code-2022

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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).