Profs. Kazmi and Miller Receive C/Change Award
Professors Asma Kazmi and Jill Miller (in collaboration with designer Kathy Wang) have been selected for a highly competitive 2023 Creative R&D Lab award presented jointly by Gray Area and Goethe-Institut SF. They are one of five teams selected to develop interactive prototypes and artworks that address one of the program’s focus areas — feminist technologies, digital democracy, and planetary futures.
Asma Kazmi, Jill Miller, and Kathy Wang, "Missing Objects Library," 2023, Digital Art
Profs. Miller and Kazmi’s project is Missing Object Library (MOL) – a curated, web-based repository of handmade 3D objects that are designed with an intersectional, feminist lens. MOL offers an alternative to commercial, status quo storefronts that provide digital assets for game design and special effects. Objects sold in these spaces are typically devoid of provenance, and they continually reinscribe false notions of neutrality while privileging a white, cis, heteronormative dominance. In contrast, MOL is an open platform with downloadable models that accurately represent the world we inhabit. MOL disrupts historical gatekeeping performed by “neutral” marketplaces by offering 3D modeled objects that span a wide range of identities, abilities, and affinities. In addition to critiquing existing 3D model storefronts, MOL builds community by offering an economic system of reciprocity, where technological representations of things are exchanged to produce meaningful relations and effects.