THE

LACKB

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The Black Chambersurveillance, paranoia, invisibility & the internet

Catalogue of the exhibition curated byEva & Franco Mattes and Bani Brusadin

Škuc Gallery, Ljubljana10 March−1 April 2016

Mali salon/MMSU − Museum of Modern and Contemporary Art, Rijeka7−30 April 2016

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The Black Chambersurveillance, paranoia, invisibility & the internet

Catalogue of the exhibition curated byEva & Franco Mattes, Bani Brusadin

(Ljubljana / Rijeka, 2016)

Edited by Bani Brusadin, Eva & Franco Mattes, Domenico Quaranta

PublisherLink Editions, Brescia 2016http://www.linkartcenter.eu

Co-PublisherAksioma − Institute for Contemporary Art, Ljubljana

http://aksioma.org

Design and layout: Fabio ParisImage editor: Matteo Cremonesi

Proofreading: Philip Jan Nagel

In the frame of Masters&Servers

This project has been funded with support from the European Commission.This publication reflects the views only of the author, and the Commission

cannot be held responsible for any use which may be made of theinformation contained therein.

This work is licensed under a Creative CommonsAttribution- NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International License.This license lets you remix, tweak, and build upon this worknon-commercially, as long as you credit the Author and license

your new creations under the identical terms.To view a copy of this license, visit http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/4.0/.

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ROTH

ANEV

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Recently commissioned by theinternational project Masters& Servers, Evan Roth’s newwork Internet Landscapes:Sweden is a series of webbased artworks that willallow one to experience theinternet’s physical, digitaland cultural infrastructureas a landscape depicted by anunusual set-up of infra-redphotos, radio frequenciesscan, and packet data.Visiting the internetphysically is an attempt torepair a relationship thathas changed dramatically asthe internet has become morecentralized and monetized, aswell as a mechanism forglobal government spying.

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Evan Rothn57.680235e11.668160.se (Internet Landscape: Sweden), 2016Networked video, 19:49http://n57.680235e11.668160.se/Photo: Miha Fras / Aksioma

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Evan RothInternet Landscape: Sweden, 2016InstallationPhoto: Miha Fras / Aksioma

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“The more time I spend alone in nature, the more Iforget about all of the politics surrounding the flow ofdata under my feet.” Interview with Evan RothBy Bani Brusadin, Ruth McCullough, DomenicoQuaranta

Domenico Quaranta: You said that visiting theInternet physically is an attempt to repair arelationship that has changed dramatically as theInternet becomes more centralized, monetized and amechanism for global government spying. Why is itthat picturing the Internet as a physicalinfrastructure can be seen as a critical, broadlypolitical gesture?

While I’ve done projects in the past that I wouldcharacterize as ranging from direct to indirectpolitical activism, this is not one of those projects.I’m at a crossroads in my own understanding of whatthe best path forward is as an artist and user giventhe current state of programmable systems andnetworked communications. This work was inspired byand involves political issues, but I feel it is morereflective of a personal search for answers rather thananything else.

Bani Brusadin: You are one of the founders of theFree Art & Technology Lab (F.A.T. Lab), anorganization of artists and engineers that from2007 and 2015 worked to enrich the public domainthrough the research and development of creativetechnologies and the media. For years, you andF.A.T. Lab have been cunningly playing as usersamong other users, provoking unexpected results inthe encounter of users’ intelligence and ingenuitywith network technologies and social media.

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With Internet Landscapes: Sweden has your interestin users’ cultures now shifted towards a new area,namely the material side of machines and collectiveintelligence?

For me there is a connection between the closing ofF.A.T. and this new series of work. I think that partof the reason F.A.T. needed to shut down was becausethe Internet had at some point fundamentally changedand yet our approach to making art and activism withinthat environment had not. Again, I’m not claiming toknow what the new approach should be at this point,but in my work, there is a deliberate change inapproach from the fast paced production andconsumption of F.A.T. projects to something slower andmore contemplative. In some ways this work is anexperiment in making art in the exact opposite waythat F.A.T. was functioning: alone, slow, not designedfor easy sharing. Where F.A.T. was trying to match thespeed of the web (or at times even outpace it), thiswork is trying to pull the Top Gun maneuver in whichthe brakes are applied very firmly and the web isallowed to speed by. (None of this is to take awayfrom the work of F.A.T., which I am proud of and willstand behind. It was just time for a change for me).

Domenico Quaranta: The use of infrared video in theInternet Landscapes is both related to portrayingthe physical Internet (information travels throughfiber optic cables as infrared laser light) and tothe DIY technologies developed by paranormalresearchers. This belief in technology as research,as the output of curiosity and free thinking, andas something that can always resist to itssubsumption by the forces of power and greed,informs all your work. Are you still positive aboutit?

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I don’t have any core belief in the power oftechnology. My continued interest in it as a mediumfor creating art comes from two places: 1) the singlegreatest feeling of self empowerment I’ve experiencedin my lifetime was uploading my first HTML file. It’s afeeling I’m constantly trying to reconnect with in mywork. And 2) because it’s cheap. There is no othermedium I know of that has such a division between thecost to produce and reach of communication. As much asI don’t enjoy writing code, it is freeing to divorcecreative decision making from the realities ofphysical production.

Bani Brusadin: In the pictures and videos ofInternet Landscapes: Sweden there's apparentlynothing to look at. We are witnessing things andplaces whose intended function has little ornothing to do with what they look like at firstsight. Network infrastructures are literally buriedunder layers of sediment as much as they’re buriedunder layers of 'user-friendly’ interfaces…

Yes, I wrestled quite a bit with how much evidence ofthe Internet to show in the frame. In the end, it wasimportant to me that in this first piece of the series,there not be any cables or direct clues. As I moveforward with the series, I will include footage ofcables where it makes sense, but from the beginning Ialways had this vision in my mind of the lonely treein an uncomfortable landscape. I see the tree as thisnaturally occurring network diagram that can functionas a monument when recontextualized. The branchesbring the viewers’ eyes away from the clouds and downinto the ground where the data is flowing.

For me this project was never meant to be ajournalistic endeavor. It’s art that is more about my

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own struggles and understanding of my surroundingsthan it is about seeing cables. I didn’t want this toturn into a project where I was just running aroundplanting flags and taking photos in an elort to becomethe mayor of the Internet on Foursquare. For thatreason I also allow myself to think more painterly(for lack of a better word) when I’m on location.The research guides me to the location, but once I’mthere, I try to allow myself a lot of freedom to makesomething that captures the essence of an internaldialog rather than just trying to document what is (oris not) there to see of the Internet.

I would also point out that there are things happeningwithin the frame. On first glance it seems as if nothingis going on, but you should be able to notice subtlechanges in light as clouds pass in front of the sun,animals, people, airplanes and boats moving in and outof frame, and changes in the wind and wave patterns.These aren’t “actions” as we are used to actions in atypical Internet experience, but actions in nature.I also think there is a performance aspect in watchingthe piece from start to finish. All of the things thatmight happen during that period (email notifications,SMS messages, incoming tweets, your impulse to movethe mouse so you can see how much time is left) areall a part of the viewing experience. These clips,which are typically shorter than the length of a TEDtalk, can seem like an eternity to watch in theirentirety (especially when viewed in the privacy ofyour own browser).

Domenico Quaranta: The generation we both belong toshares the common feeling that the Internet is notwhat it used to be; that the utopian, open spacethat we used to inhabit is over. I’m starting to bequite ambivalent about this feeling: although I’ve

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lived the Internet’s recent history, and I canrecognize the shift from the institutional Internetto the corporate web, from online communities tosocial networks, and from a space of freedom andsharing to a tool of mass surveillance, I can’tresist to seeing in this narrative the usual way inwhich the old men speak to younger generations: itwas much better when I was young - you will neverexperience this kind of freedom. How can wepreserve the values on which the early Internet wasbuilt without being nostalgic?

I am still learning a lot about the contemporarynetwork from ideas that Jodi, Olia Lialina andPiratbyran had over a decade ago. I see the work I’mdoing now as being directly influenced by those voices,and even more than nostalgia, I think what you see isa struggle in this current environment for the work toembody many of these older ideas and values that Ifeel are still very relevant.

Despite how much has changed, there is still nothingstopping anyone from registering a URL, pointing it toa networked computer and making a website. That righthasn’t been taken away from us, it’s just lessconvenient than other options. And if we collectivelybegin to grow tired of counting our friends, followersand likes, I think there is something empowering inknowing that what was true 20 years ago is still truetoday. If I want to make a really boring website abouta tree, I can still go do that.

The longer I work on this series, the less and less itis about the Internet. Nostalgia that happens to beembedded in the work is probably less about the “theInternet” and more about a younger and more naiveperiod in my own development (personally andartistically).

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Similarly, I think any frustrations I have with thecurrent state of the Internet is not directed at “thebad guys” but rather at myself for seeing what Iwanted to see instead of what was inevitably to come.

Domenico Quaranta: Another thing that I feel isthat, if the Internet has turned bad, it’s ourfault. It’s the generation that grew up in theNineties that made the current Internet, bothactively (by making the tools and launching thestart-ups) and passively (by not resisting it).And by describing it as an irreversible process, bybeing nostalgic, we are implicitly inviting youngergenerations to adapt to it. How can we be realisticwithout being perceived as a conservative force?

I think it is possible to be realistic and havesomething more than a conservative or purelypessimistic voice in the conversation, and my hope isthat this is reflected in the work.

I am also working on a new series of related workwhere I am building kites with similar IR landscapeimagery printed on them. To me, kites are generallyreminiscent of simpler and more innocent times. With ahexagonal shape and the use of antenna wire in theirconstruction, the kites I’m making also serve as ahistorical reference to Guglielmo Marconi’s earlyexperiments in long distance communication. In 1901 inPoldhu, UK, Marconi successfully used a kite withantenna wire to receive the very first wireless signalacross the Atlantic Ocean. Initially, Marconi wastrying to use a twenty mast circular aerial to receivethe signal but it was destroyed in a storm. When thisheavier and more expensive infrastructure failed, hefound a lightweight, locally sourced and moreaccessible solution in an unexpected form. For me, the

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ruins of Poldhuact as ananalogy for thecurrent networkof cables, andMarconi’s kiteis the eleganthack that putthe power ofcommunicationinfrastructureback in the hands of hobbyists (i.e., kite makers). Inthis sense, the work is meant to be both nostalgic yetstill suggestive of a path towards change.

I also view the use of the radio spectrum (both in thekites and in the networked video series) more as asign of optimism than of nostalgia or defeat. Radio,which, at the time, might have seemed even moremagical and powerful than the Internet did to ourgeneration, only had a 10 year heyday before theintroduction of television (which essentially replacedit). With this in mind, it doesn’t seem so far fetchedto me that some fundamental change to the Internet, ornew form of communication along the spectrum, couldhappen within our lifetimes.

This is one reason I’m so obsessed with theelectromagnetic spectrum at the moment. I love theidea that whether we are communicating with visuallight (painting), IR (fiber optic), microwaves(wifi/cellular) or VHF/UHF (radio and TV), it is allhappening on a single spectrum dilerentiated only bythe distance between peaks of waves. When I look atsimple spectrum diagrams like this, I get excitedbecause I know the answer to many of the problems withour current communication structures are there. Thisis one reason why you see the spectrum range (from

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visible light to near infrared to radio) showing up inthe work in various ways. The kite itself is in partmeant as a visualization of an invisible EM wave. Theheight of radio towers are often dictated not by lineof site issues, but by the length of the EM wave theyare interested in transmitting and receiving. Theantennas you see spotting the landscape are typically¼ or ½ the length of the actual wave they are built totransmit. The former architect in me sees this as oneof the most poetic relationships between form andfunction in the built environment. So the spool ofantenna wire that sits below the kites in theexhibition is of a specific length (41.3m), whichcorresponds to a frequency (3.6MHz) useful inshortwave radio communication.

Ruth McCollough: It feels like the project is notjust about Internet landscapes, but about how datainteract with the landscape, not just through theinternet file transfer, fibre optics and infrared,but the radio waves, wifi and mobile 3G. This ispresent through the audio recordings that scan theradio waves tuned by your heart beat. Can youexplain more about this experience and what we arelistening too? These field recordings seem to be anew dimension to your work, can you explain thesignificance?

Yes, the project started as a venture to find theInternet, but has slowly changed more broadly to therelationship between data and the landscape, and thenagain to the relationship between the self and nature.

The audio is composed of two channels: the first isfrom a microphone recording ambient audio and thesecond is scanning through various radio frequencies,with each change in frequency tied to my heart rate.Both were recorded on the same location as the video

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was shot. The radio device is a custom piece ofhardware and I plan on releasing the design diagramsfor it online soon. The hardware is connected to myfingertip and takes a heart rate reading through IRlight, which is reflected in part by blood cells. Whena heartbeat is detected, a microcontroller incrementsto a new radio frequency. The result is a droningsound composed primarily (but not entirely) of static.When the two channels are blended together, variousrhythms mix together: water on the shore, pulses fromthe heart and waves transmitted through air and fiber.

I originally came across the radio scanning techniquewhen researching technologies developed for paranormalinvestigations. This community developed the SpiritBox, which is a custom built or hacked radio thatconstantly sweeps through radio frequencies. Thebelief is that communication could occur through theconnected pieces of “inter-frequencies” heard in theradio spectrum. And while my interest and intent isnot connected with the paranormal, they are an amazingcommunity of tool builders and their DIY approachtowards communication across the electromagneticspectrum is inspiring.

Domenico Quaranta: The Internet Landscapes removethe Internet from the space of myth and religionand bring it to a more human scale: portraying theInternet as a physical body, made of underseacables and human-built infrastructures, is also away to resist the idea of the Internet as animmaterial soul, that was forged by Internetutopians and subsumed by corporations. Do youagree?

Yes, and this is why I think you see a growinginterest in other artists, activists and writers

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working in this space. When everything was kittens,unicorns and .mp3 files, there wasn’t any real need tothink of the Internet as anything but Willy Wonka’sdigital chocolate factory. Who wants to talk about howit all works when we could be watching Charlie Bit MyFinger? At some point, however, I think many peoplestarted seeing that things were going awry. Somepeople saw this earlier than others, and some peoplepoint to dilerent things as being more or lesstroubling, but whether it’s for spying or targetedmarketing or centralization, I think many people wereleft rethinking their relationship with the Internet.At this point I think there is natural tendency tosay, “Ok wait, things got fucked up. How did thishappen? What is this system? Where is it? How does itfunction? Who owns what aspects of it? How is thatspace regulated?” And at least for me personally(although I suspect this might be the case for othersas well), after going through a disempoweringexperience with the Internet, there is something re-empowering and grounding about understanding moreabout the system physically. Yes, seeing the cablesmaybe does break the myth of an Internet forged byInternet utopians, but I think it also lessons thefeeling of the network being something we have noinfluence or control over. And just from a personalstandpoint, venturing away from the screen andvisiting the landscape of the Internet has made memore excited about making art in that medium again.

Domenico Quaranta: You talk about your travels to fiberoptic landing locations as “pilgrimages”. Althoughyou explain these pilgrimages as a way to “reconnectwith the Internet”, I have the feeling that they aremore a way to reconnect to the world: by experiencingnature, by allowing you a diPerent experience oftime and space. Is this distinction any good?

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Yes, in fact the longer I work on this new series, themore peripheral the Internet becomes in my thinking.I’ve been using the phrase “Internet landscapes” toinformally describe the work, but lately I’ve beendropping the “Internet” and just calling them“landscapes” (which I think is more true to what theyare). Even though the Internet is a strong characterin the narrative, the work is really more about thequestioning of my surroundings and search forsolutions to issues that fundamentally challenge myart practice and worldview.

All of the research that goes into finding thesespecific places on the globe (which are usuallyremote beaches) is still a part of the work. But,the more time I spend alone in nature, the more Iforget about all of the politics surrounding theflow of data under my feet. There is a meditativequality embedded in the work that stems directlyfrom my experience in producing the work. When I’min the field filming, I usually shoot still tripodshots between 10 and 15 minutes in duration. BecauseI’m recording audio (both from the ambientsurroundings as well as from the radio spectrum), Ineed to remain stationary for the entire duration ofthe clip. In that sense the filming process is likea digital retreat with mandatory periods of 15minutes of solitary meditation in nature. And whatwas most striking to me when I started this processwas not “omg, this retreat into nature and beingaway from screens is amazing!”, it was more, “holyshit, this is boring.” In the beginning I foundmyself negotiating internally whether certain shotswere worth the 15 minutes of stillness that wasrequired. As I continued with the project, however,this perception of time became one of the mostinteresting aspects of the work. The resultingnetworked video pieces are intentionally on the

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timeline of nature to try and recreate what I feltrather than the quick editing that’s usuallyassociated with online video. In past work, I havesometimes felt the influence of the Internet in theart making process more strongly and have made workthat I know would play better online (in partbecause I wanted to reach a larger audience). But,if one of these newer videos were put on Reddit orBuzzfeed, my guess is that the comment thread mightbe less than appreciative in large part because thepacing of the work stands at complete odds with thepacing of the web. These videos may not be easy toconsume, but my hope is that for some viewers, itwill offer a solitary meditative moment in their daythat mimics part of what I was thinking and feelingwhen I was on location doing the filming.

Bani Brusadin: Why choose Sweden and how is itrelated to your personal and political background?

A lot of my thinking about the data, and the yin andyang relationship between copying and pasting, stemsfrom the now defunct Swedish think tank Piratbyrån. Inthe past I have visited more technically importantnetwork locations (for example Porthcurno in the UK),but when I envision my own personal Internetmonuments, I see them in Sweden.

Even in the midst of the file sharing debate, Piratbyrånwas always interested in the personal connectionsbetween individuals brought about by these massivelyconnected systems (online and olline). A 2014exhibition at Furtherfield, which was partly aPiratbyrån retrospective, was subtitled “Piracy asFriendship.” The title and program highlighted the ideathat bus rides and building fires are perhaps moreinteresting “social media” than what we can find online.

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On the Gothenburg portion of the trip I stayed withMagnus Ericksson (former Piratbyrån/F.A.T. member) andartist Geraldine Juarez (former Telecomix/F.A.T.member, she also organized the Furtherfield show). Theyare friends whose thinking has influenced a lot of myunderstanding on the current state of the Internet.Sleeping on their couch and having conversationsaround their kitchen table (rather than IRC) was forme another reason Sweden was the right place to lookfor a personal connection with the Internet.

Domenico Quaranta: Is kopimi another utopia fromthe past or something we can still believe in?

In an online economy in which many of the largestcompanies don’t make any content (Twitter, Facebook,Google, etc), the philosophy of kopimi has definitelybecome more complicated for me. My guess is that thesecompanies would like nothing more than to be legallyable to copy all of the world’s data to their servers(“collect it all!”) in an elort to sell moreadvertising space. That being said, for better or forworse, I still keep coming back to kopimi. It isprobably an oversimplified way of looking at thedigital landscape, but I still believe in the corenotion that the natural state of data is to be freelycopied. I’ve used this analogy before, but I liken itto an ill-equipped dam holding back water. There arebarriers to stop data from being copied (legal andtechnical) but on a long enough time line, they willalways fail because the water wants to go downstream.I still get excited everytime I see triangles and thenumber 23.

\\\\\This interview was conducted on a shared online document in March2016.

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The Black Chambersurveillance, paranoia, invisibility & the internet

aksioma.org/black.chamber

Curated by: Eva & Franco Mattes, Bani Brusadin

ExhibitionŠkuc Gallery, Ljubljana, Slovenia

10 March−1 April 2016

Mali salon / MMSU − Museum of Modern and Contemporary Art, Rijeka, Croatia7−30 April 2016

ConferenceKino Šiška Centre for Urban Culture, Ljubljana

9−10 March 2016

Filodrammatica, Rijeka8−9 April 2016

Online ProjectInternet Landscapes: Sweden by Evan Roth

http://n57.680235e11.668160.seLaunch: 2 March 2016

Action in public space!Mediengruppe Bitnik, Chelsea’s Wall

Ljubljana10 March 2016

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Head of productionMarcela Okretič (Aksioma)

Associated producersJoško Pajer (Škuc),Petra Corva (Drugo more)

Executive producerSonja Grdina

AssistantsBoris Beja, Katra Petriček,Dubravko Matanić, Luka Rodela

TechniciansValter Udovičić, Atila Boštjančič

Public relationsUrša Purkart, Ivana Katić

ProductionAksioma − Institute for Contemporary Art,Ljubljana, 2016Artistic director: Janez Janša

Drugo more, RijekaArtistic director: Davor Mišković

Škuc GalleryArtistic director: Vladimir Vidmar

Colophon

In co-production withd-i-n-a/The Influencers,Kino Šiška Centre for Urban Culture,Museum of Modern and Contemporary Art,Rijeka

Partner: Link Art Center

This project has been funded withsupport from the European Commission.This exhibition reflects the views onlyof the author, and the Commissioncannot be held responsible for any usewhich may be made of the informationcontained therein.

Supported by

The Creative Europe programme of theEuropean Union

Ministry of Culture of the Republic ofSlovenia

Municipality of Ljubljana

Istituto Italiano di Cultura inSlovenia

National Foundation for Civil SocietyDevelopment

Kultura nova Foundation

Ministry of Culture of the Republic ofCroatia and the City of Rijeka −Department for Culture.

The Black Chamber has been realised inthe framework of Masters&Servers,a joint project by Aksioma (SI), Drugomore (HR), Abandon Normal Devices (UK),Link Art Center (IT) and d-i-n-a/TheInfluencers (ES).