SprecherInnen: Johannes Grenzfurthner (monochrom), Jesse Darling, Dr. Phoebe Moore, Krõõt Juurak.
VeranstalterInnen: Stefan Lutschinger & Adriana Smentek.
The wearable revolution is at the gates: Sensors and chip sets, the “peace dividend of the smartphone wars” as former WIRED editor in chief Chris Anderson puts it, are cheaper now than ever, making it easy for companies to incorporate sophisticated hardware into wearable devices. Many of the big names in consumer electronics have already released products at the International CES in Las Vegas. Like it or not, 2014 will be the year of the wearable. January’s Cybersalon will touch of the following topics: Is Google Glass the continuation of CCTV by other means? How will the commodification and intrusion of our bodies by wearables change our perception and understanding of subjectivity? Is self-logging a trendy self-management strategy or does it create an El Dorado for personal data dealers? In which ways can critical artists respond to the challenges raised by the rapid human-machine integration? How can we tap the subversive potential of wearable technology? How can interactive fashion explore subjectivity as a nexus between inside, outside and in-between spaces? How can artificial pneumatic computer-controlled skin help us outsmart surveillance? Over the last two decades, the dialectic of political economy and technological progress has turned the vintage utopias of the 90s on their dystopian feet: 20 years ago, media art pioneer Nam June Paik had imagined the future Internet user as a Deleuzian prototype nomad warrior, cycling the Electronic Superhighway on a bike, dressed in a fancy data suit, wearing a neat surrealist Dali-style VR helmet. In 1995, MIT Media Lab founder Nicolas Negroponte had dreamt of the Body Net as the digital road warrior’s kit upgrade, connecting your shoe computer to a wrist keyboard and head-up display: “Activating your body means that everything you touch is potentially digital. A handshake becomes an exchange of digital business cards, a friendly arm on the shoulder provides helpful data, touching a doorknob verifies your identity, and picking up a phone downloads your numbers and voice signature for faithful speech recognition.” In 2014, however, the reality principle has gained the upper hand. We see supermarket workers in the UK wearing body-borne computers for performance monitoring and location tracking, a technology formerly employed in sports or pet-keeping. Shops in London are secretly snooping on customers by targeting their mobile phones through Wi-fi. In that fashion, the ‘cyborg’s new clothes’ are capable of leaking our personal data to dark global data markets in real-time. Without a retailored Esprit de Costumes, we may all unwillingly become participants in a virtual World Naked Bike Ride.
28. Januar 2014; 18:30 @ LBi UK, 146 Brick Ln, London E1 6RU, UK.