Abhiram Jois
Manic mediocre maker and alliteration admirer working as a creative technologist inspired by anything creative and anything technology. My practice lies in working with communities to make, break, use, question, critique and create with technology.
Manic mediocre maker and alliteration admirer working as a creative technologist inspired by anything creative and anything technology. My practice lies in working with communities to make, break, use, question, critique and create with technology. You can find me in the red of CLI error logs, the dark blue of hyperlinks, the brown of sticks and sand that children carve smiley faces on, in blinking cursors and blinking eyes, in settings icons and setting suns, in homepages and homes and pages, in loops that load and loops that entangle. I have a background in human centred design and theatre although sometimes trend to lose myself in the background.
On learning
Technology often imposes itself on people and places. How can we reimagine technologies that don't substitute or threaten? Is the digital a place? What does it mean for the people who don't belong to the digital? Can people and places exist in the digital beyond being data points?
Situated Practice
My practice in Kundapura, Bidar and Channapatna has always been to engage with people using technology as an artefact rather than a solution. My practice involves critical making as a way to demonstrate, engage and collaborate with people in the place. Rapid prototyping, tinkering on field with people, designing and making archives, tools, stories with people.
Place-based Engagements
I work mainly in Kundapura on Samagra Arogya. Under Samagra Arogya I have worked with children in a tribal hamlet called Hara to build a community mesh network. Additionally I work with gram panchayats, public health centres, front line health workers, care team to codesign and support the data and decision making layer for a home based community palliative care program. I have also worked in Bidar on an engagement called local techno futures which reimagines technology with local artisans. My enquiry was in speculating alternate futures with a Kambli weaver exploring ideas of memory and objects that hold memory.
Courses
Past
Data Politics
Learning Module: Primers Abstract / Short description: Understanding data practices and how it affects communities? How is data/knowledge/media/archives built and maintained in communities? Tangible media/data as ownership? Ethics, governance and ownership. Concentration: Reimagining Technology Learning Mode: Baithak, Learning with Materials (from the place), Public Engagement Micro-Context: Ancient Stone Inscriptions of Bidar, Citizen Curators (Local Collectors), Dakkhani Art & Literature, Khat
- Schools For Concentration: Reimagining Technology
- Micro-Context: Ancient Stone Inscriptions Of Bidar
- Micro-Context: Citizen Curators Local Collectors
- +4 More Micro-Context
Past
Mapping Community Systems of Wellbeing
A Geo-spatial mapping of formal & informal systems of community health and wellbeing, annotated with stories of lived experiences that highlight the practices of negotiation & navigation
- Schools For Concentration: Community Wellbeing
- Micro-Context: Tribal Settlements
- Micro-Context: Agrarian Practices
- Learning Module: Workshop
- Trimester: 01
Past
Community Health Systems
Introduces the formal & informal health systems that exist in Kundapura and Bidar (as specific cases), and how people navigate across these systems to manage their health and wellbeing
- Schools For Concentration: Community Wellbeing
- Micro-Context: Asha Workers
- Micro-Context: Community Based Healthcare Practices
- +1 More Micro-Context
- Place: Kundapura
- Place: Yelahanka
- Learning Module: Primer
- Trimester: 01
Past
Panchayats & Participatory Futures: Local Self-Governance & Water in Aluru
8 – 11 Mar 2026
How does a Gram Panchayat - the fundamental unit of democratic self-governance, and closest to the people - plan, build, maintain and sustain infrastructures of and for its public?
- Schools For Concentration: Community Wellbeing
- Micro-Context: Tribal Settlements
- Learning Module: Make-a-thon
- Trimester: 03
Past
Artefact as Method
6 – 31 Oct 2025
Learning to intently engage to understand the relational changes occuring in a place using artefact as a method to question, critique, imagine alternates and learn.
- Schools For Concentration: Reimagining Technology
- Micro-Context: Yelahanka
- Learning Module: Primer
- Trimester: 02