Why did you apply to HASTAC?
I applied to HASTAC because I wanted to be connected with an academic community that overlapped with my own research interests and to enrich my own understanding of the dialogue among media arts, technology, and the humanities. As a first-year Cinema and Media Master’s student at UCLA, I wanted to expand my knowledge beyond my discipline and learn about how other scholars are approaching science and technology studies while having opportunities to collaborate.
The program’s cross-disciplinary approach is something that complimented my own research interests in affective interfaces, interactivity, human-machine interactions, the digital body, and biometrics. With HASTAC’s support, I aim to explore how biometrics are digitized, datafied, and dissolved of privacy by machine learning using a Science and Technology Studies lens. I work across disciplines, including new media studies, film studies, computational theory and cultures, and critical health studies to explore the relationship among the body, science, and technology.
Interested in the dialogue overlapping among software/interface studies, computational theory and cultures, and experimental media art, I am inspired by the idea of playfulness as a form of resistance against and within the structures of cybermasculinity and Silicon Valley habitus. I also hope to weave practice into my work using virtual reality (VR), code, and games to create and question digital representations of the body. My current work draws from critical code studies, film studies, and affect theory to critically engage with biometric software to demonstrate how the face and its affect is datafied – captured, quantified, and commodified – when technology companies collect user biometrics for machine learning, subjecting the face to (techno)surveillance capitalism. Using users’ faces converts the privacy of affective experience into a public commodity to be standardized, in which affect becomes dynamically intertwined with the interface, exposing the face to digital surveillance occurring behind and beyond the screen. I read code, specifically p5.js, as text to understand how interfaces function to collect biometric data.
What has been your favorite course so far as an instructor or student? Why?
My favorite course has been “Theory and the Affective Turn” taught by Dr. Kathleen McHugh at UCLA. The readings and class discussions were transformative to my understanding of how valuable affect can be in prioritizing the body. Forming and shaping identity and subjectivity, affect allows the body to engage with digital information from the screen, such as in experimental media artworks. Delving into works such as Patricia Clough’s The Affective Turn: Theorizing the Social and Mark B.N. Hansen’s “Affect as Medium, or the ‘Digital-Facial-Image’” formed the foundations of my interest in affective interfaces and biomedia.
What do you want to do after you graduate?
I want to continue in academia as a professor to further develop my research as technology, especially artificial intelligence and machine learning, are constantly evolving and advancing. As a result, the ways we understand our bodies are shaped through these evolutions, which makes me excited to continue my work. Having a space to conduct research, be in dialogue with other scholars, and become involved in academic labs that prioritize a humanistic approach to technology would allow me to forge critical engagement with and a deeper understanding of interactive media.
What’s something that people would be surprised to know about you?
Something that commonly surprises people is my B.S. in Biology I received from Loyola Marymount University. I have always been passionate about studying the body, where Biology allowed me to view it through its mechanics and systems, such as the chemical reactions and organelle transports. I eventually found myself wanting to understand the body beyond the structured, idealized scientific/medical objectivity, exploring embodiment to approach subjectivity and the boundaries of the body. Inspired by Lorraine Daston and Peter Galison’s Objectivity, I still appreciate my Biology background as I seek to continue focusing on human-machine relations and critically engaging with biometrics and biotechnology.
What are some things that you wish you had known before you got into graduate school?
Something I personally wish I knew before was how important it is to have a good support system. Graduate school is a new experience for me and it took a lot of time for me to get adjusted to the differences between the dynamics of being an undergraduate versus a graduate student. Compared to my undergraduate experience, graduate school allows me to develop my critical engagement with my interdisciplinary work, rather than pushing memorization and lectures. I quickly learned that being a graduate student means more independence in academics. Not only are my family and friends a lifeline for me, but I have also found that my professors are a great support system, especially in guiding the tricky terrains of academia. They have helped me cultivate my research interests, recommended useful resources and fellowships, and offer valuable insights into my field and academia as a whole.
How do you envision HASTAC and higher education in 10 years? Where do you fit in?
In the future, continuing to encourage cross-disciplinary work within HASTAC can provide ways to understand how to address and tackle advancing Silicon Valley technology that are used as tools for discrimination. Having HASTAC continue supporting multifaceted scholars can contribute to transforming traditional academic culture that is more inclusive and accessible. Instead of complying with standards – ranging from the technology industry to academia – the future can consist of scholars who are unafraid to go against the grain and be dedicated to expanding and exploring boundaries, such as cross-disciplinary work that pushes definitions. I hope to contribute to this future by providing perspectives in my research and pedagogy as a first-generation Burmese-American scholar in a white-dominated field.
How does digital scholarship fit into your research or teaching?
Because my research centers on the digital body, I study interfaces ranging from biometric software to experimental media artwork to cyberfeminist games. I draw from interface studies, software studies, critical code studies, computer theory and cultures, and human-computer interaction.
A current project seeks to analyze how Linda Dement’s experimental media artwork Cyberflesh Girlmonster (1995) reconfigures objectification as interaction and does so through playfulness integrated within its interactive interface and lack of structure. In this project, I argue that the act of clicking, or “touching,” creates an embodied, situated knowledge that transcends multiple binaries: gender, code, and human-machine relations.
What do you hope to accomplish with your research or teaching?
Through my research, I seek to demonstrate how biometric technology can be used as a tool of datafication and discrimination, where the body – with focus on the face – is standardized by technologists for profit and/or surveillance. I hope to be able to reimagine engagement with technology through playfulness, where the freedom to explore is fostered and is able to present and reconfigure the cybermasculine structures of technology and Silicon Valley culture. With my teaching, I aim to establish a pedagogy that encourages students to critically engage with everyday technology that shapes and influences how they understand their own body and identity as a user.
What are you currently reading, watching, or listening to?
I’m currently reading Wendy Chun’s Updating to Remain the Same. Her previous work has been highly valuable to my research. This book investigates how users become the machines we use as our habitual use of digital media and their networks become embedded within us. I’m interested in informatics and systems and how they shape our embodied experience of using technology, so this has been a very fascinating read. Also, I am listening to the album Fever to Tell by Yeah Yeah Yeahs and rewatching Veep!
My twitter handle: @kylayein