Recent content in Landing page on Selena Savic
Drawing on the 
 1 ⭐ Review Tour
 
 and 
 The Browser Extension
 
, this essay reiterates psychogeographies of the present through a double negation of online rating systems. Resisting tech industry’s extractive approach to crowd-sourced content, and highlighting its role in privatising collective experiences through algorithmic regimes, this piece explores engagement…
Contemporary training sets for AI systems are composed of data scraped from news sites, social media posts, and other online user expressions. Prominent examples include the open-source Common Crawl dataset used in popular AI models generating text (GPT-3 and further, LlaMa, etc), open image datasets such as ImageNET, LAION-5B, and multi-lingual datasets used in machine translation systems such as…
The imaginary of travelling in data traces interdisciplinary concerns for technical artefacts. Focusing on data collection on radio signals gathered by a community of radio amateurs and enthusiasts, informational tools – ‘data observatories’ – render signals commensurable through their different visual representations. What can pixel distribution in a sound spectrogram tell us about a aradio…
This text postulates mud as a host and a source of three architectonic thoughts. Suspending immediate judgment about the value and potentiality of muddy matter, these architectonic thoughts offer figurations of mud that slip between inappropriate and necessary, between generosity and exploitation. The three aspects of mud depicted in the figurations characterize different informational processes:…
This article presents an approach to practicing ethics when working with large datasets and designing data representations. Inspired by feminist critique of technoscience and recent problematizations of digital literacy, we argue that machine learning models can be navigated in a multi-narrative manner when access to training data is well articulated and understood. We programmed and used…
Media architecture community systematically explores the potentials of computation and digital media to intervene in form-finding, fabrication of buildings and urban data collection processes. Combining social media topic modelling techniques with the review of media architecture-related literature, I discuss methods to locate the media architecture community in social media, conduct initial…
This course invites students into the dynamic field of archival research, highlighting its necessity in revealing untold stories of historically marginalised experiences. The course offers an overview of methodologies aimed at creating a more inclusive historical narrative. Students will engage with digital archiving and research tools. With these methods, students will be confronted with the…
Wildlife tracking is a popular activity for nature enthusiasts, as well as an important activity in scientific wildlife preservation. These observations produce large volumes data (from camera traps to geo-location data), organized into databases that can be used for various purposes, from environmental activism to environmental protection policy. In this course, we will concentrate on the two…
This course introduces students to recent developments in academic thinking and cultural theory and discusses contemporary theoretical and philosophical concepts and perspectives with the help of key readings, show-and-tell and experimental practices. Concepts do not merely float or circulate, they situate discourses and transport experiences. Concepts move matter and meaning, along diverse…
Datasets are the core of statistical models that form contemporary AI technologies. The course introduces students to concepts relevant to cultural data, including questions of digitalisation, digital and automated data collection, and broader concerns for cultural practices that inform data collection and organisation. During the seminars, we use digital tools and methods to analyse datasets and…
The workshop assembles transdisciplinary approaches to archival issues from artistic research, art history, media studies and digital culture. In a week-long course the focus is set on the modes of digitization of collections and the discourses of decolonization. The aim is to illuminate how post-digital and decolonizing practices can support digitization efforts that meet contemporary and future…
This skills course introduces students to the basics of digital research methods, especially how to better find, select and participate in online (open) fora, and reflect on digital transformations. This includes methods such as digital curation, as well as data ethics. Students learn about using online, digital research methods, through learning by doing. Beyond theoretical reflections on…
Inversion of Site Analysis: Uncertain Undulations through Place 
 This MA architecture studio explored an inversion of what is commonly understood as ‘site analysis’ in the design process—the attempt to discretize the noisy contingency of a particular location into its essential or relevant dimensions. This form of reductionism leads to the exclusion of everything deemed inessential, to the…
This course proposes to focus on a shared understanding of noise. In classical information theory, noise is that which has to be excluded, so that messages can be received with clarity. We need to quiet down the noise so we can talk. A different view on communication is to say that noise is always already part of a communication channel. We cannot exclude noise without changing the message. The…
Patterns and trends that machine learning models identify in large datasets, or ‘Big Data’, are taken as sources of truth and reason in recruitment and admission processes, measures taken in handling the pandemic, as well as in individual decisions to purchase an item. In current state of the art machine learning models (GANs, diffusion models), the way patterns are identified is inseparable from…
Claiming materiality for algorithms and digital objects 
 What do algorithms and digital objects have to do with architecture? In this seminar, we map contemporary discussions around digital, computational and algorithmic phenomena in architecture theory and beyond. We explore the claims from contemporary theorists about material consequences of computation in architectural design. We discuss…
This article presents a new materialist approach to artificial neural networks, based on experimental research in categorization of data on radio signals. Picking up on Rossi Braidotti’s nomadic theory and a number of new materialist perspectives on informatics, the article presents identification of radio signals as a process of articulating identities with data: nomadic identities that are…
We engage in a conversation with critical ecofeminism, which proposed to transform the colonialism-racism-capitalism-patriarchalism induced environmental crisis by non-essentialist countering of oppressions and hyper-separations produced by human/nature dualism. We modulate the critical ecofeminist approach by countering a similar dualism, namely that of nature/technology. Furthermore, our…
Physarum polycephalum, or slime mold, is an acellular organism extensively studied in scientific experiments and artistic engagements. Artist and critical engineer Sarah Grant collaborates with architect and researcher Selena Savić on hybrid bio-networking experiments with slime mold as an approximation of a computer network. They study communication as an organic process, rethinking networks’…
This article explores the use of agent-based modelling as a critical and playful form of engagement with
cooperative housing organizations. Because of its inherent complexities vis-à-vis decision-making, commoning is a well-suited field of study to explore the potential of humanities-driven experimental design (media) research to provoke critical reflection, problem-finding and productive…
Design, participation and decision making intersect at different moments and in different models of political determination and decision making. From autocratic to horizontal decision making based on consensus, design and technology reproduce the principles of socio-political systems in which they emerge. How does, in turn, design of space and communication networks shape the decision making…
Data Grab! How Contemporary Data Collection Practices Record Her Experience of the City? 
 With recent development of generative tools for text and images (chatGPT, Stable Diffusion), applications of generative artificial intelligence (GenAI) are present in all domains of life and work. We experiment with generating images and dialogues in our free time, for fun, but also as a form of therapy.…
In this talk, I explore the inclusivity of the posthuman turn in the humanities, extending it to encompass technology such as AI, social media, the Internet, web crawling. If technology can be read as a posthuman, this reading must emphasize how it amplifies, rather than neutralize inherent human biases. A more interesting approach is to consider conviviality and acknowledge the agency of people…
With this title, in the context of the event on ‘Cross-pollination between the Arts, Academia and the Market’ I would like to suggest the many ways to find measure in things. First of all, I propose to look at how “less is more” and its variations (which can also be a way to tell the story of architecture in the past 100 years) can be examined in the context of the market -…
This talk presents design-based research in the context of third-cycle education at art and design schools. It is based on the development of the practice-based PhD program Make/Sense at Basel Academy of Art and Design. Specific insight into the knowledges, cultures, and values that practice-based research seeks to generate are discussed. The concept of reciprocity is central to understanding the…
While progressively churning all aspects of life into data, the digital escapes conventional material methods of observation and measurement. Digital materiality has been addressed by numerous media, communication and infrastructure studies, often focusing on a single effect like their carbon footprint, as the principal measure of anthropogenic pollution in the ongoing climate crisis. My research…
In Discriminating Data , Wendy Hui Kyong Chun proposed countering harmful technological disruptions by using AI systems to provide evidence of past discrimination. In other words, to turn automated predictions of injustices on themselves. This resonates with concurrent calls to use AI to resist erasure, loss of memory and other systemic outcomes of past oppressions. In this talk, I discuss…
This talk explores the formation of ‘knowledge bodies’ that are engendered in/with large language models (LLMs) currently available on the Internet. LLMs are analysed as approximations of AI, following the industry’s optimistic grand narratives and occasional controversies, such as the fired Google researcher Blake Lemoine’s claims about LaMDA’s sentience. Extending the concerns for problematic…
In collaboration with 
 !Mediengruppe Bitnik
 
 & 
 Gordan Savičić
 
 
 With 1 ⭐ Review Tour, we look at how online rating systems shape the perception and experience of a place. In contemporary data-driven environments, credit scores, social influence rankings and product/service reviews dictate choices regarding, for example, selecting a doctor, shopping or dining…
Radio signals incorporate nature and technology in a fascinating mixture of engineering, environment and chance: poems, sounds, and all sorts of messages are encoded and transmitted at large distances as electromagnetic waves. With this book, I explore the cultural practices related to radio communication and information technologies as technical and societal domains. 
 The book develops an…
The book offers new perspectives by emphasizing the reciprocal relationship between theory and practice in artistic and design-based research, the transfer of academic research into teaching, and fostering an inclusive research community. It explores the productive ambiguity in arts pedagogy, innovative teaching methods, interdisciplinary and transdisciplinary approaches, and new concepts of…
With this teaching research project, we propose an approach to practicing ethics when working with large datasets and designing data representations. We use and continuously re-programme web-based interfaces to sort, organize and explore a community-ran archive of radio signals. Inspired by feminist critique of technoscience and recent problematizations of digital literacy, we argue that one can…
In this book, the editors focus on architecture and communication from various different perspectives – taking into account that the term “architecture” is used for buildings as well as in the context of computer software. Data and software also impact on our cities; raw data, however, do not convey any information – in order to generate information and communication they have to be organized and…
Radio Explorations is an experimental research project that combines machine learning tools with design of data observatories: web-based interfaces that facilitate searching and navigating across the digital archive of radio signals. Machine learning algorithms, more specifically the self-organizing map (SOM), operate in this space as mechanisms of differentiation: a way of ordering differences…
Dividing captures a generous contradiction: it is as much about dividing things up, as it is about joining together. Dividing assumes radical irreducibility of different cosmologies and a reemergence of a critique that challenges both the dialectical negation and the persistence of affirmation in contemporary posthumanism. To divide is to perform a quantitative operation by which we achieve an…
The “Unpleasant Design” book is a collection of different research approaches to a phenomenon experienced by all of us. Unpleasant design is a global fashion with many examples to be found across cities worldwide, manifested in the form of “silent agents” that take care of behaviour in public space, without the explicit presence of authorities. Photographs, essays and case…
A parable on extinction and pollution and how they can be measured in Inanimate Species by Joana Moll. This work proposes to express extinction and pollution quite literally in terms of analogy: encroachment of microchips is compared to the extinction of insects. The comparison between these two visually similar groups of beings is a measure of artificiality of pollution, as well as of inherent…