Friction As Freedom: Why We Build Cyberdecks

How does friction change the way we relate to our technologies? Is your technology working for you, or are you working for it? What would it mean to build a relationship with technology based on agency rather than dependence? Friction as Freedom explores the cyberdeck as a space for play, experimentation, and building. It is a deliberately imperfect and modifiable machine that invites us to participate in the technology we use rather than simply consume. In building these strange, personal machines, we reclaim something that increasingly disappears from our technological lives, and that is the freedom to tinker, to fail, to make, and to imagine our own emergent futures. Along the way, we'll explore the current state of our technological kinship, our digital bodies, and computation as a form of creative community, while discovering pathways toward sustainable, emergent technological futures that we build on our own terms. We'll ask: Where do the boundaries between body, machine, and network reside? Who owns the infrastructures we depend on? What happens when technology becomes a creative material rather than a service? And who gets to build the future? LIVE DEMONSTRATION Riya Chhikara will bring the ideas into physical reality with a live demonstration of a cyberdeck, its components, architecture, interface, and possibilities as a personal technological environment. ABOUT THE HOSTS: Ana Roman is a multidisciplinary creative technologist, workshop facilitator, and Sonic Arts teaching artist whose work sits at the intersection of generative arts, sonic cyberfeminism, and algorithmic bias. Their critical practice investigates the complex relationships between gender and technology, with particular focus on Empathetic AI, avatarization, data rights, and the transformative impact of AI on human identity. Ana has presented workshop performances and lectures at leading institutions including MIT Media Lab, NYU Tandon, NYU Clive Davis Institute, NYU ITP, Columbia University, California Polytechnic State University, and Berklee College of Music. As an active electronic music producer and DJ (Sonar Festival, Refraction Festival, DJ Magazine, Mix Mag), Ana continues to advance research in technological democratization and musictechnology innovation, most recently through the ongoing projects at Bogota Experimental Film Festival (Cinematic Bogota), and Creative Code Art NYC. SOCIALS: Insta LinkedIn Riya Chhikara is a social scientist turned data scientist, educator and creative technologist. Her path into technology began with a curiosity about how it shapes people’s lives, and grew into a passion for helping others understand, question and build it for themselves. She has taught at the Data Science Institute at the London School of Economics and now teaches robotics at the Ignite Hubs. Her work moves between data science, creative coding, robotics, cyberdecks and DIY electronics, but the idea behind it stays the same: technology should feel open, playful and possible. Through teaching and hands-on making, she encourages people to take things apart, experiment freely and learn without gatekeeping. SOCIALS: Insta LinkedIn