AMRO Research Labs are artistic research projects that involve the AMRO community.

-> https://research.radical-openness.org/2023/

You are all caught up

AMRO22 debug

15th—18th June 2022
Linz, Austria

AMRO, Art Meets Radical Openness, is a biennial festival for art, hacktivism and open cultures, organized since 2008 by servus.at in cooperation with the Linz University of Art, Department of Time-Based Media.

The current edition of Art Meets Radical Openness is dedicated to the rituals and the philosophies of debugging.

(Software) bugs are much more than simple technical errors. Under certain circumstances, they can be seen as one of the fundamental features of the current age, which is characterized by ubiquitous technologies and power structures. Are cultural practices of debugging and fixing bugs within free open source communities transferable to socio-political challenges?

As a gathering of communities with interests across arts and cultures, networked technologies and political action, AMRO offers space for sharing knowledge and practices, focusing on the potential of debugging both inside and outside of the purely technical realm.

Festival locations: afo – architekturforum oberösterreich, STWST, DH5, dev.lol, Raumschiff, bb15, & the Internet.

# Contributors  # Festival Program

Festival website https://art-meets.radical-openness.org/2022/

Art Meets Radical Openness 2020
20th - 23rd of May 2020
locations: online, DorfTV.at

"We meet at your place!

Due to the circulating Covid-19 pandemic, it was not possible to organize this years edition and gathering as usual. We will miss the possibility to meet our community in the physical space and we will miss the excellent food which was always provided.

Nevertheless, we take this as a challenge and decided to come up with a radical digital version for this years edition of our event which includes our DIY culture of setting up our own trustworthy digital environment. We will be distant but we will be social and happy to welcome you within our online event.

"Of Whirlpools and Tornadoes"

The 2020 edition of the AMRO festival is characterized by reflections upon the “centripetal” and “centrifugal” dynamics of acceleration visible in contemporary society and the ways artistic practice, activism and radical thinking can engage with it.

Of Whirlpools and Tornadoes aims to provide a picture of the current social and technological movements that reflect the diverse troubles our economic and political systems are currently facing. The speed of production and consumption of new technologies is inevitably linked to the waste of natural resources, which humans exploit and use to their own only advantage without considering the equilibrium of the ecosystem.

The acceleration of the effects of climate change runs in parallel to the unstoppable race for technological development, which is often misunderstood as a solution - rather than a cause - of the inevitable environmental catastrophe. Many groups of activists are now trying to push governments into doing more. But there is still very little discussion about models of sustainable technological infrastructure, how this infrastructure can be built and what it might look like. In the meantime, the next generation of smart products are being developed, which will increasingly be connected to the internet. Behind the smooth surface of our daily electronics, even more machines will stream data around the world 24/7, requiring more data centers and energy.

How much more digital do we need to be, when we consider that every cloud is a server farm wasting considerable amounts of energy, water, fresh air and raw materials?

Contributors 2020
Adnan Hadzi, Alexandra Cardenas, An XR Austria participant, Antonio Roberts, Anuradha Reddy, Artemis Gryllaki, Baruch Gottlieb, Bastien Kerspern, Birgit Schneider, Caroline Sinders, César Escudero Andaluz, Chipp Jansen, Christina Gruber, Dasha Ilina, Davide Bevilacqua, DISNOVATION.ORG, Dominik Leitner, Elena Gerebizza, Emil Flatø, Erich Berger, Eva-Maria Lopez, Filippo Taglieri, Franz Xaver, FRAUD, Hagen Kopp, Heath Bunting, Heavy Lifting, Inari Wishiki (aka Yoshinari Nishiki), Interspecifics, Jamie Allen, Joana Chicau, Joana Moll, Jörg Piringer, Jutta Kill, KairUs, Kikimore, Kris De Decker, Malte Reißig, Malte Steiner, Mara Karagianni, Marloes de Valk, Martín Nadal, Martina Schönbauer, Mathieu Zurstrassen, Michal Klodner, Ming Lin, Moritz Morast, Natalia Domínguez Rangel, Nicolas Zemke, Nikola Brabcova, Nishant Shah, NotFoundOn Custodians, Onur, Özgün Eylül İşcen, Post-Bio-Internet Collective, Raphael Perret, Rihards Vitols, Rita Graça, Rob La Frenais, Sai Bao & Yang Mu, Samuel Hertz, Santiago Zabala, Simon Browne, Simon Weckert, Simon Worthington, Taro Knopp, Tega Brain, Trial#1, Us(c)hi Reiter, Valie Djordjevic, Violeta Moreno-Lax, Wolfgang Spahn, Yen Tzu Chang, Z. Blace.

# Contributors  # Festival Program #AMRO Gateway

2019-2020 participants of the Research Lab are the media artist and freshwater ecologist Christina Gruber and the multimedia artist and Internet hack activist Antonio Zingaro. They will work with servus.at curator Davide Bevilacqua and the servus.at community on the environmental impacts of the Internet infrastructure and the “green” trends that are emerging in the marketing strategies of the largest Internet companies.

Both the digital and the analog world are based on water. For the digital cloud – a network of servers – water is needed to ensure fast streaming times, cool data center servers and supply power. The water required for this process is collected, heated, cooled and returned to the water cycle, which affects it. The water cycle is an ambiguous and perhaps overloaded concept, as is sustainability. How are we all connected, and are we really? Can a data center help us understand the deep relationships between ecosystems – on Earth and in the Cloud? And are there any? Or is it just another very well told story? Scrolling through the essentials of online marketing storytelling seems to be the next big thing. Without a story, your product won’t sell and at every corner there are experts to help create these masterpieces of craftsmanship. But don’t forget to be sustainable: #thereisonlyoneearth #savetheclimatenow #climatechangeisreal!

AMRO Research Lab 2019/2020 focuses on these topics. Based on the collection of examples of digital greenwashing propaganda, the attempt to recognize them and thus avoid them, and to dig even deeper and collect data in the local area. One example in particular: the use of water in so-called “green data centres”. The key questions are: Which effects do these material changes of water have on the ecosystem? How can we rethink the balance between the human needs of technology and the resources available in nature?

The research lab was structured in a long-term residence in the servus.at clubraum that was later extended in a research residence in Cyprus. Outcome of the process were: the participation at the conference of RIXC festival; a field trip looking at the internet infrastructure around Linz and its connection to water; the Symposium Vaping Networks at the Kunstuniversität Linz; a workshop about sustainable web design. Furthermore the research is included in the AMRO Festival 2020 Program.

Read More: research.radical-openness.org/2019

AMRO Research Lab 2019 was organized with

Christina Gruber (AT) is an artist and freshwater ecologist living and working in Vienna, Austria. She works at the intersection of art and science; her work deals with societal phenomena that shape our world. These relate to the Anthropocene, a concept that describes human beings as the main force changing the earth’s surface. Gruber investigates the effects humans have and had on the landscape and how they’ve shaped the earth’s surface. In the last years water is of special interest to her. She sees it as the element that all things on earth, including humans, have in common. It is the connector between stories of different places and layers, running through everything, from clouds to datacenters. www.christinagruber.net

Antonio Zingaro (IT) is a multimedia artist and internet hacktivist. After working as a filmmaker, he published R.T.F.M. (Read This Fucking Manual), a digital self-defence cross-media manual. His art practice explores the hidden layers of the internet as well as the relationship between intimacy, sexuality and technology. He is currently a MA candidate at the University of Art & Design Linz. www.forzantonio.it

In the course of 2017, servus.at Research Lab had two main directions of research: mapping and digital cartography, and Social Bots & AI.

Research: Social Bots - automated opinion making of the 21st century
Bots, soon to be software robots, have existed since computers have existed. The first example of a bot that was designed with an algorithm to follow a conversation was invented by Alan Turing in the 1950s. The dream of programming a computer algorithm to pass the so-called Turing test has driven research in artificial intelligence for decades.  Many things have changed since Weizbaum's program ELIZA, which can simulate different interlocutors via scripts and answers like a psychotherapist. Today, in our social media ecosystem, where hundreds of millions of individuals pursue different interests, including economic and political ones, the incentives to create algorithms that behave "humanely" are increasing. In the last few years, social bots have been populating media platforms such as Twitter, Facebook and Instagram, influencing more or less opinions on political, social or economic issues.

Research: Hic Svnt Dracones

Early world maps or sea charts illustrated places that were not known often with mythical creatures such as sea snakes and sea monsters. Unexplored and uncertain places were marked in this way to indicate that there was something to be discovered there, which might also have been a danger. In the financial world, the risk manager is known in jargon as "T.B.D." (there be dragons) are pointing to risks that are not foreseeable. On the Hunt-Lenox Globe, which is one of the oldest surviving globes and is dated between 1503 and 1510, the formulation HC SVNT DRACONES is found for the areas east of Asia that were undiscovered. The question is what remains undiscovered today in our information society?

Participants of the AMRO Research Labs 2017: Valie Djordjevic, Davide Bevilacqua, Veronika Krenn, Hanna Priemetzhofer, Franziska Thurner, Us(c)hi Reiter, Markus Decker und Pamela Neuwirth

Read more: research.radical-openness.org/2017

AMRO - Art Meets Radical Openness 2016, Linz
Festival Dedicated to Art, Hacktivism and Open Culture
Waste(d)!
25.05-28.05.2016

The four days lasting festival under the topic “Waste(d)!” was devoted to aspects of the conditions of our digital infosphere that are increasingly perceived as complex. The act of saving, deleting, or resurfacing data and information has taken on a life of its own, is monitored, monetized and waste valuable natural resources.

What is the cultural, social, philosophical, ecological, and economic significance of producing, saving, deleting, and resurfacing data?

Artists, hacktivists, cultural producers, journalists, F/LOSS developers, idealists, and others contributed to the edition of the festival within an exhibition, workshop, lectures and performances.

AMRO is a biennial community festival in Linz that probes and engages with new challenges between digital culture, art, everyday life, education, politics, and taking action.

Audrey Samson, Emilio Vavarella, Fabian Kühfuß, Fictilis, Ivar Veermäe, Joakim Blattmann, Linda Kronman & Andreas Zingerle (KairUs), Martin Reiche, Michael Wirthig, Michaela Lakova, Owen Mundy, Raphael Perret, Shu Lea Cheang, Simon Krenn, Matthias Urban, Times of Waste, Wolfgang Spahn

César Escudero Andaluz, Sabina Hyoju Ahn, Manetta Berends, Tatiana Bazzichelli, Alessio Chierico, Christina Cochior, Richie Cyngler, Vincenzo Estremo, Marina Gržinić, Adnan Hadzi,  Charles Céleste Hutchins, MissData & Israeli Pirates, Fieke Jansen, Joseph Knierzinger, Taro Knopp, Anne Laforet, Evan Light, Ling Luther,  Manu Luksch, Roman Lauko, Joana Moll, Daniel Neyland, Martín Nadal, Jakub Pišek, Anne Roth, Byron Rich, Matthew Rice, Aneta Stojnić, Felix Stalder, Malte Steiner, Przemyslaw Sanecki, Martina Schönbauer, Mary Tsang, Stefan Tiefengraber, Christian Voigt, Marloes de Valk, Ruben van de Ven

# Contributors  # Exhibition # Festival Programm # Files

For most of us consumers electronic devices such as smartphones, tablets, notebooks, printers or microwaves are a fundamental and indispensable parts of our daily lives. As a result of rapid growth and constant innovation the electronic industry is the world’s fastest growing industry. The “Internet of things” is increasingly adding electronic devices onto our shopping list. Devices that are adding up to a 24h surveillance system that are tracking every aspect of our life and are containers for private data. The life cycle of these products are considerably short and when they break we do not know how to fix them. When it is cheaper to buy a new one than to repair the old one we move on to a upgraded model. But where do these electronic devices go to die? Some of them end up in regulated e-waste centrals in Europe, yet lot of them are dumped illegally on electronic-wastelands in developing countries where they become a serious environmental threat. A privacy issue is that these devices still contain personal data that can be reanimated and abused when falling into wrong hands. In the ‘Behind the smart world’ – research lab we question what happens to our electronic waste? What environmental and privacy threats exists? And how can we become more responsible users of technology.

In 2014 KairUs visited the biggest e-waste dump in the world, Agbogbloshie in Accra, Ghana. There we bought 22 hard drives. As a hads-on part of this research lab we will try to reanimate the the hard drives and explore what kind of data traces are revealed of their prior owners.  We will also make a number of excursions and meet some experts to understand how electronic waste is taken care of in Austria.
In May we will organize a combined symposium and art-lab inviting experts to discuss the thematics of this research lab and to work with other artist to tell the story of the 22 hard drives.

Read more: http://research.radical-openness.org/2015

Organized in collaboration with
KairUs is an artist collaboration platform founded in 2010 by Linda Kronman and Andreas Zingerle. The platform takes interest in Human-Computer and Human-Human Interaction with a focus on media art and interactive storytelling. Through events like workshops, exhibitions, talks, presentations and guided tours KairUs invites people to participate and share opportune moments for art collaborations.
Website: http://www.kairus.org

Date: 28.05 – 31.05.2014
Location: afo architekturforum oberösterreich

Uncovering new truths and making them public as a disruption and criticism of the dominant system has consequences.

Threat scenarios of the digital surveillance state inevitably have palpable effects on our lives and actions. Access to information, infrastructure and technology, which is especially important for activists in repressive regimes up to the present, has become a widely discussed issue since Snowden’s disclosures at the latest, because now a broad mass of people in democratically governed states see their “privacy” endangered. Independence, confidence and freedom are massively put to the test.

Artists, hacktivists, cultural producers, journalists, software developers and idealists, in short creative actors with a desire for change increasingly find themselves in uncertain territory. Which methods and alternative tools can be used to generate new views of everyday life, work, money, politics and the environment, and to instigate a new cultural practice, to impel civil society processes, without them being nipped in the bud?

How do creative actors contribute to the process of change and which new forms of cooperation do they enter into?
# Program # AMRO Showcase # Speakers

Contributers:
Klau Kinki/ES; !Mediengruppe Bitnik/CH; Adnan Hadzi/CH/UK; Aleš Hieng, SLO; André Castro/ES; Andreas Zingerle/A; Anne Roth/DE; Dennis de Bel/NL; Roelof Roscam Abbing/NL; Dominik Leitner/A; Donna Metzlar/NL; Femke Snelting/NL; Franz Xaver/A; Heath Bunting/UK; Inari Wishiki/UK; Jakub Pišek/CZ; James Bridle/UK; James Stevens/UK; Jonathan Kemp/UK; Karlessi/IT; Konrad Becker/A; Larisa Blazic/SRB/UK; Linda Kronman/FIN/A; Lizvlx/A; Lonneke van der Velden/NL; Marc Garrett/UK; Marek Tuszynski/ Margarita Köhl/A; Martino Morandi/IT; Marie Polakova/CZ/A; Michael Schweiger/A; Nathaniel Tkacz; Niek Hilkmann/NL; Renfah/A; Robertina Šebjanič/SLO; Roelof Roscam Abbing/NL; Selena Savić/CH; Taro the cook/A; Tatiana Bazzichelli/IT; Valie Djordjevic/DE; Veronika Krenn/A; Vesela Mihaylova; Victor Diaz/ES; waiwai; Wolfgang Spahn/DE; Yoana Buzova/NL; Reni Hofmüller/A, Jogi Hofmüller/A; u.v.a

As a result of a 43% funding cut by the Austrian federal government for servus.at, this years LiWoLi festival has had to be canceled.

With the great support and interest of the Art University, servus.at developed "LiWoLi - Art Meets Radical Openness" into a bustling art festival over the past five years.

Reaching the tipping point, where international attention for the festival became noticeable, servus.at - the main host - is surprised by a dramatic cut in funding and has to cancel the event for 2013. The future is uncertain, but of course we hope for LiWoLi 2014.

The LiWoLi festival has its roots in the successful Free Software Events from early 2000s, which had been held yearly by local linux user groups, supported by servus.at.

As the success of Linux made that kind of events obsolete, servus.at -being an artist run data and competence center - re-created the event for artists and cultural producers while keeping focused on the spirit of the free software movements: Art meets radical openness.

Over the past five years over 300 active contributors, from all over the world, visited Linz for the purpose of sharing skills, code, visions and experience. Artists, developers and educators worked together and discussed the benefits and challenges of openness. This year we take the opportunity to rethink our exhausted structure caused by constant budget cuts. A common decision is to keep things alive and so of course we will work to make LiWoLi 2014 happen. We hope to meet you soon again!

Uschi Reiter for servus.at

Open Design by Christoph Haag

Wed, 23th of MAY
http://interface.ufg.at/opendesign/

24-26 May 2012
LiWoLi is a community festival, open lab and annual meeting spot for artists, educators and developers using and creating Free Software (FLOSS), Open Hardware and Open Design in the artistic and cultural context. This event is all about sharing artistic skills, code and knowledge within the public domain and discussing the challenges of an open practice.

This year's edition had a special focus on artworks that can be created, performed or exhibited outdoors and in public space. Like every year, numerous activities such as lectures, workshops and audiovisual performances took place during the course of this three-day festival.

guests: open Design: Ronen Kadushin (IL/DE); Greg Saul (NZ/GB); Peter Kirn (USA/DE); Beste Nazilli (GB/DE); LiWoLi: Heath Bunting (GB/~); Eleanor Greenhalgh(GB/NL); Theremini Orchestra (SLO): Tina Dolinšek, Luka Frelih, Ida Hiršenfelder, Borut Savski, Saša Spačal, Robertina Šebjanič, Matic Urbanija, Dušan Zidar; Jakub Pisek (SK) & Roman Lauko (SK) & Erik Bartos (SK), Augsut Black (USA), Dmytri Kleiner (USSR/CAN/DE); Felix Stalder (CH/A), David Young (IRL/NL), Victor Mazon (ES/DE), Cimbalab (Chile): Constanza Piña Pardo (CHI), Claudia Gonzalez (CHI); EXPANDERR (A/~), Michael Schweiger (A); Awkward Family Photos: Orestis Plakias (GR), Niko Palamares(GR), Kyriakos Tsoukalas(GR), Linda Hilfling (DK/D); Malte Steiner (DE); Servando Barreiro (ES/DE); Mey Lean Kronemann (DE), Andreas Strauss (A/~); VALUG (A); Reinhard Gupfinger (A);

# Program # Speakers #Gallery # Videos

12th - 14th of May 2011 LiWoLi is an open lab and meeting spot for artists, developers and educators using and creating FLOSS (free/libre open source software) and Open Hardware in the artistic and cultural context. LiWoLi is all about sharing skills, code and knowledge within the public domain and discussing the challenges of open practice. This year's event offers an exhibition, artists' workshops and – like every year – lectures, presentations and sound-performances. # Program # Exhibition # Speakers # Gallery # Videos

With the development and the use of free and Open Source Software and Hardware the cultural practice of DIY (Do it yourself) emerges. DIY often means to those who practice it to see one’s self-believe and the own strength as a driving force for changes. LiWoLi raises the question of whether a practice of "doing it together" (DIT) might be a more successful formula for developing free tools (FLOSS tools) for art & culture, learning & teaching. This also implies examining the motivation of active producers and making room for the aspect of "unpaid work". # Program # Speakers # Gallery

23rd - 25th of April 2009 Liwoli 2009 is a three day long Hacklab and an open invitation to all who would like to discover more about and participate in an active process of learning, producing and sharing around the areas of Free/Libre Open Source Software. FLOSS-developers, artists and programmers such as the collective GOTO10 or activists from HAIP (Hack Act Interact Progress) and many others form the basis for the event and share their knowledge in the form of workshops, hacklabs, presentations, installations and performances. # Program # Speakers # Files # Organizers Doku-Video