Neta Bomani is a worker who engages in social practices like oral history and direct action through organizing and making archives, writings, prints, zines, computational objects and workshops. Ritu Ghiya is an artist who works as a designer and web developer. Her digital works involve retrieving and archiving personal and collective ephemera – in an attempt to channel the serendipity of the offline world. We interviewed Ritu and Neta together because they recently collaborated on the website “Mask On Zone,” a mostly text-based protest guide focused around anti-surveillance.

How can we co-opt digital tools to build a more beautiful future? In the spring of 2020—amidst a global pandemic, economic depression, and transformational movement for racial equity—we talked to artists and activists about tech’s potential to help reinvent our shared realities. Published by Pioneer Works Press in collaboration with The Creative Independent and Are.na, Software for Artists Book: Building Better Realities is edited by Willa Köerner, and features contributions from Salome Asega, Stephanie Dinkins, Grayson Earle, ann haeyoung, Rindon Johnson, Ryan Kuo, and Tsige Tafesse—plus 47 Digital Diary entries from our community. This item is publicly available as part of ...