Nomination
SUPERPOWER! is a community-led initiative that enables groups of people/communities to make sense of self-determined and complex urban issues in their environment via their own subjective perception. Participants use a set of social, gesture-driven, and data-collecting wearables to devise data experiments that capture their own perception of the issue in the form of subtle and inconspicuous body gestures. Past deployments explored public safety, air quality, and gender representation, to wheelchair accessibility and cultural diversity.
Developed during the pandemic, Digital SUPERPOWER! is a mobile version of the toolkit that enables communities to collaborate on data experiments remotely, using their phones to collect geolocated time-based perception data via touch gestures and phone movements. It was trialed in 2021 where 15 young womxn creatives from Johannesburg(SA), Bulawayo(ZW), and London(UK) gathered online to discuss their experience surrounding gender safety issues and used the toolkit to collect their own and 100 other community members’ perceptual data in their own city. Participants then developed digital artworks based on their data findings, later exhibited at Fak’ugesi Festival(SA).
Credits
SUPERPOWER! is an initiative developed by Ling Tan with the support of many organizations over the years such as Umbrellium, Fak’ugesi Digital Innovation Festival, Hivos, British Council, Furtherfield, FACT, Centrul Cultural Clujean, Manchester Metropolitan University, and Organicity.
With support from:
Hivos, Fakugesi Digital Innovation Festival, Furtherfield, FACT, Liverpool Cultural Education Partnership Fund, European Commission, Organicity, British Council, and Manchester Metropolitan University.
Biography
Ling Tan (SG/UK) Part-time Associate Artistic Director at Chinese Arts Now Ltd. (https://chineseartsnow.org.uk/), part-time Senior Design Lead & Creative Technologist at Umbrellium Ltd. (https://umbrellium.co.uk/)
https://lingql.com/