Concept
Deep Lab is a women's collective group composed of artists, researchers, writers, engineers, and cultural producers. These women are involved in critical assessments of contemporary digital culture and, together, work to exploit the potential for creative inquiry lying dormant in the deep web. Outside of Deep Lab, the members engage in activities that range from magazine editing, journalism, various forms of activism, and teaching. 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. Deep Lab draws influence from Experiments in Art and Technology (E.A.T.), Cypherpunks, Guerrilla Girls, Free Art and Technology Lab (F.A.T.), Chaos Computer Club, and Radical Software. The Deep Lab collective was created "Because we wanted to be together. Because the original computers were women. Because it can't not. Because we are stronger as a pack. Because I’m trying to stay connected to the self. Because sharing is caring. Because we want to dig deeper. Because girls just wanna have fun. Because you shouldn't have to ask for permission." 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 beginning of Deep Lab were organized by Abbie Wagenknecht who was a fellow at Studio through a grant from The Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts with the idea of examining how themes of privacy, security, surveillance, anonymity, and large-scale data aggregation are problematized in the arts, culture, and society. 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.