The Hmm @ H&D Summer Camp

Hicham is a software developer by profession and tinkerer the rest of the time. They’re wary of privacy, online surveillance, and more generally of the power dynamics on the Internet. After being gifted a small mini-PC, Hicham began to explore what could be done with it, spurred on by a deep mistrust of Big Tech. Tonight they’ll be joining us to share some stories about their journey of self-hosting web services from a spare computer in their bedroom, and some insights from the Summer Camp workshops. Link

In what ways can we activate the knowledge contained in a publication far before and long after it takes material form? Amy is a writer, editor, and publisher based in Rotterdam, who co-founded and co-runs HumDrumPress, an expanded publishing practice that experiments towards publishing as a commons. She’ll be joining us to talk about HumDrumPress, sharing the specific tried and tested tools and methods for experimenting towards a commons-based publishing models in the permacrisis. In all of their outputs they work with a purpose-built, commons-based publishing model in an attempt to revise each stage of the traditional publishing cycle to make their processes as communal, open-access, and polyvocal as possible. Link

As our world is increasingly plagued by AI misinformation, algorithmic division, and political polarization, how do these changes affect intimate aspects of life, such as self-perception and relationships? Martyna’s practice is characterized by camp and surreal video compositions, digital collages, and hybrid installations. In her research, she fictionalizes and materializes the intricate effects of social media and online presence on an individual’s unique perception of the world—a phenomenon she describes through a self-coined term, auto-gaze, which she will be speaking about tonight. Auto-gaze is conditioned by the layer of distortion that personalized algorithms create by dictating the criteria making content visible in the first place and creating a dynamic of mutual surveillance among users—lowering our ability to relate to one another. Link

Livio is a researcher and writer focused on the materiality of information infrastructures. Together with Apsara Flury, a graphic designer, he runs Papertrail, a publishing collective that investigates how dominant communications infrastructures (re)produce spatial and epistemic power in the public sphere. Papertrail uses walking-based practices, counter-mapping and experimental print production to make infrastructural power and its materiality visible and legible. Livio is also active in the (anti) data centre movement, where he regularly takes people on educational walks to prospective data centre sites and other infrastructural artefacts hidden in plain sight. He’ll be joining us tonight to talk about the GenAI-fueled expansion of hyperscale data centre construction in Europe (Netherlands, Spain, Austria) and how to make the impacts of these megaprojects on peripheral landscapes and more-than-human lives visible and contestable. Link