The Influencers 2017

Participants at this edition prominently include Liam Young and Kate Davies, creators of the project Unknown Fields; artist, troll and expert in pro-Trump digital subcultures Daniel Keller; Serbian activist and technologist Vladan Joler; James Bridle, who will present his latest research on planetary computer systems; and the tandem formed by Nora Al–Badri and Nikolai Nelles, authors of the controversial project Nefertiti Hack.

In addition, the 2017 edition of The Influencers is framed within the European project The New Networked Normal (NNN), co-funded by the European Union’s Creative Europe and made up of the CCCB, the festival Abandon Normal Devices (Manchester), the festival Transmediale (Berlin) and art centre and electronic cultures festival Mu/STRP (Eindhoven). The project, which will last until July 2019, has the aim of exploring and debating about art, technology and citizenship in the Internet era.

 

 

Thursday 26 October

Opening with Unknown Fields Division (Kate Davies & Liam Young) and Nora Al-Badri & Nikolai Nelles

19.00 – 21.00 | Hall CCCB

Unknown Fields Division (Kate Davies & Liam Young)
Unknown Fields, a nomadic design studio directed by Kate Davies and Liam Young, ventures out on expeditions into the shadows cast by the contemporary city, to uncover the alternative worlds, alien landscapes, industrial ecologies and precarious wilderness set in motion by the powerful push and pull of the city’s desires...

Nora Al-Badri & Nikolai Nelles
In early 2016 Nora Al-Badri and Jan Nikolai Nelles grabbed headlines across the world by announcing that they had snuck a hacked Kinect Sensor into the Neues Museum in Berlin and done a guerrilla 3D scan of the bust of Queen Nefertiti, a precious artwork from ancient Egypt...

 

Friday 27 October

Othernet. A people's cloud

11.00 – 18.00 | Sala Conservas / Sant Pau, 58
Workshop by Danja Vasiliev (1)
With registration

A Critical Engineering workshop led by Danja Vasiliev where participants will be walked through the process of setting up a self-owned server that they control - scalable to hundreds or thousands of users.

 

Tactics and Poetics of Invisibility

15.00 – 19.00 | Hall CCCCB
Workshop by Amy Suo Wu

Tactics and Poetics of Invisibility is a workshop on how to make, apply and activate various kinds of invisible inks such as milk, lemon juice, starch, baking soda and saliva. Invisible inks are one of the oldest forms of steganography, the art and science of hiding in plain sight.

 

Trolls, trumps & algorithmic propaganda

19.00 – 21.00h | Hall CCCB
A post-post-truth session with Alice Marwick, Adrian Chen, Daniel Keller and Vladan Joler.

Alice Marwick
Are fake news merely yet another case of political disinformation? Alice Marwick nose-dived into an uncanny and often hateful arena where racism and misogyny blended with irony-saturated Internet subcultures and online sensationalism.

Adrian Chen
Few people know that Adrian Chen, a young but already influential writer and journalist, started as a (hilarious) 'youtuber'. Now, he's a writer who investigated the Silk Road, Russian internet propaganda, Reddit trolls and Facebook hidden moderators.

Daniel Keller
What do obscure numeral exoteric theories have in common with white suprematism, Kek the Egyptian god of chaos, Pepe, an innocent character of a popular comic strip, and, well… Donald Trump? Ask Daniel Keller.

Vladan Joler
Vladan Joler is co-founder of Share Lab, a Serbian research team that set out to explore how humans and data are changing the contemporary public sphere, probably for good.

The conversation will follow the next day at Ask me anything (a breakfast with data).

 

Saturday 29 October

Othernet. A people's cloud

11.00 – 18.00 | Sala Conservas / Sant Pau, 58
Workshop by Danja Vasiliev (1)
With registration

A Critical Engineering workshop led by Danja Vasiliev where participants will be walked through the process of setting up a self-owned server that they control - scalable to hundreds or thousands of users.

 

Ask me anything (a breakfast with data)

12.00 – 14.00 | Hall CCCB
With Daniel Keller, Vladan Joler, Adrian Chen and Alice Marwick. Follow up Friday's "Trolls, trumps & algorithmic propaganda" conversation.

 

Internet Yami Ichi

13.00 – 19.00 | Hall CCCB

The Internet Yami-Ichi (Internet Black Market) is a flea market which deals "Internet-ish" things, face-to-face, IRL and mostly AFK ;-)

 

Hasan Elahi, Amy Suo Wu and James Bridle

19.00 – 22.00 | Hall CCCB

Hasan Elahi
During the last US presidential campaign Donald Trump called all muslims to report about suspicious fellow believers to the FBI, provoking a huge wave of protest and users’ creativity. Hasan Elahi, an American with Bangladeshi roots, was not surprised for a simple reason: he had done the same, repeatedly and almost obsessively since 2002. Only that he had been reporting… about himself!

Amy Suo Wu
Amy Suo Wu is an artist and designer researching how language, technology and media shape people and vice versa. Her latest project is a steganographic fashion zine that instrumentalizes fashion accessories as a cover to spread sensitive, underground or erased knowledge in the context of China.

James Bridle
"We do not have to heedlessly accept the technological myths we are offered, because they can be retold and revivified in every generation. We can construct test cases, compose oppositional and adversarial examples, and catch exceptions".