Behind the Smart World publication

Exhibition: “Behind the Smart World – saving, deleting, resurfacing data”

March 13, 2016May 14, 2021KairUs

Waste(d)!

AMRO – Art Meets Radical Openness 2016, Linz
Festival Dedicated to Art, Hacktivism and Open Culture
Waste(d)!
25.05-28.05.2016

AMRO is a biennial community festival in Linz that probes and engages with new challenges between digital culture, art, everyday life, education, politics, and taking action.

This year’s festival “Waste(d)!” is devoted to aspects of the conditions of our digital infosphere that are increasingly perceived as complex. The act of saving, deleting, or resurfacing data and information has taken on a life of its own, is monitored, monetized and waste valuable natural resources.

What is the cultural, social, philosophical, ecological, and economic significance of producing, saving, deleting, and resurfacing data?

Exhibition in conjunction with AMRO 2016: Waste(d)!
Opening: Wednesday, 25 May 2016, 7:30 pm
KunstRaum Goethestrasse

Agbogbloshie is a district in the teeming metropolis of Accra in West-African Ghana. The world’s largest electro-waste dump is located here. Twenty-two hard drives brought back to Austria from this dump are the starting point for the exhibition. Alongside the material and exploitative dark sides of the dirty business with electronic waste, the exhibition brings together artistic positions dealing with the value of digital information and our constant production of data. The saving, deleting and resurfacing of information is part of our everyday life. We leave not only material traces that have disastrous effects on people and our environment, but also digital traces, the value of which is to be called into question.
A project by Linda Kronman and Andreas Zingerle (KairUs) realised in cooperation with servus.at.

Audrey Samson, Emilio Vavarella, Fabian Kühfuß, Fictilis, Ivar Veermäe, Joakim Blattmann, Andreas Zingerle and Linda Kronman (KairUs), Martin Reiche, Michael Wirthig, Michaela Lakova, Owen Mundy, Raphael Perret, Shu Lea Cheang, Simon Krenn, Matthias Urban, Times of Waste, Wolfgang Spahn.

With additional workshops by Audrey Samson (Digital Data funeral (selfie)) and Fieke Jansen and Ling Luther from the Tactical Tech collective.

Exhibition: 26 May 2016 – 10 June 2016
Opening hours and registration for guided tours: www.radical-openness.org

Partners:
KunstRaum Goethestrasse xdt, Art University Linz, afo architecture forum upper austria
Funded by: The Arts and Culture Division of the Federal Chancellery of Austria, City of Linz (LinzImPULS), Art University Linz
Supported by: Canada Council for the Arts, OCA: Office for Contemporary Art Norway
Material Sponsoring: MGG – Müller-Guttenbrunn Group

Exhibition statement and artwork abstracts

Andreas Zingerle; Ushi Reiter and Susanne Blaimshein during the opening speech Andreas Zingerle (KairUs) with Uschi Reiter (servus.at, AMRO festival) and Susanne Blaimschein (Kunstraum Goethestrasse) during the opening speech (photo by Beate Rathmayr — Andreas Zingerle (KairUs) with Uschi Reiter (servus.at, AMRO festival) and Susanne Blaimschein (Kunstraum Goethestrasse) during the opening speech (photo by Beate Rathmayr

IMG_2642_ed-1024x683 IMG_2527_ed-1024x683

Emilio Vavarella: THE ITALIAN JOB | Job n.2, An-Archiving Game (detail)

Visitors during the opening looking at Shue Lea Cheangs video work "Bodies of planned obsolesence" — Visitors during the opening looking at Shue Lea Cheangs video work “Bodies of planned obsolesence”

Wolfgang Spahn: Bilder einer Ausstellung

Wolfgang Spahn talking about the technical setup of his work

IMG_2653-1024x665 — Owen Mundy: I know where your cat lives

Martin Reiche: Shell performance (detail)

Raphael Perret talking about his field trip to India

Linda Kronman, Andreas Zingerle (KairUs): Forensic fantasies: #1 Not a blackmail

Linda Kronman, Andreas Zingerle (KairUs): Forensic fantasies: #2 Identity theft

Linda Kronman, Andreas Zingerle (KairUs): Forensic fantasies: #3 Found footage stalker

Research group: "Times of Waste" — Research group: “Times of Waste”

Research group: "Times of Waste" Field guide and audio essay (work in progress) — Research group: “Times of Waste” Field guide and audio essay (work in progress)

Flavia Caviezel and Yvonne Volkert from the research group "Times of Waste" briefly explaining their research process — Flavia Caviezel and Yvonne Volkert from the research group “Times of Waste” briefly explaining their research process

Activist group Fictilis: Wildcat hauling

location_doc_100 — Joakim Blattmann: Location

IMG_2725_ed Four workshops; Investigating your meta data, Hands on your Handy (Mobile), Pimp your Browser and Disrupting your digital shadow by Tactical Tech members Fieke Jansen and Ling Luther. — Four workshops; Investigating your meta data, Hands on your Handy (Mobile), Pimp your Browser and Disrupting your digital shadow by Tactical Tech members Fieke Jansen and Ling Luther.

Workshop participants figuring out how the Internet works.

What meta data does an image, video, text file etc. contain?

What can you tell about the owner of a phone just by looking at it for 3 min? ... pretty much. — What can you tell about the owner of a phone just by looking at it for 3 min? … pretty much.

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IMG_0110-1024x768

Book: Behind the Smart World – saving, deleting, resurfacing data

February 21, 2016May 14, 2021KairUs

Book: Behind the Smart World – saving, deleting and resurfacing of data
as part of the AMRO Research Lab 2015

edited by: Kairus.org – Linda Kronman, Andreas Zingerle
published by: servus.at | process coordinator: Us(c)hi Reiter
layout by: lafkon.net

The publication is available both analog as a printed book and digital in form of a pdf, an epub and a web version.

Content:

Us(c)hi Reiter/servus.at Foreword
KairUs: Introduction
Fieke Jansen: If not us, who stores and owns our data?
Ivar Veermae : Center of Doubt
Emilio Vavarella: The Google Trilogy
Leo Selvaggio: Surveillance, McLuhan and the Social Prosthesis
Marloes de Valk: What remains? The way we save ourselves
Research Team “Times of Waste”: TIMES OF WASTE
Interview with Audrey Samson : Digital Data Funerals
Stefan Tiefengraber: Technology-based Art and Destruction
Dr. Michael Sonntag: Third Person Data
KairUs: Artistic strategies for dealing with resurfacing data
Interview with Michaela Lakova: Deleted file information is like a fossil…
KairUs: Strategies Against Phishing and Fake Business Websites

Network meeting at Stuttgarter Filmwinter 2016

January 13, 2016May 14, 2021KairUs

We meet the “Behind the Smart World” participants at this years Stuttgarter Filmwinter where we discussed the ongoing developments of the artworks. In the early evening of Friday Jan 15th 17.-19.00 we had a public presentation at the Kunstbezirk in Stuttgart. The presentation followed a discussion about leaking the data online and seeing what happens rather than protecting it and inviting people of trust to participate in the project. Those who were not present (Joakim, Simon, Matthias) at the meeting were participating through VoIP and for over 3 hours we were presenting each participants progress, discussed aesthetical choices and special equipment needs. There are more photos to come from the Filmwinters photographer and Marcus! Big thanks to Marcus Kohlbach, Lili Weiss, Fabian Kühfuss and the Filmwinter team for making this happen!

32C3 workshop

January 13, 2016May 14, 2021KairUs

Second day at 32C3 we had the first “Behind the Smart World” workshop. It was very well received and we could interest a diverse crowd of activists, blogger, journalists and the ‘general’ mass of IT people that attend the congress. It has been a while since we had such interesting remarks and feedback and we also got some tips which places we could visit in Hamburg to collect phones and hard drives. Some remarks were that you can trace the users of a computer by looking at the different writing style in documents. One interesting suggestion was the paper “Overwriting Hard Drive Data: The Great Wiping Controversy” by Wright, Kleiman, and Sundhar R.S. According to their tests, you just have to zero fill a HDD once to make the data on it non-recoverable. When talking about found footage and flea-market artworks one guy said that with photos and S8mm material the data is not erases as with deleted and recovered data and that it is sold (sometimes by the relatives) with the knowledge (and intention?) that this material is clearly useable and amusable by others. The perception of humans material/digital trash was found interesting and one suggested to offer a hand sorting service of trash so that people get more aware of what they throw away. In general it was a good workshop with critical minds tomorrow we will continue the discussion with a focus on projects and actions that people were doing or plan to do.

32C3 ZDF Interview

January 13, 2016May 14, 2021KairUs

Upcoming publication: Behind the Smart World – saving, deleting, resurfacing data

December 13, 2015May 14, 2021KairUs

We are in the finishing steps to put together a publication around “saving, deleting and resurfacing” of data. The publication includes essays and interviews by Fieke Jansen (Tactical Tech.), Ivar Veermäe, Emilio Varvarella, Leo Selvaggio, Marloes de Valk, Research Team “Times of Waste”, Interview with Audrey Samson, Stefan Tiefengraber, Dr. Michael Sonntag (JKU Linz), Interview with Michaela Lakova.

The publication is layouted by lafkon.net

Behind the Smart World publication

November 14, 2015May 14, 2021KairUs

We are in the final phase of collecting statements on artistic research on the topic of Saving , Deleting and Resurfacing Data. We gathered interesting projects and perspectives from the following people:

Fieke Jansen – Tracking & Data brokers
KairUs collective – Behind the Smart World ArtLab – artistic strategies to deal with resurfacing data
KairUs collective – Strategies of Net-activists against constant resurfacing of phishing websites and fake businesses
Michaela Lakova – DEL?No, wait!REW
Audrey Samson – Digital data funerals
Leo Selvaggio – Surveillance, Mcluhan, and the Social Prosthesis: Examining the Construction and Presentation of Identity
Michael Sonntag – Third Person Data
Stefan Tiefengraber – Technology-based Art and Destruction – Exhibiting Malfunctions
Marloes de Valk – What remains? The way we save ourselves
Emilio Vavarella – THE GOOGLE TRILOGY. Or how to play with Google Street View in different ways
Ivar Veermae – Center of Doubt

Behind the Smart World at ISEA

October 3, 2015May 14, 2021KairUs

In August we participated in the ISEA 2105 conference in Vancouver, Canada. The theme of this years ISEA was Disruption and as keynote speakers amongst others the Yes Men who were promoting their new film: Yes Men are Revolting

Maybe one of the most disruptive actions took place during the Yes Men keynote when young activist where questioning the connections of Simon Frasier University (the host of the conference) to a plan to build a new Trans Mountain pipeline to transport crude oil. With the help of the Yes Men in a selfie style video the activist got the whole ISEA crowd to say no to the pipeline.

The Yes Men – ISEA 2015 Keynote – #NoFuckingPipelines Is The New #KMFace from Jakub Jerzy Markiewicz on Vimeo.

We were also busy presenting the ‘Behind the Smart World’ project as a poster/artist talk in one of the sessions to present ongoing works and processes. It was a interesting 2,5 h during which people came and asked questions about our project after a short presentation we did for the whole audience. The poster paper is available here:“Behind the Smart World: 22 harddrives from a West African e-waste dump. While we had a chance, as KairUs, we also organized a 419-fiction workshop, made a demo presentation of our work ‘Let’s Talk Business’ and Andreas presented a long paper which is part of his PHD.

From our perspective the conference could have been more disruptive, but some highlights were Carmin Karasic workshop”Hacktivism Seeds for Discourse” with Byron Smith explaining his concerns about the Kinder Morgan Trans Mountain pipeline expansion that was to bisect his farm. Afterwards in a role play we tried to understand the perspectives of the government, the general public and how net activists could play a role i this. Also talks in the GeoPolitics and Activism session (e.g. Tugce Oklay. An Aesthetic Reading of Online Artivist Projects, Tomas Laurenzo. Geopolitical Subjectivity, and of course Andreas) and in the Surveillance session (e.g. Annina Rüst. Participatory (Counter-) Surveillance and the Internet, and Leo Selvaggio. URME Surveillance: Analyzing Viral Face-crime) were very interesting. One of the most rewarding things about conferences are that one can get to know people behind interesting projects that deal with similar issues as ones interests are. And therefore we hope that both Leo Selvaggio’s URME Surveillance project as well as Emilio Vavarella’s Google Trilogy will make it as a part of the Behind the Smart World -publication. And of course at the main ISEA exhibition at the Vancouver Art Gallery we could spot one work with hard-drives: Error 404 502 410 by Marcelina Wellmer.

(images starting left Carmin Karasic, Byron Smith, Tugce Oklay + presentation slide, Tomas Laurenzo, Annina Rüst + presentation slide, Andreas wearing Leo’s face & Leo Selvaggio, Emilio Vavarella at a demo session and Error 404 502 41)