[oberlist] Into the blind-a work about understanding black box technology- on display in Belgrade

[jovana milica]

>From the 2-12th of May, Dom omladine in Belgrade will show Into the blind, a
work from Darija Medic, exploring the hierarchy of languages
between human and technology on the example of manipulating GPS software.
http://www.domomladine.org/izlozbe/javno-vodjenje-kroz-izlozbu-darije-medic-into-the-blind/
Darija will give guided tours 9-10th of May from 7-8pm, gallery Dom oml
adine, Makedonska 22/IV, Belgrade.

 Stemming from an urge for a physical and figurative opening of the black
box of closed systems, these navigational offers investigate the space
between human perception and technological structures, in order to render
visible the decisions existing behind every neutral technology. In a
classical hacker tradition, on the example of one of the most hermetic
systems (the GPS system, created primarily for military purposes), Into the
Blind builds on the strategy of the situationist detournament with
speculative technology. Choosing the “less common road”, in other words,
adjusting the meaning of optimal route, the modified software indicates the
problem of technological determinism on a symbolic level (technology as
guiding hand, taking the right path), as well as on a material one, based
in the sole structure of the software, through the concept of effective
algorithms. As a laboratory of technological consumption, Into the Blind
celebrates the mantra of practicing performative code and calls for a
freedom of software intervention, through the inbetween language of human
and machine, or as Katherine Hayles would say: “We become the codes we
punch”.
[image: Inline image 6]




In a world of perfectly functional and synchronized platforms, technology
is not a prothesis of a hybrid cyborg organism anymore (*Donna Harraway).
It is at the same time a collective fantasy and a physical battlefield of
social forces sublimated in protocols*. The participative world of
technoculture is total, as it is constant and ubiquitous, outside and above
technological devices, a compass through the reality of digital
materiality. While shaping time/space to the point of its own assimilation,
it is at the same time a key mediator of human activities and communication.

Into the Blind dives into everyday positioning towards the indispensable
tools that shape our movement, while at the same time remaining
fundamentally mysterious, due to their nature. Through the simulation of
placing a modified GPS software* on the market, this work inquires into the
nature of producing technological narratives and practices. Diverse
principles of navigation are offered, as an experimental technological
prototype, in the form of products with supporting corporate rhetoric
elements.


-Model 100 offers taxi drivers the possibility of earning money by taking
longer routes, while it still presenting itself as a regular navigation
software to the customer

-Model 200 offers routes for avoiding police

-Model 300 looks for routes of less electromagnetic frequency


Using the primary rule of interface design – giving the user the feeling of
having control, the models 100-300 position themselves inside the triangle
human-manipulation-technology. The features of the models go from
fulfilling practical (model 100) to abstract (model 300) requests for
convoluted routes, while their scope depicts the speculative possibilities
of market rhetoric, enabled by the suggestiveness of technology itself.
What connects these three models is an identical interpretation of tasks,
in other words they are the same software, but as mechanisms of their inner
workings are not visible, their package gives the impression of distinction
and offers trust.


[image: Inline image 1]


The material basis of today’s software suggestiveness is the vast
communicative gap between human perception and code that resides in a
specific complex technology, as well as the increasing speed of software
and device development in the direction of intuitiveness. The greater gap
between code and human logical understanding, the greater the possibilities
of interpretation, therefore access to the inner workings of technological
structures becomes the privilege of today, and a carrier of social power.
Moreover, the growing frequency of regulations towards a centralization of
informational-communicative processes plays an important political role in
the direction of control over technological practices.


///LINKS:

Walter Benjamin The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction

http://www.marxists.org/reference/subject/philosophy/works/ge/benjamin.htm

Donna Harraway: http://www.scribd.com/doc/20261943/

Hayles-Virtual-Bodies-and-Flickering-Signifiers

Situationist international

http://library.nothingness.org/articles/SI/en/display/315

Navit, an open source navigation program

http://www.navit-project.org/

Black box

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Black_box

Protocol-Alexander Galloway

http://mitpress.mit.edu/catalog/item/default.asp?ttype=2&tid=10069
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