Page of Swords: Escaping filter bubbles using magic, quotes, diffengine and (un)learning

Panel | Art Meets Radical Openness 2018
Festival dedicated to Art, Hacktivism & Open Culture.

In “Page of Swords” we will juxtapose the propaganda of the tech industry with small yet meaningful proposals for change. We will start with epic promises of abundance by the death defying innovators of tomorrow during a short performance, a mapping of the Silicon Valley narrative through quotes. Then you will be taken on a serendipitous, filter bubble popping journey inspired by surrealist games and magical rituals. Refreshed by the unexpected you will enter the unseen world of revisions in online news media during the Catalan referendum, revealed using the ever elegant Diffengine. With independence on your mind, (un)learning the rules of collectivity will help imagine alternative ways to cope with the contemporary dissolution of the concept of community.

Marloes de Valk will perform “We Are Going to Take Over the World”, in which she lets Silicon Valley evangelists speak through her about death, machine consciousness and the future of capitalism. It is a tale of abundance, disembodiment and magical transformations – asteroid mining turns into a fun trip to Mars, controlling the masses through nudging and surveillance into the loving embrace of a caring community.

Emily Buzzo will present her research on serendipity, inspired by surrealist games and literature, which offer a way to circumvent our current uniform and conformative approach to (re)search through online spaces. She believes we should make room for serendipity within existing research processes by re-introducing instinctual and playful tactics. The main methods she worked with were dowsing, runes and the reading of natural signs.

Franc Gonzalez will present Referendum Medialogs, a project mapping a journey of the events before, during and after the Catalan referendum, showing a series of conflicts leading to both the blocking of information as well as creative distributing practices, in a context characterized by nonstop overloads of inaccurate information. The project digs into the issue of revisionism, using open source revision control software.

Giulia de Giovanelli will talk about "(Un)Learning the Rules of Collectivity", an inquiry into different models for learning the rules of being together. The concept of unlearning is used to adopt a different perspective – unlearning superimposed rules as an invitation to dialogically embrace the complexity of being together and imagining alternative ways to cope with the contemporary dissolution of the concept of community.

--

Marloes de Valk is a software artist and writer in the post-despair stage of coping with the threat of global warming and being spied on by the devices surrounding her. Surprised by the obsessive dedication with which we, even post-Snowden, share intimate details about ourselves to an often not too clearly defined group of others, astounded by the deafening noise we generate while socializing with the technology around us, she is looking to better understand why.

Emily Buzzo is a graphic designer and researcher. Her work comprises a series of ongoing experiments into research methods for search and discovery. Her methodology is heavily informed by surrealist games and literature, which offer a way to circumvent our current uniform and conformative approach to research through online spaces. Her work focuses on re-introducing human instinctual and playful tactics to make room for serendipity within the existing search process.

Franc González is a graphic designer from Barcelona. His work intersects printed matter and coding experiments, digging into the political side of software and design as part of his studies, in an ongoing quest to better understand the radical implications of digital tools to society and individuals in general. This has led to his current research in the use of revision control software applied to journalism, in the dramatic context surrounding the Catalan referendum.

Giulia de Giovanelli explores models of collaboration for art and communication. She’s interested in dialogical structures for sharing and making and counter-practices in the organization of communal life. Her work includes projects such as The Autonomous Archive, a digital database that archives the historical documents of a former squat, and The Temporary Autonomous Bureau, a temporary office and educational project that explores meanings of self-organization for the city of Rotterdam.

--

Video licence: servus.at, CC BY-SA
Programm: http://www.radical-openness.org/program/2018
http://www.radical-openness.org

Program point:
http://radical-openness.org/en/programm/2018/page-swords-escaping-filte…