Five Artist Projects Exploring the Internet and Its Aftermath
Matteo Cremonesi surveys five artist projects from 2014 to 2019 that critically examine the internet's social and political implications. Amalia Ulman's 2014 Instagram performance 'Excellences & Perfection' staged a constructed lifestyle over five months, including fake breast augmentation, to expose online identity fabrication. Mediengruppe Bitnik's 'Random Darknet Shopper' (2014-2016) used a bot to randomly purchase items from the deep web, some illegal, raising questions about machine legal responsibility. Joana Moll's 'The Dating Brokers' (2017) displayed sensitive data of one million dating site users, highlighting personal information misuse. Evan Roth's ongoing 'Red Lines' (2018–) streams infrared coastal videos from servers located in the same landscapes, mapping data's physical journey. Trevor Paglen's 'ImageNet Roulette' (2019), shown at Fondazione Prada's 'Training Humans' exhibition, used machine learning to label viewers' faces, revealing biases in AI training and the dangers of delegating human classification to machines. The article was published in Artribune Magazine #52.
Key facts
- Amalia Ulman's Instagram performance 'Excellences & Perfection' ran for five months in 2014.
- Ulman posted selfies in luxury locations, a strict diet, and documentation of a fake breast augmentation.
- Mediengruppe Bitnik's 'Random Darknet Shopper' was a bot that randomly bought goods from the deep web.
- Some items purchased by the bot were illegal; the work questions legal responsibility of machine actions.
- Joana Moll's 'The Dating Brokers' (2017) displays sensitive data of one million dating site users.
- Data includes usernames, emails, gender, sexual orientation, interests, and profession.
- Evan Roth's 'Red Lines' (2018–) streams infrared coastal videos from servers located in the same landscapes.
- A map shows the physical path of the file from server to viewer's terminal.
- Trevor Paglen's 'ImageNet Roulette' (2019) uses machine learning to label viewers' faces.
- The project reveals biases transmitted to machines during training.
- The article was published in Artribune Magazine #52 by Matteo Cremonesi.
Entities
Artists
- Amalia Ulman
- Mediengruppe Bitnik
- Joana Moll
- Evan Roth
- Trevor Paglen
- Kate Crawford
- Matteo Cremonesi
Institutions
- Fondazione Prada
- Kunst Halle St. Gallen
- Artribune
Locations
- St. Gallen
- Switzerland
- Brescia
- Italy