In late September, CLCF welcomed Maurice Jones as researcher and artist-in-residence. Over the course of the residency, Jones gave a public talk, guest lectured in CLCF co-lead Rafael Grohmann’s senior seminar on Media Workers & AI, and participated in the Workers Governing Technologies workshop. Jones will be returning to Toronto in early 2026 for a research-creation project in collaboration with CLCF.
A Maroon’s Technical Practice
Jones’ guest talk introduced what he calls a “Maroon’s technical practice,” a framing for computational research-creation practices rooted in Black studies theorists and critical engagements with technology. His work spans several areas: critical technology policy, arts and cultural organizations, and computational research-creation.
Drawing on Owen Chapman and Kim Sawchuk’s work on research-creation, Jones positions his practice within “creation-as-research,” where the boundaries between making and research are deliberately blurred. He moves from the broad notion of research-creation to a more specific, entangled account of “technical practice,” taking up Philip E. Agre’s definition. This “Maroon’s technical practice” is also inspired by the work of Beth Coleman.
Jones’ practice seeks to decouple AI from the dominance of predictive models (underpinning systems like ChatGPT) and to unmoor machine learning from the “empire of AI.” He introduces the figure of the Maroon as a way of subverting dominant binaries in contemporary technology discourse: utopia/dystopia, technophile/luddite. Rather than being bound by these oppositions, Jones asks: What other options do we have?
Photos courtesy of Daphne & Maurice Jones.
Research-Creation Projects
Jones has been working on and with AI since 2017. During the course of his talk, he shared a series of recent projects and collaborations, including:
- Soundscapes of an Earthly Community: A spatial sound piece exploring human and non-human sonic exchange, where he introduced the concept of “sonic agents.”
- feral.ai: A project which involved taking “embodied sonic agents” into the swamps, where they were trained to classify sounds and write diary entries about their time in liberation. Jones described the care taken when releasing technologies into the wild, both in terms of small- and large-scale considerations.
- Wilding AI: A research-creation lab that imagines AI that can be free, through exploratory projects that seek to generate movement in space and create multi-agent systems, among others.
- Settler-native-slave: An exploration of Indigenous approaches to AI, data sovereignty, and the revitalization of indigenous languages. Jones brought up marooning histories, where indigenous technologies left behind might be encountered by maroons and repurposed for their own survival. Finally, Jones described how his ongoing work is inspired by Tiara Roxanne’s notion of “technological haunt,” and Black and Indigenous dreaming.
To find out more, read Maurice Jones’ article, A Maroon’s Technical Practice: Black Techne, Feral AIs, and Swampy Ecologies, and check back on this blog for news of his upcoming CLCF research-creation project!
CLCF Co-Director & Postdoctoral Fellow
Daphne Rena Idiz (she/her) is a Co-Director of the Creative Labour and Critical Futures (CLCF) cluster and Postdoctoral Fellow in the Department of Arts, Culture and Media at the University of Toronto Scarborough (UTSC).
CLCF Co-Director & Assistant Professor
Rafael Grohmann is a Co-lead and Co-Director of the Creative Labour and Critical Futures (CLCF) cluster and an Assistant Professor of Media Studies (Critical Platform Studies) at the University of Toronto. Rafael is the leader of the DigiLabour initiative and founding editor of the Platforms & Society journal.
CLCF Co-Director & Associate Professor
Dr. MaryElizabeth (“M.E.”) Luka is PI and Co-Director of the Creative Labour and Critical Futures (CLCF) cluster and Associate Professor, Arts & Media Management, at University of Toronto, where they examine modes and meanings of co-creative production and distribution in the digital age for arts, culture, and media.
