Hi, nice to meet you all! My name is Jackie, a junior in computer science at MIT. I went into MIT hoping to explore some intersection of art, design, and technology. Three years of being here is more than enough to help me understand that this intersection is actually extremely broad. Recently I’ve honed my academic focus to the realm of designing and implementing user interfaces, and some of my personal interests lie in reflecting on how the sometimes subtle visual and social cultures that are embedded into digital systems reflect or shape the lived experiences of humans. I’m also interested in art of a variety of media, and particularly enjoy art that involves combining tech with some sort of unexpected emotional rawness.

While not necessarily a direct social movement per-se, I find online art-collectives/ “aesthetic” groups a really interesting phenomena. Here is an example of one called “Cybertwee”: https://creators.vice.com/en_us/article/cybertwee-collective-internet-feminist-cyberpunk
It basically seeks to be a contrast to the dominant idea of what cyberpunk is (gritty and nihilistic), by proposing a cuter alternative. In addition to groups like this tending to be inclusive communities, I think embedded into these visual ideas is the idea of making technology more inclusive for people who don’t fall into masculine identities, and expanding the definition of what it looks like to engage with tech.