Summary
In the framework of “Are You Being Served?”, Peter Westenberg curated a mobile mini exhibition that travelled with us in a series of suitcases. Artworks, sketches, videos, books and objects in other forms broadened our perspectives on the subjects discussed during these meetingdays. The exhibition contained digital files that could be copied and was open for contributions.
Works in the exhibition
Olia Lialina
Summer
A portrait of the artist swinging from one URL to the next one. Each of the 21 images in this animation is hosted on a different server. The animation exists nowhere in its entirety and can only be seen online. <http://art.teleportacia.org/olia/summer>
Silvio Lorusso + Sebastian Schmieg + Kindle Users
Networked optimization
A series of three crowdsourced versions of popular self-help books. Each book contains the full text, which is largely invisible because it is set in white on a white background. The only readable text consists of the so-called “popular highlights” —the passages that were highlighted by many Kindle users— together with the amount of highlighters. Each time a passage is selected, it is automatically stored in Amazon’s data centers. <http://silviolorusso.com/work/networked-optimization/>
Men in Grey + Mikael Brain
H1606: Field Officer Protocol
“We are the direct manifestation of a Citizen’s Network Anxiety; our metal and flesh yields from a citizen‘s networked fears, doubts, delusions and the lies of others. We carry the signal and as such are a part of that signal. What passes through the air will pass through us. We span the space between the invisible and the corporeal; as Adaptors comprised of flesh and metal, we capture and reconstruct that which hides in the air. We are the lightning in an age of Cloud Computing.” <http://meningrey.net>
Anne Laure Buisson + An Mertens
L’analyse des données
An Mertens interviews statistician Anne-Laure Buisson, who compares the practice around privacy-sensitive data in the medical world to literary genres.
Christoph Haag + Maria Guggenbichler
Generative V/J14 collage
The posters for “Are You Being Served?” are all unique. On an offset printed base layer, collaged images were printed in black and white, by passing the posters through a printer, one by one. The white table porcelain carries images of gender, technology and communication. The animation in this suitcase shows a sequence that was generated from the collage elements. With thanks to Colm O’Neill.
Eleanor Greenhalgh
Tech Support
The system administrator kneels to fix her computer, in return she sews up a hole in his trousers that has resulted from performing this task repeatedly. A performance exploring gendered skills, cooperation and power. <http://eleanorg.org/art/techsupport>
irational
Job description for root on a collective server
In 2010, the art server irational.org made an archived copy of itself, presenting a disk artefact with 18 years of historical data for archaeological translation. Before being disposed of, or interred for collection, any archaeological dig of this disk makes the owners of its data vulnerable and threatens the security of the living server as a data home for members and associates. Access must therefore be carefully managed via a “secure access protocol”. Those with root access were the first to be instructed.
Recyclart
Constant Variable
w-o-l-k-e
