Artist & activist-led research into infrastructure as artwork ·
method · performance · tool
Dr Tom
Keene
“I make things to make sense of things.”
Artist: Net art, participatory art & design,
open-source cultures, DIY, DIWO, and critical technical practice
Artist and Activist-led Researcher: Urban
regeneration, democracy, technology, and urban change
Educator: Direct BA Digital Media Culture and
Technology, Current Media Arts Dept., Royal Holloway
A Critical Technical
Practice
I build things to explore how technologies shape everyday life,
democracy, and social relations.
artistic and technical experimentation
making code, contraptions, conversations, and interventions
social activism
theories of technology and society
Origins
Common 🗲 Ground grew out of Database
(e)State, an artist- and activist-led research project within a
campaign that prevented the demolition of 306 homes in South West
London… including my own.
“The database told us Cressingham Gardens Estate was too expensive to
repair.”
Government DB systems shape democratic processes
These infrastructures distribute power and accountability
Operate on us and through us
A Shift In Focus
Database (e)State asked: How does local government think and act through housing database
systems?
Common 🗲 Ground asks: What kinds of relations, collaborations, and democratic
possibilities can alternative infrastructures create?
Common 🗲 Ground
A project in development: participatory
research and creative practice with:
Visual & Sonic Works — rethinking what data is
and does
Code — performances of power and knowledge
In
practice
The project is taking shape through workshops, screenings, and
community activity.
Cressingham Gardens Walkshop: communicating lived
experience of urban regeneration
London Permacomputing Workshop: prototyping a
low-energy publishing platform
TACO!: public research collaboration in
Thamesmead
Refurbish Don’t Demolish: identifying desired
datasets with campaigners
Build 🗲 Connections
Housing campaigns — legibility and
contestation
Environmental groups — repair over replacement
Architecture — reforming consultation
Urban policy — accountable urban data
practices
Permacomputing — tech/creative expertise in
communities
Creative communities — building long-term
infrastructure
Why This Matters
If data infrastructures shape what can be known, organised, imagined,
and acted on, then it is vital to build creative alternatives that open
up different democratic possibilities.
Common 🗲 Ground
Co-making Urban Data
Infrastructures
Exploring how alternative infrastructures can generate new forms
of: