DULL-E Dead Drops
The artist Fabiola Larios described the Dead Drops to the AI picture generating system DALL-E.
It resulted in these generated pictures! 👏👏… love it! Thx! :))
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Upcoming Events
Current Events
Art Me!
21. April – 30. July 2022
Group Show, Galerie Charlot, Paris
At the heart of the Art Me! exhibition is the desire to reconsider what unites artists to their artworks, which they inhabit, populate with characters, or open to the public. The idea, therefore, as Allan Kaprow suggested in the Sixties, is that nothing must separate art from life, as attested by his Essays on the Blurring of Art and Life (1993). Nowadays, there are still artists performing happenings whether privately, in the public space, or on the Internet, benefiting from the magic and efficiency of contemporary technologies in order to embody their creations. We must recognise that there are many techniques that encourage artists to rethink the nature of their relationship to the beings that literally ‘populate’ their works, for example: scanning, modelling, or motion capture, and also artificial intelligence. The 3D models thus represented are in the exact measure of real people. It could be a matter of detail, one might think, but in fact this distinction is likely to reinforce the empathy of the audience inevitably recognising itself in a gesture or a posture that is strangely familiar. But revolutions, in art, are also the consequences of the democratisations of the artistic practices due to the emergence of innovations: going from the Kodak film to the Apple iPhone, not to mention the platforms of sharing, precisely where artistic practices mix with those of hobbyists without knowing who influences who! Indeed, how many artists collect their image files by tracking them through their index names in the realm of emojis to create collages that continue well beyond the frames? Finally, there are the artworks of which we are the heroes: the creations that we experience, through manipulation or virtually. By interacting, we magnify technical objects; in immersion, without any body, we become the essential component of the artwork that we complete, in the case that we are not already the artwork itself. Like the artists creating happenings and more widely performers who, in action, not only make an act of creation, but also are the creation itself. This brings us back to the French translation of Allan Kaprow’s book that is even more precise: L’art et la vie confondus. – Dominique Moulon 2022
With: Aram Bartholl – Chun Hua Catherine Dong – Misha Margolis – Matt Pike – Sabrina Ratté – Marie Serruya – Pierrick Sorin – Jeanne Susplugas – Penelope Umbrico – Eric Vernhes – Du Zhenjun
Curation : Dominique Moulon / V.Hasson-Benillouche
House of Mirrors: Artificial Intelligence as Phantasm
9. April – 31. July 2022
Group Show, HMKV, Dortmund
The exhibition House of Mirrors: Artificial Intelligence as Phantasm will address AI-related issues like hidden human labor, algorithmic bias/discrimination, the problem of categorization and classification, and our imaginations and phantasms about AI, and it will also ask the question about whether (and how) it is possible to regain agency in this context. More than 20 artworks by international artists will be presented in an exhibition which will be subdivided into seven thematic chapters and whose scenography will be reminiscent of a giant house of mirrors. In May 2022, a 200-page bi-lingual catalogue will be published (German/English) as printed matter and as a free online PDF.
Participating artists:
Aram Bartholl, Pierre Cassou-Noguès, Stéphane Degoutin, Sean Dockray, Jake Elwes, Anna Engelhardt, Nicolas Gourault, Adam Harvey, Libby Heaney, Lauren Huret, Zheng Mahler, Lauren Lee McCarthy, Simone C Niquille, Elisa Giardina Papa, Julien Prévieux, Anna Ridler, RYBN, Sebastian Schmieg, Gwenola Wagon, Conrad Weise, Mushon Zer-Aviv
Curatored by:
Inke Arns, Francis Hunger, Marie Lechner
The Glass Room
18. January – 26. November 2022
Group Show, MOD, Adelaide
The Glass Room MOD
The Glass Room is a public intervention that aims to educate about technology. With a sleek tech shop vibe, visitors can freely and critically discuss their relationships with data privacy.
Having toured Europe and the US, it will be visiting Australia for the first time in 2022.
From the tech boom to tech backlash, our understanding of the digital has become both deeply personal and deeply political. Our desire for convenience has given way to questions about the trade-offs for how much we can control our data and our understanding about how it is used.
The Glass Room is a place to explore these ideas. The objects here bring to life the hidden aspects of everyday technologies and examine how they are changing the way we live. The objects in The Glass Room provide unconventional and unexpected ways of seeing your relationship with your data.
As technology becomes embedded in every part of our lives, The Glass Room helps you look deeper into the digital: Does your personal data say everything about you, or is it an imperfect portrait? Do more tools, apps, and information make us better and more efficient, or are we giving away more than we want in return? What goes on behind the screens and inside the black boxes of the devices we interact with everyday? If we knew, would we still sign in or click ‘I agree’? How much trust do users invest in big tech companies, and what can be done if that trust is broken? If you want to learn more, you can visit our Data Detox Bar to pick up our Data Detox Kit, which offers you simple tips to enhance your digital privacy, security, and wellbeing.
Featured Artists:
Dries Depoorter, Aram Bartholl, Kiki Mager, Bengt Sjölén, Danja Vasiliev, Sebastian Schmieg, !Mediengruppe Bitnik, Tega Brain / Sam Lavigne, Kyriaki Goni, La Loma, and Tactical Tech
Recent Events
Metapolitisches Hüpfen
10. June 2022
Performance, Grosse Bergstrasse / Goetheplatz, Hamburg
Symposium und antifaschistische Hüpfburg
Große Bergstraße/ Goetheplatz, Hamburg
13:00-19:00 Uhr
Mohamed Amjahid (Vortrag & Diskussion)
Wie aus der Parallelgesellschaft herausspringen?
Über homogen weisse Räume in der Stadt
Aram Bartholl (Performance & Gespräch)
Greetings from Hamburg!
Wie umgehen mit geschichtsrevisionistischer Architektur?
Eduard Freudmann (Vortrag)
Kontextualisierung, Umgestaltung, Weggestaltung
Künstlerische und aktivistische Auseinandersetzungen mit geschichtspolitischen Manifestationen im öffentlichen Raum
Cornelia Siebeck (Thesen & gemeinsames Nachdenken)
Was wir „vergessen“ haben, oder:
Für eine Erinnerungsarbeit ohne Selbstvergewisserung
Nora Sternfeld (Vortrag)
Errungene Erinnerungen
Kontaktzonen umkämpfter und geteilter Geschichte
Gegenwärtig sind wir mit einer rechten Metapolitik konfrontiert, die mit kulturellen Setzungen versucht zivilgesellschaftliche Überzeugungen und kulturelle Diskurse jenseits von Parlamenten nach eigenen Vorstellungen zu verändern. Während das Konzept der Metapolitik eigentlich für den Aufbau einer demokratischen Zivilgesellschaft gedacht war, zielt die Neue Rechte darauf ab, gesellschaftliche Komplexität auf essentialistische Vorstellungen von Kultur, Nation und Volk zu reduzieren. Mit Rekonstruktionen historischer Architektur, ideologischer Inanspruchnahme von Orten, aber auch Angriffen auf Parlamente versucht sie abgeschlossene Identitäten zu konstruieren. Im Ringen um die kulturelle Hegemonie entwendet die Neue Rechte auch den Künsten ihre Strategien, mit denen zuvor noch für eine offene und vielfältige Gesellschaft eingetreten wurde. Sie richtet die performativen Methoden nun gegen die vielfältige Kultur selbst. Dafür dreht sie das kritische Potential der Künste in eine affirmative Symbolhaftigkeit um und verwendet das progressive Moment der Künste für ihre regressiven Ideen.
Obwohl die permanente Gefahr besteht, die entwickelten künstlerischen Praxen in den Händen von Personen mit autoritären und völkischen Vorstellungen wiederzufinden, besteht nach wie vor die Notwendigkeit mit Kunst Ideen davon zu entwickeln, wie wir als Gesellschaft gerne zusammenleben wollen. Metapolitisches Hüpfen bietet den Anlass, rechte Metapolitik zu diskutieren und schafft zugleich den Raum, um Gegenstrategien zu entwickeln. Um die Frage nach dem Umgang mit symbolischen Räumen so zuzuspitzen, dass sie sichtbar und diskutierbar wird, wird das Hambacher Schloss als Symbol für Demokratie aber auch nationalistische Vereinnahmung in eine antifaschistische Hüpfburg transformiert. Die Architektur wird zur Infrastruktur für ein eintägiges Symposium im öffentlichen Raum, das Widersprüchlichkeit zulässt und auf dem nicht nur theoretisch, sondern auch praktisch und performativ Strategien gegen rechte Metapolitik entwickelt, erprobt und debattiert werden.
Mit: Mohamed Amjahid, Aram Bartholl, Eduard Freudmann, Cornelia Siebeck und Nora Sternfeld
Konzeption: Frieder Bohaumilitzky
Grafikdesign Flyer & Plakat: Torben Körschkes
DeadDrops in H4v4n4
23. – 31. May 2022
Group Show, El Paquete Semanal, Havana
DeadDrops in H4v4n4 and !!!Sección ARTE [No. 37], Paquete Semanal, collaboration with Nestor Siré [May, 2022] Cuba.
Video des Monats
1. – 31. May 2022
Solo Show, HMKV, Dortmund
In the series HMKV Video of the Month, HMKV presents in monthly rotation current video works by international artists – selected by Inke Arns”
“TOP25”, 2018, video, 5:44 min
TOP25 is a series of short 3D animation sequences featuring the 25 most used passwords in the world. Standard, easy-to-guess passwords like ‘123456’ or ‘admin’—frequently the default preset passwords for routers and other devices in the past—still pose a significant security threat to computer systems in general. This collection of well-known passwords is presented in a style of 3D animation often used for YouTube intros. It is very common practice among YouTubers to use short and very to-the-point 3D animations of their logo and name to introduce their channels, and a whole scene of young YouTubers exchange and share the 3D source files (Blender 3D) online to help new channel producers generate their own intros. Though the animations are remixed and altered, the general aesthetics follow a very clear visual concept. All sequences in this video are original designs and arrangements by different creators; the text has been altered to match the top 25 passwords.
Call Me
9. April – 10. June 2022
Group Show, galeriepcp, Paris
In 1979 D. Scott Rogo and Raymond Bayless published their book Phone Calls From the Dead. It brought together reports of paranormal experiences describing phone calls from recently deceased people. The authors connected these narratives to electromagnetic effects and electronic voice phenomenon. These experiences highlight how the phone has become a metaphor for our desire for meaning and communication. The word telephone itself plays on this concept. It comes from the Greek far or distant (τῆλε, tēle), and voice (φωνή, phōnē).
Telephones today are not just audio devices that transform sound into electronic signals. Phones are surfaces onto which we project emotional desire. They are contemporary fetish objects, surveillance devices and encyclopaedias. They isolate and connect. The artworks in this exhibition question this relationship between us and the ‘thing’ in its dumb and symbolic reality.
Curated by Francesca Gavin
with:
Anthony D Green, Aram Bartholl, Britta Thie, Cecilie Norgaard, Christian Ingemann, Cory Arcangel, Damien Roach, Jermaine Francis, Juliette Blightman, Stephen Dunne
Blog
Hypernormalization at HMKV House of Mirrors
Hypernormalization at HMKV House of Mirrors, ‘Facebook, Twitter Co zerschlagen ZDF Aspekte 29.4.2022
MoMA collection
The MoMA aquired 10 photographs in 2021 https://www.moma.org/artists/39302
I don’t need to own art.
A thread unroll of a text about ntfs and digital art I posted on Twitter today.
I wrote a text about nfts from a digital art perspective but wasn’t very happy with it. Instead I condensed it into these 18 tweets. I hope you find some interesting angles.
+++ I don’t need to own art. +++
A thread:
Blockchain, nfts and smart contracts are not the new medium. The driving force in making art with nfts is a very old one: It is money! Andy Warhol: „Making money is art, good business is the best art.“ The promise of ‘getting rich quick!’. Sadly money is the medium here.
1/
The art market is governed by money. Success of art works is measured in prices. This is not helping the quality of art, on the contrary it often distorts the art. Congrats! We have the same system in place for digital art now. Ownership mindset in a space of abundance.
2/
Science built a very powerful and open Web/Internet with no commerce in mind. We’ve already lost the openness to the mega platforms. Now the crypto-bros try to add a full blown digital property layer on top of everything. This will not help make the world a better place.
3/
It’s the irony of history that netart of the 90s, which explored a true new medium is returning now in this flat form of expensive jpgs. Back then the art world didn’t know how to handle netart. Today nfts enter the market from the very top with record auction sales.
4/
The Post Internet generation, which came from netart was the first one to successfully enter the commercial art world. Because they made sculptures and prints after the Internet. But suddenly jpgs and gifs online are the big financial winner. The Internet art paradox.
5/
Now there is again a vibrant scene of online art going on and certainly interesting works are being produced. But the nft space is annoyingly loud with a lot of toxic stories and desperate jpgs. It hurts to see established digital artists in crypto whale group show auctions.
6/
Yes, make netart. Build websites. It’s great you finally can live from it. But don’t rip off your fan base with 1000$ podcast bundles. Whales have endless coins while people with no money buy in for 0.3 Eth out of FOMO. At least make sure they get something real and it lasts.
7/
Many articles and videos explained already why the crypto game is a pyramid scheme. For people in the traditional art market this is not a real problem. Because it is the same game there. Attention hype, art clowns, rigged markets, pump and dump and so on. This is fine.
8/
Galleries love nfts but institutions and museums with public funding have a different responsibility. Think hard about what you are showing and why? With nft shows you are normalizing a problematic and wasteful system. Critical works don’t need to be on but about blockchains.
9/
It was beautiful to witness the past 20 years, to see digital art evolve. Yes, there have always been trends, discussion and unexpected forks. But the current hype about ntfs is a game changer. Despite my criticism I understand the attraction of the unique identifiable file.
10/
I proposed this idea even myself ten years ago. But already back then @GIFmodel pointed such a system would not help the art in netart. And here we are: massive pyramid speculation with jpgs and museums losing tokens send to a wrong wallet address. https://web.archive.org/web/20130914141217/http://ny-magazine.org/issues.html
11/
I was naive about art markets but interested to see digital art being represented better in the art world. For this I created exhibition formats like “Speed Shows” in internet cafes or routers on gallery walls, “Offline Art”. http://speedshow.net/ https://arambartholl.com/offline-art-new2/
12/
At the @MovingImageNYC visitors could burn a DVD outside the museum building or “Full screen” was a show with works on smart watches. I was interested seeing netart in the space, bound to situations, breaking expectation. https://arambartholl.com/dvd-dead-drop/ https://arambartholl.com/full-screen/
13/
I wonder what will be left in a decade or two of the nft production from the last couple years. It is an interesting phenomenon from a Internet folklore point of view. Massive amounts of poor images being produced in hope of getting rich quick. A feast for net anthropology?
14/
Once this hype will fade and the art crowd moves on to the next new thing, nfts will become another chapter of digital art, and people will wonder how crazy that was. @errafael pointed this out in context of the Wikipedia case rejecting nfts as art.
https://twitter.com/errafael/status/1484160005066694662?s=20
15/
In his book “Krypto Kunst” german art critic @koljareichert delivers a very nuanced extensive analysis of what’s going with nfts and crypto art but in a podcast interview he concludes with “… to watch animations on screens is boring.” I don’t agree.
https://extremdummefragen.podigee.io/27-neue-episode#t=4573
16/
I love digital art. There is such a rich history of screen based works. It is important to acknowledge and remember them. Especially because working digitally became so normal in all kinds of art practices. The nft hype hasn’t brought much new to the table, except toxic $$.
17/
I don’t need to own art.
18/
Kunstforum International
Oliver Zybok „Memes – Ursprünge und Gegenwart“ Kunstforum International #297 Jan-Feb 2022, page 55
Schatten Kubas
I wrote an article about the Neue Nationalgalerie and its initial design as headquater for Bacardi on Cuba. It is available to read at monopol magazin (in german).
La Grande Bibliotheque ferme
In 2015 I projected 10k leaked passwords on the national library Quebec as part of a public art show in Montreal. It’s 2021 and the library is closed because of a hacked database and leaked personal info etc … ¯\_ (ツ) _/¯
Artforum – Greetings from Berlin
Grand Facades, March 16, 2021 • Kristian Vistrup Madsen on the Humboldt Forum in Berlin
https://www.artforum.com/architecture/kristian-vistrup-madsen-on-the-humboldt-forum-in-berlin-85258
Double opening – HAW student shows
Posthumanism Explained, online exhibition, opening!! Tuesday 23.2. 18:00 -> https://posthumanism-explained.common.garden/ (computer browser recommended!) Results of the Blockseminar “Virtual Reality – Real Virtuality”, 3D and VR experiments, WiSe20/21, Prof. A.Bartholl, Kunst mit digitalen Medien, Design, DMI, HAW Hamburg.
with: Tobias Bartenschlager, Lukas Besenfelder, Stefano Dealessandri, Frederik Engelbrecht, Julika Hother, Vanessa Könemund, Katharina Mumme, Amyra Radwan, Sandy Richter, Luisa Striepe, Alexandra Vögtle & Sebastian Ziemann
The Danger Of A Single Story, online exhibition, opening!! 23.2. 18:00 -> https://the-danger-of-a-single-story.common.garden/ (computer browser recommended!) Projects on the topic of memorials and postcolonial discourse, results of the class “Denkmal”, WiSe20/21, Prof. A. Bartholl, Kunst mit digitalen Medien, Design, DMI, HAW Hamburg
with: Stefano Dealessandri, Konstantinas Grigalaitis, Stephan Kraus, Julia Löffler, Matasova Mariia, Sandy Rrichter, Janna Thaden, Anna Wank & Lorenz Wendt
Both exhibitions build with https://common.garden , thx!
Daten am ort (Bits on location) 2001 – Video Tour
‘Daten am Ort’ (Bits on location) is a research project and website I made in 2001. How could Internet and data affect communication based on space? With this project I also graduated in architecture at the art school UdK Berlin back then. The whole website is programmed in flash which will be discontinued on all the big browsers for ever at the end of 2020. Therefore I recorded this short video tour of this website.
You are also invited to visit this website itself – http://datenamort.de – it will certainly stay online but it might be more difficult to access the flash content in the future.
Full website, no voice over, with all links and clicks, complete screen capture here.