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Aram Bartholl
WoW

Join trails of people in WOW with their name in chunky green lettering above  their heads in the same way their avatars do online. One of three projects by Bartholl in the exhibition that thematise the relationship of net data space and every day life.

Sign up to the workshop by completing the form below. Please note by signing up you agree to take part in the full 3 hour workshop and the performance that follows. Places are limited.

Friday 2 May
Workshop: 2pm - 5pm
Performance from 5.45pm

Contact Theatre, Oxford Street
Free

The WoW project is a workshop and intervention in public space that uses computer play-worlds as a means of calling attention to the changing ways people deal with privacy and identity in the public sphere. Every day, millions of people spend a great deal of time in online virtual worlds like World of Warcraft. Each player is represented by an individual avatar, which is given an unalterable name that by no means corresponds to the real name of the player but serves as a clear means of identification in the online world. This so-called nickname floats above the avatar's head and is constantly visible by all other players.

The WoW project takes this mode of publicizing players' names that's typical of online 3D worlds and transfers it into the physical domain of everyday life. Participants of the WoW-workshop will be able to construct their own name out of cardboard and then parade around in public with it hovering above their head. What happens when a person's customary anonymity in the public sphere is obliterated by the principles operative in virtual worlds online?

www.datenform.de/woweng.html

Workshop schedule:

  1. In a papercraft session each participant will cut his real full name from cardboard and mount it on a transparent plastic strip.
  2. Break (fish&chips or coffee).
  3. In a group performance the participants will carry each others names on a fork construction throughout the festival main venue.
  4. Following and presenting person will swap places after desired time.

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Artist Biography:
Since 1995 Aram Bartholl lives and works in Berlin. In his art work he thematizes the relationship of net data space and every day life. In which form does this network-data-world manifest itself in our physical everyday-lifespace? What is being fed back into physical space from the 'cyberspace' into which data has been fed for so long now? How do these digital innovations influence our actions in everyday life?

For several years now, the artist Aram Bartholl has been working in the field of inquiry delineated by these topics and questions, and investigating the feedback effects of general digitization as an approach to gaining an understanding of the technological transformation of society. In the form of objects, installations, interventions, performances and workshops he takes the developments of recent years to the analogue phiscal space and attempts to get to the bottom of the issues inherent in them.

His art work has been shown on international media art festivals such as Ars Electronica 06/07 or Transmediale 07. Furthermore he participated in exhibitions at TENT Netherlandse, VOORUIT Belgiun, Eyebeam New York, Enemy Gallery Chicago, Trampoline Night Berlin and LABORAL Spain, among others. In more than 15 lectures and workshops Aram Bartholl presented his works.

www.datenform.de/

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