"Low-tech, between exoticism and political practice" by Filippo Lorenzin
INTRO: “low” e “high”
It is interesting to understand what is meant by "low" tech, because if there is a “low” there is also a ”high-tech”. “High-tech” does refer to all the most recent products and devices which have been built with the most advanced and performing technology.At first, this separation could seem to be based on the amount of data that the product or device can process, record or reproduce, but it’s actually a separation originated by rather specific historical and cultural questions.Quoting “The Lowtech Manifesto” written by James Wallbank in 1999, “low-tech” does mean technology that is cheap and free: “cheap” because it’s produced in such a large number of copies that becomes underrated, something that the System suggest us to forget; “free” because thanks to this carelessness it’s ready to be reused without exposing any particular tie with the company which originally built it.For example, walkmens are “low-tech”: companies don’t produce them anymore and it’s really difficult to buy a new one; otherwise, you can find one old walkmen in nearly every house, used in the past by parents and older brothers and sisters. In this case, the device is “cheap”, because you can find lots of low cost copies nearly everywhere and in the second hand markets, and it’s “free” because the very same companies which originally built it, have lost interest in its existence, deciding it was become an obsolete device.“Cheap”, “free” and “obsolete” are words you should keep in mind when you talk about low-tech.
FIRST PART: low-tech ed esotismo
In general, we can say the use of low-tech means a bottom-up approach. This means that a product built by companies is being used by the public in a different way from that for which it was originally designed. As we seen before, this could mean two kinds of disruptive uses: the use of a device when it has been branded as obsolete by the System and the “wrong” use of it, with different aims from the ones expected by the company.The obsolescence of a device or a material is often planned by the same company that produces them, thus determining the period of their life spans and the moment when it must be abandoned.In recent years there has been much discussion about the problems that such a system generates within global economy, in the perception of technology by the public and in waste disposal. The “low-tech” devices are usually outdated and often evoke an imaginary linked to recycling, with a strong creative inventiveness and then to a great vitality. Another factor that makes the recycling of industrial products attractive to us is their mass production which makes them all indistinguishable from each other: re-using them, you customize depersonalized objects in ways that weren’t expected by their manufacturers. This dynamic has been met over the past decade by companies very often making devices that look really impenetrable, eternal, that promote the idea that they are not customizable objects. The user of the device is free to modify only some particulars of the device, without ever really affecting in an important way its structure and its inherent logic. An example of this is the iPhone or the majority of smartphones built in these years: they’re designed in such a way that don’t suggest potential modifications but that rather dominates the user's line of sight with its unchanging monolith form. The user can install applications from the app store, change the wallpaper and protect it with a colorful cover that can "represent her personality". There are many other products that are designed to be completed with the help and participation of the user but here lies the difference with thothe ones built before the last decade: they were built so they can be modified, fixed and explored by the users hemselves.An example of the fascination we have for reuse and modification of technology is the frequency with which reports about the communities that live near the large dumps of technological devices obsolete or broken are published by photographers and journalists. These situations are often located far from Western countries, such as Africa or China, and intrigue us because we are curious to see how our trash can be reused and infused by new life energy. In a way, it's even a reassuring experience: there is a life after death for what we owned, there is a process of decomposition that breaks down and that prolongs its life span - although in unusual or unexpected forms for our standards. In this case there is a strong exotic feeling, or something quite usual for us that is although slightly different from our daily knowledge.
SECOND PART: "Low-tech" as approach to the world
Now, why artists should be interested in such a thing? The artists who study low-tech are almost always interested in the recovery of obsolete objects and also and especially in the implied approach of this operation.This is a practice that goes against the rules dictated by the System. It is hacking, using the term in its original sense: “to hack” is a term born at MIT in the fifties, when and where the first students started experimenting with computers. “Hacking” meant to “going against the rules given by the original makers in order to create something better”. In this case the artist who deals with these questions tend to grasp a particular form of relationship between people and products given by the System. The use by artists of low-tech in their works often but not always means a political act of revolt. Low-tech is very close as practical to the glitch art: in both cases you use a product in a different way than that for which it was built. Artist Beniamin Gaulòn said that “Glitching a document is a great way to expose its inner workings.” and the same goes with technological devices. When you hack and modify a low-tech you’re going to expose the logic with which it was built.An example of this could be ScareMail by artist Ben Grosser: he created a free plugin for web browsers that add to every email you send an algoritmically generated text containing terms which are indexed by the National Security Agency as potentially dangerous, such as “execution”, “explode” and “beheaded” in order to disrupt their attempts to control the entirety of the messages sent by individuals around the world. Emails and plugins for web browsers are systems available for free to all and in this project refer to a private disruptive activity: it is a low-tech work precisely because it offers the public an opportunity to become active towards a problem by using technology and data systems by companies and governments and mockingly turning their logics.Another project that express this political approach is The Pirate Cinema by Nicolas Maigret: the French artist makes visible the hidden activity and geography of Peer-to-Peer file sharing. The project consists of three screens showing Peer-to-Peer transfers happening in real time on networks using the BitTorrent protocol. Maigret uses technologies available to everyone: BitTorrent is one of the most used peer-to-peer protocols in recent years and the installation can potentially be recreated by anyone. The video materials that are seen passing on the screens are the ones that people are actually downloading on their computers, and the apparently disconnected scenes are linked by the fact that they all belong to movies that have been stolen, exchanged and put into sharing by a public that is leaving the road opened by commercial production and distribution companies for an alternative path. CONCLUSIONSNow, back to us.Low-tech means two things that are very often, not necessarily far apart: on the one hand the exotic aesthetic of recycling and using cheap or free technology, on the other the result of an alternative approach to the industrial materials and logics. A project that deals with these issues has to take a position in relation to this question. Low-tech means first of all vital and active resistance to the logic imposed by the company on the device it built and that at some point abandoned deciding it was obsolete. This approach is often crucial not just for the actual results of projects of this kind, but because they suggest to the public alternative ways to the ones suggested by the System without wanting to impose some teachings. “Low-tech” often means life, creativity, where there should be abandonment and junk. "Low-tech" is a horizon of hope in a world accustomed to not take care of the sediment that leaves behind.
#LowTechLab London, January 15-17th, 2016
