Virus Culture: Infection Communication and the Economy of Desire - a talk by Alessandro Ludovico :: April 22, 2008, 7:30 - 9:00 pm :: CIANT Gallery, Křížkovského 18, 130 00, Praha 3 (close to the Žižkov TV Tower).

Perception of viruses stems both from the way we consider the most recent epidemic diseases and from an innate fear of having one’s own body invaded by other efficient organisms, capable of re-arranging their working patterns in order to facilitate infiltration into their host. Perception of spam, as one of the inescapable communication phenomena of our times, is a changing lively part of our everyday infoscape. Spam is extremely pervasive and effective for billions of persons whose (easy to spot and trade) personal and open communication door are infiltrated usually after being verbally titillated. Cultural infections that potentially change our identity, with communicative distances growing shorter, are becoming more and more inevitable. Continually reinventing the concise language on the net, the verbal protection / censorship game will be played using different code / sign combinations. With a constant retina overload, few strategic (key)words can make the difference.

Alessandro Ludovico (IT) is a media critic and editor in chief of Neural.it magazine from 1993, (Honorary Mention, Prix Ars Electronica 2004). He is the author of: ‘Virtual Reality Handbook’ (1992), ‘Internet Underground.Guide’ (1995), ‘Future Digital Sounds’, (2000) and co-edited the ‘Mag.Net Reader’ series (2006-2008). He’s one of the founding contributors of the Nettime community and one of the founders of ‘Mag.Net (Electronic Cultural Publishers organization). He was also an advisor for the Documenta 12’s Magazine Project. He teaches at the Academy of Art in Carrara. Since 2005 he works with Ubermorgen and P.Cirio on projects such as ‘Google Will Eat Itself’ (Honorary Mention Prix Ars Electronica 2005, Rhizome Commission 2005, nomination Transmediale Award 2006) and ‘Amazon Noir’ (2nd prize Transmediale Award 2008, 1st prize Stuttgarter Filmwinter 2007) projects.

CIANT GALLERY is a non-for-profit space for presentation of experimental projects which connect the worlds of arts, sciences and new technologies. The Gallery is operated by CIANT - International Centre for Art and New Technologies in Prague with support of the City of Prague and the Municipality of Prague 3.