Also as text at http://www.ecrans.fr/Offline-Art-il-faut-savoir-reseaux,16024.html
Thx to Marie Lechner for the great piece!!

I am glad to be featured in this very diverse refreshing overview on contemporary art.

Beyond Contemporary Art

Etan Jonathan Ilfeld

250 x 250 mm (9¾ x 9¾ in)
240 pages with 150 illustrations
Paperback with flaps
ISBN 978-1-908126-22-1
October 2012

£24.95   €29.95   US$39.95

In this book, the author surveys the key concepts and ideas that have reverberated throughout the art world in the last decade through studying the artists who have created them. From blockbuster museum exhibitions to influential art fairs and art-stars, the ever-expanding contemporary art world has been increasingly integrated into popular culture. While highlighting established artists such as Gerhard Richter, the book also includes emerging and mid-career artists whose work ranges widely. Artists such as Jeremy Wood who plots his movement across the globe through GPS tracking, Tatsuo Miyajima who does digital light displays, Eduardo Kac who does transgenic bio-art or Santiago Sierra who paid workers to shift a heavy rock back and forth are among the international artists included in this book. Often controversial, these artists push the boundaries of what would traditionally be considered art.

http://www.vivays-publishing.com/beyond_contemporary_art.htm

see also
http://we-make-money-not-art.com/archives/2012/10/beyond-contemporary-art.php
http://www.roomsmagazine.com/index.php/2012/10/going-beyond-contemporary-art-with-etan-ilfeld/

“Wo, bitte, geht’s zur realen Welt?” by Ricarda Stiller, 11.12.2012 08:00 Uhr
https://www.stuttgarter-zeitung.de/inhalt.internetkritik-wo-bitte-geht-s-zur-realen-welt.54006f04-4fa8-444f-b841-23a9a99a9f72.html

excerpt:

Was macht das Internet mit uns?

Mit dem Internet potenziert sich die Medienkritik in dem Maße, wie sich das Medium in alle erdenklichen Lebenssituationen ausbreitet. Vom Überall-Internet sind wir nicht mehr weit entfernt, vielleicht ist es sogar schon da. Nur an den Endgeräten wird noch gearbeitet. Längst besteht die Möglichkeit, dass der Kaffeevollautomat sich seine Software eigenständig über das Web aktualisiert. Konnte man sich vor zehn Jahren kaum eine Verwendung für Tablet-Computer vorstellen, wird man sich in zehn Jahren kaum noch vorstellen können, dass man seinen Alltag ohne einen Tablet-PC bewältigen kann.

Die Frage, was der Computer, das Internet, die sozialen Netzwerke oder Computerspiele mit uns anrichten, stellen sich nicht nur Soziologen, Medienanalytiker, Kulturwissenschaftler oder Psychologen, die zu diesem Thema den Büchermarkt fluten. Den aus Bremen stammenden und in Berlin lebenden Medienkünstler Aram Bartholl beschäftigt dieses Thema derart, dass es sich in fast allen seinen Arbeiten in irgendeiner Form wiederfindet.

read on full article

“Interdisciplinary artist Aram Bartholl…”
lightbox.time.com/2012/10/24/street-view-and-beyond-googles-influence-on-photography/#38

Extensive post on Rhizome about INSERT DISC. Thx Ben!! :)
http://rhizome.org/editorial/2012/oct/2/insert-disc-digital-flaneurs-guide/

Post about the DVD Dead Drop in EL PAIS, thx Stefano!!

An Anonymous video about #trapwire which features parts of the ‘How to avoid facial recognition’ video Kyle and I did a couple months ago. Yes!!

ADC Sushi 14 magazin  — CLICK TO ENLARGE!

“… Der größte Erfolg von Aram Bartholl bestünde darin, dass die auch von ihm eingestandendene Vergänglichkeit seines Werks sich darin zeigt, dass aus seinen Szenarien Wirklichkeit wird. Wenn Kunst sich dem Umstand verdankt, unwahrscheinlich zu sein und zu bleiben, gründet sich die Vergänglichkeit der Werke Bartholls darin, immer wahrscheinlicher zu werden.”  Siggi Becker 2012

Thx to the Sushi team and thx to Siggi Becker!

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/

Beautiful WDR 3 ‘Mosaik’ radio (play) piece about Dead Drops by Claudia Friedrich. Thx!!

MP3 here 2012-07-04_mos_3_0702_kunststicks.mp3 (german)

Kunststicks

Dead-Drop in Funkhaus-Wand

Mosaik kommt in die Mauer

Der Künstler Wolf Vostell zementierte sein Auto ein und nannte es Ruhender Verkehr. Das war 1969. Vor zwei Jahren machte sich erneut ein Künstler auf den Weg und zementierte einen Alltagsgegenstand ein. Kein Auto, sondern einen USB-Stick. Aram Bartholl pflanzte das digitale Speichermedium in eine Mauerritze in New York. Die Idee stammt aus einer Zeit, in der geheime Nachrichten per Post übermittelt wurden. Menschen, die sich unerkannt Informationen zukommen lassen wollten, nutzten als Medien so genannte Tote Briefkästen, Dead Drops. Das waren kleine Stifte oder Boxen, die sie zum Beispiel in Astlöchern oder Mauerritzen versteckten. Nur Adressat und Empfänger wussten davon. Der Künstler Aram Bartholl verwandelt USB-Sticks in Dead Drops. Diese toten Briefkästen sind alles andere als geheim. Jeder hat Zugang. Er kann Bilder, Texte, Töne drauf laden oder runterladen. Mit diesem Kunstprojekt löste Aram Bartholl eine weltumspannende Bewegung aus.

Reportage von Claudia Friedrich