Sharing my works and passions was one of the main reason that leaded me to create art for the web to put on everybodies screens. I was making art for the community and the networks I am/was part of. The web has become a hostile place for sharing. Sponsored posts, fake profiles and bots, algorithms that decide what is hot and not became barriers. We do not always reach the best content for us, we do not always reach the best content at all but probably just the contents with the best SEO or those who pay to be seen more than everybody else, brands, influencers etc etc. I believe this is the main reason why our works and efforts is losing value. Online nothing is free and sharing is becoming more and more a business and those who profit the least from sharing are the people putting their contents online. So, recently I have been thinking a lot about the sharing galore and its value in the online network landscape. Sharing is a value that has been totally exploited for business, for collecting data, for advertsing and selling, for polluting the political sphere. As I said, there are too many barriers and controls that sharing is losing its main purpose, that of contributing for the best in spreading culture and knowledge and informations, well, this is what I believe in. Sharing is associate with posting online but it is not the only way to do it. Dead Drops, a project by Aram Bartholl, is one of my favorite project. The act of bringing the sharing of file and contents away from the web contextualizing it in the urban scenario offline to escape the controls and jump over the barriers of the web feels just right from my dirty new media and critical thinking point of view.
Sometimes ago Anna Russett and Nick Briz put online a project that inspired me this remix version of Bartholl’s Dead Drops project. Russett and Briz project is called Current.Tube and it tries to give visibility to every video posted on Youtube putting emphasis to the reality that what we see on Youtube is just what the algorithms show us, a business model that rewards just sponsored videos, big publishers and famous creators. The videos are showed in realtime in a very amazing graphic. Each video is depicted as a message in a bottle dropped in the sea. I found that amazing and really poetic.
So, Dead Drops and Current.Tube set my mind on fire and I decided to create the Dead Drops Sea Level RMX.
As Dead Drops, “this is an anonymous, offline, peer to peer file-sharing network in public space.” But this time the public space is not urban walls and buildings but the sea because as Anna and Nick states in their project “Uploading a video these days feels like you’re tossing it into a vast sea of content, hoping it washes up on someone’s shore.” and this is the way I feel about sharing online.
So lets try this other way then. Let the sea current take our files to the next shore. Let the sea waves and not algorithms and private business decide where the contents have to land next.
All you need is a glass bottle, a micro SD and a tiny plastic bag, like those used to containt drugs, and the will to share your files with others. Upload your files in the Micro SD Card, put the card into the plastic bag and put it in the bottle. Place a cork lid on top to close it and drop into the sea.
This is Dead Drops Sea Level RMX and I hope you will drop your files into the sea soon.
