Contents
Introduction
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Criptech and the Art of Access: Introduction to Special IssueVanessa Chang, Lindsey Felt
Artists’ Articles
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From Data Doubles to Data Demons: Reflections on a CripTech CollaborationLaura Forlano, Itziar Barrio
Abstract
This article describes a collaboration between the authors around a series of robotic sculptures that were created by Barrio with data from Forlano’s “smart” insulin pump and sensor system. Forlano, a type 1 diabetic for over 10 years, expands upon previous writing about her experience as a “disabled cyborg.” As CripTech art, the robotic sculptures, discussed here as data demons, complicate and expand contemporary discourses on artificial intelligence and design. By engaging themes such as data as labor, data as material, and data as relations, this article ultimately argues that both people and technologies are disabled. -
Dandelion Rebellion: Creating Crip NaturesCynthia O'Neill
Abstract
Inspired by the field of eco-crip theory, Dandelion Rebellion is the crip author’s art-as-research project focused on accessible nature, environmentalism, and activism for weedy species such as the dandelion. Drawing on relationships between dandelions and disabilities, Dandelion Rebellion investigates urban nature and examines multispecies relations and responsibility. Accessibility is central to this project’s design, participation, and conceptual process in digital and analog forms. Even as this project practices a model of accessibility, it also envisions a more fundamental reconceptualization of access called crip nature. -
Plus noise unlockMeesh Sara Fradkin
Abstract
What happens when speech synthesis applications are incompatible with certain software? This essay considers how inaccessibility within the software and programming language Max is sonically, aesthetically, culturally, and ideologically amplified through a case study of “plus noise unlock,” which is the sound made by the author’s computer when she attempts to use a screen reader within a patcher window. -
Between Piano and Forte: Hearing with AidsOlivia Ting
Abstract
The author connects reviving her piano practice after a 20-year hiatus with her
deaf right ear “learning” to hear again with a cochlear implant.
She touches upon parallels between the physiology of the instrument and her own
body, and how they inform the inquiry for her Leonardo CripTech
Incubator/Thoughtworks Arts residency project Song Without
Words. -
How Can It Not Know What It Is?: Remembering Disability as Part of the WholeIndira Allegra, Allison Holt
Abstract
How Can It Not Know What It Is? is a conversation that uses the revered sci-fi film Blade Runner (1982) as a frame to explore the role of memory and affirm disabled identity in collective human experience, specifically concerning technology, the power of self-knowledge, and how these concepts intersect with capitalism and contemporary politics. In an open conversation excerpted here, the artist-authors discuss what it means to be wholly human, navigating subjects from memory to extended cognition, from national mythology to the ethics of AI. -
Unseen Sound: One Step into the Blind Future (Academic Access Version)Andy Slater, Elizabeth McLain
Abstract
Elizabeth McLain interviews CripTech incubator artist Andy Slater about Unseen Sound (2023), his work for E.A.A.T.: Experiments in Art, Access and Technology. Slater discusses accessibility as artistic practice, the exclusion of blind folks from augmented and extended reality, and experimental art’s capacity for fostering access intimacy. While developing Unseen Sound, Slater experienced failures in access and technology. Hyperactive listening—the key to Slater’s creative practice— enabled him to pivot and continue the fight for accessible extended reality (XR) technology. In the process, he makes the case for a brilliant blind future by making noise in public spaces and leaning into the weirdness. -
Crip-Techno-Tinkerism: A Neurodivergent Learning Style Meets Machine LearningErika Jean Lincoln
Abstract
The artist discusses the development of their crip-techno-tinkerism methodology and its application to machine learning. They outline how their tinkering with the creation of datasets and the manipulation of transfer learning within machine learning models can reflect the diversity of neurodivergent learning. -
Primitive way country come look insideYsolde Stienon, Marina; Leonard Tsaplina; White
Abstract
A disabled poet with Rett syndrome and a disabled performing artist with type 1 diabetes document their 12-month artistic collaboration to illuminate ground-time: the nonverbal, expressive dynamics of embodied communication. Five “communication moments” between the artists (documented in writing, video, and photo) are described. Potentials and limitations of augmentative and alternative communication (AAC) technologies, specifically Tobii Dynavox eye-tracking technology and Communicator 5, are discussed. Additionally, the authors question the clinical diagnostic category of “intellectual disability” on the grounds of disability justice, decolonial science, and philosophy. Communication-assistive technology platform developers are challenged to consider relational embodiment as the foundation of communication in design decisions regarding platform function. Technologies should facilitate improvisation and nonlinear expression—verbal and nonverbal— while maintaining freedom of nondisclosure. The right to opacity in communication is also discussed. -
Staring Back: Hacking Intersectional Oppression through Eco-Crip: Cybotanical FuturesAminder Virdee
Abstract
The author discusses their transmedia art installation, Eco-Crip: Cybotanical Futures (2021), as a site that critically explores and re-worlds the intersectional oppressions faced by disabled BIPOC individuals—centering on their own identity and complex lived experiences. Through a re-worlding lens, the artwork harnesses autoethnography, disability justice, and critical theory to confront and reclaim lifelong systemic oppression and medical surveillance, integrating computational art and digital painting to reconstruct medically quantified bioimaging and South Asian botanical archives into alternative “Cybotanical” futures. The author traces this work back to their earlier piece, Keep This Leaflet. You May Need to Read It Again (2014), a seminal creation in their criptech journey. Eco-Crip: Cybotanical Futures embraces a DIY ethos to hack and decolonize archives and technologies, navigating multifaceted meaning-making where beauty and pain converge—mapping new frontiers of crip technoscience art that challenges various systems of power and their associated gazes.
General Articles
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Remote Access: Crip Nightlife, Artistry, and TechnoscienceKevin Gotkin, Aimi Hamraie
Abstract
Since 2020, Kevin Gotkin has spearheaded disability nightlife events for the virtual Remote Access series for the Critical Design Lab, a multidisciplinary and multi-institution arts and design collaborative. Aimi Hamraie directs the Critical Design Lab and coined the term crip technoscience. Hamraie interviews Gotkin about the genesis of this disability arts and culture party and how it has evolved into an ongoing experiment in critical access-making. The authors focus on the elements of artistic production, presentation, and exhibition that required crip technoscience interventions before and during the COVID-19 pandemic. -
Aesthetic In-Access: Notes from the CripTech Metaverse LabFrank Mondelli, Jennifer Justice
Abstract
Metaverse technologies, such as spatial audio, virtual reality (VR), and augmented reality (AR), present new possibilities for disabled artists. To explore how artists use metaverse technologies—as well as the frictions that inhibit access—the authors describe the events of CripTech Metaverse Lab, which invited a cohort of disabled artists to a three-day workshop featuring metaverse experiences and a speculative design lab. Observing how participants creatively navigated these encounters, the authors introduce “aesthetic in-access” as a shared praxis developed by disabled users that transforms barriers to access into artistic expression. In doing so, the authors outline a metaverse future that centers disabled people’s expression and joy. -
Experimental Modalities: Crip Representation and Access with Electronic Arts IntermixDarrin Martin
Abstract
In collaboration with Electronic Arts Intermix (EAI), a nonprofit video arts distributor, the author has found videos in EAI’s collection that may reflect upon themes of disability and/or engage modes of access like captioning and audio description. The video/film works referenced in conceptual and performance practices have been broadly tethered to the word “experimental” and situated in this context to engage with accessibility even for works that resist and challenge the very nature of legibility. This essay is the author’s first attempt to explore an archive to identify video artworks that represent disability (whether deliberately or not) and present alternative modes of access (whether deliberately or not) with the intent of laying a groundwork for curations that tap into possibilities within accessibility formats. -
Resisting Normality with Cultural Accessibility and Slow TechnologyMegan Johnson, Eliza Chandler, Carla Rice
Abstract
Although the COVID-19 virus continues to circulate, there is an increasing insistence that the world “return to normal.” In this paper the authors resist this pull to normalcy and the way it devalues the knowledges, vitality, and livelihoods of disabled people. They examine the crip technoscience practices used during the 2022 digital gathering Practicing the Social: Entanglements of Art and Social Justice, situating them as examples of cultural accessibility that engage with slow technology to provoke crip(ped) ways of being in time. They argue that sustained engagement with cultural accessibility offers a different path through the pandemic, one that centers access and resists the way necropolitics devalues disabled life.
Leonardo Gallery
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Experiments in Art, Access and TechnologyVanessa Chang, Lindsey Felt, Claudia Alick
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Leonardo Gallery: Experiments in Art, Access and TechnologyMeesh Sara Fradkin, Carmen Papalia, Andy Slater, Josephine Sales, Olivia Ting
Leonardo Reviews
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A Book of Noises: Notes on the AuraculousCharles Forceville
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DopostoriaJan Baetens
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Exploring Past Images in a Digital Age: Reinventing the ArchiveJan Baetens
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Curating the Moving ImageMike Leggett
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Sentience: The Invention of ConsciousnessCecilia Wong
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Shells: A Natural and Cultural HistoryJan Baetens
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Radio Art ZoneMark Leahy
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Cold War in the White Cube: U.S. Exhibitions of Latin American Art, 1959–1968Jan Baetens
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The Nexus: Augmented Thinking for a Complex World—The New Convergence of Art, Technology and ScienceYuri Malina, Roger Malina
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Leonardo Reviews Online
Endnote
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Prototyping Criptech Arts FuturesVanessa Chang, Lindsey Felt