GATHERING MULTITUDES: A BAG OF STARS

Padmini Ray Murray

Wednesday 10 - Saturday 13 November 2021

Padmini Ray Murray presented a game world, Gathering Multitudes: A Bag of Stars, an interactive environment centred on the idea of data trust and data commons using the garden or seed bank as a metaphor.

People were able to interact in the space and upload things to make plants and trees grow. A kind of collaborative online world-making. The work provided an opportunity and a context to start conversations about ownership of archives, decentralised data trusts and the digital commons to challenge notions of neocolonial, corporate data ownership that are extractive and exploitative of user data.

About the Artist

Padmini Ray Murray's research-led practice focuses on challenging acts of infrastructural and algorithmic violence and creating alternative digital spaces and imaginations that are characterised by feminist values, specifically ethics of care. To explore the possibilities of manifesting these spaces, Padmini founded Design Beku, a design, and digital collective, that aims to dismantle expectations created by market-driven notions of design by following design justice principles, that advocate designing with, and not for. Padmini’s work, both individually and with the collective, is invested in creating contextually relevant and nuanced artefacts that communicate complex concepts simply, playfully, and with a sense of joy.

Image Credit: Screenshot of Darshan Diversion by Padmini Ray Murray

Gathering Multitudes: A bag of Stars was an online commission for the NEoN 2021 festival, it can now be found here