Call for Writing: Models for Making Distance.

Seeking writers, researchers, activists and artists

SEEKING CONTRIBUTORS TO A PRINT PRODUCT

Models For Making Distance is a print zine gathering a multiplicity of manifestos, writing and instructions for art that confounds, confuses and misuses algorithmic systems for the pleasure of human observers or actors. It is a playful but earnest bid for placing distance between ourselves and the tools designed to measure us. 

ARRG! (the Algorithmic Resistance Research Group) aims to create a low-cost paper publication gathering a variety of authors, activists and artists who navigate AI systems from a position of resistance. We are looking for those willing to contribute their work for documentation in this analog pamphlet among like-minded critics and digital malcontents. 

Contributions could include: 

• Manifestos declaring new positions for making work and culture in an era of algorithmic surveillance.

• Recipes for art and performance instructions for works that make space between bodies and algorithms, by introducing errors, glitches or confusion in to sensors. 

• Documentation of art and performances made in line with the above. 

• Short essays or other literary works oriented to increasing gaps between digital technologies and logics and lived experience, or exploring those tensions. 

• Slogans, bumper sticker proposals, or other propaganda works addressing the agenda of making distance from algorithmic order. 

“Models for Making Distance” will be distributed as a paper-based physical object, in a bid to circumvent current regimes of data analysis and recuperation. If you are a library, Zine fair, or archive, please let us know if you would like a copy.

Requirements for Participation

• Agree that trans rights are human rights

• Agree to share the work in a CC-01 publication:

  • The CC-01 is a speculative license that allows printed material to be distributed exclusively in analog formats and forbids digital redistribution.

  • You will receive print copies of the zine as thanks.

What Is ARRG!?

• The Algorithmic Resistance Research Group is a loosely knit, unfunded cohort of artists, researchers and activists focused on exploring new forms of critical distance and creative agency over algorithmic culture.

• We are engaged in the creative misuse of Generative AI, Machine Learning, and other automated data analysis systems.

• We favor work that deliberately confuses, subverts or recontextualizes the outputs of AI and ML systems. It speaks to the exploration and curiosity about systems that links hacking culture and creative production.

• We favor work that reveals the underlying technical systems, but also their relationships within larger social, ecological, cultural, or political systems.

Who is ARRG?

• ARRG consists of whoever responds to a particular open call. This project’s team is Eryk Salvaggio, Caroline Sinders, Steph Maj Swanson and Şerife Wong, with thanks to Padmini Ray Murray.

• See more about ARRG! at our exhibition page from DEFCON 31.

Who is funding this?

Nobody. At the moment, ARRG! is an unfunded collective being organized as an activist project for expanding critical AI literacy. This project will be printed with our own paychecks and expectations should be “zine” vs “print journal” or “art book.”

We are open to funding partners and donations for expanding this project. If you’re interested, email eryk.salvaggio@gmail.com.

HOW TO PARTICIPATE

• Send us your score, manifesto, writing, or artwork.

• Write in the email that the work is an original piece and can be reprinted in the Models for Making Distance zine.

• Agree that you will not redistribute the final zine via digital means such as scans, photographs, or file transfers. In other words, only share the zine through circulation of the physical object. (The cover can be photographed and posted online).

• Email your pieces, questions, ideas, to eryk.salvaggio@gmail.com with the subject header, “Models for Making Distance.”

• Deadline is December 1 2023.