For a deeper insight we initiated a conversation amongst a wider group of artists concerning their research-led practice working with data, which we published in the book: Behind the Smart World – saving, deleting and resurfacing data.13 Each book section is introduced by a theoretical text, which provides an overview and raises specific concerns, followed by artistic and activist strategies that expose hegemonic power structures, creatively revealing how we might deal with our data in today's 'smart world'.
For the biennial AMRO festival exhibition, selected participants from the ArtLab and the book publication presented their artworks. The exhibition was curated through network meetings and an open call.14 Throughout the festival, artists organized guided exhibition tours, while a series of workshops and performances completed the program. In the following paragraphs we focus on several of the artworks that deal with the recovered data.
Martin Reiche's artwork Shell Performance (Figure 6a) is heavily influenced by data from the recovered hard-drives. The installation sifts through the masses of personal files from the unidentified previous owners and transforms them into an ASCII art-inspired digital collage that focuses on audio files, documents, images and videos. In cycling through these files, the artwork highlights our personal relationship to data and the devices it is stored on, provoking critical questions around consumerism, privacy, and digital and electronic waste management.
Video artist Fabian Kühfuß produced a found footage collage from the browsing history of one hard-drive called Shopimation (Figure 6b). He arranged patterns of fashion and lifestyle thumbnails in sync with a catchy song he found on the hard-drives music library, creating a choreographed animation of the pre-owner's aesthetic dreams. If, as Flusser argues, the techno-imagination is an approach of coding a function of the meaning of techno-pictures,15 Shopimation uses those thumbnails to build up the subjective code of an aesthetic. In doing so, the artwork transcodes the very private dreams and desires of the drive's prior owner, visualizing who they would like to be.
We (KairUs) created a trilogy of artworks called Forensic Fantasies (Figure 7), a series dealing with data breaches of private information. The first artwork is called Not a Blackmail (Figure 7a) and explores the possibility of extorting the hard-drive's prior owner. Besides finding sensitive information about the owner, it is crucial to be able to contact them in order to make one's demands. Rather than blackmailing the person, we became curious whether it was possible to contact them. Therefore, we exhibited a ready-to-be-posted package, con-taining the recovered data that we want to return, along with a letter directed to the address of the prior owner.
13 Linda Kronman and Andreas Zingerle (eds), Behind the Smart World – saving, deleting and resurfacing data, Linz: servus.at, 2016, Also available at: http://publications.servus.at/2016-Behind_the_Smart_World/.
14 Behind the Smart World exhibition, http://kairus.org/amro-art-meets-radical-openness-2016/.
15 Vilém Flusser, 'Towards a theory of techno-imagination', Philosophy of photography 2, no. 2 (2012), pp. 195-201.
Fig. 5. KairUs collective, The Behind the Smart World exhibition at AMRO, 2016.
Fig. 6a. Martin Reiche, Shell performance, program code, 2016.
Fig. 6b. Fabian Kühfuß, Shopimation, video work, 2016.
Fig 6c. Michaela Lakova, DEL?No,wait!REW, program code, 2016.16 16 Reprinted with permission of the artists.
The second artwork, Identity theft (Figure 7b), focuses on the phenomena of romance scam-ming. Based on previous research into online fraud, we suspect that recovered images were used to create fraudulent profiles for future romance scamming. In this installation, 18 of the fraudulent online profiles using the same images found on the hard-drive are combined with clips of popular Nollywood found footage that cover the topic of romance scams from a West African pop-culture perspective.
The third artwork, Found Footage Stalker (Figure 7c), takes a closer look at the private images found on one of the hard-drives. Over a number of years, we gain highly personal insights into the lifestyle of the prior owner, following them to wild parties with friends, trips to amusement parks, and private Christmas celebrations with their family. Flipping through the images provokes a similar feeling to stalking a stranger on social media. Despite the rather uninteresting photo material, one starts to create stories and attach a personality to these fragmented digital representations. By presenting them in a classic photo album, we approach the material as found footage, ready for remixing and creating new artworks. By excavating personal data from amongst the trash, the artwork intersects with earlier artistic practices of remixing and reappropriation.
Michaela Lakova’s installation DEL?No, wait!REW (Figure 6c) constantly recovers files from one hard-drive and presents them to the viewer. The installation aims to prompt viewers with an ethical choice: save the file by publishing it online or deleting it. The published images are displayed on the artist's website, while the deleted files will be recovered again, saved once more, only to face the decisions of future users. For the AMRO exhibition Lakovas installation was using data from our hard-drives.
Behind the Smart World linked data breaches with electronic waste by exploring how data is collected, recorded, stored, and erased, resurfacing in unexpected ways. During the Research Lab it became evident that our hard drives and other storage mediums are intertwined in complex techno-ecologies. With a group of artists from the Behind the Smart World network, we continued collaborating, creating an interactive world-map. Mapping the Smart World examines the life-cycles of consumer electronics and network technologies, beginning from mineral mining, through to refining elements, producing metal alloys, magnets, and other components, and finally assembling consumer goods in our 'smart world'. Along with this supply chain mapping, the project maps the data centers that hold a key position in our everyday device use. At the end of this life-cycle, electronic waste once again becomes a source of raw materials such as metals and plastic. This map provides a framework for the future exploration of research topics.
On opposite page:
Fig. 7a. KairUs, Not a Blackmail (Forensic Fantasies trilogy), Mixed media, 2016;
Fig 7b. KairUs, Identity theft (Forensic Fantasies trilogy), Mixed media, 2016;
Fig 7c.Kairus, Found Footage Stalker (Forensic Fantasies trilogy), photo series, 2016. All photos by Janez Janša.17
17 Reprinted with permission of the photographer.
Acknowledgements
We want to thank Ushi Reiter and servus.at for providing the opportunity to curate the first AMRO Research Lab. Further we want to give a special thank you to all the participat-ing artists and researchers: Audrey Samson, Can Sinitiras, Emilio Vavarella, Emöke Bada, Fabian Kühfuß, Fictilis, Fieke Jansen, Ivar Veermäe, Joakim Blattmann, Andreas Zingerle and Linda Kronman (KairUs), Leo Selvaggio, Lilian Beidler, Marit Roland, Marloes de Valk, Martin Reiche, Michael Wirthig, Michaela Lakova, Owen Mundy, Pim Zwier, Raphael Perret, Dr. Michael Sonntag, Shu Lea Cheang, Simon Krenn, Stefan Tiefengraber, Matthias Urban, Michaela Lakova, Times of Waste, Wolfgang Spahn.
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