Pip is a Chancellor’s Fellow in Geosciences at the University of Edinburgh, and a Research Fellow on the AHRC funded Bridging Responsible AI Divides (BRAID) program where she leads the Writing the Wrongs of AI project. With an academic background in English Literature, Geopolitics and Cybersecurity, and previous careers in the police and the military, her theory and practice explore the changing value of language in (post)digital spaces, critiquing and making visible structures of power within the digital economy with creative methods. Her thesis, Language in the Age of Algorithmic Reproduction: A Critique of Linguistic Capitalism, put forward a theoretical, political and creative critique of Google’s search and advertising platforms, and included an artistic intervention into Google’s monetisation of language called {poem}.py. Her artistic intervention ‘Newspeak’ which critiques the commodification of language by Google’s search and advertising platforms, first shown at the Edinburgh Fringe in 2019, was shortlisted for the 2020 Lumen Prize for Art and Technology and was awarded an honourable mention in the Surveillance Studies Network Biennial Art Competition (2020). Pip’s work has featured on BBC Radio 4’s Word of Mouth with Michael Rosen, at the Edinburgh International Book Festival, the Wigtown Book Festival, the Edinburgh Fringe, in WIRED UK, New Scientist, and at the Open Data Institute in London.
Pip Thornton 