Disobedient action-research

As a contribution to a symposium on design research organised by the department of design at the Hamburg University, Femke introduces the Technogalactic Software Observatory (TSO), a temporary study center, poetic training camp and walk-in clinic that Constant will open in the World Trade Center this June.

The TSO invites artists, activists, engineers and designers to dive deeper into the social, economic and political aspects of the various softwares they practice. How can we understand the ideological orientations of software? Are there ways to talk about technology beyond programming languages, innovation-speak and solutionism? What if we study digital networks, software and services based on their artistic quality, poetic potential, solidarity or intersectionality?

The TSO employs performative and collaborative action-research methods for intervention in technological processes. It invokes disobedient practices of remediation, from academic paper to bugreport, from interface experiment to critical fork. In an action-based approach, the passive imaginaries of the probable mutate into active imaginations for the possible.


@ HAW Campus Armgartstraße

Armgartstraße 24, Hamburg