👏 Community

Community values

"Care is the practice of savouring how subtle differences can make all the difference."

–Data Loam¹

Land acknowledgment

This work offers respect and gratitude to the Tongva and Chumash peoples, who are the rightful and traditional caretakers of the land where large portions of this work have been created, along with many other sites. If you have contributed to this project from another location, you are invited to add your own land acknowledgment and visit Native-Land.ca to learn about the history of where you live, why this matters, and how to contribute.

How we gather

These guidelines are open to inputs and updates as necessary to support the needs of this space as it evolves.

1. scrappy artistic strategies, not perfect code²``
2. growth, not perfection²
3. collaboration, not competition²
4. we all have skills to teach each other²
5. meet people where they are. don't assume knowledge or imply hierarchies of skills. #nocodesnobs #newKidLove³
6. value processes as much as, or more than, outcomes⁴
7. all theory and practice is theory–practice. interdisciplinary goes hand-in-hand with intersectionality²
8. #blacklivesmatter #translivesmatter #indigenouslivesmatter engage tension; don't indulge drama⁴
9. focus on strategies rather than issues, solutions rather than problems⁵
10. listen from the heart, speak from the heart, be spontaneous, be brief⁶
11. assume best intent and attend to impact⁴
12. attempt collaboration before conflict⁷
13. accept responsibility for actions and take care to make amends when wrong³
14. take the lessons, leave the details (confidentiality)⁴
15. center care⁵ — self care and community care⁴

Thank you to the individuals and organizations who developed these principles and protocols: adrienne maree brown,⁴ Allied Media Conference,⁵ Berlin Code of Conduct,⁸ Center for Council,⁶ P5.js,³ Superrr,⁷ W3C,⁹ and Creative Code Collective.²

Events

Imprint

Individual contributors

Have you made updates to the IAI Toolkit? Please do add your name here and link to your site. We'd love for everyone to get to know you!

• Nora Al-Badri, edit-a-thon panelist
• Hadi Asghari, edit-a-thon participant
• Anna & Agnieszka & Kian, zine workshop participants
• Tiffany Conroy, edit-a-thon participant
• Daniela Dicks, edit-a-thon co-organizer
• Christina Dinar, edit-a-thon participant and mentor
• Ariana Dongus, edit-a-thon panelist
• Miriam Fahimi, edit-a-thon participant
• Katrin Fritsch, edit-a-thon mentor and participant
• Geraldine, zine workshop participant
• Julie Gough, Illustrated Women in History, portrait drawing
• Johanna Hedva, edit-a-thon speaker
• Freya Hewett, edit-a-thon participant
• Friederike Kaltheuner, edit-a-thon participant
• John Lee, zine workshop participant
• Julia Kloiber, edit-a-thon participant and mentor
• Julian Klusmann-Rösner, edit-a-thon participant
• Lucas LaRochelle, edit-a-thon participant
• Laura Liebig, edit-a-thon participant
• Siri Lee Lindskrog, zine workshop participant
• evelyn masso, zine workshop participant
• Emily Martinez, zine workshops participant
• Miguel Mercado, zine workshop participant
• Leigh Montavon, hand-lettering
• Eeva Moore, zine workshop participant
• Katharina Mosene, edit-a-thon participant and mentor
• Adriaan Odendaal, edit-a-thon panelist, workshop participant
• Jason Perez, edit-a-thon participant
• Carolina Reis, edit-a-thon participant
• Julia Schneider Gaskin, zine workshop participant
• Mary Anne Smart, workshop participant
• Jakob Stolberg-Larsen, edit-a-thon participant
• Aleksandra Straczek, zine workshop participant
• Hanna Völkle, edit-a-thon participant and mentor
• Helene von Schwichow, edit-a-thon participant and mentor
• Johanna Wallenborn, edit-a-thon organizing support
• Philipp Weitzel, edit-a-thon organizing support
• Katrin Werner, edit-a-thon participant and mentor
• Jessica Wulf, edit-a-thon participant
• Nushin Yazdani, edit-a-thon participant
• Karla Zavala Barreda, edit-a-thon panelist, workshop participant
• Theresa Züger, edit-a-thon participant
• Theresa Henne, edit-a-thon participant
• Katherine Yang, zine workshop participantand magnificent css support

Project origins

This toolkit includes the collaboration and support of oh-so-many, and it is a research project started by me, Sarah Ciston (they/any).

I'm a poet-programmer who loves building community through creative-critical code. I am white, queer, agender, and from the Ozarks, which is the ancestral home of the Osage and Kickapoo nations. Currently, I'm a PhD Candidate and Annenberg Fellow at USC's Media Arts and Practice division, and an Associated Researcher at the Humboldt Institute for Internet and Society in Berlin. Recently I have been an AI ethics Fellow at the Akademie der Künste Berlin, a Mellon PhD Fellow in Digital Humanities, and a Google Season of Docs Mentor for Processing Foundation's P5.js.

My research investigates how to bring intersectionality to artificial intelligence by employing queer, anti-racist, anti-ableist, neurodiverse, and feminist theories, ethics, and tactics. I also lead Creative Code Collective — a student community for co-learning programming using approachable, interdisciplinary strategies. My creative-critical code-writing projects include an interactive poem of the quantified self and a chatbot that tries to explain feminism to online misogynists. I did my MFA in Literature from UC San Diego and was named one of San Francisco Weekly's "Best Writers Without a Book."

In Living a Feminist Life, Sara Ahmed outlines "A Killjoy Survival Kit," which she says should contain books, things, tools, time, life, permission notes, other killjoys, humor, feelings, bodies, and your own survival kit.¹⁰ The Intersectional AI Toolkit is inspired by the kind of cooperative survival she calls for:

"Protest can be a form of self-care as well as care for others: a refusal not to matter. Self-care can also be those ordinary ways we look out for each other [...] in queer, feminist, and antiracist work, self-care is about the creation of community, fragile communities [...] assembled out of the experiences of being shattered. We reassemble ourselves through the ordinary, everyday, and often painstaking work of looking after ourselves; looking after each other."¹⁰

Furthermore, the toolkit I sketch out here is something I want in my own survival kit, and something I hope others will want in theirs, too.

Contact

For additional input on the project or media inquiries, write to me at ciston@usc.edu. You can also reach me on most of the platforms @sarahciston 💜

Personal acknowledgments

Immense credit and thanks go to the communities of Creative Code Collective, Media Arts + Practice, Akademie der Künste, Zentrum fur Kunst und Urbanistic, Humboldt Institute for Internet and Society, Mellon Humanities in a Digital World, HaCCS Lab, Feminist.AI, Chapter510, and P5.js who have taught me how to be in community and have participated in this one.

Institutional support

• Akademie der Künste JUNGE Akademie, AI Anarchies fellowship 2022, in collaboration with Zentrum für Kunst und Urbanistik
• Alexander von Humboldt Institute for Internet and Society, Fellowship, 2021; Associated Researcher 2022–
• Mellon Foundation, USC Humanities in a Digital World, PhD Fellowship, 2021–2023
• USC Media Arts + Practice Division, School of Cinematic Arts, Annenberg PhD Fellowship 2017–2022
• Additional thanks to MOTIF, netzforma*, and SUPERRR

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