From vigilance to vigil: an introduction to an alternative paradigm for technology, art, and life

Main Article Content

Matheus da Rocha Montanari
Universidade de São Paulo, Escola de Comunicações e Artes
http://orcid.org/0000-0001-9693-9044
Gilbertto Prado
Universidade de São Paulo; Universidade Anhembi Morumbi
https://orcid.org/0000-0003-2252-3489

Abstract

In the context of datafication, the ways we relate to digital data and the world are based on vigilance. The production, usage, and analysis of data technology are gaining territory and power, while we are becoming aware of its dangerous vigilant behavior. Unsurprisingly, the ones outside hegemonic contexts are the most affected by this behavior. Nonetheless, we cannot simply deny this type of technology, we need to deeply rethink it. Being so, we resort to Amerindian philosophy, and its relation with plants to indicate different cosmotechnics as useful resources to review the current vigilance paradigm.  We show resonances of this thought in Latin American and Indigenous bio-art works, as well in the initiative of a Guarani-Kaiowá Virtual Museum. Thus, pointing out possibilities to develop a different relationship with data and technology which replaces a vigilance paradigm with one of vigil, or care.

Keywords: Vigilance, Vigil, Cosmotechnics, Technodiversity, Data, Bio-art, Non-human, Amerindian philosophy

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