DIVIDE 

AI + ART for ACTIVISM - digital barriers / EU Project / AI4Future

EXPOSING TECHWASHING TO RECLAIM A SOCIAL NARRATIVE FOR DIGITAL RIGHTS AND EMPOWERMENT

Artwork

The piece explores the multiple narratives around Access to Internet and Digital Divide.

To do so, images from the affected districts are run against descriptive scenarios in a machine-learning text-to-image algorithm.

The artwork is a set of lenticular prints that reveal different narratives depending on the angle that are viewed from, thus showcasing how different people can experience or understand the multiple realities if explored from diverse points of view.

Statement

Access to internet is not equally guaranteed to all citizen, either for the lack of commercial interest by ISP's, institutional and legal boundaries or economical resources. Either way, certain parts of the population see their Right to Internet Access limited and abused.

The activists entity EXO is running a pilot program to provide free Internet Access to affected households in some districts of Barcelona. Their action goes beyond providing internet, and focuses on digital inclusion, stressing that citizen's rights need to be preserved online.

The digital divide appears to be very different depending who is talking about it.

In one hand, the official narrative, the story told by the administration and tech companies, is that everything is fine, that most of the people have access to internet and that sales of smartphones keep rising, thus there's nothing to worry about, we are ready for digital education, digital health, digital banking, digital administration and digital everything...

On the other hand, the social movements indicate that an unidirectional shift towards the digitalisation of citizenship leaves many people behind; from families with one device and several kids needing to do a video-call, citizens who are forced to manage their finances via unusable and data-extractive apps, or households where the internet is shared from a single limited mobile-data-plan.

Digital Divide

🙈👁🤖

Right to Internet Access

👨‍💻🔒📕

Physical Digital

📱🎒🔌

Digital Divide 🙈👁🤖 Right to Internet Access 👨‍💻🔒📕 Physical Digital 📱🎒🔌

Glossary:

  • The Right to Internet Access, also known as the right to broadband or freedom to connect, is the view that all people must be able to access the Internet in order to exercise and enjoy their rights to freedom of expression and opinion and other fundamental human rights, that states have a responsibility to ensure that Internet access is broadly available, and that states may not unreasonably restrict an individual's access to the Internet.

  • The Digital Divide is a gap between those who have access to digital technology and those who do not.[1] These technologies include, but are not limited to, smart phones, computers, and the internet. In the Information Age in which information and communication technologies (ICTs) have eclipsed manufacturing technologies as the basis for world economies and social connectivity, people without access to the Internet and other ICTs are at a socio-economic disadvantage because they are unable or less able to find and apply for jobs, shop and sell online, participate democratically, or research and learn.[2]

Work in Progress / notes 
(chronological order -> new at the end)

background

AI4Future is a Creative Europe’s project which involves three different European countries: Italy, Spain and Netherlands. It aims at enhancing the understanding and dissemination of AI related technologies for the active and creative participation of young activists to the European cultural scene, allowing them to work with artists for a joint creation of a new urban community awareness.

barcelona chapter / partners

  • Canodrom: Open technologies, participatory democracy and digital culture

  • ESPRONCEDA Institute of Art & Culture: international platform and multi-disciplinary environment for artists, curators

dev notes

About eXO’s project: Open Networks for Digital Inclusion in Neighbourhoods / presented by Efraín Foglia

2022/2/3 - hello project / Discussion with @canodrom and @espronceda to know their ongoing projects and draft collaboration framework

  • We learn about the Xarxa Oberta de Barris, (open-networks-in-neighbourhoods), a project by Expansió Xarxa Oberta / eXO, aimed to facilitate the right to internet access by bringing quality internet to families in Sagrerea/Congrés-Indians in Barcelona who have vulnerabilities in their internet access.

  • Within the project then, Canodrom becomes the facilitator, eXO the activists and the families the citizens.

  • the citizens / the project is looking for people with vulnerable internet access

drafting ideas / following the initial proposal, the aim remains to visualize and explore.

  • eXO’s works with hardware, with physical stuff to enable internet access. Since internet is usually visualised as ethereal clouds, it is interesting to go back to the tangible world and work with the stuff that make this possible.

  • As we will be working with families with vulnerable digital access, I’m curious to understand the expectations, what are the words, concepts associated to the digital world and the internet. I cold work with the families and the activists to

v0.1 “Possible landscapes made of cables”

Artwork: A Panorama image made with "internet hardware", blending with AI-generated images from the community's description of "internet".

technically: Using ALIS as a generative GAN fed with images of cables, routers and devices. And using a Text-to-Image algorythm to visualize internet-expectations from the community.

proof of concept / v0.1

Testing models and datasets

Proof of Concept - 000 / collecting random cables and boxes

cropping by region of (algo)-interest

2022/03/01 defining collabs: discussing the approach with Espronceda & Canodrom

  • avoid the parachute effect, where a project lands in a context, extracts and does not return

  • in this project, the artists is a resource for the activists to use AI as channel to approach a challenge

  • the goal of the AI4Future project is to see how AI can empower activism.

  • The focus should be on the process, more than on the piece.

2022/03/02 preparing an upcoming event at Rotterdam V2 with the other artists in residence - Nino Basilashvili / Chunju Yu / Luca Pozzi

proof of concept 02 / internet as a visual representation

digesting the visual qualities of popular image representations of “internet”.

2022/03/04 session with the local activists / understanding their vision of the issue, the concerns and the potential

  • This project is key as a legal framework, because in Barcelona it is not allowed for citizens/associations to provide internet to other citizens.

  • There’s a dissonance between the official narrative and what’s happening “on-the-ground”

    • Digital divide is politically understood as infrastructure

    • There is a layer of WASHING where “technology” is equaled to “accessibility” thus painting a picture of tech-enabled city / (TechWashing/SocialWashing)? / with possible redlining

    • Access to Internet is not guaranteed, as it is left to corporations and their market-driven-decision-making, and pushed to the individuals requiring paid connections and updated devices.

    • Beyond “going-online”, citizens must have their rights granted while online

    • Majority of services are switching to online-mode, leaving behind who does not follow (skills, disabilities, legalities): banking, education,

  • There is an opportunity to re-write the narrative, the concepts, the words.

  • There’s a gender gap within the digital rights activism

  • Mapping the actual project could also visualize what’s the local reality

    • i.e: there’s a high concentration of internet-cafés in that specific area (laSagrera / Congrés-Indians), probably a sign of poor home connectivity / lack of devices or help.

  • There’s a practical challenge to find candidates for social projects as their detailed realities are unknown for the administration or activists (ironically, that information is well known by BigTech/GAFAM)

  • Whatever we make, should not just TALK about the issue, but be INVOLVED with the subject and add up instead of taking.

Other considerations:

v0.2 /

Digging into the idea of Double-Narrative, I’m cooking a process/piece where we’ll define which are those narratives and how they shape our perceived reality.

Why:

Expose tech-washing and reclaim a narrative of digital rights and empowerment.

  • Work with the activists to define what’s wrong about the official narrative and what’s under-looked

How:

Side by side comparison of the same location, visually shaped according to two opposite narratives.

Use text-to-Image algorithms to visualize the transformation of spaces according to specific descriptions of reality.

  • Use Barcelona’s open image datasets

  • Use maps built with BarcelonaOpenData datasets

proof of concept / Plaça de Masadas - Sagrera (initial image by Vicente Zambrano, for Barcelona gov)
left: “a smart city inside the metaverse, cyberspace style”
right: ”piles of e-waste and old electronic devices”

What:

A multi-viewer non-linear artworks that can be placed in multiple settings.

  • Lenticular Prints that allows for a low-tech experience while giving a sense of transformation and exposing different realities depending on the viewing angle.

  • Bringing the digitally AI-created images into the physical realm

Right to Internet

A (growing) list of double-narratives built with conversations with the activists and literature review

The media
  • Catalonia is a leading “Digital Country” in EU
  • Telecommunications is a citizen's right
  • Blockchain technologies for digital democracy
  • App-based healthcare system
  • Barcelona as a technologically advanced city
  • Innovative digital education platforms
  • BigTech trade fairs
  • Funding of new technologies like the metaverse and digital currencies
  • Barcelona is a fully connected city
  • In 1997 the public company Telefonica is privatised and inherits the existing physical infrastructure, and rents it to other ISP's.
From 2008 any company can build their own optic-fiber infrastructure (companies rush to take profitable markets like big cities (often over-installing) and ignoring other parts of the territory).
  • The Goverment starts a publicly owned optic-fiber installation (XOC) with regulated prices. (11 years after the announcement, only arrives to 32% of the municipalities, connecting government sites, not people). The network is run by the main ISP and does not allow small operators to connect to or use it at a fair price.
    ...
The people
  • more than 50% of the population in Catalonia does not have access to broadband
  • The infrastructure that allows telecommunications is a resource to speculate with
  • ISP's do not have commercial interest in providing internet to everybody
  • Digital divide affects specifically to traditionally excluded populations
  • How can someone have access to digital health if can't afford a data plan?
  • How can digital education be fair when access to technology isn't?
  • BigTech fairs exclude the social agenda.
  • Digital rights are an extension of human rights in the digital domain
  • Not all neighbourhoods have the same infrastructure 
  • A better and more efficient optic-fibre installations would lower the costs and provide better services by using bandwidth surplus. 
  • It is technically viable to provide internet to any part of the territory.
  • Internet is a technology that can be run and managed locally without a speculative approach.
  • Networks as a commons 
...

Rotterdam / worksession / mid march

We met with the other artists at V2 - {lab for unstable media} / Rotterdam
to discuss the scope of the projects, review development and share technical approaches.

We put together a dev-show to share directions and get feedback from visitors.

v0.3 /

Technical approach

The project will pivot around CLIP (A neural network called CLIP which efficiently learns visual concepts from natural language supervision. CLIP can be applied to any visual classification benchmark by simply providing the names of the visual categories to be recognized, similar to the “zero-shot” capabilities of GPT-2 and GPT-3. / 400.000.000 images)

CLIP’s capacity for semantic processing will allow the project to process the narratives around Digital Divide.

CLIP code https://github.com/openai/CLIP

For Image generation, DDPM (Demonising Probabilistic Models) will be used. Specifically Guided Diffusion models like GLIDE

When combining CLIP + DDPM we are able to create a Guided Diffusion (paper), where a loop happens between imgs < - > text.

An example of guided diffusion is DALL-E or GLIDE, or RUDALL-E (paper)

With the stated tools and models, a workflow will be set up to input an initial image and a prompt i order to generate an output image as following:

Being a “words & pixels” approach, a certain focus needs to be put on Prompt-Engineering: when words, descriptions and meanings need to be carefully selected to craft the direction of the output.

below : keywords comparison image grids for the CLIP + VQGAN workflow to visualize the effect of different styles/descriptions applied to the same concepts. (more grids here)

Localisation - The activist’s project will be implemented at El Congrés i els Indians neighbourhood of Barcelona.

In order to collect visual material for the project, a field study was conducted in early April.

A photo-tour capturing localised infrastructure, spaces, housing and elements.

The results of the fieldwork will be the starting point for the AI workflow

dev v03 - images & prompts

Testing some prompts in the workflow in order to explore styles and visual languages.

starting from generic concepts of connectivity, and narrowing towards detailed descriptive scenarios.

crosstests: different prompts and workflow settings

Curating samples:

Combinations of settings, prompts and source images proved to be interesting while others lack detail or effectiveness.

A CONNECTED CITY, WITH INTERNET FOR EVERYBODY WITH EFFICIENT DIGITAL SERVICES

 

A CITY WHERE CITIZENS ARE IN A DISADVANTAGE DUE TO OBSOLETE DEVICES AND POOR ACCESS TO INTERNET

Prototype:

Printed prototypes using lenticular technology will be produced in order to test the visual quality and desired effect.

V04 / understanding activism

A workshop session was run with EXO and Canodrom in order to explore and define the narratives that will drive the final artwork.

raw concepts:
  • Open and neutral free network for everyone
  • Digital culture, free technologies and democratic innovation
  • Citizen governance digital democratic participation
  • Open Knowledge
  • Transparency and open-data
  • Public money for public code
  • Construction of community infrastructures
  • Joint network
  • The Internet as a place for human rights
  • Inclusive network
  • Radical participatory democracy.
  • eGovernment as a digitalization of democratic and participatory processes. (desired)
  • eGovernment as a digitalization of the status quo. (what is happening)
  • The system phagocytose and naturalizes radical movements.
  • Ideological extractivism
  • Neo-conservative vampirism
  • TechWashing
  • Surveillance capitalism
  • BigTechs are amoral, they only position themselves in the band that brings the most profits.
  • Software sophistication widens the digital divide due to lack of knowledge.
  • BigTechs feed on the dependence of users and institutions on their software.
  • Alternative initiatives cannot be equated with the service and usability standards offered by BigTechs, creating a barrier to the adoption of new ideas and ways of operating on the Internet.
  • There is an intentional complexity to online services, blurring responsibilities and positioning the user as responsible in the event of an error or event unfavorable to the company.
  • When banking is digitized in the name of efficiency and better service 24/7, the company gets more profits and more responsibilities are transferred to its users.
  • The algorithmic complexities of digital services are used as an excuse by companies and administration to offer services without guarantees or transparency.
  • SmartCity has not meant any visible improvement to the city's main problem, which is housing.
  • The administration does not allow to act with the communication infrastructures.
  • Some government projects approach digital rights with a paternalistic approach to helping the needy.
  • There is the opportunity to do community work and train the population for digital autonomy.
  • The government allows it and promotes private companies to own the communication infrastructure.
  • The initiatives that are encouraged are only in the field of services, such as Apps and StartUps.
  • The cost of network access: When choosing between having internet or food.
  • A citizen without internet is excluded from public participation, leisure and the relationship with the administration.
  • Internet access is necessary and not optional, but it is not treated as a fundamental right.
  • Historically, the Internet has appeared after large infrastructures have already been privatized, so it is not even considered to be a public good and its implementation and management is quickly awarded to the private company.


The concepts were organised by themes and a set of narratives extracted to drive the AI workflow:.

The Alternative Narrative:

Apps and digital services are intentionally opaque to confuse users and avoid responsibilities.

Corporate practices should be auditable and companies held accountable for bad practices

Smart City has not solved the housing problem

The Official Narrative:

New apps and services make life easier and more efficient.

Corporate information and operations need to be kept secret in order to offer good services and apps. 

Smart City bring prosperity and the future to everybody.

New media has been created using the above descriptions

physical artwork

Exploring the lenticular printing process, it is possible to show multiple frames form different angles.

Tests with different resolutions and frame combinations have been tested.

Professional prints have been produced as exhibition pieces.

To make the artwork self-explanatori, a video will be produced to introduce the activist’s role and the tools used to produce the visuals.

Since all the media used is square 1:1 ratio, which is a common ration for Machine-Lerning models, the explainer video will also be square, and displaeyed in a square display, mounted inside a frame.

Exhibition in Barcelona

As an extended program of the International Symposium on Electronic Art a preview show was organised at Esproceda’s space.

A joint exhibition with LEONARDO organisation, Aalto University and the AI for Future Project, as part of the New European Bauhaus Festival

Technology update

In February 2022, when this project started, the most suitable tech approach for the artwork idea was image generation with CLIP and Diffusion models, a good implementation of this technique is DiscoDiffusion (A frankensteinian amalgamation of notebooks, models and techniques for the generation of AI Art and Animations.) info + video tutorial

All the generated images of this project have been made using variations of that code.

During the past months, many advances occurred in the space of text-to-image generative models; including public access to Dalle2 by OpenAI, the promising Imagen by Google Research, or the popularity of MidJourney.

 

Stable Diffusion is a machine learning model developed by Stability.ai to generate digital images from natural language descriptions. The model can be used for other tasks too, like generating image-to-image translations guided by a text prompt.[1]

It can run on most consumer hardware equipped with a modest GPU and was hailed by PC World as "the next killer app for your PC".[2]

Unlike competing models like DALL-E, Stable Diffusion is open source.[3] Its license prohibits certain harmful use cases.[4][5] Critics have raised concerns about AI ethics, stating that the model can be used to create deepfakes[6] and also questioning the legality of generating images with a model trained on a dataset containing copyrighted content without the consent of the original artists.[7]

 

This technological update is fantastic, but it comes a bit too late for this particular project, so I stick with the original tech setup to finalise the artwork.

Here is a test of some of the "narratives" from this project run through the new model:

v05 / a large scale piece

With the fantastic results obtained with the pieces produced for the barcelona exhibition, it is proposed to develop a new large format piece.

A new round of photos were made onsite, with special attention to the quality of the center image, looking for a photo that reflects the characteristics of the territory while captures certain aesthetic qualities.

More photography tests were done using a fisheye lens, hoping for an immersive and captivating point of view.

The prompts/narratives were also fine-tuned to extract/distill visual qualities.

The new sets of photos were run again through the same AI system, producing novel and mesmerising results.

survivors of the curation process:

The large 100x100cm piece will be produced with the following images:

Exhibition at Canodrom / Oct-Dec 2022

In order to bring the piece closer to the community, a 2 month public exhibition was organized at Canodrom, including an open guided tour during a community meeting of the families that participated in the XOB initiative.

sidenotes 
The role of AI 
Datasets 
references / projects / artworks
Artwork created thanks to the production grant by ESPRONCEDA-Institute of Art & Culture, within the European project AI4Future
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