Antidatamining

All human activities that are affected by digital technologies, generate a wide variety and massive amount of data, providing new specific interpretative frameworks. Constructing a binary meta-layer including time, space, people, behaviours and the infinite combinations of their mutual interactions, data has become a prime material to analyse the world and its complexity. By using mathematical models fed with data, computer programs aim to understand invisible phenomenons, to reveal correlations and even predict events before they occur (in finance, politics and security for example). As many constructions of reality, these mathematical models create a distorted image of the world, which radically transforms our perception. Moreover, these become self-fulfilling prophecies that directly affect our environment through feedback effects, and thus erase the boundaries between reality and fiction.
Finance has become the most important data laboratory, where most of these methods and processes are developed, experimented and applied. This sector has reached an unprecedented level of complexity, automation and abstraction, and has transformed reality according to its processes, as may be seen in its recent successive crisis (subprimes, flashcrash, debt, etc.).

The workshop will invite participants from various artistic and scientific backgrounds to jointly explore the world of data with the artist/research collective RYBN.ORG, from theoretical models and conceptual applications in finance to their concrete uses. The workshop will give an overview of tools and techniques (open databases, data gathering softwares) that will be shared and exchanged among the participants in an open-atelier environment. The workshop aims to explore artistic strategies and concepts that relate to data manipulation and subversion.

The Workshop will be held in English with optional German translation. Please bring your own laptop computer if possible.