PARALLEL.TXT

Personal narratives speak about more than just ourselves: they extend past boundaries, situating stories within the multiple contexts that we intersect with. These texts tell stories as starting points, as initiations into experiences that manifest beyond the individual and into the social, the collective. Through explorations of family, personal struggles, and history, the story becomes the material.

As our lives become increasingly mediated, the digital tools that we incorporate into our routines and infrastructure become more sophisticated. These explorations examine the possibilities for the technology toolbox to tackle social problems, ranging from personal habits to public health. In addition, these projects consider how existing tools may be flawed, and imagine prospects for improving, modifying and inventing new ones.

In the future, what will the evidence of human life look like? How can we look at our present day digital selves in order to understand the repercussions that these virtual representations will have for years, even centuries, to come? Whether through surveillance technology, mapping, or photos, our physical and digital identities are documented, archived and tracked. These projects intervene in or subvert our virtual selves, provoking alternative insights into our present and future.

Assembling information from a human perspective offers a frame to use technology for impact. Research and personal stories are woven together into a web of data that is enriched by the affective textures of history, education, and cultural inquiry. By centering lived experiences in the research process, these projects argue for deeper understandings of social and cultural realities as the foundation of making work.