Art Hack Day Berlin going dark afterglow transmediale festival 2014 Opening 29th January 2014 – 20.30 Exhibition 30th January – 2nd February 2014
Art Hack Day
transmediale
LE AP
The following exhibition was created over the course of 48h Jan 27-29, 2014. The participants were asked to respond to the afterglow theme of transmediale 2014. As coders we fear the ‘legacy’ system, a piece of old junk we haven’t yet figured out how to throw away. As artists, we’re tempted by prolific outbursts of freshness and novelty; more art of less value. Businesses and government crave more data, more connections, more context. By embracing these impulses without contemplation we perpetuate the technological hype cycle and unintentionally shorten the half-life of our artefacts. Technology has become akin to a natural resource, generating physical and immaterial waste that is appropriated in such diverse contexts as e-garbage dumps, big data businesses
and mass surveillance schemes. As such, trash is no longer what is just left behind but is central to our post-digital lives. When digital detritus piles up it decomposes, giving rise to a postdigital afterglow with the potential for new expression and new enterprise. Can we make peace with our excessive data flows and their inevitable obsolescence? Can we find nourishment in waste, overflow and excess? Can the afterglow of perpetual decay illuminate us?
Art Hack Day Berlin afterglow is the second part of an event, in which some of the participants of the first edition: Going Dark at LEAP and additional invited artists take part in Art Hack Day during transmediale 2014 at HKW in Berlin, exploring the festival theme afterglow. From Going Dark to afterglow by Sandra Moskova To “go dark” implied a certain state of constant protection and constant fear of being observed. This transparency-awareness was explored as a state of mind. The attempt to actively contribute to the digital discourse, without being in a psycho- patia medialis1 as paranoia formed the center of artistic and technological practices; Going Dark explored the complexity of individuals being reduced to data, single data units at the same time being extrapolated to information mass in order to become effective (traceable). Within this process-loop a de tailed reproduction of the individual remains insufficient; even more, basing every further step on already collected data (and not on the individual itself) produces digital realism, “all is composed of references with no referents, a hyperreality”2. Data copies and thereby reproduces only itself. The emerging information mass then only simulates the idea of reality as it constantly refers to its collected samples, numbers and codes and serves to fill the hollows of a culture of »higher, faster, further« by producing acceleration. Through the Prism of the afterglow, a state of constant protectiveness can be replaced by aware-
ness, resistance by inclusion. A post-human(ism) futurity3 becomes possible by making way to new territories, leaving old structures behind and through the awareness that overwriting or recy cling4 can produce electronic forgetableness. The awareness, that the promises the digital has made us will remain illusions, does not legitimize itself through apocalyptic scenarios about capitalism, acceleration and the digital taking over global control. Afterglow is between sharp judgment and complete acceptance. The awareness about the mechanisms of self-regulatory control, where a definite control instance has dissolved into the mass, neither produces mass panic, nor mass apathy. We are aware, that even if we overprotect our data, or on the contrary, fake our digital images by creating multiple digital identities through fake avatars, we wouldn’t liberate ourselves out of the discourse. In being reflective, fake resistant and critical, we have replaced fear by acceptance; we accept that the dream won’t come true, that every click produces CO2 and trash islands on faraway places from us. At the same time, we scrutinize this fact and in our skepticism we again accept, that we won’t reach the truth by putting the pre fix “post-” or adding the word “criticism” to present discourses. To make way for new (life) forms and territories without longing to predict the future, in the sense of afterglow means to let go and to knowingly start to for-get5. 1 Siegfried Zielinski (2011), [... nach den Medien] 2 “The generation by models of a real without origin or reality”, Jean Baudrillard (1994), Simulacra & Simulation 3 Patricia MacCormack (2013), Kosmogenetische Akzeleration: Zukünftigkeit und Ethik, in Armen Avanessian, #Akzeleration, p.91 4 Even recycling haptic trash, such as electronic devices, illustrates a natural process: forgetting, dying, creating new from the scratch 5 Klaus Bartels (2000), Erinnern, Vergessen, Entinnern. Das Gedächtnis des Internet, in: Lab. Jahrbuch 2000 für Künste und Apparate; Etymology: Old English: forgietan, from for- as negative force, “away, amiss, opposite” + gietan, “to grasp” (get); to “un-get”, “to lose” from the mind.
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ground floor
Back to Sender (Dani Ploeger + Jelili Atiku) Numbers Station (Baruch Gottlieb + Dmytri Kleiner) untitled (Alma Alloro and Anthony Antonellis) Data Retention - Resurrection (Bengt Sjölén, Nicklas Marelius) 10 kg From the New Factory (Sebastian Schmieg + Johannes P Osterhoff) Wertkorper (Geraldine Juarez) PRISM: The Beacon Frame (Danja Vasiliev, Julian Oliver) Has-Been Trash Bin (Carl Emil Carlsen & Christian Villum (Science Friction)) Undefined (Jakob Bak, Priyanka Kodikal) Honeypot (Robert Böhnke, Johan Uhle) life.gif (David Huerta, Rachel Uwa) Entinnern (Daniel Franke) In the Highest in the Best... (Rosa Menkman) Past, Present, Future Future Future (Andreas Fischer) exercice noise (Helga Wretman) Banality of Affect (Annie Goh, Paul Christoph) BbB Bit by Bit (Justin Blinder and Benjamin Gaulon) Elephants’ Graveyard (Wolfgang Spahn) Verflüssigtes Gestänge (Jana Linke, Katrin Caspar) Circe’s New Equipment (Nancy Mauro-Flude, Emma Bugg) Smart Fireplace (exonemo and the Internet dudes) Smart Fireplace (exonemo and the Internet dudes) Discontent.us (Igal Nassima) Launchpad (Philipp Ronnenberg) Mobile mining (Nicklas Marelius, Kristina Lindström, Åsa Ståhl) Laid to REST (Quin Kennedy) Mind Your Own Dizziness (Budhaditya Chattopadhyay) Human Cursor (Akihiko Taniguchi, Laura Wadden, Shunya Hagiwari, Rachel Uwa) Septic v1.0 (Marco Donnarumma, Baptiste Caramiaux) Recycled Coil (Dani Ploeger) Mining the Arbitrary (Jens U Jørgensen + Rosemary Lee) Field Sweeper Inc. (Sabrina Basten, Audrey Samson {Roger10-4}) Hello Bitcoin (Geraldine Juarez)
For more information about the projects go to:
http://www.arthackday.net/events/afterglow
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Works
first floor
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Transmoji (Kim Asendorf, Ole Fach)
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Jobless Avatars / The real curriculum (Saso Sedlacek)
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Urban Mine (Yuko Mohri)
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BABEL (Mario de Vega, Victor Mazon)
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Pr채parat (Tina Tonagel)
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Hypno (Forrest Oliphant, Kawandeep Virdee)
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PrintCade (Jonah Brucker-Cohen & Michael Ang)
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S.M.S: Smoke Messaging Service (Dennis de Bel)
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Detective Camera (Niko Princen)
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Polypalimpsestinator 2 (Hannes Hoelzl, Alberto de Campo)
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most powerful art piece (Jacob Sikker Remin, Jeremy Bailey, David gauthier)
For more information about the projects go to:
http://www.arthackday.net/events/afterglow
Art Hack Day Berlin is a collaboration between transmediale, Art Hack Day and LEAP Art Hack Day is an internet-based nonprofit dedicated to hackers whose medium is art and artists whose medium is tech. We bridge the gap between art, technology and entrepreneurship with hackathons & exhibitions that demonstrate the expressive potential of new technology and the power of radical collaboration in art. We believe in non-utilitarian beauty through technology and its ability to affect social change for public good. During an Art Hack Day, we get together and inhabit an art space to create an exhibit from scratch in 48h that’s open to the public. There are no demos but plenty of performances. As a grassroots event it’s driven by co-organizers around the world including Barry Threw, Björn Norborg, Daniel Franke, David Huerta, Igal Nassima, Inga Seidler, Johan Uhle, John McKiernan, Josette Melchor, Kai Kreuzmüller, Kristoffer Gansing, Lindsay Howard, Mat Dryhurst, Olof Mathé and Paul Christophe. Participating art spaces include: 319 Scholes, GAFFTA, Bonniers Konsthall, LEAP and transmediale.
LEAP (Lab for Electronic Arts and Performance) is a non-profit interdisciplinary project for emerging, digital media arts and performance that aims to initiate the dialogue between art, science and technology. LEAP’s central concept is based on experimental research in digital technologies and media, which shape and change our present and future society and stimulate new discourses, discussions and questions. The human being (or body) is thus in performative interaction with these technologies and their impact on society and culture. It stands in a transformative process with its environment and thus is prompted to challenge the limits of its exterior and interior. LEAP’s conceptual and substantive program deals with the discussion of new discourses, critical issues and provides a bridge between theory and practice. http://xLEAPx.org
http://arthackday.net Thanks to: Marie Uhle, Sibylle Kerlisch, serve-u Team, HKW Haustechnik Team, Team B
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