Black Diamond. The internet is full of loopholes and leaks

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The work of Mishka Henner might evoke the one of Edward Burtynsky, Trevor Paglen, Omer Fast, Michael Wolf and Jon Rafman. Yet, comparing his work to the one of some of the artists i admire the most is pointless. Henner is his own man slash artist. He uses contemporary technology to give a new twist on artistic appropriation and redefines the role of the photographer, the meaning of the photography medium and the representation of the landscape. Without ever using a photo camera continue

Science Fiction: New Death

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Inspired by the work of J.G. Ballard, our story looks to the bleak, man-made landscapes of the future and asks: What happens when virtual environments become indistinguishable from reality? Will our global culture allow us to choose where to live, and who will stop us? What will we do with knowledge that becomes freely available to all? continue

Flone, The Flying Phone

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Flone is a drone (an unmanned aerial vehicle) which uses a smartphone as a flight controller and explores novel ways to “occupy” public space, in particular the air and claim the right to use it before legislation makes it illegal continue

Critical Exploits. Interrogating Infrastructure

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Critical Exploits showed how a new generation of artists, designers and engineers are taking a highly critical approach to the development and use of the engineered systems and infrastructures that we increasingly rely on for daily life continue

KGB, CIA black sites and drone performance. This must be an exhibition by Suzanne Treister

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Much of Treister’s recent work maps ways that human intelligence and military intelligence currently interact and work on each other. She explores how in a world increasingly determined by pervasive technologies and the demands of the military and security arms of government and state, new relations between the observer and the observed have been established and new subjectivities formed continue

Donovan Wylie: Vision as Power

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Vision as Power invites us to consider the impact of prisons, watchtowers, defensive structures and other surveillance structures on the environment, the observer and the observed continue

Book review: Top Secret. Images from the Stasi Archives

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Formerly secret, highly official photographs show officers and employees putting on professional uniforms, gluing on fake beards, or signaling to each other with their hands. Today, the sight of them is almost ridiculous, although the laughter sticks in the viewer’s throat. This publication can be regarded as a visual processing of German history and an examination of current surveillance issues, yet it is extremely amusing at the same time continue

Border Check, the physical and political realities behind the internet

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As one surfs the net, data packets are sent from the user’s computer to the target server. The data packets go on a journey hopping from server to server potentially crossing multiple countries until the packets reach the desired website. In each of the countries that are passed different laws and practices can apply to the data, influencing whether or not authorities can inspect, store or modify that data continue

Interview with Addie Wagenknecht

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Addie made a painting using a drone as a brush, enrolled a stern industrial robot to rock a baby cradle, asked online sexcam performers to replicate classical paintings, and built a chandelier using CCTV cameras continue

The Turing Normalizing Machine. An experiment in machine learning & algorithmic prejudice

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Conducted and presented as a scientific experiment TNM challenges the participants to consider the outrageous proposition of algorithmic prejudice. The responses range from fear and outrage to laughter and ridicule, and finally to the alarming realization that we are set on a path towards wide systemic prejudice ironically initiated by its victim, Turing continue

#A.I.L – artists in laboratories, episode 37: James Bridle

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I’m sure many of you have heard of James Bridle. Either because he coined and formulated the concept of New Aesthetic. Or because you’re interested in drone warfare. A few months ago, Bridle launched Dronestagram which uses Google Earth images and data collected by the Bureau of Investigative Journalism to document systematically the locations of deadly U.S. drone strikes. Bridle has also been traveling from Istanbul to Brighton to Washington DC to paint crime scene-style outlines of UAVs continue

The Reposition Matrix

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The Reposition Matrix is an investigation into the military-industrial production and trading networks of Unmanned Aerial Vehicles (also commonly referred to as Drones). The workshop aims to reterritorialise the drone as a physical, industrially-produced technology of war, and consequently explore how this affects our understanding of the covert drone campaigns in the Middle East continue

Under the Shadow of the Drone

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Under the Shadow of the Drone is a life-size depiction of a Reaper drone, one of a number of such weapons in service with US and UK forces. The Reaper is used for surveillance and bombing missions, in the declared war zones of Afghanistan and Iraq, and in the illegal wars of assassination taking place in Pakistan, Yemen and elsewhere. Such wars are made possible by the invisibility of drones to most people continue

The Air Itself is One Vast Library

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One of the projects that you can see right now in Brighton is a body of work, by Mariele Neudecker, that makes visitors reflect upon (and reluctantly admire) the use of technologies in contemporary warfare. The artist documented with seducing photo portraits and patient rubbings a series of weapons of mass destruction that were developed at the height of the Cold War continue

#A.I.L – artists in laboratories, episode 9

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Today in the radio show Neal White from The Office of Experiments will be talking declassified materials, underground bunker housing alternative Cabinet War rooms, cold war archive footage, Atomic Weapons Establishment, sites used by the UK Nuclear peace protestors, etc. I’d tune in if i were you continue

#A.I.L – artists in laboratories, episode 5

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Today i’m talking to Tom Keene, an artist whose work investigates technological objects and attempts to understand their agency and how they act as mechanisms of control within contemporary society. Our conversation will focus on topics such as the social impact of the Viterbi algorithm (with a previous explanation on what the algorithm does exactly) and wireless infrastructures, the loss of public space in cities, in particular in London and in the area surrounding the Olympic sites. continue

Dark Places and experimental geography – Interview with Neal White

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One of the current interests of the Office involves an ‘overt research’ that attempts to build up an alternative and experimental knowledge source about the UK’s “Dark Places”, the labs and facilities of advanced technological development which are often (purposefully or not) concealed, secret or inaccessible to the public continue

Exhibition tip: Nomos et Physis

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Laurent Grasso’s movie, shot in 2009 in The United Arab Emirates, looks at traditional hawk hunting. This time however, tthe hawk gets equipped with light and sophisticated surveillance equipment. The camera records every dune and village the hawk flies over. The images are fascinating but they are also threatening. Who is the man tracking the bird with an antenna? What is he trying to uncover? continue

BIP 2010 – The Theater of Authority

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The photo exhibition explores how our perception is mediated by and eventually adapts to the images coming from inquisitive medias such as satellites and security cameras. Everywhere around us, screens are showering our retina with information most of us hardly ever take the trouble to cross check. We tend to forget that these images are not first-hand, they are mediated, selected and distributed by media, political or scientific authorities continue

Pixelache Helsinki: Anisotropics

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Shaina Anand’s and Ashok Sukumaran’s work suggests that technology can follow paths different from the ones imposed by a purely capitalist perspective. When radio, electricity or CCTV is “pulled” in this way, it reveals a different set of properties, a vivid materiality and expanded parameters continue