After the emergence of Web 2.0, analysing the topology and the effects of artistic and hacktivist practices both offline and online implies a reflection on power structures, networking methodologies as well as on the tension between increasing connectivity and virtualisation of social relationships. The progressive involvement of users in the production process generates new possibilities of peer interaction, but also of hierarchical control and intimate atomisation. It becomes necessary to rethink the meaning of critical strategies in contexts of networking, not only exposing the possible scenarios of networked dystopias, but also proposing a new path for political actions based on the recognition of distributed subjectivities.

Part 1: Trapped and Tracked

A presentation of artistic projects between public exposure and social atomisation after Web 2.0.

With: Aymeric Mansoux (fr/nl) – Naked on Pluto; Johannes P Osterhoff (de) – One-Year Google Performance

Aymeric Mansoux (fr/nl) – Naked on Pluto

Naked on Pluto proposes a playful yet disturbing online game world, which parodies the insidiously invasive traits of "social software". The city of "Elastic Versailles" is animated by the quirky combinatorial logics of a community of bots that glean Facebook data from the players. Naked on Pluto caricatures the proliferation of virtual agents that harvest our personal data to insidiously reshape our online environments and profiles, highlighting the ambivalent hallmarks of major social networks: friends as quantifiable and commodifiable online assets, personas carefully fashioned contrived to impart a sense of "intimacy", and disingenuous publishing of "private" data as self-advertising.