Information Wants to Be Free?
Curatorial Essay: Art and the Internet
By Kristine Tan
Over the years, we have republished parts of long-form writing, from catalogue essays to book chapters. This practice is now formalised as part of our ‘Excerpts’ series. To read other writings from the series, click here.
‘Information Wants To Be Free?: Art and the Internet’, 2022, installation view. Image courtesy of Quek Jia Liang (ADM Gallery).
33 years on, we have another perspective on what it means for information to be free. While giving away services which appear to be without cost, technology companies spy on users, collecting data about who they are and what they do online. Much of this extracted data is traded in a new marketplace as prediction products and sold into a behavioural futures market that generates enormous wealth for corporations. This commodification of personal data captured by companies tracking online users is described by social psychologist Shoshana Zuboff as “surveillance capitalism” or the “claiming of private human experience as free raw material for translation into behavioural data”.2
This affects not just consumer decisions, but also the spheres of politics, society and culture. Google and Facebook have built behavioural modification empires that fuel dangerous problems such as disinformation, hate speech, filter bubbles and political manipulation, keeping users online to service their platforms, and ultimately impede users’ autonomy and agency. Recently, leaks, whistle-blowers and legal disputes have shed new light on how major internet companies prioritise infinite growth over public safety.
As the internet is increasingly privatised by monopolistic technology companies which make important decisions regarding online information transactions, extreme wealth and power is concentrated amongst those with the biggest computational power to exploit data without paying users' for their fair market value. Former Greek Minister of Finance Yanis Varoufakis has termed this new economic paradigm “techno-feudalism”, where value extraction has increasingly shifted away from markets and onto digital platforms, driving wealth inequalities.3 It is within this context that the works in this exhibition reveal insights about our information civilisation. From early ideas of a free global exchange of information to a network that can no longer claim to be democratic or neutral, the international and multigenerational group of artists in this exhibition raise critical questions about the commercial exploitation of our personal information and our compromised autonomy as a result of Big Tech.
“From early ideas of a free global exchange of information to a network that can no longer claim to be democratic or neutral, the international and multigenerational group of artists in this exhibition raise critical questions about the commercial exploitation of our personal information and our compromised autonomy as a result of Big Tech. ”
The exhibition opens with Michael Mandiberg’s ‘Print Wikipedia’ installation, a striking visualisation of the decentralised knowledge sharing project Wikipedia. The American artist wrote software that transformed Wikipedia’s entire English database into printable volumes which have been presented in various iterations since 2015. ‘Print Wikipedia’ is both a utilitarian visualisation of the greatest accumulation of decentralised human knowledge and a poetic gesture toward the challenges of knowing in the age of big data. Wikipedia’s stringent informational requirements and discarding of bad information is antithetical to other social web where misinformation, sensationalism and clickbait take precedence.
Michael Mandiberg, ‘Print Wikipedia’, 2009-2022, printed books, wallpaper and shelves. Image courtesy of Quek Jia Liang (ADM Gallery).
The works of Singaporean artists Kara Chin and Bani Haykal reflect on our difficulties in accurately understanding our current technological climate and the intentionally obtuse black box design of the algorithms that navigate our daily life. Kara Chin brings these unseen forces to life in her animations ‘Before Alter, ‘Followers’, ‘Fitbit Worship’ and ‘Alexa Seance’. In her videos, Chin explores technology as a contemporary form of magic, observing our spiritual devotion towards devices that have been assimilated into our everyday environments. The fetishistic belief in technology’s efficacy to change the world runs parallel to the surveillance of the modern individual. From wearable technology that tracks intimate activities like sex lives to voice assistants eavesdropping in homes – people fail to realise that magic is in fact, a form of deception.
Kara Chin, (L-R) ‘Before Alter’, ‘Followers’, ‘Fitbit Worship’ and ‘Alexa Seance’, 2020, installation view. Image courtesy of Quek Jia Liang (ADM Gallery).
Kara Chin, ‘Fitbit Worship’, 2020, Video, 1080p animation, aspect ratio: 16:9, 2 min 24 sec. Image courtesy of Kara Chin.
A new three part installation was assembled by Bani Haykal for this exhibition. ‘google teranslate memang sial // badan’ or ‘google translate is cursed // their body’ is a poeticised video demonstrating Google Translate’s algorithmic bias where gender stereotypes are forced onto the English translations of gender-neutral phrases in Malay. It is a reminder that while algorithms extract order from informational chaos and can improve our lives, they are not governed by moral conduct and often perpetuate the biases of their creators.
Bani Haykal, ‘google teranslate memang sial // badan dia’, 2021, digital video, 8min 41 sec. Image courtesy of Bani Haykal.
A bizarre mix of AI processed images titled ‘3a. my computer is asking for a vibe check lol (scores)’ and ‘3b. my computer is asking for a vibe check lol (interfaces)’ are presented on the adjacent wall. The artist imagines these images as “vibes” his computer has generated from human content. The idea of a “vibe” is hard to pin down and is not dissimilar to how machine learning models work, with statistical rather than causal correlations.
Bani Haykal, ‘3b. my computer is asking for a vibe check lol (interfaces)’, 2022, prints on archival paper, 20 x 20cm. Image courtesy of Bani Haykal.
Bani Haykal, ‘3a. my computer is asking for a vibe check lol (scores)’, 2022, prints on archival paper, 20 x 20cm. Image courtesy of Bani Haykal.
The accompanying multichannel sound installation titled ‘momok mengilai’ or ‘cackling ghosts’ orchestrates recorded laughter into a generative composition. The work references Charles Douglass’ ‘Laff Box’, a unique laugh-track device adopted by 1960s television. The work likens online users to that of a live studio audience, puppeteered for profit.
Similarly unsettling are Bill Posters and Daniel Howe’s deep fake videos ‘Big Dada / Public Faces and Veridical Fakes’ which use Artificial Intelligence to create convincing but fictional videos of celebrities to scrutinise the use of personal data in service of dataism and surveillance capitalism. In the doctored videos, celebrity imposters speak of an ominous entity named “Spectre” with total control of “billions of people’s stolen data” with an almost religious fervour. The works interrogate notions of privacy, trust, democracy, and surveillance in the digital influence industry.
Bill Posters and Daniel Howe, ‘Big Dada / Public Faces’, 2019, single channel video, synthetic art, 3 minutes 4 sec, installation view. Image courtesy of Quek Jia Liang (ADM Gallery).
Concluding the first part of the exhibition is ‘A Live Portrait of Tim Berners-Lee (An Early Warning System)' by Thomson and Craighead, a drawing made from two camera feeds located on opposite sides of the world. As the earth rotates and orbits the sun, the portrait of the British computer scientist Tim Berners-Lee inverts as night becomes day and vice versa. Berners-Lee intended for the World Wide Web to be an open and democratic platform, but with threats to net neutrality suggesting the end of open culture, his disintegrating portrait acts as a somber memorial for how commercial interests on the World Wide Web have eclipsed the public good.
Thomson and Craighead, ‘Live Portrait of Tim Berners-Lee (An Early Warning System)’, 2012-2022, digital projection from online sources, originally commissioned by National Media Museum in Bradford, United Kingdom. Image courtesy of Quek Jia Liang (ADM Gallery).
In the second gallery, the works of Rachel Maclean, DISNOVATION.ORG and Ben Grosser excavate the mechanics and problematics of social media which has fundamentally transformed how people communicate. Networked communication allows for the overcoming of geographical barriers, and emojis are a normalised form of communication which can simultaneously aid and hamper the understanding of each other. Social media gives everyone a voice and can become a tool for mobilizing social movements and political activity. However, while online networks can offer emotional support and validation, studies have shown that despite being more connected than ever, social media also breeds discontent and disinformation.
‘It's What's Inside That Counts’ by Scottish artist Rachel Maclean is an over-caffeinated, colour-saturated, dystopian fairy tale about a data addicted society in which power dynamics are constantly reconfigured and rearranged. Equal parts seductive and unsettling, the film addresses the commodification and sexualisation of young girls on social media, our dependence on technology and the artifice of social media feedback loops.
Rachel Maclean, ‘It's What's Inside That Counts’, 2016, digital video, aspect ratio: 16:9, single channel, 29 min 55 sec, installation view. Image courtesy of Quek Jia Liang (ADM Gallery).
In 2021, Facebook former employee and whistle-blower Frances Haugen revealed internal documents confirming the company’s obsession with profit over the safety of their users. Ben Grosser’s ‘ORDER OF MAGNITUDE’ is a supercut of every public instance in which Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg spoke of growth and metrics, spotlighting the quasi-religious commitment of the world’s largest social media company to grow at any cost. Edited from the same video archive, the companion piece ‘DEFICIT OF LESS’ slows down the video and audio of the few instances Zuckerberg spoke of the word ‘less’ by 50 times to match the length of ‘ORDER OF MAGNITUDE’ to eerie effect.
Ben Grosser, ‘ORDER OF MAGNITUDE’ and ‘DEFICIT OF LESS’, 2019 and 2021, HD video supercut with stereo audio, 47 min 15 sec, installation view. Image courtesy of Quek Jia Liang (ADM Gallery) and Ben Grosser.
Presented alongside these videos is Ben Grosser’s finite social media project ‘Minus’ where users only get 100 posts across a lifetime. Antithetical to Facebook's ever-increasing cycle of production and consumption, there are no algorithmic feeds, likes, follows and notifications employed by the platform to induce user engagement.
‘The Persuadables’ by working group DISNOVATION.ORG is an informative video dissecting the ways in which public opinion is manipulated in the social media influence ecosystem. It is a comprehensive catalogue documenting the political instrumentalisation of the web, exposing some of the practices used for online propaganda and the responses generated in society. Also by the same group is a wall-sized map of ‘Online Culture Wars’ overlaid onto a political compass. It visualises and contextualises some of the politicised actors, topics and cultural elements within a neoliberal and postmodern socio-cultural condition.
DISNOVATION.ORG, 'Online Culture Wars' and 'The Persuadables', 2019 and 2021, installation view. Image courtesy of Quek Jia Liang (ADM Gallery).
The exhibition concludes with the works of two artists who contemplate the past and future of the internet respectively. Tabita Rezaire’s ‘Deep Down Tidal’ utilises the visual language of internet culture to look back at how the technologies controlled by the West have expanded along a geopolitical matrix of pre-existing colonial routes, casting a form of imperialism facilitated by technological infrastructure. The work exposes the Internet’s material realities and enquires into the intricate cosmological, spiritual, political and technological narratives of water and its role in communication. It also reminds us that water remembers.
Tabita Rezaire, ‘Deep Down Tidal’, 2017, HD video, aspect ratio 16:4.5, 18 min 44 sec, commissioned for Citizen X- Human, Nature & Robots Rightsby Oregaard Museum, Denmark, installation view. Image courtesy of Quek Jia Liang (ADM Gallery).
In Chong Yan Chuah’s dystopian take of the future, he questions if virtual identities could overtake physical identities one day and whether this would further compromise individual autonomy. The title of the newly commissioned video work ‘Our “Butterfly Dreams”’ is taken from a renowned text by Chinese philosopher Zhuang Zhou, musing about a dream in which he did not know if he was dreaming he was a butterfly, or if it was a butterfly dreaming he was Zhuang Zhou. With video game companies, Microsoft and Meta all competing for a stake in the metaverse, who will it belong to in the future?
Chong Yan Chuah, ‘Our “Butterfly Dreams”’, 2021, digital video, 16:9, 3 min. Image courtesy of Chong Yan Chuah.
Access to the Internet is now seen as a basic human right and the “digital divide” – the gulf between those who have access to computer networks and those who do not – applies to over a third of the world’s population who still do not have access to the internet.4 In addition, what can be accessed and published online varies from country to country. In some cases, internet censorship is extreme, as seen in how the “Great Firewall of China” limits access to popular sites such as Facebook, Twitter and Google products such as YouTube, Search, and Gmail.
The life-changing benefits of online connectivity are undeniable, but as Web 2.0 is increasingly monopolized, manipulated, and enmeshed in our lives, there is an urgency for a return to Tim Berners’s foundational dream of an open, democratic system that services a flow of information, free from exploitation. Today, techno-positivist agendas, the launch of Singapore’s Smart Nation initiative, and the pandemic have sped up the country’s digitisation drive, eroding the separation between our online and offline lives.
We are faced with a contradiction: Internet users are empowered by access to information, education and social connection while online activity is tracked, analysed and monetised in a manner in which conceals what data is being collected and how it is being used. While technology is not inherently malevolent, ‘Information Wants To Be Free?: Art and the Internet’ urges us to look beyond the dominant tech-utopian narrative, and consider the role personal data plays in the restructuring of power and wealth in the digital age, and the implications on values of privacy, truth, democracy and individual agency.
To read other writings from the Excerpts series, click here.
1 Wagner, R. (2003). Information Wants to Be Free: Intellectual Property and the Mythologies of Control. SSRN Electronic Journal.
2 Zuboff, S. (2019). High Tech is Watching You in The Harvard Gazette.
3 Varoufakis, Y. (2021). Techno-Feudalism is Taking Over. Project Syndicate
4 More than a third of world’s population have never used internet, says UN (2021). The Guardian.
