Cultural Technologies Lab: Spontaneity, Improvisation, And Building Capacity
At the September 10th Cultural Technologies Lab meetup online, participants exchanged ideas on the role of artists in public space, exploring how regulations, surveillance, and closures are reshaping cultural life in cities. From anecdotes about spontaneous street interactions to reflections on outdoor gatherings during the pandemic, the conversation turned to how small acts of creativity can nurture civic trust and solidarity—capacities that become crucial in a climate crisis.
The session also surfaced connections between cultural innovation and climate adaptation:
Art as resilience — informal, low-tech, and community-driven gatherings as models for readiness in uncertain times.
Spontaneity and disruption — how moments of breakdown in everyday systems can foster dialogue and new ways of relating.
Navigating rules and risk — artists practicing ways of living with discomfort and uncertainty, which mirrors the cultural shifts required for ecological adaptation.
Examples shared by participants:
Reclaiming disruption as connection: A brief blackout on public transit sparked spontaneous conversations among strangers, highlighting how interruptions to routine can create unexpected social bonds.
Everyday spaces as creative commons: A public fountain was described as a site where informal play and interaction unfolded, suggesting how small design cues or positive signage can encourage collective use of shared space.
Breaking small rules to test limits: Artists and citizens intentionally bending minor regulations to reimagine relationships with urban environments and authority.
Improvised gatherings during crisis: Outdoor meetups and informal residencies that emerged during the pandemic became fertile ground for cultural exchange and community resilience, showing how artists can build capacity without formal infrastructure.
Movement as metaphor: The spontaneity of dance practices, like tango, was used to think about civic life guided by intuition rather than rigid rules, offering a way to frame adaptive responses to uncertainty.
Navigating contested spaces: Artists reflected on clashes between creative communities and new residents in changing neighbourhoods, underscoring the importance of cultural negotiation and communication in shared environments.
Residencies fostering unexpected bonds: Collaborative programs in immersive media not only generated artworks but also long-lasting community ties, revealing how collective creative risk-taking can prepare groups for broader social or ecological adaptation.
Future sessions will continue to build on these themes, emphasizing cultural R&D, public imagination, and translocal strategies for resilience.
Cultural Technologies Lab: Exploring Cultural Networks together
We held the North America timezone informal introduction session for the Cultural Technologies Lab (CTL). With participants joining from Ottawa, Toronto, Vancouver, Washington, and beyond, we dove into questions that sit at the heart of our work: What is culture? What makes technology "cultural"? And how do we build networks that support cultural adaptation and transformation?
Following our Asia timezone meet-up (a summary can be found here), we held the North America timezone informal introduction session for the Cultural Technologies Lab (CTL). With participants joining from Ottawa, Toronto, Vancouver, Washington, and beyond, we dove into questions that sit at the heart of our work: What is culture? What makes technology "cultural"? And how do we build networks that support cultural adaptation and transformation?
What We Explored Together
Defining Culture in Our Context
Our conversation began with each participant sharing their perspective on culture itself. The definitions that emerged painted a rich, multifaceted picture:
Culture as shared means of interaction through language, material artifacts, and concepts
Culture as tradition and practice — the attempt to understand through doing
Culture as community and accessibility, manifesting in both physical and digital spaces
Culture as something deeply shaped by place — one Toronto participant noted how the reopening of a local venue completely shifted their neighborhood's cultural dynamics
Cultural Technology: Beyond the Digital
When we turned to "cultural technology," the conversation opened up fascinating territory. We explored how this concept encompasses far more than digital tools:
Digital Cultural Technologies include platforms like WhatsApp that shape how we communicate and collaborate, but also the collaborative tools that enable distributed cultural work.
Analog Cultural Technologies are equally vital — archives, museums, and traditional practices that shape cultural formation and national consciousness. These "technologies" of cultural transmission have been with us far longer than computers.
One participant introduced a compelling framework: the distinction between holistic and prescriptivetechnologies. Cultural technology, they suggested, involves moving elements from the prescriptive domain (rigid, extractive) into the holistic domain (adaptive, generative).
This led us into nuanced territory around art, propaganda, and cultural influence — recognizing that the line between cultural technology and cultural manipulation isn't always clear, making our critical engagement with these tools all the more important.
The CTL Framework in Action
For newcomers to our network, we reviewed the Cultural Technologies Lab's three core pillars:
Cultural R&D — Documenting and developing localized approaches to cultural production
Public Imagination — Supporting cultural practitioners in addressing uncertainty and volatility
Translocal Strategy — Building networks that facilitate knowledge exchange and adaptation to environmental and political changes
What excites us is seeing how these pillars came alive in our conversation. Participants naturally began identifying cultural technologies in their own communities and considering how translocal connections could strengthen local cultural work.
Moving Toward Distributed Leadership
One of the most significant outcomes of our session was the decision to evolve from a centrally-organized model toward more participant-driven conversations. Rather than UKAI Projects setting the agenda, we're encouraging members to host discussions within their areas of expertise and interest.
This feels aligned with our broader mission of supporting distributed cultural systems — we want to practice what we're researching.
What's Next
Here's how you can engage with CTL moving forward:
Join Our Signal Group
We're transitioning our community conversations to Signal for more intimate discussion. If you'd like to join, simply email us with your Signal username and we'll add you to the group.
Host a Conversation
Have expertise or burning questions around cultural technologies? We'd love for you to lead a discussion. Topics we're already excited about include:
Methods for creating distributed cultural systems
Cultural technologies in specific sectors (policy, arts, community organizing)
Case studies of successful translocal cultural networks
The role of physical spaces in cultural technology
Toronto Meetups
For our Toronto-based community members, we're exploring InterAccess as a potential venue for in-person gatherings. Stay tuned for details.
Share Resources and Ideas
In response to the growing interest in domain-specific themes and discussions, we will be scheduling skill-sharing sessions covering the basics of planning an online event and facilitating a small-group conversation that can be adapted to other realms of community organizing beyond our meetups. Send us an email if you are interested in attending one, or volunteer as an instructor to lead one.
Thank you to everyone who joined our first set of conversations. We're excited to see where our distributed leadership model takes us next.
Cultural Technologies Lab: Notes Toward a Growing Network
The Cultural Technologies Lab is an evolving, collaborative infrastructure. We are actively seeking artists, cultural practitioners, organizers, and researchers interested in shaping this network—whether through gatherings, writing, prototyping, or simply staying in conversation.
Our latest conversation, led by Luisa Ji and Benjamin Lappalainen, within the Cultural Technologies Lab continued to shape how this network might evolve—as a space for cultural research, public imagination, and collective strategies that move across place.
Rather than becoming a centralized institution, the Lab is interested in operating as a trust-based scaffolding for artists and cultural practitioners to share credibility, build connected networks, and co-develop approaches to pressing cultural and ecological questions.
This gathering surfaced several areas of shared interest that could shape the Lab’s next phase:
Areas of Focus
Translocal Infrastructure
How do we build support systems that move laterally between communities—across cities, islands, and continents—without relying on institutional pipelines? How can gatherings, residencies, and artist-led exchanges function as connective tissue?Trust and Credibility
What does it mean to steward a Local Lab? Can shared language and framing offer Local Labs visibility and legitimacy for their work, while staying rooted in mutual alignment and care?Reimagining Artist Resourcing
Beyond grants and foundations, what alternative funding models—formal or informal—can sustain artistic practices without compromising values? What happens when resourcing is relational, not transactional?Art as Social Infrastructure
How might practices at the intersection of AI, climate, and collective solutioning offer not just critique, but tools for orientation? Can the Lab function as a space for prototyping these tools?
What’s Next
Participants are exploring:
Co-developing with founding Local Labs: upcoming gatherings, proposals, and public projects
Supporting KL Local Lab in Malaysia: AI KE US
Ongoing conversations on governance and resource stewardship
Introducing new collaborators across Southeast Asia and beyond
Inviting contributors to establish and grow an open repository of practices, reflections, and templates for others to use and adapt to their local and cultural contexts
Open Invitation
The Cultural Technologies Lab is an evolving, collaborative infrastructure. We are actively seeking artists, organizers, and researchers interested in shaping this network—whether through gatherings, writing, prototyping, or simply staying in conversation.
If you see alignment, join us for our next gathering.