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Yeah, thanks for introduction, and also
thanks for having me talking here today.
It's a it's quite a pleasure and
an honor, and I've been coming to
this event for many years already and
also doing. I've been doing stuff here
over the years.
So you might recognize this or the
other projects.
Yeah. Thanks for autumn beauty having
me. I think it's great.
Just for reference, I think this is one
of the well, I I studied.
I came to Berlin in the mid-nineties and
I studied architecture at the Eureka,
the University of Arts in Berlin.
And yeah, I think 97
or 98, the Congress moved to Berlin
from here.
Um, and I
came. It's like a real like a
I think it's an important stepping
stone. I don't know, like the foreign
part of my influence and my artistic
career. Sort of.
Yeah, we were an art school.
We were, I don't know.
We were still trying to draw ink plans
and architecture while there was
an internet coming up.
Super interesting, I went over to the
technical campus to write emails.
One friend I knew of had an email address
in Hamburg, and it was way more
interesting to, I don't know, to
design a house and then to play.
I don't know some game loaded
into some game and play in there instead
of drawing by ink.
So I was always torn in
between, yeah, learning this
like very old craft.
And at the same time, there was something
super interesting happening.
Um, and then there's always these moments
and probably you all know this when when
you.
I did, I did. We did tons of projects
like a lot of 3D, a lot of video stuff,
etc. and we were quite free to do what
we wanted to do.
And then I had this moment where I lost
parents, CD-ROMs and you use data
because you left Typekit still like the
backups not working.
And suddenly, like, Oh wow, like with
all these projects like Where's the
beauty I made and the 3D stuff
and I developed that
need to to make these things tangible,
touchable again.
And this is like, what?
Yeah, big part of my artist's
practice or like my my
main mission like to discuss this
online offline relationship.
And I'm going to show like
some very classic projects you might have
seen online at some
point. And then I also will go more
into CCC related and
more to the fun stuff later on.
So just yeah, the
typical project, it's called map.
It's a it's all Google
Maps, and it's about this Google map
marker here in the middle.
And I started this in
2006. It's about, I mean, it's an
interface object. It's sitting on the
screen. When you zoom in, it kind of
stays at the same pixel size, but you
cast the shadow at the same time.
Like the more you zoom in, the more it
becomes part of the city.
So I I started to make this
in 2006, where it was really
still like
kind of this. This blurring boundary
discussion like kind of kind of started
off for me was quite, yeah, very
important.
Today, these these sculptures
and I've been showing this project a lot
over the past seven, eight years
here in Taiwan, Taipei
or, yeah, in
France, two years ago.
It's like it's very it's very much
about this irritating moment like, Oh
yeah, I know this icon
very well, but wait a second, what is it
doing here?
And we're very used to,
I don't know, use all these tools and be
online. At the same time, we are still
made of humans, made of flesh and walk in
the city, and there's different rules
going on there. So I like to kind
of break in between these boundaries
and at the same time, of course, today
and it's sort of like this this piece
for me. It's like already historical in
the sense that we overcame
that point a long time ago already,
especially with you guys.
And I,
yeah, this is like the recent recent
set up in Casa, where I had a show in
October, September, October,
and Google is not building these
markers, right?
But they they are super important
and they're occupying
that location, this whole location
story with, with search, etc.
So I think it's just a question of time.
So they will enter like public market
marketing with face recognition.
I read somewhere in England, this is
already coming like the the camera on
top, like having targeted you.
So it's really the step into the
physical is coming in a different way,
but it kind of represents
how important it is here and
and all these markers in these cases.
It's always the city center.
So I when you google for and
also when you Google for Hamburg, I don't
know what pops up here, but I always
have the goal to put it exactly at the
place where Google claims the city center
to be and wow.
Yeah. Is this a city center, so it's
really also some
programmer put it there because the name
is there, but sometimes it's in the main
square, but not always.
So
I played a lot of computer games.
Yeah, I grew up with computer games.
This is counterstrike.
The map called dust, and
it's the last game I really played
excessively 10 years ago or more than
10 years ago.
What I like very much about these
games?
Yeah. When you when you look at them
and compare it to movies, you need to
know the map and the the
architecture very, very well
to survive on there.
So it's not like a movie where you
talk about the same atmosphere scenes
or what happened with the plot.
The plot itself, I would say in these
like especially like these kind of first
person shooter games, there's no plot.
It's just like fighting each other,
right? But the
the architecture and the space itself
unfold as a plot and you need to
like when you ever played one of these
games.
You will always recognize
like the space and, you know, will know
exactly what's right behind that door on
your right. And and just
to survive in there, it's super crucial
to to know the map by heart.
And as humans also, we are trained
to remember space.
I mean, I still have trouble in this
building here kind of right with all
the stairs, and I kind of get it with the
two big rooms next to each other.
But yeah, so
we got lost here or in the airport.
You pass every, I don't know, once a
month, but here you would
never get lost because you played it
like, I mean, if you played it
and then I think the game was very early
on, they they realized like that shift
that they made this kind of connection.
Oh, wow. Look, we can sit on top
of each other in the game like, what is
this like to do this in real life?
And it doesn't make sense for a sales
team, but well, let's do it
and the same at same point.
So here you have the dust map from above
and aerial view.
And then you I found these pictures on
the web that they were just rebuilt
the map in the sand, on the beach, not
because they had a printout, but because
they know it by heart.
And so I've been dealing with this map
over a long time. I mean, also dust map
and kind of stragglers, kind of, yeah,
legendary. And this is a scary one
to one model for the show.
And Cozumel recently had.
So to enter the show, you needed
to pass that crucial door.
And yeah, if you played that game, you
know, it's like, it's like this line of
sight in the middle.
And I've been experimenting
also in other ways.
So here you see the section of the
of this one of these gates.
In August, I had to publish like
a show in public and Sherbrooke and
Canada near to Montreal, and
we were building 20 of these crates who
are like positioned in the space of
that map in a old prison
yard prison yard from the 19th
century. And it kind of fit it super well
because it's like this closed space.
And yeah, with the with the sky.
So you get an idea like here
the gate sort of just cardboard, but it's
like very precise one to one.
It's just the crates taken from
the game. And also there are pixels,
right? And you will not
you get an idea from far away.
But when you look closer, you yeah,
you really see it.
So this has been going on.
And I also this 3-D prints of the
prototypes of the of the whole map and
like one of my FA goals will be and I
kind of claim, I mean, how many people
have been in Hamburg, how many people
have been in important places in the
world? And I don't know, Times Square or
Mecca and Khobar or and how many people
have been in here?
Right. A lot of people have been in here
and they claim it's cultural heritage.
Like it should be like why not
having this built as a
museum slash real like,
real life sculpture?
And this is like a very far goal, and it
will be very big to build one hundred
by one on a 20 meter.
But yeah, I would love to see this.
And not only from cardboard, but like
like from a concrete.
And maybe it's going to be like a pilgrim
place for the gamers.
And in 200 years, people will think like,
what is this like some funny
cultural artifact?
And I made some first tests like to
to build how to
build this. And of course, this looks
more like Minecraft now, right?
Um, another another
project from the Games section World
of Warcraft.
You probably all know this game very
well, but I think it's interesting in
this screenshot is that like the party
who just killed the dragon in the back,
they taking a group picture because
the moment is so important, right?
They spent so many hours on like kind
of achieving that goal and.
And they know each other very well over
the internet. And they.
But it's like it's for adults and for
people like not being in these worlds.
It's really hard to understand what's
going on and how close these
relationships like grow online.
And I love this as
a reference like when I don't know, like
when you go to travel, uh,
with a group, you take a group picture
and here they take a group picture.
And I got interested in these name
markers, which are very common in all
three games. And yeah, in any like
other online world.
And that's a workshop.
I've been doing quite a lot of time here.
This was a, I think, the last time in the
Laguna Art Museum in California, two
three years ago.
So everybody builds their own real
name from cardboard and then
we mount them on plastic strips
and then we walk our names
in the city as if we were
MMO, right?
And it's like, I mean, this is this is
2007, and I think I started this
and it's like, we're going to have this
tomorrow, right, with Google Glass.
I mean, that kind of or let's say
the data is there, right?
We all know now the data is there and
they can put names all the time and all
of our heads.
They will probably kind of try
not to put these names in the first place
because this is always the scary moment,
the face recognition and people will
freak out. But we know the data is there.
So.
And it's kind of, yeah, seven years ago,
2007, this was fun.
Now it's it's becoming sort
of creepy a little bit.
And.
And also, it's interesting to think about
how they get 10 years ago, there
was no reason to put your name online.
Right? Today, when you're not can cannot
be found by name online, you
might be a terrorist, right?
I mean, it's at
the same time in a city like public
space.
Well, I can walk up to someone and get to
know someone and ask for the name, but
you don't walk your name right and
public. It's sort of like this
private thing.
So it's a it's a beautiful
experiment also for the group.
And then we walk each other.
Our names also take this level of
play going on.
And yeah, we had a lot of fun on
that beach here on a Saturday afternoon.
Yeah, and I've been doing this in
different countries also.
It's very interesting when you do this in
Germany, in Berlin, it's like, Oh yeah,
that's an art project.
And you see there were people like, Oh,
it's just like advertising for
political party.
And and here and then
this was in Seoul, in South Korea and.
And it's like a student quarter and
people would just yell the name like
through the whole street super loud,
like. So the reaction to this is also
very different from where you do it.
And yeah, it's interesting also
combined to the to the online rules,
right? I mean, people strip naked online
all the time, but you don't do it in
public. So kind of this like this
gap developed.
And of course, I mean, things change
now when there's always only Facebook
comments, then people behave more, etc.
But it is like it is very different
spaces and at the same time,
this online, offline or
yeah, there's always the name pair of
analog digital.
It's kind of so much woven into each
other. We cannot make a separation
anymore, right?
But at the same time?
Well, it's it's a different.
It's a different style.
I think if you talk face to face
or if you chat online, I mean, yeah, and
now we come to the next project and this
has to do little bit with also as,
yeah, you see a second.
So it's about chatting.
And here again, World of Warcraft plus
many other games to chat online.
It's like it's like a super all
communication channel has also has
very specific qualities.
It's a very narrow channel, but people
kind of talk moral what they would
say, face to face, et cetera.
So what would it be like to chat in real
life? So I made these two speech bubbles
to have a backlight projection in the
back and and the people kind
of bearing the keyboard can type into the
speech bubble and it will appear just
above your head.
And what is this like?
And it's the same same thing again with
the NSA knows all the data, they could
put the speech bubble to our head.
But when you are a drink and an
ice club, transmit the other party here
at the bar, you would immediately get it
because it's really big.
Is also stays there for 20 seconds.
So people have the people can
read the message much longer.
When you sit next to a table, people
talking, you might hear parts of
the conversation, but the written
word?
Yeah, we all know it's way more
static and they you can always go
back and find out what people said.
And this project was also part of
the Congress and two thousand
seven, I think.
Um, and I kind of battle-tested
it here. We had a lot of fun.
You might know this guy.
Uh, and also
prepared us was here and this year
and.
Hello, hackers,
break the system.
I hope you're here somewhere.
Yeah, this was this was
a lot of fun. It was also used by the
Thibaud and today called digital Koolhaas
for like excellence in public space.
About RFID chips and fashion.
And yeah, they say.
Part of part of these projects kind of
came came from here and also I will
yeah, I will talk about this in the end.
And now there's another like another
branch of more about.
Well, you also internet related, but
no 3D, no games.
Are you humanness about capture coats?
And we all know like the yeah, the
technology of CAPTCHA code.
Completely automated Turing test to tell
humans and computers apart.
It's like this annoying little jetpack
at the bottom there. And it's
that moment where the script and the
is asking you, Are you human?
Like, can you prove to me that you're
human to prevent the spamming?
But it's interesting that the Turing test
used to be you sitting in front of the
screen, deciding if you talk to a human
or to a computer.
And now it's the software on
the script deciding on you, right?
And this is all one saying this is from
USO's captures from 2007.
They change over the years this all these
different song captures and
Google Street View has a number of
captures. And but it's
I think it's a very crucial.
It describes very well that the moment
we are at where, how yeah,
how important, how machines
are and software computers kind of.
Well, it's difficult to say this here,
they're not fighting on us, right?
We all know it's programed and it's a
race of like the spammers,
right kind of get over this problem
and the humans also try to solve
it. Sometimes you do.
You still like you still need a few of
them to kind of get to it.
Um, I
also in this case, I like them.
I like them very much because they.
They have these extra elements in there,
and I introduced
them at first I introduced them as
business cards, so maybe we come
to that point in the future when you hand
this over like, Oh, can you read this to
me, please?
Right? I mean,
then I blew them up and made objects
of them and put them in
public space next to graffiti.
And it's very close to like tax
write. It's like it's excise
code for certain neighborhood.
If you're not, if you can't read this,
you're not allowed to come or yeah, if
you can't read this, you're not part
of the group, etc.
I I wrote this in different locations.
This was in Vienna in 2009, and yeah,
it takes a while to find it down here.
And it's also interesting how then I may
I may also made them from from aluminum
that because these capture codes, they're
unique, right?
I mean, everything else on the web, we
copy all the time we can download.
We still we still know how to do this
course, but.
Once you use them, they're gone, right?
There were no less than the
statistics that this exact
capture will appear as like, super
minimal. So there are a lot of these
sort of these more an artistic
practice like unique artifacts.
I met them in like Apple.
Aluminum sort of eternal,
and then also a recent one I made for the
show, and castle was a big one like a
floor piece, and it's made from rusted
steel.
And it's also it's also disappearing by
very slowly over time.
So I think a capture is a kind of
just describe very well how
what's our relation here and also
kind of we all know that captures are not
working anymore either, right?
Because like the computing power becomes
bigger and bigger and there's some more,
some more examples like with passwords,
cetera, how this is like these systems
are not working anymore.
The Google portraits it's about it's
about his own life portraits like what is
the portrait used to be?
Paintings used to be photography a lot.
Today, I claim that the contemporary
portrait is like one I don't know you.
I Google. You and I get 10 results
of you, right?
And this is what we get to know of each
other in the first place.
And it's it's very fast.
It's very responsive.
But also and it may say a lot, but
at the same time, it says nothing.
And I think, yeah, and also
then you have name collisions.
That's people with the same
names. And there's all this funny stuff
going on.
And what I so what I did, I take we
took this search URL and put it into
a this time it's like a
semicolon. But later on, I put them into
QR codes and their hand
drawn. So I make these hand-drawn
QR codes, which
is nothing more than just a search on
Google, but it's a search for a person.
So I say this is like a portrait.
And this example Penelope on Brickell,
which is an artist friend from New York
City and
it's hands handmade sort of the camera.
The software doesn't really care because
there's error correction and
the drying esthetic, but
the actual portrait online kind of
keeps changing depending on the
algorithm, depending on what the artist
or the portrait person is doing.
And so this is a self-portrait made of
thumbprints.
And also, most recently, I did this one
for show in Paris.
Is Edward Snowden portrait?
And you can go go pretty wild, like when
you when you level up the error
correction.
So it's like this technical process
we can code ourselves
at the same time. It's a it's a I
would say, like Google first
10 results. It's like the contemporary
portrait of today, sort of
somewhere. Yeah, we have dead drops,
which I did in 2010.
And for this, I'm going to show quick
video.
That is an offline, anonymous
peer to peer file sharing network,
and you can be part of it.
OK, so you had the idea, let's take
this off line sharing network, I
it's an open project. Everybody can
participate. It's very simple to make you
own that drop by just embedding this
USB drive into a wall can cement
it, then you can glue it somewhere.
I started this in 2010, when
when I was while I was artist and
resident at IBM, that's
to Media Arts Center in New York City.
I started with these, actually.
I kind of arrived in the city.
I fell sick. I only had like two weeks
left and I, Oh, let's do this little
project here.
And I made these five dead
drops in New York and then posted a
picture set on Flickr and wrote
a blog post. And it kind of exploded
afterwards.
It's it's I don't know.
I'm very much in love with that picture
of of the the data
and the USB drive literally cemented
into the wall. It's like super the
opposite of what we have today with a
cloud and everything is connected and
everything was controlled.
So it's it's really
you need to go to the place.
You don't know what's on there.
Oh, the dead drop might be might be gone
already.
Maybe dangerous.
There might be a virus on there, right?
Everybody's asking that question.
So it has all these
influences on it.
And it's really, yeah,
for me, kind of the gesture.
You kneel down in the street and it's wet
and it's dirty, like instead of
you have like a clean internet
and you have your clean computer, etc.
It's it takes it back to
the very much of the city it turns.
Also, you put it into a house instead of,
for me, like it turns the whole building
into a flash drive.
Yeah, all these effects and
and of course, it's anonymous and it's no
IP address. And well,
it's it's funny how this kind
of I did this in 2010, and
while it was popular, then for a year,
maybe, and now it got popular again after
after the summer of Snowden.
Kind of,
yeah, people making dead drops again
and journalists calling me if there was
like suspicious material on there,
really. So kind of it kind of became
like a whole different view
angle on this.
So these are the first five dead drops in
New York City. This is the website
that drops dot com.
You can go to the
yesterday, there were 1304
drops been made over the past
three. Yeah, exactly three years.
This is a world map of all the dead drops
been made.
If we zoom in on to Hamburg
and there quite a lot in Hamburg, you
need to know like they don't stay
long. There depends on how you put them,
how they kind of visible
they are. And of course, it's public
space. You can also see this a wireless
one up here, which
is a pirate box.
And there's this these all these
single pages for each dead drop, so you
have always three pictures from the
location and the map and a description
to it. So these are pictures from a
workshop I recently did in Barcelona.
These are some early pictures,
and it's it's interesting.
Yeah, I guess there's more coming.
I also like this one.
Yeah. So and the fun part
about this sort of open project,
and for me, it's like it's like an art.
You could even call this an art
performance because everybody taking
part in a lot of these people doing
this don't care if it's art or not.
It's just fun to do.
Right? And it also has reference to geo
caching, of course.
And then there's like the reference to
the spy game with dead drops and the
hidden stuff and the and the place.
But people then took it further and made
all these versions of it.
And so this was a show in Leon
where, like a graphic design blog, put
out five dead drops or I don't know a
bunch of them.
And you needed to go to these dead drops
to see the show, to see the art
they produce.
Also, people music bands
kind of promoted death albums on
it, so you can download our new album on,
I don't know, iTunes, but you can get
it for free here when you go there.
So like, there was tons of press, there
was all these variations of the project,
but it was shown in the MoMA in
2011 at the Talk to Me show,
where also people could
connect with their laptop and live life
stuff in the MoMA.
I made this blog post to encourage
all artists to bring their
digital files and to upload them.
And then you can claim you had art in the
moment, just kind of like it's a
good thing to have.
I made I make my own versions and I don't
have. I didn't have the pictures for this
pirate box by David
Dart's, but it's a pretty big community.
I bet those people from Pirate
Box here, also in France, is very
big. So it's the same idea, but it's
wireless for us.
It's driven on open w.r.t
and occupy here.
This always like all kinds of projects
and in a similar field, that
swap by Dmitri, which
was actually prior to this project,
was the idea to yeah, to swap
your feed drives some person.
It's a I think it's a very interesting
field. I made these for the
Museum of Moving image.
I made the DVD that which was like,
it's like a museum version.
It's only one directional, so you get
a burn DVD.
But from the building and and again,
like, it's like this almost
deprecated media
technology. But you can you can
go in there, you get a DVD in the
museum shop and you burn your own DVD
was it ran for a whole year?
And it has like I put monthly curated
content on there, like also from shows to
movies to different materials.
And again, like the whole building has
like this very little suspicious
outlet, but it kind of becomes a DVD
burning drive for a medium,
which is kind of, yeah, it's over
already.
What else?
I've done a couple years of
getting to the more interesting stuff
now. It's a performance piece I did in
New York. Also, when I was there while I
was there, I had
my 3G hotspot with me.
So you could connect to internet,
actually. I had open internet, but at the
same time, also this was kind of,
yeah, protest for the open internet.
So I had funny conversations in the city
with people. Kind of, oh yeah.
Is this a new?
Is this a new business kind of model?
And at the same time,
yeah, for me, kind of.
It was already in that time where net
neutrality and all these topics kind of
really became
very popular.
I made protest signs of them.
So you kind of.
Kerry, the open internet of protests for
the open internet,
this was shown recently in a show
in the Netherlands,
another piece which I also
showed here two years ago at the Congress
Oh Vacuum Forum is a workshop table, and
vacuum forming is of quite classic
technique to kind of form plastic
material. All the other production design
people know this kind of all
the lid of your coffee cup is kind of
vacuum formed.
So I have this workshop.
I made this kind of the mold and
everything to vacuum from this.
And people at the at the Congress
in 2012 were invited
to to vacuum from their own Guy Fawkes
mask. It was always, I mean, often said
on the web, like, don't buy these masks
like you only pour money into the company
who's owning the rights?
And so why not making them
ourselves? And a lot of people like this,
all these versions with paper and
printed, I guess.
But this is like a very fast, quick
one to make. There's some pictures of the
production.
It's like a mold. It's like a cast
of the mask and then a mold of the the
cast again.
And this was at the Congress
2012.
People could make their own masks.
And then also, yeah, kind of.
You cut them. You, you customize
them.
And then there's a
transparent version, which is
interesting, right?
So yeah, what about like?
I mean, yet this whole anonymous
story is also kind of as
I don't know of the peak, as you know,
well, there's still a lot going on.
I know.
And Phil, you can recognize the person,
right? So it's interesting.
And then, of course, also
Nancy Dockside, right?
So who who's on the who's
on the dockside?
Can be only term.
This wasn't an opening and beginning of
2012, and I put them in public
space to and
yeah, kind of again
in the context of street art,
how to turn coat tie.
This is, I thought it was something fun
to talk about here.
I make I make a lot of these DIY
projects like the mask making, etc.
And I think this whole DIY movement
is it's a super interesting form.
It's also like how
how DIY movies are.
Tutorials kind of become
more as an entertaining, yeah,
entertaining entertainment than
exile the tutorial itself.
So I've done a bunch of them.
This is like, Yeah, this is the tutorial
how to turn code into art.
And sometimes that's very important code.
And also I I want to encourage
you to print code and to frame it.
So I'm yeah, I'm explaining how to
to frame you.
You go to the shop, you buy frames.
Do you put it on the wall and art, right?
Sort of. This is sometimes you think
this is how it works and it is.
Yeah. And
and in this case, it's a very what's
very important code, and it was very well
already well printed by the Frankfurter
Allgemeine Zeitung in Germany, where the
CCC kind of disassembled
the the German trillion
government spy software
and found all these these parts.
And there were yeah,
there was like a back door again in the
in the back door software legal one.
So and I thought they just
the and I think this is due to
functionality that he really gets
the point about many things.
They printed this on on
three spreadsheets and this is super
important. The biggest German newspaper
and and code is I don't know.
Yeah, well, I don't have to tell you,
you know, much better than me, but how
important code is today and how kind of.
And that's what we learned.
Now, all this year
affects us very, very much.
Right. So I
like code as art very much.
Greetings from the internet is a postcard
serious. I collect whenever you travel
somewhere, you want to go
on Wi-Fi online and west a password
and then your friend write it down and
you have this moment of like you have to
decode again.
Oh, is this a sixth or is it a g?
I can't really read it.
So you have to guess like the password.
So this moment before you go online,
I take pictures because you always need
the code again for your friend coming
for your other device.
But then I had this collection.
I thought, I may get me this postcard
series out of it.
And of course, there's always these
errors, right?
Password like kitten love.
I know. All lowercase, right?
It's always.
It's yeah, it's like this.
This awkward moment
I. And this summer I printed
my open p-gp code, my public
PDP code and print it on
canvas again.
Like making this like a real painting.
Like, it's a very important picture
this. Yeah, I'm not going to talk
about cryptography.
There's nothing said already yesterday in
the keynote how important this is.
It's not the salvation to all the
problems now, but it's really I
thing where, you know, obviously we were
at this moment. Now this year, now we're
going to have internet.
Uh, yeah, lust
is, uh,
has the same
kind of kind of these these these
moments where the internet was a nice
place to play.
Definitely over.
And encryption is going to be more and
more important.
And again, also about passwords.
Forgot your password is an added
volume printed
books. And in these books you find
seven and a 4.7 million
clear text passwords from LinkedIn,
which got stolen in 2012.
So you you are when when
this is on, so you can just like try
to check if your passport is in there.
I mean, the whole database was much
bigger and there was just a small amount,
which was kind of somewhat, yeah, the
hackers kind of dropped on the in some
forums like decode this or decrypt this,
and people kind of decrypt it, and you
find a quite big chunk of decrypted
passwords. And yeah, I mean, all these
services lose their passwords all the
time, right?
And another again, like something a
system which is not really working
anymore.
And it's this very private,
right? You supposed to keep it super
private. And they're
there.
And yeah, it was on the on the web
recently. I'm going to quickly talk about
Fat Lab. It's a it's an artist group
founded by James Padilla and Evan
Roth in 2007.
I'm part of it. Since 2009, it's
very much dedicated to the
connection or the sweet spot in between
open source and pop culture.
It's very much a few scifi, which is
derived from the graffiti research lab
Evan and James were doing before.
And it's a lot about copyright, about
about these privacy
questions online and, you know, with
an artistic, provocative approach.
This is a book which just came out.
You can download it for free on the
website or you can also have a print.
And in 2010, I'm going to show this one
project. We were invited to Google
Earth to transmit Diyala
in Berlin, to the media festival,
and we did a whole week of fake Google
projects.
And there were like all kinds of
little interventions, online browser plug
ins, etc.
But we also went.
In the city with a with a fake Google
car. And so we
were building this camera top there
and put this mounted all this on the
on the car.
Yes. There's no tech in there.
It's just a mock up.
There's no cameras, nothing recording.
But the moment you put a Google sticker
on your car, you are Google.
And nobody would doubt it also.
That was prior to the Germany
very big discussion in 2010, in the
summer about privacy.
And it's interesting how
how well it's what's it.
Yes, all these weird things happened to
the Google car, and it kind
of he doesn't
know its way, right?
Whole, yeah,
there was a big topic in 2010.
And they have all these weird problems
all the time, right? I mean, it's just
not working.
What do you want?
Hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey,
hey. This is Google Glass.
Turn off the camera
and we can't tell you we had a second
car and we were following
ourself through the city.
So kind of we claimed on Twitter we found
the bunker. We following it and kind
of demonstrated against it playing
the snake. This was all fake garage,
but immediately people kind of interacted
in the streets.
Well, they got drunk really bad
and.
And again, a brave citizen.
He was reaching into his pocket, so it
was like, everybody's.
This is the movie.
So we had a lot of fun with the car and
I think it's.
I think it's very interesting how,
again, like it's super easy
to understand for the public.
Oh yeah, there's a car going
in the country. They're making pictures
of every house, every fence like my
garden and how like data
is collected and browsers and cookies and
all this. It's like it's so hard to
understand and to kind of,
yeah, to teach people this.
And it's very it's again this moment.
I mean, Google wants to be the portal
plug in the wall you don't think about,
right? But they ever tried to call
someone. They're like, Oh yeah, I have a
problem with my Gmail.
It's just not possible.
It's like these invisible companies and
about the moment there's a car in the
city and was really quite an experience
to drive that car because everybody's
reacting to it. You could just like stop
in the middle of traffic. Nobody will
yell at you. It's just because you're
Google. So it's kind of
you get you get the idea of the impact
these companies have.
Yeah, some other fun project.
They coming to an end soon to
the Pirate Bay movie came out.
Beginning of this year, I was lucky
to be in the premiere in the cinema,
and I also had
the idea to made a cam screening
version, right?
So this was my first cam
camera Cornet movie I had, no, not
you. You can you can download
it on this.
There's interviews in the front and up
front and also after the movie.
This was the best scene in the movie
theater, actually.
People were like yelling, like, really
loud.
And
the editor of the movie was sitting right
in front of me, and I was like, busy with
the duct tape, like the whole show.
And you can download it on as a as
a torrent. Of course, it's also on
YouTube, but.
Well, yeah, this this is good stuff I
made for for Fat Lab the fuck 3D
glasses with 2009.
I think Avatar was out
and it was really kind of.
So are these like little projects, very
fast projects like doing on site labs,
a lot of fun. And then.
Yeah. And June Obama was visiting
Berlin, and this was right two weeks
after the first revelations by Snowden.
So I made this mask.
And of course, I mean, Obama never
wore the Google Glass before,
right? But we all know like what what's
going to happen when all this technology
comes in place. And yeah, that's
a prism in the front, right?
So.
And who's who has access to the data?
Of course, that's recording all the time
to improve the service, right?
So I took this in the city and also kind
of got it into into the into
the media, but also made some nice tweets
about it. Obama is visiting the Stasi
Museum. This was quite successful
online.
This was on the show dropping the
internet, yeah, and that's again, that's
what I was missing that word before.
It's a very recent piece and it's a
quote. It's like, this is this famous
piece by Chinese famous artist AI
Weiwei, and he's dropping the urn like
this super expensive earned from 5000
years ago. Just dropping it.
And it's like this.
Yeah, that. Yeah, well, I mean, for me,
like the innocence is kind of the
innocence of the internet.
It's over like we all knew this,
something was going on, etc.
But now it's like it's on a bigger scale.
And yeah, more people get the idea now.
But also the and I discussed
this a lot even with with Alice,
who talked yesterday the morning, she was
like, Oh, this is naive to believe in it.
But I mean that that belief and
like this internet will change.
Will they make better society,
more democracy, all these things and we
know, yeah, it's not necessarily only
due to that depends on us, right?
But it still it had that
that and it's also the sub line of the
talk how to make art after Snowden.
I mean, there's a lot of these projects
which kind of go
to the topic. But
right now, like after this revelations of
the summer, I've kind of like, I kind of
feel numb, like, Oh shit, what should I
do now? I mean, this is like so big.
You do like a fun fact project,
but it's like, it's not
touching it, really.
It's. And I also I don't have an answer
to that question yet.
I mean, of course, there needs to be more
time. And also, I think on the technology
level, there's the most interesting
stuff not happening.
But yeah, of course, there's now a lot
of art in that in that field, too.
And the angle of of prior projects,
the prospectus people see them
has changed, which is interesting.
What I said about that drafts kind of
people really like, see it in a different
light today.
And last but not least,
this was my very first show.
Let's say my I started
making art like after school, but
beginning of 2000 and
but not really like, Oh yeah, maybe I
make art. Maybe not.
And then there was blinking lights, which
I love very much.
You probably all know this interactive
facade project for the 20th
birthday day of the CCC in 2000.
One.
And then there was the blinking area
in which is still down stairs, and
actually I showed my my first pieces,
my first artwork and let's say in a show
right here on the window.
And it's kind of I was inspired and like,
we guys were inspired by blinking lights
and its brilliance, and I made
this analog
screen, which was driven by a punch
card system.
And that's a punch spot where you can
program the screen.
I don't give you much time to understand
this now, but this 64 tracks
on the paper, which control
the 64 pixels in the field
and you can program them.
And also, yeah, maybe.
Yeah, that's a super shot movie.
To get an idea, so the light
in the back is constant light, there's no
electronic circuits going on, it's
just a Christmas candle chain
and just the holes of the on the punch
card. Kind of.
Yeah, give free, free
way to the light to shine through there.
And it's sort of like what
the what the piano and all the other
weaving and all these things were.
Yeah, but as a as a screen sort of
reinvented the screen as it never has
been invented, sort of.
And also, I showed and that's the last
piece I'm showing random screen
in 2005 at the
Congress, but also I showed it in many
shows afterwards its pixels,
they're blinking very random,
and the pixel itself
is very much digital language to us.
When you see them, it's like the icon of
of digital.
It's funny today when you show this kids,
they would say it's Minecraft.
And then when you see when you look on
the backside, you will notice that all
these pixels, each pixel is controlled
by a T candlelight and it has a spinning
beer can on top, which is like
rotating by the rising heat.
And so this only fire on the back
right?
And this very much illustrates what I
like these what?
Yeah, what I like to talk about these two
sites and we're very stuck.
So I show this on a show and that's
a tech guy from another piece like
asking me how I control all these Tesla
Motors and they're like, Wait, and
there's no motors in there.
We really kind of have the technology
thinking also for these kind of events.
OK, so I think this is
the this was the talk.
What else? I'm doing a workshop upstairs.
It's based on this mobile phone blocking
pouch, which I also did in 2003.
Now it's like there's a lot of products
out there already, but you can
come upstairs.
I will open up afterwards in the
four year detail and you can make your
own mobile phone blocking pouch from this
copper cloth material.
And yeah,
this is my website.
You find me on Twitter.
Thank you.
Thank you for your great show.
And we still have some time
to take some questions.
There are microphones on the
in the aisles and also there
is a signal angel who's been monitoring
the I.R.S.
and Twitter.
Any questions anywhere?
Woops. Okay, so no questions.
You think you have to pose the question?
Oh, somebody is waving.
Here, oh, there's one question.
Microphone two.
Yeah, I would like to ask whether
it would make sense
concerning the backdrops because
they are broken down often enough,
and I have seen that in the past.
Would it make sense to create wireless
last drops?
Yeah, there are wireless dead drops.
They should. It was not in the slideshow.
I don't know for some reason, but.
There is.
Pirate Fox.
Very
OK, now you know what I'm watching,
right?
Which is which was made by David Dart's,
we also made a workshop together
a year or two years ago, and
there's all these wireless versions of
it. Oh, now this don't
know.
So it's out there.
Just search for Pirate Box and
there's the library version.
There's a whole bunch of people coding
for the open w.r.t field,
wrote us so.
And also, like other tech, people always
say, like, use the cable right, you will
break it, etc..
For me, it was very important that you
you plug in your laptop like really
hot where I took the building and
then not lasting long, but at the same
time. Also, it's super easy to make
right. You don't let kids make them you,
you buy them for five bucks, you put
them in the wall done right.
It's and it's like,
they're not. I mean, also, TorrentFreak
wrote about it. They were like, Oh yeah,
it's a cool project.
It's not very efficient, though, for file
sharing, right? I mean, you
don't know what's on there.
You have to go to the place.
Might be broken.
OK, thank you.
It's symbolic for me.
It's very symbolic.
Next question, please.
OK.
Um, I'm a little bit,
uh, irritating,
uh, because of the subtitle, uh,
how to Make Art after Snowden.
Uh, the most of the art you show
was before Snowden.
Um, was it just, uh?
Why? Catchy subtitle or.
I mean, do you really think that
that this, uh,
all that that what happened, uh,
would change art in the future?
Or do you just think that's, uh,
it's just not so much fun anymore?
Well, I mean, that's that's a it's a good
question. And also that's what
I meant when I talked about these three
pictures that
there's no like the
proper answer to it.
Artists are obviously a mirror of society
and it and it takes time to kind of
see how kind of art reacted to this.
There will be, I mean, well,
tonight there's a talk by Trevor Paglen.
I mean, now there's all these people
who've been like doing stuff on that
field. And now that kind of there's
a lot of attention to this coming,
of course. Take the sublime.
The kind of was like a teaser to
make you come here, right?
A hack.
But that's not I mean, it's really
for me, it's like a question.
And also when when this whole thing
happen, it it
also makes me sad. Like like the the
they just believe in all this stuff and.
And I ask this myself,
right?
What do you think is the
right, the proper answer?
Well, we have to find out right
now what what do you think is
has to?
And City of Karbala couldn't get
that nasty and
Ignis Mount Snowdon.
Yeah, this should be the worst
of it. I couldn't see. So the
the task of the art?
Well, I mean this there's always a venue.
Then then we can start to discuss about
art and its role in society.
And that's a very broad topic.
And it goes like from high end market
to like very
low end Tumblr blog.
I make it like people make
stuff so much, which is super important,
but don't even consider it art.
It's.
Well, yeah, that's a that's a big
question. You have an idea for it,
whether this is Google Street View,
could
you actually, if you're OK with
take a conversation with the artist?
Yeah, we might be here on some
other place and I've got a question from
the internet.
Yeah. First of all, I'm asked
to say thank you again for the Goodnight
White Pride shirt you gave to Kitty.
And second,
Frost asked, How do you
how do you make a living?
And he said, perhaps he does that,
but
well, yeah, it's it's a mix of like
giving talks, getting
paid for giving talks.
Not here, but so it's like workshops,
giving talks, showing art like any artist
fees for showing art, but also selling
art. It's like a whole.
I do the whole wide
range of that, so it's
it's not easy to make a living as an
artist. If you want to make money, don't
make art, right?
But at some point, I don't make anything
like anything on the site.
But it's say like what I
showed since 2003.
I mean, I did a lot of stuff on the site.
This was just like, this was my side
project. Now I only make art,
but it's
it's never easy.
OK, so there are no more questions.
Once again, thank you very much and.
Oh, I just I
overlook the microphone, I'm so sorry.
So one question on microphone one.
Hi. Yeah, it's I mean, I think we've got
three minutes. I was wondering about the
Google car project.
What did you do with that?
Was that just for the performance of
doing it in the time? I know you showed
some video here, but was there
was it was it documented?
Was the point of it just the performance
of doing it? Or is there more
on it? Is there a
longer?
Yeah. Well, I saw something.
Yeah, well, that's the thing.
It has different layers, of course.
That's always when you do performance in
public space and
the video, when there's video
of it, that's the only documentation.
And this is not always the discussion
is the documentation of the piece or not.
Most people have seen this on as a as a
video, and fewer people have seen
it in public space.
So you can't argue about this.
And as is true for many, like performance
art from over all the decades
and in this case, I mean,
left works very much online.
Very so.
There was a it was like it started
as a hoax, actually. So there was all the
big press, Huffington Post, etc.
They were like, Oh yeah, that's this fed
lab. And they they following the Google
car in Germany, it really started as
a hoax online and kind of a few days
later was then uncovered.
And of course, it's also
when you when you work with Google and
you do. I mean, the idea was to make
stuff with Google Car, which they
wouldn't do and don't want to see it and
that kind of light.
So at the same time,
you knew that was like while driving
their car is so kind of scary.
Everybody was like, Oh yeah, the Google
car kind of being enthusiastic
about it. So it's it's
it's as also as an artist.
It's important when you make these
things that you kind of, yeah, you're on
a thin line to very important
how you make this.
I think.
Thanks.
One last question.
My question is also about the Google
car and about
being critical. I'm a little bit
surprised that you said that
Snowden was such a big shock because I
knew you as being critical
against capitalism and
surveillance. And can you just
describe it a bit?
What?
Well, yes. So yeah,
that's that's a discussion.
I also already mentioned it with less.
I mean, it's saying it's
that this and then and it was mentioned
over the past months also often
one said, Oh, we all knew you knew this.
Nothing new. While you say, like, why are
you freaking out?
And on the other hand, a lot of people,
for a lot of people, it's new.
It's not like it's really
I mean, it's it's so important that this
happened and it's really good, of course.
And but it's
it's.
It kind of makes or as my
my my works and all these things and what
I also showed in the beginning.
That's what I said about the names above
our head. A kind of this guy was talking
was thinking about digital and online and
offline, etc..
And now it's so close.
It's already here. It's kind of like,
hmm. Like and and all
the info is out there.
They have like all the data to just
make this and it and it becomes so
scary. Like, that's like, I
think for myself, sort of like the
experience, what kind
of makes me so much think about it.
It's not so shocking.
Super shocking news, right?
Yeah.
OK, thank you.
And thank you for attending if you
like this, talk. You can rate it
on the air.
Conference wiki or
actually the Penta Bar?
And as
you leave the room, please take
everything with you, you brought in
with you. That includes everything that
might have transformed into trash
and empty bottles.
Thank you.