Everyone Has Needs: Queering Technology through Disability2 min read

Elia Vargas

Signals Podcast 3: A conversation with M Eifler, queer and disabled AR/VR artist.

How do disability studies create inclusive world building?

The role of open source software in queer technology.

Assistive technology design for reshaping accessibility.

Wearable Technologies and new models for meaning making.

“What is valid knowledge making?” asks queer and disabled AR/VR artist M Eifler. “That is at the core of my practice.” Eifler, aka Blink Pop Shift, is an artist who uses a collage of physical and virtual materials to build prosthetics, archives, and models to experiment with disabled and autistic ways of knowing. Their iterative, recursive, and experimental process for hybrid virtual and physical work begins with very simple ingredients. This includes a set of instructions or a few rules, which determine the trajectory of a wide breadth of practice ranging from AI to computational prosthetics to basket weaving and other textiles. Prosthetic Memory, one of Eifler’s most well-known works, explores their long term memory loss, and was awarded the Ars Electronica STARTS Prize 2020 Honorary Mention. Listen to Signals Podcast 3 for a wide-ranging conversation between Eifler and Elia Vargas that explores the topics of computational design, the effects of the pandemic on computer-human relations, open source software, autism and disability, memory loss and trauma, and embodiment and radical forms of meaning making.“What are your needs?”asks Eifler. “Everyone has needs and I want to know what they are.” Eifler, who stood pacing back and forth for the entire conversation, is remarkably idiosyn-cratic, as well as generous, generative, and profound in conversation. During the pandemic,“Because we felt so isolated, people lost the fact that the first part of not being lonely is connecting with yourself…The first part of using a computer or any computational device that is enriching is about connecting to yourself and your intentions, otherwise you end up in these extractive relationships.” 

Prosthetic Memory Exhibition

Podcast Music Credits: systemritual (Elia Vargas and Nathan Blaz)

BioImage Credit: M Eifler

Prosthetic Memory Images Credit: Ana Xiao Mina

Dr. Elia Vargas is an artist and scholar working across multiple mediums, ranging from video and sound to writing and performance. His work is critical, speculative, ecological, energetic, and technocultural. It is engaged in an interdisciplinary approach with contemporary and historical experimental media, digital cultural, and feminist science studies. Vargas collaborates widely with artists, musicians, and institutions. He holds a PhD from UC Santa Cruz. He is currently a lecturer at CSU Monterey Bay and is co-founder of the SF Bay Area art and technology organization, the Living Room Light Exchange.