Co-creating data models in-situ (ESR10)

The present research project aims to collaborate with underserved communities leading social change efforts for the pursuit of justice through alternative economics practices or commons-based initiatives, by co-creating a data model based on local sets that members collect themselves with participatory and speculative DIY sensors and on the contextual information that they could be interested in representing and exchanging, inciting to the collective appropriation, ownership and adaptation of data through the co-design of participatory technologies and alternative outputs of information.

Researching the implementation of data collecting artifacts and data-driven systems, through non-traditional and plural representations of information, could be instrumental in understanding how to visualise and uncover unaccounted, hidden or underrepresented labour, activities and knowledges for alternative socioeconomic practices, how to make access to specialised and contextually relevant contents more inclusive and how to integrate marginalised people with different backgrounds into diverse and just decision making processes.

It will be essential to experiment with these technologies, ideally crafted as physical unfinished prototypes, by inviting and collaborating with people to reflect on what could be meaningful for them to translate into data and what new notions could be attached to this concept itself from a non-extractive and more communal perspective that could be substantial for social or economic change, activism or justice.