I wanted to talk specifically about visual representation and inclusivity, and really trying to problematize the way that we conceive of inclusivity as an inherent good. This is not a sort of “hashtag representation matters” talk, it is a talk that’s thinking about you know, matters around representation and how to do that in a way that is non-instrumentalizing and non-exploitative.
Archive
With the rise of the Web, writing has met its photography. And by that I mean writing has encountered a situation similar to what happened uh, to painting with the invention of photography. A technology so much better at replicating reality that in order to survive, painting had to ors— or, uh, alter its course radically.
Appropriation is something we’re really uncomfortable with. We talk about it mostly in negative terms, when we even talk about it at all. But it’s also weirdly a pretty fundamental part of how we work.
Over the past few years, I’ve started to expose, both in my work and also in giving talks and writing and so on…this idea of what it means for design to be responsive to the culture that it’s speaking to, that it’s coming from is what I’d like to go over today.
In this episode, we’ll take a broad understanding of the term “technology” and look at how processed and techniques have affected the way in which societal benefits from certain types of seeds have spread across the world, from indigenous knowledges, to biotechnology, and patenting and privatization of seeds.