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[Music]
so welcome everybody to our next talk
here at Hall 6 the 12 networking Truth
uh twist our next speakers Jonas Lunt is
an artist from Sweden currently homeless
now he just arrived came back from
Brazil and now lives in Berlin he is a
multiple a multiple talented guy he does
photography paintings websites and so on
and he studies art World Trends and
behavior he has many solar and groups
exhibitions he has an excellent website
please go there and look at all the art
he does and today Jonas will present
something of or some some stuff on his
attempts to hack the art World from
designing algorithms to Data Mining and
discuss how the 12 networking truths
which is our RFC published in 1996 are
related to positions within his artistic
practice so give him a home welcome to
Jonathan and enjoy the next song
hi thanks so much for clapping and
thanks so much for CCC for hosting I'm
Jonas learned I'm an artist
currently based a little bit everywhere
I will give a very sped up talk because
it's a mini slides I will try and talk
pretty fast we're going to start with
the first rule of the networking tours
is that it has to work and in this talk
I will somehow use the the art World
Network as a isolated isolated
infrastructure to use that as an example
of how you can attack or not attack but
explore different types of network
systems
so this is the this somehow the
foundation for the current understanding
of what is art this is the institutional
theory of art it is that artists
whatever the art world says is art
and it's not only that the art World
decides what is art or not art but also
the art World decides what is good art
relevant art quality art
so it's like uh it's a bit like this
because you have a barge like in whole
institution which defines what's
included in the institution so it seems
to me that this system is pretty ripe
for exploitation you can if you can
unlock out the internal structures
operate you can use this to get ahead in
the art game pretty much so I approach
this from the kind of structured to
counter the logic illogical way of the
art world I thought to approach it
through a kind of pretty straightforward
way so I started by making a art World
database consisting of artists
institutions galleries curators auction
results and exhibitions largely from
these four sources artifacts artnet
Mutual art and artsy for those who don't
know art facts is kind of an artist
ranking website where you get points
based on what type of exhibitions you've
made and Andy Warhol is number one and
Pablo Picasso is number two so it's a
pretty serious so I am
built a ton of different JavaScript
scrapers to collect all of this data
because there is no comprehensive data
sets at all about this information
that's kind of easily queryable
download everything organize it in a
database uh then like the magic black
black box of the algorithm do something
produce something as a result or as a
comment on this and then feed it back
into the system so the first first
somehow approach for this was to make a
curatorial ranking algorithm the curator
is the critical point in the to access
the art world or to get ahead in the art
World game if you know the curator you
can get access to exhibitions in
galleries museums and different
institutions so this is the top 100
highest ranked curators in the world
sorted by who what artists they worked
with um in what institution so if you
study this and you look at it you can
figure out
who to look for at the opening or who to
look for in the museum it's kind of like
a Facebook of of knowing the right face
and introducing yourself
so we have isolated the players to
impress in order to get ahead in our art
game the second part of the Exploration
with this database was
culminated in an exhibition called the
fair missing out which was using the
database
uh as a basis for
signing an algorithm that would output
instructions for how to put together
works of art so we have the first step
of finding the right person this is the
step of uh solving the art production so
not only I can rely on the outsourced
algorithm to give me instructions for
how to produce works of art this is kind
of rough rough
approximation of How It's compiled it's
the database I figure out the subset of
the database that's suitable for me of
this I rate the artworks based on
complexity where the complexity is a
cost costs the estimation of a low
production cost and a high monetary
value so it has like it's easy to
produce
it's cheap to produce but has a lot of
aesthetical value basically so it
outputs instructions which gives me the
title material Dimension the color
spectrum and the location in the
exhibition space for this particular
exhibition so this instruction is pretty
simple it's just a crash motorcycle
this is slightly more complicated it's
called the storage product crosses it's
a single Channel generative video
installation with four poster Changers
with line drawings on poster paper
and Truth number two no matter how hard
you push no matter what the priority you
can't increase the speed of light
and this is the black Sunday satire is a
ping pong table behind non-reflective
glass door the king's official mask
product on chemist stool
uh Steve Balmer a fridge and six crates
of beer it's where the title and the
piece is very self-explanatory there's
no real instructions I think the
subtitle for this should be developers
developers Developers
The Shield White Chapel isn't scoop it's
acrylic and silk screen ink on custom
rope this is the more interesting in
terms of instructions because the
algorithm tests me with putting a
seven minute 50 second video Loop inside
coconut soap so then I had to somehow
improvise with some epoxy resin to cover
this monitor keep it going this is my
first ever made painting it's a
description Albert painted in ink on
canvas black steel frame
parachute faces diptych Airways two
chairs digital C print since the NSA
hasn't been here yet watched closely for
the removal of this sign paraphrasing
the
public library in Chicago I believe
where you're not allowed to explain that
NSA has been there this close to the
public that the NSA has been but you're
allowed to not not disclose so if you
remove the sign you know that NSA has
been there if it's still up it's all
supposedly good
uh this is the Horizon birth grayish
blue it's a Concrete it's like 250 kilos
of concrete plexiglass and plaster
it's all the different types of works
that come out of this algorithm
um it's uh I mean it's many different
parts to this piece I think the in
essence it comes down to trying to
figure out if there's a formula for
determining what's a good quality piece
and what's a bad quality piece and if
there's a way to kind of
get ahead in the art World game by
relying not on the whims of of
suggestions of subjective desires but
rather
relying on like big data sets and you
say okay now instead of being inspired
by something you just use the data sets
to provide to get instructions for
what's supposedly the most successful
works of art
and this is uh yeah it's just overview
and then you get the the Press coming
and asking our algorithms art which is
uh something it is always something
so at the end we feed this back into the
this we get the closed loop we I take
the data from the sources produce Works
through it and feed it back into the
system so you can inform the next next
session the next step is diversing from
away from the database but looking at
how you would move around in a museum or
how you would move around in a gallery
and what's the optimal and most
successful ways of installing the
artworks in the space and how do you
quantify and measure this so this is um
called Gallery analytics it's a spin on
Google analytics which um so it's Google
analytics for the gallery space using
Wi-Fi triangulation relying on the open
mesh open mesh routers so installed in
the mesh configuration in the museum
using a third-party service that can
triangulate your position if your Wi-Fi
is on on your phone up to a meter's
accuracy so you can get the real time
overview of all your visitors you can
see the little browser attached on the
piece up there
some things in life can never be fully
appreciated nor understood unless
experienced firsthand
so then in the end you get like this
detailed statistics of how your museum
is performing and you can see how many
daily visits you have you can see how
many people pass by your gallery and not
enter it so that's like the people you
really want to get that and then you
have to work on your window displays and
this is how it's mostly used this
technology right now in shopping malls
to see how well your window display is
converting customers basically
so it's like um and it's pretty stealth
it's enough with just having your Wi-Fi
on passively and then you can
triangulate it because it constantly
pings everything you also get a live
live overview to see and the Green Dot
in this scenario is the artist and the
Red Dot is the curator it's because you
can isolate their Mac addresses and then
you know exactly where they are so you
can go
it's a very useful
um well continuing talking faster okay
we're behind uh this is a piece from
2014 which is other ways of winning at
the art game or other ways of
manipulating your way or path into this
this is taking uh the spin on them
the at the time the Flip Flip collectors
or process based abstraction that was
going on a lot in La which is basically
in short summary
[Music]
um
uh collectors buying artworks from the
artist studio very cheap and in bulk and
then reselling them and reselling them
at auction for higher and higher higher
higher values so the possible for this
was Oscar morillo where Stefan simkovic
the most notorious flip collector bought
30 Works in 2012 for a thousand dollars
each and then in 2014 could resell them
for 400 000 so it's like a massive
increase so then naturally as artists
you want to get in on this game because
you think that that will benefit you so
you I purchased it from a pretty
straightforward way I made the 40
paintings which is a lot this is
basically the first death
besides the other painting the first 40
paintings ever did and they're all kind
of uh
um
collages of already successful flip
paintings so I download like all the
paintings I can get in as high as
resolution as possible from all the
auction sites that are selling them and
then basically just uh
copy paste in Photoshop until I'm like
sort of Happy
it's always possible to stick multiple
separate separate problems into single
complex interdependent solution in most
cases this is a bad idea
then they're covered it's very hard to
see but the surface because it's digital
prints the surface is covered with
acrylic gel to give it kind of a
plasticy textured feel and every
painting has a specific query from the
database saying that for example this
one is the select all from auctions
where the age of the artist is between
25 and 30 and the nationality is French
and he has made this amount of
exhibition in this
and then on the back of the pinning is a
GPS tracker
yeah which is this you can see which has
a little SIM card inside of it with a
data plan where every day it sends me a
TCP socket message like a data stream
to my server with its location its
altitude its temperature its remaining
battery and it also has the terms of
ownership stamped on the back which is
just outlining different types of rules
such as that you can't tamper with the
GPS device
and then this location data is shared
online publicly on flipcity.net
where you can also see the location
history of every piece
so you can see how it moves around and I
think of I think of this piece as a kind
of uh collection of networked paintings
that I inject into this system as a sort
of like a trojan horse I can put it into
the infrastructure of the art market
system and then it will end up at
collector storage or in an auction or on
someone's wall and then I know exactly
where and I can pinpoint and I can
follow and I can get back some type of
control or ownership over it even though
it's been sold to to some collector
somewhere
hmm
it's uh it's easier to move a problem
around than it is to solve it
it's um
yeah and then
it ends up in auction
and then you think okay now the circle
is closed again because the purpose sort
of of a piece that's called Flip City is
to be flipped although in this case it
had to be pulled because the terms of
ownership on the back didn't go well
with Christie's lawyers so it's kind of
like a funny funny thing that already
shooting myself in the foot by including
rules for the paintings so it actually
can't be sold at auction although
Phillips didn't have a problem with this
so it's good it's like the the Lesser
famous auction house
okay moving on to this piece which is
going further in trying to grow
production trying to expand and make
more and more works so this is somehow
the future
you know like yeah we're moving towards
automation everything something like uh
50 of the U.S Workforce we will be
without a job within the coming 20 years
so we have to think of different
solutions for how to solve this
Universal basic income is one becoming
an artist which is sort of in its
Essence possibly inherently useless may
be an idea because you're not actually
you know
good fast cheap pick any two you can't
have all three
so some artists have figured out figured
out how to scale up and capitalize
properly on the globalization and
Outsource labor this is Jeff Coons with
his 150 assistants
he produces around 10 paintings uh year
so my solution for this was for a solo
show in Amsterdam where I turned the
whole gallery into a factory or kind of
a studio which was under live streaming
throughout the whole thing and I hired
six assistants to work for me during the
gallery opening hours and they were
tasked with um
producing works of art I provided all
the materials everything they needed to
produce Works they were tasked with this
to
[Music]
uh Inspire I made the kind of a 300 page
manual book that all of them had to
study mostly with images which uh
outlined the current kind of meta level
of process based abstraction basically
when an artist figures out the seemingly
unique way of producing flat paintings
that hang on the wall such as like I I
put an anesthetic in my hand my left
hands I can't feel it and then I paint
or I use like aluminum and I scratch it
or I do something which is seemingly
unique and then you produce a ton of
them which feeds into the flip
collection and then you have like a
perfect cycle of production
so basically I made this but in a more
kind of networked way where I task these
systems to produce work once the work
has been done and deemed ready they we
documented uploaded to a website where
and esteemed a board uh Advisory Board
gets to appraise the work and say okay I
give this a 55 chance of it's basically
a slider between sign and Destroy so
give it the point between zero and 100.
then based on their appraisals I would
make a final decision whether the work
should be signed and become my work or
if the work should be destroyed and just
enter into a trash pile or for new
material it's sort of partly inspired by
Olaf for liason who has a studio with
around 100 assistants in Berlin and he
has kind of sessions with his assistants
where they work on an idea for about
three four weeks and then they have a
session with olafur and they present
their idea for and all of her liaison
piece and then afterwards he says
this is not an olive artwork and then
they have to start over so it's a little
bit like this you you do the Outsourcing
and then you can grow your production
and your has set it also has a Fair
Labor agreement to ensure that the
assistants are paid properly and they're
taken care of and it also has a very
important rule which says the assistant
is prohibited from discussing
documenting photographing or sharing
information or images in any form public
or private including but not limited to
social platforms such as Facebook
Twitter or Instagram
so it's a saying also that the assistant
will receive 10 euros per hour in wage
which was a little bit low but okay and
they get five percent commission five
percent commission if there were
artworks that signed cells
so I'd like to give incentive for making
successful words
truth number eight is it's more
complicated than you think
this is the instruction manual book
which has a kind of an essay to outline
the current meta level of art production
some good tips
some sizing guides
some kind of a commentary on the current
auction this is these two are by two
different artists they look quite
similar they sold for a total of four
forty thousand six hundred twenty five
pounds
some screenshots
and then halfway through the exhibition
there was a studio visit opening where
we invite the public to come in and see
where most of them
artworks were presented
for all resources whatever it is you
need more
and then here's some example of the
signed paintings
so it's uh at the same time like what
they are appraising this Advisory Board
if you see the gray this is like the
slider of the scores it's all based on
jpegs so like none of them actually see
the work in real and in this case it's
uh some worry about the cracks in the
painting so that's the reason for
for not uh yeah not signing it so cracks
not stabilized for the future one size
never fits all
so I mean at the heart of this it's like
it's a lot of um
there's a lot of different uh
thoughts about the whole surrounding art
World infrastructure and what creates
these type of situations I think at the
heart of it what I was curious is to see
if they're between 14 people in an
advice reward is it possible to find a
sort of a consensus is it somehow a way
to to make a work of art that's just
like that's it everyone goes like yes
this is the greatest work of art ever
and so far I think it's hard to say for
this maybe there is I think the
consensus within the art production only
happens after the fact something when
something enters into an archive or so
this is uh yeah more more of the
artworks
every old idea will be proposed again
with a different name and a different
presentation regardless of whether it
works
in the end the works that were not
signed were stamped with denied on the
front and the back and put into piles
and then we're moving on
um this is another single piece which
goes in towards the similar kind of
Direction which is
um
trying to figure out then because the
problematics from Studio practice
results in it's very hard to know what's
a successful work of art like what's the
painting that would attract everyone how
can we get to this so this is a piece
that will self-optimize itself based on
where the where the viewer is looking so
it has the guest tracking camera in the
middle and then it sees if you're
looking left or right and then based on
that continues to optimize different
types of compositions so it's like it
starts with simple I think this video
it starts with a simple different colors
comparing colors and then it picks you
for every session you have a winner
basically and then it just keeps on
getting more and more complicated until
it starts over and retests this
assertion that is this good or not
very much
um
yeah
keeps on going it's something like can
we
I mean in the most typical way of
looking at art you as the viewer you
have to sort of align yourself toward
towards the artwork and enter into the
art like the artist's reality or ideas
and in this case there's sort of a
reversal of this where you say that the
artwork will always adapt itself to you
the current viewer and it keeps on going
and the last truth is in protocol Design
Perfection has been reached not when
there is nothing left to add but when
there is nothing left to take away and
we're going to end with this very
quickly this is a strength attached it's
the second series of the Flip City which
is uh more towards taking back some type
of control over what the the people you
work with are doing towards your work of
art so this is a again a painting series
which has terms of
terms of sale hand-painted on them
dictating different types of rules which
can happen with the painting after the
fact so this painting may never be
offered at auction
this painting must be offered for sale
at Philips Under the Influence auction
during 2018. should Phillips discontinue
the series it must be offered at one of
their Day sales
and this painting may only be sold to
one of the following collectors
so you can somehow decide I can take
back the control I the gallery has
nothing to say anymore toward where he
can place these works these are the flip
the eighth most notorious flip
collectors from back in 2014. they were
not very happy with this
this painting may only be purchased by a
collector who agrees to purchase two
more works by the artist before March
21st 2017. this is a very common
strategy among art galleries by the way
and most typically if you want to buy a
specific piece you
first have to buy something you don't
really want so let's say you want to buy
a query Archangel gradient you first
have to buy a video piece by another
represented artist and then that's it
this is another very very popular
strategy this painting may only be
purchased by collector who also agrees
to purchase donation and donation is
this piece and that's this painting may
only be purchased by a collector who
will donate it to one of the following
museums by March 21st 2020. and it's
still like
and this painting may only be purchased
by a collector who already owns works by
all of the following artists
like uh the title is good company it's
hcd Korean Simon Danny Olive Rafael
Evelyn Timor I know one guy who who owns
I think it's only one guy this painting
may only be purchased by collectors
appeared in art forms seen and heard at
least five times and this painting may
only be sold to a Golden Globe winner
and this Penny may only be sold once
every other work in this series has been
sold
and it has a website where it keeps
track of the validity of the terms and
if they're uh if someone disagrees or
does something which is not allowed the
work becomes um no like voided or
certificate or authenticity becomes null
and that's it and I think we have five
minutes for questions
[Applause]
yes sir
actually you should watch this video
it's one minute okay can we do the
switch of the Sun
yeah sorry
see this yeah
it's the Kingpin all right he the man
you get the other dude's King you got
the game and he trying to get your king
too so you got protected now the king he
moved one space any direction he damn
choose because he's the king like this
this all right but he ain't got no
Hustle but the rest of these
[ __ ] on the team they got his
back and they run so deep he really
ain't got to do [ __ ] I like your uncle
yeah like Mom can you see this it's the
queen she's smart she fists she moved
any way she want as far as she wants and
she is the go get [ __ ] done piece
remind me to string
and this over here is the castle
it's like the stash
and move like this
and like this
dogs fast don't move man come on Yo
think how many times we move the stash
house this week
right and every time we move the stash
we gotta move a little muscle with it
right to protect it true true right all
right what about them little ball headed
[ __ ] right there all right these
right here
is it a pawn
the pawn they like the soldiers
they move like this one space forward
only
except when they fight and it's like
like this and they like the front lines
they'd be out in the field so how do you
get to be the king
it ain't like that
see the king stay the king all right
anything stay who he is
except for the pause now for Pawn made
all the way down to the other dude side
you get to be Queen
like I said the queen ain't no [ __ ] she
got all the moves
so
if I make it to the other end
I win if you catch the other dude's King
and trap it then you win all right but
if I make it to the end
I'm topped off
nah yo it ain't like that look
pawns man in the game
they get cap quick
they'd be out the game early
unless they some smart ass Pawns
thank you Jonas again
[Applause]
I think
this video should be shown at every art
school now we have about four minutes
for questions well if you have any
questions to join us oh no three minutes
then please go to the microphones here
in the Halls
yeah please yeah
um it's a just a thought experiment
um have you thought of this um if you if
you manage to do this feeding of
algorithmic art into the system
iteratively so so you get the art
collectors and on the general public to
like your algorithmic art even more then
you can narrow down all this art
and and and at some point the system
might reach a static state so you
created the final piece of art space
it's a super good idea yeah
we need a lot of assistance but yes
okay thanks another question here
um yeah everything you just talked about
is pretty much completely new to me so
it might sound a bit stupid but in the
informal the Arts you actually produced
I can't really believe that they came
out of an algorithm I think that you're
I cannot really trust on you having an
algorithm that generates art so I'm kind
of like wondering what is this algorithm
what is it really what how does it tell
you to produce art so yeah that's a good
question I didn't go into detail
properly into this but basically it's
kind of um
uh using the whole data sets when I rate
the artworks for complexity it's like me
clicking through artworks and saying
okay this artwork is less complicated
than this artwork and then as a
combination of assigning different
values to these based on what they sell
for because it's collected from auctions
I can
select kind of uh figure out what's the
most successful works of art like get a
score and say okay this is the ranking
of the like the easiest to produce but
the highest value and they have uh
titles and they have materials and
dimensions and then use like a
combination of randomizing this
collection of saying saying I have this
amount of production budget available so
these are the type of materials I can
use and then mix match with what's
appropriate in for that so it's more I
mean it's kind of yeah I mean it's an
algorithm it's just not super complex
and in the it's also something else that
the instructions are very simple it's
materials title and kind of a color
spectrum how they get transformed into
works of art it's me like reading the
instructions and then thinking okay how
should I do this and then that's kind of
like where the art is produced and then
the algorithmic idea just frames it in
such a way that it's kind of addressing
what is an algorithm how can you get
transparency into different types of
algorithms is there any way anyone on
the planet that properly understands how
the page rank works or the edge rank or
whatever like black boxed inherent bias
in all these systems and I think it's
it's more the suggestion rather than the
the like the super truth
okay thank you we have only time for a
short question here from the audience
please make it quick so which one of
these series was your most commercially
successful one
I'm the Flip City for sure
because that was like at the peak after
this like that market kind of
disappeared all the people that bought
this tons of were artworks and bulk like
they don't buy art anymore they buy
other stuff so that one's like what's on
the peak of this so yeah definitely that
was most successful we timed it right
yeah that was good timing lucky
okay thanks again Jonas let's give him
there's a warm Round of Applause and
thanks for your questions
[Applause]
[Music]