February 2, 2024

Seeking Applications for Data Trustee for pilot project with Serpentine Arts Technologies

Serpentine, in affiliation with the Centre for Data Futures at King’s College London, is currently seeking applications for a Data Trustee who will participate in an experimental project to use participatory governance to collect a vocal dataset of UK choirs as part of an upcoming Serpentine exhibition with artists Holly Herndon and Mat Dryhurst. In affiliation with the new Center for Data Futures, we aim for this trustee to become part of a first-of-its-kind training programme for data empowerment initiatives. Please email a CV and a short statement of interest to [email protected] with ‘Data Trustee’ in the subject line when applying.

Who is a Data Trustee?

In a world where people often struggle to come to grips with the data they ‘leak’ on a daily basis, we need new kinds of bottom-up, collective data empowerment organisations that steward data on behalf of others, often towards public, educational or charitable aims. These bottom-up empowerment structures can allow otherwise disenfranchised groups of people to acquire a voice when it comes to how their data should be collected and shared. A key role in this ecosystem is the ‘trusted data intermediary’ or in the case of a data trust, a Data Trustee. They act as a professional, independent party who learns and then advocates for the data subjects’ interests and aspirations on a dynamic basis. They can also monitor data-sharing agreements.

Who should apply?

Data trustees can come from any number of backgrounds, for instance, law, humanities, sociology, data science, etc. Those applying for this Data Trustee role should demonstrate:

• interest in forming new data institutions and attendant ethical, social, and organisational aspects,
• interest in developing practical processes for gathering and negotiating data empowerment within a live project,
• experience with participatory processes; they should have experience working with various stakeholders to facilitate decision-making and arrive at collective agreements,
• good administrative and communication skills as they will be the public point person for the data trust,
• they are based in the UK or can travel to the UK during Phase 1 (see timeline below)

What’s the project?

In October 2024, Holly Herndon and Mat Dryhurst will present a new project and exhibition at Serpentine. The project will center on the participatory collection of choral singing data and the training of a machine learning model using that vocal dataset. This project will not only result in new sonic artwork but also a set of open protocols for the recording and training of vocal data, especially for machine learning.

Serpentine and the artists have selected approximately 20 choirs located across the UK, from the South West to Northern Ireland and Scotland. Each choir will be encouraged to engage in meaningful discussions about how their data is used during an initial consultation period. Following this, a framework for the governance of the data will be established and administered according to their wishes.

This project envisages the public art institution (in this case, Serpentine) as a laboratory for the development of new technologies and their governance systems.

How will this role be supported?

Serpentine will initially hire the Data Trustee to support the bottom-up governance of a new dataset. However, the aim is for this role and the knowledge gained through this process to become part of the Centre for Data Futures at King’s College London where they will be a part of a community of researchers and scholars working on training a new generation of participatory data experts. In the interim, as this project is being developed, the Data Trustee will be supervised by a team of experts including Sylvie Delacroix, the Jeff Price Chair in Digital Law at The Dickson Poon School of Law, who heads the Centre and Matt Prewitt, President of RadicalxChange Foundation.

The Serpentine Arts Technologies department will also support the Data Trustee. The trustee will work with their team in Phase 1 of the project to bring together the data subjects for collective deliberation and workshopping concerning the formation of the data organisation.