ODD in tranzit
tranzit.ro/ București continues to host part of the programme of ODD.
All events in this series take place at
tranzit.ro/ București
Str. Gazelei, nr. 44, sector 4
ODD Theory #10_Machine Imagination and Alien Metaphysics
Presentation by Luciana Parisi
Saturday, 6 October 2018, 6 pm
If the image of the future has already been colonized by the inevitability of a planetary automation or by the Singularity, is it at all possible to re-introduce alieness in metaphysics beyond a master pattern that knows it all? As neural nets experiment with predictive learning, they also evolve machine percepts and concepts. These are not of an optical nature, but are exclusively algorithmic. The growth of the network however is never given, but is conditioned by the indeterminacy of trial and error in the effort to predict what has not yet been programmed – known or thought – from within the system. This dynamic mode of machine learning algorithms can be taken as a starting point to rather defy the transcendental schema of neural networks. The neural schema of machine vision algorithms must therefore be re-vised in terms of a transcendental imagination that can defy the image of the master algorithm.
Luciana Parisi researches the philosophical consequences of technology in culture, aesthetics and politics. She is a Reader in Critical and Cultural Theory at Goldsmiths University of London and co-director of the Digital Culture Unit. She is the author of Abstract Sex: Philosophy, Biotechnology and the Mutations of Desire (2004, Continuum Press) and Contagious Architecture. Computation, Aesthetics and Space (2013, MIT Press). She is now writing on the history of automated reason and the transformation of logical thinking in machines.
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ODD Theory #11 _ Privilege Escalation
TALK and a WORKSHOP with media theorist & artist Aymeric Mansoux
Privilege Escalation
Public talk
Wednesday, 10 October 2018, 8-10 pm
Privilege escalation is the exploitation of a flaw within a computer operating system to acquire elevated access to resources that are normally out of reach for the user performing the exploit.
In this talk Aymeric Mansoux will discuss the ongoing techno-legal transformation of society into a collection of systems in which the questions of agency have been reduced to issues of permissions, platforms, and usership within arrangements relying on principles of, or drawing inspiration from both computational and legal systems. A particular interest will be given to the impact of such systems on social organisation, art and culture production in general. The presentation will first give an historical overview of elements of computational culture that contributed to create an overlap between computer operating systems and social systems, then we will dive into today’s circulation of information on commercial social networks and online publishing platforms, to see how user generated content, terms of services, intellectual property laws and digital sharecropping are affecting art and culture production. Finally, we will discuss the cyclic role of artists and artists-run organisations in relation to technology, moving from a model of docile tactical commentary, to a more active form of critical engagement with infrastructures, software tools, decentralised and federated services. Throughout the talk, a particular attention will be given to the notions of being a user in a system designed by others, the sandboxing of our interaction through algorithmic and legal mediation, and the pyramid scheme of platform culture.
Mapping the means of digital production: a group therapy
Workshop
Thursday, 11 October 2018, 6-8 pm
Discussing the issue of ownership of the means of digital production, and to some extent the means of digital communication and publishing, seems like old news. After all, since the democratisation of computer access and computer networks, it is a well established fact that our digital realm is essentially relying on an unbalanced transaction between owners of free digital tools and their users, regardless if these tools take the form of a platform, social network, app or framework. As users we provide free labour to their owners, and at the same time we make use of such tools to create a constantly changing survival kit, required to remain efficient, competitive, productive, and up to date in days of precarious work. Also, does it even matter? Because of course, it is much more exciting to discuss questions of aesthetics, cultural circulation, and literacy emerging from the bricolage of all these gadgets, or, turn completely cynical about this question of ownership, and ridicule its naiveness in our socio-economic end times. Regardless, these positions do not help much, and are different materialisations of the same desperate stance: “après moi le déluge!”
However, fear not, in this workshop, a group therapy really, we will discuss our relation and dependence with all the digital gadgets, services and platforms we use on a daily basis. We will discuss and map their pervasive nature, their terms, their underlying ideologies, their alternatives, or lack of. Why bother? Because somewhere in this mess we will try to find some points of activation, some opportunities for autonomy and self-determination. We will try to find the utopia again, so we can collectively move forward, one tool at a time. Maybe.
Aymeric Mansoux has been messing around with computers and networks for far too long. Recent projects include Naked on Pluto (VIDA award) and the SKOR Codex (Japan Media Art award). His latest collaboration is an 8-bit NES video game about the manipulation of public opinion and whistleblowing. Aymeric received his doctorate from the Centre for Cultural Studies, Goldsmiths, University of London (2017), for his investigation of the decay of cultural diversity and the techno-legal forms of social organisation within free and open source based cultural practices. He currently runs the Experimental Publishing master course at the Piet Zwart Institute, Willem de Kooning Academy, Rotterdam.
ODD THEORY. A series of public meetings around a set of theoretical notions. In 2018, the program is curated by Cristina Bogdan and Anca Bucur and functions a partnership between ODD, Modulab and Editura Fractalia.
Project co-funded by AFCN. The project does not necessarily represent the position of the Administration of the National Cultural Fund. AFCN is not to be held responsible for the content of the project, nor for the ways in which the results of the project might be used. Those are entirely the responsibility of the beneficiary of the grant.
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FUR SESSIONS: Documents about domestication
A presentation by Mara Genschel and Anca Bucur
Sunday, 28 Octomber 2018, 7 pm
In the dim scenery of post-digital materialities, the difference between public and private starts to contort and dilute, making room for hybrid and contaminated forms to appear. Flows of indeterminacy navigate our composite reality. And it is precisely the uncanny medium of language which encapsulates and contracts these shifts and variations, epistemic conflations and onto-logical swaps. And it is precisely through the domestication of distinct realms of embodiment that language seeks to turn itself both visible and porous. From humanness to animalness, from animalness to parasiteness, biologies are all together morphing, in a resurgent attempt to overcome both flattening and hierarchization of agentivity.
After four weeks of researching and documenting the layers of domestication, Anca Bucur and Mara Genschel come together in writing and sharing the claustrophobic intimate space of a small book. Different actions starting from the book will follow to be developed on October 28.
