Experimental Humanities Collaborative Network Presents
Politics After the Dashboard
Tuesday, April 23, 2024
New Annandale House
4:00 pm – 5:30 pm EDT/GMT-4
4:00 pm – 5:30 pm EDT/GMT-4
Digital Infrastructures of Evidence in India and Beyond
In corporate offices, government agencies, and on our smartphones, the digital interface of the dashboard translates things in the world into numbers on screens. From New York to New Delhi, dashboards mediate evidence about the world, organizing what we know and what we can do with our knowledge. How do these “at-a-glance”, real-time overviews, which promise an objective, neutral and constantly updated representation of reality, shape possibilities for acting in the world?In this talk, I analyze the dashboard’s operations – design elements and interactions like the large number, the combination of number and plot and the drill-down – which selectively conceal certain realities, project aspirational futures, and re-wire the movement of people, data, and capital. I focus in particular on the contemporary Indian state, where dashboards are part of an ambitious program of digital reform. The case study of the Indian state allows us to set dashboards within a broader assemblage of Application Programming Interfaces, biometric identification technologies, new institutional forms and communicative media, to show how they “distribute the sensible”. Finally, looking at case studies from contemporary journalism in India, we will ask how the dashboard’s potentials can be harnessed to counter-hegemonic ends.
Mila T Samdub is a resident fellow at the Information Society Project at Yale University, where he researches the aesthetics and infrastructures of digital governance in India. He is interested in the use of biometric ID for development, the management and visualization of information through dashboards, and the architecture of the digital state. Previously, Mila worked as a curator in New Delhi, where his exhibitions explored the intersections of technology, aesthetics and public culture. Mila holds a Masters in Environmental Design from Yale School of Architecture.
For more information, call 845-758-7103, or e-mail [email protected].
Time: 4:00 pm – 5:30 pm EDT/GMT-4
Location: New Annandale House