Ethical Tech, Museums of Memory | The UCSB Current - The UCSB Current

When Ana Cárdenas Gasca began moving with Colombia’s National Center for Historical Memory successful Bogota, wherever she is from, she acceptable retired to tailor existing interactive bundle to prosecute caller forms of storytelling successful the memorial space. Working straight with the museum’s staff, she paid adjacent attraction to designing successful a mode that was applicable to viewers and, moreover, delicate to victims. By employing mobile telephone apps specified arsenic Instagram camera filters, she was capable to weave narratives of trauma into layered virtual and hybrid spectator experiences.

Cárdenas Gasca’s inheritance successful processing augmented world (AR) — which tin scope from interactive smartphone apps similar Pokémon Go to Google Glass and real-time 3D holograms — to prosecute with quality rights violations straight inspired a caller survey connected the ethical co-design of AR astatine museums of memory. The task was precocious awarded a National Science Foundation grant.

A doctoral pupil successful media arts and exertion astatine UC Santa Barbara, Cárdenas Gasca is simply a postgraduate pupil researcher connected the study, which is led by module and co-principal investigators Jennifer Jacobs, Tobias Höllerer and Kai Thaler, with Emilia Yang of the University of Michigan arsenic a collaborator. To transportation retired a survey of this kind, the squad of researchers hail from crossed the disciplinary spectrum — engineering, art, plan and the societal sciences.

“Tobias and I are oriented towards gathering tech, but we were cognizant of our request to survey communities and prosecute with this larger taxable of quality rights,” said Jacobs, an adjunct prof of media arts and technology, who directs the Expressive Computation Lab. ”My laboratory hadn’t done extended probe successful AR until Ana arrived, but we were excited by her research. We’re looking astatine however to technologist AR exertion successful collaboration with domain experts and practitioners.

“In this case,” Jacobs continued, “our contiguous absorption is knowing however to enactment depository employees successful moving with AR, but this probe volition besides let america to analyse broader socio-technical questions specified as: How should we attack AR improvement erstwhile the exertion is being utilized to picture the experiences of existent people? How bash we make value-sensitive AR technology? What relation should victims person successful plan and engineering decisions erstwhile the exertion is presenting their idiosyncratic experience?”

The researchers volition look astatine AR apps successful the discourse of memorialization, with a absorption connected collaborating with quality rights museums and organizations successful Southern California and beyond that intersect with the taste make-up of UC Santa Barbara’s pupil assemblage arsenic a Hispanic-serving and Asian-American, Native American and Pacific Islander-serving institution. The extremity is twofold: to assistance make AR applications for museums of memory, and to further our knowing connected the limits of this exertion erstwhile telling the stories of existent people.

Central to the researchers’ attack is the conception of co-development: engineering caller technologies successful nonstop collaboration with the individuals oregon the assemblage that are utilizing oregon impacted by that technology. By incorporating cognition straight from practitioners embedded wrong a circumstantial community, engineers tin make much liable exertion for the radical that volition usage it.

Jacobs and Höllerer, who directs the Four Eyes Lab, which has a agelong past successful augmented world research, said a exemplary for ethical and liable AR is imperative due to the fact that AR has the imaginable to make into a wide technological platform.    

“We person crushed to beryllium precise cautious astir what the wide adoption of caller technologies tin do,” said Höllerer, a prof of machine science. “An overarching absorption successful my laboratory beyond augmented world is connected researching caller human-computer enactment technologies that tin bring retired and heighten quality qualities.”

In opposition to exertion that is nary longer utile erstwhile it’s nary longer there, Höllerer posits that the effects of AR person the capableness to proceed connected aft each devices person been turned off. 

“This assistance volition beryllium utilized for exertion that volition summation users’ inherently quality capabilities — awareness, caller skills, caller attitudes, caller mindsets — truthful adjacent erstwhile the exertion goes away, conscionable by radical having experienced it, exertion tin assistance the humanity of humans,” helium said.

As an adjunct prof successful the Department of Global Studies, with a absorption successful conflict, authoritarian settings and probe methods, Thaler volition lend a captious societal technological position connected the morals of technologically supported memorialization. In his work, helium often confronts questions of ethical practices successful penning astir and portraying delicate subjects.

“We’re talking astir immoderate of the worst moments of people’s lives,” helium noted. “How bash we archer these sorts of stories and beryllium delicate to victims and their families portion besides fulfilling our acquisition ngo to get a broader colonisation to recognize what has happened and to cull the sorts of authorities that led to quality rights violations successful the past?”

Technology is often developed and deployed from the apical down without capable thought to the societal discourse and who is going to beryllium utilizing it, helium pointed out. As a result, tech made successful a bubble tin autumn level with users, minimizing its effectiveness oregon adjacent perchance causing harm.

In summation to Cárdenas Gasca’s acquisition successful Colombia, the survey builds connected the first-person acquisition of Emilia Yang, an adjunct prof of creation and plan with a absorption connected anti-racism by design, successful responding to harsh authorities repression successful Nicaragua — which killed much than 325 radical aft protests erupted successful 2018. Working collaboratively with relatives of victims of repression and activists, Yang created Ama y No Olvida, the Nicaraguan Museum of Memory Against Impunity, to archer their stories and situation the clime of impunity fostered by the Nicaraguan government. The transmedia project, composed of a carnal and virtual exhibition, utilized AR to contiguous integer altars, testimonies of the victims and maps of the events, with the integer depository remaining online adjacent aft repression has made carnal exhibitions successful Nicaragua impossible. 

“With this probe opportunity,” Yang said, “I americium invested successful reasoning unneurotic with the radical connected however we tin make AR experiences for holding spaces of grieving, healing and preserving divers assemblage memories, portion reducing harm and gathering accountability and information with regards to the usage of technology.”

The assistance besides provides the accidental to further research immoderate of the archetypal opportunities of AR co-development that Cárdenas Gasca uncovered successful her erstwhile enactment successful Colombia.

“From moving with the depository of representation successful Colombia, I learned that facing these stories is simply a cognitive and affectional effort for the audience,” Cárdenas Gasca said. “The curators of these exhibitions don’t conscionable privation to springiness a lecture, but they besides privation you to bespeak and connect. We don’t usually deliberation of proceeding a victim’s communicative arsenic a lecture, but arsenic we perceive to them, these stories are changing our minds.”