Call for Web Residencies No 15

Akademie Schloss Solitude’s Call for Web Residencies No. 15 is curated by Mutations Research Group. »Mutations« is the Akademie’s first thematic and collective residency. Seven fellows representing a variety of artistic and interdisciplinary backgrounds were selected due to their interests that expand mutation beyond bounded interpretations of biological structures and systems. As a part of this group, Grayson Earle (USA/Germany), Ana María Gómez López (Colombia/USA/Netherlands), and Joana Quiroga (Brazil) are the curators of this Call for Web Residencies No. 15.

The goal of the »Mutations« web residency is to engage artist collectives working on the heterogenous theme of mutations – biological, sociopolitical, technological – in relation to the global digital divide. We aim to support artists, programmers, hacktivists, researchers, and other practitioners that offer mutations to the aesthetic and political underpinning of digital and internet-based art.

Open the Artworks

Juror's Statement — Jun 16, 2021

On behalf of the jury group, Grayson Earle, Ana María Gómez López, and Joana Quiroga, it is an honor to present Digital Solitude’s artists in residence.

The five winners of this prize will spend one month in Akademie Schloss Solitude’s Web Residency. The jury hopes that the grant will enable the artist, and activists to continue exploring and developing their proposed projects. We are very happy to announce residents Futura Trōpica Netroots (Juan Pablo García Sossa), Aparato cifi (Mayra Roffe Gutman, Juan Pablo Anaya Arce), Mac Andre Arboleda, Ricardo Miranda Zúñiga & Kurt Olmstead, and Giorgi Rodionov. A further congratulations goes to the seven projects who made the shortlist: Joelle Dietrick and Owen Mundy (Sneakaway Studio), Known Cages (Clemens Poole, Elliott Shaw, Milena Khomchenko), Astrit Feringa, Natacha Voliakovsky, migr-ai-tion (Florencia Beatriz Turiace, Yasaman Pishvaei, Nuno Moreira, Jie Liang Lin), Vishal Kumaraswamy, and Dimitris Gkikas.

To define the mutational is, at its most basic, to set a condition at odds with an established order. The projects selected are characterized by the use of alternative network infrastructures and an engagement with communities across the digital divide, reminding us that so-called global technologies suffer from the same stratifications and inequities that plague the whole of late capitalist society. Technology is not neutral. The term “peer-to-peer” is vacuous insofar as it does not expand who is allowed or invited to become a peer, and to what purpose the network contributes. Blockchain is touted as a move towards decentralization, and yet we see vast centralization of wealth on these platforms and the reestablishment of financial capitalism. We are promised the freedom to share our stories, but are beholden to advertisers and siloed audiences just as before.Enabling access to local knowledge bases, the undisturbed encounter and exchange in regions controlled or prevented by dominant power structures, our personal stories we collect should be able to float freely. The works presented by this incredible group of artists and collectives moves beyond the production of network content and intervenes directly on the form of the networks themselves. We are proud to present work that offers a challenge to the lack of imagination permeating the networked infrastructure that has come to define the 21st century.

Web Residents

Futura Trōpica Netroots on FLOW (Free, Libre, Open, Wild) Systems & Technologies
Juan Pablo García Sossa | Futura Trōpica Netroots

Futura Trōpica is an InterTropical decentralized network of grass-root local networks for the lateral exchange of local resources and other forms of (endemic) Knowledge, Designs and Technologies. It uses the InterPlanetary File System (IPFS) protocol to connect Rhizomes in Bogotá, Kinshasa, and Bengaluru. Each Rhizome is composed of a DIY Local Network in combination with USB based distribution systems.

An Imaginary History of Technoscience Between the Bravo and the Suchiate River
Aparato cifi (Mayra Roffe Gutman, Juan Pablo Anaya Arce)

The web residency will allow us to publish an online anthology of science fiction. We want to highlight the imaginative practices of texts written between the Bravo and Suchiate rivers, from 1692 to 1947. The anthology will be downloadable at aparatocifi.press. Our site is both an open access shadow library with downloadable science fiction texts and a place for aesthetic experiments that use the library’s contents as a database.

The Internet Farm
Mac Andre Arboleda

The Internet Farm is a collaborative network and online platform focused on communal sharing and the cultivation of hypermedia experiences. Artists from different fields were invited to »harvest« emojis and use these as materials for a creative response. The crops harvested were negotiated by participants on a needs basis, and in turn, allow these crops to grow in their built universe of multimedia works.


DAO for Nicaraguan Political Prisoners – Nica DAO
Ricardo Miranda Zúñiga & Kurt Olmstead

Our work as part of Mutations begins with a research analysis of the potential to move funds from givers to receivers without the cost of middlemen such as charities. We ask: what international charities are moving money and how much does the CEO make? If we can by-pass the CEO salary and charity infrastructure, more money reaches directly to those who need it. We will create a comparative cost analysis of donation through crypto versus brick and mortar charities. This research will inform the creation of a visualization that makes explicit the trade-offs of using blockchain versus traditional charitable channels. This research will inform the possibility of initiating a means of direct donation to those in need. At this time, we seek to help the families of political prisoners in Nicaragua.

Casually, Dinosaurs (map of Pandemic dreams)
Giorgi Rodionov

“Casually Dinosaurs” is an audio-visual project researching subconscious stories from the pandemic times that let us converse about the world as of today.The project is based on dreams collected during the pandemic, which are mapped in a single storytelling format. As the pandemic has changed the communication habits between people the most, the project gives our subconscious a chance to speak for us.

Shortlist

Transitional Identity
Natacha Voliakovsky / Buenos Aires, Argentina

Link

Tracing Digital Territory (Platforms as Affective Architectural Spaces)
Astrit Feringa / Arnhem, The Netherlands

Link

Subaltern Mutations for the Algorithmic Age
Vishal Kumaraswamy / Bangalore, India

Link

Facade Swap
Known Cages (Clemens Poole, Elliott Shaw, Milena Khomchenko) / Maryland, US / Rhode Island, US / Donetsk, Ukraine

Link

Tally Saves the Internet and Chasing the Sun
Joelle Dietrick and Owen Mundy (Sneakaway Studio)

Link

Endling
Dimitris Gkikas / Berlin, Germany

Link

Call Page @ Akademie Schloss Solitude

www.akademie-solitude.de Webresidencies

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Mutations key visualisation by Stephan Thiel und Anne Lippert. Website by parmon.

Juan Pablo García Sossa

»Futura Trōpica Netroots on FLOW«

Today, it is still a common belief that tech innovation in the Tropics is a direct legacy of colonial and postcolonial intervention, rather than a manifestation of genuine, blooming interactions between emerging technologies, and endemic practices, and costumes.

Futura Trōpica is an InterTropical decentralized network of grass-root local networks for the lateral exchange of local resources and other forms of (endemic) Knowledge, Designs and Technologies. It uses the InterPlanetary File System (IPFS) protocol to connect Rhizomes in Bogotá, Kinshasa, and Bengaluru. Each Rhizome is composed of a DIY Local Network in combination with USB based distribution systems.

THE FLOW

»When you hit a wrong note, it’s the next note that you play that determines if it’s good or bad.« — Miles Davis

FLOW (Free, Libre, Open, Wild) Systems & Technologies

After months of investigations and exchange around situated knowledge examining our natural and artificial environments, in this residency Futura Trōpica will have a special focus on further developing our concept of FLOW (Free Libre Open Wild) Systems as a shift from FLOSS (Free Libre OpenSource Software). Systems meant to be mutable, re-appropriable and wild.

Open the Artwork

Juan Pablo García Sossa (JPGS) is a Designer, Researcher, and Artist fascinated by the clash between emerging technologies and grass-root popular culture in the Tropics. His practice explores the development of cultures, realities, and worlds through the re-appropriation of technologies from a Tropikós perspective (Tropics as Region and Mindset). He is a design research member at SAVVY Contemporary’s Design Department in Berlin, Co-Director of Estación Terrena in Bogotá, and 2020 Fellow at EYEBEAM.

Aparato Cifi

»An Imaginary History of Technoscience Between the Bravo and the Suchiate River«

Our site is both an open access shadow library with downloadable science fiction texts and a place for aesthetic experiments that use the library’s contents as a database. It includes a bot that produces literary fragments built from permutations of the library’s texts.

Open the Artwork

The web residency will allow us to publish an online anthology of science fiction. We want to highlight the imaginative practices of texts written between the Bravo and Suchiate rivers, from 1692 to 1947. The anthology will be downloadable at aparatocifi.press (a first version at: http://aparatocifi.press/seleccion/index.html). In the anthology we will recreate an imaginary history of technoscience in Mexico in its relation with fabulation in scifi. It will be a resource that offers a critical overview of the library’s contents. We believe it will be useful to both academics and writers interested in scifi, who might not be familiar yet with radical open access and internet archiving possibilities. For artists and editors unfamiliar with Mexican scifi, the anthology will be an entry to the worlds these texts build. We want to show these communities the possibilities of a radical open access archive that also experiments with its own database.

Aparato cifi (by Mayra Roffe Gutman & Juan Pablo Anaya Arce) is a platform that republishes, experiments with and rewrites science fiction texts produced between the Bravo and Suchiate rivers. The project brings together people interested in science fiction, open access, web publishing and digital literature in Mexico. We want to establish a dialogue with different theoretical approaches to technology and science fiction from the perspective of the specific literary formulations within the selected texts.

Mac Andre Arboleda

»The Internet Farm«

The Internet Farm is a collaborative network and online platform focused on communal sharing and the cultivation of hypermedia experiences. The idea came from a Twitter game where mutuals were invited to »plant« emojis on my farm hosted on Neocities (a free open source web hosting tool), as a gesture towards sharing an online space that is more »ours« than the social media platforms we’ve come to inhabit. Artists from different fields were invited to »harvest« emojis and use these as materials for a creative response. The crops harvested were negotiated by participants on a needs basis, and in turn, allow these crops to grow in their built universe of multimedia works.

In the last month, the concept of »community pantry« inspired a national movement in the Philippines, which had the tagline: »Kumuha ayon sa pangangailangan, magbigay ayon sa kakayahan.« [Trans. Give what you can, take what you need.] These community pantries threaten the established order, and have faced harassment from state forces. The Internet Farm likewise challenges ideas of »sustainability« by stimulating intimacies, strengthening connections, and making utopias present.

Open Artwork Page

Mac Andre Arboleda is an artist interested in exploring the sickness of the Internet through research and dialogue, art and text, and organizing and publishing. He is the Founding President of the UP Internet Freedom Network, an alliance of students and volunteers advocating for digital rights in the Philippines and beyond. He is also the Project Lead of the Artists For Digital Rights Network, a cross-regional alliance of artists in the Philippines and Indonesia.

Together with his art collective Magpies Press, they co-founded Zine Orgy in 2015, a biannual expo for artists and independent artists held in Los Baños, Laguna. He also co-founded Munzinelupa in 2018, an annual arts festival held in Muntinlupa City that hosted zine expos, educational discussions, film screenings, and musical performances.

Mac has held residencies at GlobalGRACE Philippines AiR (2021), Pasa Load Residency (2021), Virtual Workings (2020), and Virtual360 Konnect (2020). He also holds a fellowship at the Salzburg Global Seminar and World Urban Parks Emerging Urban Leaders program (2020-2021). He’s currently based between Los Baños and San Pedro City, Laguna, pursuing his MA focused on internet studies at the University of the Philippines.

Homepage Mac Andre Arboleda

Ricardo Miranda Zúñiga & Kurt Olmstead

»Nica DAO«

A DAO for Nicaraguan Political Prisoners

Open the Project Open on Mobile Devices

Our work as part of Mutations begins with a research analysis of the potential to move funds from givers to receivers without the cost of middlemen such as charities.

We seek to exploit this moment in which people are exploring the use of their computer power to mine and generate capital in order to analyze modes of donation.

This proposal has three facts beginning with a research analysis of the potential to move funds from givers to receivers without the cost of middlemen such as charities. We ask: what international charities are moving money and how much does the CEO make? If we can by-pass the CEO salary and charity infrastructure, great, more money reaches directly to those who need it. We will create a comparative cost analysis of donation through crypto versus brick and mortar charities. We will utilize ongoing research such as Memo Akten’s “The Unreasonable Ecological Cost of #CryptoArt” to inform the cost of transactions on the blockchain. And we will identify not-for-profit charities for analysis (using GuidStar) as a contrapoint to using blockchain technology.

This research will inform the creation of a visualization that makes explicit the trade-offs of using blockchain versus traditional charitable channels.

DAO stands for decentralized autonomous organization - WP

Ricardo Miranda Zúñiga approaches art as a social practice that seeks to establish dialogue in public spaces. The ways that inequality and power manifest themselves in our lives are consistent threads in Ricardo’s work.

Kurt Olmstead’s work has focused on the interplay between culture, ideology and technology. He holds an MBA from UC Davis and has been utilizing his professional background of business analytics to explore artistic expression in the new media space.

ambriente.com

Giorgi Rodionov

»Casually, Dinosaurs«

Map of Pandemic Dreams

Open the Artwork

»Casually Dinosaurs« is an audio-visual project researching subconscious stories from the pandemic times that let us converse about the world as of today.

Giorgi Rodionov is a Tbilisi-based artist and a curator focused on social and political stories.

Most of Giorgi’s works are based on his researches that are later transformed into all different mediums.

His artistic activity list includes many exhibitions in different countries. He founded Untitled Gallery Tbilisi, that promotes South Caucasian art projects to support human rights and social/political justice in the area through art.