The discussion will be led by Bernhard Rieder, assistant Professor of New Media at the University of Amsterdam. He is particularly interested in the role of algorithms in social processes.

With their project Data Visualisation as Documentary Graham Harwood and Matsuko Yokokoji (YoHa) critically investigate the gap between the perception of the wider public about the social reality created by data and the actual databases. Furthermore, YoHa tries to find out in what way the information generated and used by different protocols, services and facilities affect the formation of the databody in the health system. Taking the public health records of the UK and Netherlands as their case study, they mapped out the authorities, polices, and rules that hold it in place and give it meaning.

Linda Hilfling’s project A Public Domain is an open wireless network, which anybody can log onto to access the Internet. All the data that passes through the network will be filtered in such a way that texts that are not in the public domain are substituted by empty spaces, i.e. those words or phrases get replaced that, regardless of their graphical representation, are registered as trademarks in the jurisdictional area in which the network is established. A Public Domain is a wireless network intervention that simultaneously adopts and amputates the utopian notion of the net as a public space.

This discussion is organized by Impakt Online in collaboration
with SKOR | Foundation for Art and Public Domain.