output – interview
From the online publication "Fellows Published 2022-2023"
MELT (Ren Loren Britton and Iz Paehr) participated in the fellowship programme in the academic year 2022-2023. Their project was called "Unforgetting as Caring:
Braille ‘n Speak, Zenith Hearing Aid, and FTM issue no. 45". The interview below is published in the online publication “Fellows Published” that was launched in December 2024. fellowspublished.rietveldacademie.nl
Braille ‘n Speak, Zenith Hearing Aid, and FTM issue no. 45". The interview below is published in the online publication “Fellows Published” that was launched in December 2024. fellowspublished.rietveldacademie.nl
What was the starting point of your research project?
The Imagining Backwards Computer (IBC) is connected to our ongoing research on the relationship between time and data. We engage imagination as a practice that allows for the shifting of existing paradigms, meaning that we move away from a coordinate system that understands ableism as its point zero. When researching what imagining backwards might mean from trans* and disabled perspectives, we soon found that the hacks and technologies that disabled people invent or use are often disappeared from the technoscientific canon— such as early handheld computers that read braille aloud. For the IBC, we developed the method of appreciation x-ward in time—resisting the damage that has erased disabled and trans* experiences from archives and other forms of remembrance, and instead affirming complex hirstories in which technologies have played ambivalent roles, at times reinscribing ableist norms of what a body can do, and at others opening up possibilities for less normative ways of relating. The IBC lays bare these conditions of exclusion and gestures toward alternative pathways for pasts, presents, and futures that do not uphold archives as places of belonging but instead position them as complex forms of longing. From there, we asked how we might un-forget artefacts, and what reimagining them might make possible.
What has been your approach for the fellowship research project and how does it relate to the role of research in your practice?
We engaged a mixed approach in developing the research project. We worked in the form of workshops to develop and practice a method we call “writing letters of appreciation” in which we prompted participants to choose and appreciate artefacts. The project also ran in conversation with a larger strand of research called “Counting Feelings” in which we used material and sensorial elements to reimagine what data might come to mean when refigured from trans* and autistic embodiments. In relation to this project we began working with materials as well to build haptic bridges into the past.
How does MELT engage with or critique the domain of technoscience in their work, and how does this engagement inform its understanding and representation of disability within the broader sociotechnical discourse?
We approach technoscience and technologies from an anti-ableist perspective. With anti-ableist technologies we conceptualize and prototype technologies that actively intervene into ableist conditions. Projects of ours that do so are for example ACCESS SERVER and Counting Feelings. With the IBC we take up space in backward computational hirstories and reclaim or speculatively rewrite narratives that have been underattended to.
Can you discuss the research project you did during your fellowship at Sandberg and how your design-research engagements have intersected with disability justice to foster a more inclusive or accessible discourse within the design community or public sphere?
In line with Disability Justice our research projects aims to uphold disabled experiences and make access to knowing-making one’s hirstories. We make contributions to shaping design discourse by holding workshops in which this knowing-making as well as the naming and shifting of barriers becomes a shared activity. Another axis is placing access and multi-modality at the heart of our design practice. During the fellowship show we will open a public online text channel to make space for other ways of socializing than in-person participation.
The Imagining Backwards Computer (IBC) is connected to our ongoing research on the relationship between time and data. We engage imagination as a practice that allows for the shifting of existing paradigms, meaning that we move away from a coordinate system that understands ableism as its point zero. When researching what imagining backwards might mean from trans* and disabled perspectives, we soon found that the hacks and technologies that disabled people invent or use are often disappeared from the technoscientific canon— such as early handheld computers that read braille aloud. For the IBC, we developed the method of appreciation x-ward in time—resisting the damage that has erased disabled and trans* experiences from archives and other forms of remembrance, and instead affirming complex hirstories in which technologies have played ambivalent roles, at times reinscribing ableist norms of what a body can do, and at others opening up possibilities for less normative ways of relating. The IBC lays bare these conditions of exclusion and gestures toward alternative pathways for pasts, presents, and futures that do not uphold archives as places of belonging but instead position them as complex forms of longing. From there, we asked how we might un-forget artefacts, and what reimagining them might make possible.
What has been your approach for the fellowship research project and how does it relate to the role of research in your practice?
We engaged a mixed approach in developing the research project. We worked in the form of workshops to develop and practice a method we call “writing letters of appreciation” in which we prompted participants to choose and appreciate artefacts. The project also ran in conversation with a larger strand of research called “Counting Feelings” in which we used material and sensorial elements to reimagine what data might come to mean when refigured from trans* and autistic embodiments. In relation to this project we began working with materials as well to build haptic bridges into the past.
How does MELT engage with or critique the domain of technoscience in their work, and how does this engagement inform its understanding and representation of disability within the broader sociotechnical discourse?
We approach technoscience and technologies from an anti-ableist perspective. With anti-ableist technologies we conceptualize and prototype technologies that actively intervene into ableist conditions. Projects of ours that do so are for example ACCESS SERVER and Counting Feelings. With the IBC we take up space in backward computational hirstories and reclaim or speculatively rewrite narratives that have been underattended to.
Can you discuss the research project you did during your fellowship at Sandberg and how your design-research engagements have intersected with disability justice to foster a more inclusive or accessible discourse within the design community or public sphere?
In line with Disability Justice our research projects aims to uphold disabled experiences and make access to knowing-making one’s hirstories. We make contributions to shaping design discourse by holding workshops in which this knowing-making as well as the naming and shifting of barriers becomes a shared activity. Another axis is placing access and multi-modality at the heart of our design practice. During the fellowship show we will open a public online text channel to make space for other ways of socializing than in-person participation.
