#Datamaze: Vicious Circle
16 Nov 2020 – 31 Dec 2021
We’re open to all, now also you
Tickets to all current exhibitions are also available on-line.
DOX Centre for Contemporary Art
Poupětova 1, Praha 7
Show on map
Thanks to the acceleration made possible by digital technologies in the second half of the twentieth century, we have reached a stage of development where we look at the world from both a cosmic and a nano perspective. Refinement, purification, and perfection lead us to the complexity by which we construct the shape of our world and our view of it. Data and datafication have become the driving force of our development.
The third exhibition of the #DATAMAZE project, under development since 2018, brings the metaphor of the vicious circle. On the one hand, digital technologies bring us a certain magical element – the phone has become our amulet, connected computers a symbol of planetary consciousness, and supercomputers the promise of immortal human consciousness. On the other hand, we must constantly ask ourselves: Who are we? Computers and telephones are already its prosthesis, an extended imagination. And we always have to restart this imagination if we find that it has become too repetitive in its process. We need to train not only machines and computer codes, but also ourselves in an effort to expand our own imagination.
#DATAMAZE exhibition takes the format of an extended exhibition: it combines the concept of an exhibition that evolves over time (a work in progress) with a workspace, library, and a lecture space. #DATAMAZE is defined by an interest in data and digital literacy from the perspective of the activity of artists and designers, while supporting activities and developing cooperation providing a critical perspective on our existence in the digital environment. At the project’s core are educational programmes for schools and special-interest groups, whose aim is to deepen their knowledge of topics such as media and data literacy, metadata, safety on the internet, user-created content and on-line advertising, electro-waste, etc.
In May 2020, the project was enlarged to include a festival of art and design with the distinctive name Uroboros, through which we invited creators from various disciplines to present works that critically reflect on our troubling times. The festival was prepared by the ALTTAB platform, which was created within the #DATAMAZE project.
PERMANENT INSTALLATION: Internet Timeline , Modified and supplemented (with the author’s permission), Ars Electronica Linz, Austria University of Applied Sciences Upper Austria, School of Informatics, Communications and Media, Hagenberg, Austria
EXHIBITING ARTISTS: DISNOVATION.ORG, Andreas Gajdošík, Lenka Hámošová & Pavol Rusnák, Dita Malečková & Jan Tyl, Vladan Joler & Kate Crawford, Aram Bartholl, Paolo Cirio
Project Partners