About the assignment

We're taking old or found things and making them new, or interpret them in a new, maybe post-digital, way. Marcel Duchamp’s 'Readymades' are our starting point to think about the load and meaning of an object and your own power to change it. Students will re-imagine old technological devices, everyday objects and found treasures as new media installations. With the use of new technologies such as sensors, motors, microcontrollers, small projectors, VR, Max/MSP, etc you will develop new ways of multimedia storytelling - bringing together the materiality and history of the already existent with the magic of tech showing the non/not yet-existent. Possible already existent or found things can range from tangible objects, to internet data and articles for purchase, from found hashtags to sounds and sentences. The core concept of the readymade has to be clear though!

PrOn

“Man becomes, as it were, the sex organs of the machine world, as the bee of the plant world, enabling it to fecundate and evolve ever new forms.” - Marshall McLuhan

Digital Readymade Sex. The internet gives us the opportunity to experience sexuality on demand like a manufatured good. But it leaves the viewer on his own in front of his screen. Touch as a essential part of sexuality gets lost.

This is a short film made from distorted foodmassprodution foundfootage, the sound of broken harddrives. It is the result of our research about the topic porn.

Uploading the video in Youporn was the right place to raise questions like: are you satisfied?

Concept

DIGITAL READYMADE SEX/BODY

Based on the question of digital addiction to screens, smartphones, social networks… ect. we took a closer look on porn consumption.

During research about readymades we realized that there is a tension in the meaning of the term readymade. On the one hand it is an adjective, meaning a prefabricated consumer good in stock waiting for a customer to be sold and on the other hand Duchamp coined the meaning of readymade in arts through his piece „the fountain“. He put a porcelain urinal, an object of every-day life, into art context.
Erased its usual significance by giving it a new title and gave a new purely aesthetic meaning to the object.

When the term Readymade is transformed to digital times we realized the objects of desire are no longer physical but digital. Things are not available in stock but on demand. Subject expressions are being objectified and translated into digital data and commodified (for example put into business models).

In this process the construction of the body changes. In VR pornography or dating apps or games like second life the body gets dematerialized and objectified (digitally) at the same time. In dating apps the pictures of potential partners appear to be like consumer goods. In pornography sex is commodified and available on demand (¼ of all google searches are pornography). Matches as an ego push or the dose of dopamine from an orgasm in front of the screen can lead to addiction and isolation. It is a one man show in front of the screen that alienates the consumer from the real encounter with a person.

With uploading PrOn on youporn we bring critical questions into the game of easy consumption.