Nadia நடேசன்

Our smooth screens hold a textured history. Using Lisa Nakamura’s work on “indigenous circuits” as a grounding text, we explore the history of Navajo (Diné) women and microchips. From Dy Begay’s tapestries to Marilou Schultz’s Pentium rug, Diné artists remind us that innovation has always been a result of extraordinary, tedious human labor and that chips and circuits are also about pattern, touch, and intergenerational knowledge. References: /wp-content/uploads/2011/01/indigenous-circuits-nakamura-aq.pdf?ref=hyperallergic.com /gsc_news/en/20240903-pentium-navajo-weaving/#gsc.tab=0 puterhistory.org/resources/access/text/2017/01/102770254-05-01-acc.pdf /marilou-schultz-dine-weaver-who-turns-microchips-into-art/ /dine-weaver-dy-begay-sacred-looms/

RELEASE ALERT 🚨 (6/9) “Small AI Chapter” is out now! 🔗 Zoom into the full chapter on our website → https://aixdesign.co/posts/small-ai-chapter (link in bio) 🔍 The Small AI chapter invites us to rethink AI not as something floating in “the cloud,” but as deeply entangled with land, ecologies, and people — showing how technology can prioritize community value in design and governance 🦋 From artists building their personal AI models to citizen scientists preserving marginalized languages, the chapter highlights the power of small-scale approaches to protecting cultural heritage and supporting ecological resilience 🌱 Challenging the “bigger-is-always-better” mindset, Small AI calls for AI development that prioritizes real-world needs over abstract, infinite scaling — an AI that serves humanity today. This chapter is the manifestation of Nadia and the team’s past 12 months of research into Small AI ⏳ A labour of love, we’d love to hear your thoughts! And remember – you can chat with Nadia and come build your own tiny LLM at the 🎪 AIxD Festival 🎪 this May 1-3, at Loods6 in Amsterdam (tix are available now at bit.ly/aixd-festival-tickets)! 🎞️ CREDIT ROLL Research Lead: Nadia Nadesan @nadning Editor: Sofia Vieira @soffmaria Report Design: Kaashvi Kothari @kaashvi.ko Project Leads: Ploipailin Flynn @ploipailin + Nadia Piet @nadiapiet Calligramme Artist: @anamarques.lab 🐌 ABOUT SLOW AI The Slow AI project seeks to imagine alternative narratives for AI, unpacking and moving beyond Silicon Valley ideologies. Inspired by countermovements like slow fashion and slow food, it aims to subvert corporate-first thinking by collectively exploring new perspectives and pathways for AI. Slow AI is made possible through the support of Stimuleringsfonds Creatieve Industrie @stimuleringsfonds 🪼

What could we make with AI if scale wasn’t an objective? Listen to Nadia Nadesan @nadning talk us through two of the case studies that inspired us in Small AI: → Masakhane ("We Build Together") - a grassroots NLP organization led by African researchers challenging linguistic biases in AI 🌍  → And Potato Internet by Caroline Sinders @carolinesinders in collaboration with Trammell Hudson - a literally organic approach to social networking that runs on... potatoes! 🥔 These projects aren't just cute examples - they're challenging fundamental assumptions about how we collect data, who owns it, and whether technology needs to scale endlessly to be valuable. Curious about community-first approaches to AI? Many more where this came from! Keep an eye out for the Small AI chapter coming out in the next few days and join us at the AIxDESIGN Festival in May to learn more → [aixdesign.co/festival]! 🔬🌱 Video edit by April Chu @in____april 🙏🏻

In anticipation of the Small AI chapter, you can already get some toplines from @nadning ☘️ In Small AI, Nadia and the team probe what we can make with AI when cultural creation and preservation take priority over scale and profit? Some of the keys 🔑 lie in seeing how the language and stories we tell shape the tech we design and adopt. We unpack three dominant tech narratives that need rethinking: 🏜️ The “frontier” myth (which erases indigenous peoples) → what if we embraced “placefulness” instead? ☁️ The “cloud” illusion (when 99% runs through physical cables) → what if nature became a feature of tech, not a footnote? 🤖The AGI obsession (centralizing power for the few) → what if we focused on improving our problematic development processes? This is the horizon of Small AI: reimagining AI systems in a way that’s more culturally-grounded, ecologically aware, and distributed rather than centralized - honouring context, community, and care instead of endless growth and optimization (for what?!) 🎋 Which of these hits home for you? And what other stories and shifts do you think could help reshape our relationship with AI? 💭 Video edit by @nadiapiet and @aprlc 🍿 🐜 ABOUT SMALL AI Small AI challenges the mainstream narratives of bigger-is-better, universality, and profit and power max-ing. It explores how we can cultivate a new relationship with technology that prioritizes the land, resources, and communities that sustain it. 🐌 ABOUT SLOW AI The Slow AI project seeks to imagine alternative narratives for AI, unpacking and moving beyond Silicon Valley ideologies. Inspired by countermovements like slow fashion and slow food, it aims to subvert corporate-first thinking by collectively exploring new perspectives and pathways for AI. Slow AI is made possible with the support of @stimuleringsfonds

RELEASE ALERT (4/9) 🚨 “AI for Ants: A zine about Small AI” is LIVE now on @metalabel__ + the AIxD website🎱🔮 Bigger isn’t always better. What could we make with AI if scale wasn’t an objective? The second issue in the Slow AI Zine Series 🐜 “AI for Ants: A zine about Small AI” 🐜 draws inspiration from the degrowth movement, climate justice, and low-tech to re-imagine AI that is locally-rooted and more attuned to our natural world. Download it for free or pay-what-you-can. OR! Pre-order the printed collection – all three zines delivered straight to your door → 🔗 Link in bio 🧛 💞 SHOUT OUTS This zine is a hot compost pile of creative contributions, exchanges, and discussions from the Small AI Zine-making Workshop, hosted at The Sphere on July 21, 2024. Co-hosted and designed by @internetteapot & @nadning Contributors: Nadia Nadesan, Leo Scarin, Cecilia Scolaro, Tara Monheim, Georgia Borissova, Nadia Piet, Jie Shen, Kwan Suppaiboonsuk, and Gustavo Nogueira de Menezes Funded by: @stimuleringsfonds 🪼 📕 ABOUT SLOW AI ZINES This is a three-zine collection, bringing together 144 pages of collective sense-making and creative reflections to spark new ideas about what AI is and can be. 🐜 ABOUT SMALL AI Small AI challenges the mainstream narratives of bigger-is-better, universality, and profit and power max-ing. It explores how we can cultivate a new relationship with technology that prioritizes the land, resources, and communities that sustain it. 🐌 ABOUT SLOW AI The Slow AI project seeks to imagine alternative narratives for AI, unpacking and moving beyond Silicon Valley ideologies. Inspired by countermovements like slow fashion and slow food, it aims to subvert corporate-first thinking by collectively exploring new perspectives and pathways for AI.

“If it’s not based on reality, can you still call it a dataset?” 🌺 — @lindadouniar With AI generating more data than we ever could (and sometimes giving us kinda meh results, let’s be real 😅), what does it mean when we start using AI to train more AI? Dive into the full convo on Small AI stream within Slow AI project between @nadning , @lindadouniar & @veravdburg on our YouTube >> link in bio ✨ The freshest edit on video snippet + custom coded intro done by our wonderful intern @aprlc 🐸 Wait.. what is Slow AI? 🐌 A project that seeks to unpack and nourish alternative narratives for AI outside Silicon Valley ideologies. Inspired by counter movements like slow fashion and slow food, it aims to “imagine and craft the worlds we cannot live without, just as we dismantle the ones you cannot live within” - Ruha Benjamin. Slow AI is made possible through the support of @Stimuleringsfonds Creatieve Industrie 🪼 #SlowAIxDESIGN #SlowAI

KEEN ON READING A BIT ABOUT SMALL AI? 🐜 When the aim is not to scale technology or extract in a race to profit, what technologies are possible when we think smaller? How can alignment with more just futures and alternative approaches to AI development remake our visions and paradigms of ingenuity? 🌿 Small AI is an invitation to use notions of fractals, friction, and fragmented-ness in nature and math to inspire ideas around Small and send ripples that shift practices around BIG AI. Join the journey in molding the vision of Small AI. —> read the full preface #linkinbio 🧚‍♂️Nadia Nadesan is a fellow at Open Future and a collaborator at @platoniqfoundation with experience as a researcher, illustrator, facilitator, urbanist, and technologist. Her work focuses on civic technology, data governance, and public space. As a founder of @designjusticenetwork Mediterranea, she is actively involved in creating collective spaces of resistance, knowledge sharing, and community. She has worked as a researcher under Akwugo Emejulu on the project ‘To Exist is to Resist’. Her latest project with Algorights at the Jornadas DAR developed citizen modes of participation in AI governance facilitating a citizen assembly around the AI Act in Europe. Her research currently focuses on the materiality of artificial intelligence and frictions where technology encounters local sociopolitical and cultural contexts. She enjoys projects and networks that encourage re-learning, reorienting, and reclaiming narratives of who and why we are, especially how we tech and eat. In seeding alternative narratives of Slow AI 🐜 Small AI is one of the three entry points – or three uncharted horizons – that we invite you to explore with us. Wait.. what is Slow AI? 🐌 A project that seeks to unpack and nourish alternative narratives for AI outside Silicon Valley ideologies. Inspired by counter movements like slow fashion and slow food, it aims to “imagine and craft the worlds we cannot live without, just as we dismantle the ones you cannot live within” - Ruha Benjamin. Slow AI is made possible through the support of @stimuleringsfonds Creative Industries. 🪼 #SlowAIxDESIGN #SlowAI

It’s pride 🌈 pay me

Only the radio could play me💕

Time is a circle ✨

2 years l8r…. 𝓼𝓹𝓪𝓰𝓱𝓮𝓽𝓽𝓲 𝓭' 𝕮𝖍𝖎𝖓𝖊𝖘𝖊 𝕾𝖙𝖎𝖗 𝕱𝖗𝖎𝖊𝖉 𝕿𝖔𝖒𝖆𝖙𝖔 𝕰𝖌𝖌𝖘 𝖎𝖘𝖍⁠⁠ 🍝Sauce🍝:⁠⁠ eggs salt ½ teaspoon sesame oil 1 tablespoon red cooking wine 1 teaspoon cornstarch 1 teaspoon sugar ketchup quantity depends on how much you like ketchup 1 tablespoons gochuchang tomatoes or canned tomatos 2-4 scallions, sliced 1 teaspoon minced ginger (from about 1/4-inch nub) ⁠⁠ 🍝Sauce tips🍝:⁠⁠ In a mixing bowl, mix eggs with salt, sesame oil and cooking wine. In a small bowl, stir together the cornstarch and 2 tablespoons water until well combined. Chop tomatoes in large chunks. Heat a wide nonstick skillet over high heat with 3 tablespoons of vegetable oil. When the oil shimmers, add most of the scallions, save some to garnish. Cook until very aromatic maybe 20 seconds. Add the eggs, and cook until just set but still runny, about 45 seconds. Remove the eggs from the pan and pour the eggs back into the mixing bowl, and wipe out the pan. Put the pan on high heat with the remaining tablespoon of oil. When it is hot, add the ginger and cook until aromatic. Add the tomatoes, wine, ketchup, sugar, gochuchang, and salt to taste; cook, stirring occasionally, until the flesh has softened but still has some shape and the juices have begun to form a sauce. Reduce the heat to medium. Pour the cornstarch mixture into the pan. Cook, stirring, until the sauce returns to a boil and thickens. Taste and adjust seasoning as you like. Stir the eggs in the bowl then pour them into the pan. Cook, stirring, for a few seconds to finish cooking the eggs and to combine. 🍜Cook until al dente. Then mix with the sauce. Top with the reserved scallions.

𝓼𝓹𝓪𝓰𝓱𝓮𝓽𝓽𝓲 𝓭' 𝓬𝓾𝓻𝓻𝔂 𝓶𝓮𝓮⁠⁠ ⁠⁠ 🍝Sauce🍝:⁠⁠ 2 tbsp vegetable oil ⁠⁠ 1 tbsp curry powder ⁠⁠ 1/2 tsp turmeric ⁠⁠ 1 cup coconut milk ⁠⁠ 2 tbsp dried lemongrass ⁠⁠ 3 tbsp fish sauce ⁠⁠ 1 tsp sugar ⁠⁠ coriander leaves, to serve ⁠⁠ lime wedges, to serve ⁠⁠ 1 tsb garlic powder⁠⁠ 5 cardamom pods⁠⁠ 2 tomatoes⁠⁠ eggplant⁠⁠ 1/4 cup dried shrimp⁠⁠ sliced cucumber, to serve⁠⁠ ⁠⁠ 🍝Sauce tips🍝:⁠⁠ Cook the spices until fragrant. (Grind whole spices before adding) Add and cook tomatoes with the dried shrimp. Simmer for maybe 10 min then add coconut milk and fish sauce. ⁠⁠ ⁠⁠ 🍆Cube and steam over pasta water. Add to the sauce when it is nearly done cooking. ⁠⁠ ⁠⁠ 🍜Cook until al dente. Then mix with the sauce.