CODE 2022: Reclaiming Digital Agency

How can we influence politicians to fight for our digital rights? What role should governments play and what can we as concerned citizens, researchers, and artists do to support this process? CODE seeks to bring together artists, non-artists, politicians, policy makers and researchers from Germany, Belgium, and the Netherlands to engage in dialogue, critical discussion, and artistic intervention about digital rights. We want to influence public policy on a national and international level, by creating awareness and by defining ways in which we can improve laws and legislation that will protect us as digital citizens and consumers.

Over the last few months, we have worked with 22 participants in a series of workshops, hackathons and other public events. Working in cross-disciplinary teams, the participants have developed creative interventions and awareness campaigns to expose the power of tech companies and to activate politicians, policymakers and citizens to take action. At Ars Electronica we present the results of CODE 2022 and the projects created by the participants.

CODE 2022: Reclaiming Digital Agency
Credit: Florian Voggeneder

HeLi-AI

Anastasiia Belousova (DE), Pauline Vantilt (NL), Shruthi Venkat (NL)

HeLi-AI introduces a fictional product at Ars Electronica’s Kepler’s Garden in Linz, seducing the visitors/consumers with false promises. With HeLi-AI, we aim to stimulate visitors to reflect on how we are being manipulated online, how susceptible we are to techno-optimism and how easy it is to fall into the over-productivity narrative. HeLi-AI is part of CODE 2022, a program organized by IMPAKT [Centre for Media Culture] (NL) in collaboration with School of Machines, Making & Make Believe (DE), Werktank (BE) and Privacy Salon/Privacytopia (BE).

Logging into identity

Omar Adel (DE), Swaeny Nina Kersaan (NL), Anya Shchetvina (DE)

Logging into Identity is a website telling intimate stories of connections between software and users. It sarcastically yet tenderly highlights the rhetoric of first-person perspective that is so often used within the interfaces and is supposed to make us feel like we are taken care of by some sentient and sensuous being. Using personal stories, it shows how the values and affordance of particular platforms shape and interact with individuals’ identity and values.

Surveillance and Predictability

Michaëla Stubbers (BE), Bart Vandeput (BE), Fanny Zaman (BE)

Translating reality into data holds the premise of machine readability. When reality, including you, is not readable to a machine, your machine-predicted future will be based on generalizations and probabilities attributed to you. It will not be based on you. We urge you to reclaim your future, your reality, your agency, your diversity, and your imagination. The project will be a theatrical live installation that invites a player in an ad hoc setting. Your portrait will be taken.

DSMA UnLtd.

Funda Zeynep Ayguler (DE), Katia Sophia Ditzler (DE), Vo Ezn (NL), Elena Falomo (DE), Guillaume Slizewicz (BE)

Do you need to model the law according to your vision? DSMA Unlimited is a company that shines light on the shady process of lobbying. The business model of DSMA UnLtd. is to sell the Digital Service Act and the Digital Market Act, sentence by sentence, to the highest bidder. The company’s goal is to turn legislative data into financial assets, while allowing companies and individuals to own the law and modify it to their advantage. DSMA UnLtd. makes lobbying easy, affordable and accessible.

Physio·gnomy

Ines Borovac (NL), Greeshma Chauhan (NL), Arina Kapitanova (DE), Deniz Kurt (NL), Ginevra Petrozzi (NL), Michael Zerba (NL)

What is the importance of privacy for protestors? How is it possible to safeguard the privacy of the protestors, both offline and online? The project Physio·gnomy uses the control-access definition of privacy used by Marijn Sax in The Handbook of Privacy Studies (2018): “Privacy is about the control one has over access to oneself” as its starting point to explore the notion of privacy during protests. To be visible as a protestor should not come at the cost of your privacy.

Reclaiming Digital Agency: Ars Electronica X CODE Panel

Arjon Dunnewind (NL), Omar Adel (DE), Pauline Vantilt (NL), Anastasiia Belousova (DE), Katia Sophia Ditzler (DE), Funda Zeynep Ayguler (DE)

CODE addresses our lack of agency over the digital platforms and devices we are so dependent on, and how Big Tech companies and governments violate or neglect our digital rights. In this panel artists and other participants will present their thought-provoking or subversive projects addressing themes like surveillance, the use of artificial intelligence, face recognition technologies and the power of lobbyists.

Biography

Credits

CODE 2022 is realized with the support of the Creative Industries Fund NL, City of Utrecht, Democracy and Media Fund, Fonds Soziokultur, Cultural Participation Fund, the Dutch Embassy in Belgium (Brussels), the Dutch Embassy in Germany (Berlin) and the Goethe Institut.