À : Christophe Schild <cschild@worldcom.ch>

Objet : pour transmission à <sém. Benjamin/Cyber>/FW: Evaluation

Merci Christophe de bien vouloir transmettre cet extrait de mail aux étudiants Benjamin/Cyber dont tu penses qu'ils seraient intéressés à consulter le site de la 10e SESSION DE L'ECOLE DU MAGASIN et à connaître leur argumentaire pour l'évaluation de leur année en études postgrades.
Cordialement
Liliane Schneiter
----------
De : ecole <ecole@magasin-cnac.org>
Date : Tue, 03 Apr 2001 19:16:27 +0200
À : "c.queloz@bluewin.ch" <c.queloz@bluewin.ch>, "jrp@worldcom.ch" <jrp@worldcom.ch>, Schneiter Lilianne <l.schneiter@dplanet.ch>
Objet : Evaluation
Bonjour,
 
 
Vous pourrez (enfin!) consulter le site web qui sera officiellement en
ligne demain à 14h.
http://10emesession.free.fr
Salutation.
Christine_Jean-François_Nathalie_Aurélie
 
DIGITAL DEVIANCE
DÉVIANCE NUMÉRIQUE
A project by Jean-François Sanz, Nathalie Gilles, Aurélie Gandit and
Christine Laquet
We would like to acknowledge the collaboration of Critical Art Ensemble
in preparing this document.
 
The following proposal by the four students of Le Magasin represent the
conclusion of the research of our fields of interest, and suggest a
material manifestation of our thinking process. The proposal is divided
into three sections: the first explains the theoretical background of
our project; the second, the methodology; and the final section, the
historical background. This document also offers an appendix containing
an annotated list of proposed artists for the exhibition segment of our
project.
 
 
Digital Deviance
Our research was originally constructed around the idea of cyberculture;
however, we soon found that this notion was too poorly defined to be of
use in establishing a strategy for an exhibition. Cyberculture connotes
a necessary connection to online informatics (and an occasional
reference to robotic research) which in turn limited the media
possibilities we wanted to examine. Consequently, we searched for
another topic with which we could better express our interests. This
desire lead us to the idea of „digitality„ which appeared to be a
better defined concept, as well as being a better compliment to the
contemporary practices that we found to be most relevant to the current
cultural situation.
Our research into digitality began with the identification of its limits
as a model (in light of how it has been recently represented in the
cultural landscape). We found a discrepancy (contradiction en moins
fort) between its theoretical possibilities and its practical
applications in exhibitions (we will address this issue in detail in
section three). Our belief is, that like „cyberculture,‰ the digital has
been defined by technological association rather than by its
methodological and philosophical associations. Digitality is more than
just an adjective that describes a technical apparatus; rather it
describes a way of interpreting the world and acting within it. We also
want to argue that the digital is one pole on a continuum with the
analogic functioning as the opposing extreme. Historically, the world
has been interpreted through the hegemonic filter of the analogic;
however, over the past two hundred years, the digital model has
challenged its domination. The difference between the two models is
founded in a contrast of first principles. While the analogic claims
that order emerges from chaos (and chaos from order), the digital
suggests that order comes from order. To illustrate our point, let us
contrast Picasso‚s paintings with Duchamp‚s Readymade Series. Picasso‚s
paintings, like most of the key bodies of work that have come to
represent the modernist style, were analogic both in method and
interpretation. Picasso‚s objects currently and historically represent,
via the canon of art history and criticism, a quest for an original
style that is unique to his artistic vision. A Picasso painting exists
as a one of a kind acquisition of perceptual order wrenched from the
chaos of sensation by an artistic genius. It cannot be duplicated; it
can only be counterfeited or left to decay over time. To the contrary,
Duchamp‚s readymades were manufactured by a machinic process that
guaranteed equivalent replication. They defied originality in that they
could be replicated for as long as they were manufactured (this is
evidenced by the fact that after the „originals‰ were lost, they were
remade and reissued in 1963). The success of Duchamp‚s readymades is due
to his ability to take one system of material and semiotic order and
transmute it into different system of order as opposed to constructing a
novel perceptual system that was previously unknown. Given the modernist
cultural resistance to readymades in general, and one like Fountain in
particular, we view Duchamp as a prototype of digital deviance.
We do not mean to suggest that the digital and the analogic exist as
pure bipolar forms. Rather, they exist on a continuum on which there are
many hybridized manifestations. For example, let us take the Fordist
production of car. Henry Ford attempted to manufacture a digital car in
that all the completed units of production were equivalent to one
another. This initiative turned out to be an error in economic strategy.
The elimination of all analogic qualities from the commodity proved
unpopular among the buying public. This form of digital deviance
eventually became so transgressive that other car manufactures found an
opening to enter into the car market by reintroducing analogic elements
into motorized vehicles. The hybrid model primarily used by Ford‚s
competitors concentrated on the development of analogic aesthetic
characteristics. This new component attracted many buyers to this hybrid
auto. The reason for this shift in the market was due to the general
perception that a car should reflect the personal aesthetic choices of
the individual. Hence, while the public appreciated digital
manufacturing for the low prices it offered, the public rejected digital
aesthetics in regard to car manufacture due to its affiliation with a
drab uniformity (the modern anti-aesthetic). The problem with the
Fordist model was that it eliminated the expression of desire relative
to the commodity. Hence, the Fordist experience represents an early
manifestation of the conflict between desire and total digital encoding.
A second problem encountered in the Fordist model appeared in the
factory itself. Ford and other manufactures like him demanded that their
workers become an extension of the digital machinic apparatus. In other
words, the workers were transformed from bodies of desire to bodies of
instrumentality. In relationship to the principle of efficiency,
capitalist economy has insisted that desire may take no object other
than those accepted within the parameters of production and consumption.
This reductive tendency of capitalist political economy has been a key
site of political resistance. Activists, through both analogic and
digital means, have attempted to reestablish the liberation of desire by
disturbing, disrupting, and subverting the structures and codes that
homogenize and channel individual desire and collective consensus*. We
propose to focus our attention for our project on digital means of
resistance.
By definition, resistance is a form of social deviance in that it
attempts to legitimize expressions of desire that are typically labeled
marginal, abnormal, pathological, or illegal. The appropriation of the
capitalist tendency toward the digital by activists in order to achieve
liberatory goals appears in the cultural landscape as deviance in both
form and content. As form, digital cultural practice has been reduced to
three or four acceptable categories: net.art, interactivity, animation,
and on some occasions, video. Practitioners of resistant digitality
either subvert or expand the institutional categories of „New Media‰
practices and thereby tend to be placed in the subject position of
deviant by cultural institutions. In terms of content, digital deviants
engage a pedagogical practice that expands the field of public discourse
on issues of representation in macro contestational process. The implied
connection between desiring bodies, resistant digital practice, and
public discourse will be a central focus of our project in general, and
our exhibition in particular.
Against Method
Methodology is the most difficult element to describe in our process.
This situation occurs because all methods have a unique
problematic--?those inherent causalities which predetermine the result
of any given exploration. For example, if we were to examine a tree from
both a Cartesian and Druidic subject position, the method of our
respective investigations would already be predetermined, which in turn
would predetermine our conclusions. For the Cartesian method, we would
observe the tree in the bright light of day in order to see all the
details of which a tree consists. For the Druid, the tree would be
observed at magical hours and on magical days when the true nature of
the tree would present itself. In either case, the observer would see
what they expected to see. Our desire is to minimize methodological
restrictions to the fullest extent of our ability**. While we cannot be
without organizing principles, we hope to make them as open-ended as
possible. Such a notion requires dadaesque position that is willing to
tolerate contradiction as a necessary component of experimentation. Our
goal is to undermine such closed methodologies by presenting a series of
contradictory if not incommensurate versions of the digital in order
that the possibilities of interpretation remain an open field. In this
manner, we believe that we can enrich the consciousness of the viewer by
presenting a series of contrasting possibilities that represent a
variety of digital practices that emphasizes difference and complexity
as opposed to presenting a defined, concise body of work.
Digital methods and practices are pluralistic allowing for a broad range
of possibilities, unfortunately they have been homogenized within
institutional structures. Digital methods arise out of systems that are
based in the principle of order from order and thereby include
biological and communicative infomatics. Such digital cultural methods
based in orderly replication are known by terms such as appropriation,
plagiarism, combines, détournement, readymades, constellations, clones,
and so on. These typologies can materialize in any media. Technology is
not what associates a cultural practitioner with digitality; rather, it
is the philosophical and methodological interpretation. For this reason,
we plan to exhibit a number of works that have traditionally been
excluded from most shows concerned with New Media.
The second problematic within our process arises from our position
relative to the cultural institution in which we work as subjects in
formation within a curatorial program. Much like our theoretical model,
and like ourselves as subjects, our methodological process is in a state
of becoming. Rather than a finished product, our goal in the exhibition
is to present a reasonable representation of our process at a particular
point in time.
A Brief Discussion of Institutional Failure
 
After reviewing the literature on past exhibitions which have concerned
themselves with issues in digitality, cyberculture, and/or activism,
what became clear was what the group did not want to do in terms of
exhibition strategies. As we have already noted, much of the problem in
regard to digitality came from the problematic of New Media as a genre,
that is, the division of the genre into a limited set of fixed,
homogenized categories. This problem was further amplified by the
association of digitality with a technical apparatus. This problematic
tended to manifest itself as an exhibition strategy in major European
institutions dedicated to New Media in terms of either fields of
computers or monumental interactive apparati. For example, exhibitions
like ZKM‚s Net Condition or Ars Electronica‚s Mythos Information offered
the viewing public little more than an overview of the current state of
net.art and web activity. The shows did little to energize discourse on
the philosophical implications of digitality, nor did they provide a
contrast of possibilities that could act as a catalyst for a more
enriching public conversation. The permanent collections of these
institutions fell prey to the problem. In addition, the interactive,
generally emmersive vision engines that such institutions tend to
collect become technological dinosaurs after a few years due to the
rapid changes in technology in both hardware and software. Our goal, to
the contrary, is to exhibit a diverse body of work that contributes to a
reflective discussion of the conceptual possibilities of digital
cultural practice. We are not interested in a collection of web works
nor in vision engines that have only contributed to advancements in
technical research.
The history of art and activism is much longer and complex, so we found
ourselves trying to search through volumes of information looking for
exhibition strategies that would compliment our particular needs. With
the introduction of digitality in all its forms into activist discourse,
the field of possibility has radically expanded. We thought that we had
to address issues such as high velocity online communication,
online/offline relationships, networking possibilities, and electronic
tactics. All of this also has to be framed by the issue of
globalization, which has in turn, radically expanded the space and scope
of activism. To a degree, these new fields have not been adequately
theorized nor have enough practices been tested over time; however, we
believed that we could work by analogy with exhibition strategies from
the past. Two key exhibitions that influenced our considerations on how
to proceed in our process were Group Material‚s Democracy Project and
The World Information Organization‚s Future Heritage project. Both used
digital methodologies in terms of replicating systems of culture for
subversive purpose; yet they were still successful at opening their
initiatives to all varieties of media produced from different subject
positions.
The older of the two exhibitions, The Democracy Project (1990), was
useful to us in two ways. First, the multivarient cultural identities
and roles of the contributors was compelling. They came from a variety
of public spheres and represented large spectrum of specified roles
including professional and amateur artists, students, activists,
cultural critics and so on. Identity positioning was equally
diversified. Second, the exhibition was open to any media. Although
electronic digital media in a technical sense was absent from the
exhibition, it was present in a conceptual sense (Warhol, for example).
From this model, we began to understand how we could use all digital
forms for our own purposes. The result of Group Material‚s exhibition
was a profound description of cultural situation and/or a cultural
history. While we are not interested in historical constructions, we
find the result of appropriating order to create another transmuted
order through the use of a difference engine necessary to our process.
Future Heritage, first presented at Brussels 2000, gave us a more
contemporary use of contrast and difference as a means to articulate and
represent marginal resistant discourse. This exhibition combined
mechanical coding technology, analogic systems, mundane technical
interventions, state of the art infomatics and bioinfomatics, and
volumes of 2-D graphics to create a representation of invisible
activities that have an impact on everyday life. This strategy had the
affect of freeing us from a tendency toward the most current research as
well as reinforcing our idea that digital machines did not have to
dominate the exhibition. Thus, having thought through concept,
historical background, and methodology we began to construct a list of
potential artists that we would invite for the exhibition.
 
Annotated List of Proposed Artists:
The following list is a presentation of artists that we not only believe
offer important perspectives on digitality as method and discourse, but
also fit the categories of representative activist tactics that we have
identified including insertion, infiltration, sabotage, and simulation.
These tactical possibilities can function in a specialized or
recombinant form.
 
- ®TMark: se sert du sabotage facilité par ces investissements pour
créer du sensationnel dans la presse et les medias, afin de faire mieux
connaître les abus des sociétés commerciales envers la loi et la
démocratie. Intervention on our website.
- Brian Springer does interventions in satellite broadcast technology.
Spin (1995) is a behind the scenes look at the 1992 US Presidential
Campaign. The images were obtained by intercepting backhauls (satellite
transmission awaiting television broadcast. These images have no
copyright). This video made a direct impact on the transmission of
backhauls. They are now scrambled or encrypted to prevent any further
intervention like Springer‚s. He is of particular interest due to his
pioneering efforts in finding the cracks and holes in the privatization
of information and other cultural materials.
- Gregg Bordowitz is an AIDS video activist whose work addresses the
AIDS crisis in third world. His most recent video is a documentary about
how third world and particularly African countries organizing themselves
to produce pharmaceutical resources to fight AIDS. We are particularly
interested in this video because it represents the defiance of
international trademarks as a field of resistance. Bordowitz is also a
co-founder of Testing The Limits, the video wing of ACTUP.
- subRosa: is a collective of cyberfeminists who examine women‚s issues
related to new developments in biotechnology. Like RTMark and CAE, they
are attracted to the method of appropriating the codes of legitimized
institutions as a way to subvert authority and create resistant
pedagogical projects.
- Konrad Becker is the founder of Public Net Base in Vienna (a community
access computer resource center), and is the organizer of the World
Information Organization (an organization designed to invert the models
of intelligence gathering and interpretation used by state security
agencies).
- Mongrel produce combinatory off-line/on-line projects regarding racial
and ethnic hybridity. They are an excellent example of recombinant
methodology used for subversive purpose.
- FakeShop construct online/ offline recombinatory projects regarding
the impact of technology on the configuration of the body. FakeShop is
known for appropriating science fiction fantasy and turning it into an
online/offline hybrid theater.
- Heath Bunting and Natalie Jeremijenko. Bunting is the founder of
Irrational.org, and Jeremijenko is the founder of the Bureau of Inverse
Technology. Together they do an online magazine entitled Biotech
Hobbyist We are interested in getting some of their Hobbyist Technology
Kits. These starter kits are significant in that they encourage popular
intervention in technical and scientific developments.
- Institute for Applied Autonomy (AAA) The members of this collective
are the founders of the genre of contestational robotics. We are
interesting in their film-strip on police repression in the US (Little
Brother Gets Busted). This group offers an excellent demonstration of
the use analogue technology as a means to accomplish a digital goal.
- Keith Piper Acclaimed British installation artist works in an online
and offline capacity. We would like to present his cd-rom on the
relationship between the semiotic codes of robotic instrumentality and
those of racial hierarchy. Piper specializes in high-end cultural
institutional interventions from a minor position.
- Mikro (Pit Schultz and Diana McCarty) A Berlin organization which
specializes in sound streaming. Pit Schultz is the founder of Nettime.
Diana McCarty is a cyberfeminist (to check: she also a co-founder of The
Faces Forum). We are interested in having them produce a remote sound
event for the exhibition party.
- Carbon Defense League (CDL): They specialize in tactical media
projects for youth culture. We would like to exhibit their kit for
hacking a GameBoy. CDL is perfect to remind our viewers that the
position of youth within culture is a key point of intervention through
the production of anti-spectacle.
- Mathew Fuller: is a co-founder of IOD, which creates subversive and
dysfunctional software. We are particularly interested in the Web
Stalker and perhaps some other software which is downloadable by the
public. This group‚s rejection of the principle of techno-efficiency,
and their acceptance of the idea that dysfunctionality can also be
productive are key notions that we want to explore.
- Vuk Cosic: is the founder the Ascii Art Ensemble. He creates images
through the oldest process of computer image generation. We are
interested in exhibiting the ascii version of Deep Throat. AAE provides
an example of the idea that no technology is ever anachronistic in
regard to the generation of resistant representation.
- Ne Pas Plier is a collective that uses graphic design as an activist
form. We would like to collaborate with them on the design of the
exhibition flyer/ poster. Again, we want to show that 2-D analogic
production can have a digital impact in terms of method and discourse.
- Critical Art Ensemble produces digital participatory theatre events
which address issues of resistance most recently in the field of
biotechnology. We are particularly interested in presenting a
significant example of digital performance in the exhibition.
- Association of Autonomous Astronauts is a network of collectives that
attempt to appropriate scientific authority in order to produce
initiatives for outer space exploration. (ask Konrad for more info)
- James Wallbank is the founder of Redundant Technology Initiative?an
organization that collects computers that are about to be thrown away,
and redistributes them to people that do not have the financial means to
participate in electronic culture. RTI demonstrates that any level of
technology can contribute to education and resistant public discourse.
- Jordan Crandall is working on the issue of data information tracking/
surveillance; he is also the founder of the Blast Forum. We are
attracted to his ability to appropriate a system of repression, and use
it for puposes of liberation.
- Isabelle Massu: Penelope group, She was working with Natalie Bookhin.
- Gregory Green:
- Ben Kinmont:
.- AAA Corp:
- Drazan Pantic (B92 Belgrade Radio)
- Sabotage:
- Paul Vanouse (à préciser)
- Dirk De Witt: Founder of Constanz, Belgium.
- Bureau d‚Etude
- Fiambrera
Notes:
* Guattari, Félix. Soft Subversions and Chaosophy. New-York:
Semiotext(e).
We would also like to take this opportunity to state that we are in
agreement with Guartari‚s position on desire. Desire is all that exists
in a human before the introduction of language. Desire is an open field
that has an infinitude of possible trajectories, and is always in a
state of becoming. While desire cannot be inscribed by semiotic codes,
it can be channeled by them by reducing this open-ended schizophrenic
field to a constricted, rationalized flow suitable only for the machinic
flows accepted by the dominant political economy. Disturbing these
boundaries is a primary goal of digital activism.
** Feyerabend, Paul. Against Method. London: Verso.
We would also like to acknowledge the work Louis Althusser for our use
of the term „problematic„ in this section.