d.i.n.a report - bologna, may 2001 - juha huuskonen

d.i.n.a festival - May, 2001- Bologna, Italy

Festival homepage - more photos (by Adrian Ward)

NET.ART // HACTIVISM // REVERSE ENGINEERING // ELECTRONIC_CIVIL_DISOBEDIENCE // CONTROL/PRIVACY // COMPUTER_LOVE //


Thursday

The afternoon started by a performance by Amy Alexander (plagiarist.org)... in addition to the actual show, it was entertaining to follow the unix configuration process that was necessary to run the software...

Alex Galloway presented Rhizome.org (mainly the alt.interface projects and Rhizome artbase).
 

1. Amy Alexander 2. Alex Galloway.

The Epidemic group had put together an exhibition about computer viruses... their presentation consisted of reading out loud some pseudo source code, with an italian accent and temper.. very entertaining :)

Retroyou presented some modified games, a rally game had been turned into a chaotic and aesthetic experience.

Nullpointer presented the dividebyzero.org project and the Webtracer browser.

At the end of the evening, Alexei Shulgin performed his 386-DX concert, outside a bar at the Bologna main square. The seventies popsongs & nirvana were a big success once again...
 

1. epidemic 2. nullpointer 3. retroyou 4. retroyou screenshot

friday

Adrian Ward - the experimental graphic softwares auto-shop and auto-illustrator.

The theme for Florian Cramer's presentation was bitrot - how the fact that 0 changes to 1 can have major consequences :) ...he releaved the 0100101110110101.org spoof, all the main 'victims' (0100101110101101.org, Alex Galloway, etc.) were in the audience...

Surveillance Camera Players is a group of people that performs for surveillance cameras. The presentation motivated the local people to start the Surveillance Camera Players Bologna, who made their performance on the last night of the festival.

Rtmark gave a hilarious presentation about their yesmen project.

Negativland presentation went trough the history of the group ('christianity is stupid' single, the U2 & pepsi albums etc.).

 

1. Negativland 2. Adrian Ward 3. Florian Cramer
3. Rtmark yesmen material 4. Surveillance Camera Players

saturday

Amy Alexander - dupontification, netsong and CueJack.

Ricardo Dominguez - irational.org, airworld.net, BANGBANG, makrolab.

Alexei Shulgin (notice the resemblance with Richard D. James aka Aphex Twin :) gave a quite peculiar presentation: his presentation was mostly concentrating on Netoschka Nezvanova, who was going to be the next presenter. His point was to prove that there was nothing new or interesting in what NN is doing, he had a lot of examples to demonstrate this (hmmm... if he thinks there's nothing new or interesting about NN then why to spend the whole presentation talking about her? :).

NN had brought a few dozen of snails with her - she sat down and placed them on top of her lap. Her presentation consisted of a text that she read while the snails were 'painting' trails on her dress.

Domiziana Giordano gave a presentation in italian, this was a chance to try the headphones to hear the real-time translation (the italian audience had been using them all the time)... she presented the project digitalsistersindeed.

The last presentation was by Jaromil - open-source projects HASCIICAM and MuSE... later on he used the software in the 'mitocondri' concert/performance with a group of musicians.
 

1. Amy Alexander 2. Ricardo Dominguez
3. Alexei Shulgin 4. Domiziana Giordano
5. NN snail 6. NN 7. Jaromil in ascii 8. Jaromil crew

afterthoughts

d.i.n.a was a lot of fun, the atmosphere was laid back but still everything worked smoothly... the program started always at 5 pm, so no one had to try to wake early in the morning... the events were always quite crowded (100+ people?) and the crowd was mostly italian, i think i was the audience member who had to travel the longest distance (from helsinki, finland)...

I was surprised how artists (or groups) who usually hide under a pseudonym were openly telling about their work. the combination of invited people was quite unique and there was a lot of good discussion.... and since the event was relatively small, it was quite easy to get to know people. dina was a great event, big thanks to organisers the Salara and 0100101110101101.org!