Data Extraction, Materiality and Agency

Despite playing a central role in the Ad Tech ecosystem, the primary business model of the Internet, users are surprisingly disconnected from the particularities of this industry.
This is especially critical since user data is the main resource of Ad Tech. Performed by mundane gestures such as clicking and scrolling, user data is ubiquitously extracted, processed and commercialized by legions of algorithms organized and activated by global corporations and their intermediaries. This gigantic yet incredibly obfuscated maze of tangled contingencies (including algorithms, tracking technologies, devices, data centers, electricity, marketers, designers, engineers, CEOs, user data and foremost, money) traverses millions of bodies (both human, and non-human) spread all over the world. However, regardless of the compelling role of this diverse mesh of bodies in the organization and activation of Ad Tech, both their intrinsic material and their affective dimensions are dramatically neglected, thus exposing them to increasingly exploitative practices. This, in turn, excludes the possibility of repairing these systems to make them more sustainable in every sense of the word. Thus, it is urgent to create new paradigms that propose a renewed way to imagine the diversity of relationships that occur within the Internet in order to inhabit this system sustainably.
The goal of this seminar is not only to foster a deep understanding of these systems, but also to empower students with the knowledge and tools to re-balance and repair the existing disparities. Through a combination of artistic research, embodied knowledge, critical pedagogy, and basic investigative journalism methods, we'll perform an in-depth analysis of the historical legacies, infrastructures, economic frameworks, cultures, materialities and affects that construct the current map of the Internet.

Guest Speakers:

• 23 May 2024, 7 pm - Matthew Fuller (in person), public lecture at the Aula
  
• May 2024 - Ben Grosser (in person, TBC)
• June 2024 - Marloes de Vaelk (in person, TBC)