Meta(data)morphosis
Or Gallery Berlin
Featuring Heini Aho (FI), Timo Bredenberg (FI), Emma Holten (DK), Ryan Maguire (US) & Mario Santamaría (ES). Curated by Søren Rosenbak. Part of Jaw Versus Eye Attack - 3rd JVEA annual event.
In essence, metadata presents us with a rich frame around a blank
canvas, a space with ample room for interpretation, misinterpretation,
miscarriage of justice, etc. An inherently irrational human intervention
will always enter this equation, respond to the metadata frame, and
thus render a distorted portrait into a temporary proxy for truth. How
can we make sense of these ever-shifting digital shadows that social
media, corporations, intelligence agencies, individuals etc., constantly
draw from server farms from around the world? In other words, how do we
respond to the power of metadata and its speculative qualities, the
elusiveness, the lack of control and apparent meaning? Metadata pervades
our lives in both trivial and profound ways. We know that a lack of
response is essentially a submission to this very fact. How do we then
deal with this dynamic? Do we experiment, resist, play along? This is
some of the questions explored in the five works on display. While all
the works engage with the process of meta(data)morphosis, they do so in
highly different ways, employing a wide range of tactics and
sensibilities.