Hi there,
My name is Stefanie and I look for like minded people interested in ethical hardware.
I’m working on an arts based research project called “Feminist Hacking. Building circuits as artistic practice”.
We are based at the academy of fine arts in Vienna (Austria, Europe).
This project I do with my friends Taga and Pat critically intervenes in hardware production cycles, including the investigation of extractivist practices of component materials (“conflict materials”).
By tinkering de-centralized DIY hardware we try to highlight the challenges and opportunities of fair mining and fair gendered labor conditions in the global commodity chains. We try to unpack decolonization of hardware design, production and application, the endlife of e-waste and its impact on the ‘worlding practices’.
We explore experimental possibilities of DIY renewable energy sources, including mud cell batteries and other options.
Our aim is to enable mindful hardware for artistic purposes through a systematic collaboration with open hardware and ethical hardware manufacturers.
Keywords: open hardware, diffraction, diffractive art practice, new materialism, feminist hacking, feminist hardware, ethical hardware, posthumanism, science and technology studies, fair mining, gendered labor, global commodity chains