Catching flies in the alternet (2011)

Join us for the 2011 Graduation Show at Roodkapje, Rotterdam. Reflecting upon a variety of issues relevant to today’s networked media culture, the exhibition features works by Birgit Bachler (AT), Özalp Eröz (TR), Megan Hoogenboom (NL), Albert Jongstra (NL), Darija Medić (RS) and Renee Olde Monnikhof (NL).

The networks are abuzz; they are humming with high and low pitches. While some are visible, others are discretely at work “catching flies in the alternet”. Whether manifested online or offline, all of this year’s graduation projects engage in repurposing and reorienting networks to generate alternative perspectives. Birgit Bachler’s, Discrete Dialogue Network, is a telephony-based communication system designed for leaving anonymous voice messages in public space. The project by Özalp Eröz, Virtual Street Art, questions how online networked distribution impacts street art, and its beliefs in authentic local interventions. Megan Hoogenboom’s work, Huenet, physically demonstrates the differences between the public Internet, meaning the World Wide Web as we know it today and encrypted darknets. Exploring how we access the news online, Renée Olde Monnikhof´s Net News Now raises timely questions about professional journalism and the role of the amateur in an age of on-demand media. Albert Jongstra tackles participatory collaboration through a series of hands-on workshops entitled, Participator 3.0. Lastly, Attention: Recalculating!, a project by Darija Medić, challenges our unquestioned belief in technology. By modifying GPS navigation software, her project offers customized ways of taking longer routes through speculative scenarios.

Interview with OSP about the making of the catalog