Art Hack Day comes to Europe.
On April 11, Bonniers Konsthall will be taken over by some 30 hackers whose medium is art and 30 artists whose medium is tech. It’s Europe’s first Art Hack Day, following on the success of similar happenings in New York, Boston and San Francisco. We talked with Olof Mathé, the founder.
Tell us a bit about yourself. Who are you?
Hmmm. I’m a bit shy. But I studied engineering and physics at the Royal Institute of Technology and philosophy of science in Paris. Nowadays I work at a startup in San Francisco, Inkling, a publishing platform for beautiful and interactive e-books – check out inkling.com if you want to read awesome books or inkling.com/habitat if you want to make awesome books.
Art + Hackers: How did you come up with the idea for Art Hack Day?
Well, there is a burgeoning hacker-artist community and it's all about bringing us together.
On a personal note, I had almost always been involved with both art and technology so it was natural to connect the two. I think hacker culture has things to learn from the art world, and vice versa (if you believe there ever was a difference between the two). I’d been part of several startup-focused hack days but felt that the format actually works better for art making – and so you have Art Hack Day.
But ideas are one thing, what really matters is execution!
What is Art Hack Day really – a network, an art movement, an event?
Art Hack Day is unbelievable fun. It's also an Internet-based non-profit for hackers whose medium is art and artists whose medium is tech. So it’s a network, an art movement and an event. Everyone involved is passionate about the expressive potential of new technology and the power of radical collaboration in art. (Read more at arthackday.net)
Every Art Hack Day explores an artistically, politically and technologically relevant theme. In San Francisco, the theme was “Lethal Software”, and recently in New York City it was “God Mode.”
I can't wait to see how participants will interpret the Stockholm theme, “Larger Than Life” - e.g. how we embellish/amplify ourselves online.
What do you want to get out of Art Hack Day?
Creative euphoria. Art Hack Day cracks open the process of art-making in this weird and whimsical way that gives rise to a special cohesion among participants and culminates in a unique exhibit.
Beyond that I guess we want to explore what happens when you take the best of hacker culture and bring it to the art world and vice versa.
For example, we think that teams can create better art than individuals. That execution is what makes a concept powerful. That all projects are prototypes that can be improved – the concept of a “finished” work of art seems obsolete. At Art Hack Day, participants form teams and end up working off other people's ideas or backlogs (we’re all big open source fans). It's a testament to the power of radical collaboration and collective authorship.
Most hack days are woefully drab and often more about showcasing a specific company’s APIs and recruiting developers rather than celebrating the creative process.
We’ll have succeeded once Art Hack Day becomes irrelevant as a movement and an event.
How did you end up at Bonniers Konsthall?
I met Björn Norborg, project manager at the gallery, by chance via Sara Öhrvall who works at Bonnier. It was an obvious fit, Björn is a Net artist himself!
Also, I grew up in Stockholm and thought it was cool that Peter Celsing [the architect for Bonniers Konsthall] got to build an interesting building in Stockholm, so Bonniers Konsthall has always been on the radar - well, since 2006 in any case!
How can people take part without being there live?
Skilled hacker artists can participate remotely, just get in touch with me via Twitter at @olofster and we’ll fix it. If you want to come to the exhibit, you need to RSVP via Facebook.
Curious about what’s been created at previous Art Hack Days? Check out some of the links below:
- FaceTheft Mirror - "a mirror showing the face of the person who looked in the mirror before you"
- MemDescent - "navigating how a computer looks on the inside, visualization of a computer’s RAM"
- ScratchML - "a new language for documenting DJ scratching"
- Pantheon - (Disclaimer from Olof Mathé) “I worked on this. Lets you take over another person’s identity online”
- Iconoclashes: "new artifacts from the Metropolitan Museum of Art’s collection"
- Eye of Providence - "looks like an eye with material from security cameras projected from inside"
- Turriptosis Nutricula - "jellyfish, the only animals that attain God Mode"
- Other goodies here, here and here - "too many good ones to call them all out individually"
Art Hack Day is sponsored in part by Bonnier D2D.