Dirty New Media: Art, Activism, and Computer Counter Cultures

Presented at The Last HOPE (2008), July 18, 2008, 9 p.m. (60 minutes)

This talk presents a short history of electronic art by illustrating connections between artists, activists, and hackers. The connections and histories presented include: the demoscene and its origins in software piracy; video and conceptual artists in the 1970s and their activist work; contemporary artists working with circuit bending and other detournements of modern technologies; the Chicago "dirty new media" community; contemporary artists, hackers, and activists creating software and electronic art with a punk/anticapitalist ethos. Excerpts of work from these different artists and communities will be screened and discussed.

Presenters:

• Jake Elliott
  Jake Elliott is an artist/hacker living in Chicago. His art practice consists of performance, installation, and interactive work that destabilizes culturally accepted relationships between users and software. He researches and explores connections between early video art and contemporary software art with �criticalartware,� programs lo-fi digital punk microfestivals with �r4wb1t5,� tears computers apart with a hammer onstage with �0UR080R05,� and operates an artist/hacker co-op with �boxen.� In 2006 he started the free computer lab and hacker hangout dai5ychain on the near west side of Chicago.

Links:

• https://infocon.org/cons/2600/The Last HOPE (2008)/The Last HOPE (2008) - Dirty New Media - Art, Activism, and Computer Counter Cultures.mp4
• https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZzuNODFD5X0

Similar Presentations:

• Still Hacking Anyway (SHA2017) / The World in 24 Hours Revisited: How to re-enact a 1982 network art performance
• The Last HOPE (2008) / Installation Art in HOPE Space
• HOPE Number Nine (2012) / The Emergence of Hacker as Artist and Artist as Hacker