Papers by Gaia Tedone
The Black Box Book
The publication is the result of the efforts of an international collective of authors to capture... more The publication is the result of the efforts of an international collective of authors to capture the transformation of exhibition institutions and curation during the Covid 19 pandemic, with a focus on the year 2020. It seeks an answer to the question of how curatorial strategies, communication platforms and the social function of exhibition institutions have changed under the influence of rapid and external circumstances, that forced transition from physical gallery spaces to online. It critically reflects on the exhibition project Černá skříňka/The Black Box (Galerie TIC), in which several curatorial approaches were applied, including the use of artificial intelligence, and places it in the broad context of curatorial projects that were carried out at the same time at home and abroad as well as in the network of terminology apparatus, which is built around the phenomenon of online curation. The research method is a combination of writing the history of presence, mostly from the p...
Journal of Science and Technology of the Arts, Dec 29, 2019
Under conditions of so-called Platform Capitalism, software and algorithms undertake the importan... more Under conditions of so-called Platform Capitalism, software and algorithms undertake the important task of designing the interaction amongst online users and establishing criteria of relevance for content. As such, they operate as curatorial agents of platforms' content, establishing what is there to see, know and consume. This state of affairs calls for a revision of the traditional role of the (human) curator who is confronted with an online environment characterised by the unprecedented collision of commercial, aesthetic, cultural and political interests. The question of what kind of relationship the curator shall create with the algorithm then becomes crucial: is this a relationship of antagonism, resistance or alliance? How do these two curatorial agents influence each other? In this article, I analyse a cluster of hybrid artistic and curatorial experiments (including my own curatorial work) that foregrounds online platforms as discrete modes of socio-technical assemblages that curate particular forms of connectivity amongst networks of users, data layers and technical infrastructures. By doing so, I argue for the forging of strategic alliances between human and machinic curators as a strategy to channel new forms of creativity and cooperation under conditions of Platform Capitalism and to operationalise humanalgorithmic curation as a political and aesthetic practice within the networked culture.
The Book of X 10 Years of Computation, Communication, Aesthetics and X, 2022
is an artist, programmer and data activist. In the context of his doctoral research, he initiated... more is an artist, programmer and data activist. In the context of his doctoral research, he initiated the project Variations on a Glance (2015-2018), a series of workshops on the photographic elaboration of computer vision. He is currently a postdoc researcher at the Centre for the Study of the Networked Image, London. Nestor Siré is a multimedia artist who works with interactive installations, diagrams, hardware and software development, videos, photographs, actions and objects. From an artistic and academic perspective, he engages with the particular idiosyncrasies of digital culture in the Cuban context, disconnected until recently from the global Internet. www.nestorsire.com Gaia Tedone is a curator and researcher with an expansive interest in the technologies and apparatuses of image formation. In 2019, she completed her PhD at the Centre for the Study of the Networked Image, London South Bank University. She currently teaches at
Routledge eBooks, Oct 26, 2022
Routledge eBooks, May 23, 2022
This chapter explores the challenges and possibilities that exist when the object of curating is ... more This chapter explores the challenges and possibilities that exist when the object of curating is no longer a conventional art object but a poor, authorless, bastard image and when curating steps outside the ‘art filter bubble’ and enters the aesthetic flows and participatory waves of the networked culture. Central to its argument is a critical framing of the notion of circulation. This is considered a key concept which illuminates both an operational behaviour of the networked image and an atmospheric condition that affects the various affordances of curating within networked culture. However, circulation is also understood as a discontinuous and performative process that bounds the distribution of content to specific geopolitical and infrastructural conditions, governmental policies and corporate strategies. This state of affairs calls for a certain operational agility on the side of the curator who is confronted with blockages and ruptures when working on the Web and in the context of specific online platforms. Two core examples are analysed to make visible a number of paradoxes concerning the online curation of networked images. While the first example revolves around an investigation of a particular image, an H&M T-shirt patterned with the statement ‘this image is not available in your country’, the second example focuses on collecting and archiving a stream of images – predominantly memes – posted on a dedicated Facebook page by artists Félix Magal and Emilie Gervais under the umbrella of their collaborative web project ‘MoI: Museum of Internet’ (2012-2019). Through their analysis, these two case studies expose the aesthetic and political implications of curating under conditions of computational capitalism and open a reflection on the fraught relationship between the museum and networked culture, a relationship whose complexity escalated as a result of the Covid-19 Pandemic and the forced migration online of many cultural institutions.
Journal of Media Practice, 2017
The rapidity with which images circulate across the Internet has multiplied their contexts of rec... more The rapidity with which images circulate across the Internet has multiplied their contexts of reception and patterns of interpretation. This poses some challenges for the work of the online curator who neither relies on the physical space of the art gallery nor on the photographic frame to designate context and fix meaning. However, it also presents the opportunity to test new conceptual tools for dealing with networked images' inherent fluidity. This article proposes 'online critical tracing' as a reflexive method to begin charting, connecting and critically examining the unstable flow of networked images. The method develops from my tracing of a specific visual objecta T-shirt commercialised by the Swedish international retailer H&M patterned with the statement 'this image is not available in your country'. Reflecting back on this experiment, I examine a number of implications that conditions of image circulation have for online curation, namely problems of commodification, interpretation and aesthetics. While attempting to situate this method theoretically, I highlight the challenges and possibilities it might open up for the curation of networked images.
Arts, 2019
Online curation is shaped and defined not merely by its content, but just as much by the nature o... more Online curation is shaped and defined not merely by its content, but just as much by the nature of the structure and the systems that are used by curators and artists. It could be argued that this applies to any medium, but as this essay will show, the Web profoundly influences the role of the curator in new ways. In this paper we show how curation on the Web is not merely concerned with presenting art, but that curation functions within a wider ecology of social and technical power relations. This shift is characterized by a collision of different interests driven by economic, cultural, and socio-political agendas, and can be framed as a new space of performativity: signaling a move from curating a set of objects to a conceptual and operational process that puts different constellations of human and machinic agents, objects and practices into relation with one another. This means that a curator needs to take into account a complex interrelated network of dependencies and contexts t...
Under conditions of so-called Platform Capitalism, software and algorithms undertake the importan... more Under conditions of so-called Platform Capitalism, software and algorithms undertake the important task of designing the interaction amongst online users and establishing criteria of relevance for content. As such, they operate as curatorial agents of platforms’ content, establishing what is there to see, know and consume. This state of affairs calls for a revision of the traditional role of the (human) curator who is confronted with an online environment characterised by the unprecedented collision of commercial, aesthetic, cultural and political interests. The question of what kind of relationship the curator shall create with the algorithm then becomes crucial: is this a relationship of antagonism, resistance or alliance? How do these two curatorial agents influence each other? In this article, I analyse a cluster of hybrid artistic and curatorial experiments (including my own curatorial work) that foregrounds online platforms as discrete modes of socio-technical assemblages that...
Nummer 10, Lucerne University of Art and Design. Issue edited by Wolfgang Brückle and Salvatore Vitale, 2021
Since the mid 1960s, NASA has extended photographic agency from humans to space- craft, satellite... more Since the mid 1960s, NASA has extended photographic agency from humans to space- craft, satellites and robots, originating some of the most reproduced images in histo- ry. As its missions into outer space have continued to develop over the years, so has the state of the imaging technologies employed to visualize scientific data and signals and to turn them into beautiful images. By sharing these images on social media and making them available to the public through its real-time science encyclopaedia (so- larsystem.nasa.gov), NASA has also solicited a lively response from an enthusiastic global community of amateurs who have themselves become valuable co-curators of the imageries of deep space exploration. In what follows, Gaia Tedone talks to Bill Dunford, writer and web producer at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL), about his experience of working with NASA images and his involvement with the flagship Cassini Mission to Saturn. This conversation was conducted in the context of the SNSF research project ‹Curating Photography in the Networked Image Economy›. It devel- ops Tedone’s ongoing fascination with the Cassini space probe and with NASA’s ex- perimental imaging practices. The Cassini Mission to Saturn was not only one of the longest and most revealing missions in our recent history, producing an incredible wealth of scientific data and findings concerning Saturn and its moons; it also brought NASA an Emmy Award for the digital campaign it created for ‹The Cassini Grand Fi- nale›. The following conversation expands from Dunford’s daily practice of processing, distributing and curating space probe photography to open up a broader reflection on the changing status of the post-photographic image, which oscillates between com- putational interface (raw data) and visual communication (‹pretty pictures›). What emerges is an account of an increasingly networked and collaborative practice which develops from the interaction between various imaging technologies, interfaces and contexts of reception: an ever-evolving human and non-human constellation whose coordinates are little known among traditional photographic institutions.
Unthinking Photography Blog, The Photographers Gallery , 2019
Arts, Special Issue 'Art Curation: Challenges in the Digital Age' edited by Francesca Franco, 2019
Online curation is shaped and defined not merely by its content, but just as much by the nature o... more Online curation is shaped and defined not merely by its content, but just as much by the nature of the structure and the systems that are used by curators and artists. It could be argued that this applies to any medium, but as this essay will show, the Web profoundly influences the role of the curator in new ways. In this paper we show how curation on the Web is not merely concerned with presenting art, but that curation functions within a wider ecology of social and technical power relations. This shift is characterized by a collision of different interests driven by economic, cultural, and socio-political agendas, and can be framed as a new space of performativity: signaling a move from curating a set of objects to a conceptual and operational process that puts different constellations of human and machinic agents, objects and practices into relation with one another. This means that a curator needs to take into account a complex interrelated network of dependencies and contexts that are often invisible or incomprehensible to most people. In such a scenario online curation becomes 'networked co-curation' and shifts the attention from what is produced to how it is performed under the socio-technical conditions and relations that characterize the current state of the Web.
CITAR Journal for Science and Technology of the Arts, 2019
Under conditions of so-called Platform Capitalism, software and algorithms undertake the importan... more Under conditions of so-called Platform Capitalism, software and algorithms undertake the important task of designing the interaction amongst online users and establishing criteria of relevance for content. As such, they operate as curatorial agents of platforms' content, establishing what is there to see, know and consume. This state of affairs calls for a revision of the traditional role of the (human) curator who is confronted with an online environment characterised by the unprecedented collision of commercial, aesthetic, cultural and political interests. The question of what kind of relationship the curator shall create with the algorithm then becomes crucial: is this a relationship of antagonism, resistance or alliance? How do these two curatorial agents influence each other? In this article, I analyse a cluster of hybrid artistic and curatorial experiments (including my own curatorial work) that foregrounds online platforms as discrete modes of socio-technical assemblages that curate particular forms of connectivity amongst networks of users, data layers and technical infrastructures. By doing so, I argue for the forging of strategic alliances between human and machinic curators as a strategy to channel new forms of creativity and cooperation under conditions of Platform Capitalism and to operationalise human-algorithmic curation as a political and aesthetic practice within the networked culture.
Journal of Media Practice , 2017
The rapidity with which images circulate across the Internet has multiplied their contexts of rec... more The rapidity with which images circulate across the Internet has multiplied their contexts of reception and patterns of interpretation. This poses some challenges for the work of the online curator who neither relies on the physical space of the art gallery nor on the photographic frame to designate context and fix meaning. However, it also presents the opportunity to test new conceptual tools for dealing with networked images’ inherent fluidity. This article proposes ‘online critical tracing’ as a reflexive method to begin charting, connecting and critically examining the unstable flow of networked images. The method develops from my tracing of a specific visual object – a T-shirt commercialised by the Swedish international retailer H&M patterned with the statement ‘this image is not available in your country’. Reflecting back on this experiment, I examine a number of implications that conditions of image circulation have for online curation, namely problems of commodification, interpretation and aesthetics. While attempting to situate this method theoretically, I highlight the challenges and possibilities it might open up for the curation of networked images.
Conference Presentations by Gaia Tedone
Conference on Computation, Communication, Aesthetics & X, Milan, Italy , 2019
Although the cultural and social purpose of algorithms is the object of much public debate and co... more Although the cultural and social purpose of algorithms is the object of much public debate and contestation, their function is often compared with that of a renowned figure in the intellectual milieu: the curator. In this article I want to look at the relationship between these two agents-why they are compared and how they influence each other-in order to address the following question: is the curator working with or against the algorithm? Through the analysis of three hybrid artistic and curatorial experiments (including my own curatorial work) I want to problematise the false dichotomy of working either with or against the algorithm. I suggest instead that a critically reflexive approach to both the procedures of technology and art curating, to their biases and gatekeeping mechanisms, is necessary to address the crisis of cultural value brought about by the algorithmic world and for forging strategic alliances between humans and machines that can channel new forms of creativity and cooperation.
Books by Gaia Tedone
#exstrange : a curatorial intervention on ebay / Marialaura Ghidini & Rebekah Modrak., 2017
Book Chapter in the Exhibition Catalogue of #exstrange : a curatorial intervention on ebay / edit... more Book Chapter in the Exhibition Catalogue of #exstrange : a curatorial intervention on ebay / edited by Marialaura Ghidini & Rebekah Modrak.
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Papers by Gaia Tedone
Conference Presentations by Gaia Tedone
Books by Gaia Tedone