Xiaowangwang<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Xiaowangwang<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":8,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"inline_featured_image":false,"footnotes":""},"project":[451,506,459],"project_type":[725,732],"class_list":["post-22651","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","project-web-residencies","project-calls-2019","project-rigged-systems","project_type-formats","project_type-interview"],"acf":{"bgcolor":"","bgcolor_custom":"","custom_color_css_variable":"","content_type":[{"acf_fc_layout":"content_txt","acfe_flexible_layout_title":"Text","bgcolor":"","bgcolor_custom":"","layout_col_size":8,"txt_cols":"is-1-txtcol","txt":"The Chinese-American artist and engineer Xiaowei Wang developed the project The Future of Memory<\/a> for the web residencies by Solitude<\/a> & ZKM<\/a> on the topic \u00bbRigged Systems<\/a>\u00ab curated by Jonas Lund. Wang\u2019s project focuses on the poetic intervention of digital culture, taking artificial intelligence algorithms and automated censorship of the Chinese Internet as its point of departure.<\/strong>\r\n\r\nSchlosspost:<\/strong> Your practice can be described as working at the intersection of participatory geography and design computation. How do these spheres inform each other in your work? And how do they inform your current project The Future of Memory<\/em>?\r\n\r\nXiaowei Wang:<\/strong> Seeing geographically is at the core of the projects I tackle. I don\u2019t see a delineation between physical and digital worlds, and so this practice of seeing geographically expands between both realms.\r\n\r\nWhat sparked The Future of Memory<\/em> was actually the tension between invisibility and visibility. The line between being watched versus being seen. In Seeing like a State<\/em>, James Scott explores how governments see, and how states create maps of meaning to control its citizens. At the core of this control is the question of geography \u2013 a practice that traditionally requires boundaries and categories to order the world. But the question becomes, how do you contest that, and bypass that, going against the dominant power? How do you work outside of the margins? And this broader question is tied into censorship and how censorship works."},{"acf_fc_layout":"content_img","acfe_flexible_layout_title":"Bild(er)","bgcolor":"","bgcolor_custom":"","layout_col_size":6,"img_gallery":false,"img":[11630],"img_gallery_format":""},{"acf_fc_layout":"content_txt","acfe_flexible_layout_title":"Text","bgcolor":"","bgcolor_custom":"","layout_col_size":8,"txt_cols":"is-1-txtcol","txt":"In that sense, I\u2019m influenced by Edouard Glissant\u2019s call for opacity. Extending that metaphor, there\u2019s a great deal of work in queer scholarship about this idea of failure, messiness, and embracing opacity as a strategy for subverting existing power dynamics. Paul Soulellis\u2019s work on URGENTCRAFT<\/a><\/em> is an especially inspiring example of counter-hegemonic strategies. Tied into all of this is my own experience, the feeling of being \u00bbseen\u00ab by my community, and also in queer spaces versus the sensation of being invisible but being watched by government. And I am curious to explore \u2026 in that invisibility, is there a kind of potential to be used?\r\n\r\nSP:<\/strong> Can you explain the technical side of how the project and the language tool is going to work? To what extent are we working with open-source technologies? How does algorithmic censorship work, and how is it reengineered and bypassed with this project?\r\n\r\nXW:<\/strong> During the web residency, a big portion of my work has been trying to push the concept. In my original proposal, I imagined a simple tool that is similar to google translate: you can put a set of words in. The output, or \u00bbtranslation\u00ab is a series of homophone characters are generated, as well as emoji representations of the words. In Chinese, one word can have multiple tones or characters, and the change in tones or characters will change the meaning of the word entirely. For example, h\u00e9xi\u00e9<\/em> with the characters \u548c\u8c10 means harmony, a term that Hu Jintao developed to describe a \u00bbharmonious society.\u00ab But, h\u00e9xi\u00e9<\/em> with the characters \u6cb3\u87f9\u00a0means river crab. And so it\u2019s become a joke amongst netizens who make fun of this concept, which requires giving up a lot of personal rights for an imaginary \u00bbharmonious society.\u00ab\r\n\r\nCensorship is definitely becoming more automated, and throughout this residency I\u2019ve been looking at research from places like CitizenLab in Toronto (https:\/\/citizenlab.ca\/<\/a>) as well as Jennifer Pan\u2019s work out of Stanford."},{"acf_fc_layout":"content_img","acfe_flexible_layout_title":"Bild(er)","bgcolor":"","bgcolor_custom":"","layout_col_size":6,"img_gallery":false,"img":[11638],"img_gallery_format":""},{"acf_fc_layout":"content_txt","acfe_flexible_layout_title":"Text","bgcolor":"","bgcolor_custom":"","layout_col_size":8,"txt_cols":"is-1-txtcol","txt":"Using open-source tools to build this translation platform is key, and I\u2019ve also been researching best approaches, given that many natural language processing models are trained on English text.\r\n\r\nIn the interim, I also wanted to think through other ways of bypassing censorship in images. A lot of the project is inspired by existing practices that netizens use to bypass censorship: through emoji and images. In the middle of my residency, I became interested in how censored text could live on in images of objects, or on actual objects themselves.\r\n\r\nFor example I made a vase that hides censored text on a traditional, blue, and white porcelain vase, in the image I\u2019ve attached. On one side is the text \u00bbLet\u2019s go Hong Kong,\u00ab which is a phrase that is now censored but shows support for the current 2019 Hong Kong protests. On the other side is the joke \u00bbThe bun is leaking its filling,\u00ab which is a netizen joke about Xi Jinping changing the Chinese constitution to abolish term limits.\r\n\r\nThis kind of object draws on the practice of shanzhai<\/em>. Shanzhai<\/em> is a form of copycat culture that has turned into a wildly innovative ecosystem, especially in the city of Shenzhen. The culture started off as copied and pirated DVDs, handbags, and fake iPhones. But now it\u2019s spawning its own form of innovations that go beyond Western, proprietary technology. It\u2019s a kind of indigenous innovation. You have phones being produced that are easily repaired; new types of objects that allow for others to remix and reinvent them. This stand in stark contrast to big tech in the US, which is very much about intellectual property and often not open source."},{"acf_fc_layout":"content_img","acfe_flexible_layout_title":"Bild(er)","bgcolor":"","bgcolor_custom":"","layout_col_size":6,"img_gallery":false,"img":[11628],"img_gallery_format":""},{"acf_fc_layout":"content_txt","acfe_flexible_layout_title":"Text","bgcolor":"","bgcolor_custom":"","layout_col_size":8,"txt_cols":"is-1-txtcol","txt":"If you walk through Huaqiangbei market in Shenzhen, you\u2019ll see a wide of array of shanzhai<\/em> objects: everything from karaoke mics, to holograph generators, open source 3D printers, and a wide range of phones. Even though in recent years, Chinese authorities have been trying to crack down on markets in tightening the reins on copyright violations, it\u2019s impossible for authorities to keep up with patrolling fakes, knock-offs, and objects that veer toward copyright violation.\r\n\r\nThe vase with the censored text is a form of a shanzhai<\/em> object \u2014 a knockoff object that has been tweaked and changed, to preserve the memory of a certain political moment. There\u2019s something I like about it as a nebulous object.\r\n\r\nThe mahjong tiles have characters from a recent ad Li Ka Shing took out in the Hong Kong newspapers, which was a veiled warning to the government that the government should act with caution, and advocated against violence, especially in its approach to protestors. That phrase is now censored on the Chinese internet.\r\n\r\nThe phone is also a speculative object \u2014 imagining that perhaps, in the future, we will keep what remaining histories we have on cellphones as text messages, as images preloaded onto the phone, available in places like Huaqiangbei market, lost in the vast array of electronics. Maybe someone will be casually shopping and stumble across it, only to discover news images that they have never seen before, or a history that they\u2019ve never read.\r\n\r\nAnd I present these three objects as part of this panorama, the setting being an eerie, desolate cellphone stand in Huaqiangbei."},{"acf_fc_layout":"content_img","acfe_flexible_layout_title":"Bild(er)","bgcolor":"","bgcolor_custom":"","layout_col_size":6,"img_gallery":false,"img":[11646],"img_gallery_format":""},{"acf_fc_layout":"content_txt","acfe_flexible_layout_title":"Text","bgcolor":"","bgcolor_custom":"","layout_col_size":8,"txt_cols":"is-1-txtcol","txt":"SP:<\/strong> With a population of 802 million, China is home to the largest number of internet users in the world and 788 million smartphone users. Could you explain what the Chinternet<\/em> is and what makes it unique?\r\n\r\nXW:<\/strong> Chinternet is a term to describe \u00bbthe Chinese internet,\u00ab a unique internet ecosystem and culture that flourished behind \u00bbthe Great Firewall.\u00ab In the late 1990s, a few American tech companies entered the Chinese market, but because of stiff competition from local Chinese companies like Alibaba and Baidu, the American companies eventually left China. Government restrictions on the free flow of information (including censorship and information manipulation through the \u00bb50 cent party\u00ab) also created this unique culture and ecosystem of apps.\r\n\r\nWhile internet adoption in places like the United States started with personal computers, for many Chinese internet users, their first interaction with the internet is through a mobile phone, and using apps.\r\n\r\n
\u00bbI think poetry and humor allow us to constantly subvert power.\u00ab<\/span><\/h3>\r\n<\/blockquote>\r\nUnder these constraints, a unique netizen culture has proliferated, of slang and memes to discuss censored topics all the way to doling out mob justice. And for everyday citizens, mobile phones are crucial to daily life. These days, you use your mobile phone to do everything, from taking the subway in a city to paying for pork buns at your neighborhood street food stall.\r\n\r\nSP:<\/strong> The Future of Memory<\/em> to a certain extent is an exploration of Chinese digital culture with a focus on forms of expression through memes, emojis, puns \u2014 despite its serious context it has a poetic and funny quality \u2014 what role do humor, pop culture, and poetics play in your work?\r\n\r\nXW:<\/strong> I\u2019m inspired by the poet Audre Lorde\u2019s proclamation \u00bbpoetry is not a luxury.\u00ab I think poetry and humor allow us to constantly subvert power. I\u2019m reminded of an article that Zara Rahman recently wrote: https:\/\/deepdives.in\/can-data-ever-know-who-we-really-are-a0dbfb5a87a0<\/a>\r\n\r\nIn it, she describes how data is just a slice of who we are, at a certain point in time. And I think this is the interesting tension between quantification and poetry \u2014 there\u2019s a lot that machines cannot yet capture, and especially words and jokes that automated systems of censorship can\u2019t capture. It takes time for even human censors to react.\r\n\r\nAnd I think that\u2019s what I find most inspiring about the memes, emojis and puns that come out of trying to bypass censorship \u2026 it\u2019s how there\u2019s always going to be poetry and life, even if power tries to snuff it out."},{"acf_fc_layout":"content_img","acfe_flexible_layout_title":"Bild(er)","bgcolor":"","bgcolor_custom":"","layout_col_size":8,"img_gallery":true,"img":[11654,11652,11650],"img_gallery_format":"is-16by9"},{"acf_fc_layout":"content_txt","acfe_flexible_layout_title":"Text","bgcolor":"","bgcolor_custom":"","layout_col_size":8,"txt_cols":"is-1-txtcol","txt":"SP:<\/strong> As you are also working with geography, what are your thoughts on digital public spaces? How might those be created, used, explored? Are there any parallels when working with virtual\/digital spaces to a geography practice? How do these inform each other? How do you think about space and spatial relations when creating an artwork (for online and\/or physical spaces)?\r\n\r\nXW:<\/strong> I see no difference between physical and digital spaces. Technology is embedded in our culture and it moves and grows with society. I think any virtual geography also says a lot about the physical and material geographies that underlie it. For example, even a map of bitcoin mining throughout the world reflects many existing hierarchies: much of bitcoin production and mining happens in China, where hardware is cheap. Additionally, China has been a center of manufacture and production for the rest of the world for the past 30 years, so it\u2019s no surprise that the realm of the virtual continues this pattern.\r\n\r\nSP:<\/strong> Connected to your work on how technology is transforming the Chinese countryside \u2013 From your perspective, what is the situation now regarding big tech and the countryside? What type of developments are you most surprised to observe?\r\n\r\nXW: <\/strong>What\u2019s most surprising to me has been how globally connected the Chinese countryside is. It\u2019s funny \u2014 often I talk to people about tech in rural China and the first reaction tends to be that it\u2019s an isolated phenomenon. But maybe that\u2019s an urban perception of the rural, in general. Rural areas throughout the world have been sites of extraction for so long \u2013 they are home to the mines that produce rare earth minerals for our phones to the food on our table.\r\n\r\nAs for the Chinese countryside, rural China has powered so much of economic growth over the past 30 years, since China\u2019s Opening Up and Reform under Deng Xiaoping. Shenzhen, which manufactures 90 percent of the world\u2019s electronics, started off as a sleepy village. And now, economic growth is being pushed inward from the coast, to rural areas and previously \u00bbremote\u00ab regions."},{"acf_fc_layout":"content_img","acfe_flexible_layout_title":"Bild(er)","bgcolor":"","bgcolor_custom":"","layout_col_size":6,"img_gallery":false,"img":[11642],"img_gallery_format":""},{"acf_fc_layout":"content_txt","acfe_flexible_layout_title":"Text","bgcolor":"","bgcolor_custom":"","layout_col_size":8,"txt_cols":"is-1-txtcol","txt":"This means you have villages producing goods that get shipped all over the world, with villagers making items out of their own homes, grandmothers helping their children on their e-commerce business. There\u2019s also blockchain projects in remote mountain villages, all the way to big tech companies helping raise pigs using AI. Even companies like Netease, one of the world\u2019s largest video game companies, are starting to raise pigs.\r\n\r\nSP:<\/strong> You are currently researching Sinofuturism working on a documentary film. The term emerged from related concepts like Afrofuturism, but has proven somewhat difficult to define. What\u2019s your personal definition? In what way does this concept inform your work?\r\n
\r\n
\u00bbEven now, if you go to futurist conferences or conferences on the \u00bbfuture\u00ab of internet\/digital, the audience and speakers are mainly white men.\u00ab<\/span><\/h3>\r\n<\/blockquote>\r\nXW:<\/strong> Sinofuturism, to me, is an arena to question notions of futurity and who has the right to envision and imagine the future. It\u2019s not a value neutral concept. I don\u2019t see Sinofuturism as particularly emancipatory or positive \u2013 in fact, in Lawrence Lek\u2019s film, Sinofuturism is quite dark, I think.\r\n\r\nWhat it does hold, though, is the potential to open up a conversation on who has been in charge of imagining the future. For a long time, it was mainly the West, especially experts in the West, through development projects and technology transfer. Even now, if you go to futurist conferences or conferences on the \u00bbfuture\u00ab of internet\/digital, the audience and speakers are mainly white men."},{"acf_fc_layout":"content_img","acfe_flexible_layout_title":"Bild(er)","bgcolor":"","bgcolor_custom":"","layout_col_size":6,"img_gallery":false,"img":[11636],"img_gallery_format":""},{"acf_fc_layout":"content_img","acfe_flexible_layout_title":"Bild(er)","bgcolor":"","bgcolor_custom":"","layout_col_size":6,"img_gallery":false,"img":[11632],"img_gallery_format":""},{"acf_fc_layout":"content_txt","acfe_flexible_layout_title":"Text","bgcolor":"","bgcolor_custom":"","layout_col_size":8,"txt_cols":"is-1-txtcol","txt":"In that sense, I like how open the term Sinofuturism is. For some other people, I think Sinofuturism is a bit more positive of a term, and reflects how at one point China was subject to Western imperialism and colonial powers, but now it has moved beyond that to strengthen itself, and really try and become a global power. I find that strain a little depressing since we\u2019re swapping one global power for another, when the problem is power itself.\r\n\r\nSP:<\/strong> What does your desktop or workspace look like?\r\n\r\nXW:<\/strong> My desktop is extremely messy because I never use it! I always use my Terminal program to navigate through files. As a result, it\u2019s incredibly, embarrassingly messy. See attached screenshot."},{"acf_fc_layout":"content_img","acfe_flexible_layout_title":"Bild(er)","bgcolor":"","bgcolor_custom":"","layout_col_size":6,"img_gallery":false,"img":[11656],"img_gallery_format":""},{"acf_fc_layout":"content_txt","acfe_flexible_layout_title":"Text","bgcolor":"","bgcolor_custom":"","layout_col_size":8,"txt_cols":"is-1-txtcol","txt":"SP:<\/strong> What are some links, book titles, sound files, videos \u2013 as further reading or background \u2013 that might be related to your artistic practices and research topics to share with our readers?\r\n\r\nXW:<\/strong> David Li and Silvia Lindtner have some fantastic articles on Shenzhen and shanzhai \u2013 the art of copying which has become an extreme, open source environment: https:\/\/tidsskrift.dk\/ashcc\/article\/view\/21265<\/a>.\r\n\r\nAnna Greenspan also has a great book, Future Mutations about shanzhai. The phenomenon of shanzhai was where my interest in rural tech really started, since the word means mountain stronghold. https:\/\/logicmag.io\/scale\/letter-from-shenzhen\/<\/a>\r\n\r\nQueer opacity:\r\nhttps:\/\/www.e-flux.com\/journal\/60\/61064\/the-opacity-of-queer-languages\/<\/a>\r\nhttps:\/\/ivc.lib.rochester.edu\/afterthoughts-on-queer-opacity\/<\/a>\r\n\r\nThe Queer Art of Failure by Jack Halberstam is a wonderful book. No Future by Lee Edelman is also a recent influence.\r\n\r\n \r\n\r\nInterview by Inga Seidler.<\/em>"},{"acf_fc_layout":"content_cta","acfe_flexible_layout_title":"Link \/ Call-to-Action","bgcolor":"has-bg-blue","bgcolor_custom":"","layout_col_size":8,"cta_link":{"type":"url","value":"http:\/\/futureofmemory.schloss-post.com","title":"","target":"0"},"cta_txt":"The Future of Memory by Xiaowei Wang","cta_button_txt":"Visit the Project"}],"intro_preview_headline":"Interview with Xiaowei Wang","intro_preview_txt":"A poetic intervention of artificial intelligence algorithms and automated censorship of the Chinese Internet.","intro_preview_img":11648,"post_id_old":"","post_author":null,"post_subtitle":"Interview with Xiaowei Wang","post_preview_img_hide_on_single":false,"post_txt_old":"","post_pdf":null,"post_copyright":"ccl_default","translated_post":false,"translations":null,"post_copyright_individual":"","post_related_posts":"","related_posts_post":[9582,7025]},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.akademie-solitude.de\/de\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/22651","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.akademie-solitude.de\/de\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.akademie-solitude.de\/de\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.akademie-solitude.de\/de\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/8"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.akademie-solitude.de\/de\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=22651"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.akademie-solitude.de\/de\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/22651\/revisions"}],"acf:post":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.akademie-solitude.de\/de\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/person\/7025"},{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.akademie-solitude.de\/de\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/person\/9582"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.akademie-solitude.de\/de\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=22651"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"project","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.akademie-solitude.de\/de\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/project?post=22651"},{"taxonomy":"project_type","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.akademie-solitude.de\/de\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/project_type?post=22651"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}