A Silent Opera for Anthropogenic Mass. Arte Tv. 5th of Feburary 2023. Berlin, Germany.
A Silent Opera for Anthropogenic Mass (2023), focuses on exploring the insidious, yet silent production of anthropogenic mass. It is precisely the silent quality of this process (from a human perspective) that makes it particularly critical, as it blinds us to consciously experience and identify the different realities left by this subtle, yet brutal, transformation of our natural ecosystems, making it increasingly difficult to re-imagine relationships and future paradigms consistent with our contemporary climatic, technological, and human conditions. Moreover, a form of collective amnesia named the Shifting Baseline Syndrome (SBS), is progressively challenging any shared initiative of restoring our relationship with nature. SBS is based on ‘a gradual change in the accepted norms for the conditions of a natural environment due to a lack of experience, memory, and/or knowledge of its past condition’. In other words, what a generation experiences as normal, can be radically different when another generation appears, and subsequently apprehend this emerging reality as normal. Thus, developing rituals aimed at experiencing the increasing cannibalization of ecologies, exemplified by the persistent increasing of anthropogenic mass, is an urgent exercise.
Commissioned by Transmediale and in co-production with Intstitut Ramon Llull. With the collaboration of Roc Jiménez de Cisneros. Includes an opera libretto containing detailed information on the project.
In May 2017, Tactical Tech and artist Joana Moll embarked on a project that exposed exploitative practices in the global online dating ecosystem. In The Dating Brokers (2018), by purchasing one million online dating profiles from USDate, an allegedly American company, for just €136, a disturbing network of companies profiting from users’ data without their conscious consent was uncovered. The acquired dataset included almost 5 million photos, usernames, email addresses, nationality, gender, age and detailed personal information about the profile creators, such as their sexual orientation, interests, profession, physical characteristics and personality traits.
To expose this unethical exploitation, the project revealed the original dataset while ensuring anonymity and protection of users’ identities by removing or hiding sensitive information. While efforts were made to anonymise the 5 million profile pictures, technical limitations may have resulted in some being left unanonymised, prompting the inclusion of a reporting mechanism for viewers.
This project aims to draw attention to the opaque practices inherent in the online dating industry, highlighting the pressing ethical, moral and legal issues surrounding the misuse and overexploitation of users’ intimate data, which can have profound repercussions on their lives.
Commissioned by Tactical Tech.
4004 (2021). Joana Moll. Commissioned by The Photographer’s Gallery.
The project’s title, 4004 is taken from the name of the first commercial microprocessor, created 50 years ago in 1971, for the Intel Corporation. Heralded as the most advanced integrated circuit design ever undertaken, the Intel 4004, marked a new era in technological development.
Moll aims to establish a link between the exponential growth of the microprocessor and the decline in both number and diversity of species – in particular insects, who form an essential part of our ecological infrastructure and have been declining at alarming levels, with reports suggesting that a quarter of insects could be wiped out within just a decade.
Presented on the Media Wall and online on unthinking.photography, the work draws parallels between the internal anatomies and roles of microprocessors and insects, showing how both are small but key components of larger systems.
4004 opens with a dense series of images of insects which fills our vision. Over the two and a half months’ duration of the exhibition, the insects are gradually and generatively superseded by microprocessors. The subtle but continuous replacement of the natural order by technological advancement, reflects not only on the cannibalisation of ecologies, but also on the problematics of visibly representing climate change. – The Photographer’s Gallery.
16/2017 is named after a law approved by the government of Catalonia in 2017, which, among other things, obliges the government to work with carbon budgets in order to halve its Co2 emissions by 2030, as stated in the Paris Agreement. Unfortunately, the Catalan government is substantially delaying the application of these measures. Because of this reason, the artist presented Arts Santa Mònica with a proposal: to reduce the energy consumption of the art center by 50% during the four months that 16/2017 will be exhibited in the center. To do so, the institution was forced to define an energy self-regulation mechanism so as not to exceed the budget during the established time. All the actors involved in the exhibition project were forced to negotiate new methods of interaction to adhere to the energy budget.
Commissioned by Centre d’Arts Santa Mònica. With the collaboration of Maria Farràs and Oriol Gayán.
The Hidden Life of an Amazon User (2019) aims to shed light on Amazon’s often unacknowledged but aggressive exploitation of their users, which is embedded at the core of the so-called internet companies’ business strategies. Such strategies rely on apparently neutral, personalized user experiences afforded by attractive interfaces. These interfaces obfuscate sophisticated business models embedded in endless pages of indecipherable code, all of which are activated by user labor. In turn, these strategies have a significant energy cost, part of which is involuntarily assumed by the user. To put it bluntly, the user is not just exploited by means of their free labor, but is also forced to assume the energy costs of such exploitation.
Funded by the European Media Art Platforms EMARE program at IMPAKT with the support of the Creative Europe Culture Programme of the European Union. Including texts by Jara Rocha, Jussi Parikka and Christian Ulrik Andersen & Søren Pold.