R&D Lab Cohort
Announcing 2023 Selected Projects
C/Change is pleased to announce the five projects selected for the Creative R&D Lab’s second cohort. Each team will develop interactive prototypes that address one of the program’s focus areas — feminist technologies, digital democracy, and planetary futures — in creating virtual experiences, tools, and platforms that promote online cultural exchange. Learn more about the research lab here.
More about the 2023 selected projects
All Possible Rivers
Taking into account the physics that participate in the evolution of the Rio Grande, which delimits half of the U.S.-Mexico border, a computational model will be programmed to anticipate its future transformations throughout geological temporalities. Using historical data in the public domain on the behavior of the river, the model will simulate interactions between water and land to measure possible geomorphological changes the result of techno-natural engineering and public policies. The mathematical model will decompress geological time into many possible and impossible versions of the rivers as immersive 3D environments — a tool to weave situated stories through the material metaphor of the river and to respatialize the border beyond the immediacy of human scales.
Digital Rights Monopoly
Esther Mwema
Uffa Modey
Hanna Pischyk
Rachad Sanoussi
Digital Rights Monopoly is a simulation game of monopoly that engages players to reflect on the digital ecosystem, co-created through the lived experiences and expertise of the Digital Grassroots global youth community. The platform that will host the open source Digital Rights Monopoly will model a decentralized digital ecosystem where power is given to the most excluded. The Digital Rights Monopoly game shifts the power to youth who have been disenfranchised and face obstacles to participate in the digital ecosystem; it creates a pathway for the communities with restricted digital connectivity or low representation in global internet policy development processes to highlight digital inclusion challenges and solutions in their context. The simulation will be an interactive way for newcomers to the digital rights and internet governance space to shape their digital future with autonomy.
Dragon’s Delusion
Cheng Xu
KongKee
Lawman
Hanjun Dai
Yixin Wang
We are building an AI tool to create a sequel to the Asian Futurism animation, Dragon’s Delusion. AI represents a collective state of cognition of our consciousness and memory, yet its behavior surprises us. Many probabilities co-exist in AI’s perception of the world. What could that mean in narrative? What if an animation is a living breathing organism of many contributors? What if instead of one central narrative dictating the story, many responses coexist, leaving it to the viewer to reflect, contribute, and select? These meditations require a new kind of storytelling tool. Our goal is to build this tool and make it publicly accessible to a broad audience, so individuals can tell their own stories, culture, and humaneness.
Missing Objects Library
Jill Miller
Asma Kazmi
Kathy Wang
Missing Object Library (MOL) is a curated, web-based repository of handmade 3D objects that are designed with an intersectional, feminist lens. MOL offers an alternative to commercial, status quo storefronts that provide digital assets for game design and special effects. Objects sold in these spaces are typically devoid of provenance, and they continually reinscribe false notions of neutrality while privileging a white, cis, heteronormative dominance. In contrast, MOL is an open platform with downloadable models that accurately represent the world we inhabit. MOL disrupts historical gatekeeping performed by “neutral” marketplaces by offering 3D modeled objects that span a wide range of identities, abilities, and affinities. In addition to critiquing existing 3D model storefronts, MOL builds community by offering an economic system of reciprocity, where technological representations of things are exchanged to produce meaningful relations and effects.
Offline.Wiki
Or Zubalsky
Lee Tzu-Tung 李紫彤
Czyka Tumaliuan
Offline.Wiki is a decentralized platform that disseminates copies of an offline wiki to radical bookstores around the world. The project builds on the legacy of sneakernet, a method of sharing digital files through delivering flash drives from one place to another, bypassing “man-in-the-middle attack” and packet-sniffing. Available via a USB stick, the offline wiki will be delivered as an interactive browser-based experience. The wiki will feature a curated collection of software learning resources for activists to incorporate into both on and off the street actions. Offline.Wiki celebrates radical bookstores’ capacity as durable counterspaces for activists to convene in, identify struggles, and organize movements for social change. The initial prototype will focus on various encryption/ decryption technologies that facilitate safer communication among activist communities.
