[rohrpost] Open_Source_Art_Hack, May 3 - June 30, 2002

["Inke Arns" <inke@snafu.de>]

http://netartcommons.walkerart.org/
Open_Source_Art_Hack

Zenith Media Lounge/The New Museum
May 3 - June 30, 2002

Organized by Steve Dietz, Curator of New Media, Walker Art Center, Minneapolis, and
Jenny Marketou, artist, New York City, in collaboration with Anne Barlow, Curator of
Education and Media Programs, New Museum

Artists: Critical Art Ensemble, Cue P. Doll, Harun Farocki, Knowbotic Research, LAN,
Josh On/Futurefarmers, radioqualia, RSG, Superflex/Tenantspin, Surveillance Camera
Players, Rena Tangens


"Hackers create the possibility of new things entering the world. Not always great things,
or even good things, but new things. In art, in science, in philosophy and culture, in any
process of knowledge where data can be gathered, where information can be extracted
from it, and where in that information new possibilities for the world produced, there are
hackers hacking the new out of the old."

McKenzie Wark, Hacker Manifesto 2.0


In mainstream culture, hacking has many--mostly negative--connotations. Acts of hacking
can range from relatively harmless pranks, to those that have economic consequences, to
criminal actions. The activity itself elicits both fear and fascination, and its aura of
anonymity and inscrutability makes it ripe for media exaggeration. Especially after
September 11, 2001, the usual official response to any kind of hacking has been to
indiscriminately codify it as "cyber-terrorism," diverting attention from its significant social
implications.

In an age of increased surveillance, rampant commercialization, and privatization of
everything from language, to biological entities, to supposedly personal information,
hacking--as an extreme art practice--can be a vital countermeasure. Particularly when
combined with the ethics of the "open source" movement, hacking represents an important
form of institutional critique. Originally devised as a process for the community creation
and ownership of software code, open source offers abundant applications for artists--
and the public--because of its transparency and communality. Open source allows artists
to become providers of functional tools with which users can create new forms of
information aesthetics, modes of activism, and content. Within this hybrid domain, they
can intervene on- and off-line, operating in public and hacking the private, alternating or
combining digital and analogue. And by using open source, artists extend the life of
projects in a way that revises the relationship between artist, audience, and the social
sphere (both virtual and real).

Open_Source_Art_Hack includes the work of artists from the United States, Switzerland,
Denmark, Australia, and the United Kingdom who approach hacking as a creative
electronic strategy for resistance, rather than as a merely destructive act. By using media
and technology tactically, transparently, and collaboratively, the artists reveal and subvert
the way in which society, institutions, governments, or corporations undermine individual
identity, local control, and citizen agency. The work in Open_Source_Art_Hack is new,
but not without history, since it shares an important legacy with artists who have always
been interested in the politics of art as a mechanism of protest.

Swiss artists' collaborative Knowbotic Research installation Minds of Concern::Breaking
News consists of a gallery installation, web interface, and free downloadable newstickers.
Visitors trigger a set of network processes that investigate the security conditions of a
particular group's server and evaluate whether it is secure or open to hacking attacks. The
software processes used in Minds of Concern are dramatically transformed and
externalized through light and sound signals in a kind of “Alert Zone” in the main gallery
space, as well as through textual data flows in the installation.
LAN clones one's "data body" to counter invasions of data privacy. Tracenoizer works
on the principle of disinformation, using automated tools to create a fake homepage based
on searching the Internet according to a person's first and last names. This fake homepage
is then propagated through various search engines, so that it becomes impossible for
anyone to verify personal data, providing a measure of anonymity.
International computer collective RSG presents the packet-sniffing Carnivore, which
eavesdrops on network traffic through a wire-tap device that plugs into a local area
network. By making the resulting data stream available on the net, an unlimited number of
"clients" can tap into, and visually interpret this data. For the title of the work, RSG
appropriated the name carnivore, which, until recently, was the nickname for DCS1000, a
piece of software used by the FBI to perform electronic wiretaps.
Australian-born, London-based on-line art group r a d i o q u a l i a  transmit a low-
power radio broadcast, Free Radio Linux--literally lines of Linux source code--in the
museum lobby and through headphones suspended in the bookstore.
In Anti-wargame, Futurefarmers' Josh On challenges the ideology behind most computer
games (that tend not to reward players with a social conscience) with his own, anti-
imperialist version.
Cue P. Doll/rtmark jams the mediascape by turning an advertising tool--a mouse barcode
reader--into a means of determining "alternative" values of particular items by matching
them with a database of consumer products and corporate practices.
Berlin-based artist Harun Farocki's Eye/Machine investigates "intelligent" machines and
weapons.
In her lecture "Pretty Good Privacy," Rena Tangens addresses issues of privacy,
encryption and surveillance.
Artist collective Critical Art Ensemble and Beatriz da Costa present the participatory
performance, GenTerra. This performance explores the environmental impact of the new
organisms being produced by transgenics (the process of replacing the nucleus of one
animal's cell with that of another) and the economic forces that drive scientific research, as
well as the way that knowledge about such organisms is controlled.
By their very nature, Open_Source_Art_Hack projects extend beyond the museum itself,
technologically and, in some cases physically. The Surveillance Camera Players perform in
front of public and hidden surveillance cameras in Soho and mid-town, a new
performance, Amnesia.
Danish collective Superflex with Tenantspin work with local communities to create a
Superchannel streaming media broadcast that can also be viewed on the museum
mezzanine.

PERFORMANCES, DISCUSSIONS, AND BROADCASTS

[see website]
http://netartcommons.walkerart.org/





Inke Arns
http://www.v2.nl/~arns

Out now:

Inke Arns. Netzkulturen. Europaeische Verlagsanstalt, Hamburg, 2002
http://home.snafu.de/inke/Netzkulturen

Inke Arns. Neue Slowenische Kunst (NSK) - eine Analyse ihrer kuenstlerischen Strategien im Kontext der 1980er Jahre in Jugoslawien. Regensburg 2002. ISBN 961-90851-1-6
http://www.v2.nl/~arns/Texts/NSK/abstract-NSK2002.html

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