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Coded Secrets: Artistic Interventions Hidden in the Digital Fabric

Project description

A new view of the internet through the lens of neglected artworks

A team of computer scientist, analysts and multimedia experts will trace, analyse and theorise valuable cultural online production. Their focus will be on the online artworks that are hidden, concealed or withdrawn due to the networked situation into which they were inserted. They will study this under the ERC-funded COSE project, which sets out to reveal the inner workings of code-based artworks. To uncover these much-neglected aspects, an interdisciplinary team will complement art history methods with approaches from media, game and code studies, software forensics and visual design. The findings of the project will also empower scholars in the humanities, providing analytical instruments and a general understanding of our media-technological condition.

Objective

What lies beneath the surface of computational artworks? Online pieces have ‘roots’ that extend much deeper than the flat screen monitors on which we view them – they may even be distributed, occupying multiple sites on the Internet. Nobody has ever been able to see the responsive and connective agency of these works with their own eyes. COSE sets out to reveal the inner workings of code-based artworks, as well as their embeddedness in the various niches of the World Wide Web. Shedding light on this black box will enable us to gain a fuller appreciation of these artworks and empower scholars in the humanities as they begin to confront programmed works, providing analytical instruments and a general understanding of our media-technological condition.
The artistic pieces under analysis are all hidden, concealed, or somehow withdrawn due to the networked situation into which they were inserted. As art historians prefer to dedicate themselves to the surface features, they tend to overlook such works or ignore important aspects of their design: codes, files, software performance. As these interventions operate in non-standard locations, they implicitly highlight the circumstances where artists saw opportunities to critically exploit the specifics of the net in order to post a message. COSE will offer a new view of the Internet through the lens of these artworks that reclaim the right to productively diversify Internet access and usage.
In order to uncover these much-neglected aspects, an interdisciplinary team will complement art historical methods with approaches from media, game and code studies, software forensics and visual design. Taking the artworks as the starting point, the Internet will be presented as complex of activated affordances rather than as yet another node-graph-diagram. COSE will develop an original pictorial language to generate immersive views into the specific ‘machine rooms’ of the artworks and their ecosystems as a processual deep topology.

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Topic(s)

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Call for proposal

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(opens in new window) ERC-2021-COG

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Host institution

KARLSRUHER INSTITUT FUER TECHNOLOGIE
Net EU contribution

Net EU financial contribution. The sum of money that the participant receives, deducted by the EU contribution to its linked third party. It considers the distribution of the EU financial contribution between direct beneficiaries of the project and other types of participants, like third-party participants.

€ 1 997 348,75
Address
KAISERSTRASSE 12
76131 Karlsruhe
Germany

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Region
Baden-Württemberg Karlsruhe Karlsruhe, Stadtkreis
Activity type
Higher or Secondary Education Establishments
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Total cost

The total costs incurred by this organisation to participate in the project, including direct and indirect costs. This amount is a subset of the overall project budget.

€ 1 997 348,75

Beneficiaries (1)

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