Title:
Networking 2.0, An aesthetic, technological and social critique of collective art

Abstract:

This Ph.D. research is directed at developing an investigation in the field of hacktivism, networking and digital culture.

Focus is to investigate how networking practices in grassroots communities are able to change the model of production of Internet contents and artistic creations, connecting the development of hacker ethics with the creation of social media and Web 2.0. The research proposes to analyze the roots of social networking based on both analog and digital networked art, showing that the current artistic challenge of the Web 2.0 platforms lies in the invention of new courses of action, new contents and new technologies developed by grassroots communities.

The main objective is to reflect on the intersections between art, hacker culture and digital economy, focusing on disruptive art practices as tools to generate aesthetic, technological and socio-political criticism. The research intends to show how to create successful critical and innovative routes that involve "alternative" channels, compared to those dominated by the economy of the market. With a conscious use of technology, it is possible to activate an open process of creation, producing new models of technological and cultural intervention. A thread that connects networked art such as mail art, culture jamming, and hacker art with Web 2.0 social networking practices.

Themes:

(a) Collective art practices developed in grassroots communities and in the Web 2.0;
(b) Communities of artists, hackers and activists that use technology as a channel to generate socio-political criticism (with particular attention to the development of hacker ethics in the Silicon Valley and in the independent art scene in San Francisco, CA);
(c) Disruptive interventions as strategies of artistic creation.

Main Supervisor: Søren Pold, Associate Professor, Department of Information and Media Studies, Aarhus University.

Co-supervisor: Fred Turner, Assistant Professor, Communication Department, Stanford University, California.

More info on Tatiana Bazzichelli:

Blog: www.networkingart.eu
Personal website: www.tatianabazzichelli.com
Aarhus University website: http://person.au.dk/imvtb@hum