In Conversation with the NFF Fellows: Radical Data

Every year, three artists work on their own innovative research at the intersection of technology and society in the NFF Fellowships Programme. In this special programme, everything is up for discussion: the questions being asked, the methods used, even the outcomes are not fixed. To give insight into their work forms, dilemmas, and motivations, Paulien Dresscher, curator of the programme and researcher in the field of digital culture, engages in conversation with the Fellows.

The third set of Fellows in this series - and the closing of the year- is Radical Data, with Jo Kroese and Rayen Mitrovich.

Fellows 2024-2025
Part 3: Radical Data

Applied Science Fiction

For Radical Data, the artist and design collective of Jo Kroese and Rayen Mitrovich, this statement forms the starting point of their work. With their research entitled Applied Science Fiction, they are searching not just for ‘fixing tech’, but for ways to spark political imagination - building alternative futures, stories, and possibilities. It's a reaction to our collective difficulty imagining alternatives.

In their search for alternative stories with and about technology, they want to bypass the standard responses: they refuse both the simplistic utopias that claim technology will save us and the dystopian Black Mirror–like narratives. Instead, they actively build new pathways in which the human scale once again becomes the starting point for the technology we use:

“We want to bring the social back into tech — and not in the way our so-called ‘socials’ do, but by engaging in conversation with people who are normally not heard in the development of new forms of technology: young and old, highly and less formally educated, from Barcelona, Chile, or simply Utrecht.”

Radical Data was founded in 2019 by Jo Kroese, a mathematician, technologist and specialist in science communication, and Rayen Mitrovich, a dancer, designer and community worker. What they share is a background in documentary film and a love for collaborating on new stories.

But let’s start at the beginning. What exactly is the problem with our technology, and why are new stories needed?

The Promise of Silicon Valley

In the early years of the internet, innovation from Silicon Valley was always warmly welcomed. The region was seen by many as the cradle of positive progress. With great enthusiasm, tools and apps that made our lives easier were embraced: the WhatsApp group where we shared holiday photos, Google Drive for class lists, an Instagram account to promote our products, and the Facebook groups where cat videos were collected — to name just a few examples.

Gradually, however, it became clear that these technologies — and the financiers and makers behind them — are anything but neutral, as Jo and Rayen explain:

“With many of these tools, we — the users — are the business model, and our data is the raw material. At the same time, there are few alternatives. Due to the great trust in free-market principles, monopolies have arisen, dominated by a handful of large US American companies such as Meta and Microsoft.”

The Netherlands — its citizens, governments, businesses, and educational institutions — has also collectively fallen under the grip of these companies, both literally and figuratively.

Beyond the problems caused by monopoly, these companies are tied to political interests, economic systems, power structures, and colonial exploitation. For example, Google supplies technology for Lavender, an AI system used by Israel to designate targets in Gaza. On Spotify, we unwittingly listen to fake bands such as The Velvet Sundown. The Russian Orthodox Church runs online disinformation campaigns against the Dutch Spring Feelings week. Meanwhile, the minerals for our smartphones are mined by children risking their lives in Congolese cobalt and coltan mines, and our data centers consume vast amounts of water and energy, leaving behind a massive ecological footprint.

And the bitter irony is: you, the user, are right in the middle of it but have almost no control. Withdrawing from these systems often means social and societal exclusion, and alternatives are scarce at best. That realisation is sobering.

So, are we all trapped in this system? Is there really no way out?

According to Radical Data, there are alternatives, but most are still in their infancy, and much work remains to be done.

“That work does have a technical side, which involves exploring alternative environments and new tools. But the core of it is everything else: how it engages with everything around it, how it is depending on mindsets and insights”.

Radical Data helps to tell different stories about technology, moving beyond utopia and dystopia. Stories that bring people together by sharing experiences and conversations about possible new worlds. Stories that intervene in the very nature of technology, shifting its focus and purpose.

Radical Data is committed to putting public values such as sustainability, equality, democracy and privacy — which have become subordinate to the profit maximisation of free-market efficiency and power concentration — back at the centre of technology. Their credo is: “claiming data for joy and a million liberations.” Power to the people, in other words.

“Technology should be a tool for ordinary people, for a better and fairer world.”

The Methods of Applied Science Fiction

With their research Applied Science Fiction, Rayen and Jo have developed their methods into three interconnected parts.

The first part is about sparking change by deploying imagination and exploring other ways of living, with different technologies. On the one hand, this has meant conducting video interviews with leading figures in the field, such as Eden Medina, who has researched Project Cybersyn — an ambitious state project in Chile under President Salvador Allende. Cybersyn was seen as an alternative to capitalist market mechanisms and Soviet-style bureaucracy, with emphasis on participation and transparency.

On the other hand, they want to generate among the people they work with a sense of possibility: what are the alternatives to Big Tech? How might we organise our digital environment differently? What do we actually need?

The second part of Applied Science Fiction concerns systems thinking. Radical Data analyses how technology is embedded within all our networks — how it impacts them, but also how it is shaped by them. Systems here include not only the internet itself, but also social media platforms. Other social systems include origin, class and colonial heritage, which all hold important connections with technology. Consider the ‘digital divide’, in which not everyone has a (fast) internet connection, or must make do with older second-hand laptops, leading to unequal opportunities in work, education and access to information. Or the raw materials, such as lithium and cobalt, mined under inhumane conditions in Africa to produce our smartphones. Or, for example, India or Gaza, where for political reasons parts of, or even the entire, internet is shut down.

The third part of the research is about co-creation — creating spaces in which they work with people who normally have no voice in discussions about technology. Radical Data invites them to explore together which tools and systems they actually need. This part is particularly visible in the workshops they run.

The Single Technical Object

A characteristic of Radical Data’s approach is that it is never only about the single technical object. This term, made known by the French philosopher Gilbert Simondon, described the relationship between technology and culture in the late twentieth century. Technology, in his view, could not be reduced to a set of separate components, but rather formed a coherent whole, with its own logic and functioning.

For Radical Data, this means that when working with technology, coding is only a small part of the picture. “Technology, beyond coding, is about monopolies, systems, people, laws, and environments.”

Radical Data is not alone in this line of thinking. A growing group of voices is emerging in the debate on the ramifications of the technologies we have become so dependent upon.

For example, Meredith Whittaker, CEO of Signal — the popular alternative to Meta’s WhatsApp — wrote Origin Stories: Plantations, Computers and Industrial Control. In this article, she traces the roots of modern digital technology back to nineteenth-century plantations and shows how similar mechanisms go wrong in the present. Or artist Vladan Joler, who together with Kate Crawford created The Anatomy of an AI System, a map that lays out the full life cycle of Amazon’s Echo device. It demonstrates how AI is not only about data and algorithms but also involves a network of social, ecological, and political relations. Likewise, Maria Farrell, together with Robin Berjon, wrote We Must Rewild the Internet, pushing back against the monoculture of Big Tech and advocating for online diversity. Closer to home, Utrecht-based philosopher and researcher Siri Berends focuses on the human scale within technology.

The Workshops

One of the themes worked on in workshop form is the mesh network. A mesh network is an alternative to the centralised communication systems of Big Tech. Whereas traditional networks often rely on central nodes — servers or data centres managed by companies like Google, Meta or Amazon — a mesh network operates in a decentralised way. Each device in the network functions as a node that can send, receive, and forward data. This creates a dynamic web of connections that does not depend on any single central authority: it represents a fundamentally different model of network organisation.

A mesh network is all about decentralisation and ownership. It restores a degree of control and autonomy to users. Instead of being passive consumers of digital services, people in a mesh network can actively contribute to a collective digital infrastructure. And this is crucial at a time when questions of digital sovereignty, privacy, and democratic control are increasingly under pressure. Another key advantage of a mesh is that it lies beyond the reach of AI. In a world where AI exerts its influence everywhere, having a space where humans are at the centre is invaluable.

With the communities Radical Data collaborates with, they want to generate new perspectives on the future. “With our work, we want to change the world in playful and creative ways. We believe when people are given the space to imagine alternative possible worlds, the world itself can suddenly look entirely different.”

In the workshops they organise, they do not only work with young people but also often with older people who have little or no experience with technology. This too generates valuable stories, as Jo explains: “Recently, a participant told us that when she got home, she had a conversation with her grandson — to his amazement — about the ideal AI she had designed. These kinds of conversations not only contribute to reclaiming the idea of technology, but also to creating new family dynamics, and to the emancipation of an older generation.”

Life and Work

For Radical Data, life and work are one and the same:

“How we live and what we do together form the life we are building. We live with Radical Data: Often instead of just holidaying to a place, we do projects on location. We like to connect with neighbourhood organisations, and if we go to Barcelona, it is not just for the beach, but also to be together with people. It is inseparable. We are giving birth to something that is crystallising further and further. We want to let Radical Data grow, beyond ourselves. Others are welcome to become part of this whole, to have a greater impact in the world. We initiate projects where new strong people step in, who recognise the ambition. We follow desire, and give space to imagination, practice, and life together. We have learnt to trust that path.”

Applied Science Fiction, then — collectively imagining possible new futures — is a daily practice for Radical Data. Bit by bit, they are building new stories for a new world where technology is fairer, more equitably distributed, and serves us, rather than the other way around.

Written by Paulien Dresscher