Hello hello! I’m Chithira, coming to you all the way from the shores of Kerala, a small state in India that lies where the Arabian Sea, the Bay of Bengal and the Indian Ocean all meet. I’m a queer feminist, and I live several lives as a journalist, a researcher, and an editor. I have been been a community organiser for feminist rights and environmental justice for more than a decade, and I’m also a theatre practitioner who teaches ‘Theatre of the Oppressed’ techniques as a tool for addressing oppression and dealing with trauma.
I love driving around on my 21-year-old scooter to explore spaces like my city, and the forests and lakes that hem it. My dogs enjoy taking me for walks, and the cats, mongooses, crows and snakes in my neighbourhood seem to delight in letting me feed them.
I write poems when my heart permits, and have recently acquired a set of watercolour paints that I am looking forward to trying.
they/them
https://twitter.com/chithira_v
Track 1
Mixtape no.2 - In Their Own Words
**Future Tense: AI from the margins** ¿Cómo es navegar por un mundo que fue diseñado sin ti? Este es un poema audiovisual realizado por Nakeema Stefflbauer y Nushin Yazdani, dos mujeres que desde diferentes lugares entre Europa y EEUU trabajan a partir de principios de justicia en diseño, en el desarrollo de sistemas algorítmicos. Narrado en primera persona, aunque está en inglés creo que las imágenes que lo componen son suficientes para acercarse al problema de los sistemas de IA desplegados para hacer control social de las personas y grupos sociales que no tienen la capacidad de incidir en la manera como se diseñan estos sistemas, ni en los objetivos para los cuales son utilizados. Sería muy lindo que tuviera subtítulos. https://nushinyazdani.com/Future-Tense-AI-from-the-margins ALT TEXT: Hay dos imágenes. A la izquierda una fotografía de una familia de personas negras. Hay un hombre y una mujer (padre y madre) y tres menores, de las cuales dos son bebés. Una de ellas es de piel blanca y pelo rubio. A la derecha hay una imagen publicitaria. Hay varios muebles de madera y una mujer blanca de pelo negro y vestido amarillo mira hacia arriba, al final de una escalera que hay detrás de ella.
Track 2
Mixtape no.3 - Making Plans
The Shoreline Project https://theshorelineproject.org/ This is a multimedia archive of the efforts of educators, artists, architects, scientists, city planners, and youth organizations from nine countries who are responding to the challenges that coastlines are experiencing.
Track 3
Mixtape no.4 - Little Wonders
### **A starling imitates Alexa and humans** This is a video of a starling mimicking the voices of people and the virtual assistant technology Alexa. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=i7izraterXQ The video is astonishing for several reasons - the first, of course, is the impeccable mimicking, down to the emotive qualities of the voices, and the perfect recreation of the sounds of static and radio frequencies. The second one sunk in only after a couple of rewatches: there are notes and sounds in the mimicry that I have never heard from an Alexa, which suggests that the bird is mimicking sounds it is hearing from the Alexa that we cannot, because it is outside the range of frequencies we can hear. ALT TEXT: A starling is perched upon the denim-clad thigh of a person. The jeans are ripped at the knee.The starling has glossy black plumage with a metallic sheen, and the colours on its beak goes from grey, to yellow, to grey again. The bird has its head titled, and is looking into the camera.
