SoSe 25 Thielmann: Unstitching Datafication

Textile metaphors permeate the digital realm: Mark Weiser’s notion of ubiquitous computing famously rests on the ideal of seamless data transfer, devices inform net-work connections, and the World Wide Web remains the most expansive digital fabric.  The connection between weaving and computing runs deep—automatic weaving as “binary art” (Harlizius-Klück, 2017) paved the way for one of the first machines to be operated by punched cards: the Jacquard loom in the early 19th century (Schneider, 2007; Galloway, 2021). Yet, instead of emphasizing the ‘textility’ of digitality,  we focus on its disruptions: the seams and frictions of datafication, where knowledge emerges and resistance takes shape. Building on textile metaphors, Unstitching Datafication examines the flaws and breakdowns in the supposedly seamless connectivity of today’s technologies. The lecture series focuses on practices of undoing, countering, queering, and camouflaging within environments where the sensing and sense-making of people, media, and sensors become intertwined.

Using the figure of the seam ripper, or unstitcher, as an epistemic tool, we understand glitches and noise, the unintended yet often revealing features of digital systems, as options of productive resistance, disconnection, and subversion (Menkman, 2011; Sundén, 2018; Russell, 2020). These moments, which have been analyzed not only from a media theory standpoint, but also from the perspective of human geography, gender studies, or critical theory, can be understood as “glitch epistemologies” (Leszczynski & Elwood, 2022), “glitch politics” (Alvarez Léon, 2022), “queer counter conduct” (Lingel, 2021) or even “anti-fascist approach to artificial intelligence” (McQuillan, 2022). The often unassuming actions of resistance or obfuscation (Brunton & Nissenbaum, 2016) that lead to the unstitching and, ultimately, to the unraveling of digital processes expose the inherent fragility of digital systems and create spaces for creative interventions and counteraction (Borbach & Kanderske, 2024).

How can digital technologies be unstitched through practices like hacking, queering, countering, and resisting datafication and “data colonialism” (Couldry & Mejias, 2019)—be it through technical manipulations, artistic interventions, or activist action? Here, queering, countering, and hacking come to act as concepts that challenge, disrupt, and reconfigure existing norms and structures. Drawing inspiration from the Luddite weavers of the Industrial Revolution (Mueller, 2021), the lecture series moves beyond the destructive aspect inherent to unstitching seams and networks, asking how social and economic relations have been and can be reconfigured by technology in the first place.

Unstitching Datafication examines how diverse actors, from artists and activists to scholars, un- and re-stitch—or deconstruct and transform—digital technologies by working on their seams. The focus rests on exploring the limits of the digital and discussing the epistemic potential of intentionally produced seams, ruptures, and breakdowns. Even partial unstitching creates holes in the digital fabric, openings that expose the inner workings of opaque digital systems—creating opportunities to intervene in their structures and algorithmic logic (Miyazaki, 2019), and envision utopian futures and alternative digitalities. 


Bibliography

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  • Borbach, C., & Kanderske, M. (2024). “Counter-practices: Understanding sensor datafication through subversive action.” Dialogues on Digital Society 0(0), https://doi.org/10.1177/29768640241305970.

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