What it Means to Build the Architecture of Resilience

What does it mean to build and inhabit networks that hold up under pressure — not just technically, but culturally and creatively? This was one of the animating questions of the DWeb for Creators course, a multi-week workshop from Gray Area and sponsored by Filecoin Foundation for the Decentralized Web (FFDW), led by artists, organizers, and technologists working at the intersection of decentralized technologies and cultural production. Designed for creatives of all kinds, the course introduced students to the possibilities of decentralized tools, platforms, and protocols.

In this conversation, the course instructors reflect on what it means to construct an “architecture of resilience” — not just in terms of infrastructure, but in terms of imagination. Their answers underscore a shared belief: the decentralized web offers blueprints for systems rooted in solidarity, sovereignty, and care. Artists bring not only a stake in this reimagined architecture, but the vision and urgency to shape it.

What does an architecture of resilience mean for you?

mai: In the context of distributed web technologies, it means the construction of digital spaces that enable people to respond and recover from obstacles and crises. Networked technologies can enable dialogue within and between communities, and disseminate information about the challenges that we face and how to deal with them. Yet the corporate, monopolistic platforms that dominate the internet are failing at serving these basic civic functions. If we approach the DWeb as a means to make our societies resilient against current crises, it would necessitate bottom-up, democratic, solidarity-based systems of governance over the design and stewardship of network infrastructure, in order for us to be able to confront global challenges.

In what ways do decentralized technologies empower creativity, especially for underrepresented or independent creators?

ngọc: First off — data ownership. For the first time, creators can actually own their work and still be able to share it with a global audience. In a world much dominated by surveillance, extraction, and corporate control, the DWeb opens space for radical alternatives: autonomy, justice, and collective power. Tools like Distributed Press allow independent and historically marginalized creators to publish without censorship, to speak without fear, and to build without compromises. They can also receive direct support from their communities — no middlemen, no cuts, no commission fees. They are free to build communities rooted in solidarity, care, and mutual benefits. In a way, decentralization is more than just a shift in technology; it is a practice of liberation.

How are decentralized technologies intersecting with creative fields to cultivate an architecture of resilience?

Sarah G: My creative practice integrates decentralized technologies as both medium and methodology. An ongoing example of this approach is Futura Trōpica, in collaboration with Juan Pablo García Sossa. It is an intertropical network connecting communities from around the tropics via the IPFS protocol. This system enables lateral knowledge exchange outside conventional North-to-South hierarchies. Rather than relying on centralized platforms, this work creates resilience through distributed architecture, transforming traditional audience relationships into participatory ecosystems where communities collectively steward their cultural resources on their own terms.

Ayana: Equitable Internet Initiative (EII) is a group in Detroit building its own wireless networks to prevent the creation of a digital class system. Taeyoon Choi explores infrastructure and equity through participatory performances happening on top of what they’ve coined, The Distributed Web of Care. Through their project Forkonomy(), artists Tzu Tung Lee and Winnie Soon are using decentralized technologies to address questions around collaboration, land, and ownership. Considered together, these projects demonstrate that cultivating an architecture of resilience not only requires tools and technology, but also a mindset shift toward reclaiming our agency and power. These artists and organizers remind us that an architecture of resilience is first cultivated inside our own imaginations.

Reflecting on the DWeb for Creators course, what lessons did you most hope students would take away? And what insights did you leave with yourself?

Sarah F: I hope students develop a nuanced and thoughtful perspective on decentralization. We tried to design the curriculum to contain both optimism and pragmatic conversations about limitations. There are many possibilities on offer with decentralized tech, but new tools also come with new problems, both social and technical. Personally, I was excited to see the range of student projects and so much enthusiastic participation throughout the course. I think building a sense of agency is one of the most useful things you can do as a tech educator, and I hope students find ways to keep engaging with the tools and protocols discussed in class going forward.

mai: The main lesson I hope students take away from the course is that artists and cultural workers have always pushed the boundaries of network technologies. There are the companies, state institutions, and NGOs that fund, design, and build the internet’s infrastructures with their respective motivations. But artists see beyond what is expected of us all as “users” and expand what’s possible. We cover many of those experiments that have taken place over the course of the Web’s evolution — really my favorite part of the course was learning about them from my co-educators. So my primary motivation is to give students the ability to have a deep understanding of the powers and technologies that have shaped the Web, and use that knowledge to continue the legacy of creatively challenging its limitations.

Sarah F: One thing we plan to more fully address in the next edition of the course is infrastructure risk as it pertains to creative practice. As artists, we’re often reliant on platforms and protocols to host, distribute, or in some cases, literally as the medium for our work. But these platforms can crumble, and the tools can stop working. Infrastructure risk doesn’t go away with decentralized tech; it just changes. An open source decentralized protocol can lose funding or have maintainers step away. Assessing what risks we take on in specific infrastructure contexts and how to best ensure the longevity of our work is an extremely important skill for artists who work with technology.

Why is it important for artists and creatives to actively shape the decentralized web?

mai: We constantly consume art on the Web — all the videos, photos, illustrations, games, writing, and even memes that we share online are all works of art. The internet has unleashed an international creative renaissance that allows us to share and access culture in a historically unprecedented way. And yet artists continue to be neglected when it comes to their rights online. Restrictive digital policies over copyright and free expression are one primary way that artists’ rights are suppressed. Another is how mainstream platforms continue to squeeze creators for their work and undermine their ability to make a living, or even remotely financially benefit from their contributions. It’s important for artists to shape the distributed web so their rights and needs are embedded in the social and technological protocols of our network infrastructures.

Sarah G: Artists must help shape the decentralized web because they work beyond practical constraints, constantly questioning technology rather than simply accepting its path. They bring a range of perspectives, from critical to playful, that technical development alone can't provide. While engineers build systems that work, artists challenge assumptions without being limited by what's considered possible, often finding surprising insights by exploring the improbable and even the absurd. Without diverse viewpoints actively shaping these systems, we risk simply transferring existing problems into new infrastructures, no matter how distributed their technical design may be.

Author Bios

Sarah Grant is an American media artist and educator based in Berlin at Studio Weise7. She engages with the electromagnetic spectrum and computer networks as artistic material, habitat, and political landscape. She organizes the Radical Networks conference in support of critical investigations and creative experiments in telecommunications.

ngọc triệu is a potter, design researcher, and learner. She works closely with free, open-source, decentralized, and distributed project teams and their communities to tackle challenges such as digital security, neocolonialism in tech, and Internet censorship. ngọc initially joined the DWeb movement in 2019 as a maintainer of Decent Patterns. She was a DWeb Fellow in 2022 and a Curator of the Design Track in 2023. She also previously led the DWeb Fellowship, bringing her experiences in community organizing and decolonial practices to amplify and expand the program's impact.

Ayana Zaire Cotton is the founder and steward of Seeda School and host of the podcast For the Worldbuilders. Seeda School teaches black feminist worldbuilding through art, technology, and archives. Inside the ecosystem of their speculative practice, Ayana braids storytelling, software, facilitation, and interspecies collaboration to engage our collective imagination around the worlds we need in the future we desire.

mai ishikawa sutton is an organizer and writer focused on the digital commons and other intersections between network technologies and the solidarity economy. They are a co-founder and editor of COMPOST, an online magazine about and for the digital commons. They are a Senior Organizer with DWeb and a Digital Commons Fellow with Commons Network.

Sarah Friend is an artist and software developer currently based in Berlin, Germany. Besides her work as an artist, she has taught at The Cooper Union (NYC), Gray Area (San Francisco), La Plateforme (Marseille), HEAD – Genève (Switzerland), and Rupert (Lithuania).

Other DWeb for Creators instructors not included in this article:

Regina Harsanyi is the Associate Curator of Media Arts at the Museum of the Moving Image and has taught at Columbia and NYU. She advises on preserving variable media arts for artist spaces and private collectors. Her curatorial work includes the acclaimed exhibition Aureia Harvey: My Veins are the Wires, My Body is Your Keyboard (MoMI, 2024).