equalACT: Sensing Humans and Learning Machines

Session #4 with MIKA SATOMI & guests

ANDREA PARKINS, GODA KLUMBYTĖ & DANIELA ROSNER

What does it mean to understand technology? Is it about knowing how it is made and how it functions? Is it about acquiring skills to make it yourself? Or can we call much more tacit, intuitive, embodied experiences as “understanding” technology? When we learn how to ride a bicycle, do we understand bicycles or do we just know it?

“Machine learning” with artificial neural networks is one of the base technologies for AI systems, and is often named as blackbox that we can not understand. Equipped with DIY enthusiasm, in this session, we try to dissect the algorithm, opening its skulls and looking at its neurons, firing its synapses, training and propagating. We will then stuff it and stitch it back. A taxidermy.

We will also question what is “understanding”? Is understanding = knowing? Or understanding ⊂ knowing? I propose to examine the modes of knowing formed within a relationship to another (human or otherwise) and the political history of transparency. Daniela Rosner and Goda Klumbyte took this thinking journey with me and we together explored the notion of “feeling” as knowing, and how that applies in our human-technology relationship in our research project “feeling AI”. They will join the session remotely to share their thoughts and discuss with us. 

Andrea Parkins, a musician, an artistic research scholar in experimental and improvised music, agreed to play my taxidermied technology, a feltAI instrument. feltAI is not an outcome of the feelingAI research. It is a process of artistic research. Andrea performs and embodies feeling and knowing of the algorithm. No description needed. We listen and feel.

PART 1: Artist Presentation, Hands on workshop / 10 – 13.15h

Mika will introduce her artistic practices and approaches following a workshop that looks at the detailed workings of Machine Learning from DIY mindsets. After theoretical introduction, participants will build a simple e-textile sensor, and hands-on experience: how the Machine Learning system is trained, classify and map information.

PART 2: Guest Performance, Conversation, Discussion / 14.15 - 17h

Feeling AI is an artistic research project that Mika together with Daniela Rosner and Goda Klumbyte conducted. Mika produced felt AI, an instrument as a result of this exchange. Andrea Parkins is invited to perform with the feltAI and give her impression of playing with it as a musician. Daniela and Goda attend a conversation with MIka from a remote location to talk about their view on current technological developments from feminist STS angle.

Register by email at equalACT@hfs-berlin.de. Please indicate whether you would like to participate in the first, second, or both events!!
 

MIKA SATOMI is an artist, a designer and an educator working in the field of e-Textiles, Interaction Design and Physical Computing. Her work explores how we relate with technology and what we really want in them.  She often collaborates with musicians and performers creating technology embedded costumes and interactive systems. Since 2006 Mika has collaborated with Hannah Perner-Wilson, forming the art collective duo KOBAKANT creating artistic projects in the field of e-Textiles and Wearable Technology Art. She is a co-author of the e-Textile online database How To Get What You Want. Currently she lives and works in Berlin, Germany.

Guests:

ANDREA PARKINS is a sound artist, composer, electroacoustic musician, and researcher. She works with an array of sonic materials: amplified objects,  electronic feedback, custom-built software and hardware, and electronic and acoustic instruments. Her research explores connections and slippages between the body, material, sound, site, and space. Parkins’ projects encompass composition and performance,, spatial sound and intermedia installation; and scores for contemporary dance, experimental film and intermedia performance. Her works have been presented at the Whitney Museum of American Art, Experimental Intermedia (NYC), the Nordic Biennale of Contemporary Art, NEXT (Bratislava), and Akousma (Montreal) among others, Parkins holds a PhD in Artistic Research from Norwegian Academy of Music, and is a 2022-23 fellow of the Berlin Artistic Research Grant Programme/ Berliner Förderprogramm Künstlerische Forschung.

GODA KLUMBYTĖ is a post-doctoral researcher at the department of Artificial Intelligence and Human Interfaces, Human-Computer Interaction division at the University of Salzbug. Their latest books include a monograph "Feminist Machine Learning: Towards New Materialist Informatics" (Bristol University Press, 2026), and edited volumes "Posthuman Convergences: Transdisciplinary Methods and Practices" (Edinburgh University Press, 2025) and "More Posthuman Glossary" (Bloomsbury, 2022), both co-edited with Rosi Braidotti and Emily Jones.

DANIELA ROSNER Daniela Rosner is a Professor in the Department of Human Centered Design and Engineering (HCDE) and the Department of Digital Arts and Experimental Media (DXArts)  at the University of Washington. She holds adjunct appointments in the Department of Gender, Women, and Sexuality Studies (GWSS) and the Allen School for Computer Science and Engineering (CSE). She also serves as an associate member of the Einstein Center for Digital Futures in Berlin, Germany. Her work lies at the intersection of science and technology studies and design practice and performance, with a focus on the material histories and hidden labors of computing.

More information: equalACT-Projektseite

ARTISTIC RESEARCH – make it feminist! equalACT  is a collaborative project between the HfS Ernst Busch and the UdK Berlin and is funded by the Berliner Chancengleichheitsprogramm (BCP). equalACT supports women and tin* individuals who combine gender, diversity, and anti-discrimination with artistic research.