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I just came back from two jam packed weeks at Transmediale festival, 2017.

Morehshin Allahyari and I were involved in a wealth of events, mostly in relation to our #Additivism project. Including:

On the Far Side of the Marchlands (exhibition)

An exhibition at Schering Stiftung gallery, featuring work by Catherine Disney, Keeley Haftner, Brittany Ransom, and curated by Morehshin and myself.

• Photos from the exhibition can be found here.

The 3D Additivist Cookbook (book launch)

European launch, held at Transmediale on Saturday 4th Feb.

Listen to the audio of the event, as you follow our slides:

Singularities (panel)

A panel and discussion conceived and introduced by Morehshin and myself. Featuring Luiza Prado & Pedro Oliveira (A parede), Rasheedah Phillips, and Dorothy R. Santos.

Audio of the entire panel is available here:

• The introduction to the panel – written by Morehshin and myself – can be found below.
• Photos from the panel are here.

Alien Matter (exhibition)

An exhibition curated by Inke Arns as part of Transmediale 2017. Featuring The 3D Additivist Cookbook and works by Joey Holder, Dov Ganchrow, and Kuang-Yi Ku. 

• Photos from the exhibition can be found here.

Read our ‘Singularities’ introduction

The 3D Additivist Cookbook was published December 2nd, 2016 as a free 3DPDF and torrent archive

The 3D Additivist Cookbook, devised and edited by Morehshin Allahyari and Daniel Rourke, is a compendium of imaginative, provocative works from over 100 world-leading artists, activists and theorists. The 3D Additivist Cookbook contains 3D .obj and .stl files, critical and fictional texts, templates, recipes, (im)practical designs and methodologies for living in this most contradictory of times.

Download it now for free.

In March 2015 Allahyari and Rourke released The 3D Additivist Manifesto, a call to push creative technologies to their absolute limits and beyond into the realm of the speculative, the provocative and the weird. The 3D Additivist Cookbook is composed of responses to that call, an extensive catalog of digital forms, material actions, and post-humanist methodologies and impressions.

#Additivism is a portmanteau of additive and activism: a movement concerned with critiquing ‘radical’ new technologies in fablabs, workshops, and classrooms; at social, ecological, and global scales. The 3D Additivist Cookbook questions whether it’s possible to change the world without also changing ourselves, and what the implications are of taking a position.

Further details »

This talk was delivered as the plenary paper for The 11th Interdisciplinary Social Sciences Conference, Imperial College, London, 2nd August 2016. I will be writing this up soon for inclusion in the forthcoming 3D Additivist Cookbook.

Click here for the slides & the talk, or click the gear icon below and select ‘Open speaker notes’

My talk is presented here under a Creative Commons BY-NC-SA 4.0 licence – please use as you wish, but always reference and refer back to the slideshow.

“Any sufficiently advanced civilisation is indistinguishable from its garbage.” – Bruce Sterling

I delivered this 4-week public series at The Tate Modern throughout July 2016. You can find the slides for the course here.

Thanks to Viktoria Ivanova for working with me to achieve this, and the Morehshin Allahyari and Mishka Henner for their amazing artist talks.

Data is the lifeblood of today’s economic and social systems. Drones, satellites and CCTV cameras capture digital images covertly, while smartphones we carry feed data packets into the cloud, fought over by corporations and governments. How are we to make sense of all this information? Who is to police and distribute it? And what kind of new uses can art put it to?

This four-week series led by writer/artist Daniel Rourke will explore the politics and potential of big data through the lens of contemporary art and the social sciences. Participants will assess the impact the digital revolution has had on notions of value attached to the invisible, the territorial and the tangible. We will look at artists and art activists who tackle the conditions of resolution, algorithmic governance, digital colonialism and world-making in their work, with a focus on key news events yet to unfold in 2016.

Session 1
Hito Steyerl: Poor Image Politics
In this first session we will examine the politics of image and data resolution, with special attention to the work of artist Hito Steyerl represented in the Tate Collection. How do poor images influence the significance and value of the events they depict? What can online cultures that fetishise poor quality teach us about the economics and autonomy of information? Is being a low resolution event in a field of high resolutions an empowering proposition?

Session 2
Morehshin Allahyari: Decolonising the Digital Archive
3D scanning and printing technologies are becoming common tools for archaeologists, archivists and historians. We will examine the work of art activists who question these technologies, connecting the dots from terroristic networks, through the price of crude oil, to artefacts being digitally colonised by Western institutions. Artist Morehshin Allahyari will join us via skype to talk about Material Speculation: ISIS – a series of artifacts destroyed by ISIS in 2015, which Allahyari then ‘recreated’ using digital tools and techniques.

Session 3
Mishka Henner: Big Data and World Making
In this session we will explore the work of artists who channel surveillance and big data into the poetic re-making of worlds. We will compare and contrast nefarious ‘deep web’ marketplaces with ‘real world’ auction houses selling artworks to a global elite. Artist Mishka Henner will join us via skype to talk about artistic appropriation, subversion and the importance of provocation.

Session 4
Forensic Architecture: Blurring the Borders between Forensics, Law and Art
The Forensic Architecture project uses analytical methods for reconstructing scenes of war and violence inscribed within spatial artefacts and environments. In this session we will look at their work to read and mobilise ‘ambient’ information gathered from satellites, mobile phones and CCTV/news footage. How are technical thresholds implicated in acts of war, terrorism and atrocity, and how can they be mobilised for resist and deter systemic violence?
Click for further information

UPDATE: #Additivism was selected for the Vilém Flusser Residency Program for Artistic Research 2016! Morehshin and I will be spending May + June in Berlin working on The 3D Additivist Cookbook

It has been a very hectic and exciting few months for #Additivism, and Morehshin and I have a lot of plans for 2016. Towards the Spring and early Summer we will begin working closely on editing, laying out and publishing The 3D Additivist Cookbook. In the meantime, here are a host of events and exhibitions #Additivism will be a part of.

#Additivism in 2016:

January 15th and 22nd: The 3D Additivist Manifesto will be featured in White Screen, an online exhibition, curated by Caroline Delieutraz & Kévin Cadinot for Jeune Création exhibition at Thaddaeus Ropac gallery in Pantin, France.

February 4th: #Additivism was part of Transmediale, Berlin. I talked as part of the Disnovation Research panel. You can now watch and/or follow the slides of my talk.

February 11th – March 9th: Morehshin Allahyari’s solo show Material Speculation ran at Trinity Square Video, Toronto. This fantastic essay about her work, written by Alexis Anais and Anna Khachiyan, is required reading.

February 25th: we were both in Amsterdam to take part in Sonic Acts Academy. View the panel we took part in on Plastic Futures.

March 18th – April 6th: we were artists in residence at Auckland University of Technology’s COLAB.

May + June: #Additivism was selected for the Vilém Flusser Residency Program for Artistic Research. See you in summer, Berlin 🙂

Mid-July: I will be presenting #Additivism as part of Tamarin Norwood’s POINT LINE TIME research project at Spike Island, Bristol

Late 2-16/early 2017: We are open to all offers relating to the future 🙂

From 23rd – 30th September 2015 Morehshin Allahyari and I were artists in residence for 2015 VIA Festival, Pittsburgh, for the Frank-Ratchye STUDIO for Creative Inquiry at Carnegie Mellon University. During our residency we delivered a lecture, a day long workshop, and worked on our forthcoming 3D Additivist Cookbook.

Artist Residency // Ongoing
Allahyari and Rourke will be in residence in the STUDIO editing their forthcoming 3D Additivist Cookbook of blueprints, designs, 3D print templates, and essays on the topics raised by the 3D Additivist Manifesto.

Artist Lecture // Thursday, September 24th, 5:00 p.m.
A talk and Q&A session by Morehshin Allahyari and Daniel Rourke about The 3D Additivist Manifesto + forthcoming Cookbook in addition to the screening of The 3D Additivist Manifesto video. Artists will talk about their own research and practice in relationship to Additivism and 3D printing.

3D Additivist Workshop // Friday, September 25th 10am-6:00pm
What is #Additivism: A Collaborative Workshop
Investigate #Addivist ideas in your own work during a day-long workshop with the artists. Conceive, design, and prepare works for fabrication with potential for projects to be submitted to the Cookbook -> Click here to register for the workshop