Salome Asega is an artist and researcher Rindon Johnson is an artist and writer. based in Brooklyn, NY. Salome has His most recent virtual reality film, Meat participated in residencies and fellow- Growers: A Love Story, was commis- SOFTWARE FOR ships with Eyebeam, New Museum, The sioned by Rhizome and Tentacular. Laundromat Project, and Recess. She Johnson has read, exhibited, and lec- has exhibited at the Shanghai Biennale, tured internationally. He is the author of ARTISTS BOOK MoMA, Carnegie Library, August Wilson Nobody Sleeps Better Than White People ©2020. Edited by Willa Köerner. Published on the Center, Knockdown Center, and more. (Inpatient, 2016), the VR book, Meet in the She has also given presentations and Corner (Publishing-House.Me, 2017) and occasion of Software for Artists Day 6, by Pioneer lectures at Performa, EYEO, Brooklyn Shade the King (Capricious, 2017). He Works Press in collaboration with The Creative Museum, MIT Media Lab, and more. lives in Berlin where he is an Associate Salome is currently a Ford Foundation Fellow at the Universität der Künste Independent & Are.na. Technology Fellow landscaping new Berlin. He studies VR. media arts infrastructure. She is also the Director of Partnerships at POWRPLNT, Ryan Kuo is a New York City-based artist a digital art collaboratory in Brooklyn. whose process-based and diagram- Salome received her MFA from Parsons matic works often invoke a person or at The New School in Design and people arguing. This is not to state an Technology where she also teaches. argument about a thing, but to be caught in a state of argument. He utilizes video Stephanie Dinkins is a transmedia artist games, productivity software, web who creates platforms for dialogue about design, motion graphics, and sampling artificial intelligence (AI) as it intersects to produce circuitous and unresolved race, gender, aging, and our future his- movements that track the passage of tories. She is particularly driven to work objects through white escape routes. with communities of color in promot- Ryan was a 2019 Pioneer Works Tech ing and co-creating more equitability Resident. Faith can be collected at left within AI ecosystems. Dinkins exhibits Gallery (left.gallery/work/faith), and and publicly advocates for equitable AI Baby Faith, a Rhizome and Jigsaw- internationally. As a Technology Resident commissioned followup to Faith, can be at Pioneer Works in 2018, Dinkins experienced at faith.rhizome.org. worked on her project Not the Only One, with tech worker Angie Meitzler, which Tsige Tafesse’s work looks to wage included the development of an interac- intimacy in a world growing deeply tive conversational sculpture using deep disconnected. Through community learning and the multigenerational story organizing, multimedia journalism, of her family as material. curation, performance, and VR, she conjures—building pathways from where Grayson Earle is a new media artist and we’ve been to where we could go. She’s educator. He has worked as a Visiting a co-founder of BUFU (By Us For Us), a Professor at Oberlin College and the project-based collective interested in New York City College of Technology. He Solidarity amongst Us, and co-creating is the creator of Bail Bloc and a member with You in order to collaboratively build of The Illuminator art collective. Recent experimental models of organizing & displays of his work include Kate Vass making, all while generating prestige & Galerie (Switzerland) and the Brooklyn mining time as a resource. Museum (USA). He has presented his work and research at The Whitney Museum of Art, MoMA PS1, Radical Networks, the Magnum Foundation, and Open Engagement. ann haeyoung is an artist, activist, and tech worker. She uses video and sculpture to examine questions around technology, identity, and labor. She has had residencies at Pioneer Works, MASS MoCA, and Outpost Artist Resources, and has traded her labor for wages at various tech companies. #001 BUILDING BETTER REALITIES PP 4–13 INTRODUCTION PP 58–65 INTERVIEW WILLA KÖERNER RYAN KUO & TOMMY MARTINEZ Keep Trollin’ Technology Can, and Must, Be More Beautiful PP 66–77 INTERVIEW GRAYSON EARLE PP 16–26 INTERVIEW On Using Technology to TSIGE TAFESSE Outpace Our Adversaries On Practicing Liberation PP 77–88 GUIDE PP 27–37 INTERVIEW ANN HAEYOUNG RINDON JOHNSON How to Work Within Power On Navigating the Tension Structures That Don’t Work Between Physical and Digital for You Realms PP 89–113 SUBMISSIONS PP 38–48 INTERVIEW DIGITAL DIARY SALOME ASEGA Reflections on [Digital] On Creating Spaces to Life in Quarantine Imagine and Dream PP 114–124 SUBMISSIONS PP 49–57 INTERVIEW DIGITAL DIARY STEPHANIE DINKINS Image Archive Towards an Equitable Ecosystem of Artificial Intelligence Software For Artists Book 2 #001 → Building Better Realities Table of Contents 3 Technology Can, and How can technology be more beautiful? This was the question we hoped to answer when we Must, Be More Beautiful began work on this book back in the naive days An introduction from the editor, Willa Köerner, of January, 2020. In the months that have passed and S4AD organizer Tommy Martinez. since then—as the world came to an eerie, coro- navirus-induced stand-still, as we all began to experience the vast and tragic fallout of a global pandemic, and more recently, as a monumen- tal influx of participation has fueled the ongoing movement against systemic racism—we’ve seen this question answered in ways that, half a year ago, would have been impossible to imagine. +++ Software for Artists Day (S4AD) creates space for artists and technologists to come together to question and reimagine how our digital tools func- tion in the world. We aim to highlight the radical, speculative, and subversive artist-led projects that propose alternatives to the status-quo— especially alternatives to the technology industry as a white, inaccessible, ableist, capitalist, and inequitable space. For the 6th Software for Artists Day, sched- uled for July 2020, we looked forward to featuring talks, workshops, and texts with artists and orga- nizers like Rindon Johnson, Salome Asega, Onyx Ashanti, Grayson Earle, and Tsige Tafesse. To coincide with the event, this book began as a Radical imagination can show partnership between Pioneer Works, The Creative us the world we want INTRODUCTION to live in, Independent, and Are.na, with the aim of chroni- cling the ideas and insights of S4AD participants and co-opted digital tools can who use technology to build more accessible, help us make it real. equitable worlds. Software For Artists Book Introduction 4 #001 → Building Better Realities Technology Can, and Must, Be More Beautiful 5 But as offices, schools, and most major gath- series of digital programs to “share care, strat- ering spaces began a COVID-19-induced shutdown egies, wisdom, sweetness, resources, and love in early spring, everything—and we mean every- to support everyone affected by the coronavirus thing—was thrown into question. Nobody was sure pandemic.” As featured artist and BUFU organizer what would happen, or when public life would Tsige Tafesse describes in this book: resume. (It’s worth noting that right now, as we write this introduction at the tail end of June, 2020, Almost immediately after the stay- it’s still unclear when public life will fully resume.) at-home order was put in place, we As the pandemic’s devastating spread par- put out a really vague call where we alyzed the globe, the digital realm became the were like, “We’re making mutual-aid only safe space to come together. Suddenly the programs online. Virtual parties. tools and technologies that we initially hoped to Workshops. Everything.” We just investigate through S4AD—our screens, our soft- put this open call up online, and told ware, our social media, our digital access (or lack people they could apply. Then we thereof); the harm being caused by algorithms, had a public community meeting or surveillance capitalism, or inaccessibility; all of with maybe 80, 90 people on it. this tangled, digital mess—became our only con- We were like, “We’re still not sure nection to any sense of “normalcy.” In what began what’s happening. The world’s on to feel like an endless loop, the screens multiplied, fire. We got all these submissions and “signing off” became more aspirational than though, so let’s go. Let’s figure it possible. For many of us, virtual apps and appari- out.” From there, we broke up into tions became our work, our education, our social various committees... People were life, our healthcare. For better or worse, the digital able to move in and out of supporting world was becoming the whole world. the project based on their capacity, As difficult as it was to be plunged into physical mental health-wise and otherwise. isolation, the resulting total digital embodiment How it all came together was really, did have a few upsides for many of us: No more really beautiful. It felt like love work, commuting at rush hour, no more social FOMO, with many collaborators moving in no more germ-spreading. And as our springs in and out of the project, picking up quarantine wore on, a wave of thoughtful creative where others left off, and learning programming proliferated across the web. As from each other. just one example, the collective BUFU (By Us For Us) and China Residencies partnered to launch With no other options, being fully subsumed in CLOUD9 (Collaborative Love On Ur Desktop), a the virtual gave us all an immersive crash course Software For Artists Book Introduction 6 #001 → Building Better Realities Technology Can, and Must, Be More Beautiful 7 in the possibilities and promise (and tensions, tions, we partnered with Are.na to put out an and problems) of our digital tools.