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ISEA2010 RUHR Conference
P38 Press Delete – The Politics and Performance of Spamculture
Thur 26 August 2010
15:00–16:30h
Orchesterzentrum|NRW, Dortmund
Moderated by Kristoffer Gansing (se) & Goodiepal
Hosted by The Art of the Overhead
A combination of research presentation and artistic intervention, the Press Delete panel/performance expands the common format of conference panels through a dynamic double movement: being simultaneously on and of spam, it reflects the fragile socio-cultural negotiation at the heart of filtering meaningful discourse out of informational flows. A critical garbage-archaeology, illuminating dark sides, unintended consequences and creative acts connected to spam.
- 15:00h | Kristoffer Gansing (se): Panel Host and Introduction
- 15:20h | Camille Paloque-Bergès (fr): Proto-Spam. Early Forms of Spam as Vernacular Performance on Usenet
- 15:40h | Finn Brunton (us): An Infinite Continuum of Spewage. Bayesian Filtering and the Reinvention of Spam
- 16:00h | Tony Sampson, Jussi Parikka (gb): Learning from Network Dysfunctionality. Accidents, Enterprise and Small Worlds of Infection
- Goodiepal (dk/gb): Artistic Interventions
The Art of the Overhead
In the spirit of the ragpicker who repurposes the debris of modernity, The Art of the Overhead looks for ways of reflecting critically on the conditions of cultural production in network culture through the powers of the outmoded and obsolete. Initiated in 2005 by Linda Hilfling and Kristoffer Gansing, as a festival devoted to the residual medium of the overheadprojector, the project unfolds through workshops, lectures and performances.
Further Information: overheads
Kristoffer Gansing (se)
Panel Host and Introduction
The endless quest of anti-spam research in defining and eliminating spam reflects the fragile socio-cultural as well as economical negotiation at the heart of filtering 'meaningful' discourse out of informational flows. What, in the face of electronic trash is left to do than to simply follow Bill Gates 1998 encouragement to 'press delete'? The other options are there for those who dare to depart from waste, trash and spam as radically relational concepts whose meanings are open for re-interpretation.
Kristoffer Gansing is co-director of The Art of the Overhead, a media-archaeological festival devoted to the overhead projector. He's a Ph.D. student at K3 Univ. of Malmö, with a project on media art working transversally across old and new media.
Camille Paloque-Bergès (fr)
Proto-Spam. Early Forms of Spam as Vernacular Performance on Usenet
Spam has its own vernacular archaeology, rooted in the folklore of the pre-Web Internet. We talked about proto-spam in reference to media language plays performed within the folklore of Usenet user-cultures. Seen as the expression of a network vernacular, they experiment interpersonal communication as the staging of net personae, where junk messages are a necessary rule of the game.
Camille Paloque-Bergès is a Ph.D. candidate at the Université of Paris VIII. Her thesis, researching Internet folklore and network communication, is due for 2010. She teaches Internet history and Net art, and has published a book on the poetics of programming (at Archives contemporaines, 2009).
Finn Brunton (us)
An Infinite Continuum of Spewage. Bayesian Filtering and the Reinvention of Spam
Itself an interesting case of the complex relationship between scientists and hackers, Bayesian filtering analysed language statistically as part of a broader economic initiative to eliminate spam, and privacy it spurred both the transition of spammers into outright illegality, and the creation of litspam engines as an unprecedented, distributed and automated avant-garde. As presented by these events, spam illuminates the problematic territory between social theories and technical acts.
Finn Brunton (Further Information: finnb) is currently a post doctoral researcher at NYU, where he works on digital technology: history, privacy, anonymity, modification and misuse. He is writing a book about spam, and working on a novel.
Tony Sampson, Jussi Parikka (gb)
Learning from Network Dysfunctionality. Accidents, Enterprise and Small Worlds of Infection
Zittrain argues that viruses, spam and worms are threats to the generative principle of the Internet. Similarly, we contend that such software-driven social actions are exploitative of the open principles of the Internet, but further acknowledge the extent to which these practices have enthused and inspired the business enterprise. As we see it, bad software is not necessarily malicious. It becomes integral to an alternative generative logic of capture implicated in the production of new worlds of infection made ready for the spreading of social influence and sug.
Dr. Tony D. Sampson is a London-based academic and writer. He is the co-editor (with Jussi Parikka) of Spam Book: On Viruses, Porn, and Other Anomalies From the Dark Side of Digital Culture (2009) and currently writing his next book, Virality: Contagion Theory in the Age of Networks.
Dr. Jussi Parikka is the Director of CoDE - The Cultures of the Digital Economy-institute at Anglia Ruskin University, Cambridge. Reader in Media Theory and History, and Pathway Leader in Media Studies/ Co-Director of Anglia Research Centre in Digital Culture (ArcDigital).
Goodiepal (dk/gb)
Goodiepal is a muscian and performance artist. He influenced the course of modern music through radical excursions into computer technology and media art. He performs and lectures about his work and ideas worldwide. During the panel Goodiepal will intervene in his inimitable way.
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