"JODI: Something Wrong is Nothing Wrong", Ad by Motherboard TV (DELL)

Keywords:  counterculture, social networking, Web 2.0, business & advertisement.

The above image, published in VICE magazine Vol 7 Nr 2 (2010), is an advertisement for the social networking platform Motherboard TV, sponsored by DELL. But people into digital culture would immediately recognize something else.
The advertisement shows a reconstruction of the homepage http://wwwwww.jodi.org, a work by the Dutch artists JODI.org, a very well known symbol of the early net.art. JODI were part of a recent show at Eyebeam gallery in New York (December 2009) and got interviewed by the team of Motherboard TV (see here).
But this advertisement, branded by DELL, might also be the symbol of something more. What were once the values and philosophy of the hacker ethic are since some years the domain of many of the business companies which represent the development of “Web 2.0” and contributed to create the notion of social media. I have analyzed this matter on an article which is going to be published on the next issue of the Arnolfini journal, ‘Concept Store’ (Bristol, UK) .

The ideas of sharing, openness, decentralization, free access to computers and the hand-on imperative of the hackers’ imaginary, today are strictly connected with the use of commercial platforms. We are facing a progressive commercialization of contexts of software development and sharing, which want to appear open and progressive (very emblematic is the motto “Don’t be evil” by Google), but which are indeed transforming the meaning of communities and networking, and the battle for information rights, placing it into the boundaries of marketplace.This process is changing the meaning of collaboration and art itself.

In the last half of the twentieth century Avant-garde art practices from Fluxus to mail art have promised the creation of collaborative art and the production of new models of sharing knowledge. Today, social networking platforms such as Facebook, YouTube, MySpace, Twitter and Second Life have established themselves among Internet users, representing a successful model of connecting people, an a successful business strategy. But these networking platforms have their roots in a series of experimental activities in the field of art and technology started in the last half of the twentieth century which  transformed the conception of art as object into art as a network of relationships, possibilities of collectively intervening in the creation of an artistic product.

For example, the figure of the artist as a creator of sharing platforms and of contexts for exchanging is part of a background of artistic and technological experimentation from Fluxus and mail art to hacktivism and net.art; collective identities and multiple singularity projects have direct references on the Luther Blissett Project and the Neoist network-web conspiracy (as I wrote on my previous book Networking, 2006). Today, techniques of networking developed in grassroots communities have inspired the structure of Web 2.0 platforms and have been used as a model to expand the markets of business enterprises. The principal success of a Web 2.0 company or a networking enterprise comes from the ability of enabling communities, providing shared communication tools and folksonomies.

Is it today still possible to speak about “counterculture”, when social networking has become the motto of the Web 2.0 business? Digital economy and artistic subversive practices look fully interconnected. It should not surprise that Motherboard TV choose the work of JODI to represent its corporate image, writing on it: “JODI: Something Wrong is Nothing Wrong. Viruses, 404s, spam, and other exquisite works of art”. The marketing is demonstrating to have learned the lesson very well: “language is a virus from outer space”, wrote William S. Burroughs.

The act of responding with a radical opposition does not look like an effective practice anymore. Artists should probably answer becoming cultural viruses themselves, generating cultural Trojan Horses – or better, social hacks – adopting the strategy of disruptive business as a model of artistic creation. The understanding of how network business works might show the way. Creative intersections between business and art become an important territory for the re-invention and rewriting of symbolic and expressive codes. A possible field of intervention  to create artistic, cultural and political experiences, using the unexpected, and a deep level of irony and social criticism.

Yesterday was the opening night of Hack Århus, the new hacker space in the city of Århus. A lot of people came despite the snow storm and we had fun with some talks, hack-presentations and circuit bending. I gave a short speech about the roots of hacker ethics and the background of hackerspaces, with examples from Italy, Germany and California.

There were some people from Labitat, the hackerspace in Copenhagen, who shared their experience with us, and some projects presentations followed – like the very interesting one about the coding-wooden-sculpture machine from Jacob Pedersen, who is one of the initiators of the Hackerspace.

Some more info about Hack Aarhus:

Hack Århus is an informal meeting place for everyone interested in the creative use of technology in the broadest sense. Hack Århus is trying to build an open space where people of diverse backgrounds come together to share resources and knowledge to build things, create digital art or hack in general.

The kick-off event introduced the Hack Århus hackerspace as well as the ideas and projects behind it to everyone interested: a couple short talks and a hands-on workshop afterward.

With guests from the Labitat, the hackerspace in Copenhagen, as well as from Aarhus University.

Program:

• 17.00 – 17.20 :: What the Hack? – A Short Trip into the Roots of Hackerspaces and Hacker Ethics
• 17.20 – 17.40 :: Labitat – Experiences from a Hackerspace in Copenhagen
• 17.40 – 17.50 :: Hack Århus – State of Affairs
• 17.50 – 18.00 :: short break
• 18.00 – 18.15 :: Projects I – A CNC Machine for Every Home
• 18.15 – 18.30 :: Projects II – Arduino for Fun and Profit
• 18.30 – 19.00 :: Workshop – Circuit bending (bring fun stuff!)

More info at: http://www.hackaarhus.dk/

The meeting with Jake Appelbaum was a very nice opportunity of gathering students, researchers and interesting ‘geeks’. The discussion was quite alive and based on sharing of experience and knowledge about hacking, technology and development of hacker communities. We reflected on the technological and political meaning of hacking, on gender issues related to the creation of hackerspaces, and Jake inspired us through his experience within NoiseBridge, the hackerspace in San Francisco which he contributed to found, and through an interesting overview of the hacker scene in the Bay area. This meeting was also an occasion to compare different strategies and visions of hacking between Europe and USA.

Among the public were people from Computer Science and IMV at Aarhus University, Hack-Aarhus, the recently founded hackerspace in Aarhus and Labitat, the new hackerspace in Copenhagen. With the hope of having many other interesting occasions of sharing knowledge about interdisciplinary subjects (and people!), I suggest the readers to get involved in the discussion following the Hack-Aarhus mailing-list: http://groups.google.com/group/hack-arhus

Here are some photos of the event.

Jacob Appelbaum lives in San Francisco and is an independent computer security hacker currently employed by the Tor Project.. He is the executive director and a founder of the hackerspace Noisebridge in San Francisco (www.noisebridge.net).

NoiseBridge is a space for sharing, creation, collaboration, research, development, mentoring, and learning. Noisebridge is also more than a physical space, it’s a community with roots extending around the world. The hackerspace provides infrastructure and collaboration opportunities for people interested in programming, hardware hacking, physics, chemistry, mathematics, photography, security, robotics, all kinds of art, and, of course, technology. Through talks, workshops, and projects, it encourages knowledge exchange, learning, and mentoring. As a space for artistic collaboration and experimentation, is open to all types of art – with a special emphasis on the crossover of art and technology. From hardware labs to electronics, cooking, photography, and sound labs, anything that’s creative is welcome.

The tor project is free software and an open network that helps you defend against a form of network surveillance that threatens personal freedom and privacy, confidential business activities and relationships, and state security known as traffic analysis.

The meeting with Jacob Appelbaum is organized by the Digital Aesthetics Research Centre. Presented by Tatiana Bazzichelli.

Thursday January 7, 2010.
14.30-16.00, Helsingforsgade 14, Aarhus University, Turing building, 8200 Århus N, room T014.

AHAcktitude 2009, Milan

The community of aha@lists.ecn.org, the Italian mailing list on art and hacktivism is organizing a 3 day event in Milan at the Cantiere Social Centre. They called it AHAcktitude, as a collective development of the AHA: Activism-Hacking-Artivism project which I founded in 2001. I will contribute via Skype from San Francisco with a presentation on the topics I am researching during my visiting scholarship at Stanford University (starting August 2009).
The name of my presentation is: From Silicon Valley with Love, and it will connect art, tech and grassroots projects in the Bay Area (Saturday November 28, 9.30pm).

Here is the AHAcktitude press announcement:

In Milan on the 27, 28, and 29th of November the artivists of the AHA mailing list will meet at the “Il Cantiere” social centre.
Activist-artists, artistic hackers, social-artistic activists, call them  whatever you like. The 600 subscribers to the AHA mailing list are just a small part of all those people who, in Italy and in the world, know that the medium is not just the message, but the massage and the ‘mixage’. They know that it is not enough to complain about TV (be it mainstream, communitarian or niche), or blabber on about alternative communication, because the experience must be developed, and because communication without bodies only communicates stereotypes, and the body without intelligence only produces manipulation.

For this reason from last year the subscribers of aha@list.ecn.org meet face to face periodically, each time in a different city, to open the black boxes, to get their hands inside the technological devices for communication and imagination, to deconstruct the official knowledge and share new knowledge, to work at collective intelligence of bodies and not at capital intelligence, to broaden the resistance to globalization of multinationals.

AHAcktitude will be three days of activity and activism, of enjoyment and sharing, of study and fun. Technology, music, Internet, literature, telecommunications, marketing and social networks: everything will be targeted at open sourcing and open sharing. Methods, approaches, attitudes that are different but that communicate in order to explore, understand, and act in our condition of technologically modified beings.
Because human beings are worth more than merchandise, and we will not be satisfied while the life of someone who has more is worth more than the life of someone who has nothing.

aha@lists.ecn.org is an Italian mailing list created in 2002 within the AHA: Activism-Hacking-Artivism project, founded by Tatiana Bazzichelli,
aka T_Bazz. AHA wants to promote networking and critical thinking, connecting artistic practices to political and social activism. We define these practices as artivism.

(Txt from the AHAcktitude community website)

More info:

AHAcktitude 2009:
http://www.ahacktitude.org/event/2009/
Social Network:
www.ahacktitude.org

AHA mailing list:
http://lists.ecn.org/mailman/listinfo/aha

AHA – Activism-Hacking-Artivism:
www.ecn.org/aha