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Metatitle: Iterations
Title: Fun is over. (Or: The fun is over.)
Subtitle: The Te ch no Ora c le TTO

Description TTO

“I actually think most people don’t want Google to answer their questions. They want Google to tell them what they should be doing next.” 
(Eric Sc h midt)

An international group of artists is develop ing The Techno Oracle TTO, a networked counceling entity which is now world-premièring in esc, Graz.

Where internet companies don't want to burn their fingers on the suggestive, the inefficient, the absurd and mythical, The Techno Oracle TTO opens up the spectrum of search query technology to the realm of uncertainty, intuition and even magic. 
The Techno Oracle TTO fina l ly acknowledges the metaphysical depths of our worshipping of the internet as the solver of all our lives ' problems. The real darknet is not the freenet but the net of obsessive and compulsive desire s of dispossessed users. 
The Techno Oracle TTO is a human-machine configuration that provides wise councils and predictions to its users, drawing knowledge from revolutionary hybrid technologies that were already developed by the ancient Greeks.  

During the exhibition period, the space transforms into an accessible installation : The Techno Oracle TTO. It is infused by, and leaks into many sectors and disciplines: art, informatics, sociology, privacy studies, network-theory, spacemodelling methods, copy-left studies etc.

The audience is invited to participate to beta-test TTO, and engage in the development of the system by follow ing protocol s that are integrated in the exhibition. They get the opportu n ity t o lift a tip of the veil of the applied technology and discover, change and reappropriate the sources behind the smoke screen. And they might even leave with a dayplanner for a "perfect" li f e.

"Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic." 
(Arthur C. Clarke) 

With: Pascale Barret, Julien Deswaef, Heidrun Primas, Ushi Reiter,  Agnese Trocchi, IOhannes m zmölnig, 
Organised by : Constant (Peter Westenberg + Constant-Team ), esc ( Reni Hofmüller + esc-Team)

Iterations description

TTO is developed in the frame of Iterations, a joint project of media organisations esc in Graz and Constant in Brussels. Iterations is a series of exhibitions that aim to gain visibility for collective digital creative practices. 

It is also an exchange project in which artists experiment with sharing content, working together, open source software. It travels from Austria via Italy to Belgium, each time asking a different group of artists to iterate and rework the work of the previous group.

The project acknowledges the powers of repe ti tion. Doing things several times allows for building up experiences from which can be learned, we improve our skills, and strengthen our insights by going over viewing and reviewing, again and again.  

Many artists feel that ethics of tools and aesthetics are connected especially when it comes to software and the internet. Now that ubiqu it ous connectivity and blackboxed computing are in many peoples ' pockets, it is important to revisit the power of coupling free software with free society projects to help create sustainable digital ecologies of exchange.  

TTO and other works produced in Iterations speak to the senses: audio-visual, touch and other cognitive senses, the intellectual. A t the same time TTO and other upcoming works display and make available the methodological processes, the tools, sources and documentation that were used to produce the work. 

The artists coming together in the group work with free libre open source  tools. Their skills, medium, working methods are complementary. They  come from various media and artistic disciplines: some are programmers, some work online, some of them are audio / video makers, some are into scenography, spatial design. Some are experienced group workers, others  work as individual artists on their own individual works, using open licensed, collectively generated digital tools.  

“Art is continual change and the only way to advance is together. No single developer can create everything from scratch.” Pedro Soler, Artists and Free Software, An Introduction, in: FLOSS+Art


Background text by marloes and aymeric
                                   
" The relationship between artist, tool, content and audience has never been of greater importance than in digital culture. Data has become both instrument, material and medium, all of which are reproducable without cost and distributable instantaneousely. The software industry is well aware of this and consequently has adopted the model of selling licences instead of software. Similarly, the entertainment industry does not release movies and music to an audience but instead sells end user licence agreements that provide a limited right to the playback of digital content. In both cases the study, modification and redistribution of this digital information are forbidden.  
At the same time, content creators are inclined to use software specifically tuned and developed for such a distribution system. As a consequence creativity becomes a passive input for a content distribution machine the output of which feeds a passive audience. The lack of freedom and the absence of connection between the two opposed components of this production chain give the system all rights to control both culture and its usage. But i s there any alternative?

Actually, yes.
What about a model in which artists and their audience simply refuse the passive role of user and instead persevere as creators and collectors of great ideas? In this model, artists could own their own “tools”, would be free to use them whenever and however they want, and could dissect, hack, embellish and share them without breaking any laws. The creative process of an artist is no longer restricted by what software companies dictate, only by his/her own skill. Software being more than a means by which ideas are expressed technically, functions as medium. Software is the art work and its code is an integral part of it. In this model, artists would give free access to this layer of the artwork. Free distribution of the work would break the artist out of isolation and put him/her in contact with an audience, a community. Such a model is not utopian, it is already practiced by those artists who choose free software and copyleft.  "

(introduction text to FLOSS + ART, Marloes de Valk and Aymeri c Manso ux )

Description Organisers

Constant and esc, the two organisations that initiate Iterations exist since times that the semantic web and Web 2.0 were notions that still sounded innocent and even potentially utopian, untainted by the current corporate and state control and data abuse. Since then open source and free so f tware have been widely embraced by tech savy activists and corporate multinationals alike: Free software has moved from a promising alternative to becoming integrated in the digital mainstream. 
In advertising, fluent terminology has always been a violent money making tool. One result of entering the meanstream is the commercialisation of concepts and vocabulary. Among many others, the words 'open', 'sharing', 'collaboration' have been assimilated into the contexts of online bussiness. No longer do they only belong to the scope of well-mannered good willing idealists. One mission of this project is to reboot words into praxis and rethink our use of terms.

Th e experience with early digital collectives, free software art collaborations, can be an im p ortant resource for a younger generation of tech artists. That is why the concepts and practices, inspirations, tools and outputs in this project are 'iterating' over a multi-generational group of artists. Some remember the beginning of the net, some are 'born web 2.0': who grew up with a web that generates incredible capital for a few, and proposes exploitational models of distributed work for multit u des of others. 

Constant, A ssociation for Arts and Media: http://www.constantvzw.org
esc medien kunst labor: http://esc.mur.at/