Interface Politics II (After Post-Truth)

BAU EDICIONS

PUBLICACIONES GREDITS 07 After Post-Truth Interface Politics, 2nd International Conference

PUBLICACIONS GREDITS / 07 BAU EDICIONS

Colección Publicaciones GREDITS Coordinación Teresa Martínez Figuerola www.gredits.org

Editor Jorge Luis Marzo (Gredits)

1ª Edición. Cantidad de ejemplares 150 Barcelona, España. Septiembre 2019

Datos para catalogación Publicaciones GREDITS 07 After Post-Truth 2º Congreso Internacional Interface Politics ISBN (Ed. Impresa): 978-84-09-13667-4 ISBN (Ed. Digital): 978-84-09-13668-1 Depósito Legal: DL B 20059-2019

Impresión: 9. disseny Diseño y maquetación: Best Boy Tipografías utilizadas Arno Pro Campton

Derechos de la publicación: Bau, Centro Universitario de Diseño Derechos de los textos: Todos los autores

El contenido de los artículos es de absoluta responsabilidad de los autores.

www.gredits.org PUBLICACIONES GREDITS / 07

After Post-Truth 2º Congreso internacional Interface Politics Chairs Panels moderation Organized by Jorge Luis Marzo Pau Alsina Bani Brusadin Christian Andersen Rebecca Mutell Bani Brusadin Gabrielle Cosentino Scientific Committee Ingrid Guardiola Pau Alsina (UOC) Jorge Luis Marzo Bani Brusadin (UB) Lluís Nacenta Montse Carreño (UB) Joana Moll Gabriele Cosentino (LAU, Søren Pold Lebanon) Jara Rocha Marco Deseriis (NorthEastern University, USA) Collaborating students Blanca Callén Laia Balart Joan Fontcuberta María José Cano Ingrid Guardiola Nuria Gurri Ester Jordana (Escola Massana) Sofía Medina Jorge Luis Marzo (BAU) Marina Miquel Joana Masó (UB) Andrea Pérez Collaboration by Joana Moll (Critical Interface Marina Pineda Politics Research Group) Nicolás Sanjulián Rebecca Mutell (BAU) Gerard Valls Lluís Nacenta (Hangar) Søren Pold (Aarhus University, BAU Denmark)) Communication Ramon Rispoli (BAU) Susanna Garcia Jara Rocha Technical production Arturo Fito Rodríguez (UPV- Frank Casado EHU) Pablo Mayal Silvia Rosés (BAU) Design and webmaster Adrià Paz Organizing Committee Bani Brusadin HANGAR Blanca Callén Coordination Glòria Deumal Marta Gràcia Teresa Martínez Maria Àngels Fortea MACBA Mariona Genís Head of Programmes Paloma González Pablo Martínez Jorge Luis Marzo Public Programmes Coordinator Rebecca Mutell Alicia Escobio Lluís Nacenta Index

Call for papers 013-018 · Jorge L. Marzo, Bani Brusadin

Public sphere. Panel#1 020-049 · Arjon Dunnewind. The Decline of the Public Sphere and Its Future · Doro Wiese. In formation · Dafne Calvo, Eva Campos, Marta Álvarez. An approach to free software as infrastructure for the public sphere: proposals and reflections on fiveplatforms for deliberation, consensus and cultural production · Marloes de Valk. Infuence in 3 Easy Steps. Pre-internet and After Post-Truth Strategies to Manipulate Public Opinion

Public language. Panel#2 050-053 · Ester Jordana, Ramon Rispoli. La interfaz como alesthesis: la verdad como organización sensible · Jorge Luis Marzo. The mathematical management of sincerity · Emilie V. de Keulenaar, Kaspar Beelen, Ivan Kisjes, Marc Tuters. Post-Truth Encyclopedias: How Altpedias Create Alternative Facts

Narratives. Panel#3 054-095 · Enrico Beccari. Based on real drawings. Perceptions of truth in contemporary autobiographical graphic novel. · Tania Tovar. In Articulo Mortis: Meta-narratives and Reconstrucción of a Building’s Personal Memory. · Diogo Marques. “No trace can last forever”: Disruption through creativity in digital literature. · Ignasi Deulofeu. Narrative Ignot

Narratives. Panel#4 096-124 · Quelic Berga, Javier Melenchón, Pau Alsina, Laia Blasco-Soplon. Liquid film montage. A critical study of interactive documentary tools · Raúl León Mendoza. What proves an image? · Alexandra Juhasz. Forget the Audience: Reflections on Fake News Poetry Workshops as Radical Digital Media Literacy Given the Fact of Fake News

Keynote 125 · Judith Revel. From Truth as a Content to Truth as a Practice: Political Ethics of Parrhesia. Interface Politics. Panel#5 128-143 · Jan Distelmeyer. File Management: Object—and Process— Orientation (towards Networked Computerization) · Phaedra Shanbaum. You are the controller: the ubiquitous interface and interactive digital media art installations · Paul O’Neill. Towards a Critical Tactical Practice: Archaelogies of Manifestos and Making

Interface Politics. Panel#6 144-165 · Søren Pold. Towards Metainterface Realism · Fernanda Botter.Geometry: mdium or lenguage? Architectural representation as a noise source for post-truth in the globalized world · Tatjana Seltz. Where is the eXperience in UX Design?

Interface Politics. Panel#7 · Kalli Retzepi. You, the users 166-189 · Andrea Nono, Joana Moll. Sustainable Interface Protocol · Fabricio Lamoncha. Please Don’t Feed the Animals

Clouds, Interfaces, Pollution, Climate Crisis. Panel#8 · César Escudero, Christian Andersen, Joana Moll, Søren Pold. 190-196 Clouds, Interfaces, Pollution, Climate Crisis · Joana Chicau. A WebPage in III Acts

Keynote · Marco Deseriis. The ConDividual Interface 197

Algorithms are fake. Panel#9 · Alicia de Manuel. Pathological Object/ Panoptical Object 210-241 · Javier Melenchón, Laia Blasco, Pau Alsina, Quelic Berga. Qualified self: truth and subjectivity in the visualization of the Quantified Self · Paloma G. Díaz. Digital activist tactics: some lines of work in defense of the truth. · Clara Boj, Diego Díaz. Data Biography: the biographical narrative in the datacene Algorithms are fake. Panel#10 242-295 · Col·lectiu Estampa. The bad student. Critical pedagogy for artificial intelligences · Mitra Azar. Drive to visibility and games of truth: from Panopticon to POV-opticon · Andrea Facchetti.Critical approaches to information design: visualize a field of knowledge as a contested terrain · Efrain Foglia Romero. Collective intelligence in the era of bots.

Disinformation (cases). Panel#11 296-339 · Zenaida Osorio. The Cherished images. Colombia: ¡Netflix’s Narcos and the Peasants from the Radio Sutatenza Photo Archive · Víctor Sampedro Blanco, Fco. Javier López Ferrández, Pedro Fer- nández de Castro Sanabria. Digital Dietetics, to reduce the Big Brother · Teresa Dillon. The Art of Sonic Deception · Story Data. Fake news and fact-check in the political battle of the Process

Disinformation (cases). Panel#12 340-366 · Banu Ciçek Tülü. Spatial Forms of Resistance in Turkey · Mª Soliña Barreiro, Aina Fernàndez. The fallacy of the end of class struggle: underrepresentation and distortion of identity (The case of the strike of the Bershka workers) · Burak Pak, Hulya Ertas. Post-truth in Architecture Media · Gabriele Cosentino, Berke Alikasifoglu. The politics of disinformation in the Middle East: the case studies of Syria and Turkey

Keynote 367 Metahaven Interface Politics is an International Conference organized by GREDITS / BAU since 2016 with the aim of analyzing and discussing the role of interfaces, as a communicational and linguistic mechanism, and as a device with political, commercial and labor agency. An interface can be defined as a communication system that serves to translate physical realities into technical languages and vice versa, or to make compatible different technical languages.

Interface Politics I Proceedings Book http://www.gredits.org/wp-content/uploads/2017/02/Publicacions_Gredits_04_V5_web.pdf

AFTER POST-TRUTH Interface Politics, 2nd International Conference

12 Call for papers

Call for papers Jorge Luis Marzo, Bani Brusadin

Interfaces are the central instruments in the new economy of signs. They are both tools and discursive frames. Interfaces, insofar as they are instituted as an order of discourse, are transitive and mediating.

Post-truth is the term coined to define a linguistic regime in which objective facts are less influential in the formation of public opinion than appeals to emotion and personal belief. This phenomenon can be analysed as a specific system of interfaces where a whole set of communicative, technical, social, political and economic issues converge.

The post-truth or multi-truth regime is defined by the rupture of the relationship between language and object meaning in favour of pragmatics and utilita- rianism. This displacement in every form of public expression not only reveals the current conditions of semiocracy (the relationships between language and economy), but also generates creative and subversive possibilities, such as the unveiling of common objectivities against the programmed individuation of sincerity, veracity, and ultimately truth.

The post-truth age arises from the mutation of what in the 1970s Michel Foucault and Algirdas Greimas called the “veridiction contract”, that is the analytical device used to cast light over the semiotic conditions of “saying the truth” or accepting as true the discourse of others. The analysis of veridiction does not tell us what is true or not, but describes the conditions by which we establish trust or suspicion. These conditions are expressed more and more pervasively by mediating interfaces. It is necessary to address which spaces of veridiction govern us today: how formats that were established to legitimise certainty, truthfulness and authority have mutated into formats of sincerity and trust in which our public affections now seem to settle.

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How are those issues expressed by contemporary research in design, arts, and creative use of media? How to defend a public space with truth as a social bond, not as economic competition? If symbolic hyper-production is paradoxically eroding the public sphere due to an implosion of meaning and creativity, what if the grassroots practices based on the fake could boost new critical, public knowledge?

This 2nd Interface Politics Conference encourages not only the academic community, but also artists, designers and activists to share their experience and analysis of the mutations in the regime of truth in our society, as well as their observations on radical creative or educational practices that expose, subvert or transform the apparently natural order of public discourse.

Contents and conference structure The programme (papers, tracks, and keynotes) is structured according to dual criteria: on one side, the conference content will follow the path of established academic fields, organised around similar disciplines (“Main thematic areas”); on the other side, the purpose of this conference is to cast light on issues that traverse those disciplinary fields and to underline the novelty and complexity of new scenarios (“Main conference topics”). This dual approach will allow for different ways of approaching the conference topics and schedule, as well as encouraging knowledge exchanges and unexpected connections.

Main thematic areas

A. DISCIPLINES OF LANGUAGE

The alteration of the order of discourse affects almost all disciplines of knowledge. Philosophy, linguistics, semiotics, aesthetics, and social sciences in general have formulated a whole body of instruments that allow for the analysis of shifts in the use of language in relation to their public competence. Competen- ce here should be understood as the capacity to settle binding meanings in the social sphere and thus produce common political agendas. However, these disciplines have also shaped the [social, linguistic, discursive] frame that validates those changes, with special support from the study of history and law. Tags Linguistics; semiotics; philosophy; aesthetics; theory of communication; history of art and design; discursive theory / discourse analysis.

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B. MEDIA THEORY AND COMMUNICATION STUDIES

The construction of the public sphere through ICT has profoundly altered the (always variable) boundaries of the objectivity of language and its capacity to produce public bonds. New economies of language appeared due to the transformations in the production of subjects and objects through a unified system of signs. This led to the emergence of new categories that put the boundaries between traditional formats of truth and fiction under heavy pressure.

This thematic area brings together all academic fields that deal with the construction of “truth” not just as a philosophical or linguistic problem, but as the result of productive routines, the production of public space or power hierarchies. In particular, we refer to all those disciplines that analyse the evolution of media and their languages, as well as the material and symbolic conflicts implied in the collective construction of spaces of discourse and subjectivity. Special emphasis is placed on all areas that can provide relevant interpretations of the collapse of the public sphere in mass society, the emergence of new public spheres, the breakdown of hegemonic communicative models, and finally activist strategies of intervention and education. Tags Visual arts and media; cultural industries; interface cultures; digital art and technologies; digital society; ICTs and social networks; pedagogy, authority and truth; communication theory; disinformation theory; journalism; media engineering; cultural studies.

C. ART, VISUAL CULTURES, CRITICAL TECHNOLOGIES

Modern industrial culture redefined the classical boundaries between truth and fiction, placing the former firmly in the sphere of public authority and the latter in the field of aesthetic perception. However, while traditionally the -ar tistic field was simply ascribed to the cultivation of subjectivity, in recent years the symbiosis between creation and activism placed a strong creative emphasis on formats of objectivity. The fake, deception, impersonation, infiltration, -ca mouflage, and invisibility have become part of an instrumental body of several practices that suggest a critique to models imposed by the condition of the seeming transparency and user-friendliness of contemporary communication. Tags Artistic practices; media jamming; design; interface design; activist poetics; digital countercultures; new objectologies; poetics of automations and infrastructures.

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Main conference topics

1) MUTATIONS IN THE SEMIOTIC PRODUCTION OF TRUTH IN THE CURRENT SOCIAL AND TECHNOLOGICAL CONTEXT.

Papers in this area will establish case studies and analysis of the following topics:

_Critical theory and research about “veridiction contracts” (from Greimas and Foucault to the present): new notions of realism; ways to establish shared criteria for trust and semiotics of suspicion; utilitarian and pragmatist philosophy and its influence on the economy of meaning. _The symbolic efficacy of signs and the post-alphabetical society. Iconography as a linguistic model: from iconography to spectrography. _Psychology of deception and cognitive prejudice. The bias of post-truth as a conflict between a social competence or bond based on authority competences and one based on emotional response competences.

2) NETWORKED SOCIETY: NEW FORMS OF POWER, THE DECLINE OF THE PUBLIC SPHERE AND ITS FUTURE.

Papers in this area will focus on the multiple relationships between the design of global communication tools, the development of a networked society and its infrastructures, the crisis of the traditional mass media, the contradictions in the role of user-citizens (as promoters of self-expression and political agency, as well as atomised sources of intoxication and mass distraction).

Specific themes for this topic are

_Politics and mass media from the golden age of TV politics to the post-political languages of the era of global social media. _The building of the past: identity politics, nations, communities, history, and storytelling. Tradition as fraud. _Algorithmic propaganda and the technological design of misinformation. _Education and post-truth: a shift in the boundaries between authority and collective knowledge, and its consequences both in the classroom and elsewhere. _The power of data, invisible hierarchies and a political critique of transparency. _The life of objects in the anthropocene: deception, opacity and material truths of socio-technical devices.

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_Identity at play: the political agency of masks, heteronomies and improper identities in creative and grassroots activism. _The decline of the competence of objectivity in the public sphere: problems of the algorithm and proposals for revitalisation.

3) THE CRISIS OF TRADITIONAL REPRESENTATION AND NEW WAYS OF SEEING. DESIGN OF TRANSPARENCY, AESTHETICS OF OBFUSCATION, USER SUBCULTURES AND THE CRISIS OF TRADITIONAL REPRESENTATION.

Papers in this area will focus on the challenges that “post-truth” poses to creative processes in contemporary art, design, and the making of popular technologies. Under the weight of global interfaces and infrastructures, post-truth—as a combination of semiotic, social, technological and post-political symptoms— seems to be provoking changes in all forms of representation, be they visual, audiovisual, textual, objectual, performative or creative in general.

Specifically, papers will investigate topics such as

_Photography after Google and, in general, the alleged ‘user revolutions’. _Individualist saturation and the crisis of corporate design. From the responsibility of design in emotional communication to new non-corporate design practices: user design, unrecognisable or “brutalist” styles, camouflage, amateur professional practices, automatic design. _The evolution of cultural industries and their criticism: objective fiction and new formats in TV and network cinema. _Reality in drag: the evolution of the artistic/activist fake, unrecognisable art, fictions and revelations in contemporary art. _Parametric truths and fictions in algorithmic representations: objects and possible/impossible bodies, subcultures in fabrication, digitisation and maker cultures. _The design of transparency: a critical vision of the opacity of interfaces, applications, users, data. _The design of machines for deception: ethics and aesthetics of trolls and bots. _The possibility of lying through artificial intelligence (and its cultural biases) vs. the technological impossibility of lying (collective control, the automatisa- tion of trust, blockchain technologies). _New realisms to visualise what is invisible to the human eye (infrastructure policies, planetary computing and big data). _The collapse of critical irony in dystopian times: memes and user subcultures

17 AFTER POST-TRUTH Interface Politics, 2nd International Conference in irony-saturated online environments (identity politics, ironic racism, critical memetics). _Technological disobedience, rebellion and sabotage: counter-production of data, infrastructure design for counter-surveillance and obfuscation, machines to deceive other machines, sabotage of capture devices. _Historicism, mannerism, revival: the use of pastiche and irony in postmodern design. _Learning from the copy: manipulations, versions and fakes as learning tools.

AFTER POST-TRUTH Interface Politics, 2nd International Conference

Public sphere Panel#1 Moderated by Bani Brusadin

Arjon Dunnewind The Decline of the Public Sphere and Its Future

Doro Wiese In formation

Dafne Calvo, Eva Campos, Marta Álvarez An approach to free software as infrastructure for the public sphere: proposals and reflections on fiveplatforms for deliberation, consensus and cultural production

Marloes de Valk Infuence in 3 Easy Steps. Pre-internet and After Post-Truth Strategies to Manipulate Public Opinion

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The Decline of the Public Sphere and Its Future Arjon Dunnewind

Abstract How did we end up with a defeatist concept like Post-truth? The Internet, social media and new communication technologies hold a great potential to support an open, diverse and stable democracy. Yet, we find ourselves confronted with alternative facts, conspiracy theories, filter bubbles, and a decline in the quality of news and journalism. What are the structural and systemic causes that brought about these recent phenomena? How do technological mechanisms interact with societal change? And how can we harness the potential of contemporary and future media to create a positive approach to information, facts and opinions?

This presentation will picture how artists are dealing with the new dynamics we find ourselves in in this so-called Post-truth world. It will include historical examples from film and art history that show how art, cinema, journalism, and classical and modern information outlets have always been part of heavily contested battle grounds. From Soviet cinema and Hollywood film making to social media platforms, the hegemony of tech-companies and the current and future role of algorithms.

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With video activist, media pranksters and the new generation of digital journalists that use social media and digital tools to scrutinize authorities and check the various version of reality in conflict situations.

Keywords The crisis of the traditional mass media; mass distraction; politics and mass media; post-political languages; algorithmic propaganda; technological design of misinformation; big data; critique of transparency.

Arjon Dunnewind www.impakt.nl

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In formation Doro Wiese

Abstract In the current debates about the contested line between fact and fiction, little attention is paid to a genre closely associated with factual narratives: the information. However, information is a specific form of narrative that is historically connected to news about distant places, events, or people. This means that information conveys stories that listeners have, per definition, never experienced through their own senses. Furthermore, information is nowadays, through the internet, nearly instantaneous, and it loses its value once its content is not brand-new anymore.

In this article, I investigate how the characteristics of information—speed, instantaneity, newness, impersonality—influence human perception when they impinge upon the senses. I want to contrast the characteristics of information with the artwork Moule by Anna Lena Grau (2015) that slows down understandings and that asks of its audience to take their time when they try to make sense and give meaning to it. If an artwork slows down processes of meaning-making, it allows recipients to become aware of their own semiotic activities. I will argue that information is a specific form of message that is far from being objective, because it does not include personal experiences and historical, cultural, and geopolitical situatedness in its account. I will ask what is at stake with both kinds of procedures, and develop an alternative vision of connecting to people, histories, and events that are taking place afar.

Keywords: Information as a narrative genre; the production of experiences in art; semiotic activity of viewers; affect and affectivity; time and duration.

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O. Introduction

How is the aesthetic experience nowadays used for political goals, and how can it be harnessed to withstand manipulation to serve insight and understanding? In this essay, I investigate if and how artworks in general and the sculpture Moule by Anna Lena Grau (2015) in particular can counter a development in which our knowledge about the world is more and more facilitated by media and less through unmediated bodily experiences of real-time events. To politicize aesthetics means to ask how our sensory perception is enmeshed in political processes. The sculptureMoule (2015) lends itself to an exploration of the entanglement between our bodily senses and our political being. Moule (2015) is a larger than life, walk-in form, a negative imprint of a closed hand modeled from clay that could potentially be the casting mold for a three-meter-high clenched fist. If we enter the sculpture, it is not the fist that we see, but its inverse mold. The fist is only present as an absence, as an emptiness in the heart of the sculpture. I regard the emptiness in the heart of the figure as an essential part of the artwork that calls for important learning steps. If we want to read the clenched fist as a symbol of rebellion, resistance, and social struggles, Moule’s pictorial and spatial language suggests that these ways of asking for social justice are only indirectly accessible. In this essay, I want to explore how Moule (2015) in particular and artistic works in general can induce other possibilities for being affected when the sculpture forces its audience to slow-down its sense-making activities and to become potentially aware how they bestow meaning upon arbitrary forms.

24 Snapshot: http://www.sidekickbooks.com/riotous.php Public sphere_Panel#1

Caption: Anna Lena Grau, Moule, 2015 View from the outside, plaster, carbon steel, 300 x 215 x 265 cm Photographer: Ottmar v. Poschinger

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Moule’s aesthetic effects differs greatly from those of the hegemonic and pre- valent narrative form of the 20th and 21st century: the information. Contras- ting the possibilities that Moule (2015) opens up, I want to show, relying on (media) theories by Walter Benjamin, Henri Bergson, Gilles Deleuze, Tiziana Terranova, and Paul Virilio, to what extent information is meant to explain the present completely—without recourse to other times, stories, or geopolitics. The current information policy has an impact on the body, too, and affects it with the apparent objectivity of news. Thereby information cannot effectuate what Moule (2015) initiates through its formal aspects. Information has no duration, but actuality; it affects, but does not gives us time to analyze media effects which act upon our bodies; it is ostensibly objective, but leaves out important components from events as it avoids rendering subjective experiences.

1. Affection and Affect

According to Deleuze and Spinoza, the affection is an idea of the effect that the action of one body has on another. For example, when the sun shines on someone’s skin, and that person realizes that he or she is getting warmer, they have an idea of an effect caused by a specific situation. This idea is inadequate insofar as it presents only effects and not causes: it confers no knowledge about the sun, or the body, nor about their relationship to each other. In addition, the knowledge gained by the registration of an affection is purely random and in- discriminate: in the above example, the insight was only obtained because the sun shone on someone’s skin. However, the affection can bring forth another form of perception, the affect (Deleuze, 1978, p.4). For Deleuze, the affect has a direct relation to the duration of time: it describes the lived passage from one state of the body to the other (1978, p.7). Because the affect registers the constant modification of affections over a period of time, it allows one to discover differences. For example, one might learn that a long exposure to the sun causes burns, and from this insight conclusions can be drawn as to how the ratio of sunshine to one’s own well-being can be shaped. In contrast to affection, the affect can adequately name causes, and above all, it can ensure that one actively seeks out relationships with other bodies that are beneficial and strengthen the joie de vivre instead of weakening it.

As I want to show in the following, media users today are constantly exposed to affections. This in itself would not be problematic if the affect that every affection virtually contains had time to unfold. But the prevalence of a particu-

26 Public sphere_Panel#1 lar form of communication, namely information, does not allow phenomena to be permanent. In 1936, Walter Benjamin already wrote in his essay “The Storyteller” that information is a “new form of communication” whose value “does not survive the moment in which it was new. It lives only at that moment; it has to surrender to it completely and explain itself to it without losing any time” (1968, p.90). As Shunya Yoshimi (2006) has pointed out, the term “information” is associated with news about people and events that reach us from afar. Circulation is what characterizes information, a characterization which distinguishes information from other forms of meaning-transfer such as knowledge or wisdom. To paraphrase Yoshimi, knowledge can be accumula- ted and is connected to the archive; wisdom precedes insight and is linked to storytelling and the verbal transmission by older and more experienced people. While knowledge and wisdom recur through preservation and disclosure, information has a novelty of its own. Therefore, information is inextricably linked to technologies whose speed bestow importance upon it, that enable messages to reach their destination at lightning speed and that assure a quick dissemination, too. Examples of these media are the post office, the printing press, the telegraph, and the Internet. According to Benjamin, information only explains a moment in time, an actuality. It lacks a permanence essential to the development of affects. In addition, information lacks a dimension that determines the power of storytelling: “the ability to exchange experiences” (Benjamin, 1968, p.83). For Benjamin, the power of storytelling is evoked through its indeterminacy when rendering events, since it keeps them free from explanations (1968, p.89). When listening to a story, audiences have to use their imagination, their experiences, their hopes and wishes to fill in the story’s indeterminacy.

It is the indeterminacy that Moule (2015) shares with story-telling’s procedures. The representation and the meaning of the clenched fist, symbol of resistance and rebellion, is only accessible to observers if they imaginatively reconstruct the void in the center of Moule (2015). Firstly, observers have to decipher those folds and crevices left by a fist in plaster, whose imprint stood model for the three-meter-high sculpture Moule (2015). While wrinkles and crevices are basically always and everywhere part of every fist, we are accustomed to focus normally on its outer shape. In other words, we usually do not recognize a fist by its imprint but by its contours. Viewers are thus exposed to strange impres- sions: where the thumb crosses fingers to make a fist, inMoule (2015) there is a deep cleft; where fingers dig deep into the palm of a hand, a sharp wedge now protrudes. Moule (2015) thereby hinders viewers to reconstruct the counterpart of the mold, the shape it encases, without recourse to their imagination.

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Caption: Anna Lena Grau, Moule (2015) View from the inside, plaster, carbon steel, 300 x 215 x 265 cm Photographer: Ottmar v. Poschinger

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Moule (2015) initiates a process that consists of two movements. On the one hand, Moule (2015) enriches the perception by representing the surrounding space, thereby making it comprehensible, in the truest sense of the word. Normally, we do not perceive what the fist-surrounding space looks like; now, by way of the sculpture Moule (2015), we can register it. In addition, the impact achieved through its monumentality makes a perception imperative: it ensures that the viewer cannot escape to perceive its materiality, and with it a space that is normally neglected. To come back here to the differentiation between affection and affect established previously, it could be said that Moule (2015) affects the observer precisely through his monumentality. Nevertheless, it remains questionable whether the observers can even recognize that Moule (2015) is the larger than life imprint of a fist. By enlarging the molded hand, the fine gaps between fingers become a grooved dome that viewers can enter through an open gap. As Anna Lena Grau told me, some exhibition visitors considered the sculpture an oversized shower cubicle, others a mysterious grotto. Even the smell of clay and plaster does not make one think of human hands. In addition to the perception of form, Moule (2015) therefore initiates a perception of perception that is characterized as being inadequate. Viewers of Moule (2015) can experience that their perception normally sticks to the contours of forms, and therefore do not know how the surrounding space looks like and is shaped. In the worst case, this non-knowledge can provoke defensiveness, and at best curiosity: affects that are evoked by being affected by the sculpture, and that only yield insights if one takes the time to analyze their origin and causes.

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2. Being in time

It could be said that Moule (2015) sets a process of cognition in motion, precisely because it causes affects in addition to its direct sensory affection. Under the condition that the observers engage in a search for content and meaning that is not given from the outset, another coordinate comes into play, namely time itself. Knowledge needs time to be formulated and communicated, and Moule (2015) demands a certain slowdown, which can be extremely productive. Moule (2015) does not dis- close from the outset what it is referring to and wi- thholds information about its referent. As a result, the work of art cannot exhaust itself in the speed of the present moment. Rather, the slowdown achieved by the lack of a direct reference possibly activates the entire reservoir of experience as a possible source of knowledge. It activates past experiences, present perceptions and visions of the future, which are not separated and can mutually reinforce each other. The slowdown thus shows that experiences are gained in time. This form of time is called duration, a concept derived from Bergson’s philosophy of time. In Deleuze’s reading of Bergsonism (1991), duration allows us to perceive that time is an ontological category that exists independently of our own being. Existence is situated in time, that is: time is a dimension that goes beyond individual experience. An insight into time’s over-personal character can allow us to perceive, too, that all being exists in its own duration.

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Caption: Lost mold from clay during the production process of Anna Lena Grau’s sculpture Moule (2015), view of the studio. Photographer: Claudia Unruh

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Grasping different times, temporalization, and rhythms intuitively, a process for which duration is essential, can thus reveal fundamental and essential differences in time and in space, provided that a conceptual reflection embeds these differences in linguistic reality. To return here to the distinction between affect and affection, which is decisive for Deleuze, one can conclude that perceptions only give rise to insights when we have time to register their limitations, and these experienced limitations come into being when other memories and other rhythms of existence are registered in addition to one’s own perception. Besi- des the affection of the body, memories must be evoked, which in turn must be divorced from the current state of the body. However, this perception of a perception is conditioned by our being-in-time, our duration. The slowdown that Moule (2015) enables through its inversion and aggrandization is thus indispensable for the process of making sense.

3. New Media and Affect

In the following, I will compare the form of affection and affect evoked by Moule (2015) with the politics of today’s news media, drawing on the theories of Paul Virilio and Tiziana Terranova. Both media theorists have convincingly demonstrated that media are nowadays mediating and informing their audience about events and persons, but disallow the exchange of experiences that, according to Walter Benjamin, story-telling evokes (1968, p.83).

In order to make the distinction between affect and affection come to fruition, one could say that news media are nowadays reporting about events and that their reporting influences us affectively. As I have stated earlier, an experience can only then go beyond a present perception when it is confronted with differences in time and space. The perception itself must therefore be exposed as limited and not all-encompassing. But this requires the registration of differences, triggered for example by a memory that evokes temporal difference, or by the physical perception of different temporal rhythms of other worldly beings. But it is precisely this perception of duration, of being-in-time, that today’s information media are annihilating when the real-world dimensions of time and space are destroyed by the speed and potential reach of information: a process that, according to Paul Virilio (2006), can be considered as being a military technique, which is why he speaks of an “information bomb.”

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In her essay “Futurepublic: On Information War- fare, Bio-racism and Hegemony as Noopolitics,” Tiziana Terranova (2007) comes to similar conclusions as Virilio (2006). Power formations mediated by New Media target, as Terranova (2007) suggests, the biological lives of their audiences directly and therefore biopolitically acts on the latter. New forms of information transmission do not work by logical-discursive statements but by the tele-technological dissemination of affective facts. These new forms of transmission affect the body directly by impinging upon the senses and the perception. More importantly, new forms of transmission take possession of the field of perception relevant for the public opinion. They constitute audiences as recipients of affects which act upon their bodies and perceptions, thereby influencing them poli- tically through a capture of their biological lives. According to Terranova (2007), new media are not only biopolitical but also a form of government: governmentality. This power formation “addresses the biological, economic and spiritual life of the population: its way of living, producing, consu- ming, thinking, feeling and acting” (Terranova, 2007, p.126). Information conveys the impression of objectivity through the concreteness of events that it communicates, although essential historical, (geo-)political and sometimes subjective aspects of events are left out of the new media narrative. The mediation, in particular the compression of time and space, prevents that the limits and effects of affections and ensuing affects are questioned.

4. Solutions

There are several possibilities for counteracting the biopolitical affection with information. Terranova proposes to manifold publics that can withstand

33 AFTER POST-TRUTH Interface Politics, 2nd International Conference information’s politics. These inventive publics could undermine the separation of populations by pointing to their similarities, overlap, and inseparability. Instead of, for instance, dividing the world into East and West, or into citizens and refu- gees, we might as well look at what we share with others, from an enthusiasm for sports, art, and culture to life experiences and worldviews. This solution requires communication and thus differs fundamentally from a one-way consumption of information-based media. As shown, information is contrary to the exchange of experiences. Information constitutes a very limited knowledge of events and persons, precisely because it does often not convey subjective narratives. As mentioned before, information often contains abbreviated knowledge in that it only explains the present and has no regard for historical as well as geopolitical and geographic particularities. We should thus become better storytellers to explore historical and utopian possibilities.

Following my reflections on Anna Lena Grau’sMoule (2015), it seems to me necessary to ask about the conditions for developing new public spheres and practices that may obstruct the simplification of life and reality. In my analysis, I tried to express that it takes time to develop resistant practices. Accordingly, it is thus necessary, for a responsible, just, and sustainable form of politics to first pause and to inventory different experiences that are grouped around an (ideal or material) object and its links to the past, present, and future. This too requires storytelling, even the invention of stories and their exchange.

Concerning the problems evoked by information media with their speed and one-sidedness, I have shown that they prevent the rendering of personal narratives and thereby inhibit an exchange of experiences. Furthermore, they make it difficult to determine in greater precision on the history of specific places, events, and persons. Focusing on information reduces the connectivity that we can build to people, events, and places. To counter this tendency in today’s world of media and mediated worlds, we need to develop our capabilities to connect perceptions with memories and to thereby widen our experiences. As I have shown, it is necessary to distill the affects that are caused by an affection of our bodies. This requires time, which we should urgently take, if we want to follow our human peculiarity of being imaginary and narrative beings. Moule (2015) gives us time and space. It is up to us to explore how we can connect to others and how we can shape those connections.

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Caption: Form construction during the production of Anna Lena Grau’s sculpture Moule (2015), view of the studio. Photographer: Mia Grau

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Bibliography

Benjamin, W., 1968. “The Storyteller. Reflections on the Work of Nikolai Leskov.” Illuminations, edited by H. Arendt, translated from German by H. Zohn, New York: Schocken, pp. 83-111.

Deleuze, G., 1991. Bergsonism. Translated from French by H. Tomlinson and B. Hab- berjam, New York: Zone. ---, 24 January 1978. “Lecture Transcripts on Spinoza’s Concept of Affect. Cours Vin- cennes, 1978–1981.” Edited by E. and J. Deleuze, translated from French by T. Murphy, www.webdeleuze.com/textes/114.

Grau, A. L., 2015. Moule. Sculpture, plaster, carbon steel, 300 x 215 x 265 cm, Hamburg.

Terranova, T., 2007. Futurepublic: On Information Warfare, Bio-racism and Hege- mony as Noopolitics. Theory, Culture & Society, 24 (2), pp. 125-45.

Virilio, P., 2006. The Information Bomb. Translated from French by C. Turner, London: Verso.

Yoshimi, S., 2006. Information. Theory, Culture & Society 23 (2-3), pp. 271–88.

*An earlier version of this essay appeared in Frame – Journal for Literary Studies 31.2.

Doro Wiese, PhD. https://www.uu.nl/staff/DWiese

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An approach to free software as infrastructure in the public sphere: reflection and proposal on five tools for deliberation, consensus and cultural production Marta Álvarez Guillén, Dafne Calvo, Eva Campos-Domínguez

Abstract We part from the idea of establishing a parallelism between the term “public sphere” and the Internet as long as we are aware that the Network is a highly capitalized context, still unavailable to many people, territories and subaltern groups. Furthermore, it works eventually as a censor in practical terms because of its hierarchical structure. Understanding the public sphere as a laboratory for the commons connects us with the Network as a space for the digital commons. It should achieve a concept of extended freedom based on the possibilities of free software, which ensures a prosumer and recursive counter- public. Thus, the hacker community constitutes the safeguard of democracy in a growing informational capitalization. However, we must not ignore the difficulties involved in accessing this group. Democracy for everyone is difficult and we must ensure spaces that eliminate social gaps around technology.

Keywords Public sphere; free software; habermas; political participation; hacker ethics.

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“Omnia sunt communia”.

De los salones burgueses al procomún en Red.

La esfera pública ha sido un tema recurrente en la literatura teórica, especialmente en torno a la posibilidad de la democracia. La inflación del término ha llevado a situarlo en el contexto de la sociedad de masas hipertecnologizada. Sirve como modelo teórico normativo para medir las capacidades del espacio ciberconectado para la deliberación y la acción política (Poor, 2005; Dahlberg, 2007b). Los salones habermasianos se han convertido en laboratorios modales de relaciones sociales donde ensayar y asegurar modos de ser libres colectiva- mente. Se configuran como laboratorios del procomún (Durán, 2013), asegu- rando un cierto sistema democrático a partir del debate racional generado en el disenso público contra la autoridad (Raimondo, Reviglio y Diviani, 2016).

A esta noción ideal del espacio público la atraviesa, no obstante, un discurso crítico que cuestiona la exclusión del diálogo político de mujeres, personas racializadas o de clase baja. Todos estos grupos subalternos interpretan en el proceso de refeudalización de la esfera pública el verdadero peligro social dentro del contexto de los medios de masas y la comercialización de la prensa (Fraser, 1990; Corbett, 2014). Lo cierto es que del disenso no ha de obtenerse necesariamente un consenso racional que responda al bien común. Además, en la Red el diálogo no es exclusivamente respetuoso, sino también insultante y exhortativo (Freelon, 2015).

Internet es ahora una herramienta fundamental del capitalismo informacional (Fuchs, 2010; McChesney, 2015). La retórica utópica del sublime tecnológico (Poor, 2005) queda en cuestión cuando los grandes oligopolios de la informa- ción han venido a confirmar larefeudaliación anunciada (Dean, 2003; Sassen, 2003; Castells, 2011): Internet ofrece el acceso a un torrente inconmensurable de información altamente mercantilizado (Fuchs, 2010; McChesney, 2015). Se trata de un espacio común altamente privatizado en el que podemos participar de forma individual y colectiva, pero esa dependencia cada vez mayor de lo económico dificulta pensar en la Red como en una esfera pública en que sea posible la autonomía.

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1 Nótense los problemas de acceso Por otra parte, el acceso a la Red es aún limitado1. Y a la red en el ámbito rural. Para ello, véase: Estadística sobre Equipamiento aun con la existencia de infraestructuras tecnológi- y Uso de Tecnologías de Información y Comunicación en los hogares en cas accesibles, Internet no sitúa toda la información 2017 (INE). Información extraída de: al mismo nivel de acceso: la publicidad de pago y el http://www.ine.es/dyngs/INEbase/ es/operacion.htm?c=Estadistica_C&- posicionamiento online invisibilizan gran parte de cid=1254736176741&menu=ultiDa- la producción de opinión en la Red (Fuchs, 2014; tos&idp=1254735976608. Última consulta: 16/09/2018. Tufekci, 2015; Raimondo, Reviglio y Diviani, 2016).

El ciberespacio se convierte en este sentido en una pseudoesfera pública que alimenta al poder, especialmente en el caso de las redes sociales que capitalizan lo público y comercian con la intimidad, limitando la visibilidad de la opinión que en ellas se vierte -que no sólo depende de nuestros regímenes “elegidos” y poco flexibles de privacidad (Dahlberg, 2007a; Pariser, 2011; Sustein, 2003). Las redes reproducen las jerarquías de lo offline y generan censuras y autocensuras (Sassen, 2003; Sampe- dro-Blanco, 2016).

Las nuevas tecnologías no son herramientas neutras (Morozov, 2012; Corbett, 2014): la clave para que la Red sea una herramienta de empoderamiento es imposibilitar en ella el pensamiento unidimensio- nal, luchar por la veracidad, asegurar la existencia de contrapúblicos y, con ellos, de un conflicto continuo y sano para la democracia. Es en esta lectura cuando plataformas alternas como GitHub, Loomio, Reddit, Riot o Ring se constituyen como espacio y herramienta de contrapúblico.

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El software libre como instrumento recursivo para la esfera pública

La clave por tanto estará en nuestra posibilidad de conservar una autonomía, entendida como el espacio de libertad sin dominio del estado y/o corporaciones privadas, y trabajar al tiempo por el beneficio común de manera participada (Castells, 2011; Coleman, 2011; Rowan, 2016; Sampe- dro-Blanco, 2016). Podemos establecer un parale- lismo entre aquella esfera pública e Internet hoy o, más específicamente, elsoftware libre, si entendemos este segundo como una manera de facilitar el acceso al poder a través del acceso al código, de la misma manera que en la esfera pública el acceso al poder está en el acceso a la discusión (Poor, 2005).

“Con software libre nos referimos a la libertad de los usuarios para ejecutar, copiar, distribuir, estudiar, cambiar y mejorar el software” (Stallman, 2004:45). Se busca así asegurar un modelo de libertad que es más extensa y que convierte al consumidor/a en sujeto activo bajo la ética hacker –la cooperación es más importante que la explotación comercial de código constructor del espacio en Red–. Las herramientas Loomio, Reddit, Riot, Ring y GitHub operan con diferentes licencias libres que, con diferentes limitaciones, ocupan un espacio atravesado por la libertad de conocer, analizar, modificar y redistribuir su código. GitHub, Riot y Ring, por ejemplo, emplean licencia MIT, por lo que la modificación y distribu- 2 ción de su código se encuentran garantizadas . 2 GitHub ha desarrollado una plataforma con información detallada de cada licencia, Choose a license. Véase: La sociedad necesita información no solo para https://choosealicense.com/. debatir sino para hacer. Desde el software libre se en- Última consulta: 16/09/2019. tiende que un sistema propietario coarta la posibilidad de colaboración entre la ciudadanía y cercena la libertad, eliminando la posibilidad del procomún, ya que la lógica propia de Internet del “cortar y

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pegar” se transforma a la dinámica de “consigue permiso para cortar y pegar” -o págalo- (Lessig, 2004: 274). El software libre cumple con principios de apertura, escalabilidad, modularidad, confianza, transparencia y seguridad y contribuye con ello a la expansión de la libertad en la Red (Kelty, 2005). Se establece así un nexo fundamental entre tecnología y política. Programar en abierto y publicar el código en GitHub, es político, como priorizar Ring (y no Skype) para realizar videollamadas (Zafra, 2011; Sampedro-Blanco, 2016). Picar código puede ser una rebelión en un espacio de constante escritura como es la Red por definición y a la que sin embar- 3 El proceso europarlamentario que go quieren poner freno3. se está llevando a cabo durante 2018 para reformar Derechos de Autor ha sido objeto de protestas civiles, Kelty (2005) llama “público recursivo” a aquel manifestadas en la posición crítica de iniciativas como Wikimedia, también constituido por la preocupación común de man- en el caso concreto de la sección en es- tener los recursos o condiciones técnicas y legales pañol. Véase: https://blog.wikimedia. es/2018/06/no-obliguen-a-las-plata- de asociación a través de los cuales se constituyen formas-a-reemplazar-sus-comunidades-por-algoritmos/. como público, como colectividad. Los geeks/hac- Última consulta: 16/09/2019. kers, generan protocolos de relación entre humanos y máquinas, así como herramientas legales para un nuevo escenario. Atienden al cómo está construida la Red y aseguran que esa estructura siga siendo abierta: por ejemplo, colgando sus proyectos en GitHub o comunicándose a través de Riot. Así, ex- tienden las bases de la esfera pública más allá del hablar, escribir y pensar, incluyendo conceptos como construir, picar código, compilar, hackear, redistribuir, compartir. Internet puede ser contestataria si aseguramos su recursividad para el procomún.

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Preguntas para la construcción libre esperada.

Hemos señalado cómo el software libre hace esfera pública al mantener una “libertad extendida” en la Red. Sin embargo, no siempre asegura la esfera pública, en tanto para facilitar un acceso universal a esta esfera pública se requieren, no solo infraestructuras, sino formación. De lo contrario, el contrapú- blico corre el riesgo también de refeudaliación de su movimiento (Coleman, 2011). Para ello, espacios como los medialabs son lugares básicos para activar la ética hacker y alimentar el procomún (Corbett, 2014). Para el escenario en línea, las alternativas que proponemos en este texto se destinan a la toma de decisiones (Loomio); la discusión a través de marcadores sociales (Reddit); el envío de mensaje- ría instantánea (Riot); el alojamiento de proyectos de código abierto (GitHub); así como la retransmi- 4 Esta propuesta tiene similitudes con sión de voz y vídeo (Ring). la que Aviv Ovadya pone de manifiesto en Internet y el nuevo periodismo: el futuro de los contenidos falsos, Programa Esta lectura del disenso que asegura una vigilancia 1, Episodio 7, Netflix, 2018. del poder puede hacernos caer en una dialécti- 5 Véase: https://endefensadelsl.org/ ca negativa que no se resuelva nunca. Por ello la manifiesto_telecomunista.html. Última consulta: 16/09/2018. proponemos como un acercamiento asintótico: ha de haber colectivos o cuerpos que vigilen que esté 6 Véase: https://criticalengineering. org/es. Última consulta: 16/09/2018. todo en orden, tanto en las grandes corporaciones 4 7 Véase: http://lowtech.org/projects/ como fuera de ellas . Sería una suerte de separación n5m3/. Última consulta: 16/09/2018. de poderes también en el mundo online que no 8 Véase: https://robvankranenburgs. obvia el conflicto como base de la esfera pública. wordpress.com/2007/10/11/ja- Diversos colectivos responden a esta demanda mes-wallbank-says-the-zero-dollar-laptop-manifesto/. con manifiestos críticos de diverso tipo como el Última consulta: 16/09/2018. Manifiesto telecomunista5, The critical engineering 9 Véase: https://dpya.org/wiki/index. 6 7 manifesto , el Lowtech Manifesto o el Zero Dollar php/1991_-_Manifiesto_ciberfemi- 8 nista_para_el_siglo_XXI_-_VNS_ Laptop Manifesto . Así como otros del tipo del Matrix. Última consulta: 16/09/2018. Manifiesto ciberfeminista para el s. xxi9, el Additi- 10 10 11 Véase: https://additivism.org/mani- vist manifesto o el Manifesto xenofeminista que festo. Última consulta: 16/09/2018. atienden a la interrelación de tecnología y género. 11 Véase: http://www.laboriacuboniks. net/es/index.html#firstPage. Última consulta: 16/09/2018.

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Sin embargo, de nuevo cabe cuestionar si el software libre hace siempre esfera pública:

1. En primer lugar, hoy se da una notable capita- lización del software libre. También este depende del capital y, de hecho, estos programas pueden terminar siendo vendidos a grandes empresas. En junio de 2018, GitHub fue adquirida por Microsoft, lo que demuestra, de nuevo, de la capacidad de las corporaciones de Internet para extender su influencia y construir un espacio oligopólico donde resulte cada vez más complejo alejar nuestra comunicación en Red de los espacios de poder de los servidores 12 Ya es oficial: Microsoft compra mayoritarios12. GitHub por 7.5000 millones de dólares. – Xataka. Información extraída de: https://www.xataka.com/aplica- 2. Por otro lado, sigue vigente en este caso la crítica ciones/oficial-microsoft-compra-github-7-500-millones-dolares. de Fraser (1990). Si la primera condición para acce- Última consulta: 16/09/2018. der a esta esfera es ser hacker; las mujeres, personas racializadas, de clase baja o de zonas periféricas, tienen acceso complicado a esta esfera. De hecho, es importante señalar que el software libre en muchos casos se genera a base de voluntarismo y tiempos libres de quienes no disponen de recursos económi- cos o se basan tan sólo en un régimen del entusiasmo al que se somete a la nueva clase creativa (Zafra, 2017). La excesiva especialización que precisan los hackers requiere una tarea de divulgación a la altura (Zafra, 2011). Necesitamos, por tanto, interpretar el uso de Ring, Riot o Loomio desde una perspectiva crítica para reconocer quiénes emplean estas plataformas y si es un perfil concreto de usuario/a quienes colman estos espacios.

3. Por último, las redes sociales mayoritarias siguen acumulando un número creciente de usuarios y usuarias, que eligen pertenecer a este espacio por su posibilidad de socializar con un número amplio de internautas (McChesney, 2015). Ante el poder de medios sociales como Facebook –como ejemplo

43 AFTER POST-TRUTH Interface Politics, 2nd International Conference más representativo– las herramientas similares Reddit, Riot o Loomio se desplazan a una posición subalterna. Solamente desde esa posición es posible medir su capacidad y potencialidad, al menos a corto y medio plazo.

En fin, la comunidadhacker asume un reto que puede conducirnos a modificar por completo la asunción del sujeto burgués individual, haciendo efectiva una cuerpa como inteligencia colectiva que suponga un hackeo de la institución y haga, en último término, que el propio órgano de poder se vea afectado por la esfera pública. Podemos decir por tanto que el software libre y la comunidad hacker se enfrentan al menos a tres retos principales que pueden hacer fracasar esta nueva esfera pública como posibilidad para la democracia hoy.

El software libre, si bien asegura el escenario propio de un cierto contrapú- blico, como hemos mencionado, ha de extenderse, como lo está haciendo a toda la esfera pública y al ente público, el Estado. Solo de esta manera logrará facilitarse una democracia verdaderamente abierta, transparente y participada. Además, se impone una urgencia formativa que extienda las libertades de toda la ciudadanía sin diferencias de género, raza, clase o procedencia territorial; generando laboratorios como espacios de cultura abierta y participada, que favorezcan una figura de un “espectador activo” de la sociedad.

Por último, cabe mantener siempre una postura crítica que nos sirva para velar por la realización adecuada de los procesos democráticos y que vigile que el software libre siga siéndolo. Instituir comités o consejos que velen por el mantenimiento de las libertades expandidas tanto en las empresas, como en el estado o en el propio contrapúblico hacker es una manera de asegurar una autonomía que hemos de mantener siempre como horizonte alcanzable de la práctica social común.

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— Marta Álvarez Guillén https://www.bitlav.org/ http://martaalvarezprojects.tumblr.com/ — Dafne Calvo https://resistenciasdigitales.noblogs.org/ http://comdig.blogs.uva.es/ — Eva Campos-Domínguez http://uva-es.academia.edu/EvaCamposDominguez http://comdig.blogs.uva.es/

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An updated version of this paper was submitted to the #24 Artnodes Journal CFP and selected for publication. Read it in: http://doi.org/10.7238/a.v0i24.3290

Infuence in 3 Easy Steps. Pre-internet and After Post-Truth Strategies to Manipulate Public Opinion Marloes de Valk

This paper describes an artistic project which is based on research seeking to identify several strategies used to delay industry regulation and manipulate public opinion during the 80s and compare them to the strategies used by online advertising platforms such as Google and Facebook, facing regulation today. The paper will show how these strategies were woven into the story of an art game called ‘What Remains’, a darkly humorous, authentic Nintendo Entertainment System (NES) 8-bit game aiming to create an experience of fighting misinformation, showing the player several ways to push back and re- gain agency by joining forces with others and actively interrogating the nature of different news media.

Throughout the eighties, several successful strategies were tried and tested, to manipulate public opinion in order to avoid regulation threatening industries such as oil and tobacco. In this paper three strategies will be discussed with examples from both the 80s as well as today’s Tech Industry, which is facing potential regulation after the 2016 US elections and the ‘Brexit’ referendum made clear there was a massive lack of accountability on the part of online advertising platforms. The November 2017 congressional hearings of Facebook, Twitter and Google, as well as the hearings of Marc Zuckerberg in the US and the EU early 2018, are the main sources of information that are analyzed. Each strategy has a game counterpart which is described and illustrated.

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This paper shows some of the most successful pre-internet misinformation campaigns and highlights how the online advertisement industry is using them to stave off regulations threatening their business model, even if their business model is threatening democracy.

Keywords Artistic practices; digital countercultures; digital art and technologies; cultural studies; journalism.

Marloes de Valk https://bleu255.com/~marloes

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Public language Panel#2 Moderated by Jorge Luis Marzo

Ester Jordana, Ramon Rispoli La interfaz como alesthesis: la verdad como organización sensible

Jorge Luis Marzo The mathematical management of sincerity

Emilie V. de Keulenaar, Kaspar Beelen, Ivan Kisjes, Marc Tuters Post-Truth Encyclopedias: How Altpedias Create Alternative Facts

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An updated version of this paper was submitted to the #24 Artnodes Journal CFP and selected for publication. Read it in: http://doi.org/10.7238/a.v0i24.3289

La interfaz como alesthesis: la verdad como organización sensible Ester Jordana, Ramon Rispoli

La problemática en torno a la verdad se ha planteado fundamentalmente desde una perspectiva epistemológica: la cuestión, en este sentido, era la de indivi- duar las condiciones necesarias y suficientes para que una verdad sea postulada y aceptada como tal. Frente a esas formas epistemológicas de aproximarse a la cuestión de la verdad, el filósofo francés Michel Foucault proponía un acercamiento distinto en base a lo que calificaba como lasformas alethurgicas de la misma, esto es, el modo en que esta se produce en tanto que acto de decir veraz. En su reflexión, el autor exploraba así distintos modos de ese ‘decir veraz’ que atraviesan la historia atendiendo a sus principales formas discursivas. Sin embargo, cabe preguntarse si esas formas alethurgicas no pueden analizarse también, más allá del discurso, en su manifestación sensible. Desde esa doble aproximación cabe preguntarse entonces cómo las interfaces concebidas como “superficies de contacto” pueden ser pensadas e interrogadas desde el diseño en su carácter de alesthesis, esto es, a partir de la pregunta por el modo en que manifiestan la verdad (lo que se considera como verdadero) a partir de una particular organización de lo sensible.

Palabras clave Formas epistemológicas; formas alethurgicas; objetividad; interfaz; política.

— Ester Jordana http://escolamassana.academia.edu/EsterJordanaLluch — Ramon Rispoli https://www.baued.es/profesores/ramon-rispoli

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An updated version of this paper was submitted to the #24 Artnodes Journal CFP and selected for publication. Read it in: http://doi.org/10.7238/a.v0i24.3306

“La gestión matemática de la sinceridad: sobre los cambios en el dispositivo de veridicción” Jorge Luis Marzo

Abstract

Michel Foucault defined “veridiction” as the sociolinguistic apparatus that discerns the credible, that potentially possible to be believed, that consists of a cross system of formats of sincerity and authorization. However, as an authority device, its “credit systems” have been profoundly transformed during the last decades in parallel to the establishment of the new communicational, globalized and interdependent sphere. The formats of sincerity, naturalness and authenticity have become an intrinsic part of mathematical languages aimed to perform as a player with full public competency, blurring the classic swinging balance between interiority (sincerity) and exteriority (authority). The algorithms of Artificial Intelligence applied in Social Media are increasingly proposed as managers of the frankness and reputation of users / citizens, raising serious questions about the mutation of traditional credibility regimes.

Keywords Veridiction; truth regime; linguistics; social media; artificial intelligence; algorithms.

Jorge Luis Marzo https://soymenos.net/ https://soymenos.wordpress.com/

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An updated version of this paper was submitted to the #24 Artnodes Journal CFP and selected for publication. Read it in: http://doi.org/10.7238/a.v0i24.3295

Post-Truth Encyclopedias: How Altpedias Create Alternative Facts Emilie V. de Keulenaar, Kaspar Beelen, Ivan Kisjes, Marc Tuters

Abstract This presentation considers how online communities create and maintain their own universes of ‘alternative facts’. More specifically, it uses visual network analysis and word2vec in order to represent the vernacular worldviews of a number of online alternative encyclopedia projects, or ‘Altpedias’ -- all of which view themselves as challenging the hegemony of a supposed universal body of knowledge which Wikipedia claims to embody via its ‘neutral point of view’ policy. The paper introduces its approaches these Altpedias by way of Jean-Fran- cois Lyotard’s forty-year-old prediction, at the inauguration of the discourse on postmodern, concerning the impact of the computerization of knowledge on the objective status of ‘truth,’ which led him to state: ‘data banks are the encyclopedia of tomorrow.’

Keywords Altpedias; post-truth; postmodernism; lyotard; knowledge.

— Emilie V. de Keulenaar — Kaspar Beelen — Ivan Kisjes — Marc Tuters https://oilab.eu/

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Narratives Panel#3 Moderated by Bani Brusadin

Enrico Beccari Based on real drawings. Perceptions of truth in contemporary autobiographical graphic novel.

Tania Tovar In Articulo Mortis: Meta-narratives and Reconstrucción of a Building’s Personal Memory.

Diogo Marques “No trace can last forever”: Disruption through creativity in digital literature.

Ignasi Deulofeu Narrative Ignot

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Based on real drawings. Perceptions of truth in contemporary autobiographical graphic novel. Enrico Beccari

Abstract The (already generational) trend toward autobiography in contemporary comics seems evident and broadly documented, as it is directly linked to the rising, in the 2000s, of the graphic novel which, in turn, has become the canonical base, in North American academy, for the constitution of the comic studies field.

Comic studies seems to follow, if a broad sense, the line traced by last century literary and artistic studies, incorporating the shift of traditional literary values toward sociological, cultural and ethical issues. Said trajectory is ostensibly connected to the perception that autobiographical and biographical offerings – from which, directly or indirectly, stems the vast majority of sequential art works positively valued by academy – are based on true events and therefore, tell the truth, at least to some degree. Works valued for this characteristics span from autobiographical memoirs, to new graphic journalism, graphic diaries, and is a factor for the positive critical evaluation of those graphic novels that, even if fictional in many aspects, tell historical events and represent social traumas.

The present communication aim is to approach, specifically, some aspects of the construction of the notion of truth in autobiographical graphic novels. Especially interesting, within the context of image culture, is analyzing which strategies increase the truth value of autobiographical narratives in comic form, where the drawn image hybridizes the unavoidable presenciality of the image with the declared fictitiousness of drawings. This positions the autobiographical graphic novel in a very unique place within the debate on post-truth – a position that needs further and deeper examination.

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Keywords Pedagogy; authority and truth; autobiography; graphic novel; comic studies.

1. Introduction Comics and especially graphic novels have been acknowledged, especially in the last twenty years, as objects of both artistic/literary and sociological importance, bringing upon them a certain amount of academic interest.

Where does the recently acquired value of sequential art stem from? Usually, new proposals and perspectival shifts over previously ignored artistic and cultural practices are linked to relevant socio- cultural changes that, in this case, are related to the evolution of the graphic novel concept and its link with a more general tendency toward (visual) autobiographism that permeated occidental society in the last twenty-five years. In fact, the ongoing trend toward autobiographism, which appears nowadays clear and evident, has been broadly documented by comic scholars such as El Refaie (2012), Chute 1 (2010, location 241-243) , Kunka (2018), Baetens 1 Here and afterwards, “location” refers to the kindle location system that, & Frey (2015, pp. 94-98) and seems to be directly often, features instead of the page nu- tied to the emergence, especially from 2000s on, meration in Kindle devices. However, whether available, have preferred the of contemporary graphic novel; which, in turn, traditional page numbering. constitutes the base for the budding canon, in Nor- th-American academies, for the recent academic field of comic studies.

My purpose, here, is to concentrate on the specific relation that autobiographical comics and graphic novel have with concepts such as truth, verosimilitude, credibility; and with the current debate about post-truth. My claim is that, as counterintuitive as it may seem, the fictional characteristics of autobiographical comics might constitute a chance for

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further critical analysis of truth in visual representation, as well as offering valuable insights about post truth itself.

2. Comics, autobiography, truth and artistic value

Since the millenial turn, when comics started to attract considerable interest from academy, the main format of reference has not beem the comic book or the comic strip, but the graphic novel, a conceptual rebranding that make certain kind of comics appear closer to “High” art and literature (as famously described by Shils, 1960). Autobiographi- cal graphic novels, especially, feature an high degree of singularity, because they are often created by a single author, thus evoking an intense, if nostalgic, aura of “pure” authorship; they tend to be extended works, that can thus delve into complex themes both through graphic and verbal means, raising its level of intellectual, artistic and literary relevance; finally, and perhaps most importantly, they tend 2 2 Kunka (2018) comments that, so far, to present issues of social and cultural relevance . the works of just three authors – Art Spiegelman’s Maus (1986, 1991), Mar- This last point is particularly relevant, because it is jane Satrapi’s Persepolis (2004, 2005), linked to the common perception that, from the and Alison Bechdel’s Fun Home (2006) – have attracted most of academic academical point of view, the most valued works analysis, at least in terms of published of literature are those who feature some kind of papers. They are all autobiographical graphic novels. autobiographical narratives. In comics, they take formats such as autobiographical memoirs, new graphic journalism, comics diaries, and works that, even when semifictional, narrate historical events (often social shifts or social traumas) by appealing to the value of witness and testimony of the author (see Adams, 2008).

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So, whether implicitly or explicitly, these graphic novels are valued because they are supposed to tell some kind of truth about actual events that happened. Remarkably, here, truth becomes a strong value, kept in such an high esteem that has been instrumental in reframing the academic relevance of a whole media, and even create a new academic field. Therefore, it is assumed that drawings, and drawn narratives such as comics, can be a peculiar and yet feasible way of telling a true story, as well as representing a specific reality. Yet, the idea of truthfulness in autobiographical graphic novels - that, again, at the present moment may be said to constitute the basis, or at least the origin, for academical value of comics in general – is something that has to be inspected thoroughly. For starters, how can autobiographical comic achieve a sufficient degree of credibility? Under what conditions? And, since they are considered able to tell some “truth”, what can they add to the debate on post-truth, especially for what concerns the value of visual narratives and representations? In order to answer to these questions, I will clarify what aspects of the debate can most productively relate to them.

3. Post-truth. A short definition, and two main themes

First and foremost, what is post-truth? McIntyre summarizes it so:

The Oxford Dictionaries define “post-truth” as “relating to or denoting circumstances in which objective facts are less influential in shaping public opinion than appeals to emotion and personal belief.” In this, they underline that the prefix “post” is meant to indicate not so much the idea that we are “past” truth in a temporal sense (as in “postwar”) but in the sense that truth has been eclipsed—that it is irrelevant.” (McIntyre, 2018, location 160)

This definition illustrate the political debate on post-truth, where the main concern is about how conservative political forces are working hard to rela- tivize and dismiss any statement or argument not aligned with their thought and agenda. Thus, in a vulgarized application of postmodern thought, proven facts and even verified scientific assertions are reduced to personal opinions

3 For an overview of some of the most relevant issues, such as the decrease of trust in science, the effect of new mass media and technologies, the phenomenon of fake news, the relationship with academic debates and, of course, the rise of Trumpism, see: McIntyre, 2018.

58 Narratives_Panel#3 and filtered through acts of subjective interpretation (or even “alternate facts”), openly subordinate to the ideological point of view of whoever is speaking3. Another side of the debate is the philosophical aspect, where one of the main themes is to what extent has postmodern thought contributed to the creation of post-truth, by (involuntarily) providing it with tools and strategies that unscrupulous politicians and spin doctors can and will use to get away with whatever they want to.

Some authors, such as Hanlon (2018) disagree with this judgement, posi- ting that postmodern thought and theories were born as a diagnostic tool for specific issues regarding culture, society, language and philosophy in a specific historical moment; and not as a ready made ideology. Yet, many other authors, such as McIntyre (2018), Calcutt (2018), and D’Ancona (2017) are more critic about the relationship between postmodernism and post-truth. D’Ancona, for instance, acknowledge many virtues to postmodernism as a defense against monopoly of thinking, especially the grand narratives promulgated by powerful social institutions. But it also offers the following criticism:

Released into the ether of campuses, the media and cultural life, post-modernism became less of a coherent philosophy and more of a mood. It gave intellectual prestige to fashionable cynicism and a fresh face to relativism.[...] Whatever the intentions of its founders —which were often opaque—it became a rust on the metal of truth. This did not matter as long as there was a fuzzy consensus that truth was still a priority. But, as we have seen, that consensus has collapsed (D’Ancona, 2017, p. 97; italics mine)

The specific issue here is Trumpism, of course, and yet the main theme and problems seems to be the general loss of interest toward the very intention, or even need, for truth-searching. And, since we are living an historical period marked by a “pictorial turn” (Mitchell, 1994), where images have arisen as a privileged mode communicating, representating, and knowing, this epistemological mistrust is certainly projected upon them too. So, for instance, photographic images are not necessarily seen as an objective proof of anything: even when recognizing that they record an actual fact, there can always be space for doubts - there could always be something else going on that we do not know, such a manipulation of the image, or a revealing, opinion changing fragment that we have not see yet. Or, at the very extreme, there could be the impulse, or the deliberate choice, to interpretate the image only in terms that are favorable to one’s beliefs and conveniences, no matter what the eyes see.

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Therefore, is the image, ultimately, true or false simply depending on who is observing? I posit that the representational strategies and narrative working of autobiographical graphic novels and comics complicate this assumption. In order to understand how the effect of truth emerges in the autobiographical graphic novels, one has to examine which visual strategies comic authors use to convince the reader of their trustworthiness. Much like with post truth, autobiographical comics success depends on strategies. Both positions are part of greater dynamics of value creation, which is the centre of the debate about what is reliable and what is not, both on a sociopolitical and on a personal level.

4. Rhetorical (graphic) strategies and performances of truth

Looking for strategies of truth-telling in sequential art, the most logical clue is the visual potential of drawing. In fact, art can be quite powerful in communicating deeper meanings, but this is also a problematic point: how can the declaration of visual truth-telling be sustainable, given the implicit falseness of drawings? In fact, as Kunka comments, “In a sense, every artist’s style, no matter how photorealistic, is divorced to some degree from reality, [...]comics, by nature of being a hand-drawn visual medium, already challenges the connection between an autobiographical text and an ideal notion of reality.” (Kunke, 2018, location 279)

A possible answer resides in analyzing how contemporary readers are indu- ced to interpret visual and textual cues as “autobiographical” and, therefore, “truthful”. In other words, as Whitlock (who applies the term “autographics” to define graphic memoirs) puts it, it is necessary “to draw attention to the specific conjunctions of visual and verbal text in this genre of autobiography, and also to the subject positions that narrators negotiate in and through comics” (Whitlock, 2006, p. 966).

Author interested in literary analysis have demonstrated how, in a story, the reality effect that anticipates the perception of truth is not an essence, but a rhetorical value that the author attempts to achieve through specific strategies. In autobiographical comics it seems to depends, first and foremostly, from the reader’s perception of the author as someone who declares the story as autobiographical; features both as “herself” and as the main character of the comic; and tells her own story sincerely, without faking or distorting pivotal events or emotionally relevant facts of her life. This attempt of construction faith through

60 Narratives_Panel#3 coherence and integrity responds to what Lejeune famously described as an autobiographical pact between reader and author (Lejeune, 1991). While this idea of a “pact” between two fixed, essentialist identities can nowadays be debatable because of its theoretical reductionism, it is still true that readers must implicitly agree in reading an autobiographical narrative with the proper lenses, so to say. And authors, somehow, have to induce them to do so through specific strategies.

In autobiographical comics a first rhetorical strategy is to constantly portray scenes and details of everyday life, instead of excluding them from the narrative as uninteresting leftovers. Thus, some panels or sequences seem to negate the teleological principle that often structures conventional fiction, popularly known as “Chekov’s gun”: if in a scene featuring a rifle hanging from the wall, the writer has to make sure that, later on, that rifle will be used. Otherwise, that part should be removed. So, this difference echoes the tenets of realism in literature: in fact, reflecting over the concept of verisimilitude, Barthes (1972) elaborates on the “effect of reality”, recalling how the famed novelist Flaubert, describing objects in a room, included an innecessary and somewhat odd object (a barometer). Barthes, in his analysis, goes on to propose that that it’s precisely by including elements that lack of clear meaning and narrative role that the writer can reinforce the reality effect of the scene.

This is not an inherent truth in literature: in fact, Barthes, offering an historical view of verosimilitude, defines it as a changing discourse that, in contemporary literature, is linked to the connotative aspect of the purposeless description. Thus, by extension, autobiographical comics usually feature a substantial presence of random details and environmental elements, drawn and put in sequences devoid of any strong narrative function. They implicitly seem to reinforce the effect of reality, as these elements, according to Barthes, do not denote anything but themselves, and thus connote the idea of reality. But what is more interesting is that, beside sharing strategies with written narrative, sequential narratives can also take advantage from its own visual strategies. Thus, different ways of handling drawings can modify readers’ perception of reality, and the importance of specific sequences.

El Refaie (2010, and 2012) lists a number of visual strategies meant to increase the degree of authenticity. This concept, applied by El Refaie in her study of autobiographical comics, make reference to competence of an author in performing truthfulness, depending on how well she “plays” with the conventions that has been more or less established for a given media in a given historical

61 AFTER POST-TRUTH Interface Politics, 2nd International Conference period. If this is done well enough, chances are that the reader will be inclined to accept the story as autobiographical. While strategies will vary, I would divede them in two main macrocategories: a) based on photography; b) based on the stylistic and graphic rupture – what El Refaie calls the “making it strange” strategy (El Refaie, 2012, p. 177). These two strategies are not excludent of each other: in fact, are often mixed.

As for the first case, the appeal to photography to increase authenticity can be exemplified by some panels in Alison Bechdel’s Fun Home (2006), where the author faithfully reproduces pictures in her graphic memoir, in order to highlight relevant scenes, epiphanic moments, or simply to convince the reader of the real existance and aspect of subjects and places. Of course, it is also a rupture with Bechdel’s baseline drawing style, and this contrast is also employed to evoke a disrupting effect similar to what Barthes called punctum (Barthes, 1981). Other uses of photography aim to achieve authenticity in more indirect ways: for instance, in Spiegelman’s Meta- 4 maus (2011) , pictures are presented as a proof of 4 Published much later, it is a compli- mentary work to Spiegelman’s Maus the considerable research effort carried out by Spie- (1986,1991), basically documenting gelman, and a sign of his sincere commitment to its “making of” and offering an in-dep- write and draw a faithful account of his father’s life th look at the graphic memoir. and experiences during World War II. Regardless of which ones are employed, it should be noted that all strategies featuring the use of pictures, whether faithfully redrawn or directly included in the comic, rely on the enduring social belief that pictures are evidences of some kind of reality.

As for the “making it strange” strategy, it encompasses all those sequences where the author detours from what she has established as the “normal” graphic baseline; and she does so for purposes of highlighting some pivotal moment in her narrative.

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Tonal graphic variations, visual motifs, and the intrusion of fantastic, surrea- list or even uncanny elements are the strategies most used. For instance, both Craig Thompson Blankets( , 2004) and David Small (Stitches, 2009) introduce shifts and visual changes when representing events such as abuse, inner rage, reveries, and even moments of extasy.

While radically different, both macrostrategies can be seen as way of increasing or decreasing the level of intensity within the narrative, by presenting contrasts that are aimed to increase reader’ interest, and trust. Thus, authenticity is, ultimately, tied to clever patterns of intensity rising and falling. Everyday scenes present low level of intensity, but at the same time, following Barthes’ cues, they present a certain amount of scarcely interesting or (seemingly) purposeless scenes. This plays an important role in establishing a strong level of authenticity, so that more intense scenes, such as traumas, revelations, big decisions, and so on, will capitalize on the “autobiographical pact” and stand out as both true and impacting.

5. Conclusions: autobiographical comics and subversion of post-truth discourse

This short look at the intersection between truth and post-truth within the fields of comics autobiography has, hopefully, provided insights that, while undoubtely needing more research, add important nuances to these concepts and cultural practices.

For starters, notions of truth may be fragmented and polarized, but they are still important: since the authors of autobiographical graphic novels put into action complex and specific strategies to convince the reader of the truth of what is told, it is clear that they do so because readers consider it important. Therefore, the advent of post-truth does not really erase the fundamental interest for truth and the distinction, in terms of value, between what proves itself sufficiently true, and what does not pass the test. The interest toward autobiographical graphic novels can only be explained by a persisting social interest over truthful, sincere and fact based personal stories.

Secondly, autobiographical graphic comics can be a reminder that strategies, and not ontological debates about truth, are what are really at stake in order to construct credibility; and that those strategies do not necessarily need to rely

63 AFTER POST-TRUTH Interface Politics, 2nd International Conference on hard evidence such as photographs, videos, or even virtuosism in figurative art. Drawn, stylized, implicitly “false” representations of real events, seem to be valid channels for communicating a strong sense of truth. My point here is that, with countless images circulating globally, everyday on countless screens, visuality is increasingly important but, a the same time, the value of photography and video recording as objective, factual proofs is clearly decreasing. In this context, autobiographical comics and graphic novel are in a privileged position for graphically representing subjets, concepts, experiences, as well as for critically rethink the boundaries of what can be considered a truthful representation of experience. Autobiographical comics and graphic novels hybridate the inevitable presenciality of the visual with the fictitiousness of drawings, and the coexistence between these two elements generates tensions that allows for an history to be credible and “true”, even when graphic representation does not appear to even remotely reproduce reality.

Autobiographical comics, finally, offer – or, are metaphor for – an alternative way of thinking the concept of “truthful” image: what is important, in comics, is not to faithfully reproduce physical, observed reality. Even more, it is not expected that every fact be told and drawn exactly as it happened. There is, instead, an invitation to believe, which is operated through a number of strategies, aimed to produce and accumulate what could be called “soft evidence” about a given comic trustworthiness. The hope is that the reader will forgive (or even recognize and enjoy) the unimportant inaccuracies, and believe, following a perceived feeling of factuality, the core truth of the most important events.

Thus, in a way, autobiographical graphic novel subverts the post-truth discourse, by implicitly embracing – because of the “false”, idiosynchratic qualities of drawings – its continuous denials of any fundamental truth, and then exploiting them to generate truthful accounts of life experiences. Its value is an evidence of that, and its inner dynamics could suggest future strategies to counter post-truth claims in other, perhaps more political, fields.

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Bibliography

Adams, J., 2008. Documentary Graphic Novels and Social Realism. Oxford: Peter Lang.

Baetens, J., and Frey, H., 2014. The Graphic Novel: An Introduction. [Kindle Cloud Reader]. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Available at: Amazon.com

Barthes, R. et al., 1972. El efecto realidad. In: Lo verosimil. Buenos Aires: Editorial Tiempo Contemporáneo. Pp. 95-102.

Barthes, R., 1981. Camera Lucida - Reflections on Photography. New York: Hill and Wang.

Bechdel, A., 2006. Fun Home: una familia tragicómica. Barcelona: Reservoir Books.

Calcutt, A., 2018. The surprising origins of ‘post-truth’ – and how it was spawned by the liberal left.The Conversation [online]. Available at: http://theconversation.com/ the-surprising-origins-of-post-truth-and-how-it-was-spawned-by-the-liberal-left-68929 [Accessed 20 November 2018]

Chute, Hillary L., 2010. Graphic Women: Life Narrative and Contemporary Comics. [Kindle Cloud Reader]. New York: Columbia UP. Available at: Amazon.com

D’Ancona, M., 2017. Post-Truth: The New War on Truth and How to Fight Back. [Kindle Cloud Reader]. Ebury Publishing. Available at: Amazon.com

El Refaie, E., 2010. Visual modality versus authenticity: the example of autobiographical comics. Visual Studies 25 (2). Pp. 162-174.

El Refaie, E.. 2012. Autobiographical Comics: Life Writing in Pictures. [Kindle Cloud Reader]. University Press of Mississippi. Available at: Amazon.com

Hanlon, A., 2018. Postmodernism didnt cause trump – it explains it. The Washington Post [online]. Available at: https://www.washingtonpost.com/outlook/postmodernism-didnt-cause-trump-it-explains-him/2018/08/30/0939f7c4-9b12-11e8-843b- 36e177f3081c_story.html?noredirect=on&utm_term=.133130e3c441. [Accessed 20 November 2018]

Kunka, A.J., 2018. Autobiographical comics. [Kindle Cloud Reader]. Available at: Ama- zon.com

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Lejeune, P., 1991. El pacto autobiográfico.Suplementos Anthropos, 9. Barcelona: Edito- rial Anthropos. Pp. 47-61.

McIntyre, Lee. Post-Truth (The MIT Press Essentia l Knowledge series) The MIT Press. Kindle Edition. (Kindle positions, 22-24).

Mitchell, W.J.T., 1994. Picture Theory. Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press.

Shils, E., 1960. Mass Society and Its Culture. Daedalus, 89. Pp. 288-314.

Small, D., 2009. Stitches. New York: W.W. Norton.

Spiegelman, A., 1986-1991. Maus. Relato de un superviviente. Barcelona: Planeta DeAgostini [2001].

Spiegelman, A., 2011. MetaMaus. New York, N.Y.: Pantheon.

Thompson, C., 2004.Blankets . Bilbao: Astiberri.

Whitlock, G., 2006. Autographics: The Seeing ‘I’ of the Comics. Modern Fiction.

Enrico Beccari https://www.researchgate.net/profile/Enrico_Beccari

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In Articulo Mortis: Meta-narratives and Reconstructions of a Building’s Personal Memory Tania Tovar

Abstract When we think of post-truth and how it affects the construction of memory, we never think of architecture as something that could be compromised, for its physical actions and traces on earth have historically intended to endure, relying on the objective existence of its physical presence to proof and valida- te the multiple narratives contained within its walls. Confident in its solidity and strength, it portrayed its aspirations of permanence and immutability. However, what happens when a building ceases to exist and we can no longer confront the information we have with its original source? What happens when the evidence becomes the subject to be reconstructed?

In Articulo Mortis is a documentary, narrative and literary project that explores the histories of buildings on the eve of their “demise”. It makes an argument around the possibility of architecture no longer surviving as an object –building– but rather as narrative production derived from it, questioning the sta- bility and credibility of its physicality. Placed in a time of architecture’s wish of endless preservation, the project incorporates a building’s afterlife as a natural stage intrinsically related to its memory and how we build it. For this, it turns architecture into the central character of meta-narratives looking to generate future hypotheses, rather than closed and concrete statements around its origins. By restoring to literature the vast territories of the building’s afterlife, each narrative attempts to produce theoretical possibilities around their characters and environments, acknowledging history as remembrance, but focusing on it as a way of preservation and a tool for transformation, where the future of architecture lies precisely in the reconstruction of its possible and multiple pasts.

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The construction of memory in the project, is narrated from within the characters’ testimonies rather than from external affirmations about them. In this way, it can reshape the form and meaning of architecture by introducing a wide variety of documentation to its reconstruction: from legal paperwork to media coverage, images, personal interviews and memorabilia, notes and even rumors, generating a historical contingency of all the knowledge and characters, establishing a grounded critical practice where the production of meaning and history is based on “real” but mediated testimonies of what we wish to preserve.

Inserted in the post-truth conflict of authenticity, credibility, transferability, consistency and confirmability, the literary component blends the fictional aspects of reality with alleged facts, testing or rather evidencing the lack of objectivity in the writing of history that can too intervene in architecture’s future. The project seeks to leave its audience constantly wondering if fiction does in fact overcome reality, in a context where memory loses credibility and yet, adds value to things past and what we preserve. The narratives reconstruct then architecture’s physical space as something that can only be seen and built through the multilayered politics and conflicts of the archival and the official in conjunction with the popular and personal, gaining specificity and insight while making visible the relativity and fragility of architecture’s weight and materiality, before the light but powerful pages of history.

Keywords Architecture history; meta-narratives; construction of memory; architecture preservation; literary reconstructions.

Tania Tovar www.taniatovartorres.com www.proyectormx.org

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“No Trace Can Last Forever”: Disruption through Creativity in Digital Literature Diogo Marques

Abstract Every contact leaves a trace. Matthew Kirschenbaum, Mechanisms: New Media and the Forensic Imagination One of the problems with globalized culture of knowledge base/creative economies concerns the way creativity is often confused with imagination, innovation and digitization. As creativity changed from being an individual discovery to a collective and economic model of production, instrumentalizations started to take place. First, through the diffusion of creative industries, which essentially refer to the workings of communication agencies and to design (including product design). Secondly, in the way creative industries tend to limit creativity to a functionalist perspective. Thirdly, in the use of technology, along with innovation, in order to serve a capitalist and consumerist society propelled by economic progress. As a result, we are confronted with the embodiment of “creative models” for the future, a contradiction in itself.

Nonetheless, as digital technologies become ubiquitous, there is also a growing interdisciplinarity between different areas of knowledge. Moreover, technology is being used to – artistically – reflect upon itself, its contradictions, its dependences in relation to human society(ies). For instance, relating to tensions between transparency and opacity, fragmentation and control. Yet, such disruption is far from being exclusively digital, enough to say that the expansion and democratization of culture, along with the entrance in a society of consumption, all took place due to technological innovation.

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An example of such collaborative efforts is the creation of digital interactive fictions in which ludic, scientific and poetic aspects of creativity are gathered through combined skills of individuals from different backgrounds. As a result, established paradigms such as the artist/author/researcher in their ivory towers tend to fall apart.

Keywords Creativity; digital literature; transparency; interdisciplinarity; disruption.

Viewpoints

There is more information available at our fingertips during a walk in the woods than in any computer system, yet people find a walk among trees relaxing and computers frustrating. Machines that fit the human environment, instead of forcing humans to enter theirs, will make using a computer as refreshing as taking a walk in the woods. Mark Weiser, “The Computer for the 21st Century”

“This morning everything seems opaque.” The contours of a black rectangle against a dark background; below the rectangle, a lexia in white, followed by the repetitive sound of bits and bytes in order to complete this tension-filled scenario. What lurks behind this rectangle? Will it become more transparent and less opaque if I make the decision to do something? I decide to slide my fingers across the rectangle in all possible directions. Enter the sound of metallic bits and pieces, as grey-to-white phrases and the fragmented image of a computer’s motherboard start to gradually be revealed: “I would like to see through my computer/I dream of transparency/I want to have a clear understanding of myself/And of others.” But beyond this desire to use the computer as a hypothetical solution to all of our problems, there is nothing apart from a female voice, which asks: “Where are you?”, a question which already denotes a sense of enclosure and separation, as well as a lack of contact. (Fig. 1)

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Fig. 1: Opacity. Part I. Screenshot.

This is howOpacity (2012) begins. Inviting its visitors to unveil in order to reveal, or to lose grasp in order to become aware, Opacity is “a journey from a dream of transparency to a desire for opacity,” (project statement) a story about human relationships (love, politics, business), as it is a story about transparency and opacity between twofold surfaces. 1 1 Co-authored by Serge Bouchardon, Described by its authors as a digital interactive Leonard Dumas, Vincent Volckaert and Hervé Zénouda (sound design), fiction, Opacity is divided in four interconnected the work also had the contribution of parts, each part asking for a specific physical interac- Giovanna di Rosario (Italian version), Valerie Bouchardon (English version), tion with distinct interfaces, in which more or less Diogo Marques (Portuguese version), direct actions of hand and fingers – depending on and the Laboratorio de literaturas extendidas y otras materialidades whether we are using a PC, a tablet or a smartphone (Spanish version). I used the English – propel both character and reading subject through version, available at: , last accessed October a state of “an in-between.” 16, 2018. Being the second in line of a trilogy of digital inte- 2 2 , last accessed October 19, 2018. with the aesthetics of frustration in the reader’s desire for complete transparency. Having been

3 created in a collaborative environment, this digital , last accessed 3 October 19, 2018. artifact is also part of the i-Trace collective . Lead by

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Serge Bouchardon, a poet-critic practitioner (to use a definition by Adalaide Morris), able to combine creative and scientific research, the artworks with i-Trace’s signature are a poignant example of the ways in which digital literature carries out exercises of self-reflection pertaining to the holy triad of new media studies: device, medium, and concept. And if the very name of the collective is already indicative of existing tensions between ephemeral and permanent conditions of our own digital paths, the physical interaction elicited by the i-Trace’s digital artifacts, shows us how this tension can become even more pronounced. An example of this unveiling, are iterations made possible through the user’s physical interaction with the collective’s website. By sliding the cursor across the area surrounding and comprising the headline, there are consequent changes in the behavior of its header. Some of these changes are visual, as dark and grey glitches start to cover a previously white screen, while others are textual, as shown by the gradual mutation of the line, “No trace can last forever,” into, “Press any key to reset.”

Yet, by resetting, we are again confronted with the same white surface concea- ling another possible surface: its reverse side. (Fig. 2a and 2b)

Fig. 2: Screenshots of headlines to the i-Trace’s website, before and after interaction.

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As ubiquitous computing turned into a naturalized process in our lives, the opacity/transparency paradox became even stronger, and increasingly glamo- rized. With advances in digital technology, in which the intensification of haptic features became a primary goal, a new rhetoric of bodies, surfaces and interfaces continued to emerge by means of another series of visual metaphors, respectively: digital foo- tprints, thresholds, digits, smoothness, roughness, tracks and traces; all of these terms being used to describe the way we interact with digital media (and vice-versa). But as with the rhetoric of transparency and opacity, these other romanticized elements also highlight another series of consequent paradoxical conditions. As such, even when rhetoric goes from transparent and opaque qualities, to smooth and rough animations, layers, or transitions, there is always a latent visual metaphor contaminating its meaning. Thusly, wheneversmooth interfaces are mentioned, it will probably be as a synonym for transparency, imperceptibility and automation.

In May 2016, Matthew Fuller delivered a keynote at Arts Santa Mònica, Barcelona, integrated in the context of the first international conference on In- 4 4 , last accessed October 16, Layers,” Fuller’s presentation showed how different 2018. modes of transparency always produce different forms of opacity, “just as each form of cleverness or each form of intelligence produces a novel form of stupidity,” to use Fuller’s words (Fuller: 2016). In order to illustrate his dialectical thinking (not just) concerning interfaces, Fuller gave two examples: first, a blank PowerPoint slide, generating the idea of “immediacy as direct perception,” while at the same time being something that does not let one see anything else apart from a clear beam of light; secondly, a counterpoint to the idea of transparency as a “kind of contemporary virtue,” since it is also

73 AFTER POST-TRUTH Interface Politics, 2nd International Conference something that tends to appear “in fairy tales,” for instance, in the story of “The Emperor’s New Clothes,” in which “the emperor reveals himself as being a transparent fool.” However, and not belittling previous mutations of the meaning of the word “transparency,” for Fuller:

Transparency in the present day mutates again to become the mode of interpretation proper to people, politics and machines. So that the way in which the politics of interface is played out, is often through a rhetoric or modes of describing something as transparent. (2016)

Since “what is transparent to a machine is not necessarily transparent to a human,” hence forming a kind of “parallax effect,” the ways in which different modalities of transparency are adopted, constructed and maintained, enable a possible history of technology and software, Fuller adds.

In Interface Criticism, C. U. Andersen and S. B. Pold argue that in order to investigate the interface, we need to go beyond the computer’s surface, reaching “back” into history and “through” to the human senses and perception, “behind” the concept of the interface, “down” into the machine, “out” into society and culture. In all of these necessary moves, the question of human perception is central to understanding the way in which these visual metaphors manifest. In this regard, Andersen and Pold are poignant: not only does “the appearance and cultural diffusion of interfaces affect the way the world is perceived and sensed,” making human-computer interfaces “an input/output device where humans exist in a symbiosis with the cybernetic system of the computer” (2011, 11), but furthermore, according to Pold, they are based on a “double sensory process” entailing “a contemporary relationship between interface and perception,” in which “perception becomes mediated and cybernetic.” Hence:

The interface works in two ways, translating the machine to us and us to the machine. It renders the computer sensible, and it is the sense-organs of the computer, whereby it becomes a part of human culture. (Pold: 2011, 109)

By this, Pold does not intend to see a “direct coupling between human perception and the machine.” Instead, he speaks of a “cultural process that artists can interact with, and that can be critically analysed and reflected” (109). Ander- sen and Pold’s perspective is not too distant from Lori Emerson’s reflections on interfaces as sharing “a common goal underlying their designs: to efface

74 Narratives_Panel#3 the interface altogether and so also efface our ability to read, let alone write, the interface, definitely turning us into consumers rather than producers of content” (2014, 1). Nonetheless, for Emerson there is some light at the end of the tunnel, namely by means of electronic literature that courts “difficul- ty, defamiliarization, and glitch as antidotes (...) against what ubicomp has become,” the “nearly pervasive multi-touch interface” included (2-4). In her critique of the interface, having in mind, as a specific target, Apple’s rhetoric of “magic” interfaces, Emerson states that this alternative response to the way digital media “are steadily making their way toward invisibility, imperceptibility and inoperability,” consists of a growing body of digital literature with a critical eye on digital media (1–2). This aforementioned critical eye is one of the main characteristics of electronic literature, possible to be defined as a metamedial poetics, often in association with an intermedial aesthetics that is not limited to a specific medium or device (Marques: 2018). Such critical eye is present, for example, in Serge Bouchardon’s digital interactive fictions, bringing attention to the extremely mediated nature of interfaces.

In Full View

In the simplest terms Digital Poems, Interactive Fictions and Digital Artworks are born from the combination of technology and creativity, with writers/artists using all multi-media elements as critical texts. Sounds, images, movement, video, interface/interactivity and words are combined to create new poetic/artistic and storytelling forms and experiences. Jason Nelson, secrettechnology.com

The question of transparency and opacity often raises the issue of security and surveillance, and wherever there is a paper concerning transparency and opacity of digital interfaces one might as well expect a probabilistic fall into technological or social deterministic arguments. Choose Kittler, if you think media affect perception. Blame McLuhan, if you consider that media are an extension of our perception. Is it possible that both views are right and both are wrong?

In Finding Augusta: habits of mobility and governance in the digital era (2014), Heidi Rae Cooley develops a theory arguing that, if we think in the design of mobile devices beyond the recurrent questions of security and surveillance, we may find that perhaps one of the most significant issues at stake is that these devices are upgraded by designers through feedback born out of our interaction

75 AFTER POST-TRUTH Interface Politics, 2nd International Conference with digital interfaces. For instance, to reach what is now considered the actual version of iPhone, there were numerous tests, and analysis of data of all sorts, in order to have the “perfect” device to “fit” in our hand. This, of course, raises another problem, 5 consisting of the term “fit” . But, in general, what 5 See COOLEY, H. R., 2004. It’s all about the Fit: The Hand, we “sense” is a tension between these two poles the Mobile Screenic Device and (human perception and digital media), in a circular, Tactile Vision. In Journal of Visual Culture, 3(2). Pp. 133-155. DOI: or spiral, fashion: media affect perception, inasmuch 10.1177/1470412904044797. as sensory perception influences media. To support her argument, Cooley recalls the example of the hinged door given by Bruno Latour in the context of his “actor-network theory.” Just as one notices the door’s powerful agency from the moment it ceases to work, or starts to malfunction (2014, 34-35), and given that mobile media are now a part of individual beings who in turn are immersed in participant communities aware of this condition, mobile media’s constraints are used to develop its affordances and, consequently, change the status of this symbio- tic body altogether. (35)

Regarding Big Data, interactive documentary Do Not Track (2015), by Brett Gaylor, is “a personalized documentary series about privacy and the web economy,” having as its basic premise, “If you share data with us, we’ll show you what the web knows about you.” Through a series of seven episodes, users are invited to share personal data that will be analyzed by algorithms in order to bring awareness to several issues, such as: “Can you avoid being tracked?” or, “what is Big Data and how does it work.” This way, users learn what tracking means, through a positively disruptive experience, of emulation of the techniques and tracking tools used by corporations that control our daily Internet routines, such as social networks and web search engines.

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In the case of Opacity, as in most of i-Trace’s artworks, such experiential and in- telligible parallels are made available to the reader by means of gestures which articulate the strategies of signification and affect, required in order to make progress in both narrative and event. These exploratory interactions by way of the interface are what constitute these manipulations as haptic reading processes (a symbiosis of cognition and sensory-motor perception).

Despite their apparently naive narratives, Bouchardon’s artworks are infused with a series of philosophical concepts, drawing on phenomenology and deconstruction. Thus, it is not particularly strange to note that the very notion of trace might have something to do with Derrida’s usage of it, notably in Of Grammatology (1967). Known as one of Derrida’s major concepts in his deconstructionist critical outlook, trace, in French as well as in English, is one of those words with a wide range of meanings, such as track, path, or mark. While Derrida does not seem to provide any strict definition of the word, according to Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak, trace seems to be always a “mark of the absence of a presence, an always-already absent present” (1997, xvii), which is why, in Derridean deconstruction, “the authority of the text is provisional, the origin is a trace; contradicting logic, we must learn to use and erase our language at the same time” (xviii). For Derrida, trace differs (defers) from the sign, being the absent part each time we are confronted with the presence of that same sign. In other words, it is a mark, a track, left by the sign’s absent part. Every present sign is therefore necessarily composed of traces of an absence that seem to define it.

Poetic and aesthetic dimensions of playing with notions such as manipulations, gestures or traces, do not however, preclude a wide range of interpretations that tend toward the political/ideological. Independently of Bouchardon’s main focus on the way such visual metaphors question themes like embodiment in reading, a macrostructural perspective is always an integral part of such questioning. So, what if one applies what Derrida says of the trace, to the concept of post-truth?

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In Review

As I reach the end of Opacity, the sense of disclosure becomes stronger, (notice that the sound is now much calmer, less disturbing). Confronted with the misted glass of a shower door that veils the naked body of his wife taking a bath, as well as the impossibility of unveiling his wife’s thoughts on his own, the character comes face with the paradox’s punchline: “I am not looking for transparency anymore/But for opaque/interactions and sensations.” (Fig. 3)

Fig. 3: Opacity. Part IV. Screenshot.

Much in the same way that social networks contribute to a widespread collective fragmentation of identities, in literature, namely in digital literature, what is left of the author or the artwork is atrace , a rasterized gesture, a residual voice. Such are the traces, for example, left by readers inUnTrace (2016), another of Bouchardon’s digital fictions. As a repository of “collective memories”, the narrative’s possibilities are constructed according to the reader’s input in con- flation with input given by previous readers. Meaning that each time readers access the artwork, the narrative changes.

From the lyrical plow with which verses have always been drawn to the digital technological industry of automated lyricism production, from the forging of molten metal in which the Western poetic tradition is molded, to the machine

78 Narratives_Panel#3 capable of combinatorics witnessed by Gulliver in his visit to the Academy of Lagado, and from the Orwellian “speakwrite” to the use of computer technology for the production of texts with poetic effects, the literal and metaphoric uses of technology as an agent of collaboration in the act of creation are abundant.

What is not clear enough, however, is the reasons why, despite of these ances- tral gears, there is a tendency to see “new” where there is only contemporary. Not to mention the continuation of myths such as the “robot-poet”, in which there is a propagation of an apocalyptic imaginary and of a transhumanist me- canophobic nightmare, in which thinking machines replace humans, ultimately leading to the total alienation of human consciousness.

Digital literature, in its ability to create alternative worlds, different from the objective truth much-needed by science, provides more sensuous forms of truth. Yet, how is it possible to combine human creativity with machines infused with Rationalism and Enlightenment – the true spirit of technology that can be resumed in the present subversion of the sentence “Scientia potentia est” (“Knowledge is Power”)? Ultimately, in the same way that transparency and opacity are parts of ourselves and of language and communication, do we need to create a truish form of fake (a post-truth) in order to expose a truth? Which is more believable, fiction or reality? Well, I believe there is always a need for a certain sense of opacity in order to reveal illusory transparencies, through literature, in this case. Or should I be asking this to my computer?

References

Andersen, C. U. and Pold, S. B., 2011. Introduction. C. U. Andersen and S. B. Pold (eds.). Interface Criticism: Aesthetics Beyond Buttons. Aarhus: Aarhus University Press. Pp. 7-18.

Bouchardon, S., Volckaert, V., Dumas, L., Zénouda, H., 2012. Opacity. , last accessed October 19, 2018.

Bouchardon, S., Routier, C., Aufrechter, A. and Chaudet, E. (2016). Untrace. , last accessed October 16, 2018.

Derrida, J., 1997. Of Grammatology. Corrected Edition. Trans. G. C. Spivak. Baltimore and London: The Johns Hopkins University Press. [1967]

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Emerson, L., 2014. Reading Writing Interfaces: From the Digital to the Bookbound. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press.

Fuller, F. (2016). Black Sites and Transparent Layers. Keynote Conference. First International Conference “Interface Politics,” org. GREDITS (Bau Design College of Barcelona), IMAGIT/BCN (Hangar) and MEDIACCIONS Research Group (Open University of Catalonia). Barcelona. , last accessed January 9, 2017.

Gaylor, B., 2015. Do Not Track. Documentary. Canada. , last accessed October 19, 2018.

Koestler, A., 1977. The Act of Creation. London: Picador. [1964]

Marques, D., 2018. Reading Digits. Haptic Reading Processes in the Experience of Digital Literary Works. Ph.D. Thesis. Coimbra. Universidade de Coimbra.

Pold, S. B., 2011. Interface Perception. C. U. Andersen and S. B. Pold (eds.), Interface Criticism: Aesthetics Beyond Buttons. Aarhus: Aarhus University Press. Pp. 91-113.

Spivak, G. C., 1997. Translator’s Preface. Derrida, J., Of Grammatology. Corrected Edition. Trans. G. C. Spivak. Baltimore and London: The Johns Hopkins University Press. Pp. ix-lxxxviii.

Weiser, M., 1991. The Computer for the 21st Century. , last accessed October 16, 2018.

Diogo Marques https://www.cienciavitae.pt/711A-997A-427C

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Narrative Ignot Ignasi Deulofeu

Abstract I will present here three ways to address the visual interpretation of a text that corresponds to three of my professional proposals:

1.Opinion pages of La Vanguardia: The work of the illustrator of articles, unlike the comic cartoonist who starts from his own ideas, is always subject to the contents of the accompanying article. Within this constrained framework there is but ample scope to express one’s own ideas depending both on the capacities or even character of the illustrator and on the more or less rigid editorial line of the medium in which it is published.

2.Book “The Congress”: False rhetoric of power, which creates the convictions of people, simplifies reality to make it unrecognizable and easily manipulable. In my book I make a shift between phrases extracted from the Francoist rhetoric and phrases typical of the language of management, so that confronted with images close to the two domains creates a symbiosis which makes it difficult to differentiate their origin, creating an effect similar to that of superimposed double images.

3.Liber Fair: In my present project I use scientific dissemination magazines of the 60s to elaborate what I ironically call a little data, I generate an array of phrases and images with which I elaborate combinations that result in vignettes with text that take meaning depending on the situations in which they are used and compositions of images that take different meanings depending on the chosen combination. Tags Arts and visual media; art and digital technologies; journalism; digital telecommunications; poetics of automation and infrastructure.

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Narrative Ignot

There is an anecdote about the well-known Pieter Brueghel that I want to res- cue it here because it raises the central theme that concerns us, that of interpretation, which in the field of illustration has to do with how a text is interpreted visually or in other words how the truth of a text is transmitted through the image. It is said that Brueghel, in the convulsive situation in which his country was at that time and he himself being at the end of a disease that would soon lead him to his death, told his wife to burn a series of drawings since the texts that accompanied them were too mordacious and they made too much joke, it is supposed he instructed that with the aim not to harm their family.

The anecdote is more or less like that, I do not care about the accuracy of the terms, what I’m interested in highlighting here is the fact that he asked to burn some drawings because of the texts that accompanied the images. This clearly shows that visual representation, if not accompanied by an explanation, can lose the effect and meaning that you want to give and extract.

I will present here three ways to address the visual interpretation of a text that corresponds to three of my professional proposals:

1.The first proposal I present covers a long period of time with a main and more intense period of 5 years in which I focus on the realization of 2 or 3 monthly illustrations for the opinion pages of the newspaper La Vanguardia, with which I deal with very different but mostly political issues made under commission of the mentioned newspaper from the articles of different copywriters.

2.The second proposal is the book The Congress published in 2015 and composed of 120 illustrations that, although being carried out jointly in a period of about 3 months, are based on a collection of texts of diverse origin accumula- ted throughout Years, grouped thematically around the Eucharistic Congress of Barcelona in 1952 and the Mobile World Congress (MWC) in the same city. In this case the texts are integrated in the same images and their motivation is more personal and it is not an assignment. 3.The third and last proposal is a set of 8 large-format panels made for the Liber’s Fair this year, in which I work from 8 poems belonging to 8 emerging local poets.

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Opinion pages of La Vanguardia

The work of the illustrator of articles, unlike the comic cartoonist who starts from his own ideas, is always subject to the contents of the accompanying article. Within this constrained framework there is but ample scope to express one’s own ideas depending both on the capacities or even character of the illustrator and on the more or less rigid editorial line of the medium in which it is published. I want to point out from the outset that I personally prefer not to make my intention explicit in the drawing, but that does not prevent me from expressing personal ideas in some cases even opposed to those of the article, contributing nuances that do not exist in the article or in the best of the cases and when I agree with what is expressed in the article corroborating-bluntly. However, I repeat, these different approaches are never made explicit, but they are there.

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I have made a selection of these illustrations grouped into thematic groups for several reasons that I will detail. In a first group of 4 illustrations I analyze the calls for elections in different countries and dates. The first of these, as it could not be otherwise, refers to the 2012 US presidential election in which Oba- ma was presented by the Democratic Party and Romney by the Republican, placing ironically the two candidates in a boxing ring and as an arbitrator the well-known representation of the Masonic symbol that appears on the dollar bill. (Image 1)

Ilustration. Ignasi Deulofeu

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The second illustration does not exactly correspond to democratic elections but represents the celebration of the 18th Congress of the Communist Party of China in 2012, in which the successor as the head of the party was decided. In this case, contrary to the previous illustration in which I introduce symbols not present in the article, I leave a small Chinese story about a hare that appears in the article, although transforming it from a photograph of the then Chinese president, Hu Jintao giving the hand to an officer. (Image 2)

Ilustration. Ignasi Deulofeu

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The third of the illustrations of this group is from 2013 in Iran, and represents the Iraqi leader Rohani, a candidate who presented himself as a change from the then president Ahmadinejad, with slight signs of reform and moderniza- tion that were often represented in his public appearances as a slight smile. (Image 3)

Ilustration. Ignasi Deulofeu

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The fourth illustration of this group is about the electoral results of 2015 in Andalusia and accompanies an article by Kepa Aulestia entitled “Total Void” in which he comments that “party politics have been so empty that they run the risk of holding on to any opportunity that is offered to him to be divided by lots the institutional power “. I use an image of the bottles of Coca-Cola and Pepsicola to symbolize the bipartisan policy of the two majority parities in Spain. (Image 4)

Ilustration. Ignasi Deulofeu

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An element present in many of my illustrations are the photographs that I personally take in the streets of people in different situations to which I later add some symbolic element related to the topics that are dealt with in the article. In this way based in what happens in the street I portrait what the article analyzes.

The first illustration in which I include this way of representing the action of people in the street corresponds to an image of a 15M assembly in Plaza Cata- lunya in Barcelona and one of the banners that filled the plaza at that time. The illustration accompanies an article by Xavier Antich from June 2011 in which he criticizes the treatment of the issue of 15M in some media. (Image 5)

Ilustration. Ignasi Deulofeu

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The second sample in which I include images of the street I have also chosen to exemplify at the same time an event that often happens in the newspapers, and that is that the topics that are discussed are repeated and transformed over time creating a sequentiality that I have often solved using the same or similar visual elements adding some variation. In this case, I return to the previous image of 15M and add a portrait of the Italian politician Beppe Grillo. The publication is from December 2013, that is, two years after the previous one and it analyzes the distances and differences between the movement promoted by Grillo and the action of the outraged in Spain in 2011. (Image 6)

Ilustration. Ignasi Deulofeu

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To finish this journey of years of publications in the opinion pages of the newspaper I have selected an illustration that links to the subject of which I will speak later. This illustration accompanies an article by Carles Casajuana of December 20, 2013 that is entitled “Human stupidity”. It analyzes the figure of Egas Moniz, who although it seems incredible now received the 1949 Nobel Prize for discovering the therapeutic value of lobotomy in certain psychoses, he also talks about the more than one hundred nuclear tests that were conducted in the Nevada test Site between 1951 and 1962 and that caused cancer cases to increase exponentially throughout the state and finally the case of Von Filek, the man who scam the Francoist government that we will now deal briefly to introduce the new block of drawings that I present here. (Image 7)

Ilustration. Ignasi Deulofeu

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Book “The Congress”

Following the book “Filek” by Ignacio Martínez de Pisón in which he makes a detailed study of the life of the scammer we can find out the extent of the deception and what is even more interesting we can know about the reasons why Franco and his environment came to believe that a false formula made with Jarama water and other elements could become the fuel that would solve the nation’s supply problems. The process is quite bizarre and involves a lot of positions and Francoist institutions but perhaps what is more interesting to note is that Franco until May 1940, that is 5 months after the deception was discovered, according to some witnesses was still convinced of the benefits of synthetic fuel.

This anecdote clearly exemplifies the central theme of my book, that false rhetoric of power, which creates the convictions of people, simplifies reality to make it unrecognizable and easily manipulable. In my book I make a shift between phrases extracted from the Francoist rhetoric and phrases typical of the language of management, so that confronted with images close to the two domains creates a symbiosis which makes it difficult to differentiate their -ori gin, creating an effect similar to that of superimposed double images.

This shift, as a result of a choice of phrases extracted from the sources from which these rhetoric arises: catechetical books, self-help web pages, etc. which I was collecting for a long time, prompted me to unite two unrelated worlds: the Eucharistic Congress of 1952 and the Mobile World Congress.

This juxtaposition game has allowed me to establish concomitences between the two events, celebrated in Barcelona with a difference of more than half a century, which can guide us when it comes to finding out the falsehoods that prove their speeches.

Briefly these would be the concomitant ideas of the two congresses I have numbered relating them to a selection of drawings of the book:

1-The spectacularization of the urban environment 2-The goodness of leadership and hierarchy as an organizational system 3-The supposed absolute consensus with the organized acts

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4-The desire to magnify an unquestionable fact and the invention of facts that are not verifiable or directly false presented as real. (Image 8)

Ilustration. Ignasi Deulofeu

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5-Faith in the undeniable sense of a better future for the city, the regenerative and positive power of what is proposed. (Image 9)

Ilustration. Ignasi Deulofeu

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6-The pedagogical discourse as a means of submission 7-The false independence of the will of the individual, that paradoxically is only independent if it moves within the established margins. 8-The control and monitoring of people’s acts as a necessary fact for the proper functioning of the community 9-The adjudication to a higher entity above the control that actually resides in the organizers of the acts.

Finally, the channel of transmission, broadcast and, as it is now called, of awareness of these ideas is an artificially established language in a well organized and hierarchical way. On the one hand there is the Francoist rhetoric that all of us who lived in those days knew well, and on the other the language of business management present, like the previous one, in all the fields of our society: media , work, education, politics, advertising, sports, art or even gastronomy.

Ignot Mechanics

I will finish with a last anecdote. In 1962 three prisoners escaped from Alcatraz, a famed jailbreak especially because of the 1979 film. In the escape the prisoners manufactured rafts with complicated technologies, taking into account the circumstances, learned from a Popular Mechanics magazine that they were able to consult in the very library of the prison. The director of the film is convinced that if it were not for that magazine, it would hardly been possible for them to escape through the waters of San Francisco Bay.

In my present project I use scientific dissemination magazines of the 60s to elaborate what I ironically call a little data, I generate an array of phrases and images with which I elaborate combinations that result in vignettes with text that take meaning depending on the situations in which they are used and compositions of images that take different meanings depending on the chosen combination.

One could compare, jokingly, with the wisdom books from which sentences are drawn that have application in certain vital situations. Magazines of scientific dissemination could be compared in this sense with the bible or the Koran as sources of wisdom above all in general, in a mishmash that tries to solve all the doubts of the person about the reality that surrounds it and about himself. Its constant combinatorial re-reading is converted thanks to its use in a self-knowledge and behavior guide.

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As a sample of the meanings that these images can get depending on the situation, I have chosen one of the panels that I made last October for the Liber Fair in which I started with 8 verses of local emerging poets to produce 8 collages. The panel chosen is based on a verse by David Caño that says: “Freedom is a permanent state without borders, is to offer clandestine love as a drug in full daylight, it is not to abandon the attempt, it is to be honest.” (Image 10, Image 11)

Ilustration. Ignasi Deulofeu

Ignasi Deulofeu Aymar http://ignot.org/

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Narratives Panel#4 Moderated by Pau Alsina

Quelic Berga, Javier Melenchón, Pau Alsina, Laia Blasco-Soplon Liquid film montage. A critical study of interactive documentary tools

Raúl León Mendoza What proves an image?

Alexandra Juhasz Forget the Audience: Reflections on Fake News Poetry Workshops as Radical Digital Media Literacy Given the Fact of Fake News

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Liquid film montage: A critical study of interactive documentary tools Quelic Berga, Javier Melenchón, Pau Alsina, Laia Blasco-Soplon

Abstract In this paper we present a comparative study among the main interactive documentary tools. The core aim is to show, analyze and compare the creative implications of different metaphors that articulate each of these audiovisual tools. And at the same time, to explore how these different approaches to audiovisual montage result in the preconfiguration and enhancement of different narrative grammars.

We distinguish and focus specifically on interactive documentaries softwares among other audiovisual tools and artefacts found in the computing environment. Within this type of softwares, we focus on contemporary programs for authorship of interactive documentaries: Korsakow developed in Germany by Florian Thalhofer and Matt Soar, the French tool Klynt by the Honkytonk Films team, and finally, Eko, developed after Interlude, by the Israeli-American team of Yoni Bloch.

Apart from analyzing the graphical user interface, we compile other types of data surrounding the artefacts, considering not only the tool itself, but the cultural ecosystem in where it unfolds. The result of the analyzes of those tree softwares allows us to develop a comparative table considering several characteristics: we analyze the constructs, models and methods provided, the use of the vocabulary of each program, the distribution and design of the interfaces, the functionalities and features, the technologies used and finally, the most frequent and specific uses of each tool.

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We close the article reflecting on the impact that contemporary audiovisual montages that are liquid or mutable, and that might adapt and modify themselves in relation to data and/or the final user might have important consequences on the construction of the notion of reality. We end up opening questions and observations about the authorship, the forms of consumption and the forms of preservation of these resulting audiovisual devices if possible.

Keywords Webdocs; interactive documentary; i-doc; constructs; metaphors; UI; interface; criticism.

1. Entendiendo la materialidad capa a capa

Cuando usamos ordenadores o dispositivos electrónicos siempre trabajamos con código binario de 0 y 1, es decir, con corriente o ausencia de corriente, encendido o apagado. Sorprendentemente, todo lo que hacemos con este sistema binario se puede resumir en tres acciones: calcular, modificar y almacenar (Hernández-Rodríguez 2015). Lo fascinante es que a partir de estos principios básicos hemos conseguido construir artefactos y simulaciones que emulan los entornos pre-computacionales. Uno de las aportaciones más importantes para extender y popularizar la computación en nuestra sociedad ha sido el desarrollo de interfaces orientadas al usuario en el creciente ámbito de Interacción Persona Ordenador. Lo que nos interesa en esta investigación es observar con detalle el funcionamiento de las interfaces. Siguiendo la descripción de Berte- lsen y Pold (2004), nos centraremos en las capas más cercanas al usuario: “An interface is basically a layered structure with layers of code where the top layers are progressively oriented towards the human while the bottom layers address the machine”.

Cada capa condiciona nuestra percepción, capacidad de operación y en definitiva, nuestra relación con el artefacto y el ecosistema en el que se despliega. Nos interesa indagar y entender mejor qué propuestas hacen las interfaces de usuario, qué metáforas y lenguaje utilizan y cómo se encajan con las mecánicas y funcionamiento real de las tecnologías de la información (Arteaga, 2017).

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2. Documentales interactivos

Nuestro foco de atención se dirige a las herramientas vinculadas a la produc- ción cultural para poder detectar las relaciones que se derivan entre herramienta y discursos (Manovich 2002). Como los Software Studies han puesto de manifiesto, el software funciona como soporte y transmisor de cultura, pero también como creador y determinante cultural . Es decir, el software nunca es una herramienta neutral, sino cargada de implicaciones sobre la manera de producir cultura (Berga et al. 2015). En concreto, en este estudio escogemos las herramientas del ámbito cinematográfico y audiovisual, ya que es un sector que captura y se alimenta de contextos culturales, o dicho de otra manera, su creación afecta y es afectado por los contextos culturales en los que es presentado. Así pues, procederemos a analizar cómo condiciona la materialidad computacional, las capas de software y las propuestas operativas de algunas herramientas a la edición audiovisual interactiva, con especial atención a las metáforas que se utilizan en cada caso.

Como ya se ha discutido en un artículo anterior, podemos clasificar el universo de herramientas de edición audiovisual digital entre cine no-lineal (Premiere, Final Cut, iMovie, etc.), cine en directo (Modul8, Arkaos, vvvv, etc.), audiovisuales interactivos o webdoc (Klyn, Eko, Korsakow, etc.) y proyectos de autor, desarrollados a medida (Berga 2016). De este universo de herramientas nos centraremos en las herramientas para la autoría y creación de cine interactivo o webdocs como género emergente dentro del ámbito de los audiovisuales (Gifreu 2014)). Nos interesan especialmente porque están aparentemente exentas de referentes pre-computacionales (Murray 2012) y porque de hecho han abandonado la materialidad del celuloide abriéndose a las posibilidades de la computación (Lew 2015).

3. Metodología

Para analizar el funcionamiento de las interfaces realizaremos una compa- ración de tres productos tecnológicos. Siguiendo las propuestas de Mark & Smith 1995, recogidas por Oates (p.108 2006), consideramos como productos o artefactos de las tecnologías de la información los constructos, modelos, métodos y las instancias de estos. Para comparar estos productos nos centramos en el análisis de las interfaces de herramientas para la creación de audiovisuales interactivos. Utilizamos tres de los nueve puntos propuestos por la metodolo-

99 AFTER POST-TRUTH Interface Politics, 2nd International Conference gía de Bertelsen y Pold (2004): la identificación de estándares, el análisis de la materialidad y remediación y la observación de qué elementos de control y qué elementos culturales destila la interfaz. Esta propuesta de método, descrita como guía crítica de la interfaz, tiene la virtud de abrir el espectro crítico hacia una reflexión estética que no se limita a los aspectos cognitivos de los individuos frente a las máquinas, sino que introduce aspectos culturales y políticos que determinan la experiencia misma de la interrelación entre máquinas y personas.

4. Tres maneras de proponer relatos interactivos: Klynt, Eko y Korsakow

En este apartado nos centramos en tres herramientas de edición o autoría de audiovisuales que tienen en su ADN la promesa de la interacción e inclusión del usuario durante el acto audiovisual. Sin embargo, hay que tener en cuenta que el documental interactivo es un género en proceso de consolidación (Gifreu 2014) y por ello nos parece interesante analizar qué proponen estas herramientas y qué modos de operar y ejecutar narraciones audiovisuales in- tentan sistematizar. Apuntaremos así su capacidad de preconfigurar y potenciar distintas gramáticas narrativas y como estas transforman, vehiculan o median nuestra relación con la noción de realidad.

4.1. Klynt Esta herramienta nace y crece en Francia, que junto con Canadá, es uno de los países referentes en el desarrollo y producción de webdocs (Gifreu 2016). Se trata de un país pionero en el desarrollo de CD-ROM interactivos para museos, con políticas culturales que apoyan la producción audiovisual y la investigación de nuevos formatos. Algunos de estos proyectos encuentran en la cadena de televisión franco-alemana ‘Arte’ formas de reconocimiento, difusión e incluso coproducción. En este contexto, la productora Honkytonk films, dirigida por Arnaud Dressen y Benoit de Vilmorin, decide fundar Klynt en 2009. Origi- nalmente utilizando la tecnología Flash tanto para el desarrollo de su interfaz como para la ejecución de sus obras resultantes, han ido evolucionando hasta la versión actual, con un backend que usa Adobe Air y un frontend basado en HTML5, JavaScript y CSS3.

Si comparamos la interfaz de una herramienta de edición de DVDs (Figura 1) y la interfaz actual de Klynt (Figura 2), vemos claras similitudes en el plantea- miento del espacio y las funcionalidades. Podemos afirmar que Klynt adapta las ideas del CD-ROM interactivo a la red y sigue así la tradición de lo que

100 Narratives_Panel#4 fue a finales de siglo la autoría de DVDs. De este modo, asume un paradigma específico: los elementos narrativos (descritos como clips o escenas), pueden ser clasificados y/o pertenecen a grupos temáticos. La interfaz de Klynt coloca en el centro de la pantalla un organigrama de contenidos audiovisuales que se pueden conectar mediante enlaces y en un lateral superior dibuja una represen- tación en miniatura de esta estructura en forma de mapa. El resultado aparece como estructuras arbóreas o rizomáticas que permiten múltiples recorridos, siempre predefinidos por el autor/a y que pueden ser transitados de distintos modos por el espectador-usuario. Crea así una experiencia con una serie limi- tada de combinaciones posibles, sin una duración de exploración predetermi- nada y sin la necesidad, ni la capacidad de definir un final concreto. Para Klynt, el relato es un paseo por una estructura audiovisual de naturaleza ramificada y definida por el realizador. En la propia web del proyecto se anuncia: “Edit your storyboard like a Mind Map to organize your narrative structure”.

Fig. 1 Ejemplo de una interfaz de creación de DVDs (Apple DVD Studio Pro 3).

Fig. 2 Captura de pantalla de la interfaz de Klynt 3.

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4.2. EKO Studio La herramienta EKO Studio (2016) es la nueva versión de Interlude de Tree- house (2010) que nació en Israel de la mano del músico, compositor y estrella de rock Yoni Bloch (‘Eko (company)’ (2018)).

Israel, aparte de su conocida reputación militar, invierte activamente en el desarrollo de innovaciones tecnológicas. Las características geográficas de este país hacen de la red un campo de expansión y crecimiento de gran valor. Podemos ver en el desarrollo de Interlude múltiples evidencias de este fervor y apoyo a proyectos innovadores de Israel (wikipedia israel xxx). Por ejemplo, en 2012 Yoni recibió el “Prime Minister’s Prize” a la iniciativa e innovación (Klein Leichman, A. 2012). El proyecto cuenta también con una cartera de inversores y clientes altamente competentes e interesados en el aspecto más comercial del potencial de la interactividad (Speed, C. 2014). Eko, con sus oficinas en Tel Aviv y Nueva York, propone una herramienta como plataforma de servicios (PaaS, Platform as a Service), completamente online que permite editar, alojar y exhibir este tipo de proyectos interactivos. Con su claro objetivo comercial, dispone de 12 patentes y se trata de una herramienta comercial y propietaria. Utiliza tecno- logía Flash para la herramienta de edición del proyecto y sigue los estándares de web libres para garantizar el visionado en el mayor número de navegadores.

El hecho de que Yoni venga del mundo de la música y que uno de los proyectos más exitosos realizados con Interlude sea el videoclip musical de Bob Dylan Like a rolling stone ( https://helloeko.com/v/like-a-rolling-stone xxx), nos da pistas sobre el uso de metáforas y constructos de fondo que pone en circula- ción esta herramienta. Navegar a través de Eko permite empezar con una trama principal y en ciertos momentos elegir el foco de atención o entrar en una subtrama. Como el mismo Yoni afirma en una entrevista, la idea surgió durante una discusión con su grupo musical alrededor de la elección del protagonista del solo principal. Decidieron entonces grabar todos los solos y dejar a mer- ced del público la elección del solo que querrían escuchar. Eko, como Klynt, usa la metáfora de nodo como un clip que puede estar enlazado con otros. Se desmarca de Klynt con los “parallels” (figura 3) que representa en la interfaz la idea de alternar puntos de vista de una misma acción. Los “parallels”, siguiendo la idea de zapping televisivo, permiten elegir un nodo entre varios sin romper la continuidad de la línea del tiempo.

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Fig 3. Detalle de la interfaz de EKOStudio (Parallels)

Con Eko la narración es un flujo lineal de izquierda a derecha, que puede variar debido a la interacción del usuario. Su propuesta de interacción imita una estructura de preguntas y respuestas que va condicionando el montaje. Por ejemplo, la serie de ficción WarGames (Figura 4) utiliza una línea del tiempo en la parte superior de la interfaz para ubicar al espectador en el tiempo, pero también para visualizar las variaciones que están provocando sus elecciones. El visionado de un film de Eko tiene una duración determinada que puede variar levemente debido a las interacciones del usuario. Se permite así cierto control por parte del realizador, que puede mantener el ritmo y los momentos de clímax propios del audiovisual. Como se anuncia en la portada de su plataforma, “Control the story. Eko gives you the power to shape entertainment in real time” (http://helloeko.com xxx). De ese modo, la metáfora imperante en Eko es “elige tu propia historia” donde uno puede elegir cómo matiza la narración predefinida.

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(figura 4 - captura de pantalla de la ficción interactiva War Games realizada con EKO https://helloeko.com/wargames)

4.3. Korsakow El creador de este software es el artista visual alemán Florian Thalhofer, quien realizó una narrativa interactiva, Small World (1997), con la que ganó el premio literatur.digital en 2002. Este proyecto se convierte en la semilla para el desarrollo del sistema Korsakow. Primero fue creado con Director y luego Flash. A partir de la versión 5 utiliza Java como código libre y en la versión 6 ex- porta con tecnologías abiertas, siguiendo la tendencia del uso de los estándares web, al igual que hace Eko, Klynt y la mayoría de proyectos de autor contempo- ráneos (Geraci, 2017).

El despliegue de esta herramienta no nace de un interés comercial sino de la in- tención de explorar las capacidades artísticas de este nuevo medio. Presentado el año 2000 por Thalhofer en el marco de los estudios de interacción persona-ordenador de la Universidad de Artes de Berlín, la propuesta se convierte en un híbrido entre obra artística y herramienta para explorar las especificidades del computador a la hora de contar narrativas audiovisuales (Weidle, 2016).

What I developed was a simple structure that makes sense in terms of telling stories on a computer. It’s not the way that stories are traditionally told of course. It wasn’t my intention to make a point against traditional storytelling at all; I just didn’t come from a traditional background and no one told me how to tell a story properly, so I just came up with a way to do it using a computer (Nash, 2014).

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Observando las posibilidades de la máquina sin referentes anteriores surge una mirada fresca que propone modos de operar específicos y novedosos. El hecho de que esta propuesta escape del intento de adoptar un medio anterior es, seguramente, uno de los factores que justifica el alto interés de los académi- cos en comparación con las otras dos herramientas. En términos de interfaz es probablemente la menos atractiva para el usuario, pues no propone una repre- sentación visual de ningún tipo para hacer visible la estructura de la narrativa, sino que se basa en un sistema de etiquetado para generar enlaces conceptuales (Figura 5). Korsakow propone tres conceptos: las unidades mínimas de narra- ción (SNU Smallest Narrative Unit) que son clips audiovisuales; un sistema de palabras clave (descritos como POCs, Points Of Contact, sean in-POCs o out-POCs) que sirven para relacionar un clip con otro; y finalmente las “vidas” (Lives) que son las veces que puede una SNU repetirse en el proyecto. Así pues, lo que nos presenta la interfaz de usuario es una base de datos con toda esta información. Lo importante aquí, y subyacente como metáfora, son las conexiones sinápticas entre las SNU.

(Fig 5. Parte de la interfaz de usuario de Korsakow)

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Korsakow no pretende dar continuidad a una tradición específica, sino más bien analizar, proponer y explorar nuevos modos de relacionarse con la complejidad emergente de la sociedad de la información. Como describe la propia web:

More than a software Korsakow is a way of thinking. It enables authors to organize their content in a new way. Creating the rules, but not pre-thinking the experience of their work (Korsakow 6, 2000).

Así pues, usando Korsakow se obtiene una experiencia narrativa compleja que no ha sido previsualizada ni planificada de un modo explícito por el realizador. Se establecen una serie de interacciones entre el realizador, los algoritmos - capaces de conectar, aleatorizar opciones o responder al espectador - y las decisiones en tiempo real del espectador que navega, o mejor dicho, que divaga a través de los conceptos definidos en la base de datos. Una serie compleja de combinaciones, la ausencia de una estructura definida y el desconocimiento respecto la duración específica de la obra, generan una experiencia diferente respecto las expectativas de un espectador frente a un film analógico. El relato se co-crea a lo largo de la experiencia del usuario. En la propia web del autor podemos leer:

Korsakow is a software that allows authors to create rule-based, non-linear and interactive films (Korsakow-films) (‘Korsakow Software – FLORIAN THALHOFER’ 2010).

5. Promesas, hechizos y luces

Como hemos podido ver, el contexto en el que se despliega cada herramienta nos sirve para entender mejor el porqué de ciertas propuestas en la interfaz. Es evidente que estas herramientas están generando nuevas formas de narrar, pero sobretodo nos interesa el tipo de implicaciones subjetivas y políticas que traen incrustadas en sus interfaces, especialmente aquellas en que se ponen en juego las relaciones entre creador-espectador, máquina-humano y narrativa-interacción.

Vemos en el caso de Klynt formas de estructurar el conocimiento que pueden evocar los paradigmas de la ilustración en tanto sistema de información ordenada sobre ejes cartesianos y representado en una compleja red de cajas clasificadas tal como lo haría una enciclopedia. Con esta herramienta el realizador crea una infraestructura de caminos e invita al espectador a decidir su recorrido sin marcar un objetivo concreto, sino invitando a la navegación y/o

106 Narratives_Panel#4 exploración. La interacción es concebida como una libre elección dentro de una constelación narrativa pre-estructurada. Los algoritmos de Klynt se limitan a dibujar el escenario, formalizan las estructuras, pero no proponen ni juegan un papel en la creación de la narrativa, como sí hace Korsakow, por ejemplo.

EKO, en cambio, no propone un paseo libre, sino elegir una toma u otra. La promesa de libertad se tiñe de hechizo, pues el realizador controla y vigila en todo momento los potenciales despliegues narrativos.

Our patented technology features a web-based authoring tool, player, and analytics dashboards, enabling the creation, distribution, measurement, and monetization of interactive video (Eko 2016a).

En EKO la máquina hace de asistente del creador para poder acompañar, guiar y responder mejor a las acciones del espectador. La interacción se resume en una adaptación de la narrativa preestablecida y, como ellos mismos dicen, el objetivo es tener más herramientas para personalizar y incrementar el valor del producto.

Korsakow en cambio, como proyecto artístico-tecnológico se lanza a la ex- ploración de las posibilidades del medio computacional. Hace una propuesta atrevida y abierta, en la que parece que el objetivo es pensar, explorar y experimentar sobre el propio el medio. Weidle (2016) lo define como

Media software as part of an emerging counter-practice that challenges story as primary organizing principle and facilitates further investigation of digital environments for the making of documentary.

En Korsakow el realizador es, al mismo tiempo, espectador de su obra ya que el montaje, el código y la interacción se interrelacionan de tal modo que no hay modo de prefijar una narrativa. La narrativa no se basa en un relato predetermi- nado, sino que propone una experiencia entre varios agentes: la base de datos, el realizador, el espectador, las normas y la máquina. La máquina y el humano aquí se relacionan de un modo distinto: el creador-espectador ve y decide, y la máquina re-calcula y propone. La herramienta no permite escribir código directamente, pero permite operaciones propias de la lógica algorítmica y el realizador puede asignar valores a estas lógicas para crear lo que ellos mismos llaman los sistemas Korsakow o K-films. Estamos frente a una herramienta que diluye los elementos estáticos de las narraciones audiovisuales. En lugar de la obra cerrada pone en primer plano la idea de flujo operformatividad.

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Hemos visto tres maneras distintas de crear narrativas online lo cual tiene el poder de condicionar nuestra percepción, y por tanto nuestra acción sobre el mundo. Si nuestro modo de construir relatos, en estos casos, depende de las tecnologías de la información, es evidente que debemos seguir explo- rando sus posibilidades creativas así como analizan- do sus implicaciones subjetivas, culturales y políti- cas. Nos parece importante entender que estamos utilizando un ecosistema de tecnologías que, aparte de poder emular los medios anteriores, dispone de sus propias características materiales. Estamos aún entendiendo las consecuencias de un entorno altamente representacional, virtualizado, donde cada icono, cada interfaz, cada representación de objeto es una construcción que descansa única y exclusivamente sobre datos y procesos (Echeverría 1999; Hernández-Rodríguez 2015). No sabemos hasta dónde nos va a llevar la exploración el entorno computacional en el cual vivimos actualmente, pero sí sabemos que las nociones de tiempo, autor, relato, obra, verdad, están siendo profundamente diluidas y transformadas.

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Lew, M. (2015) ‘Vers un cinéma interactif’, Cahiers de Narratologie. Analyse et théorie narratives, (28). doi: 10.4000/narratologie.7259.

Manovich, L. (2002) The language of new media. 1st MIT Press pbk. ed. Cambridge, Mass: MIT Press (Leonardo).

Murray, J. H. (2012) Inventing the Medium: Principles of Interaction Design as a Cultural Practice. Cambridge, Mass: MIT Press.

Nash, K. (2014) ‘An Interview with Florian Thalhoffer, Media Artist and Documentary Maker’, in Nash, K., Hight, C., and Summerhayes, C. (eds) New Documentary Ecologies. London: Palgrave Macmillan UK, pp. 192–197. doi: 10.1057/9781137310491_13.

Oates, B. J. (2006) Researching information systems and computing. London ; Thousand Oaks, Calif: SAGE Publications.

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Speed, C. (2014) ‘How an Israeli Rock Star Got Bob Dylan and Silicon Valley to Dig His Tech Startup’. Available at: http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2014-04-24/ how-an-israeli-rock-star-got-bob-dylan-and-silicon-valley-to-dig-his-tech-startup.html (Accessed: 12 November 2018).

Thalhofer, F. (1997) ‘Small World’. Available at: http://thalhofer.com/small-world- growing-up-in-a-small-town/ (Accessed: 12 November 2018).

Weidle, F. (2016) ‘Korsakow Perspective(s)’. doi: 10.18146/2213-0969.2016.jethc116

— Quelic Berga (UOC) https://quelic.net/ — Javier Melenchón (UOC) https://www.uoc.edu/portal/en/news/kit-premsa/guia-experts/di- rectori/javier-melenchon.html — Pau Alsina (UOC) https://www.uoc.edu/webs/palsinag/ES/curriculum/index.html — Laia Blasco-Soplon (UOC) http://transfer.rdi.uoc.edu/es/investigador/blasco-soplon-laia

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An updated version of this paper was submitted to the #24 Artnodes Journal CFP and selected for publication. Read it in: http://doi.org/10.7238/a.v0i24.3297

What proves an image? Raúl León Mendoza

Abstract We are interested in the journey of a surveillance-image us a genre of visual representation. This kind of image (whose origins are a device of disciplinary power), keep in the present double status; first as an prove in police and judi- cial; and second, as a narrative-audiovisual entertainment.

If each of these points of view, implanted in practically the entire urban space with the illusion of ensuring our safety, is likely to end up in the events section of Ana Rosa Quintana’s TV program. The change of the use of these images, turns the whole of the urban territory in a kind of television set and therefore our life in the city in a potential audiovisual show.

Hence, there are hundreds of millions of short films in all parts of the world, latent sequences, waiting to be a necessary shot for a story. Millions of reality shows ready to broadcast. And yet, does the use of these images conform to the law? Why these images can take you to jail and to Ana Rosa Quintana’s program at the same time?

Keywords Image; law; post truth; surveillance; media.

Raúl León Mendoza http://www.upv.es/ficha-personal/raulemen

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Forget the Audience: Reflections on Fake News Poetry Workshops as Radical Digital Media Literacy Given the Fact of Fake News Alexandra Juhasz

Abstract Fake News Poetry Workshops are experiments in radical digital media literacy; they are first and foremost about being together in a shared place, talking and listening as we contemplate and express our own truths about social media and its core falsities. To do this, we use poetry — a historically established method of being heard and making sense. Looking at one workshop and the poems it generated, the author reflects creatively, and with creative things, hoping we might find new forms to be inspired by others, like us or not, so as to thoughtfully communicate from and about our felt truths, vigilant listening, concentrated research, conscientious words, and lived experiences. Instead of more fake news, we seek to pass on some parts of these selves (our words, our stories, our poetry) to others. We will forget the audience and focus on finding truths (from) ourselves.

Keywords Digital media literacy; fake news; truth; poetry; indexicality.

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In 2018, I have held ten Fake News Poetry workshops in various cities and sites in the US, Canada, and the UK. I have been trying to inspire something like 100 poems, while creating, reflecting on, and enjoying a developing process — Radical Digital Media Literacy given the fact of Fake News . Here, I will reflect, less as a scholar and more as a citizen-educator-participant-artist, upon one of those workshops, held with eight women who are members of the Devil’s Dyke Network in Brighton, England: a queer feminist poetry collective that I visited in March 2018. This particular workshop was especially memora- ble for me, and as such I think will be useful for situating my reflections on the project of radical digital media literacy as a whole. I will also make use some of the poems written there, as well as reflections about the process of fake news poetry workshops written by other participating poets, as a way to distribute the description and analysis of this process, experienced and practiced by many. This piece is adapted from a blog post of the same name published by the poetry blog, “The Operating System.” (Juhasz 2018) On top of poetry writing, my experiment in radical digital media literacy is committed to better machines and means for moving things from place to place, medium to medium, audience to audience, writer to writer, always attending to methods and affects that are too hard to find and enjoy on the corporate internet. (Juhasz, 2018, “Radical Digital Media Literacy in a Post-Truth Anti-Trump Era.”)

Fake News Poetry Workshops are first and foremost about being together in a shared place, talking and listening as we contemplate and express our own truths about social media and its core falsities. To do this, we use poetry — a historically established method of being heard and making sense.

Why poetry? one faculty member had asked initially, after listening to Alex propose the project at an early meeting — bristling a bit (or so I thought) at its privileging. To me teaching means making something together in a room, is always situational, sometimes also situationist. I said that I interpreted the exercise broadly as a chance to have a conversation with students about their experiences of language and art-making and their personal and political truths; to hear about their writing and reading practices; and to invite them to make work that related somehow to their socially mediated lives. I imagined that thinking about poetry with them would mean offering ways both open and constrained that they might use to respond in class and later to the issues Alex was raising. (Cohen, 2018)

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The poetry is the excuse and an opportunity, a better way to be smart, ethical, true, and heard in this time of fake news and social media. “His behavior on Instagram/ was not far from his/ reality.” Poetry allows us to communicate with and reflect upon each other outside of the structures and vernaculars that, in the name of rationality, proof, truth and power, produce our current chaotic, disturbing, and often fake digital reality. “Could our bodies be recording/ devices that receive + share other’s/truths?”

Forget THE AUDIENCE text buzzes & belly-rumbles could our bodies be recording devices that receive and share other’s truths His behavior on Instagram Was not far from his Reality

Did I reach the goal of 100? At some point, I stopped counting. Even though my #100hardtruths project (Juhasz, 2016) had initially aligned with the current administration’s first 100 days and often dealt with centennials, sets of 10x10, etc., I discovered that in the workshops—where we were making good use of my digital media literacy primer—our energy was better focused on creating an atmosphere of authenticity, safety, dialogue, place-making, and meaning-creation, rather than on quantifiable outcomes. “Forget/ THE AUDIENCE.”

The poets focused some of the dialogue around the Get Lit organization’s physical space being a community space, comparing it to digital community space. Notions of authentic relationships and safe spaces came to the forefront of the discussion. In their dialogue, the poets were taking part in active place-making: agreeing, riffing, and questioning internet communities and the digital information age in real time, fully present with one another. This activity primed the meaning-creation of their writing and performance. (Ettress and Rodriguez, 2018)

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“Forget the Audience” is one of seven poems created at the Fake News Poetry Workshop held with the Devil’s Dyke Network in Brighton England in March 2018, led by Linda Paoli and Claudia Treacher, with a great deal of pedagogic assistance from Helen Dixon. Each of the ten workshops took up the norms and interests of the teaching poets and their anticipated participants in their particular environments. The Devil’s Dyke workshop was focused on enacting and understanding somatic and cyborg experiences as feminist methods that might bring some clarity to our lived encounters on and off the internet. It was at once sad, inspiring, intense, and empowering.

The workshop opened with exercises that connected us to the physical space of the room and our bodies. We then talked about the devices that constantly di- sorient and distract us from the present, and the virtual “crowds” that we hoped or feared might be watching — including the men we might want, or hate, or fear — always reminding us that the patriarchy is still alive and well a decade or so after we had imagined and created worlds outside its gaze. “We need new psychotechnologies through which we may be able to reclaim our capacity to pay attention in ways that are not self-destructive,” explained participating poet and technologist, Kyle Booten (2018).

I never noticed the tinnitus in my ears Always checking Cohesion and fragments together IMAGES MIRROR IMAGES Always there to push me back as I push in equal measure.

There were eight or so of us, all queer feminists, mostly in our 20s or 30s, prima- rily British and white, writers and digital citizens all (I am from the US and am in my fifties). We quickly discovered that we all shared a similar experience of our bodies on social media — something akin to being inmates in a vision-prison that we entered willingly and remained within during all waking hours, a place where

116 Narratives_Panel#4 we could be “visited” anytime but never seen right, a place where we could never live up to the expectations constantly pressing on us from all sides.

WE FLATTEN. HUMAN TOUCH Being together, Feeling, acknowledging And letting it go. I REFLECT SOMETHING BODIES RECEIVING

Fake News Poetry workshops “push me back as/ I push in equal measure.” We first spend some time getting to know each other. The session usually begins by stating one truth about ourselves and which technologies would be best engaged to “verify” that. At this juncture, I am quick to define technology to include any tool that extends the self to others through place and time: sure, the internet and other digital devices, but also pencils, flesh, and books. People get it: they grasp the formative inter-relations between lived reality, bodies, and our many mechanical and digital devices. We live with and use this combination of technologies as a complex verification (and falsification) machine. As we ruminate and share, we discover commonalities as well as differences. Even as we learn that our perspectives are relative, we strive to remain honest and truth-focused. “IMAGES. MIRROR IMAGES.”

The process was simple. Alex Juhasz took 45 minutes to have an honest dialogue about what fake news was and how it has affected our youth. She shared photos and statements she had collected called #100hardtruths and the poets shared how those statements impacted them. The conversation flowed from Fox News to Instagram. It swung from clickbait to credibility. One of our poets shared a statement that will always stick with me. “It’s possible,” she said, “that we will grow up never truly knowing what’s real.” After that a silence swept over the room. The weight of not only the Internet, but our connection and dependency on it was palpable. Luckily, these poets know how to think for themselves, how to write and feel with critical and constructive eyes. (Kelly Grace-Thomas, 2018)

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I have a terrible story about social media SPIT IT OUT lying is easier on the internet Does your body panic?

We all have terrible stories about social media. At Fake News Poetry workshops we have the permission to tell these terrible stories (and good ones, too). Next we spend some time looking at my #100hardtruths-#fakenews online primer. Workshop attendees are asked to find something on the site that feels resonant: an image, some writing, one of the #100hardtruths (over half of which are written by others or refer to others’ work). This is to remind us that there is much to find and learn outside of ourselves and on the internet. We can rely on other people’s work to nourish, encourage, inspire, and even change us.

The conversations that ensued were by turns uncomfortable and informative: all together, sharing a room that we had not recently inhabited, everyone was prompted to consider how they come to know the “truth” of very local political upheavals and of something as starkly divided as a dispute between management and workers. What channels of communication are in place in our lives that give us information about a labor dispute that is happening at our places of study, work, and living (the campus is all of these things in different ways)? What did people know from being on the picket line, or from official university communications, or from social media, or from conversations with other students? (Sam Solomon, 2018)

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Contrived moment Something weird happened To TIME AT THE BACK OF MY TONGUE My body is the noise of Everything I ever liked Mutating like slime mould What if the mirror Was our own body?

After my initial framing of the project, and participants’ strong expressions about their already highly-developed digital media literacy, the poet steps in. She has planned some ways to encourage the relations between creativity, writing, metaphor, truth, reality, fiction, daily living, and what participants know and have learned, thus far, about fake news. She might ask a question or suggest a prompt for a free-write. She helps us return to the noise of our bodies and clarify that noise through our words. We then move from discussion and feeling to doing — art, poetry — framed by simple and clear structures (our conversation, our experiences, the primer, the prompt) that continue to corral and link our thoughts and reflections.

We opened with a free write asking participants to investigate when they first learned about race generally and then their own race. We asked them to:

—Recall the first time you learned about race? How old were you? Where were you? What did you hear/learn? Draw into senses such as taste, smell, touch, color to describe?

—Remember the first time you remember when you learned of your race. How old were you? Where were you? What did you hear/learn? Draw into senses such as taste, smell, touch, color to describe?

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—Recall the first time you saw your racial group represented in the media? What was this representation? Where were you? What do you remember? Describe beginning with I see… (Chet’la Sebree and Margaret Rhee, 2018)

It is not immateralised it is lost. ALL I WANT TO BE I DO NOT NEED 1000 FOLLOWERS I JUST NEED MY MOM Loss when it is not there, loss when it is there. The irony in having A body now

During some sessions, people write a poem. Or they are invited to write a poem later, which they may or may not do. The project is buy-in at every step. Do it or don’t, share as you are comfortable.

For the Devil’s Dyke Workshop, we wrote fleeting thoughts about our conversation, bodily feelings, and feelings about our bodies, onto slips of paper. “the irony in having/A body now.” We lay these slips down in clusters, willy-nilly. We read our scatterings out loud. These bundles of meaning well-represented what we had been saying to each other, what we had heard, what had been felt in the room — powerfully, sadly, honestly, and with clear focus. But this was nothing like a one-to-one record, nothing like a photo; rather, our poems cut to loss, and want, and to an immaterial that can never be indexical.

The participants selected texts and images and separated them from their everyday contexts/functions, writing them into the poems. In so doing, they practiced abstraction — a practice which, following the logic of Evidentiary Realism, serves as a means of understanding the limitation of one’s own vision of reality. (Orr Menirom, 2018)

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We were moved and inspired, at least in that moment. We chose not to tweet or hashtag about it. We found that our audience wasn’t needed. Or, better said, we had become each other’s momentary witness and muse, and that seemed more than enough. It felt empowering to forget the audience, or acknowledge a more true if temporary one. We had created truths that encompassed some of our experiences and thoughts, ones we had built together there and then about fake news — truths about media that we could never discover solely on social media.

The impulse of the project is to shift platforms from digital news circulation and refusal and rebuttal to poetic forms as a way to explore truths and lies. What is fake? This is the question that I think most grabbed our group: it seems none, or very few, of us were willing to give over to the binary of fake/ truth, but shared an understanding that these ways of shaping the world are themselves up for grabs; and aren’t truth claims dangerous, the bedrock of colonialism and imperial occupation, and the justification for injustice? Indeed what is justice, even? We seek it, we talk about it together, at every turn we cultivate our understandings, learn new ways that justice escapes us, that we do harm. (T.L Cowan, 2018)

NOT FLAT ENOUGH it has to be autonomous me as productivity machine programmed by my phone input+data+body = product(ivity) The space between Liberation and entrapment

Fake News Poetry workshops are one-offs. I spend hours in advance working with a co-teacher to co-create a curriculum; we decide on methods to engage and stimulate the intimate group; I fly or ride somewhere and try to turn on my energy, as do my collaborators and participants. We are charged with purpose; we fall in love; we make art. The poems remain. We all go home. Then, there’s a post on the internet. Does anyone read it? Does that “audience” matter in any way? The Devil’s Dyke participants met me once: a middle-aged white woman from NYC who landed in their town and worked and learned with them for a few hours. I do not really know how hard they work at other things, how busy they are, how shy

121 AFTER POST-TRUTH Interface Politics, 2nd International Conference they might be, how far away I feel in New York. I do know that that evening with them changed me, and that some of them were changed by it, too.

“Loss when it is not/ there, Loss when/ it is there.” This radical digital media literacy is our best efforts to use technologies, including ourselves, to see and be seen, hear and be heard, know and be known, think and make sense. For the rest of 2018, and in 2019, I intend to keep this project going. I’ve seen it work — and want to see what else it can do for others. It is my sense from the workshops and from the poems that record them that we need to engage outside the sick and endangering structures and vernaculars that are born from corporate media ownership and the nations, citizens, or computers that abuse them to fuel the internet falsity under critique — principles like “growth by any means necessary.” So, the project will stay as small as I can manage, with collaboration of course.

the process is the outcome #s do not matter experience does scale is not a driver. virality is virility (Juhasz, 2017) (Alexandra Juhasz, handwritten notes from her notebook)

For 2018–2019, I will be changing things up a bit, leading Fake News Poe- try-Video Workshops with participating poets, video and sounds artists, and communities. We will talk about fake news and internet truths together, we will learn from the many ideas and questions in my primer, and then we will learn from the poems already written by others last year, artifacts of others’ attempts to speak their truths as art. A new sort of flow between people and their ideas and images will be generated, but not a cruel or careless one (like a like or a re- tweet). From truth to truth, poem to video, person to person, we will honor one another and one another’s art by making something real again and yet again. We will continue to create new formats for networking, listening, writing, reading and performing — about and outside the platforms provided by America’s behemoth corporations. Our art-making may be disjointed (in time and space, as a poem moves from one place to the next); meanings may jitter or slide but not based on intentional deceptions; our efforts at media literacy will keep us attentive. We will be inspired by others, like us or not, to thoughtfully make more art that derives from our felt truths, vigilant listening, concentrated re-

122 Narratives_Panel#4 search, conscientious words, and lived experiences. We will pass on some parts of these selves (our words, our stories, our poetry) to others. We will forget the audience and focus on finding truths (from) ourselves.

Bibliographic References

Albright, J. 2016. “#Election2016 #FakeNews Compilation.” Medium: https://medium.com/@d1gi/election2016-fakenews-compilation-455870d04bb.

Balsamo, A. 2011. Designing Culture: The Technlogical Imagination at Work. Durham: Duke University Press.

Booten, K. (2018). “Psychotechnologies of Care, Algorithms of Attention.” https:// medium.com/the-operating-system/10-tries-100-poems-take-1-field-notes-psychotechnologies-of-care-algorithms-of-attention-db48f6a3043d

Boyd. D. 2017. “Did Media Literacy Backfire?” Connected Learning Alliance: https:// clalliance.org/blog/media-literacy-backfire/.

Bratton, B. 2016.The Stack, On Software and Sovereignty. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.

Brown, W. 2015. Undoing the Demos: Neoliberalism’s Stealth Revolution. Cambridge: MIT Press.

Cheney-Lippold, J. 2017. We Are data: Algorithms and the Making of our Digital Selves. NY: NYU Press.

Cohen, L. (2018) Poetry and Pedagogy, a beginning and a continuation. https://medium.com/the-operating-system/10-tries-100-poems-take-7-lisa-cohen-field-notes- poetry-and-pedagogy-a-beginning-and-a-44319ac3f4a

Cowan, T.L. (2018) “Willful Healing Through Collaborative Collage.” https://medium.com/the-operating-system/10-tries-100-poems-take-5-t-l-5c0187d4405 Debord, G. 1967. Society of the Spectacle. France: Buchet-Chastel.

Ettress, A & Rodriguez, X. (2018). “The Poetics of Place-making.” https://medium. com/the-operating-system/10-tries-100-poems-take-3-aneesah-ettress-and-xiomara- rodriguez-field-notes-the-poetics-40bf1841fa2d

Grace-Thomas, K. (2018). “Poetry is the New Watchdog.” https://medium.com/the- operating-system/10-tries-100-poems-take-2-kelly-grace-thomas-field-notes-poetry- is-the-new-watchdog-95613ebdd23e

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McCluhan, M. 1967. The Medium is the Message. London: Penguin.

Juhasz, A. 2016.“#100hardtruths-#fakenews,” http://scalar.usc.edu/nehvectors/100hardtruths-fakenews/index. Juhasz, A. (2107). ““Trump’s Alpha Male Posturing was Made for our Social Media,” DAME. https://shar.es/1VXnu5

Juhasz, A. 2018. “Radical Digital Media Literacy in a Post-Truth Anti-Trump Era,” Radical Teacher 111 (Summer 2018): 23-29: http://radicalteacher.library.pitt.edu/ojs/ index.php/radicalteacher/article/view/524.

Juhasz, A. 2018a. “Forget the Audience,” https://medium.com/the-operating-system/ forget-the-audience-813d791053cf

Lovink, G. 2008. Zero Comments. NY: Routledge.

Ludes, P., ed. 2011 Algorithms of Power: Key Invisibles. LIT Verlag.

Menirom, O. (2018) “Fake News, Video Poetry, and Evidentiary Realism.” https:// medium.com/the-operating-system/10-tries-100-poems-take-6-orr-menirom-field- notes-fake-news-video-poetry-and-524eafe9b224

Ong. W. 2012. Orality and Literacy. NY: Routledge.

Rainie, L. & Anderson, J. 2017. “Code-Dependent: Pros and Cons of the Algorithm Age.” Pew Research Center.

Sebree, C. & Rhee, M. (2018). “Race in the Media: A Poetry Workshop.” https://medium.com/the-operating-system/10-tries-100-poems-take-8-chetla-sebree-margaret- rhee-field-notes-race-in-the-media-25a7b878774a

Soloman, S. (2018) “Truth and Lies at the Intersection of Activism and Art.” https:// medium.com/the-operating-system/10-tries-100-poems-take-4-samuel-solomon- field-notes-brighton-truth-and-lies-at-the-48e79aecc62d

Turner, F. 2008. From counterculture to cyberculture. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.

Alexandra Jeanne Juhasz http://alexandrajuhasz.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/12/JU- HASZ-Vitae-121918.pdf

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KEYNOTE LECTURE

From Truth as a Content to Truth as a Practice: Political Ethics of Parrhesia. Judith Revel

Abstract Michel Foucault never denied that a proposition can be true or false, and that it makes a difference. But by questioning the historicity of the articulation of true and false, and by shifting the focus from the analysis of the content of what is said to the practical engagement of the speaker, in the very moment and context in which one speaks, Foucault stresses how much a practice of truth may be necessary. Necessary: scandalous too, since it reveals the small arran- gements that we are used to make with the power, our daily cowardices. What could be an ethical and political practice of the truth as a truth-living, instead of a truth-telling? And why does it require so much courage?

Judith Revel https://dep-philo.parisnanterre.fr/les-enseignants/ revel-judith-548268.kjsp

After numerous requests, the author never sent her text for printing

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AFTER POST-TRUTH Interface Politics, 2nd International Conference

Interface Politics Panel#5 Moderated by Bani Brusadin

Jan Distelmeyer File Management: Object—and Process— Orientation (towards Networked Computerization)

Phaedra Shanbaum You are the controller: the ubiquitous interface and interactive digital media art installations

Paul O’Neill Towards a Critical Tactical Practice: Archaelogies of Manifestos and Making

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An updated version of this paper was submitted to the #24 Artnodes Journal CFP and selected for publication. Read it in: http://doi.org/10.7238/a.v0i24.3300

File Management: Object—and Process—Orientation (towards Networked Computerization) Jan Distelmeyer

Abstract My paper addresses two changes in the (aesthetical, operational and epistemological) order of graphical user interfaces in 2007 and 2017: first the influential replacement of the “file” being part of the concentration on apps in the GUI for the iPhone in 2007 and – second – its shifted comeback with the app “files” in 2017. Regarding the CFP my discussion of this changing interface politics is combining questions of “mutations in the semiotic production of truth” and the “relationships between the design of global communication tools, the development of a networked society and its infrastructures”.

One of the most difficult tasks today is the challenge to grasp the complex situation of so called ubiquitous, calm and sensing forms of networked computing – hence of the promoted computerization of the world and its implied and executed modes of measuring, controlling, and regulation. Many concepts and notions try to describe this situation – among them for instance “the stack”, “media-ecology”, “technosphere” and of course “the algorithm” as in “algorithmic governance” for example. In this regard I would like to highlight the advantages of the term interface: understood as the complex of connections and processes (as emphasized e.g. by Wendy Chun, Alexander Galloway, Søren Pold & Christian Ulrik Andersen and Jan Distelmeyer), interfaces both enables a computer to fulfill its promise of being a multiple purpose machine and esta- blishes the connections called networks. Despite the impression that interfaces may seem to disappear, they are in fact key to the ongoing computerization of living conditions Andersen/Pold has called “metainterface”.

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Human computer interfaces are important here as one aspect of this larger complex – depend on and connected to other interface aspects and processes between hardware, software, bodies, machines and areas. Therefore any critical analysis of GUIs has to take into account the inevitable interdependen- cy between those orders of sings and the other (hardware/software-based) infrastructures and processes of interfacing. This forms a special operativity of these – to adopt a term coined by Harun Farocki – “operative images” and their mode of “depresentation”, as Marianne van den Boomen had called it. These operative images sketch out and perform interrelated concepts of relations between individuals, computers and a world that seems to rely on networked and programmable technology.

In this sense I will analyze the repression of the “file” in 2007 as a historical transition, introducing a new order of subject-object relationships. A new understanding of computers (and “users”) as part of a network in, as Apple has put it in 2007, “an era of software power“ is arranged here – a revision of processes understood as interaction that seem to be no longer object- but rather process-oriented. The orientation on apps, on programmed processes, instead of objects like files is a fundamental shift in the applied order of human-computer-relation.

On the one hand, the most recent reintegration of files in form of an app with the same name is an opportunity to become aware of this installed supremacy of programs and programmability. On the other hand it also strengthens this supremacy.

Keywords Mutations in the semiotic production of truth; algorithmic propaganda; design of (mis)information; relationships between the design of global communication tools; the development of a networked society and its infrastructures.

Jan Distelmeyer www.emw.eu/personen_lehrende_portrait.php?tid=48 www.emw.eu/studium_allg_studiengang.php?lang=en http://www.zem-brandenburg.de/en/zem.html

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An updated version of this paper was submitted to the #24 Artnodes Journal CFP and selected for publication. Read it in: http://doi.org/10.7238/a.v0i24.3282

You are the controller: the ubiquitous interface and interactive digital media art installations. Phaedra Shanbaum

Abstract This paper explores the use of new interface technologies, the utopian and dystopian stories told about these technologies and the consequent meanings attributed to them. I look at interactive digital media art installations that intervene in these stories, critiquing the claims about technology they make, the relationships that these claims promote and the potential that artistic and collaborative experimentation has for destabilizing and reconfiguring them. I focus on a recent story being told around our human relationship to technology: ubiquitous computing (ubicomp) and its flourishing, yet fragmented and contradictory image of the “invisible” digital interface.

My argument is that the word invisible, when applied to the interface in interactive digital media art installations represents the commodification of human and nonhuman bodies. Commodification also implies a linear process of technology whereby relationships, entities and technological developments are linked together in a pre-determined fashion and that the ubiquitous interface, is the final, best, iteration. In doing this, human behavior and experience is, among other things, reduced to an algorithmic commodity, ultimately creating a single, stable, unified perspective of what the interface, and interaction with it, are rather than what they could become. The ubiquitous interfaces explored in this paper, are not new. Most existed, in some form, in interactive digital media art installations prior to Mark Weiser’s (1988-1996) conceptualization of ubiquitous computing. Therefore, I also argue that interactive digital media installations are vitally important spaces to interrogate if one seeks to challenge the hegemony of dominant narratives about the development of technology.

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Keywords Artistic practices; interface design; new objectologies; digital countercultures; poetics of automations and infrastructures.

Phaedra Shanbaum https://iris.ucl.ac.uk/iris/browse/profile?upi=PSHAN78

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Towards a Critical Tactical Practice: Archaeologies of Manifestos and Making Paul O’ Neill

Abstract This paper examines tactical media art practices from a media archaeological perspective and in doing so argues that a variation of media archaeology influences the creative and conceptual output of digital media artists and collectives engaging in tactical media art. This paper states that media archaeology offers an alternative theoretical platform in which to view the dominant narratives of technological progress associated with the development of Information Communication Technologies and also argues that tactical media practices engaging with digital technologies are a reaction to these same narratives. Finally, this paper links critical making as an important practical manifestation of the conceptual links between media archaeology and tactical media and suggests that all three of these fields relate to, and inform each other.

False Progress

Erkki Huhtamo and Jussi Parikka claim that despite there being ‘no general agreement about either the principles or terminology of media archaeology’ (2011, p.2) it has still contributed to historically influenced research, allowing academics to ascertain and clarify their principles whilst reflecting on the theoretical implications of the same (ibid.p.2). Jussi Parikka argues that media archaeology is situated between media theories embedded in materialism and a focus on the importance of obsolete and forgotten histories and narratives of media (2010). But why the need for this emphasis on the obsolete and forgotten? Siegfried Zielinski observes that media historians, mostly due to

133 AFTER POST-TRUTH Interface Politics, 2nd International Conference ideological reasons, have failed to look back on the histories of media evolution in order to identify important events, moments or artefacts that may have been ‘discarded or forgotten’ (2008,p.2). This has had an impact on methodological approaches to the study of telecommunications histories, as ideas surrounding technological progress have been consistently cultivated and expanded unchallenged (ibid.p.2). Zielinski suggests that this ‘genealogy’ of progress, which is linked to other basic theoretical positions related to political hegemony, economic factors, the development of complex technological systems and the ‘continual perfecting of the illusionizing potential of media’ (ibid.p3), offers nothing more than ‘comforting fables about a bright future’ derived from a misplaced belief in both technological totality and utopianism (ibid.p.3).

Ideas of progress are also challenged by Erkki Huhtamo who argues that excavating conventional discourses related to media culture allows us to identify social and ideological representations implicitly attached to media artefacts and systems in various historical contexts (1997). In doing so, our focus is centred on the cyclical development of media histories, as opposed to more ‘traditional’ perspectives that are based on chronological development and innovation (ibid.p.223). This excavation, however, does not disregard the ‘reality of technological development’ but places it within wider societal and cultural contexts (ibid.p.223). Ziegfried Zielinski points to the importance of looking beyond accepted discourses related to progress when he speaks of the emergence of digital media technologies in the 1990s (2008). This was a time when ‘every last digital phenomenon and data network was celebrated as a brilliant and dramatic innovation’ (ibid.p.8). In this era competition between electronic and digital technologies and corporations contributed to a ‘standardization and uniformity’ of digital technologies (ibid.p.9). These technologies quickly became embedded within corporate and political power structures (ibid.p.9). In opposition to these structures were individuals and small groups who saw these technological networks as a potential space for new ‘cultural, artistic and political models’ that would seek to promote diversity and plurality (ibid.p.10). These groups who ‘facilitated heterogeneity’ did so in direct opposition to the universalization being overtly pursued by the aforementioned political and corporate actors (ibid.p.10). A history of media/net art is beyond the scope of this paper, however, we can point to the the work of Jodi.org, The Electro- nic Disturbance Theatre, The Critical Art Ensemble and Olia Liana amongst others, as examples of artists engaging in creative opposition against universalization during this time period.

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Although Zielinski is writing about the 1990s, it is reasonable to suggest that the uniformity of technology is even more widespread today, demonstrated by our continual, and it would appear, unstoppable integration with Infor- mation Communications Technologies (ICTs) and manifested through our interactions and dependence on platforms, the ‘cloud’ and other networked topologies. Indeed, within these interactions we can identify traces of what Brian Holmes refers to as the ‘Imperial infrastructures’ of ICTs (2008, p.32). These are technological systems with military origins that following accelerated liberalization large parts of civil society have become engrained in (ibid.p.32). However, there still exists opposition operating from within a cultural space, individual artists, collectives, communities etc who challenge standardization, uniformity and the political and economic structures that support and promote false narratives of progress and innovation. These groups critique these structures and embrace the potential for heterogeneity in technology by engaging with alternative, forgotten and imaginary histories of media by critically and tactically engaging with the digital tools and networks available to them.

Asymmetric Tactics

With its origins stretching back to the 1960s (Felix.openflows.com, 2018), tactical media as a term and movement can be arguably said to have lost its radical power and impact. In many ways it appears to have been subsumed into the system that many of its earlier practitioners had originally sought to critique, evident in the guerrilla marketing campaigns of large corporations or with the ‘transgression and hacker tactics’ of the alt-right (Nagle, 2017, p.13). Felix Stal- der claims that tactical media as a coherent, structured social movement had all but ceased to exist by 2005 (cited in Kluitenberg, 2011, p.14-15). However much of the practices associated with it are still being used, due to available digital technologies and online systems of distribution, meaning that people are ‘doing tactical media without thinking about tactical media’(ibid.p.14-15). Indeed, if we take tactical media as being ‘a specific conjunction of activism, art, media, and technological experimentation’ (Kluitenberg, 2011, p.17), alongside Rita Raley’s interpretation of it as an artistic and critical response to neoliberal cultural, political and economic practices that occur in our contemporary post-industrial society (2009), examples of its practices can be found within the work of many contemporary new media/digital art practitioners.

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Ben Grosser is one such artist whose work can be considered tactical in nature. ‘ScareMail’ (2013) is a web browser extension that attempts to disrupt Natio- nal Security Agency (NSA) surveillance by generating text utilising keywords allegedly used by the NSA to monitor social media sites (Bengrosser.com, 2018). Grosser, citing the work of Alexander Galloway, regards ScareMail as an exploit in that it is ‘an asymmetric response to the ubiquity of networked state power’(Grosser, 2014) . Essentially Grosser believes that as he obviously cannot compete with the power or scale of the NSA, his best tactic is to use the NSA’s ‘desire to see everything’, against them (Grosser,2014). The asymmetry that Grosser refers to is that of ‘a grassroots network posed against entrenched power centers’ (Galloway, 2007, p.14) and perfectly encapsulates Michel de Certeaus’ ‘art of the weak’ (1988, p.37), tactics that occur within the controlled space of dominant actors, consisting of individual opportunities and attempts to achieve minor temporary victories.

Grossers’ Tracing You (2015) utilises IP addresses with various online data sources to trace the user back through the network to their possible point of origin (Grosser, 2017) and in doing so, investigates and highlights themes related to ‘veilance, transparency and Big Data from a practice-based artistic research perspective’ (ibid.p.6). The work draws attention to what can be revealed, the users location, by simply visiting a single website and provokes ‘questions about the architecture of networks and how that architecture affects our own visibility both within and outside of the network’ (ibid.p.1). Tracing You reminds us of the ‘imperial infrastructures’ mentioned earlier in this paper and also provides us with another example of tactical media. Furthermore, not only is it tactical but, as shall now be discussed, it is an example of a media-archaeological approach being used within a digital arts practice.

Excavating the Black Boxes

In their text ‘Zombie Media: Circuit Bending Media Archaeology into an Art Method’, Jussi Parikka and Garnet Hertz propose that media archaeology can be utilised as a methodology for arts practice. This practice is concerned not just with the past but what they term ‘the living dead of media history’ (2011, p.427). This is further expanded on by Parikka who claims that the development of media archaeology as a theoretical framework can incorporate avant-garde media artistic practices as a way of critically engaging with new technologies (2012). In what Parikka describes as a brainstorming exercise,

136 Interface politics_Panel#5 he offers various approaches in which to identify ‘old media technology and themes resurrected in the contemporary context’ (2012, p.138). These approaches, which span historical themes, alternative histories, planned obsolescence and imaginary media, are useful guides in which to examine contemporary digital arts practice related to media archaeology. However, for the purpose of this paper, the most relevant is an approach that focuses on the excavation of the machines of the present that engages with ‘contemporary processes protocols, software and hardware environments with art/activists practices that at times come close to circuit bending and hardware hacking’ (ibid. p.140).

This approach links to Parikka and Hertzs’ previously mentioned Zombie‘ Me- dia’ text in which they discuss the idea of ‘black boxing’, arguing that technical artefacts and systems are developed to ‘a point where they are simply used and understood as technical objects’ (2012, p.428). Although these black boxes serve as ‘building blocks’ to build new technologies and infrastructures, they are not technically understood meaning that they will become obsolete or broken (ibid.p.428). This in turn leads to a restrictive and prohibitive engagement with technological artefacts that expands beyond the actual artefacts and is incorporated into the political and economic ecosystems from which they emerge. Friedrich Kittler problematizes the study of new media on the basis that we are only able to see and understand what he refers to as the ‘the external façade that the electronics industry consciously displays with everything else remaining out of sight and consequently only within the realm of experts’ (2010,p.32).As a result of this the only way to understand new media technologies is from within the artefact, which lies within ‘the field of physics in general and telecommunications in particular’ (ibid.p.32). Parikka, when discussing the archaeologies of signals, also draws attention to the ‘components, processes and other such minor, grey elements of media history’ (2012, p.154) stating that what were once considered to be specialist areas reserved for experts have now become the subject of focus for artists and media theorists (ibid.p.154). Indeed, these components have the potential to reveal more about the social and power structures behind technologies than the study of actual artefacts themselves, and due to these components being ‘intermedial’ they are often more important than the objects and artefacts that they are a part of (ibid.p.154).

The above perspectives on the black boxing of technology can be seen in the work of Ben Grosser and also in a long line of contemporary new media/digital media practitioners, such as Pip Thorntons’{poem.py} (2016) an intervention ‘which fuses Google’s AdWords platform with poetry and code to make visible and sub-

137 AFTER POST-TRUTH Interface Politics, 2nd International Conference vert the workings and the power of linguistic capitalism’ (Thornton, 2018). Also, Benjamin Gaulons’ ReFunct Media,V1-06 series (2010 – 2016), an installation that explores ‘our relationship with technologies and consumption’ (Recyclism. com, 2018) or Kate Crawford and Vladan Jolers’ ‘An Anatomy of an AI System’ (2018) which presents the Amazon Echo as a technological artefact to be utilised as ‘an anatomical map of human labor, data and planetary resources’ (anatomyof. ai, 2018).The work of Julian Oliver and Danja Vasiliev also excavates the black boxes of technology, for example, Men In Grey (2009-2014) which engages with ‘wireless exploits, content manipulation and total exposure’ in order to ‘engender greater techno-political subjectivity among computer users as to the growing risk of mass surveillance on computer networks.’ (Criticalengineering.org, 2018).

Although these works may have different focuses in relation to hardware and software, the practices and explorations involved in them all consist of exca- vations of the machine to reveal underlying structures of power. The impact of these underlying structures reminds us of Zielinski when he highlights, not the individual technical artefact, but the technological systems that surround it (2008). The excavation and exploration of these black boxes derives from both media archaeological and tactical media methodologies that inherently question many of the issues associated with our contemporary post-industrial society, including corporate and state surveillance, labor, e-waste amongst others.

Archaeologies of Manifestos and Making

Aside from digital art practices and work, we can look at various manifestos and texts that share similar media archaeological and tactical media concepts. TheCritical Interface Manifesto, with its emphasis on the ‘ideological aspect of the interface’ (Interfacemnafesto.hangar.org, 2018), speaks of the interface as being the ‘the tip of the iceberg of a complex system of agents/agencies, of interdependent infrastructures, codes, data, applications, laws, corporations, individuals, sounds, spaces, behaviours, objects, times, affects, effects, defects..’ (ibid.p.52) In other words, the interface is built upon a series of systems and black boxes. From this perspective, according to Badía et al., our interactions with interfaces present themselves as being ‘subjective decisions’ which in turn normalize ‘power and control’ (2016, p.220). Another manifesto that engages in similar themes is the Critical Engineering Manifesto (criticalengineering. org, 2018), written by Julian Oliver, Gordan Savičić and Danja Vasiliev. This document speaks of the ‘need to study and expose’ the inner workings of te-

138 Interface politics_Panel#5 chnological systems and artefacts whilst acknowledging the black boxes of the ‘machine’ which consist of ‘interrelationships encompassing devices, bodies, agents, forces and networks’ (criticalengineering.org, 2018). Further examples of a critical engagement with technology can be found in the work of Garnet Hertz. ‘Disobedient Electronics: Protest’ (2016) is a publishing project that highlights ‘confrontational work from designers, electronic artists, hackers and makers’ and in doing so, demonstrates how making DIY electronics has the potential to be an effective form of ‘social argument or political protest’ (ibid.p.2). Hertzs’ The Maker Bill of Rights which states, ‘I take responsibility for making objects and the impact they have on people, society and the environment’ (2018) is a reaction to the commercialisation, militarization and sexism of mainstream maker culture and focuses on the material consequences of the same. Both of these documents are influenced by critical making, a term first coined by Matt Ratto to link ‘two modes of engagement with the world that are often held separate—critical thinking, typically understood as conceptually and linguistically based, and physical “making,” goal-based material work.’ (2011, p.253). Although Ratto was initially focused on a more scholarly-practiced he now considers critical making as a more ‘general form of social engagement’ which in turn connects and links critical making to a variety of other practices including tactical media (2015, p.37). From this perspective, critical making can be interpreted as a form of tactical media that draws on media archaeology to challenge established technological narratives surrounding progress and innovation.

The manifestos and texts mentioned above provide further examples of the ways in which tactical media and media archaeology are conceptually linked through their approaches to investigating technical artefacts and systems by situating them in wider economic, political and cultural contexts. Furthermo- re, this paper suggests that critical making is, in part, a practical manifestation of these two different fields as it engages in a critical engagement with the materiality of technology whilst also challenging the issues surrounding this materiality, through pragmatic, tangible and tactical processes.

Towards a Critical Tactical Practice

The artists that have been mentioned in this paper, like many others, are operating on what Philip E. Agre refers to as ‘borderlands’ (1997). Whilst Agre is referencing the borderlands between analogue and digital, these artists also

139 AFTER POST-TRUTH Interface Politics, 2nd International Conference operate on the borders of many of the dominant debates and discourses of our contemporary era, such as those between privacy and surveillance, big data and open data, legal and illegal. Their work, research and respective practices are situated at the oft-quoted intersection between art and technology. These artists are influenced by a media archaeology proposed by Zielinski, that engages with ‘radical experiments’ that react against the universalization of technology discussed earlier. This is also a media archaeology that is not just focused on a reading of the past but, on a reading of the present and that takes an oppositional view, not only to a ‘traditional’ linear understanding of technology, but also to the outcomes of accepted norms evolved from this ‘traditional’ perspective. This oppositional view inherently rejects the focus on the ‘new’ in new media culture and the capitalist economic, cultural and political system that promotes it. It looks beyond and critiques the ‘wow’ factor of emerging media forms and other iterations of supposed technological ‘progress’. Instead, these artists engaging with both media archaeology and tactical media are more concerned with excavating the ‘black boxes’ of these media forms in order to critique and expose the false narratives that contemporary society has in relation to technological progress. In doing so these artists are helping us ‘to find less hazardous roads into the future than the ones we have travelled so far’ (Kluitenberg, 2011, p.68).

Bibliography

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Badia T, Berga Q, Moll J, Piazuelo C, 2016, Manifesto for a critical approach to the user interface. Context, theoretical framework and further actions, Interface Politics 1st Interna- tional Conference, Bau, Centro Universitario de Diseño. Available at: http://www.gredits.org/wp-content/uploads/2016/11/Publicacions_ Gredits_04_V2_web.pdf Accessed: 10/08/17

Crawford, K, Jolar, V, 2018, An Anatomy of an AI. [online] Available at: https://anatomyof.ai/ Accessed: 12/10/17

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Criticalengineering.org. (2018). Men In Grey. [online] Available at: https://criticalengineering.org/projects/men-in-grey/ Accessed: 10/08/17

De Certeau, M, 1988, The Practice of Everyday Life, Berkeley, University of California Press.

Galloway, A.R, Thacker, E, 2007,The Exploit: A Theory of Networks, Minneapolis, London, University of Minnesota Press.

Gaulon, B, 2018,, ReFunct Media. [online] Available at: http://www.recyclism.com/refunctmedia.php Accessed: 10/08/17

Grosser, B. 2015, Tracing You, [Online] Available from: https://bengrosser.com/projects/tracing-you/ Accessed: 09/05/18

Grosser, B. 2017, Tracing You: How transparent surveillance reveals a desire for visibility, Big Data & Society, Volume: 4 issue: 1. [Online] Available from: http://journals.sagepub.com/doi/full/10.1177/2053951717694053 Accessed: 09/05/18

Grossser, B, 2018, ScareMail [online] Available at: https://bengrosser.com/projects/scaremail/ Accessed: 10/08/17

Grosser B 2014, Privacy Through Visibility: Disrupting NSA Surveillance With Algorith- mically Generated “Scary” Stories, Presented at 2014 Electronic Literature Organization Conference, University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee Recording available here: https://vimeo.com/99517419

Hertz G. 2012, Critical Making: Making Critical Making, Telharmonium Press. Hollywood. California USA [Online] Available from: http://www.conceptlab.com/criticalmaking/ Accessed: 09/10/17

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Hertz G, 2018, The Maker’s Bill of Rights [Online] Available from: http://makermanifesto.com/ Accessed: 03/05/18

Hertz G, Parrika J, 2010, Archaeologies of Media Art, CTheory Interview, Available from: http://www.ctheory.net/articles.aspx?id=631 Accessed: 03/05/18

Hertz, G. and Parikka, J. (2012). Zombie Media: Circuit Bending Media Archaeology into an Art Method. Leonardo, 45(5), pp.424-430.

Holmes, B. 2008, Unleashing the Collective Phantoms: Essays in Reverse Imagineering, Brooklyn, New York, Autonomedia

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Interface Politics Panel#6 Moderated by Søren Pold & Christian U. Andersen

Søren Pold Towards Metainterface Realism

Fernanda Botter Geometry: mdium or lenguage? Architectural representation as a noise source for post-truth in the globalized world

Tatjana Seltz Where is the eXperience in UX Design?

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An updated version of this paper was submitted to the #24 Artnodes Journal CFP and selected for publication. Read it in: http://doi.org/10.7238/a.v0i24.3283

Towards Metainterface Realism Søren Pold

Abstract The computer interface is both omnipresent and invisible, at once integrated into everyday objects and characterized by hidden exchanges of information between objects. With the current spread of mobile devices, embedded sensors, cloud services, and data capture, a new interface paradigm, the metainterface, arises where data and software disappear from our devices and into the global cloud. The metainterface indicates, that the interface has become more abstract, generalized, but also spatialized in the sense of being ubiquitous, mobile, urban and related to the things of our environment. The metainterface as concept, industry (e.g. Amazon, Google, Apple, Spotify, Netflix, Facebook, etc.) and art/design practice calls for a new kind of realism which combines what you see (e.g. the data, tools, operations, transactions) with how you see it (the metainterface and its software, networks and executions), including how it sees you (how the user/users are captured, datafied, profiled, computed or ‘executed’). In other ways we need a ‘way of seeing’ that goes beyond the visual and integrates the metainterface and its effects. Currently these effects can be seen as three kinds of pollution that are mainly hidden in current interface design: 1) Data pollution where users cannot see which data is captured, where the data go nor what they are used for leading to crises such as the Cam- bridge Analytica/Facebook scandal. 2) Environmental pollution where users cannot see the environmental effects of e.g. cloud networks and metainterfaces such as heavy infrastructures, data centers, carbon pollution etc. 3) The combination of 1 and 2 also has effects on the territorial development of smart cities, surveillance and terror wars and on the development of a global metainterface industry of cultural and social media platforms, including its politics.

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The paper will aim to develop a preliminary theory and analysis of metainterface realism in order to consider how to take further steps towards integrating the effects of data and environmental effects in future metainterfaces.

Stiegler, Bernard. The Neganthropocene. London: Open Humanities Press, 2018.

Keywords Realism; trust; semiotics; critical theory; the design of transparency.

Søren Bro Pold http://pure.au.dk/portal/en/[email protected]

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Geometry: medium or language? Architectural representation as a noise source for post-truth in the globalized world Fernanda Botter

Abstract The crisis of humanistic disciplines shows that we live in a time that values literality at the expense of metaphor. This paper intends to discuss the understanding of architectural representations as instrumental media, deprived of its symbolical expressive potential, while its uncritical use validates ‘fake archi- tectures’. A genealogy of the media we employ to think architecture, since the Renaissance, can bring interesting considerations to investigate our relationship with the post-truth language regime that invades all spheres of life in the globalized world. It is convenient for us to identify the lineage of our design practices, but also of architectonic linguistic elements we use today, in order to recover the perception of architecture’s communicative nature.

This paper is built upon Robin Evans, Dalibor Vesely and Alberto Pérez-Gó- mez theories, critics of the theme of graphic representation applied to architecture, and Joseph Rykwert, historian and theorist who speaks about the construction of meaning in buildings and human settlements. The funerary complex Tomba Brion, designed by the Italian architect Carlo Scarpa in the 1970’s in northern Italy, is analysed as an allegory to demonstrate the critical use of representative instruments – graphic but also architectural, linguistic – as vehicles for metaphor embodiment. Hand drawings, as well as photographs of this architectonic monument, will be the iconographic sources that let us observe the power of drawing as an artifice of aggregating meaning to contemporary architecture in the ‘age of divided representation’.

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Keywords Linguistics; history of art and design; visual arts and media; pedagogy, authority and truth; disinformation theory.

It is convenient for us to start speaking of architecture searching the origins of this human activity par excellence. With that aim, I turn to the work of André Leroi-Gourhan (LEROI-GOUHRAN, 1964) who, in 1964, suggested the formula hominization / anthropization / humanization, proposing that, from an evolutionary point of view, each one of these aspects happened in connection to the other: 1. Hominization: biophysical process through which a certain pri- mate evolved in Homo; 2. Anthropization: the physical transformation of the environment by human beings; and 3. Humanization: semantic transformation of the environment into a human world.

According to Leroi-Gourhan, what sets us apart from other animals is our ability to set in technical systems in a “social body” that allows us to transform the world around us. Monkeys can use tools, but they do not internalize them the same way we do. The artefacts we produce are ambivalent: by enabling us to adapt the physical world, they allow us to exist as human beings through the attribution of meaning to the things we transform. ‘Being outside ourselves ex( + sistere) and establishing communication through artifices allows us to extrapolate our physical body to unite ourselves in a social body. By manipulating and understanding languages, codes imprinted on the artefacts we produce, we become human (BERQUE, 2005).

The transformation of the original role of geometry

Words represent concepts and ideas. They work as vehicles that condense in themselves the world-view of speakers of a language. In the context of this investigation, it is important to note that Ars and Technē, words which origins are Latin and Greek, respectively, were synonyms in antiquity, from the fifth until the fifteenth century (TARTAKIEWICZ, 2006). They referred to the set of practices and rules that allowed the organization of human production, contextualizing it so that the ‘making of something according to rules’ placed individuals in the society of which they were part of. The compositional logic of artistic/technical artefacts connected, through symbolical communication, rites and myths, understood as reminders of what brought meaning to human existence (EVANS, 2000, p. 47). Today we understand that the concepts of Art

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and Technique, which derive from the same terms, denote two concepts of heterogeneous nature. Geo- metry still finds asylum in both, but in completely different contexts and, above all, today these fields of human activity are separated from each other. Joseph Rykwert in L’Idea di Città and Structure and Meaning in Human Settlements (ed.) demonstrate 1 The concept of ‘primitive’ must that in primitive societies1 the geometrical confor- be comprehended as ‘first’ or ‘original’ people, as we want to avoid mation of human settlements represented the order understanding the idea of ‘evolution’ of something ‘greater’. The connection with the as enhancement, but think of it as transformation. sacred was expressed by the conformation of the elements of the physical world, manipulated and rearranged by human beings, in order to create codes recognizable to the whole social body (fig. 1 and 2). All artefacts of everyday use should be produced according to stated rules with the aim to reproduce symbolic schemes and to establish order in chaos. Any object had immediate metanarratives, opportunities to evoke and keep the culture alive, insofar as it consolidated a unitary and complex world-view. In these contexts, it is clear the use of geometry as a reminder of the position occupied by humans in the universe (RYKWERT, 2002, p. 246).

In studying primitive societies, Rykwert relies on Levi-Strauss’s Tristes Trópicos to address the profound need for representative coherence between social schemes and the territory order. The circular configuration of the Bororós settlements in the Xingu in Brazil that structured the disposition of its architectural elements echoed the world order of its inhabitants in an immediate way. Geometry for the Bororós, as it was for Romans or Egyptians in Antiquity, represented the security of order in the chaotic universe (fig. 3 and 4). Levi-Strauss understood the importance of geometry as a symbolic tool by observing that the strategy found by missionaries to destabilize the indigenous – and thus to cate- chize them – was dismantling the circular scheme

149 AFTER POST-TRUTH Interface Politics, 2nd International Conference that guided the layout of houses, which were then distributed in rows. Rykwert concludes that the function of geometry in primitive human settlements was twofold: it was a guide to assembling construction, from the physical point of view, but prior to that, it was an artifice for the attribution of ontological meaning to what was to be built. We can call artistic artefacts media, as they work as platforms for recording and communicating ideas. It is evident that the transformation of the environment is, in the Bororó example, closely related to the representation of a meaning. To us, women and men products of contemporary Western culture, the attribution of meaning to the conformation of territory may sound foolish ers urgent to an authentic humanity derives, for example, architectural formalism.

In Western architecture, the valuable study of Rudolf Wittkower brings us, as a contribution, reflections around the symbolic meaning of circular-shaped Renaissance churches. Wittkower identified that the geometric harmony of those buildings, organized by a central plan, symbolized an echo of celestial harmony, compatible with the Christian view (WITTKOWER, 1973). Accor- ding to Alberto Pérez-Gómez (1983), the last architect able to reveal – through building and theory – the divine order in the Western world was Guarino Guarini (1624-1683).

We shall now see some of the events that unleashed this emptying of the original role of geometry. In the Tardo Ottocento, the secularization of western thought has been consolidated. This phenomenon can be described as the process of separation between body and spirit that came from the development of philosophical theories that emphasize physis and metaphysis. It is closely related to the political rejection of religious practices that have made every individual subject to the worldview provided by Catholic Church and crystalized in the metanarratives of artistic artefacts. The previous advent and gradual adoption of perspective as a representative convention was one of the strategies of Art for the rupture of the established social order (PANOFSKY, 1991). It was not until the end of nineteenth century that the orders of classical architecture began to relate a «kind of architectural range from rustic and hard to light and refined», evoking universal sensations through the appearance of building forms and decorations, which were defined by the «mood» or «state of mind» (SUMMERSON, 1963).

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The post-truth and detached architectural 2 2 «Pay attention to what I do not say. » practice: «Repara bem no que não digo» Famous quote of the Brazilian writer, poet, literature critic, translator and professor Paulo Leminski (1944-1989) The Canadian philosopher, scholar of mass media in Catatau, Editora Grafipar, Curitiba, 1975. and communication, Marshall McLuhan (1964) coined the expression «the medium is the message» in 1964, proposing that the communication instruments and media we use transform our cognition as they become prosthesis of our bodies and minds. He suggests that our thinking and making are guided by the possibilities of the tools whose operation we dominate. Just as we delegate the phonebook our memory or, - let us take a more recent example, to Google™ –, we become dependent of external resources to the construction and constant reinfor- cement of our worldview. Let us remember that oral language is the first of those resources.

Ludwig Wittgenstein exposes the need to understand language as an instrument of thought before it becomes a communication tool, with one of his famous formulations – «the limits of my language are the limits of my world». Language is the artifice that allows us to structure ideas. Interrelating Wittgens- tein and McLuhan theories, we realize that every human being is subjected to the cognitive impact of objects and the metanarratives they carry, but even more so, of the modality of media: deaf communication vehicles. Books, drawings, paintings, videos, and architecture itself, as languages, condense in themselves messages that are delivered according to the communicative possibilities of each one of them. What those media have in common is that they can speak, but cannot hear (PLATONE, 1974). And what is not representable through the media on which we rely, Wittgenstein would say, does not exist.

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We can classify the media we rely on for architectural production today in two categories: drawing tools and advertising instruments. In contemporary architecture practice, within the drawing category, we find technical graphic instruments and procedures as artifices capable of allowing us to describe and investigate morphological solutions for design problems. Through graphic simulation we can model the physical space in order to materialize social institutions. But before we draw, we need to copy models. At that point we speak of the advertising category, through which static images (photographs and technical drawings) and motion pictures (videos and renderings) act as vehicles of transmission of atmospheres, material aspects, spatial organization, etc. In order to design well – we are thought today – we need to be able to perceive the space through our geometric body, as we imagine and experiment spaces, so that we can translate the architectural experience into the graphic language. We learn how to make architecture by a process of translation, which has been revolutionized and shaped, as we will see, from practices and media instituted during the Renaissance.

Two events that took place around the fifteenth century provoked a technological revolution in architectural practices: the adoption of conventional drawing (plans, sections, elevations) and of the movable type press. Some Italian architects devoted themselves to an architectural theory propagated in the form of treatises. These famous publications played a key role in the consolidation of what Mario Carpo calls typographic thinking. The system of the Five Orders appears, from 1537 with the Quarto Libro of Sebastiano Serlio (1475-1554), as a catalogue of standardized graphic components, designed for reproduction. Also Giacomo Barozzi da Vignola (1507-1573) and Andrea Palladio (1508-1580) have made public a method that proposes a simplified architecture design theory, based on the repetition of a number of identical, not pre-fabricated, but pre-drawn elements. This method unites the Roman Em- pire architectural stylistic convention to the architectural drawing convention, published in a propaganda vehicle that could be made available to anyone who could have a copy.

Mario Carpo (1998, p. 48) describes the transformation that the use of printed media has triggered in architectural making, insofar as it has revolutionized the practice of imitation. Before the diffusion of printed media, a mediaeval builder should see for himself a building he had only heard about, relying on his memory and senses to adapt a model. The Renaissance architect, in his turn, could go down the street and have access to printed media in the bookstore. The

152 Interface politics_Panel#6 revolution in the practice of imitation that the printed book produced is on perception: it affects the designer’s cognition and depended on one’s ability to read texts and images. As a result of this technological revolution – and this is specifically the topic this work wants to focus on –, us relying in printed media makes it a catalyst for architectural thinking.

As we began to delegate our memory, perception and repertoire to printed media, imitation became circumscribed to what could be accessed through the sense of sight. Therefore, we can conclude that whoever published dictated the rules. The typographic culture paved the way for French encyclopaedism that followed the same divulgation program through movable type press and technical illustration (fig. 7), even though in the territory of architecture it propagated other ideological presuppositions. The development of lithography and, later, photography, brings us to the Modernist propaganda of the last century, which imposes a new code of standardized forms, finally distinguished from historicist ones, but whose combinatory principle was analogous (CARPO, 1998, p. 18). Culminating on the internet, we conclude that the press never ceased to accom- pany us for the transmission of architectonical experience. But more than that, it materialized our desire for mechanization (GIEDION, 2013, p. 714).

It is fundamental to notice that architectural treatises appear as mediatic instruments when the detachment of body and spirit took place in consequence of philosophical transformation that shook the structures of the Old Western World. They provide, in the New World, the construction of a new culture from the tabula rasa of the material and cultural reality of the place, by promoting the inadvertent and autonomous reproduction of linguistic elements and geometric schemes whose meaning was unknown. The ideas propagated by them in this colonization process, insofar as they are distant from their geographical origins, suppress the power of symbolic manifestation of what is essential for each culture to express through building.

The architectural culture that is established is denatured from its aggregating role by preaching the inadvertent reproduction of forms deprived from meaning, and this phenomenon is also a consequence of the representative limitations of printed media. We see, finally, the convenient adaptation – and maybe its arousal – of the positivist discourse to printed media, for the propagation of architectural ideals in keeping with the political and economic desires of nineteenth century Europe.

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Fig. 1. Fig. 2.

Fig. 3.

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The good architecture

In order to make good use of a language, we need to pay attention to its structure. The stated rules of a language – determined by grammar, syntax, spelling, etc. – constitute its inert nucleus, that part that allows us to arrange thought, holding in itself its mechanical logic. However, we can state that communication is not limited to the mere use of the fundamental elements of language, precisely because of the meaning of its words, which derives from the free and mutable relationship between the visible and invisible things that surround us. The flexible, open part of every language is, therefore, condition to poetry, as it allows us to put its elements in relation to each other, abdicating to its canon wherever opportune, proposing new ways to recreate the language itself. Poetry is, thus, a work determined by the language structure that, in its turn, nourishes it and donates it life. Convention in art, analogously and par extension, is what guides its conception and transformation in time. This transformation occurs through the rupture of some of its canons, justified by the symbolical necessity and, sometimes, the restoration of others (GIEDION, 1967, p. 358). And, as we saw, the advent of technological communication devices impact in a great measure in the recovering or obliterating of canons in the «age of divided representation» (VESELY, 2004) because, in a process of translation, something is always lost (EVANS, 2003).

We can say that architecture itself is a language since, as every form of art, it is capable to communicating contents through the articulation of an inert and a flexible part in order to produce a discourse. As we design, we must try to refer to facts and requests that are sometimes not immediately describable by the media we use, because a representation, according to Dalibor Vesely, can never be entirely truthful to the entity it speaks of. Our effort, as architecture professionals, must be in the direction of promoting construction from the communicative/ linguistic power of media.

I would like to close this paper with a brief speech about an architectural artwork of great value, designed by the Venetian architect Carlo Scarpa (1906- 1978), with the aim to demonstrate the possibilities of transformation of traditional architectural canons - of generalist impetus - that inhabit our imaginary. In 1968, Scarpa gets the commission of the funerary complex Tomba Brion at the Cimitero di San Vito d’Altivole from Onorina Brion. He brings to life, but also transforms and transfigures, a series of historic material and cultural elements. He works with geometry as a support for a consistent artistic creation looking

155 AFTER POST-TRUTH Interface Politics, 2nd International Conference back to history, attending to the need to create a narrative. He organizes the funerary complex settlement as an allegory to the course of life, resorting to a watercourse that springs from the union beyond the grave (fig. 19 and 24).

His last work is maybe the most representative of his desire to play with the inert rules of architectural language, uniting culture and history in a unique way in a time where the artist-individual is required to sign an original work. Within the care and refinement of drawing, the self-explanation of every detail – because in connection with the complex work – in the passages and the care- ful framings, he attributes meaning through metaphor, in a time it tends to get lost. He quotes, but subverts, the Christian symbol (fig. 18). He makes poetry inserting in the project its single interpretation of culture, of life and death, exercising his role of unique artist, and revolutionizing architectural practise in the time he lived.

During an interview, Scarpa justifies the choice of the covering structure of the main tombs that today accommodates the couple Giuseppe e Onorina Brion (fig. 22 and 25), reporting that Nelle“ catacombe (...) le persone importanti o i martiri venivano seppelliti con una formula più costosa, si chiamava arcosolium: non è altro che un semplice arco, così. È bello che due persone che si sono amate in vita si pieghino l’una verso l’altra per salutarsi dopo la morte.” (DUBOY, 1984). He breaks with the canons as if they never existed, and announces the possibility of a plentiful life to geometry as an autonomous language, because capable of serving the purpose of bringing to life sensible artistic intentions. Scarpa resorts to hand drawing (fig. 27) on the few – enough – sheets he develops for years on end and makes of it his manipulable matter. In a time of few symbolical certainties, he can bring up universal – for essentially human – matters, to provide the world with a fascinating architecture artwork.

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10 4 11 3 2

5 9 Legend

1. Propylaea 2. Entrance Hall 3. Spring of water 4. Arcosalium and sarcophagi 5. The parent’s chapel 6. Chapel 7. Small water pool 8. Cypress garden 6 9. Tomb of Carlo Scarpa 7 10. Large water 13 pool 11. Pavillion 12. Access from 8 the road 13 Boundary wall 12

Fig. 8

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Fig. 11 Fig. 13

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Fig. 16 Fig. 17

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Fig. 18

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Fig. 24 Fig. 25 Fig. 26

Fig. 27

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Illustrations

Fig.1. Il templum celeste. Roman representation of the universe order. IN: RYKWERT, J. L’idea di città, p. 41.

Fig. 2. Il templum terrestre. Roman representation of the territory order. IN: RYKWERT, J. L’idea di città, p. 59.

Fig. 3. Aerial view of a Bororó settlement. IN: SANTOS, Matias B. dos.Práticas Mortuárias Entre Os Povos Indígenas No Pantanal Mato-Grossense: Arqueologia, Etno-his- tória e Etnologia. Master Degree thesis for the Post-Graduation Program in History of Universidade Federal da Grande Dourados. 2009.

Fig. 4. LEVI-STRAUSS, C. Planimetry of a Bororó settlement. IN: Claudio Luiz -Za notelli, A Antropologia Estrutural de Lévi-Strauss e suas reverberações geográficas. Confins [Online], 28 | 2016, online on October 1st 2016, consulted on October 12th 2018. URL: journals.openedition.org/confins/11168; DOI: 10.4000/confins.11168

Fig. 5. LEONARDO DA VINCI, View and plan of a centrally planned church with eight radiating chapels; top left: second proposal for the small domes. IN: Ashburnham MS. 2037, f. 5 v. plate XVIII.

Fig. 6. GIACOMO BAROZZI DA VIGNOLA, Il capitello di una colonna dell’Ordine Composito tavola XXVIII de I Cinque Ordini. IN: GIACOMO BAROZZI DA VIG- NOLA, Regole delli cinque ordini d’architettura, 1562.

Fig. 7. JEAN-NICOLAS-LOUIS DURAND, sheet 8 ofPrécis des leçons d’architecture. IN: JEAN-NICOLAS-LOUIS DURAND,Précis des leçons d’architecture données à l’Éco- le polytechnique, École polytechnique, Parigi, 1809.

Fig. 8. Plan of the funerary complex Tomba Brion, by Carlo Scarpa. IN: Biblioteca Co- munale di Altivole catalog. bibliotecaltivole.it/arte-e-territorio/tomba-brion#il-viaggio Consulted on 12th October 2018.

Fig. 9 to 27. Photographs of the funerary complex Tomba Brion, in the Cemitery of San Vito d’Altivole, 2013. IN: personal collection of the author ©.

Fig. 26. CARLO SCARPA, Tomba Brion, schizzi di dettagli per l’ingresso alla tomba a partire dal Cimitero. 1978 ca. IN: DAL CO, F. et. al., Carlo Scarpa, Opera Completa, Electa, Milano, 1984.

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Bibliography

BERQUE, A., 2005. The Ontological Structure of Mediance as a Ground of Meaning in Architecture, in ATKIN, Tony and RYKWERT, Joseph (ed), 2005. Structure and Meaning in Human Settlements. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Museum of Archaeology and Anthropology.

CARPO, M., 1998. L’architettura dell’età della stampa. Oralità, scrittura, libro stampato e riproduzione meccanica dell’immagine nella storia delle teorie architettoniche. Milano: Jaca Book.

DAL CO, F. and MAZZARIOL, G., 1984. Carlo Scarpa, Opera Completa, Milano: Electa.

DUBOY, P., 1984. Scarpa/Matisse: cruciverba, in F. Dal Co, G. Mazzairol (ed), Carlo Scarpa, opera completa. Milano: Electa.

EVANS, R., 2000. The Projective Cast: Architecture and its Three Geometries. Cambridge – Massachusetts – London: The MIT Press.

EVANS, R., 2003. Translations from Drawing to Building, in Translations from Drawing to Building and Other Essays. London: Architectural Association.

GIEDION, S., 1967. L’èra della meccanizzazione. Milano: Feltrinelli.

HUSSERL, E., 2008. La crisi delle scienze europee e la fenomenologia trascendentale. Milano: Il Saggiatore.

LEROI-GOUHRAN, A., 1964.La Geste et la parole, 2 vols. Paris: Albin Michel.

McLUHAN, M., 1964. Understanding Media: the Extensions of Man, New York – Lon- don – Toronto: McGraw-Hill Book Company.

PANOFSKY, E., 1991. Perspective as a Symbolic Form. New York: Zone Books.

PÉREZ-GOMEZ, A., 1983. Architecture and the Crisis of Modern Science. Cambridge – London: The MIT Press.

Platone, 1974. Opere, vol. I. Bari: Laterza.

RYKWERT, Joseph, 2002. L’idea di città. Milano: Adelphi.

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SUMMERSON, J.N., 1963. The Classical Language of Architecture. Cambridge – Massa- chusetts: The MIT Press.

TARTAKIEWICZ, W., 2006. Storia di sei idee. L’Arte il Bello la Forma la Creatività l’Imi- tazione l’Esperienza estetica. Palermo: Aesthetica Edizioni.

VESELY, D., 2004. Architecture in the age of divided representation: the question of creativity in the shadow of production. Cambridge - London: The MIT Press.

WITTKOWER, R., 1973.Architectural Principles in the Age of Humanism. London: Academy Editions.

Fernanda Botter http://dadin.ct.utfpr.edu.br/dadin-professores/fernanda-botter/

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Where is the eXperience in UX Design? Tatjana Seitz

Abstract Let’s consider what happens when one presses a button on a Facebook wall. Se- veral numerical registers are activated with the new data: a new line is created, a new sum calculated, a new relationship to other lines and columns established, the interdependencies afresh calculated, values reassigned, ad partners reshu- ffled, new ad orders taken, timeline elements’ values changed, that Facebook id’s and similar events’ posts get a higher value reassigned and so on.

Apart from many other things, this algorithmic recalculation is not only a ‘black boxed’ input-output mathematical formula, this hyper-capture-mechanism is in its core a learning process. Thesource for a decision making process and problem solving ability. It is that which people talk about, the stuff that stories are built from —the aggregate of human experience— the institutions of human knowledge and culture. Storytelling is the human form of computational capture. As a computational process, capture is design. Hence, as an aesthetic form experience is political.

Yet, the received feedback doesn’t include any of these steps, all one gets is a seamless stream of content. In other words, via the ‘capture’ (Agre 1994) of changes, a learning process is diverged into a database to train it to ensure a ‘more meaningful time spent’ (Facebook) and in return I receive a faked feedback – one that is constructed through interfaces design, and UX in particular, one that serves commercial & computational experience, not the user’s.

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The issue runs deeper than simulation of a reality or a need, the commodification of labor or marketing psychology -- what is a human being if it cannot learn from its past actions (in particular micro)? Any action in an analog future situation can only change course if prior experience can be activated and combined, or rather augmented with a received feedback. Yet, if all frictions are erased so as to provide a seamless user experience (Lewis 1990, Polson 1990, Harrison 2007), all points of reassurance and dissonance, so called leverage points (Klein 1998, 2017), from which experiences that are necessary for the learning process are smoothed out or ‘obfuscated’ so as not to interfere with the user experience, what is then becoming invisible is not the interface; but the very basic human accumulation of experience necessary for learning & decision making, the human equivalent to the process of “reducing, abstrac- ting, processing, organizing, analyzing, interpreting [and] applying” (Kitchen R. 2014) needed for climbing up the famous knowledge pyramid from data to knowledge and toward (human) wisdom.

In this paper I would like to look closer at the spaces between ‘data and knowledge’ and ‘experience and decision making’. More precisely, I suggest to think through these spaces as ‘marginal increments’ (Lindblom 1959), that is as interfaces between the present condition and a future decision. Then the interface as the sum of all possible decisions that can only be realized through experience – exactly that which is diverged to data bases in the act of a ‘frictionless’ UX design (Steve Krug 2000, Nir Eyal 2013).

Keywords UX critique; platforms; decision-making; interface critique; data critique.

Tatjana Seitz https://twitter.com/taz_seitz?lang=en

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Interface Politics Panel#7 Moderated by Jara Rocha

Kalli Retzepi You, the users

Andrea Nono, Joana Moll Sustainable Interface Protocol

Fabricio Lamoncha Please Don’t Feed the Animals

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You, the users Kalli Retzepi

Abstract What rock concerts were in the 1960s, today’s big tech yearly Keynote events are. You pay a small fortune, often only after winning a lottery that grants you the ability to even purchase a ticket, and fly to the Woodstock of technology (San Francisco) to sit for hours in perfectly lit conference rooms where CEOs - typically white and male - go through their brain child’s yearly assessment by a thousand metrics. They all did a great job, but can always do better.

This essay discusses the politics of the users and the interfaces through which they become assimilated into the techno-utopian dream. The user, this mystic that everyone is trying to telepathically chart the desires of, that everyone is designing for and at the same time derives free labor from, is the alibi for the creation of new professions and new solutions. Solutions that in turn create new needs. The aim of this essay is to critique the schemes of control quietly enabled by ubiquitous interfaces, and propose alternatives to Silicon Valley’s interpretation of the triad user – interface – information.

Keywords Interface design; digital society; media jamming; design; techno-utopia

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Introduction

You know, with millions of apps, Shortcut enables incredible possibilities for how you use Siri. Now, as you know, Siri is more than just a voice. Siri is working all the time in the background to make proactive suggestions for you even before you ask, and now with Shortcut, Siri can do so much more. So, for instance, let’s say you order a coffee every morning at Phil’s before you go to work. Well now, Siri can suggest right on your lock screen that you do that. You tap on it, and you can place the order right from there. Or if when you get to the gym you use Active to track workouts, well that suggestion will appear right on your lock screen. And this even works when you pull down into Search. You’ll get great suggestions. Like say you’re running late for a meeting, well Siri will suggest you text the meeting organizer. Or when you go to the movie, suggest that you turn on Do Not Disturb. That’s just being considerate. And remind you to call grandma on her birthday.”

– excerpt from Apple’s WWDC 2018 Keynote1. 1 Apple WWDC Special Event, Apple (2018); https://www.apple.com/ apple-events/june-2018/, access: What rock concerts were in the sixties and seven- October 4, 2018, 12:30pm. ties, tech keynotes are today. Big, mesmerizing, optimistic, glittering, confident, larger than life. Speakers, unsurprisingly mostly white and male, fluidly pace on big minimally decorated stages and elaborate with confidence on how their newly released product ameliorates – because that is of key importance – so many lives. Whose lives?

Yours, and mine. The users.

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Apple WWDC 2018 Keynote transcript image] [Caption: Text transcript of the entirety of Apple’s WWDC 2018 Keynote event. Words like “you”, “yours” and “user” are highlighted in black. Permission of the author.]

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Who is the user?

The term “user” came into prominence in the post-1960s timeline of computation, where it was employed in the context of the then new concept of human-machine interface. The user is the human who interacts with the then grotesque mouse and keyboard, who points to the screen, who manipulates the state of a menu. The language employed from early on was conceived by engineers and was reductive but functional, often operationalised to fit problem-solving and task optimization paradigms.

Once the rough edges of human-machine interaction were sufficiently rounded by engineers, it looked like the user could take a lateral jump towards the field of design, but the inverse happened: the field of design constrained itself to fit into the vocabulary and mentality of the engineered user. Terms like “user-centered design” point to a certain willingness to talk design, but do so only in order to be heard by engineers and managers, solving for efficiency and comfort, formulating design in the computerized world as a means for optimisa- tion. A certain vocabulary was built to cater to the needs of a user who is increasingly unaware of their role in a system that is built upon their choices, and is always hungry for more comfort and ease of mind. User-centered design, user experience, user retention, user engagement were elevated to a buzzword status in the post-dot.com era and ushered the world to a reality of screens constantly begging our attention, and vertical feeds that keep eyes and brains glued to their ethereally refreshing 2 spinners . 2 Wendy Chun, Updating to Remain the Same. Habitual New Media, Cambridge MA (2016) pp 85.

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Politics of the user

The vernacular of the user is, and should be treated as, political – not only because technology as a system is finding itself curiously now entangled with another system, that of Democracy – but because it has always been so. In addition to the well known fact that all of 20th century American computer science research and innovation was nurtured by Cold War scientific accelerationism, all of today’s tech giants can trace their beginnings to the movement of liberation, self-expression and self-reinven- tion whose origins are inextricably linked to and flow from that era in American politics.

The distance between hippies, with seemingly little respect and interest in the culture of capital and growth of economies, and their spiritual and often literal offspring, the tinkerers, dropouts and romantic failure seekers of Silicon Valley, is not as big as one would think. The main tenet in the 60’s ideology was that one is free to express themselves in any conceivable way, and subject themselves to as many transformative experiences as they wish – everything goes. So why stay the same? One should change. One should become better, in some vaguely defined way. Maybe happier? Definitely happier. That in limbo space of lifting one veil of selfhood and trying on another was often resolved by the help of drugs, which once Woodstock’s scent had left the air, gave their place to products and ritualistic behaviors: healthy eating, yoga retreats, meditation for the masses. And that also happened to coincide with college dropouts scavenging spare electronics parts and building futures in garages – the rest is history.

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On January 24th, Apple Computer will introduce Macintosh. And you’ll see why 1984 won’t be like ‘1984’.

– Apple’s first commercial advertisement in 19843. 3 Tom Hormby, The Story Behind Apple’s 1984 Ad (2014); http:// lowendmac.com/2014/the-story-be- What drugs were in the 1960’s, computers were in hind-apples-1984-ad/, access: October 8, 2018, 1:48pm. the 1980’s. Both could and did change lives – both required and defined a user, both rebooted one’s potential. Except only the latter were legal, and na- turally positioned as products that someone needed to own to unlock the above promised potential. Of course, this potential is never really fulfilled, not until a newer and better version comes to our possession, resetting the clock of the excitement-expectation-let down cycle. With the establishment of Web, social media and particularly of the iPhone and smartphones, this became laughingly easy and trivial. Users were appearing left and right, fluidly rummaging through devices and habituating themselves to a life with a device glued to one extremity, dexterously untangling gordian knots of headphone cables.

In the winter of 2006, TIME magazine awarded 4 their “Person of the Year” title to “You, the user” . 4 TIME magazine Cover Archive (2006); http://content.time.com/ Note the tone: “Yes, you. You control the Information time/covers/0,16641,20061225,00. Age. Welcome to your world”. Akin to the opening html, access: September 28, 2018, lines of this essay, it exemplifies the language that 2:00pm insidiously weaves a perfect bubble around us. Empowered and seemingly in control, the user is centered right in the middle of the web page, the screen, the action.

How does that then tie back to the main thesis of this essay, namely the gospelisation of tech rhetoric? Thorny issues of hyper-centralisation, opaqueness of data mining, surveillance and blind solutionism mo- mentarily put aside, it matters because it scripts and

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enforces a very specific narrative between companies, developers, designers and users. And it matters doubly when the companies writing that narrative have reach well outside the borders of one country. Big tech companies have managed (albeit with less and less charisma) to not be dragged into the arena of today’s partisan politics by hiding in the shadow of libertarianism and sneering at the idea of a state, but while doing that, have acquired a dangerously close similarity to the state itself, and particularly its deeper parts, like the intelligence and the military.

In addition, and unlike most democratic states, they successfully operate and monitor multiple channels of information flow with their audience, except these channels are in most cases strictly unidirec- tional. The chain of commands that shape and launch products is without almost any exception a top down process driven by what generates more revenue, and that in most advertisement based models means maximizing the “time spent” with a product. Even if the developer or designer disagrees with a certain feature, they lack the incentive and infrastructure to voice opinion, knowing that if they don’t build it, then the next person will. Hyped and lavish Keynote events in this light seem but an empty promise and celebration to both the users as well as the developers – none of them have real agency over their role in the ecosystem. The former are passive consumers of experiences and the latter passive consumers of specs for these experiences.

The role of the interface

Branden Hookway writes: “the interface is not only the form and protocol by which communication and action occur between technology and user, but also 5 Branden Hookway. Interface. 5 Cambridge, MA(2014), pp 7. the obligation for each to respond to the other” . That

173 AFTER POST-TRUTH Interface Politics, 2nd International Conference implies the existence, at least in theory, of a bidirec- tional flow of communication between the user and the technology, the two mutually shaped through friction with the interface.

Focusing on online interfaces, that used to be largely true before the dot.com era, when the Web belon- ged to amateurs who were building and linking its content slowly and often eccentrically, but with an immediate understanding and access to its under- 6 lying technology . When that started being taken 6 Olia Lialina, A Vernacular Web (2005); http://art.teleportacia.org/ away by complex templated websites and blogs observation/vernacular/email/, rather than custom-made pages, interfaces started access: September 4, 9:30pm. converging to each other and their users had to behave in ways that conformed to that trajectory. When Facebook first took off, one of its strongest features was its standardized and clean interface, akin to the privileged and guarded milieu from which it arose to prominence, which was an answer to the net chaos of its then rival MySpace, where anyone could have a profile, and style it to their liking7. 7 danah boyd. Viewing American class divisions through Facebook and MyS- pace, Apophenia Blog Essay (2007); Interfaces mediate the boundary between a user http://www.danah.org/papers/ essays/ClassDivisions.html, accessed: and the information destined to reach them, and be October 1, 2018, 8:30pm. generated from them. Who controls an interface? It is certainly not the user, no matter how hard the corporate rhetoric insists on that. On the contrary, users have no choice but to conform to the interface paradigms conceived and imposed to them. This is particularly evident in the cases of voice-controlled artificial intelligence agents used in households like Amazon’s Alexa. Instead of the interface being the facilitator of a fluid interactive performance between the information it embeds and the user, the inverse happens, with children saying their first words according to whether Alexa will respond to 8 Rachel Botsman, Co–Parenting with Alexa, NYTimes Sunday Review 8 them . A bizarre power dynamic starts to take sha- (2017); https://www.nytimes. com/2017/10/07/opinion/sunday/ pe, where the user knows what they want to achieve, children-alexa-echo-robots.html, and they have no choice but to act in a particular accessed: September 20, 5:30pm.

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way in order to work with the interface. They are treated thus as mechanistic rather than humanistic subjects, undoing the fundamental premise that an interface is there to be utilized by them, rather than 9 Johanna Drucker, Graphesis. Visual condition them into certain behavioral paradigms9. Forms of Knowledge Production, Cam- bridge MA (2018) pp 146. In addition, rigid interfaces and schemes of fraud empowerment habituate to certain forms of data input and thus their eventual hard-coding into collective memories. The equivalent of a book or a library for younger generations is without a doubt the Google search bar, parked at the same spot underneath the colorful child-like logo for the past twenty years. The only thing left for users to do in most cases is to passionately applaud or complain about the changes in visual and gestural design in their go-to interfaces, rarely effecting change.

Yes, you should think 10 Steve Krug, Don’t make me think. A Common Sense Approach to Web Usability (3rd Edition) (London 2014). Ours are times of vivid criticism and faint critique. As designers, we need to move away from menta- 11 Tim Wu, The tyranny of convenience, NYTimes Sunday Review lities akin to “Don’t make me think” approaches to (2018); https://www.nytimes. interface and systems design, and experiment with com/2018/02/16/opinion/sunday/ 10 tyranny-convenience.html, accessed: new interactive paradigms . As users, we ought October 2, 2018, 4:30pm. to seriously reflect on how to position ourselves 12 Rhizome, Net Art Anthology (2016 in a reality where convenience is our benevolent – present); https://anthology.rhizome. 11 org/, accessed: October 4, 2018, dictator . Increasing our tolerance and desire for 8:00pm. abstraction and playful weirdness, just like the early

13 Olia Lialina, Self-Portrait (2018); Web net art projects were aiming to do, can awaken http://olia.lialina.work/, accessed: us to the tightly scripted role we have been handed October 9, 2018, 10:00am. by Silicon Valley’s cultureless race to the top12. Ar- 14 Rafaël Rozendaal, Abstract Browsing tistic approaches like Lialina’s recent “Self-Portrait”, (2015-ongoing); https://www.newra- fael.com/notes-on-abstract-browsing/, Rozendaal’s “Abstract Browsing”, Rafman’s “Nine accessed: October 9, 2018, 10:00am. Eyes of Google Street View” are intriguing and 15 Jon Rafman, Nine Eyes (2008-on- valuable because they undermine the concept of going); https://anthology.rhizome. org/9-eyes, accessed: October 9, 2018, the ideal, helping us let go for a moment of any task 10:00am. oriented conventions13 14 15.

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Change does not only have to come from those distant to the tech ecosystem. While more and more engineers realize that ideologies can and do get encoded in products, interfaces and modes of interaction, they lack the means to effectively critique and control the consequences their work has on society. Silicon Valley’s culture of failure permissions the repeated effort but erases the consequence (Face- book’s “move fast and break things” pitch to fame) giving nor the time, neither the emotional and ethical bandwidth for someone to take a moment to step away and reflect on how their work influences society. Pushing for transparency, reevaluation of existing policies and tighter regulation could be effective ways to move forward, as has already star- 16 ted happening in some parts of the world . 16 EU GDPR.ORG (2017); https:// eugdpr.org/the-regulation/, accessed: October 8, 2018, 14:30pm. Superficial aesthetics should not continue to con- ceal the uneven distribution of power between the user, the interface and the information it mediates, no matter how sleek, small and fast the devices that surround us become. We need a new vocabulary for better articulating the roles of makers and consumers within the tech ecosystem. Technologists need to be incentivised and educated in order to meet practice with critique and theory. Designers and artists need to become more comfortable with unpacking and experimenting with the power dynamics embedded within the interface and its user. The user needs to be positioned as a truly sovereign subject vis-a-vis the interface, rather than a mechanistic “thing” with faux agency, conditioned to meet 17 a certain set of specifications . No matter what 17 Wendy Chun, Updating to Remain the Same. Habitual New Media, Cambridge Keynote events preach – we should be thinking. MA (2016) pp 84.

Kalli Retzepi https://kalli-retzepi.com/

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Sustainable Interface Protocol Andrea Noni, Joana Moll

Abstract According to an article published in 2013, 40% of the Internet’s total carbon footprint may be attributed to the design of a web site[1]. In June 2018, the average weight of a site was 2MB, almost 3 times bigger than the average size of a website in 2010. This rapid increase is mostly attributed to images and videos displayed on websites. While in 2010 the average size of images found on a website was 430KB (and the videos were practically nonexistent), in 2017 embedded website images weigh 1664KB and videos weight in at 199KB. Likewise, the size of stylesheets, scripts, fonts and other files have also tripled in the last seven years[2].

The numerous domestic interfaces that we use in our everyday life play an essential role in diluting the many tangible realities of our networked society. This is particularly true when it comes to the several tangible and intangible infrastructures that construct the Internet, supported by their underlying material impacts. In our opinion, interfaces’ tendency to blur the materiality constructing their own operations directly dilutes the user control they aim to empower. The result generates a sense of comfortable limbo where the user can interact “free” of guilt, thought and reflection. In that respect, we can argue that the Interface may unfold a critical agent in the generation of a culture of irresponsibility.

We firmly believe that when operating electronic devices, interfaces can play a key role in raising broad public awareness surrounding the relationships between our actions and their material impact on the physical world. By designing mechanisms capable of triggering thoughts and actions, interfaces can empower stimulattion and re-appropriate subjectivity. We believe that

177 AFTER POST-TRUTH Interface Politics, 2nd International Conference interfaces hold not only the power, but the responsibility to generate critical thought about the true nature of technology, and the imagining of alternative techno-paradigms which offer greater responsiblity towards our environmental and human conditions.

Taking all the previous statements into consideration, we are developing a protocol to design and prototype environmentally friendly interfaces and digital content. This protocol aims to serve as an open collective roadmap to raise awareness and promote sustainable practices within the digital creative community, online marketing and software engineering sectors as well as to empower average users to counteract the heavy materiality of digital data when interacting in the online sphere.

Keywords Interfaces; materiality; sustainability.

— Andrea Noni https://gridspinoza.net/en/researchers/andrea-noni — Joana Moll http://www.janavirgin.com/

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“Please Don´t Feed the Animals” Fabricio Lamoncha

Abstract This paper researches the potential combination of virtual reality platforms and biosemiotic research methods in artistic projects, with a special focus on projects related to animal rights and environmental issues. As well, it analyses the potential use of different Virtual Reality environments, such as computer-generated environments and 360° videos, in combination with other digital technologies, to articulate strategies of empowerment and audience participation. The challenges that arise are: how could we benefit from these products to promote the development of new bioethical discourses? could those tools be effective to address the ancient problem ofother minds, or – using deleuzian terms – becoming-animal, or rather the absorption of new media, a new becoming media? This paper proposes a further argumentation of these issues, based on the evaluation of different artistic projects making use of virtual reality environments and biosemiotic methods in very different ways.

Keywords Art; science; biosemiotics; virtual reality; media ecology

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Introduction

The problem of ‘other minds’ is a very ancient problem that is still present in contemporary society, and it is so basically because we haven’t been given the tool to construct our cultural believes allowing us to understand other species. Today, we are not missing observation skills and tools, nor moments of interaction with other species – in fact we are exposed to meaningful moments of exchange with other species all the time, what we are missing is the cultural constructs that make all these observations and experiences cohesive. This dis- crepancy between our own singular ways of experiencing and understanding the world and what we were taught to believe can lead us to confusion and be very frustrating (Haraway 2008).

When we extrapolate this argument to the use of animals in laboratory research, we are confronted again with paradoxical contradictions: on the one hand, research on animals is considered ’ethical’ for the physiological and cognitive difference that separate us – we have been taught that those species experience the world in a different way than us and therefore they don´t experience pain and anxiety the same way as we do; on the other, research on animals is legitimated precisely because of the similar features that we share (Wolf 2013). Acknowled- ging these similarities could provide the grounds to explore those other potentially profound differences that exist in the ways we experience the world, or using Ludwig Wittgenstein’s words: “if a lion could talk, we probably couldn’t understand him”, and concluding with Lisa Jevbratt’s: “…and precisely because we can’t understand, it is important to listen” (Wittgenstein 1958, Jevbratt 2017).

Biosemiotic Methods

Natural sciences is a discipline using continuous scales of structural differences, applying monism to explain their physical reality. But if we apply a more fine-grained classification of qualitative difference to this physical reality, we will find ourselves in another dimension of reality, we will find ourselves in the domain of pluralism, the semiotic reality (Kull 2011). Remodeling the relationship between art and science implies the discovery of their common roots, which are the semiotic ones (Kull 2009).

The toolbox of biologist is filled with specific objects called ’categories’. Those large objects called ‘categories’ gave place to the creation of the biological spe-

180 Interface politics_Panel#7 cies in the natural sciences. Therefore, the field of biosemiotics, as a pluralistic research field, endorsed as well the use of categories in the natural sciences, but redefined as the group of semiotic objects in the human process of differentiation due to interpretation (Hoffmeyer 2008).

Within the group of pioneer Biosemioticians, it is especially renowned the work of Jakob von Uexküll. Back in the XIXth Century, the German biologist already understood that the only way to acquire knowledge from a semiotic system would be through semiotic processes themselves. This type of knowledge is comparable to this we can acquire between humans through translation, or dialogue (Brentari 2015, Kull 2012).

Jakob Von Uexküll developed specific methods called ‘Umwelt-research’, aiming at reconstructing the vital creative nature of the process of creating that happen in all species. They could be also described as ‘participatory observation’ methods. Uexküll´s methods would redefine ‘observation’ as the recognition of those signs registered by the observer and that are also received by the living organism under observation. Consequently, ’Participation’ will then be defined as the resulting reconstruction of the ‘Umwelt’ (surrounding world) of another organism through the sharing of the decoding processes occurring during its behavioural activities (Uexküll 1956, 1957).

Conceptualizing ’Participation’ with other species, as well as confronting their results, Uexküll laid the principles that force us to question our self-proclaimed center position, a position that we believe has lead us to immense ecological destruction, and the suffering and the extinction of many species. Introducing ‘participation’ as a term in our interaction with other living forms force us to acknowledge their agency, turning them our intellectual and spiritual partners, and therefore becoming much more difficult to put them through suffering or danger. Therefore, biosemiotic methods in interspecies participation shouldn’t by perceived as a justification to disturb other species, but yes, to put into question some current scientific non-interaction policies.

Artistic Research

Contemporary artists have shifted from the traditional focus on the single image, and instead started making art by creating their own aesthetic systems: by arranging resources, media, people and the interactions between them.

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Therefore, contemporary art today no longer functions only as an object of interpretation, but it encompasses interactions and deregulation of systems, allowing its participants to experience art in a new, questioning, amplified and empowering way (Kac 2009).

Based on the new possibilities of the application of interdisciplinarity in their work, many artists saw in working together with other species through biosemiotic methods a new system to represent the natural world as a world full of politics, culture, meaning, interaction, communication and intention. Unfortunately, up until today, we still organize our ethical agendas under this nature and culture dualism, perceiving the first as organized and purposeful, in juxtaposition to a natural world, wild and distant, a place that we can take by violence and corrupt at our own will, and for that we need to take distance from it (Morton 2016). Confronting the results of this unusual collaborations could promote the disruption of the classic Cartesian distinction between the culture and the nature, unifying both worlds into one world of meaning (Wolf 2013).

Media Ecology

New examples of these forms of participations are constantly emerging, in part due to the development of new technologies. Jacob von Uexküll already in the XIXth century made use of a new hot media like photography and photo editing techniques to represent the different sensorial apparatus of animal species and their implications in their interpretation and understanding of their surrounding world. The development and rapid ubiquity of photography boosted the social repercussion of biosemiotics, promoting the conceptual development of new arguments, setting up the foundations of today´s bioethical agendas. Today, the ubiquity of new media technologies, with GPU´s (graphics processing units) able to render real-time CGI´s (Computer Gene- rated Images) or High Resolution 360° videos, and the support of emergent technologies like VR platforms and VR headsets like Oculus Rift and HTC Vive, among other low-cost devices, allow artists and scientists to create even more immersive environments for sensorial examination.

The ubiquity of the internet and democratic access to open-source software also enabled the emergence of new non-hierarchical, self-organized, space-time forms of collaboration. Many artists have found in these media not only new fields for the development of new poetic languages, but also for new forms of

182 Interface politics_Panel#7 participation, distribution and promotion of their work. But what´s important in this types of collaboration is not based on their individual contributions, but what they all can achieve together, and the knowledge that, as in many examples of collaborations, sharing a common agenda is not relevant for a collaboration to be successful (Jevbratt 2017).

Fig. 1. Illustrations found in the book Mondes Animaux et Monde Humain, by Jakob von Uexküll.

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Examples

“In the Eyes of the Animal”, by the British-based studio Marshmallow Laser Feast, is one of these artistic projects in the intersection of art and biosemiotic research. The artists use a combination of 3d scanners, drones, generative computer graphics, and audio recordings, in a resulting immersive VR experience that – according to their website – “allow the user to see directly through the eyes of different species” (mosquito, dragonfly, frog and owl). The audience is guided to a nearby forest where they´re invited to put on a customized VR hel- met and headphones in order to experience the show. The camera documenting the audience´s experience records the moment when the assistant takes back the VR headset showing the signs of perplexity in the eyes of the user. One could associate this face to the one confronting a moment of ecstatic singular experience and the frustration inherent to the one pulled back to the old familiar world of static cultural constructions. The audience is then interviewed and brought back outside the forest. The VR experience without any doubt has created an impact on the audience, some of them even claiming to see the forest differently. Deleuze called this moment of transformation a deterritorialization. According to Deleuze, the finality of the contemporary artist is this of despoiling of affection the object affected by the humanity of his description in order to extract that singular experience. Deleuze saw in the role of the artist the transformative power to deregulate our political ethos and therefore transcend the cultural articula- tions that keep us apart from our surrounding world. Deleuze promoted the idea that artists and writers are in a better place than professional politicians to do politics, and calling instead for the transformative potential of the micro-politics of minoritarian becomings. The most extraordinary is that, according to Deleuze, these practices can happen without relying on political regulation, and thus can go without political activism and rights defense (Deleuze).

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Fig. 2. Participant of In the Eyes of the Animal, by Marshmallow Laser Feast.

A very different kind of VR experience is brought by the USA-based NGO Animal Equality in their current campaign against animal cruelty. “iAnimal” project use 360° video cameras to record footage from the interior of different industrial animal factory farms from the perspective of the animals inside. The footage is distributed for free online in their website and can be played directly on the smartphone, using the device´s features to play these formats. The 360° videos show long sequences with different sections of the factory chain. With the only company of the calm voice of a narrator, you confront the raw footage alone. The images shown by the 360° camera are democratic, as they don´t tell you what or where you have to look. The footage can also be considered democratic, as the experience also doesn´t rely on the quality of the video compression. The democratic footage confronts us with idea that there is a substantial difference between looking at the same thing and seeing through his eyes. On the one hand, the passive and linear experience of the 360° footage; on the other, the hyperactive and restless sensorial apparatus and of the animal in the footage. What they promoted as immersive experience is indeed a passive experience, one in which the viewer only confronts the guilt of his humanity. In

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Rancière words, this project only represents “the wordless victim, the ultimate figure of the one excluded from the logos, armed only with a voice expressing a monotonous moan, the moan of naked suffering, which saturation has made inaudible” (Rancière 1999).

Fig. 3. Frame of one of the videos from iAnimal, by the NGO Animal Equality.

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Conclusion

Human-animal relationships today are still described in two contradictory ways: on the one hand, animal and wildlife activists have condemned the unsustainable industrial exploitation of nature; while on the other, we claim to hold an inherently holistic relationship with it. Applying Levi-Strauss’ paradigms of the Raw and the Cooked, we display great sensitivity toward idealized forms of the natural world while simultaneously we show indifference for the nature in the raw (Levi-Strauss 1983). “In the Eyes of the Animal” and “iAni- mal” show how our perspective of nature remains purely contextual, the first one showing humans as part of a domesticated aesthetic nature identical with culture, and the second exposing the similarities between semiotic and semantic constructions keeping us apart from a nature in the wild vilely exploited for resource (Kalland 1996).

Both projects use very different media strategies to promote their work. “In the Eyes of the Animal” uses a highly immersive graphic experience that results on a more mimetic, magic and seductive experience, that doesn´t allow participation from the user. Haraway would consider this experience anthropocentric and unsuccessful, as its standpoint of creating a synthetic experience prevent the user from building a concrete relationship with the animal other, a relationship which in fact would only possible to achieve – she argues – through curiosity, emotion, exchange and respect for the difference (Haraway 2008). “iAnimal”, on the other hand, uses completely different strategies in order to promote their project. The 360° videos provide less sensory data and, consequently, demand more participation by the audience. The raw content and the poor medium force the user to shift continuously between the magic and the real world, exposing the medium itself. The audience is as engaged with the technology as it is with the content. Then, the NGO distributes their content for free on their website, offering the possibility of worldwide distribution, and enabling the users’ active participation for the distribution of the content, who is invited to share it. A humorous art project that visualizes the responsibilities related to the production and consume of VR technology is “Second Livestock”, a speculative project proposing the use of VR for farm animals. The custom made VR headset is attached to the industrial farm chicken, providing them with the illusion of living in a traditional farm. This project more than a humorous representation of the possibilities of VR technologies is a reflection about our responsibilities as producers and consumers of new communication technologies, showing how the mindless attitude toward the absorption of a

187 AFTER POST-TRUTH Interface Politics, 2nd International Conference new technological apparatus can also enslave us. But also, how a thoughtful use of a media, one that allows participation, exchange and transformation, a media diminishing the distinctions between author and audience, can as well empower us. Indeed, a media merging art with life (Steyerl 2009).

Fig. 4. Image from the project Second Livestock, by Austin Steward.

References

Brentari, C., 2015. Jakob von Uexküll: The Discovery of the Umwelt between Biosemiotics and Theoretical Biology. Springer.

Haraway, D., 2008. When Species Meet. University of Minnesota Press. Lisa

Jevbratt, L., 2017.Making Art Together with Nonhuman Animals. Available at:

Kalland, A., 1996. Japanese Images of Nature: Cultural Perspectives. Routledge.

Kull, K., 2009. The importance of semiotics to University: Semiosis makes the world locally plural. Available at:

Kull, K., 2011. Towards a Semiotic Reality, Imperial College Press.

Kull, K., 2012. Jakob von Uexküll: An Introduction. Semiotical vol.134.

Lévi-Strauss, C., 1983. The Raw and the Cooked. University of Chicago Press.

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Kac, E., 2009. Signs of Life: Bio Art and Beyond. MIT Press.

Rancière, J., 1999. Disagreement: politics and philosophy. University of Minnesota Press.

Steyerl, H., 2009. In Defense of the Poor Image. Available at:

Uexküll, J.V., 1956. Mondes Animaux et Monde Humain. Rowohlt.

Uexküll, J.V., 1957. A Stroll Through the Worlds of Animals and Men: A Picture Book of Invisible Worlds. International University Press.

Wittgenstein, L. 1958,Philosophical Investigations. Basil Blackwell.

Wolfe, C., 2013, Before the Law: Humans and Other Animals in a Biopolitical Frame. University of Chicago Press.

Figures

Fig. 1. Uexküll, J.V. Mondes Animaux et Monde Humain. [image online] Available at:

Fig. 2. Marshmallow Laser Feast. In the Eyes of the Animal. [image online] Available at:

Fig. 3. Animal Equality NGO. iAnimal. [image online] Available at:

Figure 4. Steward., A., Second Livestock. [image online] Available at:

Fabricio Lamoncha https://fabriciolamoncha.com/

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Clouds, Interfaces, Pollution, Climate Crisis Panel#8 Moderated by Joana Moll

César Escudero, Christian Andersen, Joana Moll, Søren Pold Clouds, Interfaces, Pollution, Climate Crisis

Joana Chicau A WebPage in III Acts

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Clouds, Interfaces, Pollution, Climate Crisis César Escudero, Christian Andersen, Joana Moll, Søren Pold

Abstract When exploring contemporary interfaces of e.g. Facebook or Google through an iPhone, there is no way to see the gigantic infrastructure of cables, cloud servers and power structures working behind the user interface. Compared to earlier PC interfaces, users have even less access to experience nor understand where the software is located, which kind of software processes that are running, where their data goes nor how it impacts the interface. While this is an issue for data and leads to data pollution such as in the recent Cambridge Analytica scandal, it is also an issue materially and on an environmental scale. If the PC user had some sense of the electricity consumption and resulting pollution of the PC, contemporary users have more or less no access to understanding or influencing the consumption and pollution of current cloud services, like searching, using social media, accessing cloud storage or consu- ming streamed content.

This panel will discuss how this can be changed. How can we create more awareness among users about the environmental costs of cloud computing? How can we measure power consumption and pollution of networked cloud services? How can we create models for ‘green’ clouds? And how can we imagine an interface that instead of hiding and distancing the pollution is more transparent about its effects on both data and carbon pollution?

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The material for the discussion will be artistic projects that in different ways explore climate crisis interfaces. Examples are Joana Moll’s CO2GLE, DE- FOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOREST, Scott Rettberg and Rod Coo- ver’s ToxiCity, Shelley Jackson’s Snow, HeHe’s Nuage Vert, Michael Saup’s AVA- TAR, Martín Nadal and César Escudero’s BITTERCOIN, the worst miner ever.

— César Escudero https://escuderoandaluz.com/ — Christian Andersen https://christianandersen.net/ — Joana Moll http://www.janavirgin.com/ — Søren Pold https://pure.au.dk/portal/en/persons/soeren-bro-pold(4db7e12a- 61c5-4e14-9259-5a071cb224eb).html https://twitter.com/spold?lang=en

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A WebPage in III Acts (Performance) Joana Chicau

Performance. On choreographic thinking Design scripts and dance scores are the result of a composition process, which defines the space and time for a series of actions to unfold. In design, scripts are written with programming languages and are executable by a computer, and can be used to create information displays on screens or actions in a web browser. Similarly, choreographic scores define a set of rules and the conditions for certain actions, the main difference being that this will be executed by human (bodies). Thus, both scores and scripts hold the question of performance, the possibility and responsibility for action.

From an understanding that the media environment is constantly changing and communication methods are shifting, the question arises of whether the meaning and role of design should be rethought. Graphic interfaces and web tools are embedded in intricate ecologies of interdependent infrastructures, subjects and subjectivities, codes, data, applications, laws, corporations and protocols.

Most computation is no longer standalone, it operates as part of an architecture of servers, software, networks, and social, cultural and commercial systems. (Fuller, 2006).

All these multiple layers of complexity bring a sense of instability to media design work, speaking to the inherent nature of choreography which deals with the idea of something constantly being done. Specifically, in the context of this project there are many interlaced ones, for instance the politics of web standards: starting from the language itself (HTML/CSS/JavaScript) to the browser (Firefox, which is free and open source).

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Choreographic thinking and methodologies address questions of unpredic- tability, indeterminacy, immateriality, spatial and temporal paradoxes that can inform design on how to respond to the digital logic. As in as considering the indeterminate interactions between scripts, machines and users, and the complex inter-relations, dependencies and contingencies of design. In short, its performative stance.

The work that follows is influenced by both fields of knowledge (design and choreography) and aims at finding a common language. A hybrid methodology that makes invisible forces (elements of choreography) appear as physical manifestations in media environments.

A dual syntax

In every sphere of human action, grammar is the establishment of limits defining a space of communication. (Cox and McLean, 2012)

For the series ‘WebPage Act I, II, III’, Joana Chicau created a specific grammar or vocabulary that links choreographic concepts from post-modern dance with web-coding functions.

This technique follows the concept of esoteric programming languages, also called esolang, used when writing software, integrating a new grammar into an existing one. Although an esolang doesn’t have a proper functionality, it is used in combination with other programming languages to explore alternative ways of composing and writing code. Chicau started using esoteric programming languages as an attempt to overcome the abstractness of algorithmic code, and simultaneously as a way to develop my own design language, which derives from choreographic concepts.

In Joana’s performance pieces the esolang is the combination of choreographic concepts with programming languages, mostly web-based, such as JavaScript. In my code every JavaScript function aims to translate a choreographic concept, which is only visible in the browser in the moment of performing.

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‘A WebPage in III Acts’

The performance starts with a standard webpage, followed by the opening of the web console. The screen is now divided in two stages: the ‘frontstage’, the interface a user normally accesses and the ‘backstage’ or the web console in which programming languages can be ran. In the web console Chicau is calling, juxtaposing and manipulating different functions from a glossary of code, while simultaneously displaying the varied outcomes of graphic elements in the screen. These functions are named after choreographic concepts, which are assigned to specific web actions. While the computer interprets the code, the audience will be interpreting and start wondering about the relation between the ‘choreographic vocabulary’1 within the code and its immediate outcome.

The screen becomes an open stage, providing the audience the access to the methodology and the tools used during the performance. The performative aspect of the act of coding is a way to make more transparent the process of composition and to enhance the nuances and transient character of coding. The liveness of the work, guides the audience through its creation, and helps them follow the steps both at a technical and conceptual level, meaning that the way the piece unfolds reflects the conditions of its creation: not by looking at an object but by being part of an event. This way, allowing the audience to engage with the making of the compositions while exposing and articulating the multiple dimensions of the code. After the live coding part follows an enactment of choreographic physical movement.

As in choreography, web-design also deals with space, time and movement qualities. It has been defining ways of moving, collectively or individually, through fluid nonetheless complex landscapes of information displays, networked spaces, and multimedia environments. The performance being presented and the notion of ‘choreographic coding’ is a technical as much as social, cultural and aesthetic experiment which has been expanding both at the level of web-design as well at the one of choreography.

Keywords Media jamming; interface design; activist poetics; digital countercultures; poetics of automations and infrastructures.

Joana Chicau — https://joanachicau.com/

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Joana Chicau’s performance

196 Keynote lecture

KEYNOTE LECTURE

The ConDividual Interface Marco Deseriis

In his notable book The Interface Effect, Alexander Galloway identifies two fundamental models of the interface. The first model is based on the metaphor of the frame, the door, the glass window, and the screen. In this model, the interface is an unobtrusive and transparent threshold whose function is to support representations, facilitate perception, and enable transitions between spaces without being noticed, without placing a burden on those who watch, pass through, and so on. Galloway aptly notes that this model of the interface dovetails with a consolidated strand in media theory—which goes from Mar- shall McLuhan to Jay David Bolter and Richard Grusin—according to which the content of a medium is always a previous medium. As Galloway notes this “onion skin model” imagines the media as containers of previous media. “What is video but a container for film. What is the Web but a container for text, image, video clips, and so on. Like the layers of an onion, one format encircles another, and it is media all the way down” (Galloway, 2012).

But this is not the whole story. Galloway adds that there exists a second strand in media theory, which understands the interface as what Francois Dagognet describes as an “area of choice” and a “fertile nexus” (Dagognet cited in Ga- lloway, 2012). In this strand, the interface is not transparent and unobtrusive, but on the contrary it is opaque—it has its own autonomy. The main function of the interface as fertile nexus is to establishe a connection between the center and the edge, between representation and its conditions of possibility. This is the moment in which Homer invokes the Muse to inspire his own poem, or the well-known technique of defamiliarization and laying bare the device popularized by the modern avant-garde. From the dada manifestoes to William Burroughs and Bryon Gysin’s cut-up technique to Augusto Boal’s Theater of

197 AFTER POST-TRUTH Interface Politics, 2nd International Conference the Oppressed and Joan Leandre’s unplayable games, the interface does not provide here transparent access, it is not a threshold. Rather, in this experimental tradition, the interface becomes something that poses a problem to the subject who seeks the pleasure of reading, watching, and playing, or to the user who just wants information at his fingertips.

And yet, for all their differences, these two models of the interface have something in common, that is to say, they both establish a certain aesthetic relationship between the subject and the world. In the case of the threshold model, the interface is meant to increase efficiency and human mastery. In the fertile nexus model, it is the materiality of the medium that is foregrounded—a medium that becomes part of the world rather than acting as a gateway to it. Undoubtedly, because of its higher efficiency, the threshold model has been the dominant model of the interface in the history of humankind. Over the past fifteen years or so, however, this model has begun to undergo a significant shift, which is mostly attributable to the rise of social networking sites.

Whereas it is seemingly transparent, efficient, and user-friendly, the social media interface presents users with information that is selected on the basis of the personal data they relinquish in creating an account as well as their daily use of the platform. Thus, the social media interface is made of two primary components: a visible component that is seemingly transparent and user-friendly; and an invisible component that is platform-friendly and highly opaque. However, rather than revealing the inner workings of the technology (as in the tradition of the modern avant-garde), the opacity of the social media interface is a byproduct of algorithmic filters, whose logic and modus operandi remains by and large unknown to the user. On a general level we could say that the social media interface functions as an imaginary filter of sorts, where the term imaginary is to be understood in the Lacanian sense of the term. The social media interface functions like a mirror, which provides us with a complete image of our own interests, our social circles, and therefore our own self. This image is a narcissistic projection of our ideal ego, except that because it is a mirror image we are not quite sure whether we can rely on it, we are not quite sure of its ontological consistency.

Thus I propose to call this emerging type of interface theimaginary filter. The imaginary filter has two components: a front end from which we look at our social selves; and a backend from which we are looked at. The imaginary filter functions like a one-way mirror—a mirror that is reflective on one side and

198 Keynote lecture transparent on the other side. The problem is that users are on the reflective side of the mirror, which means that even if they are vaguely aware of being watched, there is nothing they can do to change the algorithmic filters that run in the back end. And because these algorithmic filters are designed to make social media users happy (Vaidhyanathan, 2018), to make them want to return to the platform, users are stuck in these “filter bubbles,” which constantly reinforce their own biases (Pariser, 2011). In this sense the age of post-truth is not only the age in which users believe whatever they want to believe in, but it is also the age in which the algorithmic logic of social media institutions supports and encourages user desire rather than holding it in check. Slavoj Zizek had already linked the rise of the Internet to the decline of symbolic efficiency in the late 1990s (Zizek, 1999). However, he had still not seen how the capitalist injunction to “enjoy” would be encoded into algorithms that by taking care of our own selves would relieve us from the Socratic imperative of actively knowing ourselves—of having to care for oneself.

For sure, the more these machines get to know us better than we know ourselves, the more we witness a generalized loss of control. If the interface has become a one-way mirror, and we are on the wrong side of the mirror, then we are faced with a dilemma. Because getting rid of the imaginary filter would mean to be exposed to information that does not reflect our predetermined interests, freedom from algorithmic control is necessarily conducive to a loss of control. Indeed, the return of symbolic efficiency would coincide with the acceptance of an authority that is capable of structuring our reality beyond our subjective differences. It is no surprise that being the most notable victims of post-truth, traditional news organizations are the first to denounce fake news and invoke stricter regulations for social media institutions. But in a way artists, activists, cultural and media critics also invoke, at least indirectly, the return of symbolic efficiency every time they try to demistify and expose algorithmic control as well as every time they try to escape it. In the reminder of this paper, I will first discuss these two approaches—demystification as exposure and demystification as obfuscation and exodus—to then turn to a third strategy, which is what I call the strategy of concatenation and condividuality.

The first approach, demystification as exposure, is well-established in the fine arts and insists entirely upon the realm of representation. Here the rationale is that you cannot criticize, oppose or change that which you cannot see, that which escapes perception. Thus it is a matter of making visible the invisible, of setting the aesthetic conditions for a different partition of the sensible (Ran-

199 AFTER POST-TRUTH Interface Politics, 2nd International Conference cière, 2004). For example, Michael Najaar’s High Altitude (2008-2010) is a project that re-presents the graph of different stock market indexes as “realistic mountain ranges” to make us reflect on the unmeasurable and uncanny nature of the global financial system (as well as of its environmental impact). Or we could think of the widespread use of data visualization software to display social influence on Twitter and other social network sites as an attempt to shed light on the logic of the imaginary filter.

The strategy of demystification and exposure entails in my opinion two major risks. The first is the risk of aestheticizing data, that is, of making these platforms look even more uncanny than what they already are. We might call this risk the technological sublime. The second risk, which is more pertinent to data visualization software, is that network diagrams will only show us what we already know, namely, that we are enclosed and segregated in our filter bubbles. Thus the technological sublime of artistic metaphors a la Michael Najaar and the technological realism of data visualization software are nothing but two sides of the same coin. In turning algorithmic power into an object of contemplation—rather than asking how it works and structures our worldly experience—these aesthetic strategies endow the imaginary filter with the material and objective existence that it precisely lacks in our daily experience. In other words, data visualization shows us that we are indeed trapped in our filter bubbles, but that there is nothing we can do about it because (the big Other encoded in) algorithmic power has already determined that networked segregation is the condition of our online happiness.

If the strategy of demystification as exposure ends up reinforcing the imaginary filter, the second strategy of demystification as obfuscation and exodus takes the opposite route of circumventing the filter or ignoring it altogether. The circum- vention strategy does not take an anti-Internet stance, only an anti-social media one. I am referring here to a set of individual and collective practices focused on privacy protection—what Gabriella Coleman and Alex Golub (2008) call the ethics of crypto-freedom—which include the use of VPNs, PGP, Tor Brower, and so on. The second strategy includes a whole range of disconnectionist practices that go from closing social media accounts (Karppi, 2018) to taking long respites from the Internet. The problem with these two strategies is that they both come at a high cost. Indeed, the crypto-freedom approach requires individuals to spend time and resources in educating himself on how to escape control. This libidinal investment is itself sufficient to create communities of hackers, geeks, and technophiles who share a technoculture, but who are also

200 Keynote lecture often unable to communicate with the vast majority of people who donot educate themselves. The disconnectionist approach is even more costly as less and less people can really afford the luxury of being offline. Even in this case, the costs of technical self-education and the costs of self-exclusion from the network are two sides of the same coin. In ignoring the way the vast majority of people inform themselves and communicate online, cypherpunks, crypto-hackers and disconnectionists leave the imaginary filter essentially untouched.

To sum up, while data visualization objectifies our algorithmic fantasies granting them the ideological status they would otherwise lack, obfuscation and exodus tactics produce an alternative process of subjectivation, which, however, leaves the design and politics of interfaces untouched. As we know, the politics of the social media interface is essentially defined by metrifica- tion. Without basic units such as the social media profile, and buttons for the quantification of social capital and social sentiment these interfaces would not be capable of serving the analytic algorithms that run the backend of the imaginary filter. These algorithms break down each user’s profile on the basis of discrete actions she performs vis-à-vis other users. Thesedividual electronic transactions, as Gilles Deleuze (1992) famously termed them, are the basic units of informational capitalism, which recombines the data we leave behind in a potentially infinite variety of data sets.

Here it is worth pausing on this double operation. First, the social media interface generates data by cutting our actions from the analog continuum through a logical procedure that marks distinction. The social media button, the dynamic form window, the constant exortations to express our own thoughts and feelings are all devices designed to extract data points from the continuum of social life. This segmentation—or dividualization—of the online self becomes the condition for a second operation: the recombination of multiple data points in variable data sets. This means that the dividual datum is always open to interaction, always ready to be detached from and attached to other dividuals. Thus, as compared to the individual—which prides itself of its unique properties—the dividual has the advantage of being combinable with other divisible beings that share some properties with it. As Gerald Raunig notes, “dividuum has one component or multiple components, which constitute it as divisible and concatenate it with other parts that are similar in their components: similarity, not sameness or identity, similarity concerning only some components” (Raunig, 2016).

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Now, if the dividual is nothing but a part that can be detached from and reatta- ched to other dividuals, in what way does the interface contribute to articulate this logic? To answer this question, we have first to consider that while the algorithmic governance of social media is predicated on these dividual data points, at the level of the interface the social media user is still interpellated and subjectified as an individual. Indeed, the front end of the imaginary filter produces the subject as a unique signifying entity—with her social roles, her professional status, her particular network of friends and acquaintances, and so on. Thus, the front end of the imaginary filter projects a consistent image that is built around the individual and individuated social media profiles. The back end of the imaginary filter, however, extracts value at the level of the metadata. And metadata go beyond the individuated subject to insist on the molecular, pre-individual or infrasocial level, on the level of affects that have not been yet individuated and assigned to a subject (Lazzarato, 2014).

But what would it mean to make these pre-individual affective relationships accessible from the level of the interface rather than letting them control our lives from the backend of the imaginary filter? In order to think the interface as a fertile nexus between the networked representation of social life and its conditions of possibility, between that which appears to be social and that which produces the social, I will now try to sketch the outline of the condividual interface, that is, of an interface that is made of several dividual components. This means that the condividual interface does not represent social interaction. Rather, in the avant-garde tradition, the condividual interface is a fertile nexus whereby seemingly dispersed, minor and obfuscated practices begin to concatenate, begin to enter and shape a common discursive space. The con-dividual interface, I will argue, is nothing but the emergence of this space, which allows us to perceive something that was previously powerless, disconnected, invisible as connected, as having a voice of its own, and as carrying a certain symbolic power.

In the past I have investigated a set of condividual practices, which can also be understood as inter-faces, that is, as proper names that have lost their designating function. What I call an improper name retains in fact the formal features of a proper name but it is ultimately unable to denote either an individual subject or a collective subject of enunciation. This means that an improper name shu- ffles between the individual and the collective designating a condividual process of subjectivation. Such process of subjectivation is best exemplified by shared pseudonyms such as Ned Ludd, the eponymous leader of the English Luddites; Allen Smithee, an artificial signature shared by Hollywood film directors to

202 Keynote lecture disown movies recut by a production company; Luther Blissett, a pseudonym shared by artists and activists to perform sophisticated media pranks and criticize bourgeois authorship and intellectual property; and Anonymous, a moniker adopted by thousands of Internet users to attack governments and corporations that restrict access to information and information technologies. I am not going to review each case study. Simply, in spite of their individual differences, these improper names share three formal features: 1) empowering a subaltern social group by providing a medium for identification and mutual recognition to its users 2) enabling those who do not have a voice of their own to acquire a symbolic power outside the boundaries of an institutional practice; and 3) expressing a process of subjectivation characterized by the proliferation of difference.

Let me pause here on the second feature, the symbolic power associated with these pseudonyms. I derive the notion of symbolic power from Pierre Bour- dieu, who defines symbolic power as the magic power of acting upon the social world through words. Drawing from the work of J. L. Austin on the conditions of felicity of a performative utterance, Bourdieu argues that such power is usually exercised by “an individual—king, priest or spokesperson—[who] is mandated to speak and act on behalf of the group, thus constituted in him and by him” (Bourdieu, 1991). In modern societies, institutions such as the state and the church typically grant this power to an appointed minister so that only a governor can declare the state of emergency or a priest can pronounce someone husband and wife and expect such words to have the force of action. Now, my wager is that collective pseudonyms such as Ludd, Smithee, Blissett, and Anonymous are all forms of symbolic power in their own right. But instead of being managed through formal delegation such power is directly managed by the users of the alias.

This does not mean that such power is equally distributed among the users of the alias. Rather, the users of an alias determine its mode of disposition and usage within an authorizing context. Authorizing contexts may include sanc- tioned organizations such as unions, but also art and activist collectives, social movements, and Internet-based communities. Whereas an authorizing context can try and limit access to the pseudonym to its original users, as soon as these names are released in the public domain they lend themselves to unforeseen appropriations and third-party usages. It is through their encoding in a variety of media and their circulation in the public sphere that these aliases take on a life of their own and become improper. So, while the authorizing context regula- tes access to the pseudonym, the circulation of the name in the public domain

203 AFTER POST-TRUTH Interface Politics, 2nd International Conference undermines the capacity of the authorizing context to exert such control. For example, Ned Ludd was originally meant to designate the mythic leader of the framework knitters’ organized resistance to industrial machinery in Nottin- ghamshire. Yet through its circulation across different regions of England the alias lent itself to heterogeneous uses in conjunction with a variety of struggles and demands. Similarly, over the past decade, Anonymous has been utilized to author online apolitical pranks as well as to coordinate political campaigns against public and private institutions that restrict access to information and information technologies.

In this sense, these aliases have the function of bridging a variety of actions and practices—some of which are collectively planned and executed and some of which are more spontaneous and idiosyncratic. When the pseudonym is controlled by a strong authorizing context—as in the case of the Directors Guild of America’s invention of Alan Smithee—we will speak of a collective pseudonym. When the pseudonym is introduced in the public domain with few guidelines and instructions for use—as is the case of pseudonyms such as Monty Cantsin, Karen Eliot, Luther Blissett and Anonymous—we will speak ofmultiple-use names. In this sense, collective pseudonyms and multiple-use names are nothing but attributes that describe an improper name in terms of varying degrees of control, from the centralized to the decentralized. At the same time—regardless of whether an authorizing context is able to exert a higher or a lower degree of control over the use of an improper name—I want to underscore that each of these aliases performs a connecting function in that it brings a disparate set of practices within a common discursive space.

Thus, these improper names institute a nexus between a certain mode of concatenation and its conditions of possibility, that is, between the authorizing context and the opening of what Jacques Derrida would call a différance, a deferral and a difference in the production of meaning, which is intrinsic to all media practices. Of course, this Derridean sliding in the chain of signification could be seen as yet another name for the decline of symbolic efficiency. But here I want to emphasize that the capacity of a con-dividual inter-face to articulate difference requires a shared effort, a care for a shared reputation that is also the care for a subject that understands itself as more than one. Indeed, to speak and act via an interface is not quite the same thing as acting through it. While the former implies that the interface is already given and separate from the event, acting through the inter-face means to recognize the inseparability of the event from the medium.

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Does this mean that the interface has to be invented anew at any iteration of the event? The answer to this question can only be negative insofar as the concatenation of dividuals generates information that is, knowledges, codes, and technologies for a politics of the incommensurable. My point is that this information—the cum that emerges from the condividual process—expres- ses a capacity to transfer a singular process of concatenation from one context to another, that is, as an ability to abstract without reducing and homogeneizing. Let us consider McKenzie Wark’s definition of abstraction: “To abstract is to construct a plane upon which otherwise different and unrelated matters may be brought into many possible relations” (Wark, 2004). In enabling the concatenation of heterogeneous elements, this plane exceeds the singular conjunction and becomes a carrier of informational patterns. The virtual nature of these patterns allows in turn for many possible actualizations. In other words, if we admit that abstraction is not merely reductive (as in the case of exchange value), but is also generative, then the cum- of condividualiy becomes capable of articulating and expressing manifold relations.

This kind of nexus is not ephemeral, and thus does not need to be invented anew, because it carries a memory of its prior individuations. For example, all social movements organize drawing inspiration from “repertoires of contention” such as assemblies, demonstrations, strikes, occupations, and sit-ins, which they repurpose and adapt to their local circumstances (Tilly, 1986). These repertoires are nothing but a shared set of ethical, political, and aesthetic codes, some of which are handed down from tradition and some of which emerge from the novel encounter of singularities. Such codes differ from the algorithmic logic of the imaginary filter in that they are constantly renegotiated and adapted within social and political contexts, which they can never entirely transcend or organize from without, from a backend. If we often fail to recognize these codes it is because they cannot be properly seen—they cannot be properly represented. However, this does not mean that they do not exist, or that they should be intentionally or unintentionally obfuscated so as to prevent recuperation.

I believe that the challenge for the radical designers of our time is not how to make these codes visible, but how to make them available, that is, how to put them in common so as to produce a new grammar, which may allow us to walk through the looking glass of the imaginary filter. But unlike Alice, who walks through the looking glass to discover that growing up is ultimately a solitary experience, acting through the inter-face means to discover or rediscover what Marx called the general productive power of the social individual. It also means

205 AFTER POST-TRUTH Interface Politics, 2nd International Conference to recognize that while capitalism appropriates this power by increasingly programming the social, that is, by modulating social interaction according to certain parameters, it is really up to us to define these parameters. The parts of the inter-face may not always be in agreement, but as a fertile nexus the inter-face does not require us to agree on everything. Similarity, not sameness or identity, similarity concerning only some components.

References

Bourdieu, P. (1991). Language & Symbolic Power, trans. Gino Raymond and Matthew Anderson Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, p. 75.

Coleman, E. G. and Golub, A. (2008). Hacker practice: Moral genres and the cultural articulation of liberalism. Anthropological Theory 8(3), pp. 255-277.

Deleuze, G. (1992). Postscript on the Societies of Control. October 59, pp. 3-7.

Deseriis, M. (2015). Improper Names: Collective Pseudonyms from the Luddites to Anony- mous. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press.

Galloway, A. (2012). The Interface Effect. London: Polity, pp. 31-33.

Karppi, T. (2018). Disconnect: Facebook’s Affective Bonds. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press.

Lazzarato, M. (2014). Signs and Machines: Capitalism and the Production of Subjectivity. Los Angeles: Semiotext(e)/MIT Press.

Pariser, E. (2011). The Filter Bubble: How the New Personalized Web Is Changing What We Read and How We Think. New York: Penguin.

Rancière, J. (2004). The Politics of Aesthetics: The Distribution of the Sensible. London: Continuum.

Raunig, G. (2016). Dividuum. Machinic Capitalism and Molecular Revolution, Vol. 1. Los Angeles: Semiotext(e)/MIT Press, p. 67.

Tilly, C. 1986. The Contentious French: Four Centuries of Popular Struggle. Cambridge, Mass: Harvard University Press.

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Vaidhyanathan, S. (2018). Antisocial Media: How Facebook Disconnects Us and Undermi- nes Democracy. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

Wark, M. (2004). A Hacker Manifesto. Harvard: Harvard University Press, ¶ 8.

Zizek, S. (1999). The Ticklish Subject: The Absent Centre of Political Ontology. London and New York: Verso.

Marco Deseriis https://neu.academia.edu/MarcoDeseriis https://twitter.com/sanfudai?lang=en

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Algorithms are fake Panel#9 Moderated by Ingrid Guardiola

Alicia de Manuel Pathological Object/ Panoptical Object

Javier Melenchón, Laia Blasco, Pau Alsina, Quelic Berga Qualified self: truth and subjectivity in the visualization of the Quantified Self

Paloma G. Díaz Digital activist tactics: some lines of work in defense of the truth.

Clara Boj, Diego Díaz Data Biography: the biographical narrative in the datacene

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An updated version of this paper was submitted to the #24 Artnodes Journal CFP and selected for publication. Read it in: http://doi.org/10.7238/a.v0i24.3280

Pathological Object/ Panoptical Object Design for transparency and optimization in wearable devices Alicia de Manuel Lozano

Abstract The behavioural and psychological dimensions can respond to the design of electronic object, that’s how Anthony Dunne begins to describe the pathological object in his book on speculative design, Hertzian Tales (2005). This object, technologically manipulated, subtracts the user from a standardized behaviour, generating an experience of pathological behaviour that can become paranoid or suspicious. On the other hand, the panoptic object, derived from Bentham’s theory later exposed by Foucault in Punishment and Discipline (1976), describes a technological object whose gaze is transformed into a state of vigilance, in which nothing escapes. Wearable devices are the only technology capable of being both. Thanks to the development of Bluetooth technology and the development of non-expensive sensors, wearable technology has been possible to develop today. This article presents an análisis of these new technology, subscribe under the umbrella of the Internet of things, through a panoptical and pathological gaze

Keywords Wearable devices; quantified self; panopticon; speculative design

Alicia de Manuel Lozano https://away-aliciaway.tumblr.com/

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Qualified self: truth and subjectivity in the visualization of the Quantified Self Laia Blasco-Soplon, Pau Alsina, Javier Melenchón, Quelic Berga

Abstract Nowadays, the Quantified Self is a technical reality that structures datasets of all kinds of interfaces, which are created to establish, build and transform the relationship with the self, data and society itself. In a datified world and in the Quantified Self era, data visualization challenges traditional representation systems, opening up an immense world of analytical and graphical opportunities. As user interfaces, data visualizations are artificial devices that carry cultural messages in a variety of forms and mediums; furthermore, they are never neutral mechanisms of data transmission, but they affect the messages, providing a model of the world of their own, a logical and ideological scheme. the fascina- tion with Big Data and the creation of increasingly sophisticated user interfaces pave the way for the proliferation of diverse mutations in the semiotic production of truth. A truth that springs on the false transparency of the quantitative representation of the world and of the self. This work reflects on some of the implications of the Quantified Self and its visualizations, by showing its mechanisms, deceptions and fallacies after its apparent neutrality, and demonstrating its qualitative depth inscribed in the underlying logics.

Keywords Data visualization; interface criticism; quantified self; qualified self; data portrait.

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1. Quantified Self y Big Data: verdades “datificadas”

Compartir los detalles mundanos de nuestras vidas, lo que comimos para almorzar, dónde fuimos de vacaciones o quién nos visitó el fin de semana no comenzó con los dispositivos móviles, los sensores ni las redes sociales. Tal y como dice Humphreys (2018) las personas hemos utilizado los medios a nuestro alcance para catalogar y compartir nuestras vidas durante varios siglos mediante diarios de bolsillo, álbumes de fotos o libros infantiles, todos ellos precursores predigitales de las plataformas digitales móviles que usamos hoy, y parte de la historia sobre cómo las personas explicamos la vida cotidiana.

Pese a que el seguimiento y análisis de aspectos de uno mismo y de su cuerpo no son prácticas nuevas, lo que sí es indiscutiblemente nuevo (apenas tiene 10 años) es el término Quantified Self. Gary Wolf y Kevin Kelly, editores de Wired magazine, acuñaron el movimiento del Quantified Self en 2007, un movimien- to que tiene como objetivo explorar las nuevas herramientas de self-tracking y crear un entorno en el que se pueda experimentar sobre sus posibilidades (Quantified Self Institute, 2018). En esta primera etapa la comunidad la compuso un grupo de curiosos del Área de la Bahía de San Francisco (Butter- field, 2012). En 2010, Wolf habló sobre el movimiento en TED talk y en mayo de 2011 tuvo lugar la primera Conferencia Internacional en Mountain View, California. Ese mismo año se creó el Quantified Self Institute, con sede en Los Países Bajos, para unir esta comunidad y la educación superior (Quantified Self Institute, 2018).

Quantified Self o self-tracking son conceptos que se refieren a la práctica de recopilar datos sobre uno mismo de manera regular, registrarlos y analizarlos para generar estadísticas y otras informaciones (a menudo imágenes) relacionados con las funciones corporales y los hábitos cotidianos” (Lupton, 2013)

Los distintos tipos de sensores instalados en dispositivos de toda clase (ordenadores, cámaras, teléfonos, wearables, etc.) pueden rastrear, analizar y almacenar una gran variedad de datos: posición, peso, nivel de energía, estado de ánimo, uso del tiempo, calidad del sueño, salud, rendimiento cognitivo, atletismo, estrategias de aprendizaje, etc. (Swan, 2013). Así, en tanto que sujetos conectados mediante el uso de internet, dispositivos móviles, aplicaciones de geoloca- lización o usuarios de apps de self-tracking, nos hemos convertido en emisores de datos. Y esto ha propiciado la aparición de servicios de todo tipo basadas en

213 AFTER POST-TRUTH Interface Politics, 2nd International Conference la acumulación, tratamiento y manipulación de los datos de los usuarios. Usua- rios que formamos ya parte, de forma consciente o inconsciente, de la realidad del Big Data.

“Big data es un término que describe grandes volúmenes de datos de alta velocidad, complejos y variables, que requieren de técnicas y tecnologías avanzadas para su captura, almacenamiento, distribución, gestión y análisis de la información” (TechAmerica Foundation’s Federal Big Data Commission, 2012 cited in Gandomi & Haider,2015)

Diebold (2012) argumenta que el término Big Data probablemente se originó a mediados de 1990 durante conversaciones de sobremesa en Silicon Graphics Inc. (SGI) mientras John Mashey ocupaba un lugar destacado. A pesar de las referencias a mediados de los noventa el término se generalizó en 2011 y se popularizó cuando IBM y otras compañías tecnológicas invirtieron en la cons- trucción del mercado del análisis de datos (Gandomi & Haider, 2015). Hoy, el Big Data es una realidad técnica que estructura datasets de todo tipo. En los datasets de las distintas compañías están unos “yos cuantificados” que quieren atribuir como revelación de nuestros yos pre-existentes. Con Foucault (1990) podemos decir que dichos datasets, más que construir nuevas relaciones con un yo esencialista, producen directamente un yo en la práctica. El yo cuantificado es una tecnología del yo que responde a una verdad inscrita en un cuidado de sí, en pura gobernanza individual (Foucault, 1990). Contribuir a dilucidar el tras- fondo de esas verdades implícitas es uno de los propósitos del presente escrito.

2. La visualización de datos: una interfaz entre máquinas y humanos, una conversación entre datos y cultura

La fascinación por el Big Data y sus posibilidades es ya una realidad. Informá- ticos, físicos, economistas, matemáticos, politólogos, bioinformáticos, sociólo- gos y otros académicos claman por el acceso a la gran cantidad de información producida por y sobre las personas, las cosas y sus interacciones (Boyd & Crawford, 2012). La explosión del Big Data está llevando a muchos a argumentar que estamos en plena revolución con consecuencias de gran alcance para la forma en que se produce el conocimiento, se llevan a cabo los negocios y se promulga la gobernanza (Anderson, 2008; Bollier, 2010; Floridi, 2012; Mayer- Schonberger and Cukier, 2013 cited in Kitchin, 2014).

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Vinculada a dicha explosión se produce una “naturalización” del dato; que en su cuantificación extrema se presenta ahora omnipotente, tal y como mos- tró Anderson (2008) anunciando el “fin de la teoría” y afirmando que “con suficientes datos, los números hablan por sí solos”. Esta última afirmación, llena de presuposiciones, sugiere la idea de que los datos sencillamente “están ahí” y sólo hace falta analizarlos, pero debería tomar en cuenta la reflexión fundamental proveniente de los Estudios Sociales de Ciencia y Tecnología que nos indica que todos los datos son siempre resultado de un proceso de construcción. A su vez, también debería contemplar que no podemos separar la utilización de la producción de datos, pues se afectan una a la otra en mútua co-dependencia. La necesidad de datos que serán utilizados afecta a la forma como son producidos, y al revés. No podemos tomar por ya dado el mismo dato, ni tampoco las bases de datos son simples repositorios, sino procesos en curso. Debemos tener en cuenta que “los datos crudos son un oxímoron” (Gitelman 2013) tanto como los datos no son entidades fijas, para ser transformadas y usadas, pues simplemente no existen.

Los datos del Big Data son representaciones discretas de realidades fluidas, que son actualmente procesos de interacción en el marco de redes de actores heterogéneos son fotogramas de una película que no puede vivir fuera de la película: ellos parece estáticos, y esta aparente estaticidad es lo que los hace intercambiables y transportables, en una palabra movibles, porque parecen desapegados del contexto de su producción. Por esta razón , no debemos concebir a las bases de datos como repositorios de información, no sólo porque los datos siempre están generados a lo largo del proceso en donde muchos actores heterogéneos están involucrados y durante los cuales suceden muchas “traducciones” (Latour 1987, 2005) sinó también porque, o mejor, principalmente sólo existen como procesos, y lo mismo para las infraestructuras informacionales llamadas bases de datos. (Neresini, 2017)

El Big Data también conlleva asociado el problema de manejar y analizar conjuntos de datos enormes, dinámicos y variados. La solución ha sido el desarrollo de nuevas formas de gestión de datos y técnicas analíticas que se basan en el aprendizaje automático y los nuevos modos de visualización (Kitchin, 2014). En un mundo “datificado” y en plena era delQuantified Self, la visualización de datos desafía los sistemas de representación tradicionales abriendo un mundo inmenso de oportunidades analíticas y gráficas. La visualización ya está prepa- rada para ser un mass media (Viégas & Wattenberg, 2010), y se postula como un nuevo modo de ver neutro y prácticamente infalible.

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Las visualizaciones de datos traducen los datos a imágenes y transforman las interacciones de los usuarios en datos. Median entre humanos y máquinas, entre máquinas y máquinas, y entre humanos y humanos, transcribiendo la información de un lenguaje a otro y haciendo posible la comunicación entre personas y ordenadores, así como transformando la sociedad a través de sus usos y propuestas. Como interfaces de usuario que son, las visualizaciones de datos son dispositivos artificiales que transportan mensajes culturales en una gran diversidad de formas y soportes; además, nunca son mecanismos neutra- les de transmisión de datos, sino que afectan a los mensajes, suministrando un modelo del mundo propio, un esquema lógico e ideológico (Manovich, 2001). Tal y como dice Kranzberg refiriéndose a la tecnología en general:

La tecnología no es ni buena ni mala; ni es neutral... La interacción de la tecnología con la ecología social es tal que los desarrollos técnicos con frecuencia tienen consecuencias ambientales, sociales y humanas que van más allá de los propósitos inmediatos de los dispositivos técnicos y las prácticas mismas. (Kranzberg, 1986 cited in Boyd & Crawford, 2012)

En la misma línea, la interfaz, vista desde un paradigma cultural, afecta no solamente a nuestra producción creativa o presentación del mundo, sino también a nuestra percepción del mismo (Andersen & Pold, 2011). Las interfaces no solamente cuentan la historia de sus propias operaciones, sino que traspasan hacia la vida social, planteando cuestiones a las que la interpretación política es la única respuesta coherente (Galloway, 2012). Tal y como mostramos en la Fig. 1, las interfaces (y entre ellas las visualizaciones de datos) son atravesadas y definidas por tensiones tecnológicas, económicas, ideológicas, culturales, históricas o políticas que quedan escondidas bajo la gráfica de usuario. Como señala Suchman (2011), a través de Levi Strauss, “somos nuestras herramientas”. Deberíamos considerar cómo las herramientas participan en moldear el mundo junto con nosotros a medida que las usamos. La era de Big Data acaba de comenzar, pero es importante que empecemos a cuestionar los supuestos, valores y sesgos que supone (Boyd & Crawford, 2012). Existe una necesidad urgente de una reflexión crítica más amplia sobre las implicaciones epistemológicas del Big Data y el análisis de datos, una tarea que apenas ha comenzado a pesar de la velocidad del cambio en el panorama de los datos. (Kitchin, 2014)

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Fig. 1 Esquema interfaz visible (graphic user interface) e interfaz invisible.

3. Otras verdades: lo que la visualización esconde, lo que la visualización revela

Iniciativas como el Council for Big Data, Ethics, and Society (2014) son propuestas que quieren dar respuesta a la necesidad de proporcionar perspectivas sociales y culturales críticas sobre los grandes proyectos sobre datos. Aún así, la atracción que suscitan las posibilidades que la visualización de datos ofrece, a menudo eclipsa las perspectivas más críticas sobre el tema. Manovich (2016) apunta a la tendencia de no-reducción de algunas visualizaciones que nos adentra en una nueva escala de información. La posibilidad de procesar grandes cantidades de datos sobre un objeto de estudio, supera el proceso de

217 AFTER POST-TRUTH Interface Politics, 2nd International Conference simplificación de las clásicas visualizaciones, y permite centrar las interpretaciones en las variación y diversidad, planteando nuevos retos para los diseñado- res y artistas. Todo ello aumenta la fascinación por lo que las visualizaciones de datos nos brindan.

Pero que una visualización se base en datos, o incluso que pretenda procesar todos los datos sobre su objeto de estudio, no significa que presente realmente todos los datos existentes sobre aquello. Los datos que se visualizan son los que en la minería se han conseguido, los que la base de datos ha recolectado, los que se han podido obtener, los que se han querido escoger, los que se han decidido mostrar, los que se han querido presentar y a su vez los que el usuario ha podido navegar, ha sabido manejar e interpretar. A su vez, los sistemas de visualización hacen posible que los humanos operen con las máquinas escon- diendo su funcionamiento interno bajo la apariencia que se le da al software (Boomen, 2014). Esa apariencia es la metáfora sobre la que se construye la representación de la información. Se considera que estas metáforas están bien diseñadas cuando se naturalizan y se vuelven imperceptibles, pero en ningún caso son realmente transparentes, aunque parezcan invisibles (Scolari, 2004). Y el significado de dichas metáforas no sólo reside en lo que muestran, sino también en lo que ocultan. Al hilo de lo que hemos visto en el punto anterior, bajo la propuesta visual y de interacción de una visualización de datos sub- yacen tensiones políticas, tecnológicas, económicas, ideológicas, culturales o históricas tales como la elección de la base de datos, el lenguaje de programa- ción usado, el tiempo y coste de producción, el dataset generado, las metáforas usadas o el contexto en el que se inscribe la visualización, tal y como mostramos en la Fig. 2.

De esta manera, en el actual contexto social y tecnológico, la seducción por el Big Data y la creación de interfaces de usuario cada vez más sofisticadas, abonan el terreno para la proliferación de mutaciones diversas en la producción semiótica de la verdad. Una verdad que brota sobre la falsa transparencia de la representación cuantitativa del mundo y del propio yo. La visualización explici- ta unas representaciones, obvia otras cuestiones y esconde tensiones pero ¿qué estrategias tenemos para revelar aquello que permanece oculto?

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Fig 2. Esquema interfaz visible (data visualization) interfaz invisible

4. Qualified self: reivindicando lo subjetivo y lo no cuantificable

En pleno Quantified Self, autores como Davis (2013) o Lupton (2013, 2016) empiezan a plantear sus dimensiones más cualitativas jugando con el término Qualified Self (Humphreys, 2018). Este componente cualitativo está desde el principio en las decisiones sobre qué medir y cómo hacerlo, tal y como apuntá- bamos más arriba. A su vez también lo está en las narraciones e interpretaciones

219 AFTER POST-TRUTH Interface Politics, 2nd International Conference subjetivas, mecanismos por los cuales los datos se transforman en historias que los self-trackers se cuentan sobre sí mismos. Son los bits con los que dan sentido a sus átomos (Davis, 2013). En este punto, y mirando de empezarnos a dotar de estrategias para revelar aquello que permanece oculto, nos preguntamos ¿qué se registra y para quién? ¿quién decide qué ser registra y para quién?

A su vez, el Quantified Self también se está convirtiendo en Qualified Self apli- cando métodos de rastreo a fenómenos cualitativos como el estado de ánimo, la emoción, la felicidad o la productividad (Swan, 2013). Sin embargo, aunque consigue medir en cierto grado emociones, sentimientos y respuestas corporales, no tiene acceso al campo de los afectos en sentido estricto: los funda- mentos sociales, psicoestructurales o otros factores que causan las respuestas afectivas o las interacciones interpersonales. Las tecnologías de rastreo de trabajadores, por ejemplo, nos pueden decir qué condiciones de trabajo o interacciones parecen causar según qué emociones o comportamientos, no cómo o por qué. Afirman que nos muestran lo que un cuerpo puede hacer, pero en realidad solo nos muestran qué se ha visto hacer a ciertos cuerpos desde una determinada y particular mirada. Esto es propio de un cambio de la “verdad” al funcionalismo vacío, de la ciencia deductiva a una orientación tosca e inductiva del “esto funciona” (Moore & Robinson, 2016). Y así, emerge la falacia basada en que el yo se puede cuantificar ¿de verdad creemos que la identidad y el yo es algo que se pueda medir? La simple pregunta lleva implícita la idea que existe un yo objetivo, una esencia a descubrir que puede ser captada y reducida a datos cuantitativos, en pro de una renovada ilusión positivista extrema.

Por otro lado, el enfoque intensamente individualista de cuantificar el yo es también digno de mención. Cuando las nociones de salud, bienestar y productividad se presentan a través de datos extraídos del autocontrol, se ocultan los determinantes sociales de estos atributos. La enfermedad, la angustia emocio- nal, la falta de felicidad o la falta de productividad en el lugar de trabajo se representan principalmente como fallas del autocontrol o la eficiencia individual y, por lo tanto, requieren esfuerzos mayores o más efectivos, incluyendo tal vez una mayor intensidad de los regímenes de seguimiento automático, para producir un “mejor yo” (Lupton, 2013). Por lo tanto, el enfoque del Quantified Self puede considerarse como una de las muchas estrategias y discursos heterogé- neos que posicionan al yo neoliberal como un ciudadano responsable, dispues- to y capaz de cuidar de su propio interés y bienestar. Los escritos de Foucault sobre las prácticas y tecnologías del yo en el neoliberalismo son pertinentes para entender el yo cuantificado como un modo particular de gobernar el yo

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(Foucault, 1991 and 1978-79 cited in Lupton, 2013). Por ello, otra pregunta pertinente ante la representación del yo mediante una visualización de datos sería ¿a qué yo se apela? ¿qué idea de individuo co-construye?

Asimismo, ahondando en el tema de la representación, nos pararemos en qué formas toma aquello que se nos presenta visible reparando en qué nos muestra y cómo lo hace. Como punto de partida general, Moore & Robinson (2016) apuntan a la premisa ontológica del dualismo cartesiano con la mente dominante sobre el cuerpo, dónde los datos que proporciona un cuerpo sin autoridad son interpretados por una mente racional que toma el mando y las decisiones sobre su subordinado organismo. Lupton (2013) apunta a una visión del cuerpo/yo como una entidad similar a una máquina que proporciona inputs y outputs. A partir de aquí, ante cada representación del yo cuantificado podemos preguntarnos ¿qué imágenes crea? ¿qué metáforas usa? ¿Queremos aceptar las metáforas dadas como las únicas y verdaderas representaciones posibles?

Finalmente, retomando aquello que queda invisible, conviene pensar qué se puede leer desde las ausencias, las faltas, los vacíos, los silencios o los blancos. Al girar la moneda de la reflexión sobre las imágenes o las metáforas propuestas encontramos la otra cara de la misma medalla al preguntarnos por ¿qué queda fuera? ¿qué queda oculto?. De igual manera, en cuanto a la admiración por las representaciones de nosotros mismos como sujetos cuantificados en espejos que reflejan identidades homogeneizadas y hegemónicas, cabe preguntar sobre ¿qué otredades se construyen? ¿quién es el otro?

Para concluir, volvamos a años antes de que apareciera el término del Quan- tified Self. A finales de los años 1990, Donath (1995) Xiong (1999) o Viégas (1999) empezaron a construir y a hablar de data portaits (Donath et al, 2010), un término aplicado a los primeros retratos con datos que fueron creados como experimentaciones artísticas para explorar la posibilidad de retratar personas a partir de sus datos. Lo interesante de esta propuesta no es solamente su carácter pionero, que también, sino especialmente que deja bien claro que se trata de una aproximación subjetiva: el sujeto retratado sabe que se le toma una instantánea parcial e incompleta por definición, sin que por eso deje de ser fascinante. Una aproximación que queremos reivindicar y que consideramos punto de inflexión para la puesta en marcha de un aparato crítico que permita penetrar en las capas visibles y en las invisibles de las visualizaciones de datos. Frente a la ilusión e impulso positivista por captar el yo cuantificado reducido a datos plenamente objetivables y desprovistos de toda subjetividad, cabe opo-

221 AFTER POST-TRUTH Interface Politics, 2nd International Conference ner la visión constructivista no sólo de los datos y de sus visualizaciones sinó también de los mismos procesos de subjetivación y el propio yo como práctica, que escapa a toda verdad omnisciente. Dejemos de hablar de yos cuantificados y empecemos a hablar de retratos del yo mediante datos, visión más fiel a la verdad: una verdad siempre parcial, incompleta, cualitativa y cabalgando a lomos de procesos de subjetivación de largo y amplio recorrido.

Referencias

Anderson, C. (2008). The end of Theory. WIRED, 16, 07.

Andersen, C. U., & Pold, S. B. (2011). Interface criticism: Aesthetics beyond the buttons. Aarhus University Press.

Boyd, D., & Crawford, K. (2012). Critical questions for big data: Provocations for a cultural, technological, and scholarly phenomenon. Information, communication & society, 15(5), 662-679.

Butterfield, A. D. (2012).Ethnographic assessment of Quantified Self meetup groups. Unpublished Doctoral dissertation, San José State University.

Council for Big Data, Ethics, and Society website: http://bdes.datasociety.net/ (visited on october 2018)

Davis, J. (2013). The qualified self in: https://thesocietypages.org/cyborgolo- gy/2013/03/13/the-qualified-self/ (visited on october 2018)

Diebold, F. (2012). A Personal Perspective on the Origin (s) and Development of’Big Data’: The Phenomenon, the Term, and the Discipline, Second Version. Donath, J. S. (1995, January). Visual Who: Animating the affinities and activities of an electronic community. In Proceedings of the third ACM international conference on Multimedia (pp. 99-107). ACM.

Donath, J., Dragulescu, A., Zinman, A., Viégas, F., & Xiong, R. (2010). Data portraits. Leonardo, 43(4), 375-383.

Foucault, M (1990) Tecnologías del yo y otros textos afines. Paidos.

Galloway, A. R. (2012). The interface effect. Polity.

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Gandomi, A., & Haider, M. (2015). Beyond the hype: Big Data concepts, methods, and analytics. International Journal of Information Management, 35(2), 137-144.

Humphreys, L. (2018). The Qualified Self, Social Media and the Accounting of Everyday Life. MIT press.

Gitelman, L. (Ed.). (2013). “Raw data” is an oxymoron. Cambridge (MA): MIT Press.

Kitchin, R. (2014). Big Data, new epistemologies and paradigm shifts. Big Data & Society, 1(1), 2053951714528481.

Lupton, D. (2013). Understanding the human machine [Commentary]. IEEE Technolo- gy and Society Magazine, 32(4), 25-30.

Lupton D. (2016) The Quantified Self. Polity.

Manovich, L., (2001). The language of new media. MIT press.

Manovich, L. (2016) Artistic visualizations. Chapter 19 in Paul, C. A Companion to Digital Art. John Wiley & Sons.

Neresini, F (2017) On Data, Big Data and Social Research. Is it a Real Revolution? in N. Carlo Laura et al (eds) Data Science and Social Research. Springer. New York.

Moore, P., & Robinson, A. (2016). The Quantified Self: What counts in the neoliberal workplace. New Media & Society, 18(11), 2774-2792.

Quantified Self Institute website: http://qsinstitute.com/about/what-is-quantified- self/ (visited on october 2018) Scolari, C. A. (2004). Hacer clic: Hacia una sociosemiótica de las integraciones digitales. Editorial Gedisa.

Swan, M. (2013). The Quantified Self: Fundamental disruption in Big Data science and biological discovery. Big Data, 1(2), 85-99 Van den Boomen, M. V. (2014). Transcoding the digital: how metaphors matter in new media. Institute of Network Cultures

Viégas, F. B., & Donath, J. S. (1999, May). Chat circles. In Proceedings of the SIGCHI conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems (pp. 9-16). ACM.

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Viégas, F. & Wattenberg, M. (2010).An interview for infosthetics.com, on May 2010: http://infosthetics.com/archives/2010/05/interview_fernanda_viegas_and_mar- tin_wattenberg_from_flowing_media.html (visited on october 2016)

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— Laia Blasco-Soplon (UOC) http://transfer.rdi.uoc.edu/es/investigador/blasco-soplon-laia — Pau Alsina (UOC) https://www.uoc.edu/webs/palsinag/ES/curriculum/index.html — Javier Melenchón (UOC) https://www.uoc.edu/portal/en/news/kit-premsa/guia-experts/di- rectori/javier-melenchon.html — Quelic Berga (UOC) https://quelic.net/

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Digital activist tactics: some lines of work in defense of the truth Paloma González Díaz

Abstract In the 21st century, we have gone from living immersed in the “knowledge economy” of the 90’s based on horizontal, democratic and innovative structures to that of “cognitive capitalism”. After the attacks of 9/11, the goals of those companies and state policies related to ICT were radically modified: they went from being utopian proposals on the globalization of knowledge, to give a radical turn to try to monopolize and analyze the largest amount of data possible, a model that was transformed at the end of the second decade of the 21st century in the big business of algorithms and applications. The massive implantation of smartphones, in addition to breaking our spatio-temporal relationships, has perverted our behaviour, our relationships with others and has led to a dispro- portionate boom of individualism with a marked narcissistic character.

We are still immersed in a paradigm of communication that has driven, on the part of transdisciplinary activist groups, tactics aimed at raising awareness among citizens about how to escape from the lies of political and media discourses. If initially these practices were conceived as the representation of the great Orwellian eye, in which the viewer had a less active position, proposals have been strengthened in recent years that take advantage of Big Data methodologies to analyze and raise awareness among citizens about this disinformation. Others generate an alternative and experimental discernment on unknown places of knowledge outside the official information channels. There are also alternatives that provide more pragmatic solutions to denounce the abusive collection of data carried out by organizations and companies. Tags Digital tactics; criticism; transparency; control; post-truth.

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Tácticas activistas digitales: algunas líneas de trabajo en defensa de la verdad.

Al inicio del siglo XXI el desarrollo y difusión de tecnologías digitales y herramientas de comunica- ción y creación transforman radicalmente el modo de comunicarnos, relacionarnos y de entender la vida. Las metodologías y los conceptos instaurados y difundidos a través de los medios digitales han logrado imponer ideas panópticas encaminadas a controlar cualquier aspecto de la vida real. Conceptos como desobediencia y transparencia se han postulado como un eje indispensable para modular la relación entre poder político y económico y ciudadanía.

Si los atentados del 11 de septiembre, suponen un recorte de derechos y libertades decapitando a expansión de los valores democráticos relacionados con la ética, la comunicación y la participación a través de la red; 2010 acaba con con un revelador acto de contestación y reproche hacia el poder coer- citivo geopolítico de la diplomacia estadounidense, gracias a las revelaciones realizadas por WikiLeaks en 20101. Tres años más tarde, Eduard Snowden, 1 Publicadas simultáneamente en cinco diarios de prestigio internacional, ex-técnico de la CIA, desvela los mecanismos de que paradójicamente irán desentendién- espionaje globalizado de la Agencia Nacional de dose del caso como consecuencia de la incursión paulatina de accionariado Seguridad (NSA). En 2016, una filtración perio- parcial en el mercado de la comuni- dística del Süddeutsche Zeitung respaldada por el cación: El País (España), Le Monde (Francia), Der Spiegel (Alemania), The International Consortium of Investigative Journalists, Guardian (Reino Unido) y The New ICIJ, destapa el caso de los Papeles de Panamá. En York Times (Estados Unidos). él se ponen de manifiesto como jefes de estado y lí- deres de renombre evaden impuestos ocultando sus empresas, activos y ganancias a través de la firma de abogados panameña Mossack Fonseca (ICIJ, 2016) Aunque todas estas acciones son de una transcen- dencia sociopolítica relevante, ya se han instalado en la población mundial una severa desconfianza hacia el periodismo “vinculado con los principios que dieron lugar a la prensa libre” que se defendía

226 Algorithms are fake_Panel#9 en Los elementos del periodismo (Kovach y Rosenstiel, 2012) Poco a poco se desmontan los controles de calidad de las empresas de comunicación, y la investigación, el análisis y la crítica se consideran un modelo de negocio obso- leto: su papel de control social queda en segundo término condicionado por una “debilidad económica que le aboca a una dependencia político y financiera severa de los poderes” ((Iglesias, 2017) Ese proceso tiene un efecto devastador en la mayoría de los lectores ya que han acabado decantándose por contenidos ligeros, más cercanos a sus preferencias políticas y religiosas, muchos de ellos falsos, y han tenido una trascendencia fundamental en tomas de decisión tan cruciales como en el Brexit o en el rechazo a los acuerdos de paz en Colombia.

Desde la llegada a la presidencia de Donald Trump en noviembre de 2016, fantasear sobre la realidad se ha reforzado y se ha convertido en una tendencia al alza en la comunicación global. Los mensajes políticos y empresariales, lanzados sobre todo a través de las redes sociales, apelan a la emoción y a las creencias, mientras que los hechos objetivos han quedado relegados a un segundo plano, tal como han reconocido -entre otros- Ben Parscale, el que fuera gurú digital del presidente (Jiménez Cano, 2017). Tras su triunfo los expertos denunciaron lo que ya era evidente: la intervención de webs con noticias falsas, el hackeo desde Rusia y la trascendente labor de Google, Twitter o Facebook. Todos estos acontecimientos conforman lo que autores como Éric Sandin califican como “mediación de la vida” (Sandin, 2018): la maquinaria digital no ha hecho más que abandonarnos a la gestión de nuestra existencia. De ese modo, de la “era del acceso” de los 90, nos hemos visto abocados a la expansión de la “economía de datos” actual: los proveedores digitales conocen y modelar como nunca a sus usuarios gracias a la proliferación de pantallas, de móviles, de objetos conectados (Internet of Things, IoT) o del procesamiento en la nube (cloud computing). A todos esos elementos se les añade la expansión de las redes sociales y la implementación de nuevos servicios y plataformas.

Ante tantas capas de información y desinformación no es de extrañar que la palabra del año de 2016 fuera posverdad, término “que apela a la poca influencia de los hechos objetivos” (Amón, 2016) Esta circunstancia se ha visto favorecida por la crisis económica, que ha hecho languidecer, tal como apuntábamos anteriormente, al periodismo de investigación y ha dado rienda suelta a los discursos ingenuos y decadentes. ¿Cuál ha sido el resultado? Son muy pocos los individuos que mantienen una actitud crítica ante las medias verdades o las mentiras evidentes. Unas veces por hastío y otras por exceso de contenidos muchos ciudadanos se acaban desentendiendo de aquellas noticias dudosas que se pro-

227 AFTER POST-TRUTH Interface Politics, 2nd International Conference pagan por doquier a través de motores de búsqueda y de algoritmos de redes sociales, de las que en rara ocasión se conoce su autoría (Fowks, 2018).

La mercadotecnia ha logrado hacernos sentir únicos y especiales ofreciéndonos experiencias a medida para el deleite (o no) de nuestra autoestima que no son más que resultados algorítmicos. Esas realidades paralelas no son más que versiones digitales de los simulacros que nos describiera Baudrillard en la década de los 70 (Baudrillard, 1993). De aquel “encegamiento e indiferencia” que describía el filósofo francés, hemos pasado a una involución infantiloide que mantiene ocupada a gran parte de 2 la población , mientras los poderes fácticos toman 2 El episodio Nosodive de Black Mirror (Charlie Brooker, 2016) logra plasmar decisiones fundamentales sobre nuestra existencia. desde un punto de vista irónico (y En un ambiente viciado y bastante homogeneizado llevado al extremo), la necesidad impuesta de ser valorado por los es difícil, pero no imposible, hacer llegar mensajes demás. Sin embargo, en este caso esa de resistencia y de confianza. puntuación constante es la que permite a la protagonista poder acceder a ciertos servicios como alquilar una casa, alquilar un coche o ser invitada a una boda con cierto caché. 1. Algunas estrategias encaminadas a desenmascarar la verdad en el contexto actual.

El poder político y el económico han instaurado una nueva manera de narrar: los discursos se han convertido en relatos contrarios a las evidencias. Ante cualquier prueba objetiva se difunden largos sermones capaces de cambiar el foco de atención de cualquier imputación. Lo hemos visto con Trump, con Putin o en cualquiera de los casos de corrupción que se propagan por nuestro país. Como resalta Justo Serna en Fake news. Todo es falso salvo alguna cosa (Serna, 2017), todos aquellos que aun teniendo posturas confrontadas “operaban con datos, valores y posiciones políticas” han quedado fuera de juego. Ante un panorama ciertamente desolador ¿qué estrategias globales se pueden aplicar en un entorno en el que la desinformación está

228 Algorithms are fake_Panel#9 tan enquistada? El grupo de Expertos de la UE, consciente del tema, abogó el pasado mes de marzo por instaurar un Código de Buenas Prácticas (European Commission, 2018) y países como Alemania, Canadá o India ya han aprobado leyes más o menos restrictivas. Aunque las iniciativas son positivas, nos encontramos, paradójicamente, con que las plataformas digitales y buscadores no habían sido consideradas hasta ahora empresas mediáticas. Llegar a conside- rarlas como tal, les concedería “la libertad de decidir su línea editorial”, pero se les instaría a fomentar la trasparencia de las fuentes, de los anunciantes y de sus metodologías de trabajo. En todo caso, es necesario que detallen claramente sus normas de funcionamiento, ética y transparencia a escala global y que no reconozcan sólo errores o fallos (de gestión, de seguridad…) en casos mediáti- cos y las promesas de cambio queden en papel mojado.

En una escala más local se vislumbra desde hace una década un interés creciente por parte de ciertos colectivos multidisciplinares con la idea de ofrecer herramientas y metodologías a un público sometido constantemente a análisis y sondeos. En un intento de romper con las férreas relaciones establecidas desde el poder económico bajo preceptos neoliberales, toman el testigo de propuestas generadas desde el ciberactivismo, y la evolución de los conceptos ligados al control y la vigilancia tecnológicos. Se sigue esgrimiendo, por tanto, el principio de libertad como fuerza de rechazo, invención y transformación global desde abajo, tal como defendían en Reverse Engineering Freedom (2003) Geert Lovink y Florian Schneider. Ejemplos destacados de esa filosofía serían las primeras tácticas del artivismo en línea que rememoraban acciones a favor de los derechos fundamentales de los años 60. Tanto Critical Art Ensemble (CAE), precursores en el uso de biotecnología y en el tactical media en piezas como Shareholders Briefing, (1996); como The Electronic Disturbance Theater (EDT), con FloodNet (1998), promovieron la Desobediencia Civil Electróni- ca (DCE), ofreciendo a ciertas minorías espacios alternativos de poder a través de la Red. Sus estrategias a la hora de informar y capacitar a sus espectadores en sus acciones desmontan las llevadas a cabo desde el poder. La lucha de ambos colectivos por la transparencia chocaba de bruces contra la opacidad informativa sobre cualquier acontecimiento que pueda perturbar a la comunidad.

Evidentemente, el contexto actual no ofrece las posibilidades de actuación de hace diez años. Nuestra existencia está mediada por pantallas, por lo que se hace necesario restaurar la verdad captando la atención de los usuarios en un campo de batalla totalmente saturado e intoxicado. La narración sobre lo que está sucediendo, por tanto, se hace más compleja en su desarrollo que en

229 AFTER POST-TRUTH Interface Politics, 2nd International Conference su concepción. Tal como apunta Remedios Zafra debemos (re)construir esas propuestas reiterando “una historia (…) habitarla, hacerla compartida, atravesar con ella el magma del marco de fantasía” (Zafra, 2017)

Aunque el entorno no propicie este tipo de procesos, empiezan a fomentarse prácticas que ofrecen verdaderos ejemplos del poder del trabajo en comunidad en los que se muestran interesantes efectos de las interactuaciones que se llevan a cabo y las consecuencias que producen en su entorno. Aun- que parece imposible captar y mantener la atención de los ciudadanos, tal como vaticinara Michael Godhaber en 1997, sí que aparecen propuestas que son capaces de trasladar conceptos e informaciones desarrollando estrategias atrayentes que ayudan a conformar sobre todo el cómo se ha impuesto la ignorancia en nuestras vidas. Nos interesan especialmente aquellas que ayuden a crear nuevos paradigmas de trabajo con el objetivo de sacar a relucir la verdad, y en los que la creación cumple un papel fundamental. Por ese motivo hemos seleccionado algunos que pueden considerarse como mensajes di- rectos al sujeto, factor que puede implicarle y hacerle sentir parte de una cadena comunicativa contra la manipulación. De todas las analizadas, hemos seleccionado tres: Situation Room (2004), Dark Places (2009) y The Glass Room (2016)

Comenzamos con uno de los pioneros prototipos ciudadanos gestados en nuestro país: Situation Room 3 Su origen militar se remonta a (2008) ideada por Pablo de Soto (de Soto, 2017), la Segunda Guerra Mundial y se y desarrollada por el colectivo hackitectura.net. La asocia directamente con la invención y desarrollo de los ordenadores. Su es- pieza que debía su nombre a las salas desde las que tructura permaneció vigente durante la se monitorizan datos del contexto para la poste- Guerra Fría pasando a formar parte del imaginario colectivo gracias a novelas 3 rior toma de decisiones en momentos de crisis , y ficciones cinematográficas comoDr. Strangelove, or How I Learned to Stop promueve fomentar el uso del código abierto para Worrying and Love the Bomb, (1964), fomentar experiencias y conocimientos ciudadanos de Stanley Kubrick .

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“acumulados por los movimientos sociales” ((Hackitectura.net, 2017) . La propuesta, excepcional en su momento, resulta paradójica por su contenido y por la estructura institucional en la que se presenta: LaBoral Centro de Arte y Creación industrial.

Por una parte, plasma gracias a la visualización de datos la idea de Focault de vigilar al vigilante y ofrece sobre la posibilidad de acceso y crítica de cualquier persona frente al entramado principal del sistema ((Foucault, 1979). Por otra, los visitantes -convertidos en colaboradores de un laboratorio global o en una sala de situación ciudadana-, logran descifrar y entender dentro de una comunidad abierta y en una posición activa, rompen el sistema central con el que se ejerce la vigilancia y la manipulación global planteados por Bentham en El Panóptico. Se propicia a su vez el intercambio de conocimientos propuesto por Lyotard con vistas a romper con el binomio saber/ignorancia -entendida la primera como poder- para ofrecer mejores actuaciones políticas que se apoyen en la transparencia, la colaboración y el debate.

Ilustración 1 Detalle de “Situation Room” en LAboral (2008)

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Con ese mismo postulado se desarrolla LA ZONA (2018), instalación artística inmersiva del mismo autor, desarrollado en colaboración con Román Torre (Torre y DeSoto, 2018), que permite visualizar y entender algunas características actuales de la Zona de Exclusión de Fukushima (Japón) En este caso, la interpretación y comparación de los datos de la catástrofe proviene de la medición de la radioactivi- dad tomados por los ciudadanos de la franja afectada, que distan bastante de los oficiales. Se suma a la proyección interactiva un espacio de documentación con libros y artículos académicos sobre el caso, que ayudan a los espectadores a formarse una concepción realista y profunda de los acontecimientos.

Otra línea de trabajo interesante, más ligada al trabajo de campo, es la que desarrolla desde el Reino Unido el colectivo Office of Experiments (OOE). Fundado y dirigido por el investigador con amplia experiencia en arte y tecnología Neal White, carece de un espacio físico fijo en su pretensión de generar un discernimiento alternativo y experimental sobre lugares de conocimiento fuera de los canales de infor- mación oficial. Con ese propósito, ofrecen recursos para concebir nuevas prácticas interdisciplinares colectivas e independientes. (Office Of Experi- ments, 2018)

OOE invita a utilizar sus archivos, bases de datos, publicaciones y guías de campo actualizadas, como recursos públicos alternativos. Solicita a cambio que los proyectos creativos resultantes, ofrezcan el compromiso, la percepción y la respuesta crítica necesaria para explicar la relación entre tecnolo- gía-ciencia-industria-ejército y expongan cómo se conjugan esos términos en el contexto en el que se presentan. Su objetivo es dar forma a ideas basadas en investigaciones coherentes acerca de la cultura, la vida política y la vida cotidiana. El arte,

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por tanto, es concebido por el grupo como marco de reflexión que conduce a nuevos conceptos y 4 4 Desde esta perspectiva situacionista planteamientos políticos y sociales . refuerza tanto han realizado colaboraciones junto a artistas y organizaciones de talante su discurso como su metodología la muestra Dark crítico como: los británicos John Places (2009), desvelando nuevas estrategias sobre Latham y Trevor Paglen o el Centre for Land-Use Interpretation (CLUI), los lugares oscuros —de ahí su nombre—, como lo que les ha permitido integrar laboratorios o instalaciones de alta seguridad, que metodologías y diseño de software para conocer el paisaje post industrial son deliberadamente escondidos de la vista pública del Reino Unido, de Estocolmo (Deep en el Reino Unido. En ella se presenta Dark Places - Architecture (2017)) o de Utah y Washington (F- Utility (2010), 1x1 South Edition, proyecto interdisciplinar desarrollado Project (2012). por un equipo de investigadores independientes a través de una presentación de diapositivas de inter- pretación, así como una guía de campo sobre cada espacio analizado en un punto de información. El proceso culmina en las excursiones críticas guiadas –presentadas como Cold War Spaces of Secrecy and Technology, en las que se presentan y ofrecen datos, comentarios y videos sobre espacios estratégicos cruciales construidos o reforzados durante las tensiones producidas durante la Guerra Fría. Promue- ven, además la documentación de todas las observa- ciones realizadas, la recopilación de conocimiento alternativo y la aplicación de técnicas de geografía experimental. Uno de los aspectos más interesantes del proyecto es que la percepción pública falsa de ciertos lugares se incorpora para atestiguar el impac- to de las noticias faltas y mostrar la debilidad de las democracias.

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Ilustración 2 Detalle de la guía de Dark Places (2009), de OOE.

Como ejemplo de pragmatismo y claridad, destacamos The Glass Room Expe- rience (2016- ), proyecto de la organización sin ánimo de lucro con sede en Berlín Tactical Tech en colaboración con la Fundación Mozilla, Sus propuestas siempre se orientan a ofrecer información sobre el uso de los datos personales, encontrar, desarrollar y promover modos seguros de comunicación entre colectivos activistas y genera herramientas a cualquier “defensor de los derechos para crear, encontrar y utilizar información tácticamente” (Tactical Thechnolo- gy Collective, 2017).

The Glass Room es una muestra itinerante que muestra al público una de las grandes paradojas de nuestro siglo: cómo la tecnología sigue unas reglas propias, que los ciudadanos debiéramos conocer y dominar. Utiliza mecanismos similares a los de algunas tiendas tecnológicas de alta gama para mostrar atrac- tivos dispositivos digitales (tablets, smartphones, chips…) en un decorado bastante aséptico que recuerda a memorables películas de ciencia ficción. Para cualquier visitante ajeno a cualquier problemática asociada la toma de datos y a la privacidad el espacio se convierte en inquietante cuando se da cuenta de que el objetivo no tiene nada que ver con lo que aparenta.

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Ilustración 3 The Glass Room Experience

El acierto de la muestra reside en su lenguaje cercano que ayuda a cualquier tipo de público “a tomar decisiones sobre su vida en línea”. A través de ejemplos curiosos como un software de reconocimiento facial para reconocer a los feligreses de una comunidad religiosa, un vídeo de un actor leyendo los extensos e indescifrables términos y condicio- 5 5 El vídeo, reproduce las ocho horas y nes del Kindle de Amazon ; o explica cómo algunas media que necesitas para leer las condiciones de uso del Kindle de Amazon. aplicaciones activan nuestra cámara al ser instaladas. El estudio fue realizado por Choice, una asociación de consumidores de Australia. Además de poner en cuestión los conocimientos sobre el tema en a través de varios quiz muy senci- llos, pero que ofrecen resultados sorprendentes. A modo de conclusión y de reflexión profunda sobre ofrece un Kit de desintoxicación datos en 8 días, el 6 6 También disponible on line. Data Detox kit . En él se explica, entre otros detalles, que son y cómo nos afectan las nuevas leyes sobre Protección de Datos aplicables tanto a empresas como a usuarios. En 8 fases, es posible aplicar el plan propuesto aprendiendo porqué hemos de ser más cauto con el uso que hacemos con la tecnología

235 AFTER POST-TRUTH Interface Politics, 2nd International Conference y las herramientas digitales más conocidas. En el decálogo se habla claramente de empresas como Facebook, Google, de casos de empresas que compran datos y venden perfiles, se repasan casos como el de Cambridge Analítica,… La metodología utilizada en este caso, es mucho más introspectiva e individua- lizada que la ofrecida en los dos casos anteriores, pero tal vez sea más drástica y eficaz a la hora de conocer el contexto y comprobar cómo el poder se salta los límites y de qué manera podemos actuar y modificar maneras de hacer a través del conocimiento.

Nos parece relevante en los ejemplos seleccionados el esfuerzo realizado para explicar y concienciar a un público que tal vez sea más reticente a acercarse (o a encontrar) propuestas relacionadas de gran interés, como puede ser el Survei- llance self-defense de Electronic Frontier Foundation. Todos los esfuerzos que consigan que la verdad, que la confianza y la trasparencia vuelvan a ser

Conclusiones

La tecnología ha sabido determinar los mecanismos de la producción cultural (Manovich, 2005). La cultura del algoritmo se ha instalado en nuestras vidas sin que seamos conscientes de ello y sin darnos cuenta, nos hemos convertido en protagonistas con dos papeles antagónicos: somos generadores de datos y a la vez, somos el objetivo de técnicas que tras analizarnos pormenorizadamente son capaces de cambiar nuestros sentimientos, pensamientos y/o actitudes.

Es un hecho que mientras los ciudadanos estábamos más preocupados en cómo presentarnos a través de imágenes impostadas o en reenviar mensajes de dudosa procedencia a través de las redes sociales, nos hemos instalado de lleno en una época en la que la propaganda y la manipulación atacan los valores de nuestras ya endebles democracias contemporáneas. Hemos caído de lleno en la trampa de la economía de la atención, pero nos en vez de indignarnos o pasar a una postura activa, hemos optado por el silencio y el acomodo. Como indica Marina Garcés en varios de sus artículos, hemos optado por paralizarnos: la experiencia y la comprensión que podemos llegar a generar no está dando sus frutos.

Vivimos en un continuo simulacro lleno de acontecimientos retransmitidos como fogonazos a través de miles de cámaras, de tuits, pero cada vez nos resulta más difícil saber cuáles de esos mensajes son verdaderos. Es complicado procesar la información y conocer qué herramientas y metodologías son las

236 Algorithms are fake_Panel#9 más adecuadas para hacerlo. Ante esta realidad ¿qué tácticas activistas pueden ayudar a fomentar la conformación de una opinión pública crítica? ¿es posible centrarnos de nuevo en los problemas reales? Es innegable que existen propuestas interesantes que cumplen una función relevante al romper tabúes sobre la investigación y contribuyen a buscar soluciones meditadas con aspectos directamente relacionados con la desinformación y la manipulación (abogando por la transparencia, los derechos y libertades…). El problema reside en que muchas se quedan en el ámbito local: a veces por falta de medios, por el idioma que utilizan o por el nivel de especialización de los aspectos que abordan. Debemos, por lo tanto, esforzarnos por salir del gueto y pensar en que hace falta buscar estrategias que acerquen al público a la crítica a través de la experimen- tación o de lenguajes utilizados por el poder tecnológico.

Tal como asevera Timothy Snyder en Sobre la tiranía: “renunciar a los hechos, es renunciar a la libertad” (Snyder, 2017, p. 74), así que nos parece más necesario que nunca desarrollar, publicitar, fomentar y debatir sobre proyectos que hagan retomar la ilusión por investigar y desterrar la sensación de soledad y frustración de que todos aquellos que creemos que la posverdad es mentira.

Fuentes

AA.VV. (2016) «FAKE. No es verdad, no es mentira». Editado por Insttut Valencià d’Art Modern. Valencia, p. 267.

Amón, R. (2016) «‘Posverdad’, palabra del año | Internacional | EL PAÍS», El País, 7 noviembre. Disponible en: https://elpais.com/internacional/2016/11/16/actualidad/1479316268_308549.html (Accedido: 5 de octubre de 2018).

Bentham, J., Foucault, M. y Miranda López, M. J. (1989) El Panóptico. Las Ediciones de la Piqueta.

Bosco, R. (2008) «Desde la sala de control | Edición impresa | EL PAÍS», El País, Disponible en: https://elpais.com/diario/2008/01/17/tenden- cias/1200524401_850215.html (Accedido: 10 de octubre de 2018).

Baudrillard, J. (1993) «La mayoría silenciosa», en Cultura y simulacro :. 7a ed. Barcelo- na: Kairós, p. 127-136.

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Charlie Brooker (2016) Black Mirror (T3): Nosedive (TV). Netflix. Disponible en: https://www.netflix.com/browse/person/30168177?jbv=70264888&jbp=0&jbr=0 (Accedido: 1 de octubre de 2018). de Soto, P. y Hackitectura (2010) Situation room. Barcelona: LABoral. Disponible en: http://www.dpr-barcelona.com/index.php?/projects/situation-room/ (Accedido: 10 de octubre de 2018).

European Commission (2018) A multi-dimensional approach to disinformation. doi: 10.2759/0156.

Fowks, J. (2018) Mecanismos de la posverdad. Lima: FCE - Fondo de Cultura Económica.

Foucault, M. (1979) Vigilar y castigar : nacimiento de la prisión. Siglo XXI.

Ibáñez Fanéz, J. (ed.) (2017) En la era de la posverdad : 14 ensayos. Madrid: Calambur.

Iglesias, M. (2017) «Las consecuencias de la doble crisis», en Fundación telefónica, A. (ed.) Diez años que cambiaron los medios: 2007-2017. Madrid: Fundación Telefóni- ca, Ariel, pp. 108-110. ICIJ (2016) Giant Leak of Offshore Financial Records Exposes Global Array of Crime and Corruption, ICIJ. Disponible en: https://www.icij.org/investigations/panama-paper- s/20160403-panama-papers-global-overview/ (Accedido: 5 de octubre de 2018).

Jiménez Cano, R. (2017) «Facebook, Twitter y Google se involucraron en la campaña de Trump | Internacional | EL PAÍS», El País. Disponible en: https://elpais.com/ internacional/2017/10/09/actualidad/1507524039_928191.html (Accedido: 1 de octubre de 2018).

Kovach, B. y Rosenstiel, T. (2012) Los elementos del periodismo todo lo que los periodistas deben saber y los ciudadanos esperar. Madrid: Aguilar.

Kubrick, S. (1964) - Dr. Strangelove, or How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb. Columbia Pictures / Hawk Films.

Lovink, G. y Schneider, F. (2003) Reverse Engineering Freedom, October 24, 2003. Disponible en: http://geertlovink.org/texts/reverse-engineering-freedom/ (Accedi- do: 16 de octubre de 2018).

Manovich, L. (2005) El lenguaje de los nuevos medios de comunicación : la imagen en la era digital. Barcelona: Paidós Ibérica.

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Office of Experiments (2018)Office of Experiments – Art & Experimental Research. Disponible en: http://o-o-e.org/fieldwork/ (Accedido: 18 de octubre de 2018).

Ontiveros, E. (dir) y López Sabater, V. (coord) (2017) Economía de los Datos Riqueza 4.0. Madrid: Ariel, Fundación Telefónica.

Sandin, É. (2018) La siliconización del mundo. 1.a ed. Buenos Aires: Caja Negra Editora.

Serna, J. (2017) «Fake news. Todo es falso salvo alguna cosa», en Ibáñez Fanéz, J. (ed.) En la era de la posverdad : 14 ensayos. Madrid: Calambur, pp. 101-116.

Snyder, T. (2017) Sobre la tiranía: veinte lecciones que aprender del siglo XX. 1º. Barcelona: Galaxia Gutenberg.

Tactical Thechnology Collective (sin fecha)The glass room experience, 2018. Disponi- ble en: https://tacticaltech.org/pages/the-glass-room-experience/ (Accedido: 8 de octubre de 2018). Torre, R. y DeSoto, P. (2018) LA ZONA — LABoral Centro de Arte, 2018. Disponible en: http://www.laboralcentrodearte.org/es/exposiciones/la-zona (Accedido: 1 de octubre de 2018).

Hackitectura.net (2017) Situation Room – hackitectura.net. Disponible en: http://x. hackitectura.net/es/hola-mundo/ (Accedido: 1 de octubre de 2018).

G. Díaz, P. (2018) Uncovering Ctrl: LA ZONA: los datos del desastre en Fukushima., Uncovering Ctrl. Disponible en: http://uncovering-ctrl.blogspot.com/2018/08/la-zona-o-como-visualizar-el-desastre.html (Accedido: 18 de octubre de 2018).

Zafra, R. (2017) «REDES Y POSVERDAD (publicado en libro colectivo»:, en Ibáñez Fanéz, J. (ed.) En la era de la posverdad : 14 ensayos. Madrid: Calambur, pp. 181- 197.

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Figuras

1. [Hackitectura] n.d. [imagen on line] Disponible en < http://hackitectura.net/~p- desoto/situationroom_5.pdf (Accedido: 10 de octubre de 2018).

2 OOE n.d. [imagen on line] Disponible en (Accedido: 10 de octubre de 2018).

3. [Tachtical Tech] n.d. [imagen on line] Disponible en (Accedido: 10 de octubre de 2018).

Paloma González Díaz, http://uncoveringctrl.com/

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An updated version of this paper was submitted to the #24 Artnodes Journal CFP and selected for publication. Read it in: http://doi.org/10.7238/a.v0i24.3293

Data Biography: the narrative biography in the datacene Diego Díaz, Clara Boj

Abstract Increasingly details of our lives are recorded and stored to be part of what has come to be called BIG DATA. Our life, in all its aspects, leaves a digital trail that is continually updated according to our activities. From the physical to the digital life we are feeding databases in which from the last book we have bought to our last medical visits are recorded. Many of these data are open and accessible, others are owned by private companies that market with them.

In this society mediated by digital data, defined as Datacene era, we found from contemporary art practices different approaches to the use and analysis of complex data: from the generation of attractive visualization in order to discover the information hidden in large data volumes, to more conceptual approaches that bring us closer to a critical approach to the collection, use and marketing of our digital data.

In this publication we focus on the concept of narrative biography in the era of the Datacene, understanding that if a biography is the life of a person narrated by another, consigning those aspects of his life more relevant and everything, in the eyes of the rapporteur, may be interesting. This research tries to make a speculative design proposal about how we could write the biography of a person located at the present moment using the data captured from our digital trail in Social Networks, WhatsA- pp, emails, visited websites, Google Searches, images, GPS locations, etc.

Keywords Big data; data biography; datacene; media art; digital trails. Clara Boj + Diego Díaz http://www.lalalab.org/

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Algorithms are fake Panel#10 Moderated by Lluís Nacenta

Col·lectiu Estampa The bad student. Critical pedagogy for artificial intelligences

Mitra Azar Drive to visibility and games of truth: from Panopticon to POV-opticon

Andrea Facchetti Critical approaches to information design: visualize a field of knowledge as a contested terrain

Efrain Foglia Romero Collective intelligence in the era of bots

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The bad student. Critical pedagogy for artificial intelligences Estampa (Roc Albalat, Pau Artigas, Marc Padró, Marcel Pié, Daniel Pitarch)

Abstract The development of artificial intelligence today is focused on machine learning. Machines learn by themselves to carry out tasks using examples that we teach them. The aim of these developments is to automate the maximum possible number of processes and to apply them to vast databases: to classify, to identify patterns, to predict behaviour and to carry out mass monitoring. Through these technologies, visual culture today is expanding on its invisible side, the one on which machines generate images that only other machines will see. In this context, we need to consider how we can embody those images in order to undo their ghostly action in our surroundings. If the world of artificial intelligence uses the metaphor of learning, we ask for a critical pedagogy: a non-mimetic artificial intelligence that gives rise to unexpected relations and images.

This article summarizes the artistic research we did on artificial vision and image generation using deep learning neural nets between June 2017 and April 2018.

Keywords Artificial intelligence; deep learning neural nets; machine learning; YOLO9000; artificial vision

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En los últimos años, una parte de la investigación y la innovación tecnológica se ha centrado en una área de la inteligencia artificial: las técnicas de aprendizaje automático, que utilizan redes neuronales artificiales profundas. Mediante estas redes, las máquinas aprenden por sí solas a realizar tareas a partir de los ejemplos que les enseñamos. Además de la tarea que queremos que cumpla, en una red neuronal podemos decidir su estructura interna –número de capas, tipo de funciones matemáticas que se deben aplicar– y qué corpus de material le proporcionamos para que aprenda. Sin embargo, el aprendizaje de la red se lleva a cabo a partir de una serie de operaciones internas (estadísticas y de probabilidad) en las que no hay intervención humana. De forma simultánea, un proceso automático de testeo iterativo optimiza los resultados de la tarea.

El objetivo de estos desarrollos es automatizar el mayor número posible de procesos y aplicarlos a grandes bases de datos: clasificar, buscar patrones, pre- decir comportamientos o monitorizar a gran escala. Es de este modo como las redes neuronales tienen un papel fundamental en la cultura visual, ya que una de las tareas que se les ha atribuido de forma masiva es describir el contenido de las imágenes. La nueva economía de los signos ha requerido una acelera- ción en la explotación de su materia prima. Y en este proceso la visión artificial ha devenido una interfaz necesaria para convertir en información indexable también aquello representado en las imágenes, hasta hace una década inac- cesible a la lectura automática. Así pues, un archivo de imágenes (un archivo histórico público, un banco de imágenes comercial, el fondo fotográfico de un periódico, las imágenes subidas a las redes sociales o un álbum personal) ya no necesitaría que una persona se dedicara a introducir descripciones textuales y palabras clave, sino que un programa informático podría ejecutar esta tarea. Sin embargo, en nuestro mundo actual, esto no solo se aplica al conjunto de imágenes existentes y catalogadas, sino también al flujo continuo de nuevas imágenes proporcionadas por la ubicuidad de cámaras en funcionamiento. En este sentido, ya no se daría tanto una automatización de la descripción, como una automatización de la percepción, atendiendo a una diferencia de tempora- lidad: la visión artificial puede hoy operar en tiempo real.

En la actualidad la mayoría de imágenes ya no están pensadas para ser vistas por una persona, sino que su espectador ideal, y muchas veces único, es tam- bién una máquina. No queremos decir que la red sea un sujeto, sino que, como señalan artistas como Trevor Paglen (2016) o Hito Steyerl (2012), hoy en día la mayoría de imágenes ya no están pensadas para ser vistas por una persona, sino que su espectador ideal, y muchas veces único, es también una máquina.

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Serían imágenes operativas, según la expresión del ci- neasta Harun Farocki (2004)– y si los sujetos tam- bién las podemos percibir, es solo por medio de una interfaz que las traduce y las hace visibles, pero que es, desde el punto de vista de la operación, innece- saria. Al ser invisible, se nos hace difícil saber qué información se extrae de las imágenes. Este es uno de los motivos de interés de nuestra investigación: poder estudiar los modos en que ve la máquina. En el actual contexto, en el que estos modelos operan en cada vez más ámbitos y a escalas mayores, urge comprender los mecanismos que rigen el aprendizaje automático. ¿Qué categorías establecemos a la hora de hacer clasificaciones? ¿Quién decide lo que deberá ver la máquina y con qué criterios? Si el mundo de la inteligencia artificial utiliza la metá- fora del aprendizaje, nos hemos propuesto pensar una pedagogía crítica que ponga en evidencia la mitificación de estas tecnologías. Bajo esta premisa, hemos realizado una serie de experimentos: modi- ficando, alterando o entrenando redes neuronales de reconocimiento en imagen, así como aquellas programadas para generar nuevas imágenes.

¿Qué es lo que ves, YOLO9000?

Para llevar a cabo la investigación hemos utilizado YOLO9000, una red neuronal de reconocimiento de objetos entrenada con un dataset de 9.418 palabras y millones de imágenes. Su corpus de palabras proviene de WordNet, una base de datos del léxico del inglés organizada jerárquicamente en función del significado de las palabras. La imagen 1 muestra fragmentos de una visualización en forma de red de YOLO9000 (esta visualización se puede explorar de 1 1 https://tallerestampa.com/treballs/ manera interactiva en la web del proyecto ). malalumne/jerarquia_yolo9000/

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Imagen 1

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Cada uno de estos conceptos es definido por una colección de imágenes. Poste- riormente, el proceso de visión artificial consistirá en encontrar los patrones adquiridos en una imagen. La visión artificial de reconocimiento de objetos concibe las imágenes de manera realista y discontinua. Es decir, se trata de identificar fragmentos de la imagen como representaciones de objetos o seres vivos, y la imagen no se interpreta como una totalidad sino como un conjunto de elementos discretos. Con el objeto de destacar dichos elementos, hemos al- terado la interfaz gráfica de reconocimiento de objetos de YOLO9000 con diferentes combinatorias sobre lo que se ve y lo que se oculta. Estas salidas gráficas evidencian el carácter discreto y parcial de la identificación (img. 2 y 3), juegan con la distancia entre la identificación verbal y la visual (img. 4) o convierten el proceso de identificación en una película abstracta (como un seguimiento de los movimientos en la imagen con el código de colores de YOLO9000, img. 5).

Imag. 2 Imag. 3

Imag. 4 Imag. 5

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La condición cultural del tesauro

El vocabulario empleado por YOLO9000 es un tesauro: un glosario jerarquizado. Cada término forma un árbol que contiene las palabras que dependen semánticamente de él. La visión artificial se entiende con mayor precisión como una operación de clasificación. La red distribuye el corpus de imáge- nes entre este árbol de categorías. La adscripción de cada imagen viene determinada por un porcentaje de probabilidades de pertenecer a una cierta cate- goría. En este sentido, procede como una máquina normativa. Ninguna imagen queda fuera de la clasificación, siempre hay una de las categorías que le es más cercana. En la visión artificial, la elección de estas categorías es la menos automática de las tareas, corre a cargo de los humanos en la mayoría 2 de los casos . En caso de desviaciones, la supervi- 2 Ciertos tipos de aprendizaje profundo inventan nuevos conjuntos sión humana puede inscribir nuevas etiquetas en el de categorías, el sistema reconoce inventario y entrenar la máquina para reconocer el patrones y etiqueta los datos por sí solo, pero actúa en base a un propósito nuevo patrón. determinado (como el diagnóstico del cáncer). Cuáles son estas categorías es, por lo tanto, la pregunta inicial previa a todo entrenamiento y, con ellas, se decide lo que la red podrá decir sobre una imagen. Conseguir que una visión artificial funcione implica educarla en un sistema particular de ver. En el caso de YOLO9000, su vocabulario proviene principalmente del dataset ImageNet. ImageNet es una base de datos de imágenes anotadas creada por la investi- gadora Fei-Fei Li con las universidades de Stanford y Princeton como un recurso para la investigación en visión artificial. Pero que las palabras tengan un significado no quiere decir que tengan una equivalencia visual. Los límites de la relación entre imágenes y palabras se hacen evidentes para cualquiera que re- corra las categorías de ImageNet relativas a personas: ¿se puede crear un dataset de imágenes para la categoría bad person? (img. 6). ¿Los criterios morales

248 Algorithms are fake_Panel#10 son elementos que se pueden apreciar en las imágenes? En el caso del género, las imágenes de ImageNet también son elocuentes: por ejemplo en la categoría smasher, stunner, knockout [...] (“una mujer muy atractiva o seductora”, según la definición del propiodataset ), que no define el contenido de la imagen sino el tipo de mirada con la que se ha construido (img. 7). Estos ejemplos demuestran los límites y los peligros de la definición visual, ya que ésta no consigue eliminar la ambigüedad que se supone a toda representación.

El output de la máquina es considerado con frecuencia un dato objetivo, el cual se supone liberado de opiniones y puntos de vista humanos. Sin embargo, el aprendizaje automático en visión artificial requiere de dos decisiones políticas y culturales cruciales. La primera: qué imágenes se utilizan para el entrenamiento de la máquina –a la que nos referiremos en la siguiente sección–. Y la segunda: qué categorías utiliza la máquina para clasificar las imágenes que ve –el vocabulario de la máquina–. Estos ejercicios plantean maneras de ver que abren varios interrogantes: ¿qué categorías establecemos al hacer clasificaciones? ¿Puede existir una taxonomía que permita una visión técnicamente neutra?

Imag. 6 Imag. 7

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Una de las líneas de experimentación realizadas se basa en la sustitución del vocabulario de YOLO9000 por otros listados de palabras. Para una primera sustitución se ha utilizado otro célebre tesauro, que fue elaborado en 1805 por Peter Mark Roget, médico británico, teólogo natural y lexicógrafo. El tesauro de Roget es una obra epistemológica que contiene conceptos relacionados con la existencia, el cambio, el razonamiento o los afectos. Un repertorio abstrac- to que contrasta con los términos concretos –aptos para monitorizar– de YOLO9000 (img. 8). Otra estrategia ha consistido en sustituir el vocabulario estándar de la red por la lista que el Departamento de Seguridad Nacional de Estados Unidos (DHS) se vio obligado a publicar en 2012: 377 palabras clave y frases que utiliza para monitorizar correos electrónicos y redes sociales. La lista proporciona una visión de lo que el espionaje entiende como señales de amenazas terroristas o de otros tipos contra EE. UU. (img. 9). En otro ejercicio de sustitución se ha utilizado el listado de la enciclopedia china, ficcionada por Jorge Luis Borges en El idioma analítico de John Wilkins, que permite hacer un comentario acerca de la arbitrariedad de las taxonomías. Como explica Borges, toda taxonomía representa un intento provisional del lenguaje para clasificar una realidad inabarcable (img. 10).

Imag. 8

Imag. 9 Imag. 10

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El bagaje visual de la máquina

Para llevar a cabo el entrenamiento de una red neuronal no solo es necesario un vocabulario –un corpus de palabras– sino también un corpus de imágenes asociado a cada uno de estos términos. La red neuronal aprende en función de estas imágenes. A partir de todas las imágenes que le demos relativas a una categoría, desarrollará una serie de procesos (funciones matemáticas) que le permitirán decir, ante una nueva imagen, si pertenece a esta categoría o no. Eso implica tener imágenes de cada categoría lo suficientemente heterogéneas para reflejar diferentes situaciones futuras, es decir, si se quiere que identifique dónde hay personas en una imagen, se necesita una gran cantidad de imágenes de personas y que estas aparezcan de muchas maneras posibles (de cara, de espaldas, agachadas, acostadas, etc.) y en muchos contextos posibles (interior, exterior, poca luz, mucha luz, etc.). El desarrollo de la inteligencia artificial en los últimos años se ha basado en el incremento de la capacidad de cómputo y en la disponibilidad de mayores volúmenes de datos. Las redes neuronales artificiales han arrojado resultados aceptables para la industria a partir del momento en que se han podido aplicar a grandes bases de datos. Esto implica que los estándares cuantitativos actuales de los datasets de imágenes para un entrenamiento sean muy elevados y, en consecuencia, que solo estén al alcance de grandes proyectos y empresas (por ejemplo, el dataset Open Images, desarrollado por Google, está formado por 9 millones de imágenes anotadas). La capacidad de conseguir y etiquetar grandes cantidades de imágenes desborda una tarea individual o de pocas personas, igual que la capacidad de cómputo para los entrenamientos desborda la mayoría de equipos domésticos –hablan- do dentro de los estándares industriales–. Los dataset de partida diferencian los proyectos de visión artificial, pero también existe una serie dedatasets que se han convertido en herramientas comunes para estos proyectos; es el caso del mencionado ImageNet.

Si el árbol de conceptos de ImageNet proviene de WordNet, las imágenes que lo ilustran provienen principalmente de plataformas como Flickr. El mundo visual de este dataset, por lo tanto, se ha creado con un imaginario muy concreto: el de las redes sociales y las plataformas 2.0. De hecho, monitorizar este universo es una de las tareas para las que se desarrolla la investigación en visión artificial. Pero, ¿hasta qué punto el entrenamiento queda marcado por este imaginario?

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El etiquetado de las imágenes según los conceptos predeterminados requiere una gran fuerza de trabajo. En el caso de ImageNet, se ha conseguido por medio de Amazon Mechanical Turk, una plataforma en la que se ofrece la realización de tareas concretas a cambio de poco dinero (céntimos de dólar). Los trabajadores reciben una definición y un conjunto de imágenes y deben seleccionar cuáles incluyen este objeto y encuadrarlo dentro de la imagen. Como indica el artista e investigador Nicolas Malevé (2016), esta economía de la producción de los datasets provoca una aparente paradoja, en la que las personas llevan a cabo tareas mecánicas y rutinarias y las máquinas se califican de inteligentes. Todas estas cuestiones relativas a ImageNet llevan a preguntarse sobre la posibilidad de crear datasets alternativos. ¿Qué conjuntos alternativos de imágenes podrían utilizarse para entrenar a la red?

El mundo del arte ha sido el punto de partida de dos entrenamientos. En el primero se han utilizado las categorías de catalogación de Wikiart y su corpus de imágenes para enseñar a una red a reconocer estilos artísticos. En esta situación, la visión artificial se ve forzada a enfrentarse a la idea de estilo y movimientos artísticos, y lo hace desde un punto de vista puramente formal, descartando cualquier consideración conceptual, ámbito que, por definición, escapa a su comprensión. En el segundo caso, los datasets de entrenamiento son las colecciones de distintas instituciones artísticas de Barcelona (MAC- BA, MNAC, Fundació Miró, Fundació Tàpies, Museu Picasso y Museu del Disseny). Las imágenes que contiene cada colección son extremadamente heterogéneas. Forzada a realizar una síntesis, la red acaba produciendo interpretaciones absurdas. En estos casos, la visión artificial nos sirve para satirizar el discurso sobre el arte basado en la clasificación, que inevitablemente homo- geneiza y simplifica la producción artística (img. 11 y 12).

El entrenamiento de redes de visión artificial también se ha realizado en otros ámbitos. En unos casos, intentado que la red trabaje más sobre la imagen que sobre los objetos representados: hablamos de la identificación de conceptos de composición o representación del espacio (punto de fuga y horizonte, asumiendo el punto de vista del espectador ideal de la perspectiva) o de los dispositivos de creación de la imagen (por ejemplo, cámara web, teléfono, etc.). En otros casos, entrenando la red a identificar artistas particularmente elusivos como Cindy Sherman o Joan Fontcuberta (img. 13).

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Imag. 11

Imag. 12

Imag. 13

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La automatización en la generación de imágenes

La inteligencia artificial se aplica al mundo de las imágenes por dos vías: la visión artificial y la generación de imágenes. La visión artificial se centra en la capacidad de identificar el contenido de las imágenes de manera automática. El otro gran campo de aplicación de las redes neuronales en el mundo de las imágenes es la vertiente, no de reconocimiento o clasificación, sino de crea- ción de imágenes: el campo generativo, entre otras, de las denominadas GAN (generative adversarial networks o redes generativas antagónicas). En este caso, el aprendizaje está enfocado a producir una imagen de unas determinadas características. Una red común en este campo es Pix2Pix, que se entrena a partir de un corpus elevado de parejas de imágenes. Esta red necesita muchos ejemplos de una imagen A y una imagen B para aprender, ante un nuevo input que le demos, a tratarlo como la imagen A del par y generar la B.

A partir de las imágenes de un proyecto anterior (Rotondes. Panorames i fases per a un espectador en moviment, Marcel Pié / Estampa, 2017) hemos entrenado una red neuronal a rotoscopiar, esto es, a convertir en dibujo una filmación en vídeo. También se ha realizado un entrenamiento en el sentido inverso: a partir de una imagen dibujada, se genera la toma fotográfica. Como los pares de imágenes de entrenamiento son de la filmación y la rotoscopia de distintas rotondas del delta del Ebro, el tipo de imagen fotorrealista que genera la red se corresponde con este entorno (carretera, señales de tránsito, paisaje plano, vegetación y cielo). Con estas herramientas, se han buscado mecanismos para que la red generara paisajes imaginados. Una de estas estrategias es el proceso recursivo: se ha rotoscopiado automáticamente una rotonda filmada (img. 14) y esta rotoscopia generada por la red se ha vuelto a procesar para convertirla en imagen fotográfica de nuevo (img. 15). El resultado es un paisaje inventado por la red. La otra estrategia ha sido proporcionar a la red solo fragmentos del paisaje rotoscopiado: enfrentada a inputs parciales, la red genera una imagen entre el fotorrealismo y el glitch (img. 16).

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Imag. 14

Imag. 15

Imag. 16

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El par de imágenes de entrenamiento ha sido, en otro de los experimentos realizados, las dos mitades de una cara. La red neuronal se enfrenta a completar la mitad de un rostro con su relación de simetría. Como en todos los casos, el resultado es una red obsesiva que, ante cualquier input, genera solo lo que sabe. Las caras que imagina esta red son un especie de media de todas las caras que ha visto, modificada por las características de cada imagen de entrada (img. 17).

Imag. 17

Si Pix2Pix aprende a generar una imagen B a partir de una imagen A, se pueden plantear experimentos que no busquen una conversión a un estilo determinado sino un desplazamiento en el espacio y el tiempo. Inspirados por un experimento del desarrollador Damien Henry (2018), hemos utilizado los fotogramas consecutivos de un vídeo como pares de entrenamiento, y hemos planteado a la red que aprenda a crear el fotograma siguiente: la predicción de un futuro inmediato. Otro experimento se ha realizado con pares estereoscópi- cos con los que la red aprendería a generar la segunda imagen del par, esto es, a ver la misma imagen desde una perspectiva ligeramente distinta (la diferencia entre el ojo derecho y el izquierdo, unos 6 cm más allá). Estos entrenamientos se desplazan metafóricamente en el tiempo y el espacio y son, en este sentido, auspicios, visualizaciones predictivas de lo que pasará. Dado que la predicción de comportamientos es una de las obsesiones de los datos masivos y de la mo- nitorización actuales, los resultados abstractos de estos experimentos, cuando

256 Algorithms are fake_Panel#10 se generan de manera recursiva (img. 18), funcionan como un comentario irónico acerca de las promesas tecnológicas.

Imag. 18

Conclusiones

La primera parte de la investigación se ha centrado en el análisis de reconocimiento de objetos en imagen. Durante este proceso, la máquina correlaciona los objetos reconocidos en una imagen con una serie de categorías establecidas de antemano. Estas categorías son un conjunto de clasificaciones existentes derivadas de conocimientos institucionalizados o aceptados que, mediante el proceso masivo de etiquetado de imágenes, se intensifican y derivan en un proceso invisible de estandarización en la cultura visual. La decodificación de estos modos de reconocimiento la hemos abordado mediante la experimentación con el lenguaje; sustituyendo los vocabularios predeterminados por otro tipo de clasificaciones o listas. Los resultados gráficos de estos experimentos ponen de relieve el reconocimiento de objetos en imagen como una forma específica de reducir la complejidad, un modo particular de ver. Del mismo modo, aquello que hemos denominado el bagaje visual de la máquina –esto es, el corpus de imágenes que le suministramos para que aprenda cada concepto– resulta un intento, basado en un contexto histórico y cultural determinado, de apresar en un sentido unívoco aquello representado en las imágenes. Los resultados

257 AFTER POST-TRUTH Interface Politics, 2nd International Conference obtenidos en la experimentación con el corpus de imágenes y el entrenamien- to de la red neuronal se prestan a una revisión de los discursos que tratan de investir el output maquínico como conocimiento autoridad tecnocientífica. Por el contrario, la arbitrariedad en el output era un resultado esperado, y formaba parte del juego en el enunciado de cada experimento. Finalmente, hemos realizado una investigación el campo de generación maquínica de imágenes. Los experimentos realizados nos han permitido poner en relieve tanto las aptitudes técnicas del dispositivo, la importancia de la iconografía de entrenamiento en los resultados obtenidos, así como sus potencialidades como dispositivo conceptual auto-referencial y crítico.

Referencias

Farocki, H., 2004. Phantom Images. Public, n.º 29, pp. 12-22.

Henry, D., 2018. A train window. Magenta, [online] Available at: https://magenta.tensorflow.org/nfp_p2p [Accedido 20 de Octubre 2018].

Malevé, N., 2016. Machine Pedagogies. Machine Research, [online] Available at: https://machineresearch.wordpress.com/2016/09/26/nicolas-maleve/ [Accedido 20 de Octubre 2018].

Paglen, T., 2016. Invisible Images (Your Pictures Are Looking at You). The New Inquiry, [online] Available at: https://thenewinquiry.com/invisible-images-your-pictures-are-looking-at-you/. [Accedido 20 de Octubre 2018].

Steyerl, H., 2012. The Spam of the Earth: Withdrawal from Representation. E-Flux, n.º 32, [online] Available at: http://www.e-flux.com/journal/32/68260/ the-spam-of-the-earth-withdrawal-from-representation/. [Accedido 20 de Octubre 2018].

Estampa https://tallerestampa.com/

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Drive to visibility and games of truth: from Panopticon to POV-opticon Mitra Azar

Abstract The paper proposes a theoretical framework to understand the emergency of the post-truth era in the specific realm of Internet visual culture, and analyses the aesthetic and technological conditions that allow a new form of post-truth to emerge. The paper argues that Internet post-truth could be addressed as the jeu de la vérité1 (game of truth) emerging from the transformation of the Panopticon – the form of visual governamentality of modernity2 – into the POV-opticon.

The POV-opticon is a regime of visibility outlined by the explosion of POV (Point of view) technologies of vision – mobile phones, VR and AR technologies – which are transforming POV from a cinematic aesthetic and technical format into one of the most controversial political-aesthetic battlefields of our time. The capability of cinematic POV to produce the seamless overlapping between body and technology3 is re-invented in relation to new technological devices that re-defines human and machinic agency within new regimes of visibility and new games of truth.

1 Ibidem.

2 Foucault, M. Discipline and Punish. The birth of prison. New York: Phanteon, 1978. Print.

3 This is what happens in Lady in the Lake by Montgomery (1947), as much as in contemporary experiments of POV movies since at least The Blair Witch project by Mirick & Sanchez. Montgomery, R. Lady in the Lake. USA: Metro Gold- win-Mayer, 1947. Mirick D. & Sanchez E. The Blair Witch project USA: Artisan Entertainment, 1999.

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The paper tries to understand the POV-opticon by looking at the development of a new type of selfie aesthetic and of a new imagery coming out of the ongoing machinization of the face operated by facial recognition technologies – what I’ve tried to define elsewhere as the Algorithmic Facial Image (AFI)4.

Especially by defining POV-opticon and AFI, the paper expands the notion of regime of visibility proposed by Dutch art critic Camel van Winkel, and relates it to the notion of games of truth elaborated by Michel Foucault. If, according to Winkel, the regime of visibility is more about the drive to make visible rather than the visible itself5, the drive presents a peculiar relation with truthfulness which seems to fit well with the games of truth generated by the POV-opticon. Games of truth is Foucault’s attempt to rethinking the concept of regime of truth6 defining the Panopticon, in relation to distributed forms of governamen- tality7 and emerging forms of subjectivity. The paper argues that POV-opticon provides the technological strata for explaining post-truth as the hermeneutical reality emerging from the proliferation of POV games of truth. POV games of truth are assembled into new POV micro-regime of truth algorithmically generated by the extraction of data from the subject and by the creation of a POV data double8 that works as the algorithmic answer to the drive to visibility and offers a solution to the ambiguities of the games of truth.

Keywords Panopticon; POV-opticon; games of truth; regime of truth; algorithmic facial image (AFI)

4 Azar, M. “The algorithmic facial image and the relation between truth value and money Value”. APRJA, A peer review journal about, Volume 7, Issue 1, June 2018. Web.

5 Cfr. Winkel, C. The regime of Visibility. Rotterdam: nai010 publishers, 2016. Print.

6 Foucault, M. Surveiller et punir. Naissance de la prison. Paris: Gallimard, 1975, pg. 30. Print.

7 Philosopher Daniele Lorenzini argues that Foucault moves towards the implicit distinction between regime of truth and games of truth in his writings between 1975 and 1980, right before his course Subjectivité and Vérité at the College de Fran- ce in 1981. Cfr. Lorenzini, D. La force du vrai. De Foucault à Austin. Lormont: Le Bord de l’Eau, 2017. Print. Cfr. Lorenzini, D. “What is a regime of Truth?”. Le Foucaldien 1/1. Open Access Journal for Research along Foucauldian Lines. 2015. Web.

8 I’ve approached the data double as data selfie when dealing in depth with the Algorithmic Facial Image (AFI). Cfr. Azar, M. “The algorithmic facial image and the relation between truth value and money value”. APRJA, A peer review journal about, Volume 7, Issue 1, June 2018. Web.

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Faire l’histoire de la vérité, faire l’histoire de jeux de vérité, faire l’histoire de pratiques, des économies, et des politiques de veridiction, faire cette histoire [suppose qu’on ne puisse aucunement] se contenter de dire: Si on a dit telle vérité, c’est que cette vérité étiat réelle. Il faut dire au contraire: Le reel étant ce qu’il est, quelles ont été les conditions improbables, les conditions singulières qui ont fait que, par rapport à ce reel, un jeu de la vérité a pu apparaître, avec certes ses raisons, ses nécessités, mais ses raisons et ses nécesittés qui ne sont pas simplement le fait que les choses en question existaient?

I. POV-opticon and games of truth The paper proposes a theoretical framework to understand the emergency of the post-truth1 era 1 “To make the history of truth, to in the specific realm of Internet visual culture, and make the history of truth games, to make the history of practices, analyses the aesthetic and technological conditions economies, and policies of veridiction, that allow a new form of post-truth to emerge. to make this history […] and to be content with saying: if one has said The paper argues that Internet post-truth could be such a truth, it is because this truth 2 is real. On the contrary, it must be addressed as the jeu de la vérité (game of truth) said: Since the real is what it is, what emerging from the transformation of the Panop- were the improbable conditions, the singular conditions which made it ticon —the form of visual governamentality of possible for a game of truth to appear modernity 3— into the POV-opticon. in relation to this real, certainly with its reasons, its necessities, but its reasons and necessities that are not simply The POV-opticon is a regime of visibility outlined the fact that the things in question existed?” M. Foucault, Subjectivité et by the explosion of POV (Point of view) technolo- vérité. Course au Collège de Fance. 1980-1981. Paris: Seuil-Gallimard, gies of vision – mobile phones, VR and AR tech- 2014, p.223-224. Print. nologies, Google Gaze circuit e.g. the ensemble of

2 Ibidem. Google technologies of vision such as Google Maps, Google Car, Google 360 – which are transforming 3 Foucault, M. Discipline and Punish. The birth of prison. New York: Phan- POV from a cinematic aesthetic and technical teon, 1978. Print format into one of the most controversial survei- 4 This is what happens in Lady in the llance and political-aesthetic battlefields of our time. Lake by Montgomery (1947), as much as in contemporary experiments of The capability of cinematic POV to produce the POV movies since at least The Blair seamless overlapping between actor’s body, came- Witch project by Mirick & Sanchez. 4 Montgomery, R. Lady in the Lake. ra, and spectator’s body is re-invented in relation USA: Metro Goldwin-Mayer, 1947. to new technological devices that re-articulate the Mirick D. & Sanchez E. The Blair Witch project USA: Artisan Entertain- relation between body and technology in a way that ment, 1999. re-defines human and machinic agency within new regimes of visibility and new games of truth.

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The paper tries to understand the POV-opticon by looking at the development of a new type of selfie aesthetic and of a new imagery coming out of the ongoing machinization of the face operated by facial recognition technologies – what I’ve tried to define elsewhere as the Algorithmic Facial Image (AFI)5. 5 Azar, M. “The algorithmic facial image and the relation between truth value and money Value”. APRJA, A Especially by defining POV-opticon and AFI, the peer review journal about, Volume 7, Issue 1, June 2018. Web. paper expands the notion of regime of visibility proposed by Dutch art critic Camel van Winkel, and relates it to the notion of games of truth elaborated by Michel Foucault. If, according to Winkel, the regime of visibility is more about the drive to 6 make visible rather than the visible itself , the drive 6 Cfr. Winkel, C. The regime of Visi- bility. Rotterdam: nai010 publishers, presents a peculiar relation with truthfulness which 2016. Print. seems to fit well with the games of truth generated by the POV-opticon. Games of truth is Foucault’s 7 attempt to rethinking the concept of regime of truth 7 Foucault, M. Surveiller et punir. Nais- sance de la prison. Paris: Gallimard, defining the Panopticon in relation to distributed 1975, pg. 30. Print. forms of governamentality8 and, more importantly, 8 Philosopher Daniele Lorenzini argues emerging forms of subjectivity. The paper argues that that Foucault moves towards the POV-opticon provides the technological strata for implicit distinction between regime of truth and games of truth in his writings explaining post-truth as the hermeneutical reality between 1975 and 1980, right before emerging from the proliferation of POV games of his course Subjectivité and Vérité at the College de France in 1981. Cfr. truth. POV games of truth are assembled into new Lorenzini, D. La force du vrai. De Foucault à Austin. Lormont: Le Bord POV micro-regime of truth algorithmically genera- de l’Eau, 2017. Print. Cfr. Lorenzini, ted by the extraction of data from the subject and by D. “What is a regime of Truth?”. Le 9 Foucaldien 1/1. Open Access Journal the creation of a POV data double that works as the for Research along Foucauldian Lines. algorithmic answer to the drive to visibility and offers 2015. Web. a solution to the ambiguities of the games of truth. 9 I’ve approached the data double as data selfie when dealing in depth with the Algorithmic Facial Image (AFI). Cfr. Azar, M. “The algorithmic facial image and the relation between truth value and money value”. APRJA, A peer review journal about, Volume 7, Issue 1, June 2018. Web.

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II. From Panopticon to POV-opticon

If in the recent past the Panopticon has been associated with the practice of CCTV surveillance 10 10 Yar, M. “Panoptic Power and the camera , the contemporary surveillance-assem- Pathologisation of Vision: Critical Reflections on the Foucauldian Thesis”. blage seems to be better formally described by the Surveillance & Society 1(3) 2003: deployment of POV technologies of vision oriented 254-271. Web. towards data-veillance11. One of the reasons for the 11 Clarke, R. “Information Technology transformation of the Panopticon into the POV-op- and Dataveillance”. Commun. ACM 31,5 1988: pp. 498-512. Web. ticon is the passage from a surveillance system based on CCTV technology to a surveillance system based on POV technologies of vision.

12 12 Ponsoldt, J. The Circle. USA: STXfil- In the 2017 filmThe Circle by James Ponsoldt , ms, Europacorp, 2017. Film. the young and rampant worker Mae manages to witch-hunt a fugitive prisoner in ten minutes and twenty-one seconds by accessing in real time more than one billion POV mobile images world-wide, all connected to the Google-like social network The Circle. The so called SoulSearch technology proceeds to real time scanning the images produced by the community through a machine vision technology trained to recognize the fugitive’s facial features.

The POV-opticon seems indeed to be characterized by the overlapping of features coming from both CCTV and POV regimes of visibility. The GIGA Selfie, a technological system patented in Australia which allows tourists to take images of themselves by controlling remotely with their phones a CC- TV-like camera that is able to zoom from a CCTV frame to a POV selfie-like close-up of the users’ faces, confirms this idea. The shrinking of the distance between CCTV and POV proceeds with the collection of data from users’ phones and emphasizes the securitarian nature of the POV-CCTV circuit over the subjects and the space around them.

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1. GIGA Selfie technology, Australia, 2015. The shift from CCTV technologies to POV technologies as instrument of control is also evident in the case of the new Chinese social credit system, according to which citizens are tracked by a mobile phone app which datifies a stunning variety of actions (from buying alcohol to paying the bills in time) that serves to generate a citizen’s data double and a consequent “social credit” aimed at controlling the 13 overall citizen’s agency — from being allowed or 13 Rollet, C. The odd reality of life under China’s all-seeing credit score not to travel, to surfing online slower or faster than system. Wired, June 2018. Web. others, to having access or not to certain type of jobs. The Chinese social credit system works, once again, by overlapping the security quality of CCTV technologies with the real time access and proximi- ty provided by POV technologies to their subjects.

POV-opticon replaces the modern Panopticon and function as the aesthetic format enabling one of the most aggressive surveillance assemblage ever seen in history. A form of surveillance which is not limited to tracking behaviors and analyzing data, but 14 Haggerty, K. D., Ericson R. D. The which actively aims at constructing the subjects by surveillant assemblage. British Journal 14 of Sociology Vol. No. 51 Issue No. 4 designing their (POV) data-doubles and the cus- 2000: pp. 605–622. Web.

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tom-made (POV) post-truth reality tailored around them. In this sense, if the Panopticon is a regime of visibility functioning as an apparatus in charge of establishing a regime of truth within which certain 15 15 Cfr. Foucault, M. Surveiller et punir. games of truth can emerge , the POV-opticon – Naissance de la prison. Paris: Galli- mard, 1975, pg. 30. Print. and the capability of algorithmic POV images to engineer reality (and truth itself) in ways that were before unimaginable, as we will see – produces the collapse of the regime of truth over the games of truth it underlines, giving rise to hermeneutic ambiguities defining the relation between the drive to visibility and the POV images that try to fulfill it.

III. POV-opticon, Algorithmic Facial Image and post-truth

The hermeneutic ambiguities defining the POV-opticon seem related to the shrinking of the distance between body and interface typical of POV technologies and to the securitarian features these technologies inherited from CCTV technologies.

Furthermore, the alleged shrinking of the distance between ‘fiction’ and reality typical of the POV-opticon is matched by the shrinking between an embodied ‘singularity’ (the subject) and a disembo- died algorithmic agency. The most extreme forms of POV-opticon are being developed in relation to facial recognition systems, and the emergency of a new approach to the selfie aesthetic pushes even further the threshold of the Internet Post-truth condition. In this context, I’ve tried to define the Algorithmic Facial Image (AFI) as a new selfie aesthetic format especially characterized by the ambiguous games of truth it produces. AFI becomes popular with the viral diffusion over the internet of an open source deep neural networks capable of real time facial re-enactment. The source spreads

265 AFTER POST-TRUTH Interface Politics, 2nd International Conference on the Reddit community to be used in the production of DeepFakes, a type of video image generated by the seamless overlapping of the face of famous Hollywood actresses over the body of pornographic ones while recording X-rated movies, with the face of the former assuming seamlessly the facial expression of the latter16. 16 Romano, “Why Reddit’s face-swap- ping celebrity porn craze is a harbinger of dystopia”. vox.com, 2018. Web.

2. DeepFakes, Emma Watson, 2017.

In Arkangel, one of the episodes of the last Black Mirror series, a mother implants her daughter with a device which allows her to see in real time the images she is looking at from a POV perspective. Furthermore, the mother is provided with a user’s friendly interface that gives her the possibility of de- leting from the daughter’s “sight stream” images she thinks could traumatize her kid. As a consequence of this technology, the kid grows incapable to recognize conflicts or violence and indeed incapable to behave accordingly when they appear in front of her eyes, after having been freed from the device.

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3. Arkangel, Black Mirror 4th season. 4. Arkangel technology user interface.

Arkangel technology is the most violent form of AFI ever imagined. The shrinking of the distance between body and technology annihilates, and the creation of memory is altered while being created at the same time via the constant visual commer- ce between the subject and the world recorded in first-person and harnessed in real time by the technology. Arkangel simply substitutes reality with a revised version of it overlapping completely with reality itself. Post- truth becomes truth, and games of truth solidify into a POV micro-regime of truth which dictates the life of the kid and affect her way of relating with the world.

The POV-opticon shrinks the distance between body and interface and applies the securitarian features of CCTV technologies to POV technologies of vision turned into first-person tracking mechanisms. As a consequence, this process provokes the shrinking of the distance between fiction and reality, opening the space for the engineering quality of the algorithms to substituting one with the other. The games of truth turn into manufactured POV micro-regimes of truth which become post-truth because of the capability of images such as the AFI to replace reality with an algorithmically generated imagery. The POV-opticon allows for the hyperproliferation of POV images and thus misleads the drive into feeling always closer to what Camel van

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17 Winkel calls the “missing visuals” (something like 17 Winkel, C. The regime of Visibility. Open! Platform for Art, Culture & the the engine of the drive itself), and as a consequence Public Domain. April, 2005, p.1. Web. novelty takes over truthfulness as the criteria for the drive to sustain itself. Meanwhile, the POV-opticon works on the assemblage of data extracted from POV technologies, and algorithms manufacture a reality which suits the drive as good as the reality itself, if not better — for the reason that this algorithmic reality is tailored on the drive to visibility of each subjects, and it contributes to the formation of the subject’s POV data-double which in turn contributes to the formation of the algorithmic post-truth defining the POV-opticon.

IV. Drive to visibility and games of truth

According to Camiel van Winkel, a Dutch art critic who not long ago published a book called “The regime of visibility”, “there are too few images. The dynamics of contemporary culture are determined by visual shortage rather than visual surfeit. The demand for images – not just ‘complex’ or ‘interesting’ images, but any images – far outstrips supply. Life in a world dominated by visual media is subject to a permanent pressure to furnish the missing visuals; to visualize practices and processes that do not belong to the realm of the visual, or that aren’t even 18 visible as such. This is the regime of visibility ”. 18 Ibidem.

Winkel proposes us to look at the drive to visibility rather than at the visible itself, and by doing so he invites us to think about the hyperproliferation of images as a way to control this impossible drive to bring everything into visibility, which Winkel tells us to be at the foundation of the regime of visibility itself. If we follow this idea, the ocean of images whatsoever we’re drowning in is nothing more than the attempt to fulfill the impossible request and

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function as the instrument to sedate the drive and control it. Furthermore, if the drive to visibility is the force behind the regime of visibility, when the drive gets out of control, the care for accuracy and realism can get overshadowed.

In a study recently published by M.I.T. Initiative on the Digital Economy about “the spread of true and 19 Vosoughi, S. Roy, D. Aral, S. “The false news online”19, it seems that “falsehood diffu- spread of true and false news online” M.I.T. Initiative on the Digital Eco- sed significantly farther, faster, deeper, and more nomy Research Brief. March, 2018. broadly then the truth in all categories”20 and that Web. “contrary to conventional wisdom, robots accele- 20 Ibidem, pg.1. rated the spread of true and false news at the same rate, implying that humans, not robots, are more likely responsible for the dramatic spread of false 21 21 Ibidem. news” . How does this result speak to the drive to visibility Winkel is talking about? The indifference for the truthfulness of the information and the importance played instead by novelty — “false new 22 Ibidem. was perceived as more novel then true news”22 — seems to bridging over the gap between the drive to visibility and what it is visible, or brought to visibility. Novelty fulfills the drive to visibility better then truthfulness, and algorithms allows to harness novelty and reality at the same time, to the point of substituting one with the other. The shrinking of the distance between CCTV and POV regimes of visibility contributes to the shrinking between fiction and reality, and algorithmically driven POV regimes of visibility such as the one generated by the Algorithmic Facial Image (AFI) contributes in turn to the production of algorithmic novelty looking real.

The drive to visibility Winkel talks about is indeed defined bythe games of truth emerging from the indifference of the drive towards the truthfulness of the information / image (as proved by the M.I.T. research), and from algorithmically driven POV

269 AFTER POST-TRUTH Interface Politics, 2nd International Conference regimes of visibility generated by the shrinking of the distance between POV and CCTV regime of visibility, and by the consequent shrinking between fiction and reality allowing the substitution of one with the other. The internal drive to visibility is captured by algorithms via the creation of seamlessly real imagery (such as in the case of the AFI) that overcome the distinction between reality and fiction. Internet post-truth emerges because the drive to visibility and the algorithmic governance23 cross 23 Cfr. Doneda, D. Almeida, V. What is algorithm governance? IEEE Internet each other in the POV-opticon, where opaque and computing, 2016. Web. invisible algorithmic complexity co-exists together with the liveness and realness of POV images and provide the aesthetic and technological format for the hermeneutic ambiguities characterizing the games of truth of a POV-opticon form of visual governamentality.

Mitra Azar http://au.academia.edu/MitraAzar/CurriculumVitae http://digicult.it/author/mitra-azar/

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Critical approaches to information design: visualize a field of knowledge as a contested terrain Andrea Facchetti

Abstract Information design underwent a process of rationalization throughout the 20th century that involved both the employed theoretical assumptions and representation techniques. The aura of scientificity permeating information design in the last twenty years has anyway begun faltering after the enormous diffusion of these artifacts and their use in everyday contexts. The overproduction – and overexposure – of pie charts, histograms, flowcharts, tables, thematic and conceptual maps undermined the reputation of infographic languages as a scientific tool of investigation and representation. Faced with this situation, some authors and designers have begun to rethink their methodological approach through critical (Hall 2011), humanistic (Drucker 2011) or conflictual perspectives (DiSalvo 2012). These perspectives follow two directions: on one side they try to question or rethink the assumptions and rules that usually guide the design process; on the other they try to produce representations where the embedded knowledge is perceived and understood as a constructed, negotiated, and situated form of knowledge. In this paper I’ll go through several research approaches and projects by which processes of information design are oriented towards the production of critical forms of knowledge and the construction of contested terrains. Following this new orientation the value of a critical project will be recognized as the “examination of the assumptions of a field of knowledge” (Crampton and Krygier 2006), and the process of re-framing and modifying those assumptions and conditions. Keywords Design research; critical design; politics of representation; conflicts; knowledge production

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1. Introduction

The present paper fits a broader research aiming to build a mapping of the critical practices that rose towards the end of the 20th century in the field of design. The object of this research are the approaches that reside within the so-called “research through design” (Koskinen et al. 2011) that try to direct methodologies, the tools and the project practices towards the articulation and the redefinition of a set issue rather than aiming towards the problem’s solution (Blauvelt e Davis 1997; Blauvelt 1998). In other words, the objective is to analyze said practices by looking at their capacity to produce different visualizations and representations of a certain aspect of reality, starting from which it is then possible to 1 build forms of critical and situated knowledge . 1 That is, forms of knowledge that somehow put into discussion the hegemonic symbolic order (Mouffe Such mapping thus implies a redefinition or a new 2008) or the scopic regime (Jay 1988) that sets a certain aspect of reality. It orientation of the same concept of critical analysis is useful to quote here the concept of applied to the design practice: the objective of the “situated knowledge” as defined by the U.S. American philosopher Donna critical analysis is not to unmask a representation – Haraway (Haraway 1988). and the knowledge that stems from it – as false or ideological, but to determine the role played by that representation in the process of the social construction of reality. In other words, critique is articulated by detecting and bringing to light the basic assumptions and limits within which a specific field of knowledge has thrived.

Such new orientation is still marginal within the information design environment, a discipline that underwent a significant rationalization process throughout the 20th century, involving both the theoretical assumptions and the representation techniques employed. The aura of scientificity that has permeated infographic design in the past twenty years has anyway begun to falter following the enormous diffusion of these artifacts and their use

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in unscientific and everyday contexts (Hall 2008). The overproduction – and overexposure – of pie charts, histograms, flowcharts, tables, thematic and conceptual maps have undermined the reputation of infographic languages as a scientific tool of investigation and representation. Several authors and designers have felt the urgent need to develop critical 2 2 It is worth quoting among these Peter approaches or tools in front of such pervasiveness . Hall, Johanna Drucker, and Carl Di- Salvo. We should moreover remember The objective to be achieved is dual: on one side that critical and radical approaches to we try to question both assumptions and rules that the planning of maps and atlases in the cartography field have been expe- usually lead project phases. On the other we witness rimented and debated for many years the desire to experiment a series of languages and by now. It is sufficient to mention the work of the historian and theoretician practices capable of producing forms of visuali- John Brian Harley (Harley 2001). zation through which the structured, partial, and negotiated nature of knowledge should be shown. Such approaches are freed from the true/false polarity given that the construction of a discourse and of a critical position is not translated into an action of unmasking or of verification, rather in the attempt of rebuilding and representing a certain aspect of social reality – and the knowledge we have of such aspect – as a confrontational and contested terrain ruled by set conditions and crossed by 3 “A critique is not a project of finding various conflicting positions and agencies3. fault, but an examination of the assumptions of a field of knowledge. Its purpose is to understand and suggest alternatives to the categories of knowledge that we use. […] Critique 2. Towards a new idea of critical design does not seek to escape from categories but rather to show how they came to be, and what other possibilities there It is necessary to define several positions and are” (Crampton and Krygier 2006). theoretical frameworks these projects have in common before studying several works that try to set up a visualization system to direct it towards the production of critical and situated knowledge. The first of such premises refers tovisual culture studies. Within said studies, the idea that languages and visual communication take part in the production of knowledge becomes the prerequisite for a more articulated thought that sets the same languages at

273 AFTER POST-TRUTH Interface Politics, 2nd International Conference the center of the processes of social construction of 4 reality . In accordance with this position, a graphi- 4 Stuart Henry describes in Blackwell Encyclopedia of Sociology the “cons- cal visualization that shows climate changes cannot truction of social reality” theorized by be reduced to the mere informative dimension, as Berger and Luckmann as “a series of interconnected social processes through much as the photograph published on a newspaper which humans create institutionalized cannot be considered the simple description of an social phenomena that are seen as having an independent existence outside event. The critical analysis of a visual artifact will of the people who created them. In this process humans lose sight of their first of all recognize a dimension “that is not limited own authorship of the world, ‘reifying’ to the fact that it accompanies its object but it even it into an apparent objective reality that then acts back on its producers”. institutes it.” In this way the images and visual repre- Within this process, the role of com- sentations will be analyzed and discussed within a munication and of other interaction activities between humans occupies a new theoretical frame; our attention is focused on central position (“Through commu- “their capacity of making what is absent present, nication humans construct categories to define the events they experience”). what invisible visible, their role in building and Among the key elements of this theory, some seem particularly interesting conveying meanings, identities, beliefs, and values, for the present research: “social their setting themselves untiringly as contested constructionists argue that knowledge or truth about the social world should terrain” (Pinotti and Somaini 2009). not be uncritically accepted as real or self evident; its taken for grantedness as a reality should be questioned. Thus, The second prerequisite, the direct consequence social constructionism takes a relativist of the first, foresees that the forms of knowledge epistemology rather than a realist one. […] commonsensical assumptions produced by languages and visual artifacts cannot and expert knowledge are historically and culturally bound to time and be conceived according to rules or the qualities place. […] all knowledge is a result of of scientific disciplines (transparency, objectivity, social processes based on interaction and shared (intersubjective) meaning neutrality, etc.). Conversely, these languages and that is subject to negotiation by the artifacts help strengthen specific modalities of participants involved. […] knowledge production is a political process, sub- seeing – specific “scopic regimes” (Jay 1988) – to ject to being shaped by concentrations the detriment of others; they therefore prioritize of interests with a view to producing social effects; in other words, knowled- certain agencies rather than other ones. What was ge is intertwined with power and social first conceived and approached, as a scientific-tech- action” (Henry 2007). nical problem, becomes a political issue.

It is worth to focus on the concept of “scopic regime” introduced by Martin Jay in a chapter of the book Vision and Visuality. Jay describes with this phrase a precise declination of our sight, more generally of the visual thought shared within a community. It is formed by starting from precise cultural conditions and acts in a regulatory way thus influencing behaviors and modalities of social inte-

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raction. The most interesting aspect introduced by Jay resides in having characterized scopic regimes as contested terrains: “the scopic regime of modernity may best be understood as a contested terrain, rather than a harmoniously integrated complex of visual theories and practices. It may, in fact, be characterized by a differentiation of visual subcultures, whose separation has allowed us to understand the multiple implications of sight in ways that are now 5 5 This consideration seems to share only beginning to be appreciated” (Jay 1988) . much with the “media culture” definition given by Professor Douglas Kell- Reality takes on the shades of a political problem ner in the book Media Culture: Cultural also in Rosalyn Deutsche’s thought by studying Studies, Identity, and Politics Between the Modern and the Postmodern: “I argue how languages and visual artifacts interact with that media culture is a contested terra- social reality to the point that the historian and art in across which key social groups and competing political ideologies struggle critic resorts to the phrase: “politics of represen- for dominance and that individuals live these struggles through the images, tation” (Deutsche 1996) to describe the different discourses, myths, and spectacles of modalities of seeing and representing. media culture” (Kellner 1995). The third and last position regards the institution of two categories — the one of normality and of exceptionality. Practices and theories bound to sight and visual representation contribute to the definition and distinction of the conditions of normality and of an exceptional nature around the observed object. This specific agency can be easily understood if we think of the birth and development of the thematic or statistical maps throughout the 19th century. According to the cartographic historian, Jeremy Crampton, “thematic or statistical maps were part of a more general effort to govern by means of statistical analysis. It was only with the development of descriptive and probabilistic statistics, and the formulation of society in terms of likelihoods and norms, that thematic maps could emerge” (Crampton 2003). The birth of thematic and statistical maps as the needed tool to monitor and control the population of a state is due to the possibility of understanding and representing that same population in terms of rule and exception

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fig. 1 – Map of the distribution of the population in the United States (1890), Henry Gannett,The Statistical Atlas of the United States. The development of thematic and statistical maps was an indispensable tool to control the population of a state and at the same time it contributed to build a “visibility regime” around the concepts of population and of state strongly tied to their understanding in quantitative terms and according to concepts of rule and exception.

[fig. 1]. New technologies that deal with sight, also applied to different fields, have brought to the distinction between normal and abnormal subjects or phenomena based on the visual perception of precise visibility regimes.

The most meaningful examples come from criminal anthropology and phy- siognomy. It is interesting to notice how these pseudo-sciences, although highly criticized in the 20th century, have as a matter of fact anticipated several disciplines like biometry or anthropometry, used nowadays in various sectors as in the safety industry. These processes, besides the use of artificial intelligences and neural networks, tend to replicate a visual regime and specific politics of representation based on an ontological and objective distinction between a normal and deviant subject. According to James Bridle, this visibility regime is even empowered (and in a certain sense neutralized) right to the employment of advanced technologies like neural networks. Bridle refers to the case of two researchers of Shanghai Jiao Tong University who “recently trained a neural network with the ID photos of 1,126 people with no criminal record and 730 photos of convicted criminals. In a paper published in 2016, they claimed that the software could tell the difference between criminal and noncriminal

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fig. 2 – The management of public safety through technologies that use facial recognition is by now well established in China. The image features a CCTV display with the embodied facial-recognition system in Beijing (Photo by Gilles Sabrié, www.washingtonpost.com). faces — that is, it used photos of faces to make inferences about criminality” (Bridle 2018) [fig. 2]. As the same Bridle underlines, great part of research that deals with facial recognition was born and is developed from a thought (and an ideology) that views reality as a system ruled by a natural order that can be analyzed and understood without prejudices or mistakes. The new possibilities offered by the immense capacities of calculation of the neural networks and by big data would increase the quality of analysis and of knowledge to levels unknown to human mind. Anyhow “technology does not emerge from a vacuum; it is the reification of the beliefs and desires of its creators. […] The very idea of criminality is a legacy of nineteenth-century moral philosophy, and the neural networks used to ‘infer’ it are, as we’ve seen, the products of Hayek’s worldview: the apparent separation of the mind and the world, the apparent neutrality of this separation” (Bridle 2018).

If we keep in mind the mentioned theoretical frame, that acts as the background to critical approaches of information design (and more in general to visual design), unsettled aspects of the matter that come to surface when facing new technologies for facial recognition should not be limited to the truthfulness or falsehood of the cognitive outcome. Most interestingly it should instead

277 AFTER POST-TRUTH Interface Politics, 2nd International Conference consider the conditions and prerequisites that found those technologies and their application to such a delicate and controversial area like the one of public safety and digital surveillance, and most of all the modalities by which such assumptions define a state of normality as opposed to the one of an exceptional nature. In other words, the critical instance that nowadays involves several experimental approaches of information design should be translated into practices and tools aiming at the production of new forms of visibility regarding conditions of possibility. As Bridle reminds us, “Our inability to visualize is also an inability to understand” (Bridle 2018).

3. False Postives and History Flow

We should not be surprised if, following what stated, many of the critical projects developed in the past years have dealt with issues connected with normalization processes of several aspects of social reality.

The projectFalse Positives (2015) by Dutch designer and photographer Esther Hovers consists in a series of photos and illustrations that represent “deviant behaviors” according to a new video surveillance system that has been tested in some US and European airports. Compared to the average CCTV systems, the one analyzed by Hovers is equipped with software that can recognize certain behaviors and mark them as potential threats to public safety. Specifically, the anomalous behaviors identified by the cameras include “loitering too long, moving too fast, standing on a corner, looking over your shoul- der, going against the flow of foot traffic, abando- ning something, clusters of people suddenly breaking apart and synchronized movements between 6 people” [fig. 3]. Although these behaviors can’t be 6 https://www.wired.com/2016/02/ directly linked to criminal intentions, the algorithm esther-hovers-false-positives

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fig. 3 – Esther Hovers,False Positives (2015).

279 AFTER POST-TRUTH Interface Politics, 2nd International Conference ruling the surveillance devices has been designed with a classification system that assigns a normal or deviant value according to the movement patterns of the people seized by the cameras. Hovers’ project tries to visualize this classification mechanism – and the internal rules that allow for the assessment of people’s movements and the prediction of their intentions – thus identifying eight types of anomalous behaviors.

It is interesting to notice how Hovers’ photos do not represent these eight behaviors in an explicit and recognizable way; instead, the observer will hardly recognize the suspicious behavior, and will therefore be led to question the very concept of deviant behavior7 [fig. 4]. In this sense,False Positives 7 “Each photo contains at least one example of deviant behavior. But is a research project that analyses and shows the while intelligent surveillance cameras conditions of visibility by which a given phenome- typically frame suspects within a box, Hovers lets hers blend more subtly non (deviant behavior in public spaces) is identi- into the crowd, challenging viewers to fied, represented, and framed within the discourse figure out what’s sketchy in the frame. In some cases, like with the suitcase of safety. At the same time the project produces a abandoned on a street corner it’s easy. But for the most part, it’s pretty hard. representation that questions the way a phenome- That’s the point. ‘What strikes me is non is usually understood – that is, it questions the that they [deviant behaviors] are so close to what you would consider to role played by visual representations in producing be normal’ Hovers says” (https:// and normalizing a certain knowledge regarding that www.wired.com/2016/02/esther-hovers-false-positives). phenomenon.

The contrast between a representation that natura- lizes a certain form of knowledge and a representation that instead gives back a conflictual image is at the center of History Flow (2003), a project developed by the researchers Martin Wattenberg and Fernanda Viégas. History Flow is a web application that allows visualizing discussions, debates, and the changes, thus the story hidden behind each entry on Wikipedia. The entries of an encyclopedia —even of an encyclopedia built on a participatory and open model like Wikipedia— once published is unusually presented through a fixed and static

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fig. 4 – Esther Hovers, False Positives (2015).

281 AFTER POST-TRUTH Interface Politics, 2nd International Conference image. Exploiting the digital encyclopedia’s pubic and accessible database, Wattenberg and Viégas’ application supplies a more complex, different visualization by which each change and argument that have taken place during the drafting of the page 8 can be seen . History Flow allows visualizing both 8 “When visiting a wiki, one is greeted with what looks like a conventional the macroscopic trend that marks the evolution of static Web site. Yet this serene façade an encyclopedia entry and the detail of each single conceals a more agitated reality of constant communal editing. Hundreds, change of every debate [fig. 5]. The application be- sometimes thousands of busy hands comes therefore a tool of analysis particularly suited insert words, create new pages, delete paragraphs, manicure the contents to detect some trends or patterns of behavior that of the site” (Viégas, Wattenberg, and tend to be repeated especially in the case in which Dave 2004) the analyzed entry is controversial [fig. 6]. As Peter Hall states, “In visualizing the changes to specific entries in Wikipedia, Wattenberg and Viégas zoom in on the disputes and controversies that surround topics that might otherwise seem long since settled. An encyclopedia page becomes a contested terrain” (Hall 2011).

4. Visualizing a field of knowledge as a contested terrain

These two projects do not by all means exhaust the huge heterogeneity of the projects that in the past decades have tried to build critical approaches and practices within information design. The two examples suggested in the present paper seemed interesting since they adopt extremely different languages and outputs, still they rely on the same approach and the same idea of a critical analysis applied to the design practice. Be it Hovers’ project or Watten- berg and Viégas’ one, they evolve by following the assumptions described at the beginning by foremost sharing the idea that the knowledge which is produced by starting from visualization processes has to be conceived and represented as an open field crossed by different agencies and conflictual positions.

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fig. 5 – Martin Wattenberg and Fernanda Viégas,History Flow (2003). The visualization process used by the application is shown in the image: each author receives a color and each version shows the changes made by every single contributor. The debate can then be visualized with or without the time feature.

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fig. 6 – Martin Wattenberg and Fernanda Viégas,History Flow (2003). The image shows the visualization of the English page under “abortion”. Notice the zigzag pattern that usually indicates what the Wikipedia community call “edit war”, a controver- sy of two people or groups that alternatively continue changing the contents of the page.

We begin to grasp the conceptual and strategic shift introduced by the image of a visual representation – such as an interface or a graph, but also a photographic image – rendered as a contested or conflictual terrain. The articulation of a given problem through the representation of its conflictual (and thus political) dimension allows us to visualize the theoretical framework within which the problem is described and understood, and the various positions and agencies of the interested actors who move within that specific problem. To visualize those conditions and therefore the agencies means to give them a specific form and presence; we thus enable the possibility to modify, enlarge, redefine, replace or link them with aspects, concepts or subjects that were previously excluded or hidden. In this sense, a critical design approach should be directed towards the redefinition and articulation of a certain problem, in order to represent its conflictual character. The concept of a contested terrain can thus be applied to design practices in order to embed a critical instance in the project, and to improve re-framing processes of social reality.

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References

BLAUVELT, Andrew, and Meredith Davis. 1997. “Building bridges: A research agenda for education and practice”. In Looking closer 2. Critical writings on graphic design, edited by Michael Bierut, William Drenttel, Steven Heller, D.K. Holland, 77-81. New York: Allworth Press.

BLAUVELT, Andrew. 1998. “Remaking Theory, Rethinking Practice”. InThe Education of a Graphic Designer, edited by Steven Heller, 102-108. New York: Allworth Press.

BRIDLE, James. 2018. New Dark Age: Technology and the End of the Future. London: Verso.

CRAMPTON, Jeremy W. 2003. “Cartographic Rationality and the Politics of Geosur- veillance and Security”. Cartography and Geographic Information Science, 30: 135-48.

CRAMPTON, Jeremy W., John Krygier. 2006. “An Introduction to Critical Cartogra- p h y ”. ACME: An International E-Journal for Critical Geographies, 4: 11-33

DEUTSCHE, Rosalyn. 1996. Evictions. Art and Spatial Politics. Cambridge: MIT Press.

HALL, Peter. 2008. “Critical Visualization”. In Design and the Elastic Mind, edited by Paola Antonelli, 122-131. New York: Museum of Modern Art.

HALL, Peter. 2011. “Bubbles, Lines, and String: How Information Visualization Shapes Society”. In Graphic design: Now in production, edited by Andrew Blauvelt, Ellen Lupton, 170-185. Minneapolis: Walker Art Center.

HARAWAY, Donna. 1988. “Situated Knowledges: The Science Question in Feminism and the Privilege of Partial Perspective”. Feminist Studies, 14: 575-599.

HARLEY, John B. 2001. The New Nature of Maps. Edited by Paul Laxton. Baltimore: John Hopkins University Press.

HENRY, Stuart. “Deviance, constructionist perspectives”. 2007. In The Blackwell Ency- clopedia of Sociology, edited by George Ritzer, 1086-1089. Oxford: Blackwell.

JAY, Martin. 1988. “Scopic regimes of modernity”. In Vision and visuality, edited by Hal Foster, 3-27. Seattle: Bay Press.

KELLNER, Douglas. 1995. Media culture: Cultural studies, identity and politics between the modern and the post-modern. London: Routledge.

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KOSKINEN, Ilpo, John Zimmerman, Thomas Binder, Johan Redström, Stephan Wensveen. 2011. Design Research Through Practice. From the Lab, Field, and Showroom. Burlington, MA: Morgan Kaufmann.

MOUFFE, Chantal. 2008. “Art and democracy. Art as an agonistic intervention in public space”. Open, 14: 6-15.

PINOTTI, Andrea and Antonio Somaini. 2009. “Introduzione”. InTeorie dell’immagine. Il dibattito contemporaneo, edited by Andrea Pinotti, Antonio Somaini, 9-35. Milano: Cortina Raffaello Editore.

VIEGAS, Fernanda, Martin Wattenberg, Kushal Dave. 2004. “Studying Cooperation and Conflict between Authors with history flow Visualizations”.CHI Letters, 6(1), 575-582.

Andrea Facchetti https://www.unibz.it/en/faculties/design-art/academic-staff/ person/38327-andrea-facchetti https://www.researchgate.net/profile/Andrea_Facchetti

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Collective intelligence in the era of bots Efraín Foglia

Abstract How is the concept of “collective intelligence” amplified with the use of bots? A bot (software robot) is a computer program that automatically performs repetitive tasks on the Internet. The bots are the new organisms of the network society (Castells), they are designed to live in it and their potential for operation in our data flows is incalculable. These technological beings have lightness (Calvino) as the first characteristic. They do not weigh in comparison with a mechatronic robot and they reproduce nimbly in the digital nervous system of our hyperconnected society.

This text focuses on analyzing the possibilities of amplification of Pierre Levy’s concept of “collective intelligence” with regard to the inclusion of the phenomenon of bots. The idea is to draw possibilities to update Levy’s work a propos the question: what changes in collective practices with the systematization of communication processes?

The bots are here to stay and in very little time they have become very popular in society and have already been accused of being the cause of several political crises. Investigating the territory of the bots is not an easy task, but it is necessary. The communities of practice self-manage their organizational communication through forums, chats, mailing lists and recently by groups of messaging systems such as Signal, Telegram or Riot. In this scenario, the bot ecosystem has been born, and this text aims to delve into the digital communication of communities that use technology from a critical perspective. Tags Bots; collective intelligence; critical technology; techno-activism; network society.

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Inteligencia colectiva: punto de inicio.

Lo «colectivo» y lo «inteligente» como conceptos contemporáneos atraviesan como un rayo láser gran parte de las prácticas sociales, culturales y políticas de los debates actuales. Hoy en día darle la espalda a dichos términos es como negar que las formas de organización social han evolucionado hacia modelos más horizontales e híbridos. De igual forma, son el comodín perfecto para la maquinaría tecnodeterminista nacida en Silicon Valley. Todo será inteligente y colectivo (Internet of the things) en el reino (Smart City) que cuelga de la nube de internet; así rezan los nuevos imperios que capitalizan la recolección de datos de nuestras prácticas sociales mediadas por dispositivos portátiles.

Los estudios sociocientíficos han profundizado en dichos paradigmas a lo largo de las últimas dos décadas, revisando sin cesar cada nuevo fenómeno ligado a las «multitudes inteligentes» (Rheingold, 2004). Por otro lado, desde los estudios tecnopolíticos se vertebran sin cesar argumentos ligados a nuevas formas de democracia basados en las colectividades y en la generación de una supuesta inteligencia que nos acerca más a la descentralización del conocimiento (Cas- tells, 2009). Han existido diversos acercamientos al concepto de «inteligencia colectiva». Basaremos nuestro análisis en el concepto desarrollado por Pierre Lévy, ya que lo consideramos uno de los ejes vertebrales y el punto de partida académico del desarrollo de las teorías ligadas a las formas de interacción social en red. Así explica Lévy el concepto de «inteligencia colectiva»:

Es una inteligencia repartida en todas partes, valorizada constantemente, coordinada en tiempo real, que conduce a una movilización efectiva de las competencias. Agregamos a nuestra definición esta idea indispensable: el fundamento y el objetivo de la inteligencia colectiva es el reconocimiento y el enriquecimiento mutuo de las personas, y no el culto de comunidades fetichizadas o hipóstasiadas. (Lévy, 1997, p.19).

El concepto de Lévy nos permitirá proponer algunas ideas relacionadas con fenómenos recientes de las tecnologías en red. En concreto, amplificaremos los postulados de Lévy y añadiremos las transformaciones en las interacciones digitales a partir de la normalización de los bots en nuestra vida cotidiana.

¿Cómo se amplifica el concepto de «inteligencia colectiva» con el uso debots ? Un bot (software robot) es un programa informático que efectúa automática- mente tareas repetitivas a través de internet. Los bots son los nuevos organis-

288 Algorithms are fake_Panel#10 mos de la sociedad global en red, que según Manuel Castells: «es una es una sociedad cuya estructura social está formada por redes activadas por tecno- logías de información y comunicación procesadas digitalmente y basadas en microelectrónica». (Castells, 2009, p.24). Por lo tanto, los bots se diseñan para que vivan en ella y su potencial de operación en nuestros flujos de datos es incalculable, pueden estar en todos lados en donde interactuemos digitalmente. Estos seres tecnológicos cuentan con la levedad (Calvino, 2007. p.24) como primera característica. No pesan en comparación con un robot mecatrónico y se reproducen ágilmente en el sistema nervioso digital de nuestra sociedad hiperconectada. Internet es la jungla de los bots y al ser una nueva especie están trastocando el ecosistema que existía anteriormente. El caso más popular del efecto de los bots en la actualidad toma el rostro de información artificial, masiva y mal intencionada, con fines políticos o comerciales, las llamadasfake news. Estos casos son solo el inicio de la posible forma de operar de estos algoritmos que pueden ser diseñados para intervenir en cada fase del proceso de red, para bien o para mal.

¿Cómo se modifican las prácticas colectivas con la sistematización de los procesos comunicativos? Los bots han llegado para quedarse y con el poco tiempo que llevan popularizados en la sociedad ya se les acusa de ser instrumento de varias crisis políticas. Investigar el territorio de los bots no es una tarea sen- cilla, pero sí necesaria, pues representan un nuevo actor en el sistema global de difusión de la información. ¿Podríamos hablar de una nueva versión de la inteligencia colectiva? Al parecer la movilización efectiva de las competencias de las personas, en un proceso colectivo, ahora es capaz de añadir movilización viral y automatizada.

Automatización de las decisiones en red.

En el terreno de la praxis diversos grupos sociales buscan habitualmente mecanismos para realizar alguna consulta o toma de decisiones de alguna proble- mática concreta. Dichos grupos ya tienen metodologías históricas para llevar a cabo esta labor, como las reuniones, asambleas, sistemas de votación, etc. A esto hay que añadirle las plataformas en internet que permiten la acción valién- dose de la ubicuidad de los participantes. Aquí nacen las llamadas «comunidades instantáneas de práctica», son comunidades que «expresan la existencia latente de intereses y/o valores en común. Pero en la base de dicha estructura latente es posible crear una comunidad de práctica de forma instantánea me-

289 AFTER POST-TRUTH Interface Politics, 2nd International Conference diante un mensaje que, gracias a su tono acertado, se extienda a lo largo de una red de sujetos receptivos» (Castells, 2006, p.383).

En este terreno es donde entra en juego la posibilidad de la automatización de decisiones, y recientemente, la amplificación de dichas posibilidades pasa por la incorporación de bots dentro de las plataformas participativas. Lévy nos subraya que las acciones deben ser coordinadas en tiempo real. En este sentido la automatización en la coordinación de personas favorece dicho objetivo. Un bot podría enviar mensajes a cientos de personas y comprobar su correcta re- cepción y si algo falla volver a enviar el mensaje hasta que se cumpla el objetivo total de la recepción. Al parecer algunas garantías en los flujos informativos pueden hacerse más robustas.

¿Qué estamos ganando con esta incorporación?, ¿qué dejamos por el camino? Se podría pensar que los sistemas participativos de democracia directa que usan internet como plataforma se están exponiendo a estos nuevos seres que les permiten ganar potencialidades, y que, al mismo tiempo, abren un abanico de preguntas: «¿cómo coordinar las inteligencias para que se multipliquen en lugar de anularse? ¿Hay medios para introducir una valorización recíproca, una exaltación mutua de las capacidades mentales de los individuos en vez de someterlos a una norma o rebajarlos al mínimo común denominador?» (Lévy, 1999 p. 107).

Por otro lado, un bot puede mediar o ayudar a la toma de decisiones de pro- blemáticas concretas, es capaz de automatizar diversos procesos que algorít- micamente nos pueden facilitar la toma de decisiones para nuestros intereses concretos, en un momento específico. Pensemos en las recomendaciones automáticas de plataformas de consumo como Netflix o Spotify. Hablamos de algoritmos que, usando nuestros datos de consumo, nos arrojan la «mejor» opción para consumir un producto audiovisual en un momento concreto. ¿Esto sería inteligencia colectiva? Realmente sería inteligencia corporativa; no obstante, lo que nos interesa es poder proyectar estos mismos mecanismos de recomendaciones para usos no solo comerciales. Si unos de los objetivos de la inteligencia colectiva es el enriquecimiento mutuo de las personas, podríamos imaginar un sistema de recomendaciones algorítmico para lecturas, temas médicos o cualquier tema que se necesite reforzar según nuestro perfil cultural. No obstante, debemos ser cautelosos pues ya Lévy nos describía la «inteligencia colectiva» como un «Nuevo pharmakon, la inteligencia colectiva que favorece la cibercultura es a la vez veneno para aquellos que no participan (y na-

290 Algorithms are fake_Panel#10 die puede participar en ella completamente por lo vasta y multiforme que es) y remedio para aquellos que se sumergen en sus remolinos y consiguen controlar su deriva en medio de esas corrientes» (Lévy, 2007, p.15).

Para determinadas acciones un bot puede facilitarnos algunas labores sin olvidar el criterio del ser humano. Podemos poner como ejemplo el caso de las alarmas o avisos de emergencia. Un bot diseñado para casos de emergencia puede ser capaz de anticipar diversos fenómenos que para las personas sería di- fícil de gestionar en la vida cotidiana. Si un bot se conecta con la base de datos del meteorólogo de una ciudad, de forma automatizada, podría enviarnos un mensaje de texto o audio para advertirnos que viene una fuerte tormenta. Con este ejemplo estaremos de acuerdo que no necesitamos convocar una asamblea para decidir si debemos ir a meter la ropa para que no se moje, y si lo hiciéra- mos, seguramente sería muy tarde para ello.

Siguiendo con el caso de la alarma, uno de los problemas que suscitan habitualmente estas tecnologías es la invasión en nuestras vidas de avisos en nuestros dispositivos móviles, que hacen que lleguemos al punto de desactivarlas por saturación. Aquí es donde entra el criterio del ser humano para jerarquizar las prioridades y adaptar dichos sistemas a temáticas relevantes y de primer orden.

Finalmente, los bots amplifican como nunca los procesos de divulgación de la in- formación en red, y como es habitual, la duda deriva en la pregunta: ¿quién dise- ña los bots?, y ¿con qué objetivo? Es posible que la amplificación de la inteligencia colectiva se convierta en una perversión mediada por los diseñadores de bots, que casualmente son pocos y de lugares muy concretos. La historia del diseño de artefactos nos habla de esta realidad; el especialista es capaz de dar ventajas o desventajas al usuario del sistema: «La burocracia y las formas autoritarias de organización aseguran una cierta coordinación, pero a costa de la asfixia de las iniciativas y de la anulación de singularidades». (Lévy, 1999. p.105). Hablamos de un territorio muy especializado y que no está al alcance de cualquier persona. De hecho, en la actualidad ya está claro que muchos de los sistemas de informa- ción que se usaron para las últimas elecciones presidenciales de Estados Unidos, donde salió como presidente Donal Trump, fueron diseñados por grandes y potentes empresas dedicadas a cumplir un objetivo poco ético.

Desde diversos grupos ligados al software libre lo más relevante a la hora de in- cluir un bot en cualquier proceso de comunicación o de toma de decisiones, es que la arquitectura de dicho bot sea transparente y que permita la encriptación

291 AFTER POST-TRUTH Interface Politics, 2nd International Conference de dichos mensajes para evitar el filtraje de contenidos. En este sentido existen diversos servicios de mensajería como WhatsApp que al pertenecer al emporio Facebook está rodeado de una imagen muy negativa en cuanto al uso de bots se refiere. En el otro lado de la moneda tenemos sistemas como Telegram, Signal o Riot, que nacen de una contraofensiva a las grandes corporaciones y que permiten el uso y diseño de bots de forma más transparente. Son arquitecturas tecnológicas que trabajan por el conocimiento abierto y compartido.

Bots para el bien.

En este texto pretendemos subrayar, en la medida de lo posible, las posibilidades de los bots para escenarios propicios a fortalecerse por el uso de dichas tec- nologías. Ya hicimos hincapié en el lado oscuro de estos nuevos habitantes de la sociedad red, pero es necesario proyectar su potencialidad en escenarios de contrainsurgencia informativa. Las comunidades de práctica en pro del software libre y de la neutralidad de la red autogestionan su comunicación organizativa por medio de foros, chats, listas de correos y recientemente por grupos de sistemas de mensajería. En este escenario es donde se está propiciando el ecosistema bot para fines sociales, y es necesario profundizar en la comunicación digital de comunidades que usan la tecnología desde una perspectiva crítica. De igual forma, vivimos procesos de comunicación cotidiana que pueden verse favorecidos por el diseño de dichas matrices tecnológicas, siempre desde la prioridad social ciudadana y que beneficie no solo, como menciona Lévy, a las comunidades fetichizadas.

Proponemos una lista de líneas de trabajo que incluyen el diseño de bots y que son usados en comunidades como guifi.net o exo.cat que buscan fortalecer su forma de operar siempre desde los principios y ética del software libre. Propo- nemos una clasificación de 4 tipologías:

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1. Automatización de tareas mecánica en donde no se necesite consenso de los implicados.

Casos: — actualización de sistemas informáticos y sus componentes específicos, como las versiones de parches de seguridad — alarmas textuales o sonoras para informar de eventos próximos — envío de mensajes masivos para reunir recursos humanos o equipo de trabajo

2. Diseño de sistema de organización comunitaria en casos de emergencia social.

Casos: — terremotos, inundaciones, incendios — violencia de género — desalojos de viviendas por parte de empresas de dudosa legalidad.

3. Verificación de información dudosa y mal intencionada. En este caso se necesita un sistema híbrido para que la validación tecnológica ofrezca margen para la intervención humana.

Casos: — cuentas fraudulentas de redes sociales — comprobación de la veracidad de la información — sistema de denuncia en caso de información falsa malintencionada

4. Diseño de sistema para apoyar la educación y el conocimiento.

Casos: — bots que ayuden al aprendizaje de idiomas a partir del conocimiento ya generado históricamente — sistemas de recomendaciones que no estén centrados en el consumo corporativo

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Conclusiones

Da la sensación de que el fenómeno bot es demasiado complejo para nuestras capacidades técnicas e intelectuales. En su momento los postulados de Lévy ya proponían una lectura de la sociedad que se hacía cada vez más compleja. De hecho, cuando miramos el mundo y sus interacciones sociales seguimos viendo estructuras disfrazadas de organizaciones rizomáticas. Si además sumamos las capacidades de expansión de los bots en nuestros procesos organizativos y de transferencia de conocimiento podemos entender que todo se vuelve más complejo y sofisticado aún. La inteligencia colectiva con capacidad de automa- tización abre nuevos caminos en donde cabe la pregunta: ¿La automatización nos hace inútiles? «Lo que nos hace inútiles es ignorar cómo funcionan dichos sistemas de automatización. Si no somos capaces de entender y modificar el diseño de estos sistemas solo seremos consumidores de los deseos del capitalismo extractivo». (Foglia, 2018). Otra opción es que ignoremos dichos sistemas y sigamos operando igual que antes de la era bot en nuestros procesos colectivos. El problema que tiene dicho postulado es que hay procesos democráticos a nivel global que se están resin- tiendo gracias al diseño de bots que impregnan la comunicación masiva. No es un territorio del que debamos alejarnos de forma irresponsable. Igualmente, ya contamos con una larga tradición de movimientos en defensa de la libertad de expresión y el derecho a la información. El problema lo encontramos en la pregunta: ¿quién es capaz de diseñar un bot? Quizás, en principio, no es necesario saber diseñarlo, pero sí entender lo que son y de dónde vienen, en dónde viven y por qué vienen a buscarnos. Por otro lado, un acercamiento crítico a dichas tecnologías nos da la oportunidad, como se ha mencionado en el texto, a proponer nuevos caminos que se enfocan más directamente al uso de bots con fines más adecuados a nuestras necesidades vitales. Finalmente estamos frente a una hoja en blanco y nos toca convivir con estos nuevos organismos y enten- derlos como elementos que juegan un rol «bueno o malo» en la construcción de la democracia participativa de nuestros tiempos. Lo que debe quedar claro desde el primer momento es que sin el usuario no hay algoritmo que sirva. El bot chupa la sangre de nuestros datos y de nuestras acciones en la red; por lo tanto, la gobernanza de dichos artefactos virales puede estar modelada desde el inicio, por la forma en que operemos, con conciencia de uso, en internet.

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Bibliografí a Calvino, I. (2007). Seis propuestas para el próximo milenio. Siruela.

Castells, M. (2009). Communication power. Oxford, Universtity Press.

Foglia, E. (2018). ¿Debemos automatizarlo todo? En: Design Does. Elisava.

Lévy, P. (1997). Collective Intelligence. Cambridge, MA: Perseus Books.

Lévy, P. (1999). ¿Qué es lo virtual? Paidós, Multimedia 10.

Lévy, P. (2007). Cibercultura. La cultura de la Sociedad digital Anthropos.

Rheingold, H. (2004). Multitudes inteligentes, la próxima revolución social. Gedisa, Cibercultura.

Efraín Foglia http://www.efrainfoglia.net/publicaciones-academicas/ http://www.mobilitylab.net/about/

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Disinformation A (cases) Panel#11 Moderated by Jorge Luis Marzo

Zenaida Osorio The Cherished images. Colombia: Netflix’s Narcos and the Peasants from the Radio Sutatenza Photo Archive

Víctor Sampedro Blanco, Fco. Javier López Ferrández, Pedro Fernández de Castro Sanabria Digital Dietetics, to reduce the Big Brother

Teresa Dillon The Art of Sonic Deception

Story Data Fake news and fact-check in the political battle of the Process

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The Cherished Images. Colombia: Netflix’s Narcos and the Peasants from the Radio Sutatenza Photo Archive Zenaida Osorio

Abstract What are those images that depict a country -Colombia, for this matter- that the networks of officials, visual producers and scholars deem as legitimate?

What are those images from this same country that national and international institutions in charge of selecting the memories as well as the local and world heritage are willing to acknowledge, preserve, catalog, classify, digitalize and communicate?

What are those other images -we know they are not the same from the previous ones- that get the interest from commercial entertainment enterprises and their most successful directors, producers and financial agents who greenlight the most widely accepted and praised web television series?

Both the arguments and opinions generated by the four seasons of Narcos, a web series produced in the 21st century, as well as the ones generated by research conducted about an institutional photographic archive produced in the middle of the 20th century are tools to study traditional stories, low cost actions against memory and commemoration, the meeting points between digital economy and digital truth, the negotiations of visual trust, the institutional fake, the imposture of patrimonial and documentary information as a justification for technological investment, and the usefulness of the disorgani- zed and comical activisms in defining the public spheres of our existence.

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While Narcos defines itself as a historical fiction web series, the Acpo-radio Sutatenza photographic archive does so as a documentary archive that became part of the Unesco program ‘Memory of the world’. Both the series and the archive are available online and both also bring up their links to what is real. This notion of ‘real’ is defined outside both the series and the archive and is what le- gitimizes them: the Narcos from fiction shield themselves behind research that is focused on events that happened throughout Colombia during the 1980’s, while the peasant families that inhabited Sutatenza and other Colombian municipalities in the mid 20th century were documented through prearranged settings and “do-as-if-you-were” photographic mechanisms.

Nowadays, Colombian authorities and people that identify themselves as Co- lombians complain about Narcos because they think that “Colombians are not like that”, “We aren’t all like that” and “We’d rather be known for other things”. The debate is so precise that it questions the actor in the leading role because he is not “really Colombian” and speaks Spanish with an accent since his mother tongue is Portuguese. Meanwhile, the authorities, scholars, journalists, and the general public that rejects the representation from Narcos find in the bucolic photographic scenes of the Sutatenza peasants – the cherished images of the peasant that do represent the true Colombian essence.

Tags Pedagogy, authority and truth; cultural industry; disinformation theory; arts and visual media; digital counterculture.

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Mi propuesta es la discurrir sobre algunos de los temas que nos convocan usando dos experiencias de producción de información sobre lo que es o no es un país, en este caso Colombia, país tan de moda en las agendas periodísticas, humanitarias y académicas, internacionales, a finales del siglo XX. Esa Colombia que es objeto de atención para la industria del entretenimiento y del turismo contemporáneos, y también para las instituciones colombianas que declaran lo que se debe recordar, memorizar y patrimonializar. Para ello utilizaré una serie web de NETFLIX y una campaña de alfabetización de ACPO.

1. Los narcos de NETFLIX

Narcos es, según la define la compañía NETFLIX, unaserie ficción histórica, de 4 temporadas, con 10 episodios de 50 minutos cada uno. Las temporadas se estrenaron así: Temporada 1., el 28 de agosto de 2015; Temporada 2., el 2 de septiembre de 2016; Temporada 3., el 1 de septiembre de 2017; Temporada 4., el 18 de noviembre de 2018.

En tanto NETFLIX preparaba la primera temporada de Narcos, en Colombia se adelantaban los llamados diálogos y negociaciones entre el gobierno y las Fuerzas Armadas Revolucionarias de Colombia, FARC. El proceso inició ofi- cialmente en septiembre de 2012 y terminó con la firma del llamado Acuerdo para la Terminación Definitiva del Conflicto el 24 de noviembre de 2016, cuando NETFLIX hubo finalizado la temporada 2 de Narcos y se ocupaba de la 3. Un tema crucial del acuerdo fue el del cultivo, la producción y el tráfico de drogas declaradas ilícitas, que implicaba, entre otros actores, a las FARC, al campesinado, a las poblaciones indígenas y afrodescendientes, analfabetas y empobrecidas de Colombia.

En lo foto de la firma del acuerdo de paz los protagonistas fueron el color blanco y la prenda de vestir para hombres llamada guayabera (-de guayaba), la misma que eligió el escritor Gabriel García Márquez, creador de Macon- do, para recibir el Premio Nobel de Literatura en 1982. La alusión al escritor apareció, también, en el texto que antecede la primera imagen que veremos de Medellín, en el episodio 1 de Narcos: “El realismo mágico se define como un entorno realista y detallado que se ve invadido por algo tan extraño que resulta increíble”.

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Fotos 1a y 1b Sobre la idea del blanco coca, como rasgo visual pertinente, trabajó Mistress, la agencia de los Ángeles, responsable de la campaña y que declara en su página web: “Logramos construir, aumentar e impulsar la presencia en los medios sociales de Narcos, obteniendo 94 millones de impresiones en Face- book y 1 millón de seguidores solo en el primer mes, lo que contribuyó en última instancia al éxito generalizado del programa”. (Traducción propia).

Foto 1c. ‘El apretón de manos’, como se conoce coloquialmente a esta fotografía, fue altamente reproducido en los periódi- cos nacionales e internacionales. Esta fotografía la tomó el fotógrafo Alexan- dre Meneghini, para la agencia Reuters y entró a formar parte de los llamados periodísticamente, momentos clave, de esos diálogos. Los 3 personajes protagonistas son Raúl Castro, Juan Manuel Santos y Timochenko, en la Habana, durante las llamadas negociaciones de paz.

Sin embargo, en los Narcos de la primera temporada de NETFLIX, el blanco estuvo también en otra parte: en la cocaína, una de esas drogas ilícitas, que flota y envuelve al señor Pablo Escobar en los afiches y en el intro promocional de la serie, y que asaltó el blanco nieve de la navidad en las vallas dispuestas en las grandes plazas públicas con el eslogan “¡Oh blanca navidad!”, utilizado en 2016, el mes siguiente a la firma de los mencionados acuerdos de paz en Colombia. En unos y otros el personaje de Pablo Escobar caracterizado por Wargner Moura, el músico y actor brasileño que en el afiche aparece solo y mirando a la cámara, vistió la misma camisa de manga corta, con el primer botón desabro- chado, alejándose de las etiquetas masculinas del vestir tropical. El blanco, de la paz, alcanzó en el mismo año al entonces presidente de Colombia Juan Manuel Santos, quien el 6 de octubre, se hizo acreedor al Premio Nobel de la Paz.

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Durante la tercera temporada de Narcos (septiembre de 2017) y la cuarta (noviembre de 2018), Colombia pasó en los lenguajes oficiales, periodís- ticos y académicos, del conflicto al postconflicto, de la verdad a la postverdad, de los guerrilleros a los excombatientes, nombrados también como reinsertados. A su vez, durante 2017, NETFLIX se ocupó de preparar las series Dark Tourism y Distrito Salvaje, para estrenarlas en 2018. En Dark Tourism el presentador, avalado por una profesión devota de la verdad, es el periodista neozelandés David Ferrer, quien expresa, como una opinión personal, que “siempre me ha atraído el lado extraño de las cosas”, y dicho esto inicia sus recorridos en la ciudad de Medellín, en la que un taxista le recibe en el aeropuerto: el taxista es un Pablo Escobar actua- do, que en la primera escena le recita a su cliente el dicho con el que NETFLIX caracterizó al otro Pablo Escobar en el primer episodio de la primera temporada de Narcos: “Plata o plomo”. El asunto de los acentos y de los refranes, es decir el del lenguaje hablado, es uno de los campos en los que se juega el sentido de lo real, tanto para la compañía vendedora de streaming de contenido multimedia como para la organización alfabetizadora de campesinos con 1 Así llamó ACPO a los transistores, modernos medios de acción1. Volviendo a Ferrer, el videodiscos, periódicos, cartillas, libros y automóviles con altoparlantes utiliza- periodista trabajador de NETFLIX, hizo su apari- dos en su campaña de alfabetización. ción en la serie documental, el 20 de julio, fecha en la que la Colombia oficial celebra su independencia de España, y, al igual que los Narcos de NETFLIX, Ferrer abandonó este país para irse a México, esta vez a presenciar un exorcismo.

Sólo tres meses después del estreno de Dark Tou- rism, el 19 de octubre de 2018, NETFLIX cambió de escenario y de protagonistas en Colombia, y lanzó su más reciente serie. En ella es Bogotá, D.C. —distrito capital—, el Distrito Salvaje en el que un exguerrillero intenta reinsertarse en la vida legal.

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La primera temporada de Distrito Salvaje también cuenta con 10 episodios, presentados así por El Tiempo: “La serie de diez episodios se estrenará a finales del 2018 y contará la historia de Jhon Jeiver (Juan Pablo Raba), un guerrillero que se traslada de la selva a Bogotá tras la firma del Tratado de Paz. El combatiente intenta escapar de su pasado y reinsertarse en la sociedad y en su familia, pero rápida- mente se encuentra envuelto en una red de crimen y corrupción”2. 2 El Tiempo, 2018. Artículo: ‘Llega ‘Distrito Salvaje’, la tercera producción colombiana de Netflix‘´.El Tiempo Como parte de la campaña de lanzamiento, el online, [online] 6 de marzo. Disponible en: aeropuerto internacional El Dorado de Bogotá y los con el eslogan: “Bienvenidos al Distrito Salvaje”. En el caso del aeropuerto los visitantes arribaron, durante al menos un mes, al mítico Dorado y al Distrito Sal- vaje simultáneamente gracias a NETFLIX. En tanto en los paraderos de bus, en los que la compañía de- cidió omitir el logo en los afiches, las personas que habitan diariamente la locación de la nueva serie, ajenas a que el mensaje aludía a una producción de NETFLIX, preguntaban, “¿qué es eso?”.

Entre tanto Narcos abandonó Colombia para irse, a partir del 18 de noviembre de 2018, a México, donde la compañía continúa la temporada de Narcos 4 bajo el eslogan: “Nuevo país. Nuevo cartel. Nuevos Narcos”. O, como se lee en las letras de un anuncio financiado por NETFLIX y que los ayuntamientos aceptaron en las plazas públicas: “Adiós hijueputas, hola hijos de la gran chingada”. Frase que mezcla la lógica del eslogan publicitario con la de los refranes populares, y el vocabulario considerado vulgar3. 3 Fernando Vallejo, autor de La virgen de los sicarios (1994) y Víctor Gaviria, director de Rodrigo D. NO futuro (1990) y La vendedora de Ahora haremos otra alusión a Gabriel García Már- rosas (1998), atienden a las relaciones quez, en las palabras de Alberto Abello, director de lenguaje y violencia, en sus obras; ambos nacieron en Medellín, en donde la Biblioteca Luis Ángel Arango, institución a cargo las sitúan. La vendedora de rosas, se del cuidado de los documentos de Acción Cultural ambienta en la época de navidad.

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Popular –ACPO-. Afirma Abello, al inaugurar una de las exposiciones dedicadas a los documentos de ACPO:

Sutatenza es a la educación lo que Macondo a la literatura. A partir de esos dos puntos, el país cambió la concepción sobre su geografía, puesto que estos permitieron conocer más a profundidad sus territorios y la vida de los habitantes que en ellos vivían. Además, nos abrieron la posibilidad de conocernos y pensarnos como una nación diversa, plagada de tensiones entre la realidad y la ficción, al tiempo que ampliaban nuestras posibilidades de soñar futuros mejores. Con esta exposición la Luis Ángel invita a quienes tienen a su cargo la política educativa colombiana a que revisiten esa magnífica experiencia nacional y ejemplo mundial que fue Radio Sutatenza4.

En la retórica institucional que desarrolló ACPO, y que entusiastas y poco críticas acogen las instituciones al cuidado de las memorias y los patrimonios públicos, los campesinos de Sutatenza hicieron una guerra y una revolución distintas a la de los acuerdos de paz y a las que inspiran a NETFLIX: su guerra fue a la ignorancia, considerada en la misma retórica religiosa como un pecado, y su revolución fue la alfabetización con la que se prometió riqueza y abundancia5.

4 La entrevista fue concedida al 5 En la misma época del auge de las periódico El Tiempo, el 6 de junio escuelas radiofónicas de Sutatenza, de 2017. Este periódico, como otros autores africanos cuestionaron con medios de información colombianos, ahínco los procesos de alfabetización escriben sobre las escuelas radiofónicas y la escolaridad; entre ellos Cheikh Ha- de Sutatenza con añoranza y aso- midou Kane en La aventura ambigua ciándolas a la memoria y el recuerdo y Ngũgĩ wa Thiong’o, en Descolonizar la imprescindibles para el país. Ello lo mente, publicadas entre 1961 y 1981. percibimos en algunos titulares: “El olvido de Sutatenza” (El Espectador, 22.8.2012); “Remembranza a las escuelas radiofónicas” (Las 2orillas, 1.6.2015); “Reviven legado de Radio Sutatenza” (Unimedios, 9.6.2016); “Lo inolvidable de Radio Sutatenza” (El Espectador, 7.12.2016); “70 años de Acción Cultural Popular para el campesinado colombiano” (revista Arcadia, 19.4.2017); “ Sutatenza, o el recuerdo de la radio popular” (El Espectador, 8.6.2017); “El medio con el que los campesinos ‘le hicieron la guerra’ a la ignorancia” (revista Sema- na, 23.6.2017); “Hace 49 años Pablo VI bendijo los transmisores de Radio Sutatenza” (Caracol radio, 23.8.2017).

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2. Los campesinos del archivo fotográfico de ACPO

Las fotografías son documentos. Siempre se ha destacado este hecho, desde el día en que se inventó la fotografía hasta hoy, y esta premisa material es la primera que se ha aceptado sobre ella. Ciertamente la tesis que sostiene que la fotografía son documentos deja muy poco margen a la crítica, como mínimo si se tiene en cuenta que la película y la cámara son instrumentos ópticos. Takuma Nakahira6

El archivo fotográfico de ACPO lo integran 406 carpetas, cada una con diferente número de copias fotográficas en papel7, que contienen imágenes producidas o enviadas por agencias e instituciones nacionales e internacionales para el uso de ACPO, entre 1947 y 1994.

ACPO, a diferencia de NETFLIX, no se ocupó del entretenimiento, sino que se autodefinió, y aun lo hace, como “una organización que tiene por fin la Educación Fundamental Integral cristiana del pueblo, especialmente de los campesinos adultos, mediante cualquier sistema de comunicación, con sus elementos de acción”. El elemento de acción favorito en 1947 para la campaña de alfabetización fue el de la radio, acompañada siempre de materiales impresos y de auxiliares inmediatos. La campaña fue asesorada por la UNESCO y otras entidades internacionales que ofrecieron asistencia financiera y técnica a campañas similares en África, Asía, centro y Latinoamérica, y cuyos materiales audiovisuales fueron producidos en algunos casos por los mismos directores, guionistas y fotógrafos8.

En la Colombia de mediados del XX, mientras ACPO se estrenaba en la pro- ducción serial y a gran escala de sus materiales de comunicación, y se ocupaba de extender sus redes tecnológicas en el país para que fueran aptas para la circu- lación de sus programas de radio, cartillas, libros de la biblioteca del campesino y el periódico y, simultáneamente, capacitaba a miles de auxiliares inmediatos y de técnicos, el país protagonizaba las protestas conocidas como el Bogotazo

6 Nakahira, T., 2018. La ilusión 7 Las carpetas contienen algunos 8 Un ejemplo es el de Paul Bordry: documental. Barcelona: Ca L’Isidre negativos, hojas de contacto y recortes en 1955 dirigió para la UNESCO el Edicions. pp. 47. de prensa. Los reversos de las copias documental Sutatenza un mensaje de fotográficas con frecuencia aportan paz; en 1956 participó en La selva y el instrucciones para el editor, además arado; en 1970 dirigió Una luz verde, y del nombre, el número y la página de en 1977, Kibaru. la publicación a la que la imagen estaba destinada.

304 Disinformation A (cases)_Panel#11 y los hechos que, por mucho tiempo, tanto la historiografía profesional como el lenguaje común, llamaron La Violencia, en la que el régimen legal estatal se enfrentó a los guerrilleros o bandoleros, como nombró la prensa a Efraín González, Guadalupe Salcedo o Manuel Marulanda, este último cofundador y comandante en jefe de las Farc, el mismo grupo que firmó los recientes tra- tados de paz; Marulanda renunció a su nombre de pila, Pedro Antonio Marín Marín para homenajear a un líder comunista.

El campesino y el campesinado eran la razón de ser de ACPO, según lo repetía el sacerdote fundador, que a ellos dedicó, además de su vida según las numerosas biografías, un periódico llamado de la misma manera. Las páginas de El campesino, dieron cuenta de la intención de ACPO de defender a los campesinos analfabetas de todos los males que les atacaban desde dentro y desde fuera del país usando para ello la campaña de alfabetización. Un enemigo de los campesinos que ACPO señaló, además de La Violencia, fue el comunismo, que, como insistió en todos los modernos medios de acción que utilizó, encontraba en la ignorancia, la falta de escuelas, los monocultivos, el alcoholis- mo, la miseria y el abandono de los campos, el camino abierto para sus garras. Ese enemigo fue el mismo enemigo de muchas instituciones que, desde Italia a Estados Unidos, se unieron a ACPO para combatirlo.

Fotos 2a y 2b. Ambos afiches forman están incluidos en el informe de ACPO titulado “La ignorancia de un pueblo. Máximo problema económico y social de América Latina” y que usó para solicitar y mantener el apoyo de distintas entidades cola- boradoras. Los afiches fueron impresos en la editorial PIO X, y son parte de los documentos entregados y al cuidado de la Biblioteca Luis Ángel Arango.

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Los campesinos de ACPO fueron mostrados por los fotógrafos de varias maneras, entre las que destacan dos arquetípicas: el del campesino ignorante y la del campesino lector/escritor iniciándose en los caminos de su alfabetización. La producción visual de los campesinos ignorantes se hizo durante sesiones fotográficas que, al parecer por el conjunto de copias que se conservan en las carpetas, debieron ser largas, pero también jocosas; sesiones en las que a los campesinos locales se les pidió que actuaran como aquellos campesinos a los que se quería combatir, esta vez con la ayuda de los fotógrafos: se despeinaron, reventaron espinillas, desabrocharon la camisa, abrazaron tambaleantes o se tiraron al piso. Durante la misma sesión fotográfica, ateniéndonos al conjunto de copias que se conservan, los mismos campesinos encarnaron (to embody) a los otros campesinos alfabetas o en camino de serlo: se peinaron, se abrocha- ron la camisa, se sostuvieron firmemente de pie o sentados haciendo como‘ que’ leían el ejemplar un único periódico, casi siempre El campesino, cuya cabecera mostraron con cuidado a la cámara.

Fotos 3a y 3b. El seguimiento a las fotografías del archivo fotográfico de ACPO, dentro de la totalidad de documentos que entregó la institución, permite establecer la confianza que la institución delegó a la información visual. La extensa serie de lectores de El campesino, por ejemplo, además de crear visualmente una comunidad imaginada de lectores, fue útil para argumentar en los informes que a ellas se presentaron. Aquí, informe presentado a la Fundación The Simón Bolívar Founda- tion con imágenes que se encuentran en la carpeta Lectores del campesino. F.T. 2466.

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La imagen del campesino lector y la del que traza sus primeras letras, pertenece al género que durante siglos reconstruyó visualmente la velada de lectura/ escritura. Ambas son las preferidas de los curadores y asesores de las exposiciones con la que se divulgan los documentos de ACPO y con las que conmemo- ran su existencia, y para las que se han dado a la tarea de buscar a las campe- sinas y campesinos protagonistas que aún están vivos, para demostrar con su voz, convertida en testimonio, la autenticidad de las mismas, siguiendo una estrategia de demostración cercana a la que se usa NETFLIX en sus produccio- nes y los narcotours privados que se ofrecen en Colombia. En éstos últimos, por ejemplo, se ha buscado a los exsicarios de Pablo Escobar para que sean los que avalen la información que los tours se ofrece.

Los campesinos de ACPO, más allá de estas imágenes pacíficas, también atendieron las demostraciones, en las que funcionarios nacionales e internacionales les instruyeron en las modernas estrategias para tratar las aguas y abonar la tierra, vacunarse y vacunar a los animales a su cargo, construir fogones en alto y embalses, mientras recibieron los primeros almuerzos en cajas de papel y poliestireno, marcadas con el logo de ACPO.

Fotos 4a, 4b y 4c.(referencia) Los elementos de acción de ACPO, incluido El periódico El campesino, se usaron a la vez que, para divulgar información local dirigida a ellos, para trabajar con otras entidades como el Instituto Colombiano Agropecuario, el INDE- RENA, o el Instituto Colombiano de Bienestar Familiar, en campañas de alcance nacional e internacional. En los informes, junto a cuadros y estadística, se anexaban páginas específicas de información publicada en los distintos medios al alcance de ACPO, en los que la demostración por fotografías, fue una constante. Aquí anexos de 2 informes, la fundación Misereory y The Simón Bolívar Foundation.

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En el archivo fotográfico hay mujeres, niñas y niños campesinos, que en vez de participar en la velada de lectura, fueron orientados por los fotógrafos, con un cuidado similar al de los directores artísticos de NETFLIX, para que se mostra- ran a sí mismos como niños gamines, abandonados, migrantes o trabajadores, y que encontramos presentes en distintas entregas del mismo periódico, bajo títulos y temas distintos, pero también en los folletos, libros y almanaques, donde unas veces fueron la imagen de lo abandonado y otras las consecuencias visibles de la migración del campo a la ciudad o de la falta de métodos modernos de planificación familiar. Los mejores de todos ellos se incluyeron en los informes que ACPO presentó a las instituciones que les apoyaron, como The Simón Bolívar Foundation o Misereor.

3. Las imágenes queridas

El primer reparo de muchos colombianos a NETFLIX fue el de que el actor que hizo de Pablo Escobar, no fuese de nacionalidad colombiana, y que su acento, ya no su idioma, no fuese el de cierta región del país. A éste se sumó el de los daños que a la imagen del país hace la serie, pues reconocer a los Narcos de NE- TFLIX como propios, sería volver, según el argumento oficial, a la imagen que de Colombia se tuvo cuando el otro Pablo, el original, estuvo vivo. Los Narcos de NETFLIX, como lo dice la propia compañía, viven por la acogida que tienen en las audiencias que no son colombianas, en tanto los campesinos de ACPO lo hacen sobre todo gracias al cuidado de las instituciones, funcionarios, académi- cos y periodistas colombianos, empeñados en lograr para unos pocos de ellos, los que les gustan y conmueven, un reconocimiento internacional.

Estas discusiones, una vez más y necesaria, ponen en juego la definición de quié- nes son los unos y los otros: ACPO pareciera tremendamente local en tanto NE- TFLIX se asume ajena e internacional. Sin embargo, al revisar rigurosamente los documentos de ACPO se precisan las relaciones que mantuvo con numerosas, simultáneas y consecutivas instituciones, y se comprende que formar parte de las agendas políticas, religiosas, humanitarias, tecnológicas y financieras de empresas e instituciones nacionales internacionales, que fue le permitió a ACPO fuese más allá de la iniciativa bondadosa de un sacerdote; al hacer algo similar hallamos al considerar la existencia de NETFLIX, en la presencia de empresa- rios, artistas, escritores, sonidistas, fotógrafos, editores y creadores colombianos, que participan en las recientes series, no solo como socios sino también como trabajadores, son parte de su éxito internacional y económico.

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De hecho, son ejecutivos, escritores, actores y periodistas colombianos los que colaboraron con las primeras series, y son los que ahora producen Distrito Salvaje, contenido original producido cien por ciento en Colombia. Pero no todo acaba ahí. Junto a unos y otros, surgen jóvenes colombianos de nacionalidad, publicistas algunos y activistas muchos, que han diseñado otros tours, entre ellos los narco tours que se ofrecen online a visitantes locales y extranjeros, a quienes llevan a los mismos sitios, a ver los mismos objetos y a escuchar las mismas narraciones que están presentes en las excursiones escolares y en las noticias periodísticas.

9 Me refiero al tour organizado por Os- En el narco tour más conocido se usa un exsicario9 car Cantor, desde 2010, llamado Pablo Escobar Tour, en el que ofrece 4 planes como argumento de autoridad para avalar, de pri- básicos. El tour está disponible a través mera mano, la información que el tour ofrece, exsi- de página web, Youtube, Facebook e Instragram. cario que también guía al periodista neozelandés de Dark Tourism. Para muchas colombianas y colombianos de nacionalidad el sicario youtuber remplaza de manera más convincente al periodista presentador, en tanto para otros la imagen del campesino sufriente, religioso y aprendiz de lector, está lejos de representar a los campesinos que todos los días son perseguidos y asesinados y que tratan de sobrevi- vir en medio de la guerra por cultivos declarados ilícitos, cuando los buenos cultivos no les alcanzan. Quizá todo esto es útil para reparar con cuidado porque, en tanto casos, acogemos a ese campesino que a través de ACPO continúa afirmando que ¡La“ educación nos hace libres, el ignorante es un esclavo!”, y rechazamos al Narco de NETFLIX que advierte: “Plata o plomo”, en un país al que le costó reconocer que la cultura del narcotráfico coincidía con la de la religión, como en la Virgen de los sicarios, que Fernando Vallejo nos recordó. Zenaida Osorio http://www.facartes.unal.edu.co/fa/docentes/docentes/profesor. php?id=18&escuela=Dise%C3%B1o%20Gr%C3%A1fico

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Digital Dietetics, to reduce the Big Brother Víctor Sampedro Blanco, Fco. Javier López Ferrández, Pedro Fernández de Castro Sanabria

Abstract We present the theoretical basis of the Digital Dietetics project (dieteticadi- gital.net), emerged after the publication of the homonymous book by Víctor Sampedro (2018). We advance a critical analysis of the hegemonic formats of digital television and networks, establishing parallels and continuities between realities (wrongly called telerreality) and networks (wrongly called social). We are moved by a double objective of academic research and social intervention: 1) To dismantle the rhetoric and the imaginary of teledemocracy and ciberde- mocracy, arguing that digital interactivity has been conducted towards television formats and digital networks that maintain and reinforce hierarchies and imbalances of power. This leads to degradation of political leadership -forma- tted as celebrities and trolls- and of citizen participation channels -monetary and commodified in a digital public sphere co-opted by the data industry. 2) To train publics to re-program their uses and digital practices, to increase their autonomy. We propose two lines of action. To program in our devices an alternative digital consumption: conscious, limited and oriented to collective objectives beyond the screens. The second is to re-program television formats, software and hardware, opening their proprietary codes to participation and social innovation.

In this communication we approach the theoretical discussion that sustains the project.

Keywords Digital dietetics; media literacy; realities; digital networks; digital public sphere

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Introducción

Para hablar de tecnología desde una perspectiva crítica habríamos de evitar el presentismo y prestar atención a la economía política de la industria digital (McChesney, 2014; Rodríguez Prieto y Martínez Cabezudo, 2016). Arrancan- do el siglo XXI, el potencial participativo de la televisión digital se materializó en su formato estrella y principal legado: el reality show. Facebook, Twitter, Instagram o Snapchat aplican el mismo modelo de negocio, que dirige y encap- sula la actividad digital en labores no remuneradas de minado de datos para la mercadotecnia. Los realities y las redes imponen, así, un régimen de visibilidad que aumenta la desigualdad acumulativa. Concentran el poder simbólico de encarnar y representar la opinión pública al César Digital de la pseudocracia (Sampedro, 2018).

Frente a los desequilibrios de poder que las formas de participación digital más extendidas consolidan, se hace necesario promover entre la ciudadanía la desconexión parcial y la reprogramación digital. Se trata de retomar el control y proponer usos autónomos de los dispositivos tecnológicos que ahora sostienen un sistema de comunicación política que genera y difunde mentiras prefabrica- das. Apuntamos hacia el fomento de unos hábitos digitales que promuevan la autonomía ciudadana y una mayor soberanía tecnológica.

Abandonemos la nostalgia y el romanticismo offline, ya que las tecnologías digitales son el campo de batalla inexcusable donde hacer avanzar la autonomía individual y el cambio social. Pero partamos de la tesis de que la participación ciudadana no merece tal nombre si no cuestiona o altera la distribución del poder (Dahlgren, 2018). Desde esta perspectiva surge el proyecto Dietética Digital que reúne varias discusiones teóricas. Abordamos los formatos digitales estrella, el liderazgo y sistema político que favorecen, así como la pedagogía social que fomentaría un uso emancipatorio de las TIC digitales.

1.Realities y redes

Los realities prometían teledemocracia: programas protagonizados por el pueblo, que también votaba al ganador. Ahora las redes digitales corporativas ofrecen ciberdemocracia: se apoyan en el relato de Internet como escenario horizontal de desmediación y participación. Lejos de esta suerte de mitología digital,

311 AFTER POST-TRUTH Interface Politics, 2nd International Conference donde el “poder simbólico” (Bourdieu, 1985) y el acceso a la información se presuponían distribuidos, observamos nuevos procesos de concentración que favorecen los intereses y el lucro de una industria digital: ofrece sus plataformas y dispositivos a cambio de mercantilizar nuestras comunicaciones. El “prosu- midor” ideal, que la literatura dominante presenta en términos de emancipa- ción (Shirky, 2010; Jenkins, 2006; Jarvis, 2011), es ante todo un minero de datos y un propagandista de sí mismo. En realidad, trabaja para las marcas que se publicitan en la televisión y las redes. Estas aplican la “economía de la aten- ción” (Goldhaber, 1997). Captan, secuestran y dirigen la nuestra para venderla a los anunciantes. No solo somos su producto -datos de mercado y perfiles de consumo- también sus trabajadores y publicistas no remunerados (Terranova, 2000; Fuchs, 2014).

Intercambiamos privacidad e intimidad por comunicaciones gratuitas que pro- meten hacernos visibles e influyentes. Pero, al usar compulsivamente las redes, incrementamos nuestro nivel de dependencia, vulnerabilidad y desposesión. En suma, nos exponemos a abusos derivados del desequilibrio de conocimien- to y poder.

Los usuarios con cada (inter)acción digital minan datos que desvelan la capacidad y patrones de consumo, las preferencias más íntimas y detalles biográficos mínimos. Esto permite a las plataformas digitales, así como a corporaciones y estados, experimentar sus mensajes con públicos muy segmentados. Y, en suma, dirigirse a ellos según sus detallados perfiles socio-demográficos y psi- co-biográficos. Se establecen como instituciones que ejercen unnoopoder, noo proviene de nous, palabra griega para “mente” e “intelecto”- (Gehl, 2013) sobre una ciudadanía inserta en la sociedad de control (Deleuze, 2006).

Los millenials españoles se estrenaron en Internet “votando” (en realidad, pagando) a los concursantes de Gran Hermano y Operación Triunfo. Hacían estudios de mercado en tiempo real eligiendo iconos juveniles y sumándose a comunidades de fans. Ahora se votan entre ellos, con likes y aspiran a convertirse en celebrities pagando con sus datos. Esta forma de socialización tecnológica conduce al sobrepeso digital, hinchado de marcas/identidades digitales lucrati- vas: diseñadas por usuarios y gestionadas por los algoritmos para hacer dinero.

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2.Césares digitales y pseudocracia

El concepto pseudocracia (Sampedro, 2009) —entendido como el gobierno de la mentira— ha adquirido una nueva dimensión en el escenario digital. Se ca- racteriza por ser el régimen de la mentira que todos sostenemos. El contexto de “mediatización profunda” (Couldry y Hepp, 2016) generado por las tecnolo- gías digitales ha desdibujado las fronteras entre la comunicación interpersonal, publicitaria y política. La datificación, y su utilización con fines privativos, han generado una creciente cultura algorítmica (Striphas, 2015) con una capacidad de persuasión –política y comercial– desconocida por los medios analógicos.

Realities y redes, comandados por celebrities y trolls, han acabado por colonizar la esfera pública bajo la lógica publicitaria. La industria y el César digital tienen el mismo sustento: el engagement o “participación” del telespectador y del concursante de realities. Como usuario en las redes, viraliza más la información falsa que la verdadera, especialmente en cuestiones políticas (Vosoughi, Roy y Aral, 2018). Y, a su vez, los algoritmos favorecen mensajes que fomentan los peores sesgos cognitivos (sectarismo, pereza intelectual, estereotipos…) porque generan más participación y, por tanto, también más datos de mercado.

Los césares digitales, con Donald Trump a la cabeza, comandan las pseudocra- cias contemporáneas. Brindamos atención y damos poder a quien convierte la comunicación política –mutada en marketing electoral– en una ficción dramatizada. Es decir, sostenemos a quien convierte la mentira, el exabrupto y la polarización en las dinámicas político-comunicativas dominantes.

El César digital vence tras negar credibilidad a expertos, técnicos o científicos, gestores públicos, políticos y periodistas. A los últimos les tacha de “enemigos del pueblo”. Todo es fake news, excepto los tuits edictos del César. Así comunica sus decisiones, ninguneando y sorteando la separación de poderes. Desarrolla la estrategia populista de enfrentar ciudadanía y élites. Y se presenta como úni- ca alternativa para imponer orden con medidas iliberales y autoritarias.

Antes de convertirse en presidente de EE.UU., Trump protagonizó un reality durante más de una década. Después, manejó Facebook a su antojo e incen- dió Twitter a golpe de talonario. Trump es, ante todo, una marca. Expone el potencial de los realities y las redes para crear híbridos de celebrities y trolls. La campaña electoral y la Presidencia son plataformas —platós de televisión y redes— para la autopromoción de una identidad lucrativa pensada para lucrar-

313 AFTER POST-TRUTH Interface Politics, 2nd International Conference se. Ha alcanzado el máximo esplendor publicitario: secuestro de la atención pública, visibilidad ubicua y contagio de discursos ajenos hasta convertirse en el dominante. El triunfo publicitario, alcanzado por esas vías, se traduce en degradación democrática.

La ciudadanía digital ha de retomar el control de las pantallas. Eso, si quiere reclamarse como sujeto político de pleno derecho: desempeñar un rol activo más allá de votar, pagar impuestos y multas o comprar online. Porque se hace difícil votar con libertad y defender intereses objetivos si la industria digital conoce preferencias que ni siquiera podemos expresar, analiza información que producimos sin ser conscientes y, finalmente, formatea nuestras comunicaciones supeditándolas al lucro empresarial o a los intereses estatales.

3. Por una dietética digital: elogio de los usos digitales conscientes y lentos

En cuanto a las pedagogías digitales más extendidas, identificamos dos: la médi- ca y la policial. La primera trata a los usuarios como enfermos, mientras que la segunda los retrata como víctimas. Ambas comparten un enfoque paternalista y vertical. Si bien es importante señalar las patologías y amenazas derivadas de los usos digitales, estos enfoques no ligan las TIC al bienestar individual y colectivo, ni las orientan a reforzar y construir comunidades de carne y hueso. El acento en la adicción y la peligrosidad impide usarlas proactivamente. Por eso, planteamos una pedagogía alternativa, que recurre a la analogía alimentaria.

En ambientes anglosajones se ha generalizado la crítica a las redes digitales comparándolas con la comida rápida o el tabaco. Las corporaciones también han fomentado usos digitales compulsivos e inconscientes con idénticas técnicas. Los interfaces de las aplicaciones emplean estrategias semejantes de excitación hormonal. Pretenden incrementar el consumo sin límites, impidien- do que nos saciemos de nicotina, sal, grasas, azúcar… y pantallas. La industria digital, como la tabaquera o la alimentaria, crea graves problemas colectivos: contaminación ambiental (Maxwell y Miller, 2012), nuevas formas de ex- plotación laboral (Terranova, 2000), vigilancia estatal y corporativa (Zuboff, 2014), y polarización del debate público en comunidades-burbuja antagónicas (Pariser, 2017).

En este contexto no parece adecuado instruir en el uso “seguro” y “apropiado” de las aplicaciones más extendidas. Proponemos, en cambio, inculcar valores,

314 Disinformation A (cases)_Panel#11 actitudes y competencias para recuperar el control sobre los dispositivos y los formatos digitales. Más allá de las soluciones médicas y policiales –centradas en reprimir impulsos y desviaciones– planteamos la necesidad de generar usos y hábitos digitales conscientes y saludables. De esto va la soberanía tecnoló- gica que se relaciona, así, con el concepto de “soberanía alimentaria” (Haché, 2014). No se agota en la técnica sino que implica desarrollar comunidades que puedan dar sustento a un entorno comunicativo autónomo. Los principios cooperativos y sostenibles, aplicados a la economía del bien común (Felber, 2012; Tirole, 2017) e imbuidos de una ética hacker (Himanen, 2001) pudieran servir como marcos de referencia.

Una pedagogía digital crítica, digna de tal calificativo, implica diferentes niveles de intervención. Apela a los individuos y se extrapola a lo social y a lo político. Las prácticas y usos tecnológicos individuales conllevan efectos en lo personal que se trasladan al plano colectivo. La mejor analogía es dietética: “somos lo que comemos”. Lo que ingerimos cambia nuestros organismos y nuestras sociedades. A nivel agregado, la dieta tiene consecuencias globales que se pueden alterar cotidianamente y en los entornos más cercanos.

El movimiento de la comida lenta (slow food) ofrece inspiración a la dietética digital. Se trata de volver a cocinar y comer con tiempo. Hacerlo en colectivo y con productos de proximidad. A ser posible, generados por la comunidad más cercana. Sigue, frente a la comida rápida, los mismos principios que una dietética digital básica. No son más que tres:

1) Limitar el consumo. Si no, las aplicaciones colonizarán todo tiempo y espacio social: como la comida basura, están disponibles, reclaman atención en todo momento y lugar.

2) Fijarse objetivos, a ser posible colectivos y materializados más allá de la pantalla. Si no, el hartazgo vendrá por la soledad y el aburrimiento de jugar o hablar solos –o con desconocidos (quizás un robot)– en lugar de con amigos o gentes próximas.

3) Juntarse con alguien que sepa más y que ayude a sacar todo el provecho de la cocina (dispositivos) y los alimentos (aplicaciones y programas). Se trata de romper las cadenas del código privativo y cerrado, con un conocimiento tecno- lógico de amateurs (amantes) no comercializado, y proclive al bien común.

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Estos tres puntos han de desarrollarse de manera comunitaria para fortalecer los vínculos y los afectos mediante el control de canales, infraestructuras y recursos tecnológicos. Sin embargo, no basta con promover el autocontrol —ya sea de los usuarios o de las industrias. El poder público debe incentivar a usuarios y corporaciones a adoptar prácticas más saludables. En el plano educa- tivo y de alfabetización mediática ya se están desarrollando algunos programas y proyectos en el marco de la Unión Europea. Ejemplos de ello son DigComp1, EU Kids Online o Global Kids Online2.

El rol de las administraciones locales y estatales debiera ir más allá: incentivar y apoyar lredes de comunicación digital auto-gestionadas o desarrollar plataformas públicas, ligadas a los servicios estatales de radiotelevisión. Al igual que los estados buscaron financiar la sanidad pública con impuestos al tabaco y al alcohol —y en algunos países a la comida rápida y las bebidas azucara- das— ciertas fuerzas políticashan comenzado a proponer un gravamen a las redes corporativas para financiar una red de titularidad pública, código y datos abiertos, controlados y rentabilizados por los usuarios.

Una ciudadanía digital demanda políticas públicas que promuevan cooperativas tecnológicas de código abierto. Frente a la obsolescencia programada, repa- rarían, adaptarían equipos y mantendrían plataformas e infraestructuras. Es una forma de fomentar circuitos de producción y consumo locales, responsables y autónomos, pero ligados por redes distribuidas. La analogía serían las acutales cooperativas de huertos urbanos y productores próximos.

La dietética digital propugna, por tanto, una soberanía tecnológica que mediante la acción combinada de la sociedad civil y las instituciones públicas sitúen a la ciudadanía en el centro de los usos digitales. Desplazarían el control del Gran Hermano —el Estado— y su Hermanastro —el Mercado—, ambos pilares del capitalismo digital y sus derivas cesaristas. La dietétia digital se opone al discurso securitario, saturado de términos como “ciberseguridad”, “ciberataque”, “cibergue- rra”… Las guerras económicas, electorales y bélicas en curso se presentan bajo el marco de la “seguridad digital”, que solo augura más recortes de libertad.

Frente a esto, la dietética digital reclama la capacidad de las comunidades para perfilar sus escenarios comunicativos de manera distribuida, plural y sosteni-

1 https://ec.europa.eu/jrc/en/digcomp

2 http://globalkidsonline.net/eu-kids-online/

316 Disinformation A (cases)_Panel#11 ble. Lo esencial es su capacidad de generar mayor participación e implicación ciudadana significativas. Esto es, fomenta hábitos y crea una ciudadanía capaz de desplegar autónomamente y exigir políticas públicas que, valiéndose del potencial revolucionario de las tecnologías (McChesney, 2014), reduzcan la desigualdad y alteren la distribución de poder (Dahlgren, 2018).

Bibliografía

Bourdieu, P., 1985. ¿Qué significa hablar? Economía de los intercambios lingüísticos. Madrid: Akal.

Couldry, N. y Hepp, A., 2016. The Mediated Construction of Reality. New Jersey: Wiley.

Dahlgren, P. 2018. Public Sphere Participation Online: The Ambiguities of Affect. International Journal of Communication, 12, pp. 2052–2070.

Deleuze, G., 2006. Post-scriptum sobre las sociedades de control. Polis Revista Latinoa- mericana, 13.

Felber, C., 2012. La Economía del bien común: un modelo económico que supera la dicotomía entre capitalismo y comunismo para maximizar el bienestar de nuestra sociedad. Barcelona: Deusto

Fuchs, C. 2014. Social Media and the Public Sphere. Triple C, 12 (1), pp. 57-101.

Gehl, R. 2013. What’s on your mind? Social media monopolies and noopower. First Monday, 18 (3-4).

Goldhaber, M. H., 1997. The Attention Economy and the Net.First Monday, 2 (4).

Haché, A., ed., 2014. Soberanía tecnológica. Dossier Ritimo.

Himanen, P., 2001. La ética del hacker y el espíritu de la era de la información. Barcelona: Destino.

Jarvis, J., 2011. Public Parts: How Sharing in the Digital Age Improves the Way We Work and Live. New York: Simon & Schuster.

Jenkins, H., 2006. Convergence culture: where old and new media collide. Nueva York y Londres: New York University Press.

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Maxwell, R. y Miller, T., 2012. Greening the Media. New York: Oxford University Press.

McChesney, R. W., 2014. Digital Disconnect. How Capitalism Is Turning the Internet Against Democracy. New York: The new press.

Pariser, E., 2017. El filtro burbuja: Cómo la web decide lo que leemos y lo que pensamos. Madrid: Taurus.

Rodríguez Prieto, R. y Martínez Cabezudo, F., 2016. Poder e Internet. Un análisis crítico de la red. Madrid: Ediciones Cátedra.

Sampedro, V. 2009. “Conspiración y pseudocracia. O la esfera pública a cinco años del colapso del 11-M”. Viento Sur, 103, pp. 60-68.

Sampedro, V., 2018. Dietética Digital. Para adelgazar al Gran Hermano. Barcelona: Icaria.

Shirky, C., 2010. Cognitive Surplus: Creativity and generosity in a connected age. New York: Penguin Press.

Striphas, T., 2015. Algorithmic culture. European Journal of Cultural Studies, 18, (4-5), pp. 395-412.

Terranova, T., 2000. Free Labor: Producing Culture for the Digital Economy. Social Text, 18 (2), pp. 33-58.

Tirole, J., 2017. La economía del bien común. Barcelona: Taurus.

Vosoughi, S., Roy, D. y Aral, S., 2018. The spread of true and false news online.Science , 359 (6380), pp. 1146-1151.

Zuboff, S., 2014. A digital declaration.Frankfurter Allgemeine, [online] 15 September. Available at: [Accesed on 28 August 2018].

— Víctor Sampedro Blanco www.victorsampedro.com www.ciberdemocracia.com — Fco. Javier López Ferrández www.ciberdemocracia.com — Pedro Fernández de Castro Sanabria www.ciberdemocracia.com

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The Art of Sonic Deception Teresa Dillon

Abstract Sonic deception is the tactical use of sound to confuse, misguide and disrupt. Discourses of deception, trust and the semiotics of suspicion often neglect sound in favour of more linguistic, verbal readings. Drawing on Goodman’s (2009) analysis of the vibrational force of sound in conflict and its potential as a sensory tactic of fear, the work of sound artists including Joe Banks (aka Di- sinformation) and the work of Martin Howse, Eric Berger and Mario de Vega in making audible the electromagnetic spectrum, this short paper examines the relationship between sound, deception, obfuscation and trust. Within this links are made to United States military parlance, in particular Information Operations or Influence Operations and full-spectrum dominance, whereby modern warfare is centred on a battle for public opinion, which purposefully manipulates human cognitive and emotional fallibility. It is from this viewpoint that the role of sound within contemporary deception is examined. This paper concludes that sound calls for a closer examination of the multiplicitous ways in which mis- and disinformation occurs, while also challenging us to take a multi-sensorial approach to the politics of frequency.

Keywords Deception; sound; art; influence operations; full-spectrum dominance; multi-sensorial politics of frequencies; response-ability.

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1. Introduction

On 30 May 2000 the United States (US) Department of Defence (DoD) released the document Joint Vision 2020 – America’s Military Preparing for Tomo- rrow. Within it the capabilities of adversaries to either have similar technology, or be able to adapt to the forces technology, is considered as a serious threat. To address this, full-spectrum dominance is required in order to ‘win’.

Full-spectrum dominance is defined as “the ability of U.S. forces, operating unilaterally or in combination with multinational and interagency partners, to defeat any adversary and control any situation across the full range of military operations” (p.61). As noted:

Conflict results in casualties despite our best efforts to minimize them and will continue to do so when the force has achieved full-spectrum dominance. Additionally, friction is inherent in military operations. The joint force of 2020 will seek to create a ‘frictional imbalance’ in its favor by using the capabilities envisioned in this document, but the fundamental sources of friction cannot be eliminated. We will win - but we should not expect war in the future to be either easy or bloodless. The requirement for global operations, the ability to counter adversaries who possess weapons of mass destruction, and the need to shape ambiguous situations at the low end of the range of operations will present special challenges en route to achieving full spectrum dominance. (p.61)

Fictional imbalance and the shaping of ambiguous situations are in essence tactical approaches through which information superiority is achieved. Infor- mation superiority referring to

…the capability to collect, process, and disseminate an uninterrupted flow of information while exploiting or denying an adversary’s ability to do the same; achieved in a noncombat situation or one in which there are no clearly defined adversaries when friendly forces have the information necessary to achieve operational objectives. (p.61)

Such language, it could be argued, has in part set the foundations for what we now define as a post-truth politics, where ‘facts’ are malleable. More precisely Applebaum (2018) in her work on Western and Russian democracies, and others (Benkler, Robert and Roberts, 2018; Jackson and Jamieson, 2007; Kick, 2009; Stahl, 2006) in their analyses of social media polarisation, algorithmic

320 Disinformation A (cases)_Panel#11 bias towards extreme views and the lack of regulation on facts in media, refers to this trend as the purposeful use of mis- and disinformation. However much of the work on mis- and disinformation has focused on the power of the verbal and written word, consequently it fails to take into account other forms of sensory distortion, including what is referred to here as sonic deception. This short essay attempts to sketch out some of the issues relating to such auditory distortions and draws briefly on work of artists, who address these topics, including that of the music producer, author and DJ, Steve Goodman (2009) on sonic weapons and the artist Joe Banks (aka Disinformation), who has looked at the issue in relation to electronic voice phenomena and other distortions of aural perception (Banks, 2012). Specifically and with regarding to manipulations of the electromagnetic spectrum, artists such as Martin Howse, Erich Berger and Mario De Vega works is particularly relevant (Dillon, 2015, 2016a and 2016b; also see Kahn, 2013). These artists have specifically played with the notion of the eavesdropping potential that digital devices emit, with reference to the US government’s declassified document ‘Tempest’, which was released in 2007 and states:

Any time a machine is used to process classified information electrically, the various switches, contracts, relays and other components in that machine may emit radio frequency or acoustic energy. These emissions, like tiny radio broadcasts, may radiate through free space for considerable distances – a half mile or more in some cases. (NSA, FOIA Case # 51633, SECRET, 2007, p.26)

Prior to this document release, Wim van Eck’s (1985) seminal paper demonstrated how it is possible to “obtain information on the signals used inside the equipment when the radiation is picked up and the received signals are decoded” (p. 269). Essentially van Eck proved that cheap, off-the-shelf equipment could enable the electromagnetic emissions emitted from a devices tube or display to be collected, demodulated and interpreted. Berger drew on van Eck’s work and in a nod to the NSA document, created Tempest, whereby the radio waves produced by a screen playing a series of generative graphics are captured using various radios tuned to different AM frequencies. Similarly Howse extensively explored van Eck like techniques within his XXXXX (2001- 2008) and micro_research (2007-2009) workshop programmes1, which in part informed the development of his Detektor device (in collaboration initially with Berger and later with Shintaro Miyazaki). Likewise de Vega, in collaboration

1 http://www.1010.co.uk/org/xxxxx_micro_research.html [Accessed 20 April 2018]

321 AFTER POST-TRUTH Interface Politics, 2nd International Conference with Victor Mazón Gardoqui, has employed similar ‘sniffing’ techniques within his workshops2 and art installations (eg Doleman, 2015). However while these artists have illustrated how through sound various forms of inception can occur, it is the following example drawn from a more recent series of incidents in Cuba that will be the focus in relation 2 r-aw.cc. [Accessed 10 October 2018] to questions of distortion and obfuscation.

2. Fear and Loathing in Cuba

From late 2016 through to August 2017, US government personnel serving on a diplomatic assignment in Havana, Cuba, reported neurological symptoms, including headaches, dizziness, hearing loss, fatigue and nausea associated with exposure to auditory and sensory phenomena. In January 2018 the former Secretary of State Rex W Tillerson (February 2017 - March 2018) opened up a formal inquiry into the cause of these symptoms, which in various international papers was reported as a mysterious ‘sonic attack’. The University of Pennsylvania’s Center for Brain Injury and Repair was selected to coordinate multidisciplinary clinical evaluation, treatment and rehabilitation of individuals affected. Of the 25 individuals that reported symptoms, 21 were evalua- ted (11 women, 10 men, mean age 43 years), with multidisciplinary evalua- tions taking an average of 203 days. Out of this group, 18 of the 21 individuals reported hearing a novel, localised sound at the outset of symptoms in their homes and hotel rooms.

Affected individuals described the sounds as directional, intensely loud, and with pure and sustained tonality. Of the patients, high-pitched sound was reported by 16 (76%), although 2 (10%) noted a low-pitched sound. Words used to describe the sound include “buzzing,” “grinding metal,” “piercing squeals,” and “humming.” The sounds were often associated with pressure like (n = 9, 43%) or vibratory (n = 3, 14%) sensory stimuli, which were also experienced by 2 of the 3 patients who did not hear asound. The sensory stimuli were likened to air “baffling” inside a moving car with the windows partially rolled down. Both the sound and sensory stimuli were often described as directional in that the individuals perceived a distinct direction from which the sensation emanated (hereafter referred to as directional phenomena). Further, the directional phenomena appeared to be localized to a precise area, as individuals (n = 12, 57%) noted that after changing

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location, the sensation disappeared and the associated symptoms reduced. Five individuals (24%) reported covering their head and/or ears, although doing so did not result in attenuation of the directional phenomena.” (Swanson, Hampton, Green-McKenzie, Diaz-Arrastia, et al, 2018, p.1127)

The key findings revealed that the cohort had difficulties in remembering and felt cognitively slow. The team ruled out the effect of collective delusional disorders, including mass psychogenic illness. They also concluded that it was unclear if or how the noise was related to the reported symptoms, as sound in the audible range is not known to cause persistent injury to the central nervous system. Given that the individuals all appeared to have sustained injury to widespread brain networks without an associated history of head trauma, the conclusion was that the described, audible sounds might have been associated with another form of exposure.

In the run up to the inquiry, multiple news articles (Devlin, Aug, 2017; Robles and Semple, Aug 2017; Erikson, Sept 2017) described experts analysis of this ‘other form of exposure’ as a sonic attack in the form of ultrasonic frequencies, which are not audible to humans. Other news reports speculated on the influence of Russian operators, including the potential for a chemical attack. The Cuban government also came under severe scrutiny, despite animatedly denying that a sonic attack could not cause neurological damage at such a distance. Neverthe- less, as a result of the situation Mr Trump expelled 15 Cuban diplomats from the US, an act that in part undermined Barack Obama’s 2015 move to re-establish diplomatic relations with Cuba. Additionally, regardless of the University of Pen- nsylvania’s report, which was published on 20 March 2018, two months later international papers reported that diplomats visiting China sustained similar ‘sonic attacks’ to those experienced in Cuba. Other potential scenarios also put forward by experts in international newspapers (Newsweek, May 2018) have described the auditory exposure as a result of surveillance. For example in the Newsweek article, Professor of Computing at the University of Kent Ian McLoughlin notes how ultrasound is used in forms of active surveillance whereby people’s mouth patterns in noisy locations can be masked or tracked (refer here to the previously noted van Eck experiment). While not intentionally aiming to disrupt a person, McLoughlin notes that such surveillance could have led to cavitation damage, particularly when the person is near the sensor. If multiple sensors are in place then “waves from different emitters could combine at the eardrum, causing much higher energies. Sitting in the wrong position for too long could then cause hearing damage without the subjects noticing” (McLoughlin, 2018).

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3. Ecologies of Anxiety and Alarm

As part of the AUDNIT group’s Unsound: Undead symposium at Spike Island, Bristol on 20 April 2018, Steve Goodman contextualised the above events in Cuba in relation to his previous work Sonic Warfare Sound, Affect and The Ecology of Fear (2009). In this book Goodman discusses the affective tone that is the purposeful use of sound and vibration to physiologically and emotionally modulate a person’s or population’s mood, as well as modulate the material, living and non-living environment. The purposeful deployment of sound to disrupt an object’s or persons vibrational frequencies can be achieved through the manipulation of the electromagnetic frequencies, in particular the infra- sonic (under 20Hz), ultrasonic (above 20,000Hz) and audible ranges (20- 20,000Hz). Concrete examples of the use of such tactics within war however are difficult to fully pin down. Although there are cases, Altmann’s (1999) review Acoustic Weapons - A Prospective Assessment: Sources, Propagation, and Effects of Strong Sound, illustrates the lack of evidence. As noted by Altmann and later Valencia (2007), the actual available evidence and use of such sonic weapons is shrouded in secrecy and often classified. √While Goodman’s work and that of the collective AUDINT3, which Goodman is a member, goes some way to collate both anecdotal and critical examples. It could also be argued that the classification of such information in and of itself is a form of deception, which in turns leads to intentional forms of obfuscation that can result in a range of outcomes from expert speculation to full-blown conspiracy theories. It could also be argued that such loops are also considered approaches to ensuring that certain realities are obscured from view, deliberately constructed and purposefully played out in the public imagination as a viable means of distrac- ting from other situations.

4. Deception and Trust

While it is not possible to go into the details of theories of deception here, for the purpose of this short paper deception is defined as “intentionally, knowin- gly, and/or purposely misleading another person” (Levine, 2014 p.2). And while deception has shown to be part of many types of communication and interaction (Buller, Burgoon, Buslig et al, 1998; Ekman and Friesen, 1969; DePaulo, Malone, Lindsay et al, 2003; Zuckerman, DePaulo and Rosenthal,

3 http://www.audint.net/ [Accessed 20 April 2018]

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1981), sound is often not discussed in this context and is more broadly defined (see section 3) as a weapon and more specifically as a Non-Lethal Weapon (NLW). NLWs are tools and tactics that aim not to shoot or kill but to control, deter, disperse and segregate. Yet as noted in the opening abstract for this paper, modern warfare is now centred on a battle for public opinion, which purposefully manipulates human cognitive and emotional fallibility. Given this, the role of NLW’s and in particular the use of sound to create fictional imbalance and shape ambiguous is necessary to both address and explore.

As Nichols notes:

The experience of auditory stimuli is a function of the nervous system. We are culturally conditioned to interpret sounds, and recognise them,which is why we are roused to anxiety by an experience we can neither interpret nor dismiss as ‘noise’. The very fact that infrasound can be ‘felt’ but not heard creates a frustrated perceptual impulse. Anxiety can only be resolved by attaching it to an object or cause. In the absence of either, we tend to create one, and in most instances we create a supernatural or preternatural one. (Nichols, 2000)

Within the case of the US diplomats in Cuba, whether sound was purposefully used or not what is clear is that the outcome of the situation undermined diplomatic relations. Frictional imbalances were achieved and in a politics of retraction, Trump dismissed a number of Cuban diplomats from the US and for a period of time placed an international spotlight on a nation that is still stepping into its new identity, by recasting it as the ‘mistrusted’ other.

5. Why we need a Multi-sensorial Politics of Frequencies

In summary, the US Department of Defence Joint Vision document explicitly notes how fictional imbalance and the shaping of ambiguous situations are essential tactical approaches through which information superiority and the destabilising of so-called adversaries is achieved. In the case of the Cuba example, anxiety was aroused via perceptual cues, which were apparently although not conclusively created via ultrasound. This in turn triggered a whole series of reports and investigations that could in some cases be considered as smokescreens for other activities, potential mistakes or oversights or the deliberate attempt to undermine and derail the other. Whatever the intended

325 AFTER POST-TRUTH Interface Politics, 2nd International Conference outcome such examples highlight how we need to move beyond the analysis of verbal and linguistic forms of mis- and disinformation and instead take a more multisensory account of such happenings. As typified in the Cuban example, the site-specificities of the EM spectrum manipulation are grounded within micro-localities, which according to the diplomats’ accounts varied from one spot to another. Such micro-locations further highlight the vital role in understanding the nuanced affairs of how the body and therefore the mind can be manipulated. Drawing on eco-feminist perspectives, such examples of sound cultivate what Donna Haraway calls “response-ability” (p.34), that is to develop a more attuned collective sense of knowing and doing that takes into account who and what is present and absent. While Haraway’s points are focused on our kin relationships with other species, her call for “response-ability” considers the multiple materialities of site and place through which forms of distortion and manipulation occur. Taking this one step forward, such a multisensory analysis needs to also consider non-human species whose voices have yet to be considered within post-truth, dis- and mis-information narratives whereby the misrepresentation of environmental and climate change issues is undeniably one of the most urgent of matters.

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References

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Applebaum, A. (2018) We know a lot about online disinformation but do nothing. The Fayetteville Observer. Available from: https://www.fayobserver.com/opinion/20181105/anne-applebaum-we-know-lot-about-online-disinformation-but-do- nothing [Accessed 10 October 2018]

Banks, J. (2012) Rorschach Audio, Art and Illusion for Sound. Strange Attractor Press

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Brunton, F. and Nissenbaum, H. (2011) Vernacular resistance to data collection and analysis: A political theory of obfuscation. First Monday. Volume 16, No 5-2, May 2011. Available from: http://finnb.net/w/obfuscation.pdf [Accessed 10 October 2018]

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De Vega, M. (2015) Dolmen. Sonic Acts Festival – The Geological Imagination. February 2015 Devlin, H. (2017) How could the ‘sonic attack’ on US diplomats in Cuba have been carried out? The Guardian. 25 August 2017. Available from: https://www.theguardian. com/science/2017/aug/25/how-could-the-sonic-attack-on-us-diplomats-in-cuba-have-been-carried-out [Accessed 10 October 2018]

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Dillon, T. (2016a) For what it’s worth: sound art practices within secondary school curricula. In: King, A. and Himonides, E. (eds) Music, Technology, Education, Routled- ge & Ashgate

Dillon, T. (2016b) Wire rope express. In: LIMEN, Ecologies of Transmission, In: De Vega, M., Mazón Gardoqui, V. and Silvestrin D. (eds) 17 enhe. ISBN 978-607-96131- 6-7

Dillon, T. (2015) Hello Citizen! Registering the sound of the Smart City. In: Theona, I. and Charitos, D., Hybrid City 3rd International Conference, Data to the People, Procee- dings of the 3rd International Biennial Conference, pp.323-328, 17-15 September 2015, National and Kapodistrian University of Athens, 2015, University Research Institute of Applied Communication. ISBN 978-960-99791-2-2

Ekman, P. and Friesen, W.V. (1969) The repertoire of nonverbal behavior: categories, origins, usage, and coding. Semiotica. 1: 49 98

Erikson, D. (2017) U.S expel 15 Cuban diplomats, latest sign déntente may be ending. The New York Times. 3 October 2017. Available from: https://www.nytimes. com/2017/10/03/world/americas/us-cuba-diplomats.html [Accessed 10 October 2018]

Goodman, S. (2009) Sonic Warfare: Sound, Affect, and the Ecology of Fear. MIT Press

Goodman, S. (2018) Public presentation (title unknown). AUDNIT, Unsound: Un- dead. Spike Island, Bristol, 20 April, 2018

Haraway, D. (2016) Staying with the Trouble: Making Kin in the Chthulucene. Duke University Press: Durham and London

Howse, M. (2006) XXXXX. Published in association with OpenMute

Jackson, B. and Jamieson, K.H. (200&). unSpun: Finding Facts in a World of Disinforma- tion. Random House Trade Paperbacks

Kahn, D. (2013) Earth Sound Earth Signal: Energies and Earth Magnitude in the Arts. University of California Press

Kick, R. (2009) You are STILL being lied to; the NEW disinformation guide to media distortion. Historical Whitewashes and Cultural Myths. Disinformation Books

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Levine, T.R. (2014) Truth-default theory (TDT): a theory of human deception and deception detection. Journal of Language and Social Psychology. 33, 378-92

Levine, T.R. (2014) Active deception detection. Policy Insights from the Behavioral and Brain Sciences. 1, 122-28. Nichols, 2000

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Miyazaki, S. (2013) Urban sound unheard-of: a media archaeology of ubiquitous infospheres. Continuum Journal of Media & Cultural Studies. June 2013. DOI: 10.1080/10304312.2013.803302

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NSA, Tempest: A Signal Problem. The story of the discovery of various compromising radiations from communications and Comsec equipment. NSA, FOIA Case #51633. Approved for release on 09-27-2007

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Valencia-Fernandez, D. C., (2007) Infrasound and its effects on humans. Spatial Audio, DESC9137, Semester 1 2007. Graduate Programme in Audio and Acoustics. Faculty of Architecture, Design and Planning, University of Sydney, Available from: https://bit. ly/2K4Mfwz [Accessed 10 October 2018]

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Zuckerman, M., DePaulo, B.M., and Rosenthal, R. (1981) Verbal and nonverbal communication of deception. In L. Berkowitz (ed),Advances in Experimental Social Psychology. Vol.14, pp.1–59). New York: Academic Press

Teresa Dillon www.polarproduce.org www.urbanknights.org www.repairacts.net

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Fake news and fact-check in the political battle of the Process StoryData (Eli Vivas, Laia Brufau, Silvia Galilea, Carina Bellver)

Abstract Our paper proposal aims to analyze, through a data journalism project, the main fake news published on the networks on the process of independence of Catalonia within one year, from October 1rst 2017 (the date of referendum for self-determination) until October 1rst 2018 (date of the first anniversary of the event). We will collect the data provided by various Twitter accounts, such as @ FactCheckCat and @malditobulo, the only Spanish project dedicated to denying false information to the networks that has been certified by the In- ternational Fact-Checking Network. Our proposal incorporates this technical analysis of mining and interactive data visualization.

Guidelines Post-truth; fact-check; fake news; data journalism; process; referendum.

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La batalla ideològica del Procés utilitza ‘fake news’ per viralitzar desinformació política a les xarxes socials amb l’objectiu de fomentar el dubte, manipular la ciutadania, combatre discursos polítics, guanyar terreny ideològic i desacreditar el contrari. Sota la forma de suplantació de comptes de polítics i ge- neració de notícies falses però que semblen reals es posa en entredit la veritat informativa en una guerra bruta que es bat diàriament a les xarxes socials i que 1 amenaça directament la democràcia , pel volum de 1 https://ec.europa.eu/spain/ notícies falses que hi circulen. news/180220_noticias-falsas_es

2 Al 2017, les notícies falses van créixer un 365% i 2 Approaching the future 2018. Tedencias en reputación y gestión de el futur esdevé desolador. Si no es prenen mesures intangibles. Corporate Excellence – per evitar-ho, es preveu que al 2022 la meitat de les Centre for Reputation Leadership y 3 CANVAS Estrategias Sostenibles. notícies que circulin per les xarxes siguin mentida . Juga en contra el fet que a Twitter, la xarxa social 3 Top Strategic Predictions for 2018 and Beyond. https://www.gartner. per excel·lència per compartir informació, les com/technology/research/predicts/ notícies falses es propaguin més ràpid que les que 4 són veraces , ja que es retuitegen amb un 70% més 4 http://www.sciencemag.org/ news/2018/03/fake-news-spreads- de probabilitats. I això no és tot. A la incertesa sobre faster-true-news-twitter-thanks-peo- la veracitat de la informació se li suma el fet que el ple-not-bots 86% dels espanyols es creu les ‘fake news’ i, per tant, no les detecta a temps, mentre que gairebé la totali- tat de la ciutadania, el 90%, diu haver compartit una notícia falsa5. Per si fos poc, una societat dividida 5 ‘I Estudio sobre el impacto de las fake news en España’. Universidad en bàndols és l’escenari ideal per a què triomfin les Complutense de Madrid. https://d3vj- ‘fake news’ ideològiques6. cwm65af87t.cloudfront.net/novacdn/ EstudioPescanova.pdf

La nostra investigació, basada en tècniques de 6 Fake News. La verdad de las noticias falsas. Marc Amorós Garcia. Plaforma periodisme de dades, demostra que, en el període Editorial. d’un any que abarca des de l’1 d’octubre de 2017 — data de la celebració del referèndum d’autodetermi- nació de Catalunya— fins a l’1 d’octubre de 2018, s’han propagat per les xarxes socials un mínim d’un centenar de fake-news, detectades i verificades, que pretenien interferir en el procés d’independència.

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Aquestes notícies falses ens permeten explicar l’anomenat ‘Procés’ des d’una narrativa inventada però paral·lela a la real, a través de prismes interessats i més enllà dels filtres i els interessos privats de les empreses periodístiques. Una realitat-inventada que vol suplantar la realitat-real a través de la viralitat de missatges falsos, amb la finalitat de “generar idees errònies per establir una opinió pública que sigui reproduïda ràpidament pels usuaris”. L’objectiu final: “sembrar la postveritat”, és a dir, “fer que els fets objectius siguin menys influents a l’opinió pública 7 7 Fake News. La verdad de las noticias que les emocions i les creences personals” . falsas. Marc Amorós Garcia. Plaforma Editorial. 2018 La idiosincràcia d’aquestes informacions falses rau en el seu disseny, en la voluntat de fer-les passar per notícies reals amb l’objectiu de “difondre una desinformació deliberada per obtenir una finalitat 8 8 Fake News. La verdad de las noticias política” . En el cas que ens ocupa, i com demostra falsas. Marc Amorós Garcia. Plaforma Editorial. 2018 la nostra investigació, aquesta finalitat política que es vol aconseguir és, en el cas de l’anomenat bloc unionista, la de desacreditar el moviment independentista i es contraposa amb la voluntat de fer efectiva la república, per part del bloc independentista i malgrat la repressió de l’estat espanyol.

La mostra utilitzada per a la nostra investigació, basada en tècniques de periodisme de dades, sorgeix de l’scrapping a través de l’eina Twimemachine del compte de twitter @MalditoBulo i @FactChec- kCat. Cal remarcar que els companys de Maldito Bulo són, ara mateix, els estandards de la verificació periodística de notícies falses a l’estat espanyol. Un projecte periodístic independent que monitoritza el discurs polític i analitza el missatge a través de l’aplicació de tècniques de periodisme de dades per verificar-ho. Des de juny de 2017, Maldito Bulo forma part de l’Internacional Fact Checking Network i esdevé a l’actualitat l’únic mitjà de comunicació espanyol que forma part del Grup d’Alt Nivell sobre

333 AFTER POST-TRUTH Interface Politics, 2nd International Conference fake news i desinformació de la Comissió Europea. D’altra banda, la tria de @FactCheckCat rau en el fet de ser un compte de twitter català i en català, malgrat que hem detectat que només verifica notí- cies falses relacionades amb el bloc independentista, mentre que @MalditBulo n’ha verificat per part dels dos blocs.

Les ‘fake news’ del Procés

La batalla ideològica ha deixat multitud de fake news, sobretot en els dies claus d’aquest primer any des què es va celebrar el referèndum d’autodetermi- nació. D’aquest darrer any, el dia amb més generació de notícies falses que es van compartir a les xarxes socials va ser, possiblement, l’1 d’octubre de 2017, data del referèndum d’autodeterminació.

Per a @MalditoBulo, aquesta jornada “ho canvia 9 tot”. Al seu web , expliquen que en aquesta data 9 10 bulos sobre el 1-O: Cataluña, campo de batalla de la desinformación. concreta es detecta un “boom de desinformació” i Maldito Bulo. https://maldita.es/mal- és quan “es van adonar” que existia un fenomen de dito-bulo/10-bulos-sobre-el-1-o-ca- taluna-campo-de-batalla-de-la-desin- la desinformació a Espanya “com el que s’havia vist formacion/ a d’altres països”. També desmenteixen la creença, viralitzada a través dels mitjans de comunicació, que la desinformació provinent del bloc independentista provenia de Rússia. Exemples d’aquestes notícies falses són:

1. La dona que van desallotjar d’un col·legi electoral de Girona no és la mateixa que es va fotografiar amb Otegi, malgrat les notícies falses que van circular amb les dues fotografies.

2. La foto d’un policia nacional que no va ser agredit durant l’1-O a Catalunya. Es tracta d’una fotografia de 2008 d’agricultors agredint a un agent a Almeria.

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3. No hi va haver cap nen de sis anys que quedés paralític per una càrrega policial.

4. La foto del jove amb el cap sagnant era de 2012, durant les càrregues poli- cials contra les protestes dels miners de Madrid.

5. El whatsapp que va circular dient que només es va votar a 62 taules era fals.

6. La fotografia de la Policia Nacional contra els bombers no és de l’1-O, és de 2013.

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La verificació, l’antídot contra les ‘fake news’

La magnitud de la situació col·loca la verificació de la informació -l’anomenat ‘fact-check’- com a un dels principals reptes no només dels periodistes i de les plataformes socials sinó de qualsevol usuari que no vulgui ser víctima de la desinformació interessada. Se- gons dades del Duke Reporters Lab10, la comprovació 10 Duke Reporter’s Lab. https://repor- dels fets s’ha triplicat en els últims 4 anys. També ha terslab.org/latest-news/ crescut el nombre de verificadors de dades, un 239% des de 2014, passant de 44 a 149, ubicats a 53 països diferents. El continent amb més fact-checkers és Amèrica del Nord (53) seguit per Europa (52), Àsia (22), Amèrica del Sud (15), Àfrica (4) i Austràlia (3).

En aquest sentit, són moltes les iniciatives que 11 Internatio Fact Checkin Network. https://ifcncodeofprinciples.poynter. s’han pujat al carro de la lluita contra la desinfor- org/ mació. Periodísticament, un dels més proactius és 12 Grup d’Alt Nivell sobre fake nwes Maldito Bulo, un projecte periodístic de verificació i desinformació de la Comissió d’informació que forma part de l’International Fact Europa 2018. https://ec.europa. 11 eu/digital-single-market/en/ Checking Network i que esdevé l’únic mitjà de news/experts-appointed-high-le- comunicació espanyol integrat al Grup d’Alt Nivell vel-group-fake-news-and-online-disinformation sobre ‘fake news’ i desinformació de la Comissió 12 13 Descarga la extensión de Maldito Europea . Aquesta iniciativa ha llançat una exten- Bulo para Chrome y Firefox. https:// 13 sió de Chrome i Firefox per alertar de webs poc maldita.es/descarga-la-exten- 14 sion-de-maldito-bulo-para-goo- fiables i també un manual de sis passos que permet gle-chrome-y-firefox/ distingir entre informació real i falsa, com també ha 14 Manual Maldito Bulo. https:// fet el Col·legi de Periodistes de Catalunya, en aquest www.lasexta.com/programas/ cas a través d’un decàleg15 per identificar ‘fake news’. el-objetivo/noticias/el-manual-de-seis-pasos-de-malditobulo-para-que-no-te-cuelen-noticias-fal- sas_2017031758cbebd70cf2453280c- Davant la pèrdua de credibilitat creixent, els mitjans 37be6.html de comunicació tradicionals també estan fent un 15 Cert o no cert: aquestes són les esforç per no perdre audiència. A Espanya, diaris qüestions. Ferran Lanueza. https:// digitals com Público ha llançat un mapa de trans- www.report.cat/llista-detectar-fake- parència16 per combatre la desinformació, una eina news-cert/ de periodisme transparent (TJ Tool, Transparent 16 Mapa de Transparencia. https://blogs.publico.es/ Journalism Tool) que genera un mapa de trans- publico/2018/10/04/un-mapa-de-transparencia-en-cada-noti- parència en cadascuna de les informacions que es cia-la-propuesta-de-publico-para-com- publiquen en aquesta plataforma. batir-la-desinformacion/

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Els professionals de la informació s’organitzen a través d’entitats com ara l’European Journalism 17 17 European Journalism Centre. Center , una entitat sense ànim de lucre que, des https://ejc.net/ del maig de 2016, presideix el periodista català Vicent Partal. Entre les iniciatives principals destaca 18 First Draft Colition. https://first- la creació de la First Draft Coalition18, un grup que draftnews.org/ treballa seriosament el ‘fact-check’ o el ‘Verification 19 19 Verification Hand Book. http:// Handbook’ , un document traduït a nou llengües verificationhandbook.com/ que dóna eines i apunta bones pràctiques que es poden fer servir com a periodistes per desenmascarar les ‘fake news’.

A nivell europeu, també hi ha diversos exemples. A França, on el govern treballa per legislar contra les mentides mediàtiques, vuit mitjans de comunicació s’han aliat per lluitar contra la desinformació interessada. Als Estats Units, hi ha més exemples com 20 Politifact: Fact-checking US Politics. Politifact20, un projecte del Tampa Bay Times que https://www.politifact.com/ ostenta un premi pulitzer i que es dedica a verificar 21 Fact-Check.org. https://www. dades o també el web Fact-Check.org21. A més, factcheck.org/ 22 existeixen organitzacions com Stop Fake , que es 22 Stop Fake.org. https://www.stop- dediquen a desmentir informació falsa de la guerra fake.org/es/sobre-nosotros/ entre Rússia i Ucraïna.

Fins i tot Viquipèdia ha llançat un web per verificar dades. Es tracta de Wikitribune, que oferirà articles reals i neutrals, a través d’un model de negoci basat en subscripcions mensuals. Però hi ha projectes a tot el món en una llarga llista, com per exemple Africa Check, Boom Fact-check a l’Índia, Agencia Lupa al Brasil, Verificado a Mèxic o Confirmado a Guatemala, fins al punt que el 2 d’abril s’ha triat 23 23 Fact-Checking Day. https://www. com el Dia Internacional del Fact-Checking . factcheckingday.com/ També les plataformes socials estan invertint esforços en trobar fórmules que permetin la ràpida 24 Las Grandes Plataformas contra las fake news. Antoni Gutiérrez-Rubí. verificació de la informació, després que a les elec- https://www.slideshare.net/Antoni/ las-grandes-plataformas-contra-las- cions presidencials de 2016 als Estats Units se les fake-news critiqués pel seu paper en la batalla electoral24.

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Google invertirà 300 milions de dòlars en els propers 5 anys per millorar la qualitat de la seva informació, a través de la subscripció d’informació. Des de l’abril, els usuaris poden comprovar el grau de verificació en algunes de les informacions del buscador i compten amb 115 ‘fact-checkers’ que participen en aquesta iniciativa.

Pel que fa a Facebook, el 6 d’abril Mark Zucker- 25 berg va fer un post on explicava la nova eina per 25 https://www.facebook.com/photo. php?fbid=10103623499604541&se- detectar notícies falses i que es col·loca a la part t=a.529237706231&type=3&theater superior del seu news feed. Una iniciativa treballada amb l’equip de First Draft, una organització sense ànim de lucre dedicada a elevar els estandards per informar.

També Twitter s’hi ha sumat a la guerra contra les ‘fake news’. L’empresa tecnològica ha eliminat més de 70 milions de bots des del mes de juliol, per combatre una forma generalitzada de frau a les xarxes socials. I és que els bots comparteixen el 20% 26 de les ‘fake news’ . 26 ‘Online Human-Bot Interactions: Detection, Estimation and Characte- rization’. https://aaai.org/ocs/index. Les tres empreses, juntament amb Mozilla, s’han php/ICWSM/ICWSM17/paper/ compromès a instaurar mecanismes de vigilància view/15587/14817 de la informació falsa per tal que les fake news no influeixin en les eleccions europees de maig de 201927. Això després que a les últimes eleccions 27 Las grandes plataformas contra las fake news. Antoni Gutiérrez-Rubí. americanes, les 20 notícies falses més compartides https://www.slideshare.net/Antoni/ van sumar més interaccions que les 20 que van ser las-grandes-plataformas-contra-las- 28 fake-news verídiques . 28 Informe Buzz Feed. https://www. buzzfeed.com/craigsilverman/par- 29 També Whatsapp ha restringit el reenviament tisan-fb-pages-analysis?utm_term=. hyvwrEz9V#.ih31Wop4v massiu de missatges per lluitar contra les notícies falses. La mesura s’aplicarà a tots els usuaris pro- 29 More changes to forwarding. https://blog.whatsapp.com/10000647/ gressivament per tal de reduir a només 5 xats el fet More-changes-to-forwarding de poder reenviar missatges. Un altre dels gegants, YouTube, ha assegurat que intentarà combatre les ‘fake news’ incorporant als seus videos, sobretot de

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vacunes i canvi climàtic, informació procedent de Viquipèdia i de l’Enciclopèdia Britànica.

A nivell polític, la Comissió Europea també s’ha volgut posicionar contrària a la viralització de les notícies falses. Per aquest motiu, ha llançat una consulta pública en què es pot participar fins al 23 de febrer amb l’objectiu de determinar “com en alguns països s’intenta direccionar el debat públic a través de la divulgació estratègica de les notícies falses”30.

També la tecnologia s’ha posat a favor de la lluita contra la desinformació. Són moltes les aplicacions i els programes que s’han creat per combatre la desinformació, com per exemple InVid31, que pot verificar videos. També diverses universitats, com la de Michigan, als Estats Units, o Àmsterdam, als Països Baixos, han creat un algoritme capaç de detectar informació falsa amb més fiabilitat que els humans. Fins i tot a la Universitat de Yale, als Estats Units, es va crear el complement Open Mind, com a extensió per al navegador de Chrome de Google. Instruments que poden servir als usuaris a detectar notícies falses i neutralitzar-les, amb l’objectiu de no compartir-les per a què no es facin virals a través de les xarxes. Perquè, parafrasejant Donald Trump, 45è president dels Estats Units, “fake news is the enemy”.

StoryData http://www.storydata.es/

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Disinformation B (cases) Panel#12 Moderated by Gabrielle Cosentino

Banu Ciçek Tülü Spatial Forms of Resistance in Turkey

Mª Soliña Barreiro, Aina Fernàndez The fallacy of the end of class struggle: underrepresentation and distortion of identity (The case of the strike of the Bershka workers)

Burak Pak, Hulya Ertas Post-truth in Architecture Media

Berke Alikasifoglu, Gabriele Cosentino The politics of disinformation in the Middle East: the case studies of Syria and Turkey

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Spatial forms of Resistance in Turkey Banu Çiçek Tülü

Abstract Turkey has faced many crises in the cultural, social and political scene after the 1980 coup d’état. Top-down decisions, mass production of housing and urban renewal (kentsel dönüsüm – which is far from a renovation of an old neigh- bourhood and it is not an innocent approach to improve social conditions – is the ultimate neoliberal tool of government to replace the certain disadvantaged communities in order to benefit from central urban areas) exclude the inhabitants from their own environment, as well as from the decision making process. Additionally, after today’s ruling party gained single party power in 2002, construction politics transformed into propaganda for the state and local governance. Construction industry has been defined as one of the leading industry for the economic development of the country. Hence, “emergent spatial practices” developed with the necessity to critique the power of state on the construction industry, architectural, cultural practices and society. Besides the negative environment, hopeless positions, crisis and ruptures, the author proposes that creative and grassroots activism creates hope and new ways of seeing even countries like Turkey where the network society contested. This paper contributes to current research on urban activism by examining how different groups from Turkey that work on urban issues and architectural solutions create critical opposition about the ongoing neoliberal reconstruction of common space. It explores how those groups produce alternative spatial practices and how they can create geographies of resistance and re-production of new “spaces of hope”. Based on semi-structured interviews with founders of the groups and document reviews, the paper presents three different categories of the groups. Keywords Urban activism; urban research; contested cities; network society; urban design; urban democracy.

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1.Spatial forms of resistance in Turkey

The city is not being understood anymore just as a physical structure. Streets, public life, neighborhoods and urban events continuously shape the urban texture and everyday life. Art, artists and creative community have affected their tendencies to transform their habitat within the community; urban space is central to these speculative urban visions, most of which are described through imaginative takes on dwelling, shopping, work or recreational space. Urban design plays a significant role in envisioning cities, in defining the structure of every day city life. To city-dwellers, however, the city form is perhaps only partially built, or of buildings. The city seems to move, to be alive, to change. Cultural icons emerge from clusters of activity, and the city takes on a kind of ephemeral figure. Given this dynamic appearance, design should be equally nimble–capable of reconciling the moving with the static. It is this condition of design that the present thesis seeks to develop. Briefly, it may be of some use to ponder the mechanics of urban space, specifically with respect to these mentioned temporal elements and modes. However, as Hard and Negri (2009) discuss that the city, of course, is not just a built environment consisting of buildings and streets and subways and parks and waste systems and communications cables but also a living dynamic of cultural practices, intellectual circuits, affective networks, and social institutions. These elements of the common contained in the city are not only the prerequisite for biopolitical production but also its result; the city is the source of the common and the receptacle into which it flows. Mainly, the authors highlights the importance of the living and building together. Furthermore, Chantal Mouffe (1991) explains the citizenship as persons who construct the city and they are not only “the passive recipient of specific rights and who enjoys the protection of the law”. Mouffe (1991) does not undermine those elements and considers as unrelated, “but the definition of the citizen shifts because the emphasis is put on the identification with the commonwealth. It is a common political identity of the persons who might be engaged in many different purposive enterprises and with differing conceptions of the good, but who accept submission to the rules prescribed by the commonwealth in seeking their satisfactions and in performing their actions. What binds them together is their common recognition of a set of ethico-political values. In this case, citizenship is not just one identity among others – as in liberalism – or the dominant identity that overrides all others – as in civic republicanism . It is an articulating principle that affects the different subject positions of the social agents while allowing for a plurality of specific allegiances and for the respect of individual liberty” (Mouffe, 1991).

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Therefore, Mouffe (1991) proposes the deconstruction of the identification of citizens, those proposes the radical democratic citizenship where must be an extension of equality and liberty. In that sense, the rise of urban movements and urban activism have a big impact on deconstruction of identities and neoliberal development of cities. The fact that the emergence of movements is symbolized by the names of cities, even the problems they addressing is global or regional. This is by no means a coincidence: in every corner of the world, groups need “places” to establish themselves as a movement. Moreover, since most of the issues and institutions criticized by the urban movements are in cities, cities represent the regional focal points of urban movements. This does not mean that rural conflicts are less important in terms of regional focus, as the paper presents in the following section giving examples from all over Turkey.

2.Emergent spatial practices from Turkey

Turkey’s population – the country mostly described as the bridge between Europe and Asia – had been estimated 80,810,525 in 2017. There are 81 cities in the country and approx. %76 of the population live in cities. Even there is a significant increase in population, according to Turkish Statistical Institution, 253,640 people moved out from Turkey in 2017. The reasons vary. Researchers argues that after the failed coup d’etat in 2016 and the following state of emergency pushed people to look for democratic living conditions. While the terror attacks make people feel unsafe, the post-truth era creates fear especially in big cities. As a result of ongoing conservative development in any sense, oppres- sion is getting bigger and the freedom of expression is totally under control. Apparently, brain drain is not a new thing for Turkey. However, there is an significant acceleration in the last years. Privileged academicians and intellectuals try to find the way to go out, but there is still big population remains in Turkey. This paper is interested with the remaining population and their act in order to find the ways to democracy in spatial forms.

Turkey has faced many crises in the cultural, social and political scene after the 1980 coup d’état. Beside the economic cycle, those crises affected architectural and spatial sphere. Top-down decisions, mass production of housing and urban renewal (kentsel dönüsüm – which is far from a renovation of an old neighbor- hood and it is not an innocent approach to improve social conditions – is the ultimate neoliberal tool of government to replace the certain disadvantaged communities in order to benefit from central urban areas) exclude the inhabi-

343 AFTER POST-TRUTH Interface Politics, 2nd International Conference tants from their own environment, as well as from the decision making process. Additionally, after today’s ruling party gained single party power in 2002, construction politics transformed into propaganda for the state and local governance. Construction industry has been defined as one of the leading industry for the economic development of the country. Hence, “emergent spatial practices” developed with the necessity to critique the power of state on the construction industry, architectural, cultural practices and society. Besides the negative environment, hopeless positions, crisis and ruptures, this paper proposes that creative and grassroots activism creates hope and new ways of seeing even countries like Turkey where the network society contested.

This paper contributes to current research on urban activism by examining how different groups from Turkey that work on urban issues and architectural solutions create critical opposition about the ongoing neoliberal reconstruction of common space. It explores how those groups produce alternative spatial practices and how they can create geographies of resistance and re-production of new “spaces of hope”. Based on semi-structured interviews with founders of the groups and document reviews, the paper finds three different categories of the groups.

3.Categories of groups in spatial practices

These groups has been constructed, firstly in order to emphasize the diversity of spatial scales and their forms of articulation as the main feature of the urban conflicts. Secondly, to analyze the contribution of various prototypes of different activism models and their strategic orientation to global and local urban movements. One of the common feature is they all work overall Turkey, not only focusing to the big cities.

4.Category 1: DIY

First category focuses on DIY style construction which concentrates on repai- ring, reusing, renewing and hacking (by using technology) in small scale and in short term period. They propose creating alternative knowledge and to the point actions. The first type work mostly on the symbolic appearance of neoliberal reconstructing. It is interested with the crisis of urban infrastructure and focuses to transforming the winning narratives and challenges the hegemonic

344 Disinformation B (cases)_Panel#12 images. Furthermore, they are especially crucial for traditional architecture, urban and social studies education system because of their workshop activities with different student groups.

4.1. Onaranlar Klübü (www.onaranlarkulubu.com) The Group describes themselves as “a community of volunteers who produce useful projects for the city on the axis of repair, production and sharing”. While they are creating their projects they focus on the dialog between them and the environment. This is why focus on ecological solutions and recycling.

Figure 1 Source: Onaranlar Klubu

4.2. -trak (design-trak.com) The group „thinks up the interaction between the space and the user and offers permanent and temporary designs to enhance the space“. Their approach to the place oriented issues is taking care of the all elements and consider it as a mould code. They work on common working areas, ateliers and street itself.

4.3. Plankton Project (https://www.facebook.com/planktonproject/) They started as a student group and continue their activities. It is also possible to see those kind of small student groups are becoming offices, in order to sur-

345 AFTER POST-TRUTH Interface Politics, 2nd International Conference vive in the market. They are bringing a new approach to the conventional urban planning and architecture education. They propose other possibilities to work and collaborate together with big institutions in an interdisciplinary project.

Figure 2 Source: Plankton Project

5.Category 2: NGO

Second category performs as an NGO that focuses an awareness on urban issues and raises critical question on right to the city in different scales. In that sense, they propose organizational continuity. They use exiting data in order to shatter the invisible hierarchies and construct the public sphere. At the same time, it fights against the dominant hegemonic system in long term. In general, they aim to establish alternative social and economic (sub-) structures. They use media activism as a tool which facilitates the flow of knowledge and time. They consider rural conflicts, such as urban conflicts, are directly related to global neoliberal reconstruction.

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5.1. Ekolojik Haklar Merkezi (Center for Ecological Rights - ekolojikhaklar.org) The group’s aim is to help citizens their right and how to use them. They help citizens to reach the right information about environmental and urban issues, to make the right applications and to refer to the relevant public institution. They do not offer legal services but an objective perspective on ecological urban issues.

5.2. Kuzey Ormanlari Savunmasi (Northern Forest Defense www.kuzeyormanlari.org) Their working are is the northern part of Istanbul, from Istanbul to Sapanca, together with the whole forest areas. They focus to different ecosystems including water basins, agricultural areas, numerous endemic plants and animal species, advocating that an ecological area can survive. It is a movement of non for profit and voluntary individuals who organizes solidarity actions in order to stop any urban-rural project that threaten the nature. Even their working area is limited they have been a good example for other organizations since their establishment.

5.3. Çekül (The Foundation for the Protection and Promotion of the Environment and Cultural Heritage - www.cekulvakfi.org.tr) They aim to strengthen the sensitivity of the public on traditional values and identities that have disappeared. They work on renewing or re-establishing these assets without touching the original quality, without disrupting their identity and to protect, to improve, to function and to live with a modern understanding as well as to transfer to the future as a heritage.

6. Category 3: Association

The third category is mostly associations which works actively in architectural and urban sphere in Turkey and produce alternative solutions from small to large scale projects and aim to change the political discourse. They contribute to the institutionalization of the impact of social movements and create a safe space for dissenting thoughts and alternatives.

6.1. Mekanda Adalet (Center for Spatial Justice/Beyond Istanbul – www.beyond-istanbul.org) The group work on issues on spatial justice and create cross-disciplinary, independent, demand-responsive urban solutions. They support local communities, municipalities and force the scientific research before the action.

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6.2. Düzce Umut Atölyesi (duzceumutatolyesi.wordpress.com) It is a group of volunteers from wide range disciplines as well as citizens. They came together upon the call of A Hope Association - Solidarity Workshop for the help to Düzce Earthquake Victims. Even their starting point is Düzce, the group work collectively in order to create an alternative housing production in Turkey which is a good example of community building in a post-natural disaster area.

Figure 3 Source: Düzce Umut Atolyesi

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6.3. Herkes icin Mimarlik (Architecture for All – www.herkesicinmimarlik.org) The Group focuses on participatory processes in the construction of architectural and urban projects. They work collectively with the citizens or users in order to raise an awareness and act as catalyzers between public and private entities.

7. Conclusion

Spatial practices work on multiple phases which include different processes and networks. Those design processes in urban issues with an inclusive, active and mixed approach enable different actors to join and express the other forms of knowledge, production and resistance. The reason that this mentioned groups have been chosen as examples firstly they are interested with spatial questions and urban issues. Secondly, their focus is overall Turkey. They are interested topics like; DIY Urbanism, Tactical Urbanism, Artistic intervention, Production of space, Right to the City, Right to Housing, Right to Ecology, etc. The most distinctive features of these groups is that their international orientation of the subject and the diversity of working areas. Hence, researching about their characteristics enables to understand their interdisciplinary processes. Claiming the right to the city should not be seen as only improving the living conditions in cities. At the same time, it also refers to a legitimized source of livelihood, including a wide range of democratic participation, human rights, equal access to commonwealth, and various other aspects, such as the appeal of public space, environmental justice or social solidarity. These three different groups could refer to different typologies in terms of organization, management and communication. Nevertheless, their focal points coalesce with creating awareness, fight against power relations and restructure them in everyday city life. Beside their positive approaches, they experience the rupture because of social, economic, cultural and political limitations. However, understanding their role is crucial by means of creating a platform for discussion for urban agenda and actors but also as a collective experience for users who shape the spatial domination and counter-resistance practices in order to reproduce the urban space.

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References

Hardt, M; Negri, A. 2009. Commonwealth. London:Harvard University Press.

Mouffe, C. 1991.Democratic Citizenship and the Political Community in Community at Loose Ends (ed.) Miami Theory Collective. University of Minnesota Press.

Banu Çiçek Tülü https://www.researchgate.net/profile/Banu_Cicek_Tuelue

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The fallacy of the end of class struggle: underrepresentation and distortion of identity (The case of the strike of the Bershka workers) Mª Soliña Barreiro, Aina Fernàndez

Abstract Between October and November 2017, the longest strike Inditex had ever had to face took place. 100% of the workers in the shops of Pontevedra (Galicia, Spain) went on an indefinite strike for 9 days, until their working conditions were equal to those of the workers from other Spanish provinces. Bershka’s tex- tile industry model, based on productive and labor precariousness, throwaway culture, business relocation and overexploitation had a class and feminist response. The normalization of the discourses from the tune of the “there is no alternative” (Thatcher) to neoliberalism and the praise of consumerism-constructed identity -which had been increasing from the 80s and predicted the end of class struggle-, is faced by a conflict that, despite the attempts of invisibiliza- tion by the media, reflects the tradition of class struggle though adapted to the new productive and social context.

This communication proposal aims to demonstrate the systematic destruction of class identity in the media and culture and the emergence of new models of struggle which, despite being rooted in the era of fast fashion, offshoring and the service industry, anchor their roots in the tradition of labor struggle.

To develop these ideas, the discourses produced at (and inhibited by) the media during the strike and the union discourse of the workers involved will be analyzed. Methodologies mobilized are therefore diverse: content analysis and in-depth interview all guided by a theoretical framework based on Critical Theory.

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Bershka shop assistants’ strike has broken, thanks to their discourse and images, the illusion of a fake middle-class identity built by consumption, showing how the working class can still be defined in Marxist classical terms despite its transformations.

Keywords Class struggle; audiovisual journalism; conflict and representation; politics and media; labour protests

— Mª Soliña Barreiro http://tecnocampuc.academia.edu/M%C2%AASoli%C3%B1aBa- rreiro/CurriculumVitae — Aina Fernàndez https://tecnocampus.academia.edu/AinaFernandez

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Post-truth in Architecture Media Hulya Ertas, Burak Pak

Abstract Architecture media has a history of more than a century as a business-to-business (B2B) platform with established relationships within the construction and real estate sector and it is rarely discussed in a critical manner in the theoretical and empirical media studies. Therefore the recent debates on post-truth are hardly considered as problematic in this field. In this context, the main aim of this paper is to initiate a critical discussion on the forms of post-truth such as manipulation of knowledge; censorship, self-censoring and blackout; commercialization of knowledge and poor journalism within the mainstream architecture media. The paper starts with a visit to three scenes experienced by the authors, revealing different forms of post-truth in this domain. Afterwards, we discuss the emergence and evolution of post-truth in relation to the architecture media. Following the presentation of a theoretical framework for the future of a post-truth-proof architecture media, we introduce the idea of a knowledge commons as a means to enable social and participatory construction of truth on architectural projects in the form of a post-media, and initiate an open discussion for further questions.

Keywords post-truth; architecture media; knowledge commons; post-media; commons.

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Can true function arise from basic dysfunction? Ursula K. Le Guin, The Dispossessed (1974)

Scene 1

On July 2017 Hulya (the first author) receives a call from Ersen Gursel, a well-known architect in Turkey. The topic is Galataport, a controversial project on the agenda for more than 15 years, criticized for privatization of public space, risk of gentrification and over-touristification. Located on the seaside of Tophane, very close to Pera, the place used to house the cruise port, museums and cultural institutions. With the support of local and national authorities, the neoliberal logic of urban transformation and privatization envisions a scheme based on profit maximization at this very central seaside. On the phone Gursel was mentioning he had seen the project on Metropolis magazine’s website. Given the lack of transparency in these transformation processes this was a big news. Through the link he sent with the title ofHow a Hydraulic Boardwalk Is Giving Istanbul Its Waterfront Back it reads: “So a master plan, under construction through 2019, that will restore the public’s access to a historic 0.75-mile area along the European bank of the Bosporus has been welcomed.” (Moreno, 2017) By tearing down buildings of modernist industrial heritage (Anon, n.d.) and re- placing them with luxury hotels and commercial spaces through an extremely opaque process, Gensler and Dror are promising the citizens to “give back” their public space after 200 years. However, on the plan it is unclear how the fo- reseen linear boardwalk connects to the everyday life and the informal networks. Also, the notion and definition of public space in Istanbul is problematic today and apparently was more problematic 200 years ago. The statement and how the project is being developed does not only impose a western and modernist mode of thinking (in the form of creative destruction and panopticism) it also ignores the long term effects of the project such as gentrification, urban memory loss and commercialization of leisure activities. This type of myopic readings especially on public space in developing countries is not accidental, it is an intentional manipulation of knowledge by the architecture offices that wishes to continue their businesses as usual.

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Scene 2

On May 2015, Burak (the second author) reads an article written by the manager of the Arkitera online platform on the architecture of the Presidential Campus of President Erdogan in Ankara: “Sometimes acquaintances, journalists ask me to make a few comments solely on the architecture of this building. How am I going to do so? Has this building been ever published in architecture media? Have we asked the architect Şefik Birkiye to give feedback? Yes, several times (without success). Has anyone took us around the building? … No.”. In this article, Ömer Yılmaz (2015) points out to a vital problem which has become increasingly prominent in the last decade in the Turkish media: censorship, self-censoring and blackout. The presidential campus is estimated to cover a total area of 750.000 square meters (TC Cumhurbaşkanlığı, 2015) and it is one of the most important pieces of architecture ever built in the history of the Turkish Repu- blic using public funds. The whole process of its design has been organized without an open competition and completed in secrecy with a single architecture office. The main presidential building has been completed in 2015 and the citizens and representatives from 25 media organizations have been invited to join guided tours, and even a virtual tour has been made available. However, both are organized in a strictly limited perimeter and cover only “the main areas”. Yet, almost three years after its completion, there is still a cloak of secrecy over the architectural plans, a mystery on the exact size and the building program(s) and the total cost which are ever-expanding. This factual blackout of architecture and selective censorship leads to lack of sensible criticism and make it impossible to initiate any meaningful architectural discussion on the Presiden- tial Campus. These also result in the emergence of fake news and polarizing speculations (such as golden toilets), (Anon, 2015) diverting the public sphere the towards the never ending cycles of myth-manufacturing and myth-busting as well as accusations of “perception management” by the government.

Scene 3

On September 2018, while working on this article we were reading about Superkilen, BIG, Topotek 1 & Superflex’s well-known project in Copenhagen online. Clicking on some architecture websites led to a numerical oddity. On Archdaily, (Anon., 2012) the park’s length is half a mile (804.672 meters), on Designboom (Chin, 2012) 1000 meters, and on Dezeen (2012) it is 750 meters. This quantitative oddity is easily traceable. The mismatch between the

355 AFTER POST-TRUTH Interface Politics, 2nd International Conference social impact envisioned by the design architects and daily life consequences is not that easy to spot. If you keep reading about the Superkilen on mainstream architecture media, you come across the statements of Bjarke Ingels, spread out in the form of a press release to all media outlets. This press release quotes him saying: “… we proposed public participation as the driving force of the design leading towards the maximum freedom of expression. By transforming public procedure into proactive proposition we curated a park for the people by the people – peer to peer design – literally implemented.” When we searched for this exact statement online, we discovered ten more news resources and countless blog posts which “copy-pasted” the statement of the architect into a news piece without any questioning and quoting, one being the news outlet of a reputable university. These are clear cases of poor journalism through which novel projects are praised and set as ideal cases on the architecture media. It’s a fait accompli: architecture journalists don’t have to spend effort to write and criticize but still can make profit from the press release; and the architect gets free marketing of his/her own “truth”. However, there is an issue with this truth: “a park for the people by the people” does not seem to be appreciated by the people using it. On a site visit to Superkilen in 2012 Hulya had witnessed one of the project managers at BIG explaining how the pieces of urban furnitu- re were being broken by people and replaced over and over again. Brett Bloom (2013), a critic of the park for its financial model, lack of urban feel, surveillance and control mechanisms implemented on public space also tackles this issue of constant breaking of park elements and connect that phenomenon to them not being “designed for Nørrebro’s public space” (Bloom, 2013). For instance, the palm trees transplanted (Green, 2013) from distant cultures struggle to survive due to climatic incompatibility. The qualitative oddity here becomes apparent as a rupture between the information shared through the press release (as a form of self-promotion and advertising) and the reality of daily life.

The evolution of post-truth

The general discourse evolving around post-truth accelerated after the presidential elections in USA in 2016. The term was even selected as the word of the year by Oxford Dictionary (Flood, 2016) which related the emergence of the term to the widespread use of social media as a news source as well to distrust towards the establishment. However, according to Google Ngram analysis tool (2018), the use of the term dates earlier -back to the beginning of 1990s- a period when it was common to add “post” to any concept to start a speculative discussion.

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The concept of post-truth in the meaning we understand today originates in The Post-truth Era book by Ralph Keyes in 2004. The author positioned post-truth as a third category between an ambiguous statement and a lie. Ac- cording to him, key elements of post-truth is deception and dishonesty. These are employed by high-profile dissemblers, through a trickle-down mechanism which operates from top to bottom.

Today, we observe the popularization of the post-truth which operates both ways, top-down and bottom-up in cycles of feedback, creating a snowballing effect. The financial crisis of 2008 has led to the increasing distrust towards the establishment and the increasing use of social media by the disadvantaged parts of the population. In this context, varieties of post-truth get amplified through the echo chambers of platforms such as Facebook and Snapchat which have recently been put under legal scrutiny for spreading misinformation. Long established protocols of editorship, scholarly and journalistic truth are being replaced by the Newsfeed algorithm of Facebook, making Mark Zuckerberg the “editor-in-chief of the globe” (Martinez, 2018). However, the fabrication and spread of post-truth goes beyond the social media, blogs and online platforms. Bjarke Ingel’s sentences in press release reviewed in Scene 3, has even been published in an MIT Journal as an article (Ingels, 2012).

Emergence of post-truth has also led to the emergence of the concept of “fake news”. According to the Reuters Digital News Report (Newman, 2018) fake news covers: manipulation of knowledge, commercialization of knowledge (stories as adverts), censorship, self-censoring and blackout and poor journalism. These bring core principles of journalism under the spotlight.

Organizations such as the Ethical Journalism Network (Anon, n.d.) suggest to tackle the poor journalism practices by enforcing five core principles: truth and accuracy, independence, fairness and impartiality, humanity and accountability. The principles such as accuracy, independence, accountability can be monitored and discussed relatively easier (but may be difficult to implement in a neoliberal context) compared to the truth, fairness and humanity. The biggest challenge in this context is the kind of understanding of truth which is based on objectivity: the factual truth (Keane, 2018).

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Post-truth in architecture media

Architecture media has a history of more than a century as a business-to-business (B2B) platform with established relationships within the construction and real estate sector. These are rarely discussed in the theoretical and empirical media studies, thus the recent debates on post-truth are hardly considered as problematic in the architecture media. Yet, going back to the opening scenes of this article we can easily trace the mechanisms for the construction of post-truth (Newman, 2018) manipulation of knowledge (scene 1), censorship, self-censoring and blackout (scene 2), commercialization of knowledge: stories as adverts (scene 3). And poor journalism plays part in varying proportions in all these aforementioned scenes. These phenomena are partly related to the culture of architecture media, partly to the emergent socio-political and technological developments.

Through a cross-matching of the general conditions in architecture media and the forms of post-truth, it becomes explicit that manipulation of knowledge is related to culture of architecture media as a B2B platform, censorship to editorial line and commercialization of knowledge to content production mechanisms.

The architecture media’s inherent quality as a B2B platform indicates a complex relationship between the media outlet and the profession. Architects are content producers and consumers at the same time. They are the news, authors of the news, readers of the news. And with the introduction of new online publications or online interfaces of established architecture magazines this relationship gets even more complex since different levels of contribution to content production is possible through comments, voting for future content, sharing on social media or financial support of media outlets via crowd- sourcing, etc. (Garrido, 2015). It is actually this complex relationship that undermines the criticism in the field. It is a common practice in architecture media to first contact the architects who designed the building, ask for their permission and recommendation of a critic to publish the project. The natural end product of this mechanism is “captive writers telling happy stories of what the architect wanted to do and how they did it (always successfully)” (Clark & Walker, 2013). Mostly relying on the intention of the architects, quoting their design principles with little or no critical reflection, the texts penned by critics manipulate knowledge. These are also accompanied by images produced by the architecture office who designed the building, namely renders or photographs shot by the artist commissioned by the architecture office. It is possible to

358 Disinformation B (cases)_Panel#12 digitally manufacture a render with no balustrades on balconies, green terrace gardens on 100 meters above ground and have it circulated in architecture media outlets (Minkjan, 2016). It is also possible to photoshop photographs of the buildings to clear unwanted wires, dirt on facades and even to replace the building in another setting (McGuigan, 2012). This is the practice of manipulation of knowledge through the textual and the visual content .

On the other hand there is a long tradition of setting the editorial line of the architecture magazines by selecting what to publish or not, claiming this is where the critical stand of the publication lies. “Criticism is practiced by omission: when the editors don’t like a building, they just don’t talk about it” (Fromont, 2013). This trend is to be followed all the way back to first editions of Archi- tectural Review, founded in 1896 (Parnell, 2016). Taking a position through selection, architecture media limits itself to productions of architects which is only 5% of the built environment (Ibelings & Powerhouse Company, 2012, p.60). This self-censoring and/or blackout mechanism has also played a part in detaching architecture media from the wider audience since the daily life realm has been omitted along with the not-good-enough-to-publish buildings. Even within the 5%, the buildings that their designs are not well received in quality, are not published at all, rather than receiving a well-deserved critique. This is partly related with the characteristics of architecture publications as B2B platforms; in the architecture community no one wants to be enemies with no one. And this can also be partly related with the political and economical conditions of the context or power relations architecture media is operating in. Knocking down a building with a good critique requires more courage than claiming criticality through not publishing it at all.

How the selected projects are being published, namely how the content production mechanisms work needs to be discussed in detail as well. There is a great dependency on the information (texts and visuals) provided by the architecture offices and absence of fact-checking mechanisms to question the information provided. Copy-pasting the information received from architects mostly in forms of press releases has become the common modus operandi, especially in the online media outlets, such as Archdaily, Dezeen and Designboom, etc. In some of these outlets, it is also possible to upload your own project, and if it is selected by the editorial team you are online directly. The accelerating speed of content generation and distribution and free access to information within the world of internet has resulted in online publications that are hungry for web traffic in order to be able to finance themselves. To feed the monster of web -tra

359 AFTER POST-TRUTH Interface Politics, 2nd International Conference ffic one has to outsource the content generation. In architecture media case it is outsourced to architecture offices who designed these projects in the first place. This results in an indifference between news-making and PR campaign. Stories as adverts are published and circulated with no critical judgement, or fact-checking. This is more problematic when the story of the architect is based on social issues. Stories that are not told in formal descriptions, but in the architecture’s impact on social life with the terms such as social engagement, participatory design, ecological awareness are harder to fact-check.

What is to be done?

First step to challenge post-truth is to understand it better (McIntryre, 2018). In this paper we tried to reveal and discuss the specifics of post-truth in the architecture media. We are aware that the effects of post-truth in this field is not as devastating and society-wide as it is in the mass news media; yet the epidemic spread of post-truth needs to be fought in every aspect of life. “From each according to his ability, to each according to his needs” (Marx, 1875). In this case it is in our ability to spot and stop post-truth in architecture media.

It is important to recognize that there is a long-established dispute over the objectivity of the facts, that facts can also be understood as social constructs. These completely override the ethical principles of journalism and call for a new direction of thinking towards a post-ethical framework that exceeds the positivist understanding of truth. A social constructionist view of factual truth also tri- ggers novel approaches and positions on how to react and challenge post-truth.

In order to deal with post-truth, a wide range of strategies have been developed and adopted. In the last decade we witnessed the rise of fact checking (Graves & Cherubini, 2016). However, it became clear that fact-checking is insufficient (Keane, 2018); it’s a paradoxical effort destined to fail since the manufacturers and consumers of post-truth do not believe in factual truth, for them “truth is not truth” (Gomez, 2018).

Another strategy to fight post-truth, especially during the heydays of protest movements like Arab Spring, Gezi or Occupy Wall Street was the citizen journalism. Citizen journalism has emerged out of awareness of the corrupt relationships (Chadha & Steiner, 2015) between media giants and political bodies and how strong their joint power is in manipulating the public opinion. As

360 Disinformation B (cases)_Panel#12 a bottom-up practice citizen journalism was considered as corrupt-proof until it started to spread out “ill-researched versions of the truth” (Warren, 2017).

In an effort to overcome the shortcomings of fact-checking and citizen journalism there are a variety of experiments in mainstream news-making e.g. Wikitri- bune, The Media Fund, Nwzer. Since some are open-source projects, others are providing operational framework it s possible to translate these experiments into architecture media and replicate them to develop further insight. For a theoretical framework for replicating these experiments or generating new ones we would like to introduce and reframe Guattari’s (1990) “post-media” as a form of knowledge commons.

Guattari’s proposal for a shift “from consensual mass to a dissensual post-media era” (Genosko, 2013) suggests an interactivity and reappropriation of knowledge both individually and collectively. For the individual and collective reappropriation, commons propose a robust alternative to alter the existing power structures dominating and even sometimes oppressing media today. And knowledge commons (Hess & Ostrom, 2007) refers to co-production of knowledge as a shared resource through certain protocols.

Constructing knowledge commons for architecture media

We would like to conclude our paper by sharing some questions and opening up the discussion further through this link https://paper.dropbox.com/doc/ Post-truth-in-Architecture-Media--AQfBA4Dyw3Y18uFT9BenNjHXAg-1wEh4o- HXeP63wSlcqF9Sa (https://bit.ly/2Q3BIDZ) as an introduction to knowledge commons, and as a means to challenge post-truth and the neoliberal positio- ning of architecture:

— How can a knowledge commons cover a wide range of perspectives in order to be a novel source of news for architecture community?

— How can it contain and facilitate the construction of dissensus and representation of multiple truths and facts?

— What are the protocols to make this commons to reach broader audience and a reliable news source for a multitude of people?

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— What kind of governance structures, types of action within the community or network can be operational for a sustainable model, both financially and ethically? — What are the possibilities that a knowledge commons offer for a repositio- ning or redefinition of architecture both within the disciplinary boundaries and more globally on a societal level?

Acknowledgement This paper is co-created as a part of the PhD research project of Hulya Ertas “Building a Knowledge Commons for Commons Architecture” at KU Leuven Department of Architecture, Campus Sint-Lucas Brussels, co-advised by Burak Pak and Lieven de Cauter.

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— Hulya Ertas https://www.kuleuven.be/wieiswie/en/person/00113844 https://xximagazine.com https://paper.dropbox.com/doc/commons-architecture-0JQuUR- 9MKbEtl4YFaWt4D http://hulyaertas.net — Burak Pak https://www.kuleuven.be/wieiswie/en/person/00069187 http://www.kuleuven.be/cv/projects/u0069187e.htm http://www.kuleuven.be/cv/teaching/u0069187e.htm https://limo.libis.be/primo-ex-plore/search?query=any,contains,s- taffnr_U0069187&vid=Lirias&lang=en_US&offset=0&sortby=date https://orcid.org/0000-0002-2901-1032

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An updated version of this paper was submitted to the #24 Artnodes Journal CFP and selected for publication. Read it in: http://doi.org/10.7238/a.v0i24.3284

The politics of disinformation in the Middle East: the case studies of Syria and Turkey Gabriele Cosentino, PhD In collaboration with Berke Alikasifoglu

Abstract The article presents two case studies of disinformation and post-truth politics from the Middle East. The first case study discusses the information wars that the Syrian regime and the opposition have been fighting alongside the military conflict that has raged in Syria since the 2011 uprising. Particular focus is given to the propaganda strategy put in place after 2015 by the Russian authorities to supplement their military intervention in support of the Assad regime, which has successfully altered the dominant narrative about the Syrian uprising and changed the perception and the course of the conflict in favor of Assad. The Syrian conflict has provided ideal conditions for employing the tested tactics of hybrid warfare that Russia had previously employed in the 2014 war in Ukraine, heavily relying on disinformation and fabricated narratives circulated on television and the Internet by automated bots, trolls and self-styled social media influencers. The second case study recounts the strategy of the Turkish President Erdoğan to co-opt the mobilization and consensus building potential of social media after the 2013 Gezi protests. Special focus is given to the development and the dynamics of the digital propaganda outfit called the AKTrolls that operates with disinformation and harassment tactics in support of Erdoğan party, the AK Party. Keywords post-truth; disinformation; propaganda; social media; Syria, Turkey. Gabriele Cosentino https://lau.academia.edu/GabrieleCosentino

366 Keynote lecture

KEYNOTE LECTURE

Metahaven

Abstract We don’t live in an age of post-truth. We live in an age in which the effects of technology can obscure our wish to perceive and talk about what matters most. In The If Borderlands the American poet Elise Partridge (1958–2015) wrote about life as a series of roads not taken. She wrote about what if that other thing—not the thing that actually happened—would have happened. “We raid the warehouses of inerrant fortune cookies,” Partridge wrote, longing for lost loved ones, and for a globe, “tender as a peach,” that might have been. What would happen if we raided our own warehouses of inerrant fortune cookies? In their search, Metahaven will draw on some of their recent film work, as well as the work of absurdist poets and long-take filmmakers. The work of Metahaven consists of filmmaking, writing, design, and installations, and is united conceptually by interests in poetry, storytelling, digital superstructures, and propaganda. Films by Metahaven include The Sprawl (Propaganda about Propaganda) (2015), Information Skies (2016), Possessed (2018, with Rob Schröder), Hometown (2018) and Eurasia (Questions on Happiness) (2018). Publications include Digital Tarkovsky (2018), PSYOP (2018), Black Transparency (2015) and Uncorporate Identity (2010). Their work is screened, published, and exhibited worldwide.

Metahaven http://metahaven.net/

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