Cast a Broader Net: Innovation is Relative

My research addresses some of the ways that ethnic communities of practice have voluntarily subverted, or remixed mainstream technologies using local (cultural) practices. The resulting inventions have been broadly adopted in communities around the world. Ethnic artists and practitioners often make use of the refuse of consumer technology production to foster social interventions, make an income, or simply to fill a need. I argue that we need to cast broader net to include these creative, cultural practices and innovations.

Technology is typically defined in very narrow terms. This prevents us from seeing and understanding how those who are not deemed tech-savvy are innovating all around us. I’m working to advance the concept of Techno-Vernacular Creativity, or TVC as a lens to witness and examine all the ways that people are creating and experimenting with technology. This is especially the case among ethnic groups who are underrepresented in science and technology fields such as African American, Latino and Indigenous people.

Though often overlooked in mainstream studies, the rich traditions of practices among underrepresented ethnic groups demonstrate how these same groups engage existing technologies, or create new conditions and environments were technologies can encourage participation. As ‘appropriated technologies’, TVC modes have meaning for the people who engage, view, or use them. Modes that distinguish TVC from mainstream technology research and development include:

· Re-appropriation or the cultural process by which underrepresented ethnic groups reclaim artifacts from ‘dominant’ culture and the environment. For example, African American and Latinx artists who use or alter commercial images (e.g. ads, logos) in their work.

· Improvisation or spontaneous and inventive use of materials. For example, practitioners who use on-the-spot techniques to make graphic, contemporary quilts and quilted projects.

· Conceptual remixing, bricolage, tinkering, or making do with whatever is on hand. For example, artists who combine different, often seemingly disparate knowledge sets, artifacts, identities, and practices.

The combination of these modes or qualities can result in the invention of new practices, methods, performances, or products. From this approach we can look at how indigenous groups’ views of the world relate to emerging technologies. For example, ‘dreamtime learning’ in Aboriginal Australia shares some aspects of deep dreaming, which uses a artificial intelligence neural network to find and enhance patterns in images via algorithmic processes. The Kongo cosmogram, which is a cultural map of the universe has been imagined as a virtual reality platform. What happens when we make these connections more visible or accessible?

In order to make a new reality we also need taxonomy, language, or vernacular to describe it. By changing the lens, we can discover and explore new realities.