M.A.R.Y.

M.A.R.Y. Manifesto

M.A.R.Y. is:

A vision of human and technological collaboration.

An inquisitive attitude for storytellers working with and around technology; one that combines a healthy dose of scepticism towards the status quo with the courage to be imaginative and experimental with computational tools.

A generative and collectively authored creative process [that believes silences are powerful when they are combined.]

A commitment to access.

A way of being heard.

**

M.A.R.Y. is about telling complex human stories with many layers that encourage us to unlearn dominant, essentialising narratives.

It is about many voices and authors, not one resounding voice.

It hopes to decentralise narrative control.

It welcomes the chaotic, the entertaining and the political simultaneously.

M.A.R.Y. returns to the archives, to our traditions and histories.

It considers the dignity of people and their stories.

**

It hopes to find the poetical within the technological.

Why?

I
Computational technologies dominate our lives, and yet so many of us know so little about them.

M.A.R.Y. is about acquainting ourselves with the combinations attained by the mechanisms.[1]

When it comes to artificial intelligence, you do not have to dig too deep to find its limitations.

M.A.R.Y. is trying to reclaim agency over biased systems with these systems.

M.A.R.Y. sees AI as a tool, a mirror held up to society.

By collaborating with [and embodying?] these technologies, we can debug them.
II
‘When computers became the miniaturised circuits of silicon chips, it was women who assembled them.’ [2]

‘Gender inequality still characterises the fields in which technologies are conceived, built, and legislated for, while female workers in electronics perform debilitating low-paid labour.’ [3]

M.A.R.Y. remembers and recognises the silenced histories of the women who built, programmed and continue to work with computational technology.

M.A.R.Y. is inspired by the storytelling traditionsthat we inherit. Those that are passed down through the generations and learned from centuries of female authorship.

Final Thoughts

M.A.R.Y. IS NOT [actually] about conclusions or solutions.

However, IT IS about finding expansive logic systems that consider the diverse ways of seeing and experiencing the world.

It hopes these complex multi-layered stories can include those who usually get ignored, challenging archaic belief systems in turn.

[1] Ada Lovelace
[2] Sadie Plant, Zeros and Ones
[3] Laboria Cuboniks, The Xenofeminist Manifesto