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Elektronika Session 1 – Evolution

Elektronika Session 1 – Evolution

Elektronika is a project which was launched last February, and aims to develop a historiography of electronic music in Malta. During this summer, Elektronika will enter into a new stage with a series of oral history sessions by which the development and evolution of the electronic music scene in Malta will be explored.The first of such sessions will be called: ‘Session 1: Evolution (focus on the DJ era)‘. Michael Bugeja who is this project’s research co-ordinator will be interviewing four of Malta’s pioneering dj’s in the electronic music scene: Coco, David Dee, Brian James and Owen Jay. The session will be followed by a 1 hour dj set from ‘Tres Moody’ which is a project consisting of David Dee, Brian James and Owen Jay.

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Video Vortex Hybrid Event: Play, Pause and Reset

Video Vortex Hybrid Event

To compensate for the real life events that we are all missing so much, the VideoVortex community gathers during a hybrid event that happens both online and in the courtyard of John Cabot University in Rome. Organized and hosted by Donatella Della Ratta and Albert Figurt (in Rome) and Andreas Treske and Geert Lovink (online), we will switch between a conversation robot, Zoom, a drone and the obligatory online video screening in an experimental setup that will try to beat the overall online fatigue. Remember Malta, let’s bring on new VideoVortex gatherings! In the meanwhile, let’s preserve the spirit, see you all thereWhat is online video today, fifteen years into its exponential growth? What started with amateur work of YouTube prosumers has spread to virtually all communication apps: an explosion in the culture of mobile sound and vision. Now, in the age of the smart phone, video accompanies, informs, moves, and distracts us. Are you addicted yet? Look into that tiny camera, talk, move the phone, show us around — prove to others that you exist! Founded in 2007 by the Amsterdam Institute of Network Cultures, Video Vortex is a lively network of artists, activists, coders, curators, critics, and researchers that deals with all the facets of both politics and aesthetics of online video.

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Calculating Control Symposium (11)

Calculation Control Day 1
Day 2

The location and architecture of Haus der Statistik demonstrates the two-sided nature of the science of cybernetics: On the one hand, the potential of a new organizational model, and on the other, the risks associated with its use as a powerful instrument for surveillance and control. These ambivalent uses of cybernetics are explored in examples from the socialist political regimes of the past as well as the capitalist network society of today. A second focus of the symposium is the consideration of netart and its aesthetic expressions that reflect the cybernetic conditions of the internet, while also being dependent on them.

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David Claerbout in conversation with Sara Dolfi Agostini

David Claerboutin conversation with Sara Dolfi Agostini

David Claerbout participated in The Eye of The Storm – Blitz’s first online exhibition, part of the new online initiative OPEN – with Oil workers (from the Shell company of Nigeria) returning home from work, caught in torrential rain (2013). In this artwork, Claerbout deployed 3D and new media technology in order to turn a photographic instant into endless repetition and confront visual perceptions, yearning for change and hope. As the act of waiting unfolds into an existential, cyclical condition rather than a one-time event, the artwork becomes the perspective from which to examine productivity and capitalism in relation to the workers and ourselves, even more now that the Covid-19 pandemic has altered our sense of the passage of time.David Claerbout focuses primarily on photography, video, sound, drawing, and digital arts, as well as large-scale video installation. In his works, the reconfiguration of images bestows a socio-political weight while questioning at the same time sensory authenticity and the now-disappearing system of trust between reality and its representation. The conversation will focus on Oil workers (from the Shell company of Nigeria) returning home from work, caught in torrential rain (2013), the evolution of Claerbout’s practice since, and his seminal text The Silence of the Lens (e-flux journal, 2016).******David Claerbout (Belgium, 1969) studied at the Nationaal Hoger Instituut voor Schone Kunsten in Antwerp from 1992 to 1995 and participated in the DAAD: Berlin Artists-in-Residence program from 2002 to 2003. Claerbout’s work is included in major public collections worldwide, including: Centre Georges Pompidou Musée National d’Art Moderne, Paris, France; Pinakothek der Moderne, Munich, Germany; Art Gallery of Ontario, Toronto, Canada; The Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles, USA.; Walker Art Center, Minneapolis, USA; Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden, Washington D.C, USA; S.M.A.K, Ghent, Belgium; The Margulies Collection, Miami, Florida, USA; Walker Art Center, Minneapolis, Minnesota, USA; Collection François Pinault, Italy; FRAC Nord Pas de Calais, France; Galerie Neue Meister, Dresden, Germany; GAM Galleria D’Arte Moderna et Contemporanea, Turin, Italy and many others. He has been the subject of numerous solo and group exhibitions internationally, including: MAST Foundation, Palazzo Zambeccari, Bologna, Italy (2019); Les Abattoirs, Toulouse, France (2018); Talbot Rice Gallery, University of Edinburgh, Scotland (2018); Kunsthaus Bregenz, Austria (2018); Musée des Beaux-Arts, Rennes, France (2017); Museu Nacional d’Art de Catalunya, Barcelona, Spain (2017); Schaulager, Basel, Switzerland (2017); BOZAR, Brussels, Belgium (2017); Contemporary Art Museum, Tampa, Florida, USA (2016); De Pont Museum of Art, Tilburg, Netherlands (2016); Städelmuseum, Frankfurt, Germany (2016); MAMCO, Geneva, Switzerland (2015); Staatsgalerie Stuttgart, Germany (2015); 19th Biennale of Sydney, Australia (2014); 8th Busan Biennale, South Korea (2014); Kunsthalle Mainz, Mainz, Germany (2013); Secession, Vienna, Austria (2012); Tel Aviv Museum, Tel Aviv, Israel (2012); SFMOMA, San Francisco (2011); WIELS, Brussels, Belgium (2011); De Pont museum of contemporary art, Tilburg, The Netherlands (2009); Pompidou Center, Paris, France (2007); Kunstmuseum, St. Gallen, Switzerland (2008); and Van Abbemuseum, Eindhoven, The Netherlands (2005).

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Video Vortex XII proceedings: art, archive, algorithms, activism

Video Vortex XII proceedings: art, archive, algorithms, activism

Video Vortex, an artistic network concerned with the aesthetics and politics of online video, gathered again in Malta for a two-day conference. We were in particularly focussing on bringing new research, theory and critiques of online video– in addition to questions around its integration with social media – to Malta. These proceedings are an edited collection of assembled and annotated video essays living in two instantiations: an online version – located on the web at https://vv12.org, and an offline version – stored on a server inside a VHS case.

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(re)programming: Accountability

How to tell With Eyal Weizman

Truth is hardly making it under an information ecosystem defined by speed, exploitation, opacity and inequality. But journalism is not in danger, it is just happening somewhere else. Eyal Weizman founded Forensic Architecture to test a methodology for analyzing the occupation of Gaza as a crime scene, using buildings as witnesses, satellite data as evidence and models and artificial intelligence as tools for the testing and verification of new hypotheses. This exercise of counter-forensics has been replicated and improved over the years to provide new evidence against official narratives in international human rights courts. It also prompted a new genre of journalistic procedurals and a community of practice that, under the moniker Investigative Commons, seeks to confront the disinformation machine of “counter-factual” neo-fascist groups by socializing the development and deployment of “counter-forensic” evidence. Initiated by Forensic Architecture, FORENSIS and the European Center for Constitutional and Human Rights (ECCHR), Investigative Commons includes documentary superstar Laura Poitras/Praxis Films, Bellingcat, Mnemonic and HKW, among others.

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CTM & TM: for refusal 2021 Highlights

The Research Networking Day (RND) is an exchange platform for students and researchers from different graduate and postgraduate programmes traversing the fields of audio, arts, media, design, and related theoretical disciplines. This RND edition will take place in collaboration with Leuphana University, the German Association for Music Business and Music Culture Research (GMM), and Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin.

Sisters With Transistors

Morphine x Beirut

Rethinking Music Ecosystems

CTM Cyberia

Studio & CTM Present: CQ5

Arts Formation

MusicMakers Hacklab: Off the Fovea

Apotome

Club Matryoshka

Refuse To Be Human !Mediengruppe Bitnik !Mediengruppe Bitnik, Refuse To Be Human, 2021 !Mediengruppe Bitnik, Refuse To Be Human, 2021 !Mediengruppe Bitnik, Courtesy of the artists / OPEN BerlinEver wanted to surf the web as a bot? Ever wondered what a bot gets to see online that you don’t? In their latest work, !Mediengruppe Bitnik allows you to become a Yandex bot to find out. The number one search engine in Russia, Yandex uses web crawlers that extensively scrape the web for content for their search engines. Only what the bots see is indexed, for discovery later by users searching on Yandex. Refuse to be Human allows you to install a web extension that changes your browser’s user agent to match that of the Yandex bot, giving you access to what is referred to as the ‘grey web’ – a layer of content only visible to bots, and access to websites and archives usually paywalled. Download the browser extension here Firefox Chrome Produced in collaboration with transmediale and Open.Berlin .!Mediengruppe Bitnik (read – the not Mediengruppe Bitnik) are contemporary artists working on, and with, the Internet. Their practice expands from the digital to physical space, often intentionally applying loss of control to challenge established structures and mechanisms. !Mediengruppe Bitnik’s works formulate fundamental questions concerning contemporary issues. In the past they have been known to subvert surveillance cameras, bug an opera house and broadcast its performances outside, send a parcel containing a camera to Julian Assange at the Ecuadorian embassy in London, and physically glitch a building. Their works have been shown internationally, most recently in exhibitions at CAC Shanghai, LOAF Kyoto, Annka Kultys Gallery London, House of Electronic Arts Basel, Aksioma Ljubljana, Kunsthaus Zurich, FACT Liverpool, Onassis Cultural Center Athens, Public Access Gallery Chicago, Nam June Paik Art Center South Korea, Shanghai Minsheng 21st Century Museum, The Pushkin Museum of Fine Arts Moscow, Beijing Contemporary Art Biennial and the Tehran Roaming Biennial.

For Refusal
Marshall McLuhan Lecture 2021
TM & CTM recordings
YouTube channel

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Arcturus

Performance (Circuits 2020) Away from the Comfort Zone

A new project by the name of Arcturus will be premiering on the 8th of January, 2021. It is set to close the “Away From The Comfort Zone” series of projects.The name, Arcturus, is also that of a red giant seen in the Northern Hemisphere of Earth’s sky – the brightest star in the constellation Boötes, more commonly known as The Herdsman.Arcturus is fronted by none other than Carlo Muscat and Keith Farrugia – both incredible musicians known especially for their incandescent music. This project is set to infuse the electronic realm with some of the finest jazz tunes – and will provide listeners with a more intimate, improvisational side to music.

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Flagged for Political Speech

Flagged for Political Speech

What do algorithms see when they look at your social media profile? Are you a good provider of content? And what exactly is good? What does the algorithmic view on your social media profiles say about you?

Analyses of social media profiles are employed in an increasing number of real-world transactions. From border control to job applications, social media profiles are used to assess the threat-levels of a candidate and verify their suitability to enter a country or organisaton.

Many of these social media checks are done automatically by algorithmic entities. How and what do these algorithms assess exactly? And what do their assessments look like?

To find out, !Mediengruppe Bitnik used Ferretly, an automated online service used by Human Resources Professionals to evaluate candidates’ social media profiles. Ferretly uses algorithms trained on keywords and image recognition to sift through 7 years of social media history. The service evaluates candidates publically available social media posts on Twitter, Instagram and Facebook, analyzing original posts, reposts, replies, and likes. Additionally, Ferretly will assess any news items they can find.

With their service, Ferretly promises to reduce the risk of letting a person displaying toxic behaviour into your organisation or country. Toxic behaviour is defined in 11 risk categories, from hate speech, political extremism, drug-related content to explicit images and toxic language. The publicly available posts are also used to look at the sub-text of each post: the candidate’s attitude towards the event or situation they are posting about is rated as positive, negative or neutral. Each candidate is judged according to these per-defined flags and sentiment points and given a social media score which rates them as fit or unfit for entry.

!Mediengruppe Bitnik ran the social media profiles of the leaders of each of the 27 EU member states through the service. Bitnik then interpreted the results of the analysis and used this as the basis to devise a customized sweatshirt for each of the 27 profiles. 

Each shirt shows Bitnik’s interpretation and visualization of the Ferretly ratings. Besides their social media scores for different parameters, each of the shirts publicly displays a number of flagged posts which were rated by Ferretly as toxic and the reason for this rating. Depending on the report, the shirts contain more or less data. Usually more posts and data meant a worse social media rating by Ferretly.

Like the clothes we wear, our social media profiles have become the carrier of our identities. These online identities are used more and more by the gatekeepers of institutions, countries and organisations to verify that we are worthy of access.