Blog Archive for Month: August 2012

OHH NOO! 0dayart.net  STOLE the HOT show (on DVD) and is seeding it now ILLEGALY on the INTERNT! thepiratebay.se/torrent/7542702 😉 Love the picture @nullsleep!! THX!!
Project page DVD Dead Drop

Full interview at http://hyperallergic.com/55777/somewhere-between-cyber-and-real-an-interview-with-aram-bartholl/ THX Jillian!!

Somewhere Between Cyber and Real: An Interview with Aram Bartholl

The DVD Dead Drop at the Museum of the Moving Image (all photos by the author for Hyperallergic unless otherwise noted)
Somewhere along one of the exterior walls of the Museum of the Moving Image, there is a slot. It’s barely noticeable — a small, dark crevice cut into the wall, incredibly thin and not more than five inches long. If you happened to see it, you’d probably think it looks a lot like a CD/DVD drive — and you’d be right. It is a drive, meant for blank discs. If you bring a DVD, insert it into the slot and then wait a few minutes, the drive will eventually return your disc to you. On it will be a curated exhibition of video art — for the next month, at least. After September 15, the content being offered will change. It will change again a month later, and then again, and on and on indefinitely (or until the museum decides to uninstall the drive).
This installation, titled “DVD Dead Drop” (2012), is the work of German artist Aram Bartholl. Bartholl uses his art to explore the line between the digital and physical worlds, often bringing the former into latter in an exaggeratedly literal way. For a project titled “Are You Human?” he took web-based CAPTCHA images and turned them into text sculptures installed on the street and in galleries. In this way, his work both embraces digital culture and questions what may be missing from it.
The DVD drive at the Museum of the Moving Image isn’t Bartholl’s first dead drop. In 2010, while in residence at Eyebeam, the artist embedded 5 USB flash drives into the walls of buildings around New York City. Those were the first dead drops: free, physical file-sharing networks available for public use, if you could find them. The idea has spread massively — there are now almost a thousand dead drops worldwide. But this is Bartholl’s first time using DVDs. I sat down with him at the Museum of the Moving Image to discuss the new project, as well as some old ones, and whether there’s any difference between cyber and real anymore.
*   *   *
Jillian Steinhauer: This isn’t your first dead drop. The other ones, the USB ports, seem to be much more about file sharing: you load whatever you want and take whatever you want. Is that where the idea came from?
Aram Bartholl: There’s many layers to this whole development. Dead drops started, for me, with this picture of your flash drive in the wall, and just the gesture of — you walk up with your laptop and you connect it to the building, to the city. The files are literally cemented into the building, instead of all this server-based connection. You have to go to the place, you don’t know what’s on there, it’s dangerous because there might be a virus — it has all these implications.
But it started with a picture, and back then I wouldn’t know what to put on there, and I was like, “Oh, it’s empty and everybody can put something on there. It’s file sharing, actually.” So it kind of came up as a second step. And it made so much sense with the whole idea of having it in public, accessible to everyone, and the internet censorship discussion.
For the history of the DVD dead drop: I think at the very beginning, there were people from Brazil, for example, journalists writing, “Oh, that’s a great idea, but you can’t really do it here, because not everybody has a laptop and you don’t pull out your laptop in the street.” So there was always this question of, “Hm, what are the other ways to do it, to make it more accessible for everyone?” That was the start to think about DVDs.
Also, I had a piece before the dead drops where I had a USB device in a drawing, and you could get files on the drawing with a USB — it would copy on your stick. Going to dead drops kind of flipped the whole thing, that the USB drive is in the wall and you have to bring your whole computer. Of course, to embed a DVD drive in a wall, you need a computer in the back; it involves more effort and structure. And still, it’s not magic, right? It’s feasible….
read on at  http://hyperallergic.com/55777/somewhere-between-cyber-and-real-an-interview-with-aram-bartholl/

flickr set
The DVD Dead Drop opening last week at MMI was awesome! Thx to everyone for showing up!! Thx to all the artist participating in the first show ‘HOT‘!
Thx to MMI staff for dedicated production and support! Thx to Jonas Lund for code! And special shoutout to Jason Eppink at MMI for making all this happen!
Project page DVD Dead Drop
 

DVD Dead Drop at MMI
Project page DVD Dead Drop
 

 

(everything ready to launch! CU on Thursday!)
Project page DVD Dead Drop

HOT
A group show about video that is not video
Curated by Aram Bartholl
Served on DVD through the DVD Dead Drop install at the Museum of Moving Image, NYC
Opening reception Thursday, August 16, 6:00–8:00 p.m.
Acessible to the public 24/7 , August 16–September 15, 2012
Participating artists:
0100101110101101.org (Eva & Franco Mattes), Constant Dullaart, Curating YouTube (Robert Sakrowski), Joel Holmberg, JODI, JK Keller, Olia Lialina, Jonas Lund, Rosa Menkman, Katja Novitskova, Niko Princen, Casey Reas, Evan Roth, Andrew Salomone, Borna Sammak, UBERMORGEN.COM
Curator’s Statement:
“If it had been possible to distribute video online from day one, there would be no Web as we know it today. Instead, during the long wait for shareable online video, artists developed a distinctive language that we still value today, applying clever montages, modular visuals constructed form reusable, repeatable elements, and minimal activity…”
—Olia Lialina (2010). “Early Experiments Online,” article published on ‘The Take,’ at Guggenheim.org
Technological developments over the last three decades have generated a vast range of production and distribution methods for the moving image that have significantly deconstructed the linearity of film and video. The rapidly changing landscape of the web, code, vectors, 2D, 3D, games, glitches, and GIFs has profoundly influenced the way we perceive video today. Works produced by these new processes and software tools often have very little in common with traditional video: some are closer to paintings, some loop in micro movies, and others exploit system faults. Many of these moving images are software processes that result in a wide range of visualizations, and a lot of them exist in single frames, code-generated vectors, manipulated computer games, or screencasts of operating systems.
The moving image has been hacked, transformed, and infiltrated from multiple directions and digital sources, but over the last ten years it also conquered the Internet. The show HOT represents a wide range of artistic positions analyzing, reinterpreting, and deconstructing the moving image. New and classic works from well-established digital artists will be served to a public hot on silver disc 24/7.
DVD Dead Drop
Made possible by the Harpo Foundation, with support from the Consulate General of the Federal Republic of Germany, New York.
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Project page DVD Dead Drop

iPhone live
by Johannes P Osterhoff
2012
Currently on show at bauer & ewald, Berlin,
iPhone live party upcoming Saturday, 11th 8pm 🙂
I, Johannes P Osterhoff, shall do another one-year performance piece.
The piece is called “iPhone live” and documents the activities performed on my mobile phone during this year.
Activities can be seen streamed on http://www.iphone-live.net and on public projections.
The performance shall start on June 29, 2012 and shall end on June 29, 2013.
I shall not use other mobile phones during this year.
 

From next week on the MMI will be serving HOT discs to the public 24/7 right here! (pic by @jasoneppink thx!!)
Project page DVD Dead Drop

Pretty clever idea by Raphael to combine the software development platform Github and its repository tools for open source projects with the making and remixing of an art installation. like.
1962
Sculptures conceptualized using a revision control system and represented physically.
by Raphael Bastide
2012

**love it** 🙂
Curiosity
by Olia Lialina
2012