Coding IxD (6) - Digital:Sovereignty
From the Practice of Interdisciplinary Education: Reshaping Digital Self-Determination
»Digital:Sovereignity«. Copyright: Project Coding IXD
After an unavoidable pause due to the pandemic situation last year, the practice project »Coding IxD« (Informatik x Design) took place for the sixth time at the Cluster of Excellence »Matters of Activity« – this year on the topic of »Digital:Sovereignty«. The course offering is a cooperation of the Human-Centered Computing Research Group led by Prof. Dr. Claudia Müller-Birn (Freie Universität Berlin) and the Embodied Interaction Group led by Prof. Carola Zwick, Prof. Judith Glaser and Prof. Thomas Ness (weißensee school of art and design berlin).
The project »Digital:Sovereignty« intended to uncover, explore and reshape the socio-material aspects of digital sovereignty by designing novel neo-analogue artifacts. Digital sovereignty describes the ability of an individual or a society to use digital services (such as cloud/payment services or digital media) in a self-determined manner. Self-determination encompasses both individual capabilities and material conditions including legal, political, and infrastructural issues. Our goal is to facilitate new forms of interaction between people, material, and code to emerge that enable sovereign decision-making by empowering individuals to critically reflect on their digital practices critically.
Since digital sovereignty is a complex fabric involving diverse actors with divergent goals, we introduced students to this fabric from four perspectives, namely law, ethics, technology, and politics. Four invited expert contributions from the respective field formed the starting point at the beginning of the semester:
- Legal perspective – Jakob Friedrich Krüger | Data Law and Employment Law Specialist at Kliemt.HR Lawyers
- Ethical perspective – Corinna Balkow | Research associate at the Universität Osnabrück in the project SIMPORT
- Technical perspective – Florian Tschorsch | Assistant professor and head of the Distributed Security Infrastructures group at the Technische Universität Berlin and the Einstein Center Digital Future (ECDF)
- Political perspective – Frederike Kaltheuner | Tech policy analyst, researcher and advocate for justice in a world made of data
In interdisciplinary teams, students from Freie Universität Berlin and weißensee school of art and design berlin, and in cooperation with the Cluster of Excellence »Matters of Activity«, explored the possibilities of self-determination through the embodiment of individual decisions for a sovereign interaction with sensitive data through neo-analogue artifacts.
Supervision:
Prof. Dr. Claudia Müller-Birn (Freie Universität Berlin)
Peter Sörries (Freie Universität Berlin)
Prof. Thomas Ness (weißensee school of art and design berlin)
Prof. Judith Glaser (weißensee school of art and design berlin)