Centre for Internet and Society

An Artist's Hunt for Lost Stepwells

praskrishna — 2015-10-05T15:05:26Z

As part of the Maps for Making Change project, Kakoli Sen has brought to light some facts which she stumbled upon while mapping the stepwells in Vadodara. She mapped these and also discovered 14 such architectural heritage structures. The news was covered in the Times of India.

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/news/hunt-for-lost-stepwells

Mapping the Things that Affect Us

praskrishna — 2015-10-05T15:05:45Z

'Map for making change' is a project using geographical mapping techniques to support struggles for social justice in India

As we go around living our lives, living in a city that is transforming, it is interesting to know that there are people interested in mapping the changing face of, not just the city, but the changing country.

The invite read ‘Map for making change’, elaborating that the project explored the potential of geographical mapping techniques to support struggles for social justice in India. Stepping inside the CIS workspace in Domlur, the large screens and tiny laptops projected maps of India, with dots that intrigue and piqued the onlooker. Maps that reflected pavement dwellers in Mumbai and problems of their eviction and rehabilitation, of mining areas from Goa to Madhya Pradesh, to the ‘hunted’ Chattisgarh, to maps that pointed heritage sites in Cochin and Ahmedabad you could explore using the GPRS on your mobile or demolished building in Kolkatta.

The idea was mapping the changing face of the country. The 25 participants were a mix of activists, researchers, artists and techies. The brain behind the project, researcher Anja Kovacs, explains the idea behind the project: “The idea took seed two years ago in 2007, when, as a trained sociologist I realised that anthropologists around the world were studying cyber-anthropology and I didn’t even know about social media sites like Facebook or Orkut.”

Hit by an idea, she says, “I realised that as activists, we tend to make a mistake by ignoring the technological changes happening around us, since technology, no doubt is transforming our lives.” More importantly, she made a connect: “I realised that we as activists could use it to our favour.”

Her first thoughts were maps. She explains her choice: “Maps were used in colonial times and maps affect the lives of those who do not use them the most.” She pointed out how “even to this day maps are used for governance and by policy makers. In that sense they can be really important”.

The map is a powerful medium to convey information in an innocent manner, she says. “When the land in a map is hid behind dots, one knows there is a problem,” she says matter-of-factly.

Currently a fellow with Centre for Internet and Society (CIS), she co-coordinated and organised the project and says the last five months the selected participants have had several workshops, one of them she mentions was of them learning the “whole mapping exercise”.

A work-in-progress is what all these projects are, and Kovacs says, after an intense five months, they are also looking at answering the “what next”, for now, however, she is happy, “to have begun tracing the transformation”.

Read the original article in DNA

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/news/mapping-the-things

Their India has No Borders

anja — 2015-10-05T15:08:36Z

Bangalore felt far for them, they would mark it outside the country. India, for migrant labourers, is different from the India we know

To 30-year-old Shankar, a migrant worker in Bangalore who came from Jharkhand, Mumbai is near West Bengal and Bangalore is in the North-East. If someone were to travel to Mumbai by Shankar’s map of India, he would land up in Kolkata.

Shankar’s map was part of an installation art show that concluded in the city on Wednesday, showing the maps of India as seen by migrant workers in Bangalore. The installation was a 14ft-by-18ft space enclosed with asbestos sheets. Wires crisscrossed the tiny room, and from the wires hung maps of India, drawn according to the perceptions of the migrant workers.

Shankar is only one among thousands of migrant workers in Bangalore who have a very different perception of where the cities where they work are located. Their India is a world away from the maps of India that educated Indians know of. It has none of the directions, orientation or location of places as we know it.

Start Thinking

“We want Bangaloreans to stop and think about migrant workers, who live amongst us,” says Ekta. Along with Yashaswini and Paromita, she spoke to 70 migrant workers on Old Madras Road before tracking their journeys on the maps. While Ekta has founded Maraa, a collective that looks at art and culture in the public domain, Yashaswini and Paromita are independent film makers.

“Our perception of location is meaningless to migrant workers,” says Ekta. For them, locations, distances and directions are all very different from the true picture. Their ideas of places are all drawn from their lives, as they travel from city to city to earn their livelihoods, she adds.

For instance, if Assam was westwards from his home, a migrant worker would mark it in West India. And if Bangalore felt far for him, he would mark it outside the country. Borders hardly came in the way and distances are measured by the time spent in a journey, including train delays and stopovers at transit points, they say.

When the workers say long distances or far way, they mean places such as Jharkhand, Bihar, Nepal, Punjab, Andhra, and North Karnataka.

India in a Room

While they work here, their families are in villages back home, even as far away as Nepal. Many workers live in asbestos shanties that are as small as 10ft by 10ft. They live huddled within the small space, creating a mini India right here in Bangalore, says Ekta. Spluttering rai (mustard seeds) mingle with the smell of Andhra chutneys in a room adorned with photos of Amritsar’s Golden Temple in the same tiny space.

As the group spoke to the workers, the latter also shared their stories of the weather, people, smells, cultures, personal, nostalgic and fantastical, of places — by their memories of what they saw, felt and remembered. They go beyond the geo-political maps of India and present a new, spatial experience of places.

The project is part of a workshop called Maps for Making Change, which was started by Centre for Internet and Society, to examine ways of using maps to help social causes.

Read the original in Bangalore Mirror

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/news/their-india-has-no-borders

Maps for Making Change - The First Workshop

Anja Kovacs — 2015-10-05T15:09:14Z

In this first workshop in a series of three, participants will think through the potential of mapping in the context of a project that they have suggested in their application and the preparations they need to make to make these ideas a reality.

On 3 December, 'Maps for Making Change: Using Geographical Mapping Techniques to Support Struggles for Social Justice in India' will officially kick off at the India Islamic Cultural Centre on Delhi's Lodhi Road. In this first workshop in a series of three, participants will think through the potential of mapping in the context of a project that they have suggested in their application and the preparations they need to make to make these ideas a reality.

A joint initiative by the Centre for Internet and Society in Bangalore and the Tactical Tech Collective in Bangalore and the UK, Maps for Making Change is a two month project that seeks to explore the potential of digital mapping for social change specifically in the Indian context. For the first time, activists and supporters of movements and campaigns working for progressive social change in the country will get the opportunity to collectively debate and explore in detail the potential of digital mapping as a tool to support their work.

The aims of this first workshop are to:

introduce tools and techniques for mapping
assist participants to identify the information they need to collect for their mapping project

By the end of the workshop, the participants will be able to:

understand the socio-political context of mapping and how maps can be used to maximise advocacy efforts
identify different types of maps (static, interactive, collaborative, etc)
identify some of the tools used for creating, uploading and editing maps (not covering the technical aspects nor the step-by-step process for making maps, but focusing on the general web-based mapping techniques)
understand data collection for mapping

The preliminary workshop schedule is as follows:

Welcome and introductions

Why mapping?

15 min break

Mapping and Advocacy Discussion

How do you 'map'? Basic tools and techniques

What can you 'map'?

Lunch break

Project scoping of participants' projects

Summary

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/events/maps-for-making-change-the-first-workshop

Public Event: Exploring Maps for Making Change

anja — 2015-10-24T14:19:32Z

The Centre for Internet and Society, in collaboration with Tactical Tech, would like to invite you to 'A Conversation on Maps for Making Change - Using Geographical Mapping Techniques to Support Struggles for Social Justice in India', at the Centre for Internet and Society in Bangalore.

When a migrant labourer draws a map of India, what does it look like? Can maps prove a correlation between corporate investment and Operation Green Hunt in Chhattisgarh?

For the past five months, twenty five activists, researchers, artists and techies have explored together, as part of the Maps for Making Change project, the potential of geographical mapping techniques to support struggles for social justice in India. As Maps for Making Change comes to an end, they would like to share with you their journey, their thoughts and their work, and to enter into a conversation with a much wider group of people about the potential and challenges of mapping for social justice now that new technologies can in theory be mobilised to fight for social justice by anyone with an interest in maps, but in practice remain confined to the hands of a privileged few.

Join us:

from 4 pm onwards, for an exhibition that allows you to explore the work of Maps for Making Change participants through installations, websites, conversations, information, video, ... and maps.

from 5 pm to 5.30 pm, for refreshments.

from 5.30 pm onwards, for a panel discusion which our panelists will kick off by sharing some of their own reflections and comments on mapping for social justice, to open up the conversation to a much broader discussion with all those present in the audience.

Panelists:

Reuben Jacob, Inclusive Planet

Shakun Mohini, Vimochana

Shubhranshu Choudhary, Knight International Journalism Fellow and Community Media Activist

For more information, please contact Anja Kovacs, Centre for Internet and Society: 98 11 74 72 12, anja@cis-india.org. Or check out the Maps for Making Change wiki: maps4change.cis-india.org.

Looking forward to seeing you at CIS on 28 April!

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/events/public-event-exploring-maps-for-making-change

Second Maps for Making Change Workshop: Using Geographical Mapping Techniques to Support Struggles for Social Justice in India

anja — 2015-10-05T15:09:51Z

The second workshop of the Maps for Making Change project will take place at the National Institute of Design in Ahmedabad, from 1 until 3 February 2010. The workshop will allow a select group of activists and supporters of social movements and campaigns in India to start developing digital maps that they can use in their advocacy work, under the expert guidance of international digital mapping rights activists, Indian mapping experts, design professionals and techies with an interest in activism. The workshop is organised by the Centre for Internet and Society and Tactical Tech, in cooperation with MediaShala at NID.

The aims of the workshop are to:

explore in depth tools and techniques for mapping
assist participants in starting to develop their own maps in the context of the projects that they have suggested
help participants identify important design concerns and elements of their project that require attention at an early stage if they are to communicate effectively

By the end of the workshop, the participants will be able to:

identify which mapping tools best suit their project
identify additional data required to complete their mapping project
make informed choices about issues relating to privacy, licensing, etc
independently continue to develop their own maps using the tools they have explored during the workshop
apply core concerns of information design to their mapping project to maximise its effectiveness and impact

The provisional programme of the workshop is as follows:

Monday 1 February

Time	Session
8.00–10.00	Breakfast and registration at NID
10.00–10.45	Welcome and introductions (icebreaker) - Anja Kovacs & Kate Morioka
10.45–11.30	Opening plenary - Lars Bromley: “Mapping the truth: how geo-technologies are uncovering human rights violations and injustice”
11.30 – 1.00	Morning Session - MediaShala team: “Information Design: the art of making campaigning messages visually compelling”
1.00 – 2.15	Lunch
2.15 – 3.15	Project Time - All: revising project scope based on morning sessions (audience, purpose, objectives)
3.15 – 4.30	Afternoon 'Lab' Sessions (choose ONE) Elective 1. Using Google Maps for Social Activism - Henry Addo Elective 2. Mapping with Open Layers- Alagesa Pandian
4.30 – 5.00	Break
5.00 – 6.15	Elective 1. Advanced GIS- Lars Bromley Elective 2. GPS Basics - Hardeep Singh Rai, with Arky and Sajjad
6.15-6.30	Evening Circle - Anja Kovacs
6.30 – 7.30	Free Time / Knowledge Sharing @ Speakers' Green
7.30 – 9.00 (open invite)	Film screening: “10 Tactics: Turning Information into Action” - Kate Morioka. This film produced by Tactical Tech explores how rights advocates around the world have used information and digital technologies to create change.
9.00 – 10.00	Dinner

Tuesday 2 February

Time

Session

7.30 – 9.00

Breakfast (Hotel)

9.00-9.30

Morning Circle - Anja Kovacs

9.30 – 11.30

Guest Speakers

“The experiences of Ushahidi” - Henry Addo

“An Introduction to Open Street Maps for Activism” - Mikel Maron (online)

11.30 – 1.00

Participatory mapping process and techniques - Kate Morioka

1.00 – 2.15

Lunch

2.15 – 4.00

Project Time - All:

identifying methodology and technical implementation of participants' mapping projects

4.00 – 5.00

Break/ Knowledge Sharing @ Speakers' Green

5.00-6.15

Elective 1. Google Earth for Advocacy - Henry Addo

Elective 2. An Introduction to Open Street Maps - Hardeep Singh Rai

6.15-6.30

Evening Circle - Anja Kovacs

6.30 – 7.30

Free time

7.30 – 9.00

Exploring the Ahmedabad Markets

9.00 – 10.30

Dinner at Vishala

Wednesday 3 February

Time

Session

7.30 – 9.00

Breakfast (Hotel)

9.00-9.30

Morning Circle - Anja Kovacs

9.30 – 11.15

Panel Discussion

“To Map or Not to Map: Issues of privacy, licensing and other rights-related concerns”

Followed by a group discussion

11.15 – 11.45

Break

11.45 – 1.00

Introduction to GIS and remote sensing for human rights advocacy - Lars Bromley

1.00 – 2.15

Lunch

2.15 – 3.45

Project Time - All

time to work on individual projects and obtain feedback from fellow participants and facilitators

3.45-4.15

Break

4.15 – 4.45

Closing Plenary - Pratyush Shankar

“Reflection”

4.45 – 5.30

Evaluation - Madhuresh Kumar

Briefing on the next workshop - Anja Kovacs

Close - Anja Kovacs and Kate Morioka

Assistant Facilitators: Arky Ambati and Sajjad Anwar

Technical Assistance: Kiran (Jace) Jonnalagadda

VIDEO

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/events/second-maps-for-making-change-workshop-using-geographical-mapping-techniques-to-support-struggles-for-social-justice-in-india

Third Maps for Making Change Workshop: Using Geographical Mapping Techniques to Support Struggles for Social Justice in India

anja — 2015-10-05T15:10:23Z

The third and final workshop in the Maps for Making Change project will take place at Visthar, in Bangalore, from 26 until 28 April. During this workshop, participants will fine-tune and polish their maps; explore ways to connect with broader movements and disseminate their maps among target audiences; and reflect on their own experiences so as to distill learnings that can help us decide where to go from here. While participation in the workshop is closed, the workshop will end with a public event at the CIS office on 28 April, from 4 pm onwards, open to everybody (more information to follow soon). If you, too, share our interest in mapping for social change, then do join us there.

The aims of the workshop are to:

give participants an opportunity to fine-tune and polish their maps, with the assistance of others where needed, so that they can be shared with a wider audience;
explore campaigning tools and strategies for disseminating the maps produced among target audiences, including other movements and activists;
distill the learnings participants have made from this project, both individually and as a group, and prepare a plan to build upon these in the future.

By the end of the workshop, participants will be able to:

make informed decisions about every step of the design and implementation process of a mapping project.

Also, participants and organisers will be able to:

identify the political and ethical challenges of mapping, in particular as they apply for social justice in India;
understand better the particularities of online activism and ways in which it can connect better with activism on the ground in the country;
apply their knowledge of mapping to other campaigns and movements in India and function as a point of contact for other activists for a network of activists using maps for making change.

The preliminary schedule of the workshop is as follows:

Monday 26 April

Time	Session
9.00-10.00	Registration at Visthar
10.00-11.00	Welcome and introductions (icebreaker)
11.00-1.00	90 Seconds: Where are we with our projects (and what do we need to achieve during this workshop)?
1.00-2.00	Lunch
2.00-3.30	Building partnerships between techies and activists: what is required? (debate and discussion)
3.30-3.45	Tea/coffee Break
3.45-5.00	Project time as per participants' needs (which can relate to technical issues, design, hosting, ...)
5.00-6.15	Afternoon 'Lab' Sessions (CHOOSE ONE): Elective 1. Hosting and creating websites and embedding maps Elective 2. Technology and Security Concerns for Activists
6.15-6.30	Evening Circle
6.30-7.30	Free Time
7.30-8.30	Dinner
8.30-10.00	Screening of Swagat Sen's film on the second workshop and social gathering

Tuesday 27 April

Time	Session
8.00-9.00	Breakfast
9.00-9.30	Morning Circle
9.30-11.00	Maps as agents of change – uses and challenges (including in terms of how to connect with movements on the ground)
11.00-11.30	Tea/coffee Break
11.30-1.00	Communication and campaigning strategies to take mapping outcomes forward to broader audience, both online and offline (poss. Incl. Use of creative media)
1.00-2.15	Lunch
2.15-4.00	Project time as per participants needs
4.00-4.30	Tea/coffee break
4.30-5.15	Evaluating Maps for Making Change
5.15-6.15	What next?
6.15-6.30	Evening Circle
6.30-7.30	Free Time
7.30-8.30	Dinner
8.30-...	Social evening

Wednesday 28 April

Time	Session
8.00 – 9.00	Breakfast
9.00 – 9.30	Morning Circle
9.30-12.30	Finalise preparations for public event (project work or other, eg slides on loop etc)
10.30-11.00	Tea/coffee Break
11.00-12.30	Finalise preparations for public event (cont.)
12.30-1.30	Lunch
1.30-2.00	Travel to CIS
2.00-4.00	Set up the public event
4.00-7.30	Public event (with a discussion from 5.30 onwards)
7.30-9.00	Dinner (venue to be decided) + workshop evaluation
9.00-9.30	Return to Visthar
9.30-...	Great-working-with-you-guys Party at Visthar

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/events/third-maps-for-making-change-workshop

A.I. Hype Cycles and Artistic Subversions

sharath — 2016-01-01T07:52:20Z

Gene Kogan will give a talk on "A.I. hype cycles and artistic subversions" on Friday, January 22, 2016 at the Centre for Internet and Society office, 6 pm - 8 pm.

Mona Lisa restyled by Egyptian hieroglyphs, the Crab Nebula, and Google Maps. Style Transfer. Gene Kogan.

Recent years have seen a resurgence of popular interest in machine learning and artificial intelligence, as emerging methods have set new scientific benchmarks and introduced classes of neural networks capable of imitating human behavior, among other impressive feats. More importantly, the study of these algorithms is rapidly crossing over into mainstream culture and industry as AI applications begin to inhabit more of our daily lives. Numerous initiatives have appeared, attempting to demystify and make these previously obscure research tracks more accessible to the public. Open source software like Torch, Theano, and TensorFlow have equipped amateurs with the same software which is achieving state-of-the-art results in industry and academia.

This talk will examine the most recent wave of artistic projects applying these methods in various cultural contexts, producing troves of machine-hallucinated text, images, sounds, and videos, demonstrating a previously unseen capacity for imitating human style and sensibility. These experimental works attempt to show the capacity of these machines for producing aesthetically meaningful media, yet challenging and subverting them to illuminate their most obscure and counterintuitive properties.

A recent article by the speaker about this: From Pixels to Paragraphs: How artistic experiments with deep learning guard us from hype.

Relevant projects by the speaker that will be presented include: Style Transfer, A Book from the Sky 天书, Learning to Generate Text and Audio, and Deepdream Prototypes.

Gene Kogan

Gene Kogan is an artist and programmer who is interested in generative systems and applications of emerging technology in artistic and expressive contexts. He writes code for live music, performance, and visual art. He contributes to numerous open-source software projects and frequently gives workshops and demonstrations on topics related to code and art.

He is a contributor to openFrameworks, Processing, and p5.js, an adjunct professor at Bennington College and NYU, a former resident at Eyebeam Art & Technology Center, and a former Fulbright scholar in Bangalore, India, 2012-2013.

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/raw/ai-hype-cycles-and-artistic-subversions

Creativity, Politics, and Internet Censorship

sneha-pp — 2016-06-17T07:07:40Z

In collaboration with Karnataka for Kashmir, we organised a discussion on 'Creativity, Politics and Internet Censorship' on May 25, 2016. Mahum Shabir, a legal activist and artist, Mir Suhail, political cartoonist with Kashmir Reader and Rising Kashmir, and Habeel Iqbal, a lawyer who has worked with several justice groups in Kashmir, shared some of their work and experiences. This discussion was organised as part of Port of Kashmir 2016, a series of events bringing together a small collective of people using different modes of art and activism to address crucial challenges to free speech and democracy in the state.

Mahum Shabir talking about the Handwara case. Source: Swar Thounaojam.

The discussion began with Mahum Shabir giving an overview of the work at the Jammu Kashmir Coalition of Civil Society, specifically on the Handwara case. She spoke of the role of the internet, and social media in particular, in perpetuating the gaze of the state, while also bringing up the larger question of how media propagates a certain way of looking at Kashmir, particularly women, marginalised groups and victims of violence. Internet blockades and media censorship pose several obstacles for the circulation of information, resulting in the need for surreptitious ways of communication as a necessary way to counter predominant narratives in the discourse around occupation. The implications of these for the rights of women in particular, the curbs on freedom at different levels, and the undercurrent of violence that is prevalent in everyday life, came up as significant questions.

Mir Suhail presented some of his cartoons, and shared some poignant personal experiences of growing up in a state under military occupation. His works reflect his concerns about a changing society, from understanding strife as an almost normalised state of existence, to now a phase of industrialization and control of resources. He spoke on the politics of exercising creative freedom in the present, and his attempt to encourage conversations on contemporary issues through his art. The role of technology in facilitating these conversations is as crucial as it is contentious, for it also brings up questions of surveillance and privacy;his art tries to navigate through some of these questions in different ways.

Habeel Iqbal, a lawyer who has worked on the Shopian and Handwara cases, spoke on some of the legal aspects of censorship and surveillance related issues in Kashmir, particularly in instances involving social media. He discussed some of the challenges faced by activists, social workers and political groups in working on certain cases, particularly in gathering and circulating information or in writing about sensitive issues. Self-censorship is often the only option for people working on these issues, as he elaborated through some personal experiences.

The discussion included questions on the possibilities opened up by privacy tools, such the use of encryption and to the extent to which they affect communication. Access to these technologies is a factor here; besides, transparency is also a goal for most human rights organisations working in the state. Social media, and social messaging apps in particular often function as an alternative to mainstream media as a means of communication, and it is interesting to see the questions it opens up for censorship. Examples of activism using not just the internet, but the network (through USBs and hard drives) were also discussed. The responses to such forms of activism, from across the world were interesting to engage with, as it tries to tackle predominant perceptions about the state. The economic aspects of different strategies of censorship and surveillance, through curfews and blockades and its broader implications for socio-economic development in the state were also discussed. The talk provided several insights into the problems and challenges to freedom of speech, the censorship of ideas, and its repercussions for creative freedom and politics in Kashmir.

Postcards of cartoons by Mir Suhail. Source: Swar Thounaojam.

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/raw/creativity-politics-and-internet-censorship-20160525