Join NAVEL & Tiny Tech Zines for a special edition of WYD? (What’re You Doing?) + TTZ, an intimate gathering where our communities can share, talk about, and make inquiries on current research topics.

On Sunday, October 11 at 5PM PDT we will hear from Maya Friedman, Rudy Falagán, & Kengchakaj Kengkarnka. RSVP for free to attend this session of WYD on Zoom.

We ask all participants to uphold our Braver Spaces Intentions during this gathering, please take some time to review them here.

Want to submit to present at the next WYD? + TTZ on Sunday, December 13? Click here.

Participant Bios

Maya Friedman (She/her/hers) is a third-year MFA candidate in the Media Design Practices Program at ArtCenter College of Design. Her work focuses on imagining alternate models of healthcare for women and exploring new forms of sexuality & intimacy as related to touch and motion technologies. On the side, she pursues her own zine projects on women’s sexuality, which have been featured at the Boston Art Book Fair, Tiny Tech Zines LA and Skylight Books LA. She is a product designer at the non-profit Tidepool, developing automated software for people with T1 Diabetes and researching how menstruating women manage their periods with T1.

Project Description: She’ll be sharing work-in-progress lines of inquiry and prototypes from her thesis, which focuses on imagining new possibilities of what it means for women to visit the doctor in the age of remote care and telemedicine. Some questions she’s trying to answer include: What affordances do the systems of telehealth offer that can help us re-work the power hierarchy between female patients and doctors? How could remote care systems tap into the vast amount of digital, community generated evidence as a form of care provision? Radical feminists have long tried to “build a collage of similar experiences” to be used as trusted and systematically built streams of knowledge about their bodies, what does this look like digitally?

Website: https://cargocollective.com/mayacfriedman

Instagram: @mayacfriedman

Rudy Falagán (He/him/his) is a fourth year BFA candidate at the University of Southern California’s Roski School of Art and Design, with a ceramics and intermedia emphasis. His practice takes his heavy involvement in internet culture and intersects it with interests in his own identity and health, both physical and mental. He uses humor, memes, personas, and online communities to express statements he is too fearful to say on his own, all hyper aware that the digital space he uses as his haven is one that is under constant surveillance. His work has been shown at François Ghebaly Gallery and the Roski Master of Fine Arts Gallery.

Project Description: The current state of quarantine has reshaped the majority of people’s reliance on technology in their day to day. For people who are privileged enough to have a laptop and internet access, the screen has become the main connection to the outside world. Falagan’s interests in our usage of screens and our reliance on the internet finds itself recontextualized by this new normal. He will be sharing parts of his practice as well as his ongoing research into platforms and communities he has utilized before, including Instagram meme culture and the Sims Franchise. As someone with OCD, how has this situation affected his own mental health ? How has it affected his queer identity and his experiences with dysphoria ? These actions and inquiries stem from a desire to understand his own brain, and a determination to analyze his fixations and escapist tendencies rather than surrendering to them completely.

Website: rudyfalagan.com

Instagram: @poptropican

Kengchakaj Kengkarnka (He/him/his) is a Bangkok-born, New York-based award-winning musician and composer. He composes and improvises sound, both alone and collectively, using various instruments such as piano, synthesizer, electronics, and programming. His musical idiom is rooted in the aesthetics and ideologies of Thai culture infused with jazz and the blues, Afro-American music. In November 2019, Outside In Music released his debut album Lak Lan(ลักลั่น.) Lak Lan has been featured and reviewed by leading music industry magazines and newspapers such as Downbeat, NYC Jazz Record, Jazziz, etc.

Lak Lan (ลักลั่น) derives from a Thai word that can be translated as juxtaposition, dichotomy, or paradox. Lak Lan is a concept space for an exchange of dialogue - a gap for creative opportunities, a temporal moment to investigate new possibilities between spaces. Lak Lan serves as an impetus to unify ideas that are seemingly opposite and to make room for new directions.

The concept of tension between new and old and the recurring struggle to fit in and define identity is inherently intertwined with Kengchakaj’s artistic voice. By juxtaposing different materials and ideas such as Thai tuning, the blues, layered rhythms, textures, and emotions, he composes, improvises new music that reflects and translates the concept of Lak Lan.

Project Description: Jit(จิตร) is an imaginary electronics Thai ensemble using machine learning and computer programing to generate decolonized Thai sound culture and its visual representation. Inspired by Jit Poumisak(จิตร ภูมิศักดิ์)’s series of essays speculating the evolution of Thai traditional music with an indigenous knowledge in mind. Jit Poumisak(จิตร ภูมิศักดิ์) is an important Thai activist, writer, and historian who was seen as a threat and killed by Thai government in the 1960s. The word “Jit(จิต)” also means “mind or soul” in Thai.

Tiny Tech Zines (TTZ) is a tech zine fair and collective based in Tongva land (Los Angeles, CA). We focus on relationships between marginalized communities and technology. Together we poke holes in digital tech’s sleek facade, feeling for the nuances of its presence in our worlds. At the same time, we define technology very openly as anything that beings make to help them accomplish different tasks. We are asking: Which technologies go unacknowledged in western society? What technologies are being made to serve the unique needs of our diverse communities? How can care and technology come together in deeply meaningful, post-colonial ways?

TTZ is organized by Rachel Simanjuntak, Tristan Espinoza, and Tyler Yin. TTZ is inspired by the original New York Tech Zine Fair.

Instagram: @tinytechzines