This book is a journey into the past and an attempt to reinterpret the familiar. The traveler explores documents from his journeys to southern regions, creating a "Subjective Topography." It reflects not just a quest for happiness but also the complexities of reality, resulting in a 50-year panorama of the search for joy.
Reverse Engineering is a term that comes originally from the field of mechanical engineering. Reverse Engineering indicates the process of analysing an existing object or system by laying out its construction plan to then rebuild it in every detail. This manner of reconstruction allows for modifications and adjustments to new demands and requirements, it signifies creative appropriation, democratisation of knowledge, further development. The contributions in this volume take Reverse Engineering to another level, applying it to the fields of arts, sciences and politics in an attempt to reveal the procedures of culture and technology at work, and the importance of access, knowledge and skills in reshaping our present times and future.
The group monochrom refers to its working method as Context Hacking, thus referencing the hacker culture, which propagates a creative and emancipatory approach to the technologies of the digital age, and in this way turns against the continuation into the digital age of a centuriesold technological enslavement perpetrated through knowledge and hierarchies of experts. Thanks to the electronic mass media of this age, the possibility of democratizing and socializing the means of production seems for the first time to have become realizable (with no need for any other revolution beyond the technical). Context hacking transfers the hackers’ objectives and methods to the network of social relationships in which artistic production occurs, and upon which it is dependent. In a metaphoric sense, these relationships also have a source code. Programs run in them, and our interaction with them is structured by a user interface. When we know how a space, a niche, a scene, a subculture or a media or political practice functions, we can change it and recode it, deconstructing its power relationships and emancipating ourselves from its compulsions and packaging guidelines.
paraflows.7 dreht sich um den ursprünglich aus dem Bereich des Maschinenbaus stammenden Begriff des Reverse Engineering. Reverse Engineering bezeichnet den Prozess der Analys eines bestehenden Dings oder Systems, indem sein Bauplan freigelegt wird, um es detailgetreu nachzubauen. Diese Art der Rekonstruktion erlaubt Modifikationen und Anpassungen an neue Anforderungen und Bedürfnisse; sie steht für kreative Aneignung, Demokratisierung von Wissen, Weiterentwicklung. Angetrieben durch das Eintauchen in neue Materie wird der/die Reverse Engineering betriebende/r KünstlerIn zur/m ForscherIn, EntdeckerIn und erlebt durch das erneute Zusammenwachsen der Disziplinen eine Renaissance.
paraflows.6 - LISTENING COMPREHENSION (Hörverständnis) hat Hören und Gehört werden zum Thema. Seit jeher ist Klang, Sound, Musik an Technologie gekoppelt. Alles um uns herum erzeugt, reflektiert oder absorbiert Klänge. Die Kulisse aus Tönen hilft uns zu navigieren, gibt Signale, löst umittelbar Reflexe aus. Gleichzeitig haben Klänge ein unglaublich großes emotionales Potential; sie dienen der Kommunikation und der Organisation, wie beispielsweise mittels unserer Sprache. Die Arbeiten in der Ausstellung widmen sich der Frage, wie sich Klang oder Schall im virtuellen Raum, im Digitalen ausdrückt. Acht Künstlerinnen und Künstler wurden eingeladen, sich mit dem Thema auseinander zu setzen, welchen Stellenwert der Klang in einer digitalen Kultur hat, wie die Technologie die Qualität von Klang beeinflusst.
The terms »mind« and »matter« appear to signify two concepts irreplaceable and permanent in nature. The increasing challenges and modes of reflection of digital life and cultural creation have contributed to a productive doubting of said dichotomy. Net culture has exposed the causality of the two only superficially contradictory systems and translated these into new technological realities. This publication, using an interdisciplinary approach, strives to investigate the entanglement of cultural, artistic and technical praxis, to document the developments, to clarify the status quo of the scientific community in a practical and exemplary fashion and to enable glimpses of potential future developments.
Urban spaces became battlefields, signifiers have been invaded, new structures have been established: Netculture replaced counterculture in most parts and also focused on the everchanging environments of the modern city. Important questions have been brought up to date and reasked, taking current positions and discourses into account. The major question still remains, namely how to create culturally based resistance under the influence of capitalistic pressure and conservative politics. This collection of essays and contributions attempts to address this question and its implications for different scientific and artistic fields.