DIGIMAG the Digicult’S Project Journal | N° 75 | Year XI | Spring 2017 1 DIGIMAG Issue 75 / Spring 2017
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ISSN: 2037-2256 n° 75 | year XI Spring 2017 Euro 0,00 75 DIGIMAG the digicult’s project journal | n° 75 | year XI | spring 2017 1 DIGIMAG Issue 75 / Spring 2017 CURATED BY Silvia Bertolotti, Marco Mancuso EDITING Silvia Bertolotti, Roberta Colavecchio, Marco Mancuso DIGITAL PUBLISHING Loretta Borrelli COVER Marco Cadioli, Square with concentric circles #64 (2013) CONTRIBUTING AUTHORS Samaa Ahmed, Nicola Bozzi, Claire Burke, Marco Cadioli, Alessio Chierico, Salvatore Iaconesi, Patty Jansen, Linda Kronman, Miriam La Rosa, Patrick Lichty, Randall Packer, Oriana Persico, Jeroen Van Loon, Andreas Zingerle PUBLISHER Digicult - Digital Art, Design & Culture Largo Murani 4, Milano Editorial Press registered at Milan Court, number N°240 of 10/04/06. ISSN Code: 2037-2256 LICENSES Creative Commons, Attribution-NonCommercial NoDerivs Creative Commons 2.5 Italy (CC BY-NC-ND 2.5) PRINTED AND DISTRIBUTED BY DIGICULT EDITIONS ISBN: 978-1-291-38203-7 PUBLISHED IN COLLABORATION WITH Goethe-Institut DIGIMAG the digicult’s project journal | n° 75 | year XI | spring 2017 2 Table of Contents THE REPRESENTATION OF SELF IN DIGITAL LIFE. DIGITAL ONTOLOGY FOR DIGITAL IDENTITY 7. Alessio Chierico THE MUTANT CUTE: MEITU,THE SELFIE, AND THE REWRITING OF GLOBAL IDENTITIES 16. Patrick Lichty THE POST HUMAN CYBORGIAN BODY: DITHERING BETWEEN THE REAL AND THE VIRTUAL 21. Claire Burke ALGORITHMIC MEMORIES. THE CASE OF “YEAR IN PHOTOS 2014” 25. Marco Cadioli NETWORKED CONNECTED MEMORY 31. Patty Jansen MOVING OUTSIDE FIXED BOUNDARIES: … ‘IN RESIDENCE’? 36. Miriam La Rosa SELLING MY FULL GENOME TO THE HIGHEST BIDER. USING ART TO EXPAND THE DISCOURSE SURROUNDING DNA DATA 47. Jeroen Van Loon PUTTING THE SELF IN SELFIE: AN EXPLORATION INTO THE WAYS IN WHICH DIGITAL DEVICES ACT AS AN EXTENSION OF THE SELF 57. Samaa Ahmed THE AESTHETICS OF PRODUCTIVE ANXIETY. SILVIO LORUSSO AND THE ENTREPRECARIAT 66. Nicola Bozzi EVIL WEB BUSINESSES, ROMANCE SCAMS AND PHONE FRAUD. 3 ARTISTIC CASE STUDIES DECON- STRUCTING SCAMMERS ONLINE IDENTITIES 76. Linda Kronman, Andreas Zingerle ALGORITHMIC AUTOBIOGRAPHY: A NEW LITERARY GENRE 85. Salvatore Iaconesi, Oriana Persico XTREME TRUMPOLOGY 97. Randall Packer DIGIMAG the digicult’s project journal | n° 75 | year XI | spring 2017 3 MANIFESTO Since 2005, Digicult is one of the main online platform that examines the impact of digital technologies and science on art, design, culture and contemporary society. Based on an international Network of critics, curators, artists, designers, professors, researchers, journalists, media center, galleries and festival, Digicult is an editorial project that daily publish news, informations, articles, interviews, reports and even essays, artists’ book and the Digimag Journal through its online publishing service Digicult Editions. Digimag Journal is an interdisciplinary online publication seeking high-standard articles and reviews that focus on the impact of the last technological and scientific developments on art, design, communication and creativity. Following the former Digimag Magazine (72 issues in 7 years), it is based on international call for papers on given subjects and provides readers with comprehensive accounts of the latest advancements in the international digital art and culture scene. Digimag was born as a monthly magazine and published 72 issues in over 7 years. It provided readers with comprehensive accounts of the latest advancements in the international digital art scene and culture. The magazine evolved year after year, issue after issue, morphing into a hybrid instrument able to reflect the complexity of contemporary artistic and cultural production. It quickly became a cultural instrument, a tool for academics, researchers, students, artists, design- ers, geeks and practitioners connected to the main international media centers, universities, contemporary art galleries, digital art festivals and hacktivist networks. Digicult Editions is the publishing initiative of the Digicult project, whose goal is to be active in the publication of the Digimag Journal, but also critical and theoretical books and essays commissioned to international authors, university thesis of special interest, publications edited in collaboration with other national and international publishers, conference proceedings and classes materials connected to educational activities, as well as peer-reviewed publications with institu- tional partners. Digicult Editions has now 4 different book series: Networks (Internet, Networks, IT), (h)activism (social and political im- pact of technologies), Arts and Sounds (more strictly visual and/or sound art), Rhizomes (genres’ intersection) and Digital narratives (new narrative formats: literature, gaming etc). Digicult Edition uses all the tools of a contemporary digital publishing: the print on demand (POD) approach through Peecho, Epub and Mobi formats, always giving the chance to join all the prewieves through the Digicult Library on Issuu https://issuu.com/home/publisher). All contents by Digicult Editions are circulating under CC Licences: Attribu- tion-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 3.0 Identity is becoming a fluid concept, encompassing different domains of the self. How are identities affected by technology and digital tools? What is the role of art in shaping this notion One of the most interesting aspects of our relationship with technology is the way we relate to other people DIGIMAG the digicult’s project journal | n° 75 | year XI | spring 2017 4 DIGITAL IDENTITIES SELF NARRATIVES Identity is becoming a fluid concept, encompassing different domains of the self. How are identities affected by technology and digital tools? What is the role of art in shaping this notion One of the most interesting aspects of our relationship with technology is the way we relate to other people and create new identity narratives through it. Internet, social networks and p2p tools have amplified this phenomenon, enabling the ramification of larger networks built around individuals. As a consequence, personal narratives are linked to virtual (and real) dimensions of social, economic and artistic fields. Digital identity becomes, therefore, the individual unit of a larger digital culture environment. This subject has been widely studied in Streaming Egos, the pioneering international project by Goethe Institut (http:// blog.goethe.de/streamingegos/) which involved five different European countries through the production of an online platform, some critical texts, a convention, commissioned artworks and a final catalogue. The aim of the project was to study how Internet, social networks and, more in general, technologies are modelling the way we relate to others and to the external world, both conceived not simply as biological systems, but also as virtual entities telling their own stories. “Who am I?” is a primordial existential question, with different connotations depending on the context (social, political or cultural). “Who do I want (or: do I have) to be?” is questioning the very basis of economy, ethics, theology and politics, especially in its collective meaning “Who are we?” The act of transforming and reinventing the concept of ourselves and, consequently, the idea of community is at the very basis of identity explorations in the digital era. Identity becomes a fluid concept, encompassing different domains of the self. How are identities affected by technology and digital tools? What is the role of art in shaping this notion? When interacting with other people on the Net, individuals reflect more and more on themselves, carefully choosing contents (whether personal or not) to be shared (and seen by others). This leads to a self-discourse redefining the notions of identity, repetition and difference .and, consequently DIGIMAG the digicult’s project journal | n° 75 | year XI | spring 2017 5 Alessio Chierico, “[e-Book] Intellectual Property - A Reference Handbook”, photo by Alessio Chierico THE REPRESENTATION OF SELF IN DIGITAL LIFE Digital ontology for digital identity by Alessio Chierico 1 Introduction person is translated from the physics standing of the digital nature. of oxygen and carbon to the physics of As extensively debated, nowadays it electron, and the logic of bits. For this 2 Digital Ontology is possible to recognize that digital is reason become necessary to question an essential substance that constitutes what the digital is. Thus, it becomes Firstly, referring to digital ontology, it the basis of our cultural production as necessary to entail an ontological per- is important to clarify that this term well as virtual identity. In fact, virtual spective toward digital. The research defines two very different fields, that identity should not be seen exclusively presented here combines the idea of must be distinguished, in order to as a proliferation of the self in social digital identity with digital ontology. avoid any confusion. This term is of- networks in form of profile or avatar. Exposing issues like visual representa- ten used in “digital physics” for identi- Instead, it lies in the very deep sub- tion and materiality, it aims to provide fying a hypothetical cosmology which stance of digital: the fact that every the conceptual tools for an under- believes that the whole universe is de- DIGIMAG the digicult’s project journal | n° 75 | year XI | spring 2017 6 scribable with discrete values, there- not just regard digital as a new po- qualities. For instance, the ontological fore everything: time, space, every en- tential substance of former material concerns that