Owen Mundy

I am tele-participating in a one-week online performance of Google queries at Transmediale 2012 in Berlin. The project, plainly titled, “Google,” is organized by Johannes P. Osterhoff and will run from Jan 30 to Feb 5, 2012. Each participant edits the search method for their browser search bar so that everything they type in this box, from the personal to the mundane, becomes instantly visible at google-performance.org.

The project (“manifesto” below) makes public what Facebook, Google, and any online search engine, crowdsourcing website, or social network already does by harvesting searches from users, and re-representing that data in a new context. While Google uses these queries to build and sell condensed user demographic data to advertisers, Osterhoff’s project asks, who actually owns your search data?

We shall do an one-week performance piece.

The piece is called “Google” and documents all searches we perform withthe search engine of the same name.

The performance shall take place during transmediale 2012 and shall start on Monday, January 30 and shall end on Sunday, February 5, 2012.

We shall not use undocumented ways to use the search engine Google during this time.

Each of our search queries shall create a web page that is indexed by this search engine and thus makes our searches publicly available as search results for everybody.

Facebook’s “Privacy Settings” always seem to be a work in progress. One thing they do consistently is default to less privacy overall, thus more sharing of your information on their site. For a website that depends on user-generated content the motivation to encourage sharing is clear enough. Still, why do they use the word “privacy” if they’re not actually embracing the idea?

For example, a recent update introduces a table with degrees of privacy from less to more (left to right). Types of data are listed in rows, while access is shown in the columns, with Everyone to Friends Only, again left to right.

Curious about what Facebook “Recommended” settings were, I clicked and am sharing the screenshot below. I am not surprised to see that they wish me to open-up all content I generate; status messages, posts, images, etc. and discourage allowing anyone I don’t know to comment on posts (probably as spam prevention).

I have been thinking about privacy quite a bit this week, developing ideas for what next to do with Give Me My Data, and providing an interview about social media for Naked on Pluto (along with the likes of Marc Garrett and Geert Lovink). Plus I went to see the “geek hero story” The Social Network at the Babylon Cinema last night.

Anyway, after all this thinking about Facebook’s past, I’m curious about its future, and how it will continue to try to hold on to the #1 social networking website position that Friendster and MySpace lost so quickly. The API, games, etc could be expected, but the Facebook Connect tools that are so prevalent now, even on Yelp, a site I figured could make it without schlepping, were a surprise.

Facebook Connect, a jquery “widget” that allows you to login to other websites using your Facebook ID, is clever and eerie at once. It allows Facebook to track you when you are not even on their site, and make sure you stay loyal. If that sounds sinister, well it is. What other purpose could there be for making available a service with the single purpose of mediating every interaction or bit of content you add to the web? It seems at first like OpenID, and it is, except that its run by a multi-billion dollar social media corporation.

A deconstruction of defense contractor website data structures.

After 4 months the new yourarthere.net website and member-run content management system is now live. Thanks to Braylin and Brittany Morales, Beth Lee, and Chris Cumbie for all their hard work.

The site is valid XHTML/CSS and runs on PHP/MySQL using the Codeigniter framework. All the details from our research from inception onward are archived here.

This site is based around the idea that members should have control of the content on the website. Every member has a profile where they can add images, text, tags, and events to promote their artwork or group. Members can create a new profile for every domain they host with yourarthere.nets.

Keyword Intervention has been included in the recent HZ Net Gallery update. Also included were: Alysse Stepanian, Rudi Punzo, Aaron Oldenburg, Aaron M. Higgens, Anders Bojen & Kristoffer Ørum.

Keyword Intervention is receiving lots of traffic this week from searches related to a television show called, yes, “Intervention.” All these great searches like “intervention nude“, “intervention cristy naked pics“, and “INTERVENTION CHRISTY NUDE” (all caps will somehow help your search?) have inspired me to update the layout and search engines it scrapes.

Map of this week’s searches.

drain: Journal of Contemporary Art and Culture is pleased to announce the launch of Issue #10 COLD

A collective behavior of baroque, abundant consumption has led to an economic and climatic meltdown. The push toward a frenzied emphasis on growth & mass consumption has manifested a cascade of aesthetic opulence in the form of brightly colored advertisements & plastic disposable goods. In the wake of this recent collapse; the purity, simplicity & refinement of a calmer and cooler culture is now alluring. Can transparent, clear and meditative practice counter this lavish, hot & hysterical culture? Subverting the old notion of icy bureaucratic indifference remediated through hot empathy, might the forces of hot commodity be slowed by an intervening cold? Is it possible for the lucidity of coolness to connect cultures & move us into the future?
This issue of Drain presents a collection of critical writing and art practices that has touched on many continents, climates and cultures to transform the way in which we think about how various degrees of cold collaborate.

We are pleased to present Celina Jeffery and Owen Mundy as our feature writer and artist.

This issue also includes essays by Edwin Janzen and Eduardo Navas, as well as interviews by Scott Waters with artist Andrew Morrow, Shannon Stratton with Michael Milano; reviews by Gean Moreno (on Ernesto Oroza) and Edith-Anne Pageot (on Construction Work: Lorraine Gilbert, Josée Dubeau, Jinny Yu).

In our Creative Writing section, we bring to you works by Adelheid Mers, Ellie Krakow, Kathryn Yusoff and Allison Kudla.

Art projects, include two sections; Freeze – with works by Leah Bailis, Lou Mallozzi, Sally Grizzell Larson, Noelle Mason and Deborah Wing-Sproul and Thaw – with works by Jonathan Van Dyke, Nitin Mukul, Kim Jackson DeBord, Rachel Moore, Adrian Göllner and Living Lenses

While this issue explored Cold as an aesthetic experience and concept of our times, THAW – The Meltdown- A Panel and discussion forum held at Atlanta Contemporary Art Center, took this investigation a step further through conversation that addressed the aftermath of the residual coldness.

We wish you an enjoyable read and look forward to contributions from you for our upcoming issues on Militarism and Rewind respectively.

Drain would not have been possible without the support of you, our patrons. Thank you for your continued support!

This issue was curated by Avantika Bawa and Stuart Keeler.

Managerial board: Avantika Bawa, Celina Jeffery, Adrian Parr

drain – Journal of Contemporary Art and Culture
www.drainmag.com

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Saturday, August 29, 2009, I will be talking about Keyword Intervention in a paper titled, “Intervention and the Internet: New Forms of Public Practice” at ISEA2009: the 15th International Symposium on Electronic Art in Belfast, Ireland.

Full program
http://www.isea2009.org/images/programme15july.pdf

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