Internet Studio USC

This is a companion site for Internet Studio: Experimentation and On-line Expression, a studio art class taught at the Roski School of Fine Arts at the University of Southern California by Jean Robison.

[internetstudio]

Artnet Op-Ed: Why Facebook Is a Waste of Time—and Money—for Arts Nonprofits

I published a short Op-Ed for Artnet based on writing I did at the C4AA.org site and the C4AA Facebook page. There’s a lot of reasons we weren’t big fans of Facebook at the C4AA, but af…

[internetstudio]

[internetstudio]

The punk rock internet – how DIY rebels are working to replace the tech giants

Around the world, a handful of visionaries are plotting an alternative online future. Is it really possible to remake the internet in a way that’s egalitarian, decentralised and free of snooping?

[internetstudio]

Opinion | When Our Thoughts Are No Longer Our Own

What will become of our inner selves now that our most intimate moments are not only recorded, but analyzed to predict our future actions?

[internetstudio]

Sign the Petition

Save Net Neutrality #netneutrality

[new-aesthetic]

Among the millions of algorithmically-generated videos on YouTube attempting to hack keyword searches, autoplay rankings, and human cognition, a very sizeable number are aimed at children, playing on common YouTube tropes such as nursery rhymes, surprise eggs, learning colours and popular songs and characters.

A very significant number of these however are intentionally disturbing, segueing from standard cartoon fare into nightmarish situations of pain, fear, violence and abuse, with a notable propensity for things which particularly trouble children: dentistry, blood, injections, insects, and evil clowns. The knock-off Peppa Pigs above are at the very mildest end of this spectrum.

What is particularly troubling is that while there is a connection here to the kind of algorithmic weirdness that youtube and other similar complex computational systems throw up with increasing regularity (the rape tshirts, the adult diaper phone cases), this is not fully automated, random, or accidental, but a deliberate, intentional attempt to terrorise and traumatise children, performed on a massive scale, using Youtube and its algorithms as its attack vector.

References, in ascending order of disturbingness:

YouTube has a fake Peppa Pig problem - The Outline

Disturbing, fake YouTube shows fool kids for more clicks - Engadget

On YouTube Kids, Startling Videos Slip Past Filters - New York Times

Something is Terribly Wrong With Many “Kids” Videos on YouTube - Vigilant Citizen [Warning: graphic content / right wing conspiracy site - not an endorsement etc]

[new-aesthetic]

Saudi Arabia grants citizenship to robot Sophia | News | DW | 28.10.2017

Saudi Arabia granted citizenship to a humanoid robot, it announced at an innovation conference in Riyadh this week. It claims to be the first nation to bestow citizenship upon a robot.

Sophia was built by the Hong Kong-based company Hanson Robotics in 2015. The inventor David Hanson claims that the robot is imbued with artificial intelligence and can recognize faces. The robot’s silicon face can reportedly mimic 62 human facial expressions.

Hanson is evidently proud of his robot creation’s looks, as he rather lecherously described Sophia on his website: “Porcelain skin, a slender nose, high cheekbones, an intriguing smile and deeply expressive eyes,” the website gushes. She was supposedly modeled on the late actress Audrey Hepburn.

Saudi citizens are entitled to generous sums each year as part of the kingdom’s substantial oil revenues. Citizenship is rarely granted to foreigners, and is most notably withheld from poorly treated migrant laborers.

Social media users in the kingdom were quick to point out that the robot could be entitled to more rights than the country’s female subjects, who must have a male guardian, must wear a hijab, cannot mix with unrelated males and are unfairly represented in the justice system. They were only recently granted permission to drive.

[internetstudio]

CV Dazzle: Camouflage from Face Detection by Adam Harvey

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www.facebook.com/paglen

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GreenScreenRefrigerator Part I

First half of GreenScreenRefrigerator. A black Samsung Bottom Freezer Refrigerator was filmed live in front of an audience at Gavin Brown's Enterprise in Oct...

[internetstudio]

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Feeling My Feed

Self hooked up to a Midi Sprout connected to a Korg VolcaKeys (for galvanic skin response), Drone Thing with Stagg delay effect, and passive electromagnetic microphones…

[internetstudio]

Excellences & Perfections: Amalia Ulman at The Influencers 2015

Amalia Ulman's performative lectures: "Excellences & Perfections" & "The Future Ahead. Improvements for the further masculinization of…

[internetstudio]

Chris Burden - TV Commercials 1973-1977

From UBUWeb: The TV Commercials 1973-1977 Chris Burden 1973-77/2000, 9:08 min, color, sound The TV Commercials is a recent compilation of Burden's four legen...

[internetstudio]

An imperfect podcast about art, technology and culture by Rafael Rozendaal and Jeremy Bailey.

I’ve been listening to this all summer!

[internetstudio]

Frederick Hammersley and the Computer

An upcoming Huntington show will touch on Frederick Hammersley's role as pioneer and prophet of digital art. After moving to New Mexico, H...