Deep Lab

The collective's research spans a variety of topics including privacy, code, surveillance, art, social hacking, capitalism, race, anonymity, 21st century infrastructures, and practical skills for real-world applications.

"[3] In 2014, the collective gathered at the Frank-Ratchye Studio for Creative Inquiry at Carnegie Mellon University and published a compilation of reflections on digital culture, the post-Snowden Internet, and cyber-feminism called Deep Lab.

The key issues that Deep Lab is seeking to address is the discrimination towards marginalized people at the hands of “corporate dominance, data mining, government surveillance, and a male-dominated tech field.”[5] The collective has noted that internet privacy has different meanings to men and women, citing the exposure of female celebrities’ nude images, and claims that big business doesn’t have an interest in making privacy easy for women as it doesn’t help their profit margins.

Other essays in the manifesto include one by Denise Caruso on privacy, how corporations are leeching data off of consumers in attempted to make as much money off the human being as possible, and how Deep Lab is teaching those who will listen how to fight these parasites.

Speakers in the series included Maddy Varner, Lorrie Faith Cranor, Maral Pourkazemi, Jen Lowe, Harlo Holmes, Ingrid Burrington, Allison Burtch, Addie Wagenknecht, and Denise Caruso.

In May 2015, Deep Lab was invited to NEW INC at New Museum for a week-long residency for the women of the collective to continue their initial work with privacy, security, surveillance, anonymity, and data aggregation as well as how those themes tie into The Invisible City.

In addition, panels and discussions were held surrounding topics such as “Surveillant Anxiety,” “Data and Social Justice,” “Pipelines to Tech Empowerment,” and “How to PGP in 10 minutes or less.” At the end of the residency, Deep Lab produced and open-source toolkit about what was discovered in IDEAS CITY so it would reach a larger audience.