Caroline Sinders leads an MIT workshop titled “no permission, no apologies.”
Caroline Sinders, an award-winning critical designer, researcher, and artist will be the 2023 Roman J. Witt Artist in Residence at the Penny W. Stamps School of Art & Design.
The Roman J. Witt Residency Program, developed with the support of alum Penny W. Stamps and named in honor of her father, is an annual international competition that awards one residency per academic year to a visiting artist/designer who proposes to develop a new work in collaboration with students and faculty. The residency provides an opportunity for the Stamps community to witness and take part in the artist’s creative process and is expected to culminate in the realization of the proposed work.
Sinders’ Roman Witt Residency project aims to explore prototypian futures (neither dystopian nor utopian) within the intersections of human rights, design, and art. In addition, the residency will allow Sinders to continue her research with Hyphen Labs, where she was one of the lead artists of the Tate Exchange in 2019. This continuing work is looking at how architecture and public spaces can inform intimacy and safety online, through theories of proxemics, public infrastructure, and open, digital commons inspired by mutual aid and open source technology. This ongoing research will yield a new project: a digital archive, new sculptures, and a new, written and visual based essay. Sinders is exploring structures, metaphors and engagements of privacy and security within technology, which will be incorporated within the architectural sculptures themselves.
“The critical issues Sinders explores through her dynamic, expansive body of work offer an urgent and relevant deep dive into privacy vs. the right to know for our students,” said Chrisstina Hamilton, director of the Penny W. Stamps Speaker Series. “We are so fortunate to have Sinders join us this year at the Stamps School to offer an important, unparalleled learning and engagement experience for our community.”
Sinders’ creative practice includes examining the intersections of artificial intelligence, intersectional justice, systems design, harm, and politics in digital conversational spaces and technology platforms. She has worked with industry, government agencies, and nonprofits throughout her career including the United Nations, Amnesty International, IBM Watson, and the Wikimedia Foundation.
Sinders’ work has been featured in the Tate Exchange in Tate Modern, the Contemporary Art Center of New Orleans, Telematic Media Arts, Victoria and Albert Museum, MoMA PS1, LABoral, Wired, Slate, Hyperallergic, and others. She has held fellowships with the Harvard Kennedy School, Google’s PAIR (People and Artificial Intelligence Research group), the Mozilla Foundation, and many others. Sinders is the recipient of several honors such as the Forbes AI Designer to Watch in 2017, a bronze award for Webby’s Anthem Award’s responsible technology category for a toolkit she created for technologists and community organizers for how to hold safe and caring events during COVID19, and shortlisted for a Fast Company’s Innovation by Design Award in the Social Good Category.
Learn more about Caroline Sinders at carolinesinders.com.
