Fellowships 2024

‘Screen-to-Soundscape’ adopts a creative and experimental approach to reimagining screen reader voices. The project aims to develop a speculative design prototype that transforms a browser or screen into an immersive soundscape. This prototype will feature multiple layered voices reading all readable text in unison with spatial audio, enabling users to discern the text’s location within the browser. The motivation behind this initiative is to overcome the inherent limitations of traditional screen readers by offering users with visual impairments a more intuitive and immersive way to navigate digital content. This benefits users with visual impairments and provides a richer, more engaging web experience for all users. Constant, a non-profit artist-run organization based in Brussels, will also support the project with content feedback, technical returns, a budget contribution, and public moments.

‘Holografia’ is an initiative based on open-source principles, aimed at promoting design literacy and creative coding in Brazil, especially amongst Deaf individuals. The project ‘p5.js in Brazilian Sign Language’ comprises a series of freely accessible educational videos explaining the fundamentals of p5.js in Libras — the sign language commonly used by Deaf communities in urban areas of Brazil. These videos will feature visual resources, given the Deaf community’s reliance on visual communication, and will also include an audio track and subtitles in Portuguese to ensure accessibility for a broader audience across the country. The project will be conducted by a collective of professionals including Luís Miguel, Jaque Brenda, Paulo de Almeida Sachs, and Camila Delfino.

Debate and disagreements are natural parts of people coming together, yet many projects lack deliberative protocols to support codes of conduct. For the 2024 Processing Fellowship, Dorothy Howard and David Hecht are focusing on the design of a conflict resolution system for self-organized communities, such as open technology projects, online groups, or cooperatives. The system will be published in an open repository, so communities can modify and improve it to suit their contextual needs.

The broader aims of this project are to reduce harms that can occur because of inadequate resolution procedures, as well as to foster discussion about applying restorative practices to collaborative governance. To inform the design, the team will conduct research including a review of restorative practices and conflict resolution case studies and literature, and organize a focus group with community practitioners. They will also create a community engagement plan to identify projects that might have needs the system can help address, and a structure for feedback.

This project will build with the Processing Foundation community work to develop practices around encouraging safe spaces and communication in times of conflict, applying the ethics of care to design, and fostering dialogues about the complexities of interpersonal communication, complaint, compassion, and well-being.

‘How do We Care for Each Other’ (“Vì Mình Thương Nhau”) aims to create an archival website that documents the actual lived experiences of disabled people in Vietnam through visual storytelling using code, such as Processing and p5.js. By collecting first-person narratives, the project seeks to highlight and celebrate the diverse stories of Vietnamese disabled individuals, recognizing that all bodies deserve to be celebrated. Using creative technology tools, the project hopes to bring visibility to Disability Justice, care, and community. How can we celebrate disabled people as they are and dismantle ableism, especially within all the nuances of the Vietnamese cultural context? Beyond the fellowship period, the project aspires to cultivate a solid community for Disability Justice in Vietnam, continually documenting and celebrating disabled stories. It hopes to inspire more conversations and research on disability from Vietnamese scholars, students, and the general public. In the long term, the vision is to present this website as archival documentation to various levels of government. Better data informs better policies; the project hopes to advocate for better support for disabled people in housing, education, healthcare, and other social services.

Working with the Processing Foundation community, along with other creative technology projects that draw inspiration from Processing’s pioneering history, Roopa Vasudevan will begin a research and creative effort to develop both a definition of values and practices that govern an “open-source ethos”, and models for ethical alignment among a range of open-source creative tech communities.

While different protocols and practices are necessary for different languages and technical systems, the ethos surrounding the larger software art community should be consistent if it strongly believes in expanding access to and literacy with technology. Drawing from Vasudevan’s long-term work engaging the complex relationships between art, technology, and power — along with her history of facilitating exchange between tech-based artists about values, practices, and things they would like to see in the field — this project attempts to take steps towards reconciliation and alignment of value-based goals among open-source communities.

As part of the fellowship, Vasudevan will build a Web-based resource collecting her research; outlining findings; and soliciting feedback, ideas, and visions from community members for their hopes for the open-source creative software community. The work from the fellowship period will also be produced as a PDF and printed zine to be distributed in the fall of 2024.

‘Palestine Online’ is a collection of web pages created by Palestinians (and friends), primarily in the late 90s and early 00s, sourced from the Internet Archive’s Wayback Machine, including but not limited to: personal homepages, news websites and online magazines, sites showcasing Palestinian art and culture, and online memorials.

The project preserves Palestinian web presence during or close to the Second Intifada and showcases the overlooked yet rich early history of Palestinian internet presence, tracing the World Wide Web as a crucial tool for resistance, connection, and expression that has given Palestinians an unprecedented platform under ongoing occupation, and which to this day is a primary commons for a people repeatedly silenced or misrepresented by mainstream media outlets.

Palestine Online is also an exploration of using the capabilities of the modern web, the most important global connectivity tool today, to create a rich and interactive archive that revitalizes and makes newly visible the digital contributions and expression of oppressed peoples.

‘Synthetic Moans’ is a piercing scream into the void and a soft whisper to a lover, sister, or mother. Synthetic Moans indexes a process, a practice, and a palimpsest of trans life, and of transfeminine lineages between aesthetics, music, and science. The process at the heart of Synthetic Moans is a system for identifying and assembling transbiological data (hormone levels, frequency of medical visits, embodied memories of sexed and gendered becoming) and sonifying it into tones, sequences, and scores. The practice that will enable the emergence of Synthetic Moans is a method of memory work and archival research between transfeminine people sharing and recording documents, ephemera, and feelings related to broad and variable interpretations of transition. The palimpsest generated through the process and the practice of Synthetic Moans will both disclose and obfuscate felt dimensions of transfeminine life. It will be a digital archive and an evolving compendium of sounds and resources composed with transfeminine contributors. Inspiration for this project comes from many sources: Arca, ARCHANGEL, Annie Sansonetti, ANOHNI, Ita Segev, Jeanne Vaccaro, Juliana Huxtable, Keioui Keijaun Thomas, Mary Maggic, Mira Bellwether, SOPHIE, troizel xx, and many more.

During the Processing Foundation Fellowship, this project aims to capture and preserve the nuances of live coding performances, detailing artistic decisions and challenges. The project involves developing a platform-agnostic tool that records live performances through keypress detection and state changes within the source code. This tool will effectively archive live coding performances, providing a comprehensive record of the real-time coding process and the artist's intentions. Ensuring compatibility with any live coding platform, the tool will extend its use across various artistic practices and workflows. Code analysis will reveal patterns, trends, and potential areas for innovation, offering insights into live coding interactions. The project will make all tools and research outputs open-source, promoting transparency and collaboration. This approach allows others to observe, contribute to, and build upon the findings. Additionally, the project aims to establish a discursive framework around individualistic practices in live coding, fostering a shared language and a clearer understanding of intent and purpose. By documenting and archiving live coding performances, this project seeks to contribute valuable knowledge and resources to the live coding community and the broader field of creative technology.