Hello World is a project in two parts taking as its starting point the emergence of the Internet over the past 20 years as one of the primary means of the dissemination of information.

Part 1:

The first part is a physical exhibition that will take place at the Embassy featuring the work of 6 artists. The work in the show will approach the way in which the Internet has influenced cultural production, in specific relation to practices of appropriation. The increasing digitalisation and distribution of media has spurred a new generation of artists to approach the image in a similar way to that of the supposed ‘pictures generation’, taking extant images and recontextualising them, augmenting meaning or offering new ways of seeing.

Part 2:

The second part will be an experimental seminar with a new link being shared daily, through the sources listed below for the duration of the exhibition.

05.12.10
riverofthe.net by Ryan Trecartin and David Carp

04.12.10
You’re Stealing it Wrong: 30 Years of Inter-Pirate Battles from Jason Scott on Vimeo.

03.12.10
All Together Now by Brian Droitcour

02.12.10
Parasitic Media by Nathan Martin

01.12.10
Ars Electronica Festival 2010: Open Source Life IV, Repair Society (and yourself) (en) from Ars Electronica on Vimeo.

30.11.10

29.11.10
Vale Ubu? by Jack Sargeant

28.11.10
Looking beyond the open source battle by Bobbie Johnson

27.11.10
The Rise of the Network Culture by Manuell Castells

26.11.10
Cyberspace, Or, The Unbearable Closure of Being – Slavoj Zizek

25.11.10

Audio clip: Adobe Flash Player (version 9 or above) is required to play this audio clip. Download the latest version here. You also need to have JavaScript enabled in your browser.

24.11.10
The Cathedral And The Bazaar by Eric Steven Raymond

23.11.10
The Web Is Dead Long Live The Internet by Chris Anderson

22.11.10
Cache Rules Everything Around Me from Evan Roth on Vimeo.

21.11.10
Teen Image by Seth Price

20.11.10
The meaning of open is obfuscated an interview between Geert Lovink and Andreas Hirsch

Notes: (more…)

Levez Vos Skinny Fists Comme Antennas to Heaven is a solo show featuring a body of new experimental sculptural  work by Alex Hetherington formed as a result of a dramatic treatment or scripted scenario based on the idea of the German artist Isa Genzken listening to the Canadian band Godspeed! You Black Emperor  and devising works formed from her response to these audio works.  The title of the show comes from a ‘failed’ or alternative title to the band’s 2000 double album release.

The show deploys  Godspeed’s heavy use of sampled  and taped voices  and references to Genzken’s abrasive and  haphazard use of materials as the cue for the manufacture of a series of objects rendered in vinyl, glass, metal, mirrors, bagpipes, windscreens, collaged photographs, destroyed Apple Mac laptop computers and embossed leather. The show will also include three new A2 black and white editions. In unison these works hope to imply or suggest the ‘live’ or ‘performative’ and a ‘dialogue’ surrounding themes of identity theft, influence, Appropriation or Postproduction tactics.

A performance ‘Linda Levez Vos Elfriede Skinny Rosemarie Fists Jelinek Comme Antennas Trockel to Fratianne Heaven’ was presented on the final night of the exhibition.

Years have been invested for nothing more than a few moments of fleeting pleasure. The ethereal ‘wisdom’ – as in singularity

rather than totality – is (inherently) never to be found: she is a wretched wench, we all know. Woe is me (+you+everybody else).

There’s something out there though, something that must be found; it’s only logical: the greatest idea in the world! Oh the euphoria!

(Skepticism abound; lashings of it, swathes of it!)

We want empire: we want all! But, why? These are the plugs that will fill the gaps of fact in our mind with more fact (not to be

confused with truths): to have; to own. More rapture! Imagine the power that one could have? The power!

‘Why?’ persists, though. It is our wish to know all, to have all, and all for nothing more than flexing in the presence of others like a peacock brandishing

it’s beautiful, beautiful plumage. For self esteem; to carry conversations; to make me feel good about me. It is, after all, the very same reason that we

dress up, we go out, we show off: it is ‘us’ that is deserving of such attention and no others.

Leave it all behind then. Imagine; imagine the possibilities! Insecurity abandoned allows space for progress: I didn’t consider my

shoes this morning evening, but that’s O.K.; it gave me time to think about better things! About ignorance. Ignorance is ignorance,

but a bit is good for you.

All this thought of thought leaves me in a state of great despair. The maths is frightening: with pencil and paper, it would take me more years than one

has to get through it all, tenfold! The dark room is increasing in size and there is still only one cat (that isn’t even there). We should all be quivering

at the prospect.

And with the empire…

Together (together, together, together) the challenge is, at very least, quantifiable: for it is the relations between people rather than the people themselves

that matter. All we need now is to create more, find more and create more! Ah, the rapture! She returns!

Wait!

We were damned from the start and we’re even more damned now. We did it to ourselves by even trying and we are beyond fucked. The only respite

comes when we forget, for all but a brief second, about the chase, only for it to kick us back down. Damn. It’s over; all a pipe dream. Never, no more;

again! We do it to ourselves and shall continue on such a course until land is struck, that is if land doesn’t strike us first.

Forget the rapture.

The mornings are but the endings of night.

Pierre Bayard, How To Talk About Books You Haven’t Read (New York: Bloomsbury, 2007