Cables, waves, hard drives and tattoos

 ... or how to trace the post-photographic image across networks

The project Critical Tracing and The Post-Photographic Image explores how images move across infrastructures. In this context, we propose a two-days workshop to approach the digital image as a transactional device that we can use to trace the infrastructure through which it circulates. This hybrid workshop will be hosted by the MediaDock at the Lucerne School of Art and Design and on a Telegram channel. It will take place on the 23rd and 24th of November 2021.

Guest speakers and tracers:
Irene Amerini, Anaïs Bloch, Marloes de Valk, Andrew Dewdney, Maurice Haedo, Geoff and Stephanie Hobbis, Sam Mercer, Nicolas Nova, Jara Rocha, Nestor Siré, Katrina Sluis, Gaia Tedone, Tiberio Uricchio, Mushon Zer Aviv.

The workshop is the second of a series developed as part of the project 'Critical Tracing and the Post-Photographic Image' supported by the Swiss National Science Foundation and the Lucerne School of Art and Design. It originates from the collaborative work between Gaia Tedone, Nicolas Malevé and Nestor Siré and is inspired by Siré's longterm research on the 'Cuban Paquete Semanal'.

In 20th century photographic history and criticism the notion of trace has consistently been associated with the medium's mechanical reproducibility and its indexical relationship to reality. Yet, with the ubiquitous adoption of digital technology, photography has moved away from the singularity of the analogue medium towards a networked technology with a computational structure. Hence the question arises: How can the concept of trace and the act of tracing be reframed to account for images' algorithmic structure and their circulatory patterns amongst different contexts of reception? What are the aesthetic and political implications of foregrounding such notions when rethinking parameters of production, dissemination and interpretation of networked images?

Once images ceased to be perceived primarily as visual surfaces but as a vectors of relations, the notion of infrastructure gains importance, as an essential concept for framing image practices as inseparable from their materiality. Our objective is to study how infrastructure permeates our concepts and ideas about the post-photographic image. We believe that infrastructure cannot be taken for granted and tracing requires different strategies according to the materialities through which images circulate under different geopolitical and socio-technical conditions. As such, our aim is to explore and complicate the idea that 'every act of seeing an image or reading a text on the Internet is registered and becomes traceable' (Groys, 2016:185).

In this two days workshop, we propose a transdisciplinary dialogue between ethnography, computer science, network activism, media and cultural studies in order to explore different methodologies of tracing/tracking images, patterns of circulation and various forms of 'invisibility'. To do this, we will learn about computer forensics and scrutinize the traces of image circulation via jpegs uploaded on social media. We will follow transactional networks of advertising and their ramifications. We will reflect on the problem of translating images from online to offline economies. We will follow their paths from websites to hard drives and USB keys, from cables to waves. And their financial adventures from personal credit cards to Pesos. Along the way, as we will move through infrastructures, we will pay attention to errors and glitches and the impressive work of maintenance of ad hoc infrastructures. We will trace the map of the knowledges emerging from the activities supporting image movements where shops become laboratories and where pocket infrastructures provide new patterns of connectivity.

During this hybrid workshop gathering participants from Europe, Israel and Latin America, presentations will take place both online and on site. The channel of choice will be Telegram for the remote presentations as well as to broadcast on site presentations. During the workshop, we have also planned hands-on moments of collaborative diagramming to reflect together on the relations between infrastructure and image circulation in a context of digital asymmetry.

Schedule

Day 1, Tuesday November 23
Themes: the networked image, tracing

10:00 – 10.15: Welcome and Introduction.
10.15 – 11.00: Mushon Zer-Aviv, AdNauseam – Obfuscation as a Privacy Counter-Measure, Remote Presentation + Q&A
11.00 – 11.15: Break
11.15 – 12.00: This image is Not Available in Your Country; glitches, errant t-shirts and the potential of an empty inbox, Gaia Tedone, On site Presentation + Q&A
12.00 – 12.45: Remote response by Katrina Sluis and Q&A
13.00 – 14.00: Lunch
14:00 – 14:45: Tracing the Networked Image, Andrew Dewdney, Remote Presentation + Q&A
14:45 – 15:30: Research/Creation : A visual exploration of digital repair practices, Anaïs Bloch, On site Presentation + Q&A
15:30 – 15:45: Break
15.45 – 16:45: Tracing Session [Hybrid]
16.45 – 17.30: Presentation + Q&A by Nestor Siré on the recent developments of the Sección Arte in El Paquete Semanal, Remote Presentation
17.30 - 18.00: Collective discussion & Wrap up, Hybrid
7:00 Pm: Dinner

Day 2, Wednesday November 24
Themes: digital divide, infrastructure, network

10:00 – 10.15: Summary of Day 1 & Introduction to Day 2.
10:15 – 11.00: Learning to trace imperceptible features in social media images, by Irene Amerini and Tiberio Uricchio, Remote Presentation + Q&A
11.00 – 11.45: The Girl with the Tribal Tattoo Jpeg: Stories from the Bush Internet , Geoff and Stephanie Hobbis, On Site Presentation + Q&A
11.45 – 12.00: Break
12.00 – 12.45: My store is a laboratory: smartphone repairers and their knowledge, by Nicolas Nova, Remote Presentation + Q&A
13.00 – 14.00: Lunch
14:00 – 15:30: Tracing Session
15:30 – 15:45: Break
15.45 – 16:45: Nestor Siré and collaborators, prototyping session, remote
16.45 – 17.30: Collective discussion, presentation of the tracings & Wrap up [hybrid, in Lucerne + Telegram]

The choice to use Telegram has been made to circumnavigate problems of connectivity with Cuba and to explore creative and social responses to instant messaging apps. Please download the latest update of the Telegram app ahead of the event. You can decide to follow the talk from either your phone or computer desktop. Just click on the above link to join the channel at the time of the event. If you don’t have Telegram, you can download the app for free here: https://telegram.org

+ info: http://functionariesofthecamera.net/packaging-across-networks/

Packaging Across Networks

 

Online workshop held on a Telegram channel
July 7&8, 4pm – 7pm CET
An experiment in networked tracing, instigated by Nicolas Malevé, Nestor Siré, Gaia Tedone

Guest speakers and tracers: Cristina Cochior, Marloes de Valk, Maurice Haedo, Swati Janu, Steffen Köhn, Offray Vladimir Luna Cárdenas, Sam Mercer, Jara Rocha, Luis Rodil-Fernandez, Winnie Soon.

Please join us for a two-days online workshop to reflect and speculate on the poetics and politics of divergent networked infrastructures.

The framework of the Packaging Across Networks Workshop is Nestor Siré’s long-term research on the 'Cuban Paquete Semanal' – a one-terabyte collection of media that is aggregated weekly in Cuba on a physical hard drive and is distributed through a pirate network of distribution via in-person digital copying. In this context we are reflecting upon the material conditions of different networked infrastructures and how they force us to rethink a series of assumptions about the circulations of images and content and create different networked economies.

Over the course of two days of focused exchange, we aim to open up reflections on online and offline networks, informal channels of content circulation, and collaborative practices under conditions of socio-technical asymmetry. Through a set of presentations, discussions and a tracing exercise, we will attempt to articulate the tensions arising when online networked content is disseminated in offline networks as well as the conditions in which these offline networks may resurface online. We will address the social and economic dynamics that subtend these forms of networking. The context of the American embargo against Cuba will serve as a point of reference for this discussion that will extend to other contexts such as Khirkee, South Delhi.

The tracing exercises, which will be conducted at the hands of invited participants–tracers aided by open source software, aims to visualize the various questions and concepts introduced in the presentations and to offer a map for moments of shared analysis and speculation. Focused attention will be directed towards the near future of Siré's project: to find the relevant form of presence of the Art Section of El Paquete in an online environment. We want to collectively discuss which form this can take, which strategies can be imagined, what kinds of alliances need to be built and which trajectories must be enabled. 

The choice to use Telegram has been made to circumnavigate problems of connectivity with Cuba and to explore creative and social responses to instant messaging apps. Please download the latest update of the Telegram app ahead of the event. You can decide to follow the talk from either your phone or computer desktop. Just click on the above link to join the channel at the time of the event. If you don’t have Telegram, you can download the app for free here: https://telegram.org

The workshop is developed as part of the collaborative project 'Critical Tracing and the Post-Photographic Image’ supported by the Swiss National Science Foundation and the Lucerne School of Art and Design. 

+ info and full programme: http://functionariesofthecamera.net/packaging-across-networks/