!Mediengruppe Bitnik & Low Jack (DE/FR)
Alexiety (2018)
Single channel video installation with sound, Full HD, 16:9, 08:28; Amazon Echo and Google home devices, screen, loud speakers and cables; printed 12” EP sleeve, print on acrylic glass, download code.
Intelligent Personal Assistants like Amazon’s Alexa, Google Home and Siri are the brains of the smart home ecosystem. They operate, monitor and control smart home appliances while keeping the algorithms and rule-sets that determine their workings secret. Intelligent Personal Devices are voice controlled, thus dissolving the machinic presence of the computer while placing its functionalities at the users disposal. It’s like living inside the machine, while at the same time having no agency over the composition and structure of one’s environment. What are the relationships that we are forming with these IPA devices? What happens when IoT devices are hacked to form rogue bot-networks? Is my capacity to act expanded or diminished when relying on these semi-autonomous devices?
Together with French musician Low Jack, !Mediengruppe Bitnik have been looking at ways to engage with Alexa and similar ‘Intelligent’ Personal Assistants through music. A set of three songs attempt to capture the feelings we develop toward Intelligent Personal Assistants: The carefree love that embraces Alexa before the data privacy and surveillance issues outweigh the benefits. The alienation and decoupling/uncoupling from the allure of remote control and instant gratification. The anxiety and discomfort around Alexa and other Intelligent Personal Assistants that is Alexiety. The EP is best streamed on the radio for the enjoyment of smart homes everywhere. Play it loud, so your neighbours devices can hear.
What will happen if one day you wake up and there is no Internet?
The exhibition Imagine you wake up and there is no Internet explores the effects of ubiquitous connectivity and technology in everyday life. Starting from our obsession with digital technologies, the exhibition seeks to enhance the debate about the coexistence of human and machine in the 21st century. 13 artists and 5 art collectives showcase scenarios from the present time and the near future, strategies of disconnection and disorientation, evacuation and escape plans from the city, studies on the information society, snapshots from digital life and the infrastructures that allows us to be connected to the network, and new readings for the political period we are going through. Any sense of certainty for the present and the future seems to have been destabilised. 31 years after the creation of the world wide web, concepts such as space, time, value and labor have acquired new meaning. And these concepts will continue to take on new meaning as the technology that we use the most, changes at great speed leaving us -often- in the position of the observer with little space for manoeuvring. The levels of control and surveillance in the networks we navigate, whether resulting from political decisions or market trends, are often obscure. At the same time, everyday life and personal data have acquired a particular economic value within networks and our obsession with constant connectivity, can only accelerate a technological future where human behaviour becomes predictable or can be predicted to meet political or/and economic trends. The works in the exhibition highlight moments and fragments of our digital life surfacing issues related to the human-machine relationship and its impact on the public sphere. The exhibition aims at contributing to the discussion on the constantly accelerating dynamics of the Network, our position within it, and finally, the boundaries between a human-driven versus a machine-driven technological world. The exhibition presents new commissions and works from: Marina Gioti, Vaggelis Deligiorgis, Antonis Kalagkatsis, George Moraitis, Manos Saklas, Alexandros Tzannis, Jono Boyle and the new version of the work “Tracing Information Society – A Timeline” by Technopolitics group. Participating Artists:
!Mediengruppe Bitnik & Low Jack (DE/FR), Aram Bartholl (DE), Jono Boyle (UK), Heath Bunting & Kayle Brandon (UK), Vaggelis Deligiorgis (GR), Exonemo (JP), Marina Gioti (GR), Antonis Kalagkatsis (GR), George Moraitis (GR), No Más / No More (GR), Manos Saklas (GR), Molly Soda (U.S.), Superflux (UK), Technopolitics (AT), Alexandros Tzannis (GR), Filipe Vilas-Boas (PT) Curated by Katerina Gkoutziouli & Voltnoi Brege