#lunchbytes

“No Internet, No Art — A Lunch Bytes Anthology”, marks the first publishing adventure of Lunch Bytes providing a general overview of the event series, as well as presenting some important topics that have shaped the crossover between art and internet in the past few years. Edited by Melanie Bühler Copy edited by Rachel Somers Miles Designed by Hannes Gloor with Freja Kir Published by Onomatope 416 pages/ softcover 165 x 240 mm / 6,5 x 9,5 inches 64 pages full color

This sounds like an incredible conference. Trying to find out if it’s being livestreamed or recorded…

Keynote Lecture “Dark Cloud: Shapes of Information” ◆ David Joselit, Distinguished Professor at the CUNY Graduate Center, New York

This lecture will explore how the metaphor of “the cloud” as an elastic and scalable information storage system applies to artists’ efforts to demonstrate the shapes that information can assume – in other words, information’s plasticity. Two primary themes will be addressed: profiling, as a technique for personifying configurations of data, and extraterritoriality, as the capacity for information (like the weather) to break free from particular locations and thus to challenge territorial forms of sovereignty. Are spaces of extraterritorial information also sites from which political claims can be made? Or, on the contrary, do we need to protect ourselves from the exposure of information’s easy circulation – operating not from a darknet but from a Dark Cloud?

21 March 2015 10am-7.30pm 10.00-11.15am Panel 1: Medium

With: ◆ Maeve Connolly, writer, lecturer in the Faculty of Film, Art and Creative Technologies at Dun Laoghaire Institute of Art, Design and Technology, Dublin ◆ Katrina Sluis, artist, writer, curator Digital Programmes Photographers’ Gallery London ◆ Ben Vickers, curator of Digital Serpentine Galleries, London

Moderated by: ◆ Toke Lykkeberg, curator, Copenhagen

The first panel will focus on the concept of the medium. Digital techniques and tools have transformed raditional disciplines and blurred their external boundaries, while new and emerging forms of artistic roduction reflect the increasing ubiquity of the digital. This panel invites a discussion of the medium as an analytical entity, revisiting the concept of medium specificity. Does it still make sense to think in formal, media-related categories or have we moved beyond the medium as a recognisable and classifiable entity in the age of pervasive computing?

11.45am-1pm Panel 2: Structures and Textures

With: ◆ Diedrich Diederichsen, critic, journalist, author, Berlin ◆ Kerstin Stakemeier, researcher, critic, Munich ◆ Christopher Kulendran Thomas, artist, London/Berlin

Moderated by: ◆ Victoria Camblin, editor/artistic director of Art Papers, Atlanta ◆ Carson Chan, writer and curator, Princeton University, New Jersey

Computational processes can be traced everywhere and are intrinsically interwoven in the fabric of our lives. This hybrid reality increasingly affects the materiality of artistic production in a variety of fields and disciplines. This panel will examine how online culture has affected our understanding of materials and question how contemporary art is shaped by the infrastructures that subtend the digital realm. Considering how the art world’s traditional spaces, such as the gallery or the museum, relate to the internet as a repository and space for the reception of art, the discussion will explore how spectatorship is constituted now that we have become used to online viewing habits. How do artists’ practices extend and relate to online spaces, and how has the production and dissemination of artworks changed?

2-3.15pm Panel 3: Society

With: ◆ Stephan Dillemuth, artist, Munich ◆ Constant Dullaart, artist, Berlin

Co-moderated by: ◆ Kristoffer Gansing, artistic director Transmediale, Berlin ◆ Hito Steyerl, artist, filmmaker, writer, Berlin

When considering the history of online culture, one sees a significant shift in how networked environments have been perceived as common spaces. The 1990s ideal of cyberspace, where knowledge and resources were shared freely, has largely given way to a webspace that is commercial and enclosed. Vast parts of the contemporary internet are presently owned by a few private mega-companies, which capitalise on the content and data generated by the users of their platforms. The internet has turned into a network via which everything is profiled and monitored for commercial and state interests beyond users’ control. This panel focuses on artistic strategies of resistance in response to present mechanisms of control.

3.45-5pm Panel 4: Life

With: ◆ Jesse Darling, artist, London ◆ Cécile B. Evans, artist, Berlin/London ◆ Cornelia Sollfrank, artist, Dundee

Moderated by: ◆ Elvia Wilk, writer, editor, Berlin

The last panel will zoom in on the individual subject, discussing notions such as affect, emotion, and solidarity online. Artists are invited to talk about their work relating to the question of how identities are established and configured through the various digital and material environments constituting our realities. If bodies don’t end at the skin but instead extend to and reconfigure themselves with the material environments they engage with, what kind of implications do digital technologies have for conceptions of representation, embodiment, and gender? If the various platforms we engage with influence our structures of feeling, how do they shape the way affective ties are created and mediated?

5.30-6.15pm “What Was Pre-Post-Internet? Why Net Art and Cybernetics Are Forgotten” Keynote Lecture ◆ Melissa Gronlund, writer, critic, co-editor of Afterall journal, London/Abu Dhabi

I've got all these notes on my phone, maybe they will be useful to someone...

"The second Lunch Bytes discussion in London explores how artists have engaged with computational structures in their work and how contemporary art is shaped by the infrastructures that underpin the digital realm. Chaired by Ben Vickers, speakers include Wendy Chun, Boris Groys and Paul Kneale."

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BEN VICKERS Reorganisation of space-  but we find ourself in the same formats w the experts...so what's changed? What has infrastructure done for our lives?  Layers- conversation distributed online Institutional integrity is under threat by ppl and tools Questions- How do artworks places relate to network environment  Can artists work meaningfully intervene in our networked environments? Infrastructure is really hot right now; it's cool to consider it, reflecting on end of immateriality ________________________________ WENDY CHUN Promiscuous mode 'If your computer was monogamous you'd never get anywhere' Paranoid about network traffic; computers become metaphor 'Who knows what's happening behind our interfaces, with our software?' As our machines disappear the density and opacity increases Software as metaphor- usually  Machines as metaphor- metaphor as putting things in transit New media is about leaks Baffled by responses to Snowden- why did we ever think things didn't leak?  New media are leaky- they breach and therefore sustain the boundaries between public and private Information is curiously undead- we make the ephemeral endure Anything want we to live on must be printed- paper lives longer than constantly changing networks Conflation of Memory and storage- memory did not used to be about storing Von Neumann- outside world became dead storage But our networked connections constantly leak Reproduction is contagious "What is a Facebook friend if not a potential leak?" ____________ BORIS GROYS Shift from image itself to the networks of distribution  Museum items are already copies of themselves Critics expect that public art museums will ultimately disappear, being unable to compete with art market and w cheaper digitalised archive Museum as stage of art events Used to be a place where things happened It's also for lectures, screenings etc Flow of events inside the museum  is often faster than what's happening at it We don't so often visit a museum but follow it; it becomes more like a blog  Events not objects- these are impossible to reproduce  Documentation of events- we do not expect any mimetic relationship between original and copy Traditional work being reproduced created an illusion of trans-temporal existence  Today- confronted with documentation of performance, unfinished projects, curatorial projects etc we think- How wonderful it would've been to be at the original event! What happened to the spectator? As a human being- if you look at painting, your viewing does not leave any trace, and cannot be repeated Non correlation between subject and object is about not leaving a trace But on the internet your viewing of an image- operations of subjective seeing- leave a trace, and can be repeated There is the production of contemplation  So who can make a judgement now? Traditionally it was God- what comes after is the algorithm  Develop a parallel system of algorithmic connoisseurship Instead of an all-seeing God- a new kind of algorithmic gaze- art we do for algorithms  _____________