For the first time, Akademie Schloss Solitude has awarded Schlosspost web residencies. The first call on the topic »Decentralization of Internet Art« was curated by NETRO who were also the jury for this call.
Eighty-four great project proposals were received from applicants from all over the world. In the end, a decentralized, uncensored, user-curated darknet pocket gallery, an SEO campaign as a kind of performative intervention into the back end of the web, and an experiment in blocking all personal sites in search of a new type of internet, convinced the jury with their exceptional way of dealing with the topic. The three web residents will be contributing to Schlosspost for four weeks until April 3, 2016 reporting on their steps and publishing a finished work at the end of the residency.
»Centralization means loss of flexibility, innovation, and independence: the essential elements of the World Wide Web. Decentralization has only just begun; it is the logical consequence of a lack of options. We have selected web residents whose ideas deal specifically with this topic and who will work on it in an unusual, but critical way.
The concept of web residencies is something obvious to us. In our networked and digital world, where place and origin don’t play a special role any more, we consider the web residency as a statement.« –NETRO
»Pivilion – Your Personal Darknet Pocket Gallery«
by Dina Karadžić & Vedran Gligo, Zagreb/Croatia
»Pivilion – Your Personal Darknet Pocket Gallery« by Dina Karadžić & Vedran Gligo, Open Call No 1 — »Decentralization of Internet Art« curated by Netro, 2016
»Pivilion is a decentralized, uncensored, user-curated web gallery operating system and gallery management software running on nodes hosted by the general public and distributed through clearnet and Tor. The aim of the gallery-host project is to create a nomadic free virtual environment that connects art-oriented users (both creators and consumers) by offering a participatory model of interaction.«
»Institute for New Feeling«
by the Institute for New Feeling, Los Angeles/US
»This proposal is the first phase of a larger research project + web-based performance we’re planning for 2016. For the Schlosspost Residency we will research strategies for manipulating online reputation and/or page ranking, content generation, black hat and white hat SEO tactics, publish an essay that includes a glossary of techniques, and launch a SEO campaign by creating 1,000 websites. $500 will purchase 100 domains for 1 year @ $3-5/each; we’ll build the sites using our existing hosting and (with 10 subdomains on each), acquiring virtual real estate and populating it with repetitive, minimal content that links back to the Institute for New Feeling.«
»A Disillusioned Netizen Sets Out on a Walk Across Internet«
by Travis Hallenbeck, Baltimore, MD/US
»A Disillusioned Netizen Sets Out on a Walk Across Internet« by Travis Hallenbeck, Open Call No 1 — »Decentralization of Internet Art« curated by Netro, 2016
»After spending most of the past 17 years online, I now rarely go anywhere other than eight sites: Google, Wikipedia, Tumblr, Twitter, Pinboard, Facebook, Youtube and Netflix. For the web residency, I’ll block those sites in my browser for a month and blog here about where I go, what I see and who I meet. I’ll start accounts where I’ve never been, make whatever art is possible and link extensively. I’ll push myself to go as far and wide as possible and not obsess over any one place. At the end of the month, I’ll compile everything as a finished work, a map of the Internet as I will then know it.«