Knowledge servers

Grassroots strategies for democratic, socially and environmentally sustainable knowledge infrastructures

Background

In this project, we examine the growing reliance on corporate knowledge services and the associated risk of diminishing critical thinking abilities. The shift towards digitalization and dependence on knowledge generated by, for example, Big Tech companies' AI services, as well as knowledge repositories in popular culture and academia, raises concerns.

When knowledge is provided as a service, there is a risk that the conditions of knowledge production become obscured. What knowledge is prioritized? Whose knowledge is represented? What work is involved in the production of knowledge, including, for example, the "ghost work" associated with training AI models? How many natural resources, which materials, and how much CO2 emissions? These questions point to the material, political, and organizational aspects of knowledge production.

Purpose

We therefore pose the following research questions:

What cultural and technical strategies can promote democratic, socially, and environmentally sustainable knowledge infrastructures?
How do these strategies foster a collective examination of the tensions inherent in the technologies themselves?
How can social collectives, connecting academia and grassroots movements, promote the creation of autonomous services and infrastructures that enhance knowledge, participation, and political immediacy?

Using theories and experimental methods from the humanities and social sciences, we examine how certain often-overlooked digital grassroots communities offer alternative collective, reflective, and autonomous participation models. In collaboration with communities, we develop and explore how these models inspire radical visions for knowledge infrastructures — operating on a smaller, peer-to-peer scale (rather than relying solely on client-server models) and being attentive to minorities, diversity, justice, and sustainability.

The project benefits the public in the following ways:

It raises awareness about the relationship between infrastructure and knowledge through practical experiments, making it easier for an audience to understand a complex issue and its implications.
It increases knowledge of these issues and establishes a shared vocabulary for publicly discussing these problems.
It offers a method and a conceptual toolkit to address them.
By connecting different collectives and communities of practice, the project engages in participatory democratic practice.

Activities

Research/knowledge servers, involving:

The creation and maintenance of a self-hosted research community server, hosting collaborative tools such as etherpad and a calibre web library.
Guidelines to ease the negotiation between institutional procedures, external grassroots partners, policies in IT department/support, and research and teaching needs.
A series of public workshops on the creation and maintenance self-hosting community servers (with external partners).

Community ‘shadow’ libraries, involving:

The creation and maintenance of a self-hosted web library, specifically focused on collective knowledge making.
The creation of a ‘federation’ of community driven web libraries, connecting likeminded knowledge-based shadow libraries.
A workshop format and series of workshops addressing the shadow library as communal knowledge space.

Community networks for publication, involving:

The creation of a community driven autonomous network (ServPub) for experimental publishing.
A series of workshops on community practices of print making using web-to-print techniques.
The publication of a ‘field guide’ using these techniques, on how to run autonomous servers, services, and knowledge infrastructures.

Community-driven AI:

The creation of a sustainable autonomous server for AI image generation.
A workshop format and series of workshops on image generation, targeted local communities, using community data, and aiming at collective reflection on generative images and AI models as spaces of knowledge.

Publications

Andersen, C. U., and Geoff Cox (eds). “Content/Form,” APRJA, volume 13, issue 1, 2024 (forthcoming).
Andersen, C. U., and Geoff Cox (eds). “Minor Tech,” APRJA, volume 12, issue 1, 2023.
Andersen, C. U., and Geoff Cox (eds). “Rendering Research,” APRJA, volume 11, issue 1, 2022.
Andersen, C. U. “Techniques of the face – on video conferencing art and politics.” Electronic Literature Organization, 2022.
Andersen, C. U., and S. Pold. “Protest and Aesthetics in The Metainterface Spectacle.” ISEA – International Symposium on Electronic Arts, 2022.
Andersen, C.U. & S. Pold, S. B. “Aesthetic Computational Criticism – How to critically and technically engage with the Climate Crisis.” In Miguel Carvalhais, André Rangel, Luísa Ribas, Mario Verdicchio (eds.). The Book of X. i2ADS: Research Institute in Art, Design and Society, 2022.

Internal collaborations

Digital Aesthetics Research Centre (DARCH)
Centre for Aesthetics of AI Images (AIIM)
Centre for Critical Data Practices (C4CDP)
Renée Ridgway (“Searching for Search Alternatives”), Department of Business Development and Technology
Søren Pold (“Human-AI Collaboration: Imaginaries, Interventions, Interfaces (HAIC-III)”), Dept of Digital Design & Information Studies.