Eirian Friedkin
A white canvas displays ever changing, and linked phrases of three words in black font. A handful of popular nouns where chosen at random and are combined as such to allow the viewer to draw (unexpected) connections between different concepts and how one may very well degrade another.
Eirian Friedkin exists and does things. Sometimes it may be called art.
Jennifer Gradecki, Derek Curry
Boogaloo Bias is an interactive artwork and research project that addresses some of the known problems with the unregulated use of facial recognition technologies, including the practice of ‘brute forcing’ where, in the absence of high-quality images of a suspect, law enforcement agents have been known to substitute images of celebrities the suspect is reported to resemble. To lampoon this approach, the Boogaloo Bias facial recognition algorithm searches for members of the anti-law enforcement militia, the Boogaloo Bois, using a facial recognition algorithm trained on faces of characters from the 1984 movie Breakin’ 2: Electric Boogaloo. The film is the namesake for the Boogaloo Bois, who emerged from 4chan meme culture and have been present at both right and left-wing protests in the US since January 2020. The system is used to search live video feeds, protest footage, and images that are uploaded to the Boogaloo Bias website. All matches made by the system are false positives. No information from the live feeds or website uploads is saved or shared. Boogaloo Bias raises questions about automated decision making, public accountability and oversight within a socio-technical system where machines are contributing to a decision-making process. Facial recognition technology allows for the quick surveillance of hundreds of people simultaneously and the ability to automate decisions using artificial intelligence, establishing a power structure controlled by a technocratic elite. Rather than providing a solution for how to improve facial recognition, the project pushes the logic behind the current forms and uses of facial recognition in law enforcement to an extreme, highlighting the absurdity of how this technology is being developed and used. Boogaloo Bias is made using only open source software, including OpenCV, Flask, dlib, Pillow, and the Python face-recognition module.
https://www.boogaloo-bias.art/
Jennifer Gradecki is an artist-theorist who investigates secretive and specialized socio-technical systems. Her artistic research has focused on social science techniques, financial instruments, dataveillance technologies, intelligence analysis, and social media misinformation. Gradecki has presented and exhibited at venues including Ars Electronica (Linz), ISEA (Barcelona), National Gallery X (London), NeMe (Cypress), ADAF (Athens), International Symposium on Computational Media Art (Hong Kong), and the Centro Cultural de España (México). Her research has been published in Big Data & Society, Visual Resources, and Leuven University Press. Her artwork has been funded by Science Gallery Dublin, Science Gallery Detroit, and the NEoN Digital Arts Festival.
Derek Curry (US) is an artist-researcher whose work critiques and addresses spaces for intervention in automated decision-making systems. His work has addressed automated stock trading systems, Open-Source Intelligence gathering (OSINT), and algorithmic classification systems. His artworks have replicated aspects of social media surveillance systems and communicated with algorithmic trading bots. Derek earned his MFA in New Genres from UCLA’s Department of Art in 2010 and his PhD in Media Study from the State University of New York at Buffalo in 2018. He is currently an Assistant Professor at Northeastern University in Boston. https://derekcurry.com/
Vera Sebert
How can we characterize the cinematic narrative, which is in a netbased environement no longer tied to chronological sequences? How does actual information deform under the manipulating influence of the viewer? The webproject JOURNEY TO THE PLANET OF NUCLEAR CHEWING GUM is formally based on experimental film, poetry texts and interactive netart, arranged in several layers. Digital images of different objects are assembled in the picture’s foreground and overlapping found and newly assorted footage. They can be rearranged randomly by drag and drop. Each movement of an object is linked to one individual sound snippet and a random subtitle. By interacting viewers create a strong varying narrative form which manifests in the space between text, image and film.
Vera Sebert, *1987 (DE), Media Artist
2007- 2015 Fine Arts at University of Fine Arts Braunschweig and Academy of Fine Arts Vienna. 2015 – 2019 Language Arts at University of Applied Arts Vienna. Artistic works in the border areas of visual media, language, film, computer programs: Computer code allows the adaptation of all other media whose properties are imitated, fragmented and reassembled in virtual space. The hybrid exposes the categorical separation between artistic image and text production and creates a space for experiments that explore the mesh of code, image, sound and language in a digital environment. Most recent international exhibitions and screenings: Hamburg International Film Festival (DE), Vector Festival Toronto (CA), House of Electronic Arts Basel (CH), Eclat Festival Stuttgart (DE), Cairotronica (EGY).
2017 Artist in Residency at Künstlerdorf Schöppingen (DE). 2018 Hannsmann-Poethen Grant for Literature (DE), Styria Artist-in-Residency (AT). 2019 Subnet Artist-in-Residence, Salzburg (AT), 2020
https://verasebert.com
Przemyslaw Sanecki
This work summarises my latest investigations into aesthetics of abstract video, auditory perception, and what it means today for the digital visual artist to remain radically autonomous without losing the critical voice.
There are multiple threads present in this work. Some of them are strictly of the formal type, like for example an examination of repetition as a method of rationalising a temporal structure of an artwork. Another thread, of the more political tone, concerns the impoverishment and ruptures in consumer sensory apparatus and its impact on narrowing epistemology of colours. Thus all colours used in the work have their origin in everyday consumer experience, being recycled from packaging of products found in my household and rigidly transferred inside the code.
Intensity, for some even brutality, of the stimulus fabric of this work should be understood as an intrinsic effect of a contrast. Contrast here is an artistic equivalent of a dialectical method. I like to think of it as a procedure to introduce into a work a play of confronting ideas, and in this particular piece I use it extensively. For example, one can think of a confrontation of trompe-l’oeil with reality as a generalised, metaphysical contrast, similar to a crude approximation of non geometrical structures of clouds in a computer game texture. Another example: regularity and arrhythmia are obviously contrasted. A kick and a handclap are another slightly surprising contrast. Obeying and ordering is another. In fact, most elements of this video can somehow find its dialectical partner next to each other.
Saying all that, and ironically in contrast to what a title of the work might suggest, I rather pose questions than try to find answers. This is because I don’t think artists should be yet another expert in solving problems and this is where my obsession with rough, far from smoothness of modern UX, aesthetics comes from.
All visual material is created programmatically by code written using an open source framework OPENRNDR, sounds are composed using a hybrid software-hardware modular system (Pd, VCV). Programming is not only one of the available mediums of expression, but more importantly a radical means of production that profoundly changes social hierarchies, thus it should be creatively appropriated by artists and become the subject of their critical scrutiny.
Przemysław Sanecki is a multidisciplinary artist working primarily with code, video, sound and ai. Originally from Poland, he lives and works in Paris (FR).
Marc Duseiller
Creatives, designers, painters welcome! No previous knowledge in electronics or circuit design is needed.
As a creative design / drawing workshop we want to explore how creativity can be use to make unique designs of fuctional electronic circuits. We also will discuss what means Open Hardware and why sharing detailed instructions can lead to a diversity of personal designs and improving the accessibility for DIY electronics workshops.
In this creative drawing workshop, we will learn the most basic introduction to read schematics of electronics circuits, and how to implement it as a functional PCB (Printer Circuit Board) where all the connections are drawn in copper. We will learn what are footprints of components and what are the different “layers” for preparing a PCB design for manufacturing (in China factory of DIY home etching).
This workshop also serves for re-thinking the diy-CAD methodology (do-it-yourself Children Aided Design) and applying it to the fork of the peepsy, based on the Continuity Tester by David Johnson-Davies. The peepsy circuit is based on the ATTINY85 functions as a continuity tester, the famouse “peeps” of every multimeter, that allows you to test if an electric connection is present, testing your aux cables, or debbugging other electronics. And it has a pink LED on it!
What circuit will we do?
The example circuit is based on the peepsy, by Michael Egger (a.n.y.m.a.) and it has even a practical function as a continuity tester, the most useful tool to test if a connection is present, in a cable or on a circuit. It’s the “peep” that is one of the functions of all multimeters, and usually the one we use the most! The circuit is very simple, 1 capacitor, 2 resistors, 1 LED, a buzzer to make the “beep”, a coin battery holder and an µ-controller (the Attiny85). Due to the special software on the attiny, it will “sleep” all the time, and only use a little electricity when testing, so the battery last almost forever!
All the materials will be available on site, pen and paper, colors, footprints.
https://www.hackteria.org/wiki/Diy-CAD#Workshops
