Aram Bartholl – Blog

Group Show: MAKE IT FIT 

http://make-it-fit.net

New works by the students and members of the class ‘New Media’, visiting Prof. Aram Bartholl, Kunsthochschule Kassel.

Participating artists:
Nicole Brauer, Echo Canluo, Christopher Casper, Hannes Drescher, Lou Hardt, Saskia Kaffenberger, Hannah Kretzschmar, Jonas Leichsenring, Jasper Meiners, Isabel Paehr, EIEE, Fritz Laszlo Weber, Zhifeng Zhang, Aram Bartholl.

04.02.2017 – 05.02.2017, Opening Feb 4th, 7pm
http://panke.gallery , Gerichtstr. 23, Hof 5, 13347 Berlin —>> RSVP fb-event

Opening: 4th February 7:00 pm

07:00 pm – 12:00 am: Exhibition FREE ENTRANCE!,
09:00 pm – 10:00 pm: Video Screening FREE ENTRANCE!,
10:00 pm – open end: AfterParty, Live Acts, DJs FREE ENTRANCE!
01:00 pm – 04:00 pm 05.02.2017: Exhibition FREE ENTRANCE!

MAKE IT FIT

Kunsthochschule Kassel – The New Media class is proud to present new works at panke.gallery, Berlin. The pieces range from installation, performance, screen-based and interactive works to video and film. ‘Make it fit’ refers to the restrictive cabin baggage rules of budget airlines, including their painfully meticulous control mechanisms. A lifestyle-conscious, hyper-mobile generation rattling trolleys along pavements has become the hallmark of gentrified neighborhoods in travel-hyped European capitals.

Kassel’s New Media students are using the classic travel suitcase as a constraint and metaphorical context for art production to meet the challenge of setting up a group show in Berlin in less than one day. Each work must fit into a suitcase to be transported, and setup time has to be either instant or not more than two hours. Hyper-mobile art also facilitates instant pop-up micro shows and performances in trains, in stations, and in other public spaces.

Curatorial processes often see artists selected on the basis of friendship networks or name dropping rather than actual works. How far can an artwork be ‘bent’ to make it fit an art show? An art market open secret is that paintings and sculpture that are small enough to fit in an ‘Upper Westside’ elevator have a better chance of being sold. Does it fit?

Klasse Neue Medien, Visuelle Kommunikation, Kunsthochschule Kassel, 2017

PROGRAM

Video Screening:

Insert your nipple here,
InternetRestroom Trailers,
LAST CHANCE JUNCTION,
Passt doch,
making waves unmastered,
29°01′53″N 111°41′56″E

AfterParty:

GRUPPE FORMAL (live),
Mo Chan & SEABA$$_T_ύN,
DJ Thunder Touch

LINKS
http://make-it-fit.net
http://newmediakassel.com/
http://kunsthochschulekassel.de/

All pictures on flickr: https://www.flickr.com/photos/bartholl/sets/72157678572549491

Forgot your password? currently on show at “The Glass Room” NYC by Tacticaltech

THE GLASS ROOM: LOOKING INTO YOUR ONLINE LIFE is a pop-up shop with a twist: – a space for reflection, experimentation and play on how our we live our lives online. The Glass Room – 201 Mulberry Street New York, NY – November 29 to December 14, 2016 – https://tacticaltech.org/projects/glass-room

Press:

• http://thecreatorsproject.vice.com/old_blog/fake-pop-up-exposes-the-information-age
• https://nytimes.com/2016/12/27/magazine/finding-inspiration-for-art-in-the-betrayal-of-privacy.html
• http://www.voanews.com/a/glass-room-exhibit-privacy-in-digital-age/3676113.html

8k

12 x 3 meter print, car, audio collage
Aram Bartholl
2016

Commissioned by NEON festival Dundee.
8k, Aram Bartholl’s newly commissioned installation for NEoN, features a panoramic view of Sin City from Grand Theft Auto 5. The scene is a screenshot presented as a twelve-metre long print. A car parked in front of the billboard beckons visitors to take a seat and enjoy the view of the vast digital cityscape while listening to an audio collage of YouTubers playing the game.

Grand Theft Auto is an open-world, action-adventure video game series published by Rockstar Games. The title of the series makes reference to legal terminology for motor vehicle theft in the USA. The series has its origins in Dundee where it was first developed by Rockstar North (formerly DMA Designs) in 1997. The third chronological title, Grand Theft Auto III, released in 2001, was widely acclaimed for bringing the series to a 3D setting and offering a more immersive experience. The series has garnered controversy for its adult nature and violent themes.

The vast, open world of GTA 5 offers total free interaction for the player, like a huge playground with no moral boundaries. As a result, players tend to test the limits of what is possible in the game. YouTube hosts a massive collection of GTA 5 videos in which players frequently, hysterically, ‘go nuts.’ The ‘City of Sin’ in GTA 5 serves as a metaphorical excess flow valve, a projection plane and a mirror of today’s society, which has become increasingly regulated and controlled.

NEoN (North East of North)

all pictures on flickr

@arambartholl dead drop on Elementary :) pic.twitter.com/BslUrpBKrv

— Theodore Watson (@theowatson) https://twitter.com/theowatson/status/793612879928885248 November 2, 2016

Thanks to Jonah Brucker-Cohen & Theo Watson for pointing out the appearance of a Dead Drop in the TV show ‘Elementary‘. Cool! :)

Greenscreen Arnsberg
performance in public,
Aram Bartholl
2016

Greenscreen Arnsberg is a performance in public space which took place during the show “Remind me later” at Kunstverein Arnsberg in July 2016. The idea is to ‘catch’ random pedestrian in public with a portable green-screen. The by-passers become unwittingly actors  of an imaginary movie set. The green-screen background represents unlimited layers of augmentation in a post social everyday life.

The internet revolutionized information sharing, allowing people all over the world to post content and distribute it among networks. But as the internet has grown, surveillance on the web has exploded as well. So one artist is encouraging people to forget the cloud and share information in a totally anonymous way.

In 2010, Berlin-based media artist Aram Bartholl started “Dead Drops,” his participatory file-sharing art project, by cementing a USB drive into a brick wall in New York City.

“Speculative Privacy: Practical and impractical things you can do to your phone” is a lecture-workshop-performance format I presented at the Datapolitics conference track during the annual International Summer festival, Kampnagel, Hamburg on August 20th.

First the audience got stickers on their smart phone cameras at the entrance (in true Berghain manner) and then was instructed to do a few tests and look up settings on their devices during the talk. In the second half of the presentation everyone was invited to the stage to test different tools and materials on their phones while we kept discussing todays privacy questions. Some of the ‘mini workshops’ are useful others don’t really make sense but offer a strong therapeutic moment to ‘grill’ your mobile phone in a non destructive way.  You always wanted to flush your phone in the toilet or bury it in cement? This is your chance! Have it vacuumed in a plastic bag and dip it in paint or through it in other actions!

All slides of the talk and related links here! : http://datenform.de/talks/kampnagel/

Aram Bartholl, 2016

…more pictures on flickr!!

How to cement in your phone in a non-destructive way!

Aram Bartholl: Speculative Privacy
Aram Bartholl ist Konzept- und Medienkünstler. Im Mittelpunkt seines Interesses steht die kritische Auseinandersetzung mit der zunehmenden Digitalisierung unseres Alltags. In seinen oft humorvollen Arbeiten überführt er Items aus der Netzwelt ins Analoge, um bspw. die Allgegenwärtigkeit von Internetunternehmen wie Google sichtbar zu machen. In seinem performativen Workshop TRANSPARENCY zeigt er welche digitalen Spuren bei der Benutzung von Smartphones entstehen und welche Möglichkeiten es gibt, diese zu verwischen.

Thanks to the Kampnagel team for making all this possible!

http://www.kampnagel.de/de/programm/datapolitics/
20. August 2016, 18:00 – 19:30 (Halle P1)
Kampnagel, Hamburg

The ‘DeafenYourPhone’ tube is a mobile, low-cost, DIY sound dampening solition to prevent supposedly hacked phones from eavesdropping on its owner.


The Matryoshka tube in a tube concept works well to isolate a phone sound proof from its environment.

To avoid impact sound transmission the tubes are isolated with foam. Add another tube if you want to increase the sound proofing quality.

Dimensions: 12 x 12 x 30 cm ; weight: 1 kg ; material cost: 24,- €

The problem

Once targeted a standard mobile phone can be hacked by an attacker and easily be modified to record sound at any time. This might sound like a farfetched spy story to you but in the year 3 after Snowden politicians, lawyers, NGOs or journalists have to deal very much with these kind of questions. Recently Edward Snowden & Bennie Huan presented the project “Introspection Engine”, a hardware modification for iPhones that monitors and signals radio traffic on a hardware level to make sure the phone is ‘really off’. Different voices in the hacker community pointed out that this device cannot prevent phones from listen to a conversation and to relay the data ‘later’ to the ‘attacker’. It is generally advised for i.e. journalists who are meeting a ‘source’ to leave their phones ‘at home’ or in a sound dampening closet like a fridge nearby. However, depending on the local situation this is not necessarily a practical solution. You might need the phone to plan the meeting and maybe the place where you meet has no fridge or similar appliances accessible.

How does it work?

Like a russian Matryoshka doll the phone is locked into a foam isolated plastic tube with screw cover, which again is placed in an isolated plastic tube. After a series of tests with different containers it showed that a round tube of hard plastic provides good properties to block sound. It is very important to disrupt direct contact of the phone case and plastic tubes to avoid impact sound transmission. The double layer tube in a tube approach can be improved with a 3rd or more layers of plastic tubes. Surprisingly it is quite difficult to prevent a phone microphone from ‘hearing’ something. Try it yourself! I did tests with pouches, boxes, kitchen containers, glass containers, pelican cases and so on. Often there the recorded sound is already very low but always good enough to listen to a conversation once you pull up the volume in post-production audio software. Heavy high density material would work best to block sound waves but to walk around with a concrete block seems not very practical. However if you find out other better solutions please share your ideas!

Tutorial:

1. Get different size plastic drain tubes and covers with rubber seals from your local DIY store. Screw covers are advised but sometimes harder to get. In german the grey tubes are called ‘HT-Rohr‘
2. Buy some foam. I used just 10 mm standard foam but there is also special foam for sound canceling available i.e. in the auto mobile market available. Total cost of tubes and foam ca 24,- €
3. Place the phone in the isolated tube and close the cover tight. Make sure the phone cover is not touching the tube directly. Place the small tube in the big tube and also close this one tight.
   ( The small tube I got only has diameter of only 7,5 cm. Small size smart phones still fit in here. Any new iPhone or Samsung will need a bigger tube. )

Disclaimer!

Make sure to test your setup! Put your phone to record audio and lock it in the tubes. Try different sound sources in a variety of distances to the DeafenYourPhone tube and check the results in audio software on your computer. In a normal medium sound environment, with a distance of 1-2 meters and normal voice speaking level I wasn’t able to extract any usable audio from the recordings. Only rely on this proposal for a sound proofing capsule if you have tested and proofed its function properly. Tips and recommendations from audio/eavesdropping experts are welcome! ;)

History

I presented this sound proof tube concept along with the killyourphone.com pouches workshop end of 2013 at the #30C3 conference, the annual congress of the CCC (Chaos Computer Club) but haven’t documented it properly since then. This blog post is dedicated to Linus Neumann and Tim Pritlove from Logbuch Netzpolitik.org. ;))

Audio test!!

This is an audio test with the above shown setup. “Logbuch Netzpolitik” #190 is running at a decent volume (normal voice level). The tubes are closed and then placed ca. 1m away from the speaker. If you are able to extract the conversation of Tim and Linus while the phone (iPhone 5) is in the tube please let me know!

AV / DV
intervention & object
rubber, metal, 40x5x2cm, video 1:49 min

AV /DV is a customized 40 cm pressure hose – AV  Auto valve / DV Dunlop valve adapter – to balance pressure between a car and bicycle tire. First tested and shown at Remind me later solo show at Kunstverein Arnsberg.