach. An additional public program (lecture night and film screening) will take the participants and the public into a deeper conversation around topics, which have arose in our modern techno society and will certainly breach over the course of the Summer Academy. The immersive program of the Summer Academy allows participants to build relationships and investigate new technology and design methods, and equip them with technological and design tools, collaboration opportunities, cross-disciplinary vocabulary, and a new understanding of technology and design in a social context.

Workshop format: Learning by Making

H&D functions as a proxy between developers and artists/designers. We believe designers and artists, should be empowered with the tools of the digital realm including coding and hardware usage and construction. Conversely programmers and makers should be more comfortable and effective in engaging in a creative process through familiarity with the vocabulary of designers and artists. All disciplines should become more comfortable in theoretical and social discourse, and thus be asking questions such as “should we” instead of only “can we”.

1st workshop block: Soft work (curated by H&D, taking place at De PUNT)

Key words: forms of organization of work participation communities exchange immaterial labor gender inequality informal economies crypto currency stock exchange, algorithmic trading, tax havens, … investments, shares, … digital labor, affective labor (youtubers), knowledge economies, … the contemporary geopolitical net sphere,… neural nets,…

Proposal workshop program: Monday: Workshop 1: Morning tech focus, afternoon design focus Tuesday: Workshop 1: Morning tech focus, afternoon design focus (Evening: film night) Wednesday: Workshop 1: Morning tech focus, afternoon design focus (Evening: presentations) Thursday: Workshop 2 Friday: Workshop 2 Saturday: Optional trip to (?) Sunday: Optional trip to (?)

Modes of production: hands-on! Workshopping, wire framing, software development & prototyping, discussion

2nd workshop block: Hard work (curated by–and taking place at WAAG Society)

Key words: The Internet of Things Post-industrialization Waste-reducing products Smart houses, smart products, networked sex toys,… Problematics of machine-learning processes Robotization of society A new „intelligence’ of a new physical world Artificial intelligence

Modes of production: hands-on! Workshopping, hard-ware hacking, discussion

Public program

Lecture series: Curated by H&D in collaboration with WAAG Potential speakers: Ramsey Nasser (language design), Pieterjan Grandry & Valentina Karga (Market for immaterial value), Hito Steyerl, Brian Holmes, Zack Blas, Frank Rieger (CCC), Aymeric Mansoux, Ben Vickers (www.benvickers.net), Audrey Samson (www.ideacritik.com), Jon Lucas (jon-l.com, dismagazine.com/dystopia/66996/veit-laurent-kurz-presents-herba-4/), Ataun Tanaka (https://vimeo.com/2483259) http://phoenixperry.com/ (talk about women in computation) Rebecca Fiebrink (London) (http://www.doc.gold.ac.uk/~mas01rf/Rebecca_Fiebrink_Goldsmiths/welcome.html) (http://www.bethanykoby.com/)

Film night: Curated by Jeffrey Babcock

End exhibition & party

References:

Brian Holmes writes in “The Affectivist Manifesto” (2009) that activism today faces “the knowledge society, an excruciatingly complex order. The striking thing . . . is the zombie-like character of this society, its fallback to automatic pilot, its cybernetic governance.”

http://www.e-flux.com/journal/zombies-of-immaterial-labor-the-modern-monster-and-the-death-of-death/ Zombies of Immaterial Labor was originally presented in the Masquerade lecture series, organized by the curatorial platform If I Can’t Dance I Don’t Want To Be Part Of Your Revolution, at the Piet Zwart Institute in Rotterdam, January 25, 2010.

http://www.perc.org.uk/project_posts/the-political-economy-of-david-bowie/

http://www.e-flux.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/05/2.-Maurizio-Lazzarato-Immaterial-Labor.pdf

http://www.e-flux.com/journal/designs-for-a-new-world/

http://www.e-flux.com/journal/towards-the-space-of-the-general-on-labor-beyond-materiality-and-immateriality/

http://www.arte.tv/guide/en/060180-014-A/futuremag?zone=europe

http://resonate.io/2016/

http://emotional-labor.email/

Documentation

hackersanddesigners.nl wiki.hackersanddesigners.nl meetup.com/Hackers-and-Designers-Amsterdam-NL

facebook.com/hackersanddesigners twitter.com/hack1design github.com/hackersanddesigners

Things to add: - Non-hierarchical approach (teacher & participants should meet each other on eye level and learn form each other) - keeping the price low increases level of participation - Professionals and students can/should both join - Are we able to organize accommodation if necessary? (Camping? OT301? Tetterode?)