1 00:00:00,000 --> 00:00:18,210 *35C3 preroll musik* 2 00:00:18,210 --> 00:00:27,119 Herald: Hello everybody. A warm welcome to our friend Nicholas Maigret from 3 00:00:27,119 --> 00:00:35,530 DISNOVATION.ORG. They are making contemporary art with research and hacking 4 00:00:35,530 --> 00:00:42,000 to question the positive ideology for technology, to stimulate a post-growth 5 00:00:42,000 --> 00:00:47,820 technology narrative. So I am quite interested and give him a warm welcome. 6 00:00:47,820 --> 00:00:53,010 *Applause* 7 00:00:53,010 --> 00:01:02,490 Nicholas Maigret: Hello Everyone. Ouh does it work? Can you hear me? Hey, Yeah. 8 00:01:02,490 --> 00:01:06,410 Hello, so I'm Nicholas Maigret and together with Maria Roszkowska we 9 00:01:06,410 --> 00:01:11,819 initiated the DISNOVATION.ORG collective and our collective intends to reveal and 10 00:01:11,819 --> 00:01:15,960 challenge the dominant ideology of technological innovation and circulate 11 00:01:15,960 --> 00:01:22,300 alternative narrative. So I will show you a selection of projects and mainly it's a 12 00:01:22,300 --> 00:01:30,259 few projects selected to resonate with the CCC and the topics here. So we do 13 00:01:30,259 --> 00:01:38,140 basically creations so we organize the festivals and we create the art species in 14 00:01:38,140 --> 00:01:43,459 a different series of projects around basically the rhetoric of technological 15 00:01:43,459 --> 00:01:48,680 innovation and the effect of this dominant ideology on society. We also 16 00:01:48,680 --> 00:01:55,349 work on publications in books. I will get back to that in a minute. And we do 17 00:01:55,349 --> 00:01:59,299 artworks and site specific projects that I will present in the second half of this 18 00:01:59,299 --> 00:02:05,440 talk. So the first part will be focusing on our curatorial practices around this 19 00:02:05,440 --> 00:02:09,610 idea of counter-narratives on technological innovation. So I will 20 00:02:09,610 --> 00:02:16,290 introduce three works. The first one is a pirate book. So it's a book we started to 21 00:02:16,290 --> 00:02:26,000 compile in 2014. It's a compilation of stories about sharing and distributing 22 00:02:26,000 --> 00:02:34,063 cultural contents outside the boundaries of local economies, politics, laws, religions, 23 00:02:34,063 --> 00:02:40,210 and so on. So with this work we tried to explore the notions such as the piracy of 24 00:02:40,210 --> 00:02:47,100 necessity, the idea of new originals. And I think it's interesting to go back to 25 00:02:47,100 --> 00:02:53,020 this project to come back to this project in the context of the Anthropocene and the 26 00:02:53,020 --> 00:02:59,120 potential imminent collapse. Because I think there is a need for non-techno- 27 00:02:59,120 --> 00:03:04,670 solutionist and non-techno-positivist stories at the moment and somehow a need 28 00:03:04,670 --> 00:03:10,280 to develop post growth narratives. So we'll see what we can learn from the 29 00:03:10,280 --> 00:03:17,670 following examples taken from the book around concerns like repair, care, 30 00:03:17,670 --> 00:03:26,010 maintenance, and creative appropriation. So the first excerpt from the book I would 31 00:03:26,010 --> 00:03:34,700 like to focus on, is an example from Mexico, given by our contributor Jota Izquierdo 32 00:03:34,700 --> 00:03:42,080 and basically it focuses on the stories of a craftsman that works for improving the 33 00:03:42,080 --> 00:03:48,668 practices of street CD vendors in Mexico. So I will I will play a quick excerpt of it. 34 00:03:48,688 --> 00:03:51,458 *Video is playing with music* 35 00:05:14,180 --> 00:05:17,280 Nicholas: So in the book we cover multiple 36 00:05:17,280 --> 00:05:20,560 stories in this sort. We just focus on a couple of those. 37 00:05:20,560 --> 00:05:22,880 *musik from video in the background* Nicholas: The second one is based in the 38 00:05:22,880 --> 00:05:31,550 Sahel. It's a contribution by Christopher Kirkley and is presenting basically how a 39 00:05:31,550 --> 00:05:39,180 big part of music distribution in Sahel is done through copies between dumb phones 40 00:05:39,180 --> 00:05:48,070 using Bluetooth. So it's a way somehow to create a circulation of contents by 41 00:05:48,070 --> 00:05:56,000 nearest neighbor dynamics, basically. And the third example I would like just to 42 00:05:56,000 --> 00:06:03,800 introduce is el paquete semanal. Basically it's in the context of Cuban lack of fast 43 00:06:03,800 --> 00:06:10,790 internet or internet at all. Basically el paquete semanal is a sort of substitute 44 00:06:10,790 --> 00:06:16,740 to the internet in the form of a package. It's a hard drive, as you can see here and 45 00:06:16,740 --> 00:06:21,850 this hard drive also circulates one copy at a time. And it's basically a 46 00:06:21,850 --> 00:06:30,470 compilation of all the content that is considered to be missing for people so you 47 00:06:30,470 --> 00:06:41,100 can see on this hard drive TV shows, books, movies, music, and all the sorts of 48 00:06:41,100 --> 00:06:47,560 content you could expect from an internet browsing experience. So you can find the 49 00:06:47,560 --> 00:06:54,430 book online for free. And we cover many of the stories but tonight I will just 50 00:06:54,430 --> 00:07:03,060 present those and connect with this last contribution by Clément Renaud. He did a 51 00:07:03,060 --> 00:07:11,830 long term six years of research in China and he shared with us this story about 52 00:07:11,830 --> 00:07:19,199 Shanzhai technology production. It's basically something between piracy and 53 00:07:19,199 --> 00:07:24,580 hybridization in Chinese manufacturing. And I will focus on this one a little bit 54 00:07:24,580 --> 00:07:31,920 more so in his article Clément Renaud described specific local tech 55 00:07:31,920 --> 00:07:39,240 innovation named Shanzhai. The Shanzhai culture is a mix of piracy, DIY, and anti- 56 00:07:39,240 --> 00:07:43,720 establishment. It literally means "mountain fortress" and it comes from a 57 00:07:43,720 --> 00:07:55,400 novel from the 13th century that tells a story of a group of outlaws that hides in 58 00:07:55,400 --> 00:08:00,669 the mountain to be outside the system and outside the regulation of the state 59 00:08:00,669 --> 00:08:06,430 basically. So in a more recent context Shanzhai refers basically to 60 00:08:06,430 --> 00:08:14,400 manufacturing, it emerged in in the 50s for instance in Hong Kong to describe a 61 00:08:14,400 --> 00:08:21,770 small scale factories that were producing cheap low quality items and mainly 62 00:08:21,770 --> 00:08:28,770 counterfeit products of famous brands like Gucci or Nike and they sold those products 63 00:08:28,770 --> 00:08:35,209 on markets that would not buy the fancy, expensive originals. And as electonic 64 00:08:35,209 --> 00:08:42,169 manufacturing migrated to Shenzhen in the early 2000s this informal network of 65 00:08:42,169 --> 00:08:50,610 Shanzhai production found the perfect product in the mobile phone. So our first 66 00:08:50,610 --> 00:08:57,579 acquisition in this collection was basically the the Ghana phone and we've 67 00:08:57,579 --> 00:09:06,769 been very intrigued by this device. So basically this device has not been 68 00:09:06,769 --> 00:09:15,290 conceived for its superficial design but it's it's been conceived to fill a gap a 69 00:09:15,290 --> 00:09:24,550 need, a niche market. So this phone is a power bank basically to fill the gap of 70 00:09:24,550 --> 00:09:31,809 the frequent power cuts in Ghana. So it has a battery that can last for a week. 71 00:09:31,809 --> 00:09:38,499 You can also charge other devices with it, recharge your computer, another phone. You 72 00:09:38,499 --> 00:09:43,290 can also use it as a light. So that's why you have a hook to connect it on the on 73 00:09:43,290 --> 00:09:52,759 the ceiling. And basically it's a whole package of functions and properties that 74 00:09:52,759 --> 00:09:59,670 were designed specifically for local markets that nowhere any brands were 75 00:09:59,670 --> 00:10:07,420 paying attention at. So we were very interested by this track of research and 76 00:10:07,420 --> 00:10:14,449 we wanted to dig some more. So we started with a simple protocol. We started to 77 00:10:14,449 --> 00:10:19,889 collect hybrid phones that were combining multiple functions and designed for those 78 00:10:19,889 --> 00:10:26,350 niche markets all over the place, mainly in the global south but not only, you 79 00:10:26,350 --> 00:10:33,829 will see. So you can find a lot of fancy and weird devices that I will show, and 80 00:10:33,829 --> 00:10:39,759 those devices we've been collecting them in markets in Shenzhen like Huaqiangbei 81 00:10:39,759 --> 00:10:45,259 and also online like on Taobao, Aliexpress, and so on. So one of the 82 00:10:45,259 --> 00:10:49,971 reasons that we wanted to focus our research on mobile phones, because 83 00:10:49,971 --> 00:10:55,079 Shanzhai production is not about mobiles, it's about every kind of technology I 84 00:10:55,079 --> 00:11:00,869 would say. But we kind of wanted to stick to one sort of device to have this 85 00:11:00,869 --> 00:11:08,949 continuity over 20 years. And also because somehow a huge contrast could be seen 86 00:11:08,949 --> 00:11:16,490 through the mobile phone between sort of north hemisphere culture or this somehow 87 00:11:16,490 --> 00:11:24,010 the standardized culture of the black rectangle we all have in our pockets here. 88 00:11:24,010 --> 00:11:30,249 And this kind of non normalized technological imaginaries that were 89 00:11:30,249 --> 00:11:35,399 emerging there and somehow it reminds us I think that although technological 90 00:11:35,399 --> 00:11:43,470 possibilities always exist beyond the ultra normalized industry. So I will dig 91 00:11:43,470 --> 00:11:47,379 into a few of those. *musik from video in the background* 92 00:11:47,379 --> 00:11:53,189 Nicholas: So each of those examples I think a tell a specific story and reveal 93 00:11:53,189 --> 00:11:59,189 specific uses and cultures. So here you can see a lighter phone. So it's basically 94 00:11:59,189 --> 00:12:09,019 a phone that does cigarette lighter. This one is I would say a working cigarette 95 00:12:09,019 --> 00:12:12,778 pack that also includes a mobile phone or perhaps the other way around. 96 00:12:12,778 --> 00:12:38,179 *inaudible voice from video* 97 00:12:38,179 --> 00:12:40,709 Nicholas: And this one is a razor phone. 98 00:12:40,709 --> 00:12:43,779 So it's a phone that includes a working shaver. 99 00:12:43,779 --> 00:12:49,770 *razor noise from video* 100 00:12:49,770 --> 00:12:52,350 Nicholas: So since 2015 we've been 101 00:12:52,350 --> 00:12:59,029 collecting about hundreds of those hybrid phones and I will zoom into a few of very 102 00:12:59,029 --> 00:13:04,549 interesting specimens and stories. So here you can see the card phone, it's the size 103 00:13:04,549 --> 00:13:09,489 of a credit card. It used to be the cheapest on the market. It cost about 104 00:13:09,489 --> 00:13:15,410 twelve dollars and it's made of a single board. So basically it can be very easily 105 00:13:15,410 --> 00:13:22,194 replicated and optimized, modified, and so on. So that's why it's been called the 106 00:13:22,194 --> 00:13:27,839 Gongkai Phone which means open source and you can find this board in multiple 107 00:13:27,839 --> 00:13:33,929 versions in the later generation of phones I will present in a minute. 108 00:13:33,929 --> 00:13:51,819 *Video music in the background* 109 00:13:51,819 --> 00:13:58,249 So this one is called the Buda phone. It's been designed as a digital alternative for Buddhist 110 00:13:58,249 --> 00:14:06,019 prayers and related religious activities. So basically it replicates for instance 111 00:14:06,019 --> 00:14:12,100 the ritual components like the burning of incense, purification rites, meditative 112 00:14:12,100 --> 00:14:21,370 music, and more. So all of those features are included in basically the UX of the phone. 113 00:14:21,370 --> 00:14:54,273 *musik from video* 114 00:14:54,273 --> 00:14:59,779 Nicholas: So this is the sound system phone. It's been designed for mainly the 115 00:14:59,779 --> 00:15:06,519 elderly people. So the favorite one of the favorite activities of the elderly in 116 00:15:06,519 --> 00:15:13,609 China is group dancing on public squares in evenings. And this specific phone has been 117 00:15:13,609 --> 00:15:20,059 designed for this purpose. And so it comes with a several gigabytes of old fashioned, 118 00:15:20,059 --> 00:15:29,339 communist songs that Chinese pensioners are particularly keen on. It has huge 119 00:15:29,339 --> 00:15:36,420 buttons. I mean it's really designed for the elderly. So the device is like that 120 00:15:36,420 --> 00:15:41,749 size. And there is also support to stand in front of the dancers and the powerful 121 00:15:41,749 --> 00:15:46,089 light torch to ensure a smooth return home after the dance. 122 00:15:50,199 --> 00:15:54,560 Speaker on Video: Small. Nice and neat to put away up in the bums 123 00:15:54,560 --> 00:16:01,359 Yeah, I'm a pro, I can do about 20 in 10 minutes 124 00:16:01,359 --> 00:16:04,730 Speaker on Video: Why in Mars bars? Speaker on video: Because they are 125 00:16:04,730 --> 00:16:08,329 available in most of the visit halls, you can't take something that might not be 126 00:16:08,329 --> 00:16:13,629 there because if you do they're gonna notice it's different. I'd say that 127 00:16:13,629 --> 00:16:24,819 there's probably 75 percent of prisoners have phones in jail. I take them in on the 128 00:16:24,819 --> 00:16:30,989 person in places where you wouldn't get searched, the front of your trousers, in 129 00:16:30,989 --> 00:16:36,199 your bra. Nicholas: So this one is the prisoner 130 00:16:36,199 --> 00:16:44,040 phone or it's also called Beat The Buzz. The buzz is a device for scanning 131 00:16:44,040 --> 00:16:50,170 prisoners. So actually, It started on the market as the smallest phone on the 132 00:16:50,170 --> 00:16:56,380 market. But for some reason it became popular among prisoners, many in the UK 133 00:16:56,380 --> 00:17:01,759 because of its small size. It's the size of a finger. And because of the fact also 134 00:17:01,759 --> 00:17:07,819 it's composed of 99 percent of plastic, so it's barely detectable during the checks 135 00:17:07,819 --> 00:17:15,740 in prisons and you can easily smuggle it. Inside food, inside the body obviously but 136 00:17:15,740 --> 00:17:24,140 also in weird ways like inside drones, carrier pigeons, rats and so on. So we try 137 00:17:24,140 --> 00:17:30,370 to exhibit all this collection of weird devices in their natural habitat, in a 138 00:17:30,370 --> 00:17:35,890 way, so we built a reproduction of a street market kiosk where we basically 139 00:17:35,890 --> 00:17:41,280 showcase this collection of hybrid phones and together with that we have a couple 140 00:17:41,280 --> 00:17:48,600 of video documentaries like this one, that kind of tells the larger Shanzhai culture 141 00:17:48,600 --> 00:17:55,510 and focus on the Chinese ecosystem of technological devices production and 142 00:17:55,510 --> 00:18:06,150 distribution. So that's how it looks when it's shown. Yeah. That's it for this one. 143 00:18:06,150 --> 00:18:12,290 And the last cultural project. I'd like to introduce is a work in progress. It's 144 00:18:12,290 --> 00:18:17,460 called the Museum Of Failures and I will start with a quote by Paul Virilio. 145 00:18:17,460 --> 00:18:18,160 *Quote read by a female voice* 146 00:18:58,833 --> 00:19:01,880 Nicholas: So as you could guess with this 147 00:19:01,880 --> 00:19:07,680 quote this project is about uncovering and compiling counter narratives about the 148 00:19:07,680 --> 00:19:14,530 history of technological innovation and our project is basically to compile those 149 00:19:14,530 --> 00:19:20,270 under represented stories, that can help us to disrupt the dominant positive discourse 150 00:19:20,270 --> 00:19:28,830 on innovation and help us maybe to think about technology in post growth era. So 151 00:19:28,830 --> 00:19:37,150 the project takes the shape of workshops, conferences, events, and we share it as a 152 00:19:37,150 --> 00:19:45,650 database and exhibitions. So this symbolic museum is structured in two floors. They 153 00:19:45,650 --> 00:19:51,380 go in negative numbers. They are somehow the underground counterparts of usual 154 00:19:51,380 --> 00:19:58,360 technological museum. So each floor is a potential sort of entry, or perspective on 155 00:19:58,360 --> 00:20:04,700 the museum sorted by topics. So you have like intentional failures, fiction and 156 00:20:04,700 --> 00:20:13,370 dystopias, risk and disasters, unexpected outcomes, and so on. So the first part of 157 00:20:13,370 --> 00:20:21,180 this future book is a collection of aborted projects: flops, errors, 158 00:20:21,180 --> 00:20:26,710 malfunctions, business failures, ethical rejections, disasters, and somehow reflects 159 00:20:26,710 --> 00:20:31,960 the outlines of our society from a historical, symbolic, poetic, and cultural 160 00:20:31,960 --> 00:20:37,820 point of view. The second part of this book though will be based on interviews 161 00:20:37,820 --> 00:20:44,120 and contributions and we are open to proposals. So if you have stories or 162 00:20:44,120 --> 00:20:49,070 research on post growth technological imaginaries and counter narratives on 163 00:20:49,070 --> 00:20:55,990 technological innovation, you're welcome to submit. Okay so the second part of this 164 00:20:55,990 --> 00:21:01,360 talk will be about our artworks, specific selection to resonate with the CCC as 165 00:21:01,360 --> 00:21:12,040 well. And we grouped it into this idea of psychoanalysis of the hyper connected era. 166 00:21:12,040 --> 00:21:18,370 So the first artwork I will introduce, is the Pirate Cinema. So basically the copy culture got 167 00:21:18,370 --> 00:21:25,040 mainstream with BitTorrent and the Pirate Bay in the early 2000s and it became an 168 00:21:25,040 --> 00:21:31,860 essential part of culture for a whole generation. And at the same time as this 169 00:21:31,860 --> 00:21:39,140 process since the early days of peer to peer it coexisted with an intense level of 170 00:21:39,140 --> 00:21:46,810 surveillance. So this surveillance was conducted by universities, cooperations, 171 00:21:46,810 --> 00:21:53,050 states. Some times for statistical purposes, just to know how much is 172 00:21:53,050 --> 00:21:57,500 consumed from different types of content and so on, and most of the time for 173 00:21:57,500 --> 00:22:04,830 copyright infringement. And we got very interested in how we could disrupt those 174 00:22:04,830 --> 00:22:11,580 systems of network surveillance basically and use it to reveal the dynamics and the 175 00:22:11,580 --> 00:22:16,730 materiality of peer to peer file sharing. So basically to expose the materiality of 176 00:22:16,730 --> 00:22:23,640 this process and the geographical dynamics of the contents that were consumed and 177 00:22:23,640 --> 00:22:30,915 shared. So I'll show a few excerpts of this project. 178 00:22:30,915 --> 00:23:20,780 *inaudible sound snippets from video* 179 00:23:20,780 --> 00:23:24,170 Nicholas: So we programed the server to 180 00:23:24,170 --> 00:23:29,190 use BitTorrent and to synchronize every morning with the Top 100 videos of the 181 00:23:29,190 --> 00:23:34,260 Pirate Bay. So it's a sort of a man in the middle attack where we see what people are 182 00:23:34,260 --> 00:23:42,680 sharing through our server. So it's a way to view the global dynamics through one 183 00:23:42,680 --> 00:23:50,410 node of the BitTorrent network. And as you can see on the video it also reveals the 184 00:23:50,410 --> 00:23:57,400 user IP address and the countries. And somehow it's a way to depict the 185 00:23:57,400 --> 00:24:04,920 geographical dynamics of media sharing in the consumptions. The next project I'd 186 00:24:04,920 --> 00:24:11,380 like to introduce following this idea of counter narratives. It's a series about 187 00:24:11,380 --> 00:24:18,590 illicit contents. It's called Blacklist. So we got interested in basically who 188 00:24:18,590 --> 00:24:23,320 controls and decides what should be visible or not online or what should be 189 00:24:23,320 --> 00:24:32,800 blocked or not. And how those least are built and used. And somehow how maybe it 190 00:24:32,800 --> 00:24:39,980 can be something that reveals the value system we live in. So there are numerous 191 00:24:39,980 --> 00:24:46,340 blacklists. You can subscribe to more or less efficient and up to date. Script 192 00:24:46,340 --> 00:24:50,620 blacklists, Squid blacklists, Sheller list, Cisco and so on and somehow they 193 00:24:50,620 --> 00:24:57,490 remind us literally of the index of forbidden books that used to exist in 194 00:24:57,490 --> 00:25:02,780 libraries around the globe. It was a list basically of publication considered a 195 00:25:02,780 --> 00:25:09,510 hereticall, immoral or anticlerical. And you know in an internet blacklist nowadays 196 00:25:09,510 --> 00:25:14,890 you have pretty much the same. So addresses that can be blocked, they are 197 00:25:14,890 --> 00:25:20,050 organized into categories as you can see here. And as a sysadmin you can decide 198 00:25:20,050 --> 00:25:26,650 what type of content you want to block. So such lists are used by universities, 199 00:25:26,650 --> 00:25:32,450 towns, airports, companies, individuals and so on. And then it helps you basically 200 00:25:32,450 --> 00:25:38,260 to restrict the access to specific content on your network. So you have categories 201 00:25:38,260 --> 00:25:43,700 like copyright, porn, pharmacy and so on and you can see weird stuff like feminist 202 00:25:43,700 --> 00:25:50,330 for instance and I guess it reveals the for profit nature of this list and the 203 00:25:50,330 --> 00:25:58,160 fact that anything can be requested, if enough clients are asking for it. So this 204 00:25:58,160 --> 00:26:05,470 work took the shape of a sort of an encyclopedia in 13 volumes of 666 pages. 205 00:26:05,470 --> 00:26:12,160 It's basically an encyclopedia of illicit and filtered sites. It is structured like 206 00:26:12,160 --> 00:26:19,440 an old phone book. It's a sort of ready made, that reveals the moral sort of 207 00:26:19,440 --> 00:26:23,590 portraits or framework of the web. 208 00:26:23,590 --> 00:26:25,470 Video: Blacklists is a directory of the 209 00:26:25,470 --> 00:26:31,960 prohibitions of the internet, deployed in the form of an encyclopedia in 13 volumes 210 00:26:31,960 --> 00:26:38,860 of 666 pages each. It is an extensive collection of restricted websites used 211 00:26:38,860 --> 00:26:45,060 for the automatic filtering of traffic considered ilicit or licentious. Just 212 00:26:45,060 --> 00:26:49,520 like the intent of forbidding libraries the Blacklist project points out the 213 00:26:49,520 --> 00:26:55,070 sidelining of online content that could be dangerous for the very survival of the 214 00:26:55,070 --> 00:27:01,390 system. With around two million web sites extracted from commercial content control 215 00:27:01,390 --> 00:27:07,250 softwares this collection reveals the cultural social and ideological model of 216 00:27:07,250 --> 00:27:13,390 our society through what has been deemed unfit for consultation by specific groups 217 00:27:13,390 --> 00:27:23,770 and institutions around the globe. Nicolas: So I guess you get the idea. All 218 00:27:23,770 --> 00:27:30,100 right. So this next work is predictive art bot and I will need to contextualize a 219 00:27:30,100 --> 00:27:37,450 bit. So basically we live in the era of hyper connectivity and the time we spend 220 00:27:37,450 --> 00:27:43,280 on phone and social media is radically increase over the last ten years. This has 221 00:27:43,280 --> 00:27:48,240 a strong effect on us. Online news and communication tends to monopolize a lot of 222 00:27:48,240 --> 00:27:53,970 our attention and it does have a growing influence on our types of concerns and 223 00:27:53,970 --> 00:28:02,400 priorities. So we know about effects like a filter bubble, media echo chambers and to 224 00:28:02,400 --> 00:28:07,350 some extent the influence of social media and hyper connection tend towards a sort 225 00:28:07,350 --> 00:28:14,320 of uniformization not only of our concerns but also somehow of our innovation and 226 00:28:14,320 --> 00:28:20,650 creativity. And it tends towards a higher chance of predictability of our behaviors. 227 00:28:20,650 --> 00:28:28,430 So stemming basically from the art field we started to notice somehow similar 228 00:28:28,430 --> 00:28:36,320 patterns amongst the artists around us. So we spotted numerous similar imaginaries 229 00:28:36,320 --> 00:28:42,680 similar trends in each interest groups. And we started to observe similar topics, 230 00:28:42,680 --> 00:28:47,900 similar ideas and even similar ways of realizing artworks and answering to ideas 231 00:28:47,900 --> 00:28:53,340 and concerns. So at some point we were like: Do we really need artists to simply 232 00:28:53,340 --> 00:28:58,790 follow the trends? And do we need artists to just illustrate the latest technical 233 00:28:58,790 --> 00:29:03,820 technological bells. Maybe no. So that's where the project started with the simple 234 00:29:03,820 --> 00:29:10,180 question and we decided to automatize the process of mainstream creativity we could 235 00:29:10,180 --> 00:29:19,080 say. And to push it toward sort of the absurd. So to do that, we created a bot. 236 00:29:19,080 --> 00:29:25,960 And this bot basically is subscribed to hundreds of RSS feeds. That's the sort of 237 00:29:25,960 --> 00:29:31,150 feeds we will get on our cell phone, our Twitter feed you know. So were basically 238 00:29:31,150 --> 00:29:39,930 subscribing the bot to the same. And then the bot is using some python library to 239 00:29:39,930 --> 00:29:48,309 try to identify the most significant keyword in the headlines and those 240 00:29:48,309 --> 00:29:54,350 keywords are stored and then we organized using Tracery in a sort of generative 241 00:29:54,350 --> 00:30:00,470 poetry to create potential concept for artworks and those concepts are reposted on 242 00:30:00,470 --> 00:30:07,070 Twitter and different places to basically create a new weird inspiration machine. 243 00:30:07,070 --> 00:30:13,520 That's what you will see now. Video: Predictive Art Bot is a bot that 244 00:30:13,520 --> 00:30:20,050 turns the latest media headlines into artistic concepts. In the Age of Hyper 245 00:30:20,050 --> 00:30:25,260 connectivity the perverse implications of media echo chambers are becoming more and 246 00:30:25,260 --> 00:30:31,350 more obvious. Groups of similar behaviors are being partitioned into filter bubbles 247 00:30:31,350 --> 00:30:36,620 while the few massively reposted topics tend to monopolize most of the available 248 00:30:36,620 --> 00:30:42,900 attention. Search insular echo chambers strongly effect ways of thinking, resulting 249 00:30:42,900 --> 00:30:49,760 in increasingly homogeneous imaginaries within groups of likeminded people. 250 00:30:49,760 --> 00:30:53,480 Predictive art bar caricature is the predictability of media influenced 251 00:30:53,480 --> 00:30:59,640 artistic concepts by automating and skirting the human creative process. But 252 00:30:59,640 --> 00:31:04,900 beyond mere automation, it aims to stimulate unbridled, counter intuitive and 253 00:31:04,900 --> 00:31:11,870 even disconcerting associations of ideas. To do so it continually monitors emerging 254 00:31:11,870 --> 00:31:16,800 trends among the most influential news sources in fields as heterogeneous as 255 00:31:16,800 --> 00:31:24,320 politics, environment, innovation, culture, activism, or health. On this 256 00:31:24,320 --> 00:31:29,300 basis it identifies and combines keywords to generate concepts of artworks in a 257 00:31:29,300 --> 00:31:36,520 fully automated way ranging from unreasonable to prophetic to absurd. Each 258 00:31:36,520 --> 00:31:40,540 prediction becomes a thought experiment waiting to be incubated, misused, or 259 00:31:40,540 --> 00:31:47,380 appropriated by a human host. Nicolas: Okay. And we also commissioned a 260 00:31:47,380 --> 00:31:53,450 few artists to interpret and realize those projects a few times. Okay. The last 261 00:31:53,450 --> 00:31:58,190 project for tonight. I see that it's almost time for me. So the last project is 262 00:31:58,190 --> 00:32:07,370 a map and it's a work in progress for a future long-term project. And basically it 263 00:32:07,370 --> 00:32:13,040 focuses on the fact, that the web has become one of the most impactful vehicles 264 00:32:13,040 --> 00:32:19,380 for the propagation of ideas in culture. And hyper connectivity did intensify the 265 00:32:19,380 --> 00:32:26,790 rise of online politics and made it way easier to manipulate public opinions. And, 266 00:32:26,790 --> 00:32:34,690 I mean this happened at a sort of unprecedented scale. So you know we've 267 00:32:34,690 --> 00:32:40,590 seen the emergence of political bots, fake accounts, troll farms and so on. But today 268 00:32:40,590 --> 00:32:46,190 I will focus on the cultural aspect of this battleground. So one of the important 269 00:32:46,190 --> 00:32:50,760 aspects of online culture wars that we were trying to map, is perhaps this notion 270 00:32:50,760 --> 00:32:56,940 of transgression, so as one of the Trump supporters, Milo Yiannopoulos used to say 271 00:32:56,940 --> 00:33:04,800 "Conservatism is the new punk". Milo Yiannopoulos: And think about how the 272 00:33:04,800 --> 00:33:09,190 culture wars have changed, and changed very rapidly and in a very short space of 273 00:33:09,190 --> 00:33:18,929 time. The dissident element in culture: punk, mischief, irreverence is now better 274 00:33:18,929 --> 00:33:24,010 represented in politics by a "Make America Great Again" hat than by anything on the 275 00:33:24,010 --> 00:33:28,520 left. If you want to annoy somebody, you want to piss your parents off, If you want 276 00:33:28,520 --> 00:33:35,410 to be ejected from polite society as this poor angel has been. There is no better 277 00:33:35,410 --> 00:33:39,850 way to do it than to cast a vote for Donald Trump. This is the new punk. 278 00:33:39,850 --> 00:33:44,260 *Shouting* Milo Yiannopoulos: This is the new punk. 279 00:33:44,260 --> 00:33:48,670 Republican is the new cool. Thank you for coming. 280 00:33:48,670 --> 00:33:54,270 *Shouting* Nicolas: So in the context of the 281 00:33:54,270 --> 00:34:00,010 political correctness and self-censorship, public shaming. That was occuring a lot 282 00:34:00,010 --> 00:34:07,500 in the left. This obscure style of sort of iconic, cynical, mockery emerges as a sort 283 00:34:07,500 --> 00:34:15,810 of counterforce. And transgression made the alt-right attractive in a way. And 284 00:34:15,810 --> 00:34:20,749 this transgressive online culture is well presented in the book of Angela Nagel 285 00:34:20,749 --> 00:34:25,569 called Kill All Normies. Audio: What seem to hold them all together 286 00:34:25,569 --> 00:34:31,429 in their obscurity was a love of mocking the earnestness and moral self flattery of 287 00:34:31,429 --> 00:34:36,299 what felt like a tired liberal intellectual conformity running right 288 00:34:36,299 --> 00:34:41,279 through from establishment liberal politics to the more militant enforcers of 289 00:34:41,279 --> 00:34:47,849 new sensitivities and from the wackiest corners of Tumblr to campus politics. 290 00:34:47,849 --> 00:34:54,239 Nicolas: So basically this culture of transgression aligns pretty well with what 291 00:34:54,239 --> 00:34:58,630 is called a weaponized meme so a weaponized meme is when the internet memes 292 00:34:58,630 --> 00:35:05,180 become part of political and ideological propaganda. It can be done by the right 293 00:35:05,180 --> 00:35:10,480 but as well by all the political spectrum like here to fight the homophobia in 294 00:35:10,480 --> 00:35:17,910 Russia. And as a starting point for this new series of projects we wanted to create 295 00:35:17,910 --> 00:35:23,249 a kind of mind map of the emerging online culture wars. So we use this classical 296 00:35:23,249 --> 00:35:29,820 political compass as a framework. I mean it's a framework that has been criticized 297 00:35:29,820 --> 00:35:35,829 a lot but nonetheless it became popular as a format to exchange content on online 298 00:35:35,829 --> 00:35:41,500 forums and on the meme-osphere and it often integrates non-political characters 299 00:35:41,500 --> 00:35:47,890 and pop-references and so on. So after studying numerous critical researches on 300 00:35:47,890 --> 00:35:52,509 the topic, like the Computational Propaganda Project, Angela Nagel, Florian 301 00:35:52,509 --> 00:35:57,859 Cramer and so on and also on investigations, we started to assemble a 302 00:35:57,859 --> 00:36:03,779 sort of cartography of weaponized meme elements with the help of Baruch Gottlieb. 303 00:36:03,779 --> 00:36:10,349 Audio: The Online Culture Wars Project offers a provisional cartography of 304 00:36:10,349 --> 00:36:17,150 weaponized meme elements using a speculative political distribution. Taking 305 00:36:17,150 --> 00:36:21,059 the political compass as a framework this cartography offers a symbolic 306 00:36:21,059 --> 00:36:26,859 representation of online ideological and political debates in the context of the 307 00:36:26,859 --> 00:36:33,549 growing polarization and radicalization. This ever evolving chart is the result of 308 00:36:33,549 --> 00:36:39,520 a superposition of hundreds of politicized memes found online. In addition to 309 00:36:39,520 --> 00:36:44,960 influential political symbols, actors and influencers. It is designed as a 310 00:36:44,960 --> 00:36:51,460 discussion starter intended to expose and contextualize the present battlefield of 311 00:36:51,460 --> 00:36:56,289 online culture wars. Nicolas: So we are currently continuing 312 00:36:56,289 --> 00:37:02,759 this map as an interactive, contributive webpage. Well this was a quick selection 313 00:37:02,759 --> 00:37:08,440 of our old and new works that somehow resonates with the CCC and thank you for 314 00:37:08,440 --> 00:37:15,290 your attention. *Applause* 315 00:37:15,290 --> 00:37:25,660 Herald: A big thanks Nicholas. Are there any questions to Nicholas. There is 316 00:37:25,660 --> 00:37:30,200 microphone 1. Micophone 1: Hey congrats. Beautiful 317 00:37:30,200 --> 00:37:32,200 presentation. Nikolas:Thanks. 318 00:37:32,200 --> 00:37:38,210 Micophone 1: I'm curious what's what have you never dared doing, what's your next 319 00:37:38,210 --> 00:37:46,119 step? I think it's correlated somehow. Nicolas: Yeah yeah yeah. So as I said this 320 00:37:46,119 --> 00:37:51,650 last project is a sort of a starting point for a new series of investigation and 321 00:37:51,650 --> 00:37:58,239 research. And at the moment we are accumulating a lot of documents on the 322 00:37:58,239 --> 00:38:06,509 online propaganda and online influence. And we're starting a new series of online 323 00:38:06,509 --> 00:38:14,710 performance using and basically challenging those strategies for the 324 00:38:14,710 --> 00:38:22,319 manipulation of opinions. So we are trying to develop our own propaganda strategies 325 00:38:22,319 --> 00:38:27,049 basically. Herald: Are there any questions from the 326 00:38:27,049 --> 00:38:35,670 internet. No. Yeah. Then a big warm applause, thanks for Nicholas. 327 00:38:35,670 --> 00:38:37,664 *Applause* 328 00:38:37,664 --> 00:39:01,000 subtitles created by c3subtitles.de in the year 2020. Join, and help us!