Naked on Pluto is part of the exhibition Robots+Avatars, shown at FACT, Liverpool, 16 March – 27 May 2012.

Robots and Avatars Exhibition showcases the most exciting visions and innovations from international artists, designers and architects, exploring their impact on the future of work and play. Robots and Avatars departs from pop culture imagery and re-imagines these technologies for a new reality: how do we envisage our future relationships with robotic and avatar colleagues and playmates, and what point does this evolution cross our personal boundaries of what it is to be a living, feeling human being?

Robots and Avatars is a programme of work which began in 2009. It was originally conceived and produced by body>data>space who led the project through research and development into an EU Culture project involving 5 other UK and European partners

The exhibition presents immersive experiences – from physical limbs rendered into pixels through the act of touch, collaborative landscapes stretching beyond the confines of popular gaming, to wearable and interactive technologies that guide and confound, including a new Commission developed in collaboration with the National Theatre: “Visions of our Communal Dreams”.

The Robots and Avatars Exhibition presents at FACT, Liverpool (UK) from 16 March to 27 May 2012, and will tour onwards to AltArt, Cluj-Napoca (Romania) and KIBLA (Slovenia) in 2012.

Naked on Pluto entered the world of contemporary art last week as part of the VIDA/telefonica exhibit at the ARCO 2012 art fair in Madrid. This was the culmination of a lot of work making the game into an installation format, which represented the library as the centre of control and surveillance in Elastic Versailles. The installation consists of books printed from information stored in the game archives over the previous year, slogans and glowing LED books on the walls. We also had terminals running the game with the projection of the live game world in a circle in the middle of the space.

Read more on the blog >>

We are so happy!

This is how Naked on Pluto was received:

Naked on Pluto proposes a playful yet disturbing online game world, developed with Free/ Libre Open Source Software, which parodies the insidiously invasive traits of much “social software”. The city of “Elastic Versailles” is animated by the quirky combinatorial logics of a community of fifty seven AI bots that glean Facebook data from subscribers to the game. Naked on Pluto’s bot crew, which are hard to distinguish from other agents in this text-based environment, are dysfunctional gatekeepers whose access-control means are broken by the participants only to be elastically “healed” by the bots. Players attempt to override the game’s restrictions, teaming up in order to ultimately crash and escape from the system. Reporting on activities via a blog and Twitter, and issuing a constant stream of incitations to click, declare, poke and buy, the bots run havoc with one’s own and one’s friends’ data, generating more or less spurious links with chillingly escalating speed. Disconcertingly familiar faces and information from one’s personal and associated profiles are indiscriminately blended in a brash prosumer landscape which, like the original Versailles, is designed for promotional parades of inseparable personal and ideological attributes. No player information is shared, stored, or relayed back to Facebook in this malleable social ecosystem where all that counts are glimpses of fleeting visibility.

Naked on Pluto caricatures the proliferation of virtual agents that harvest our personal data to insidiously reshape our online environments and profiles, highlighting the ambivalent hallmarks of major social networks: friends as quantifiable and commodifiable online assets, personas carefully fashioned contrived to impart a sense of “intimacy”, and disingenuous publishing of “private” data as self-advertising. The emergence of intelligence in this game is ultimately, hopefully, that of the players who manage to escape from it.

Naked on Pluto will be part of the exhibition at FILE Sao Paulo 2011.

http://www.filefestival.org

Art Meets Radical Openness (Liwoli 2011): Plutonian Striptease

Guests Friday 13 May

Marloes de Valk - http://naked-on-pluto.net and http://pluto.kuri.mu
Owen Mundy - http://givememydata.com/
Dusan Barok – http://www.faceleaks.info/

Guests Saturday 14 May

Nicolas Malevé – http://yoogle.be/spip.php?page=start_yoogle
Margaritha Köhl – http://www.univie.ac.at/publizistik/Koehl.htm
Pippa Buchanan (Mozilla Webcraft) – http://p2pu.org/webcraft
Birgit Bachler – http://www.birgitbachler.com

‘Plutonian Striptease’ is a 2 evening lecture series, filled with short 30 minute lectures on social media, online privacy, the data market and the economy of open systems.

We all share a lot of information with others online. Not only voluntarily and consciously via public parts of social media, but also unknowingly, by searching, purchasing, browsing… And on top of that, non-public parts of the web are being scraped to complete the already very detailed profiles data brokers and listening companies have on us.

“You have zero privacy anyway, get over it.” (Scott McNealy, as chief executive of Sun Microsystems , 1999)

The open web, heralded for it’s transparency, interoperability and decentralized nature, is not just about being open and accessible for the benefit of us all, it also happens to greatly facilitate data harvesting, tracking, scraping, data mining, profiling and behavioural advertisement. This facilitation is fuelled by, and fuels a booming industry. There is no single and clear definition of what the open web really is, and maybe that is because of it’s paradoxical nature. On the one hand, there is a strive for openness driven by an ideology for the public good, on the other it’s driven by commercial goals.

Compared to the speed with which the data market is growing, legislation to protect users from invasion of privacy is light-years behind. Making an ‘opt-out’ or ‘do-not-track’ option mandatory would be a good start. But even if the law were up to speed, is it possible to properly enforce such laws? It would require a close look into the code of every application and online service accessing a users personal data; a police raid of App Store, Android Market, and the like. A 2010 study by Pennsylvania State University, Duke University, and Intel Labs showed that out of 30 randomly selected popular Android apps that access personal information, fifteen of the apps reported users’ locations to remote advertising servers and seven applications broadcast the handset’s device number or phone number to outside servers (Eck W., et al, 2010).

To some, the trade-off between personal data and free services paid for through advertisement is more than fair. You get as much back as you give, convenience comes at a price. The problem is that it has become almost impossible to make those trade-offs consciously and with a good idea of what the consequences will be. Online, it’s hard to tell when you’re leaving private space and entering a public one. The ‘I’ve got nothing to hide’ argument proposed by those involved in the ‘privacy versus security’ debate, is not easily matched with a one-liner explaining the value of privacy, this is a more complex and abstract story, and as pointed out by Bruce Schneier, the real choice is liberty versus control (B. Schneier, 2006). He points to two proverbs that say it best: Quis custodiet custodes ipsos? (“Who watches the watchers?”) and “Absolute power corrupts absolutely.”

This lecture series investigates these issues and showcases art projects making the hidden world of data harvesting tangible.

Enck W. et al., 2010, TaintDroid: An Information-Flow Tracking System for Realtime Privacy Monitoring on Smartphones , [online] Available at: [accessed 14 April 2011]

Schneier B., 2006, The Eternal Value of Privacy. [online] Available
at: .[Accessed 14 April 2011].

Plutonian Striptease has been organised by Marloes de Valk, and is the follow-up of a series of interviews published on http://pluto.kuri.mu, asking experts, owners, users, fans and haters of social media about their views on this topic.

http://naked-on-pluto.net

Naked on Pluto is part of the exhibition ‘Funware’, the opening is Friday November 12 at 20.00.

Funware

Adrian Ward, Amy Alexander, Annina Ruest, Bob Zimbinski, Carmen Weisskopf / Domagoj Smoljo / Roger Wigger, Christoph Haag / Franziska Windisch / Ludwig Zeller / Martin Rumori, Colin Green / Matthew Fuller / Simon Pope, Dave Griffiths, Dave Griffiths / Aymeric Mansoux / Marloes de Valk, David Link, Electroboutique, Gazira Babeli, Joan Leandre, JODI, Jon Satrom / Ben Syverson, RTmark, Runme.org.

Making and using software can be experimental, humorous and aesthetically rich. Alongside today’s rather dull omnipresence of databases and content management systems, elements of fun have actually informed and guided the development of software from its beginnings. Fun is the energy of curiosity and inappropriateness, exploring what is not yet known in art, culture, computer science, design, math and the site of their encounter: software. Here, software art, a joke of a mathematical genius and amateur tinkering of software stand side by side.

Freaks run the world. It is through fun that they invent what becomes our reality, even if their jokes are later updated to guide matters in unappetizing ways. Our society is built and managed by software. To understand how we can act in relation to such systems and how they are made, we need to get a sense of the energy that drives software, the energy based on fun. We can come closer to these practices through the territories that are in-between geeky humour, digital folklore, cultures of using conventional software, artistic software and history of computation. It is in the fact that exploration takes place through fun and the bizarre territories always exist that there is a hope for an open horizon.

The exhibition Funware questions, tangles and experiments with the materiality of software, the backbone of contemporary society. Letting us deal with the glitchy nature of human-machine ensembles, it offers a way of understanding something that is normally hidden and serious. Fun is far from detaching software from political or social interrogability, it is rather a force and a method that works on complicating the normal, the serious and the dominant.

Starting off with the reconstruction of an algorithm from the 1950-s, Funware references home scripting of the 1980-s, early fascination with ASCII, geeky humour, deconstructed games, classic software art and goes on to include an i-Phone sculpture and an i-Pad application.

Performed by amateurs, artists, alternative coders or professional programmers for “fun”, enquiries into software as aesthetic and political practice let us see the uncertainty and seamfullness of software in times when the dominant tendencies is to hide its operation behind security systems, impenetrable interfaces and shiny entertainment.

Fun in software is a way to construct and recognize the complexity of software as embedded in between art, folklore, industry, and university. It is about breaking from systems of constraints in ways that produce richness and abundance of kinds. Funware offers a way to re-address software, as an invisible universal culture, in its aesthetics, history, and power.

Curator: Olga Goriunova
Executive producers: aaaan.net
Supported by: VSBfonds, SNS Reaal, London Metropolitan University & STRP Festival

The 1st of June the “Naked on Pluto” residency at NIMk, BALTAN Laboratories and Piksel started!

Naked on Pluto is a Massively Multiplayer Text Based Sandbox Adventure Game on Facebook. When you enter the game, you find yourself on Pluto, in a city under the rule of Elastic Versailles revision 14 (EVr14), an Artificial Intelligence functioning as an entertainment colony. It is the Las Vegas of the Solar System, a true paradise for consumers and corporations alike.

Versailles is a capital of convenience, a non stop 24hr zone of endless pleasure, provided by Pluto’s huge entertainment corporations. Amuse yourself and your friends for hours on end collecting meaningless tokens, talking to our bland robots (genetically engineered to be enjoyed by the average plutonian for exactly 4.3 days, and programmed to mention their sponsors name four out of every five sentences), or you could always just relax and take in the staggering conformity of your new home.

Take absolutely no notice of the areas you aren’t allowed to go into, even if it were possible to break out of the control zone around the Palace, why would you possibly want to – or indeed why change the core structures of this world when they have been so excellently taylored to fit your every desire?

The game explores the limits and nature of social networks from within, slowly pushing the boundaries of what is tolerated by the companies that own them, carefully documenting this process as we go. Story and play are combined with an investigation on how exposed we are on social networks, and how our data are being used.

The project will be developed during a shared residency at NIMk, BALTAN Laboraties and Piksel, between June and November 2010, by Dave Griffiths, Aymeric Mansoux and Marloes de Valk. The project is licensed Copyleft. The research and development process will be documented and can be followed on http://pluto.kuri.mu and the game can be played on http://naked-on-pluto.net (teaser only a.t.m.).

Here’s an online preview!

hello process! is part of the exhibition Process is Paradigm
April 23 – August 30 , 2010
LABoral, Gijon (ES)

“Before the background of unforeseen global processes, credit crash and climate change, the exhibition el proceso como paradigma researches the nature of processes and self organising, processual systems on a cultural level and in the arts. el proceso como paradigma puts forward the idea that today processes have become one of the major paradigms and creative strategies in contemporary art and design across the disciplines. The show reveals the elementary shift from a culture based on the concept of manifestation and the final product to a culture of process resulting from a networked society. Consequently, the show introduces a new understanding of process-based art which goes beyond previous definitions. el proceso como paradigma suggests that the new process-based art is the art of the 21st century.”

Curated by: Susanne Jaschko & Lucas Evers
Spatial design: kawamura-ganjavian
Graphic design: The Studio of Fernando Gutiérrez

Artists: Jelte van Abbema, Ralf Baecker, boredomresearch, Gregory Chatonsky, Adrián Cuervo, Ursula Damm, Driessens & Verstappen, Peter Flemming, Isabelle Jenniches, Roman Kirschner, Allison Kudla, Manu Luksch & Mukul Patel, Aymeric Mansoux & Marloes de Valk, Luna Maurer, Marta de Menezes, Henrik Menné, Leo Peschta, Julius Popp, C.E.B. Reas, RYBN, Warren Sack, Antoine Schmitt, Ralf Schreiber, Jan-Peter E.R. Sonntag


#!/bin/bash
cat <<":*" |

                                                _
    _        _     ____     _       _   _______|_|
   | |_    _| |  _|____|_  | |    _|_| |  _____|
   |+----------------------------------------+_
   || chmod +x, Groningen(NL) 2-7 March 2010 |_|
   |+----------------------------------------+___
   |_|_     |_| |___|  |_| |_|     |_| |_________|
     |_|_      ____     _______     _________
       |_|   _|____|_  |  _____|_  |___   ___|_    _
            | |____| | | |_____|_|     | |   |_|  |_|
            |  __    | |  _   _|       | |
            | |  |_  | | | |_|___     _|_|
            |_|    |_| |_|   |___|   |_|

Make art is an international festival focused on Free/Libre/Open Source
Software (FLOSS) and open content in digital arts. Make art offers
performances, presentations, workshops and an exhibition, focused on the
blurred line between art and software programming.

The fifth edition – chmod +x art – will take place in Groningen (NL),
from the 2nd to the 7th of March 2010.

Workshop hello wor(l)d!, exhibition, Hocus Pocus lecture evening,
Placard headphone concert, breakfast club, speed geeking & PechaGnucha,
bookshop

With: Wayne Clements (GB) , Martin Howse (GB), Graham Harwood (GB) ,
IOhannes Zmölnig (AT), Pall Thayer (IS) , Dave Griffiths (GB), Gabor
Papp (HU), Agoston Nagy (HU), Florian Cramer (DE), Nathalie Magnan (FR),
Dmytri Kleiner (RU), …

http://makeart.goto10.org/chmod+x

–

Make art is een internationaal festival rond Free/Libre/Open Source
Software (FLOSS) en open content in digitale kunst. Make art biedt
performances, presentaties, workshops en een expositie, rond de vage
grens tussen kunst en het programmeren van software.

De vijfde editie – chmod +x art – vindt plaats in Groningen (NL) van 2
tot en met 7 maart 2010.

Workshop hello wor(l)d!, expositie, Hocus Pocus lezingen avond, Placard
koptelefoon concert, breakfast club, speed geeking & PechaGnucha,
boekwinkel

Met: Wayne Clements (GB) , Martin Howse (GB), Graham Harwood (GB) ,
IOhannes Zmölnig (AT), Pall Thayer (IS) , Dave Griffiths (GB), Gabor
Papp (HU), Agoston Nagy (HU), Florian Cramer (DE), Nathalie Magnan (FR),
Dmytri Kleiner (RU), …

http://makeart.goto10.org/chmod+x

:*

sed "s|[^A-Za-z]| |g" | sed "s| *| |g" | ( cat <<"=(^-^)=" |
#define _BSD_SOURCE
#include
#include
#include
#include
const int N=27;int main(int argc,char**argv){int count[N][N][N][N],
i,j,k,l;for(i=0;i<n;++i){for(j=0;j<n;++j){for(k=0;k<n;++k){for(l=0;
l<n;++l){count[i][j][k][l]=0;}}}}i=0;j=0;k=0;while(0<=(l=getchar())
){if('A'<=l&&l<='Z'){l-='A'-1;}else if('a'<=l&&l<='z'){l-='a'-1;}
else{l=0;}count[i][j][k][l]++;i=j;j=k;k=l;}unsigned char probs[N][N
][N][N];for(i=0;i<n;++i){for(j=0;j<n;++j){for(k=0;k<n;++k){int
total=0;for(l=0;l<n;++l){total+=count[i][j][k][l];}if(total==0){
total=1;}int p=0;for(l=0;l<n;++l){p+=count[i][j][k][l];probs[i][j][
k][l]=(255*p)/total;}}}}srand(time(0));i=0;j=0;k=0;while(1){
unsigned char r=rand();int c=0;for(l=0;l=r){c=l;break;}}putchar(" abcdefghijklmnopqrstuvwxyz"[c]);fflush(
stdout);i=j;j=k;k=c;usleep(40000);}}
=(^-^)=
gcc -xc -std=c99 -Wall -pedantic -o chmodxart - && ./chmodxart )