Yukiko Shikata

Kingdom of Piracy

2001-2005

Kingdom of Piracy

2001-2005

共同キュレーション：シュー・リー・チェン、アルミン・メドッシュ、四方幸子

インターネットは、デジタルを介したデータの共有を可能にした。「クリエイティブ・コモンズ」に代表される、デジタルにおける情報の共有とそれによる新たな創造に向け、アートを介してそその可能性を実践的に検討するためのオンライン・プロジェクトとして、メディアアーティストのシュー・リー・チェンを中心に、台湾のAcer Digital Art Centerの委嘱で制作されたオンライン・プロジェクト。トップページは、情報が共有される海「Open Sea」となっている。開設当時、ネットアーティストやハッカーによる作品、テキストで構成され、以後後各地で新たなプロジェクトをオンラインおよびオフラインで追加していった。

・オンライン・パイロット版リリース：2001年12月9日 エーサー・デジタルアートセンター（台湾・台北）／同月、台北MOCA、高雄市立美術館でプレゼンテーションを開催
・初の展示とイベント：アルスエレクトロニカ・フェスティバル2001（オーストリア・リンツ）
・その後以下で新たなプロジェクトを追加し展開：オランダ・ロッテルダム（DEAF03、V2）、英国リバプール（FACT Centre、2003）、サンフランシスコ（イエルパ・ブエナ芸術センター、2003）、東京(ICC、2005）など。

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各地での展開：

1) 2001：エイサー・デジタルアートセンター（台北）
アート・プロジェクト：Low Level_All_Stars (BEIGE vs. RSG)、Global Village Health Manual v.1 (Raqs Media Collective + Joy Chatterjee)、Stealth Waltz (Mukul Patel & Manu Luksch)、injunction generator(ubermorgen.com)、The File That Wouldn't Leave(0100101110101101.org)、ResourceHanger+ (doubleNegatives)、I love you, world (Vladimir Radisic)、Explorer 98 game (EASTWOOD - Real Time Strategy Group)、HIGH BALL (エキソニモ)、Warriors of Perception: Search and Manifest (Agnese Trocchi)、i_Biology Patent Engine: (i-BPE)(Diane Ludin)、All Universe for heike, dragan and internet explorer (Olia Lialina)、OmniCleaner (Dragan Espenschied, Andreas Milles and Alvar Freude)
*日本からはエキソニモ、doubleNegativesが参加

テキスト・プロジェクト：The Right to Copy: Local study on piracy as an art form (Whiteg weng)、Towards an Army of Ideas - Oppositional Intellect & The Bad Frontier (J.J. King)、Culture Without Commodities:From Dada to Open Source and Beyond (Felix Stalder)


2) 2002年9月7日-12日：アルスエレクトロニカ(オーストリア・リンツ）
インスタレーション＆イベント「Kingdom of Piracy」


3) 2003年2月22日-３月27日：ファクト・センター（英国リバプール）I
アート・プロジェクト：Frequency Clock (r a d i o q u a l i a) 、Nine9” (Harwood/Mongrel)、last.fm (Michel Breidenbruecker. Felix Miller. Martin Stiksel. Thomas Willomitzer)
インスタレーション：BURN
出版：『DIVE』（CD ROMと冊子）*エッセイ、ソフトウェア、リンク
シンポジウム：3月7日 14:00 - 18:00
BURNパーティ：3月8日 14:00-17:00（DJ: Mukul, Shane Solanki、Special VJゲスト: jaromil）


4) 2003年2月23日-3月1日： 「LOG」 @ DEAF03（オランダ・ロッテルダム）


5) 2004年1月17日-4月4日：「GAME COMMONS @ GAME SCENES」@ イエルパ・ブエナ芸術センター（米国サンフランシスコ）
アート・プロジェクト：S3GA MarkII（portable[k]ommunity / 日本）、Civilization IV - Age of Empire is a project （Eastwood Real Time Strategy Group / セルビア・モンテネグロ）、Logicaland （re-p.org / オーストリア）


6) 2005年4月29日-7月3日「ワークインプログレス・インスタレーション/フォーラム :
《コモンズ｜テールズ｜ルールズ — KOP（キングダム・オブ・パイラシー）リサーチ＆ディヴェロプメント》」@ NTTインターコミュニケーション・センター[ICC]（東京）
イニシエーター：シュー・リー・チェン＋アルミン・メドッシュ（KOP）

2002年よりオンラインを中心に、世界各地のフェスティバルやメディアセンターで新たなプロジェクトを加え展開されているKOPは、デジタル環境における創造の共有可能性をめざすアート＆リサーチプロジェクト。本展では，異なる歴史や文化的背景から、「コモンズ（共有物）」の多様性を浮上させていくためのワーク・イン・プログレス・インスタレーションおよびフォーラムを展開。

インスタレーション《opensea》
パネル・ディスカッション：6月4日 14:00-
ワークショップ「PLAY THE RULES」：6月5日14:00-

Kingdom of Piracy (2001-2005)

Joint Curation: Shu Lea Cheang, Armin Medosch, Yukiko Shikata

Online Pilot Launch: December 9, 2001 Acer Digital Art Center, Taiwan
Onsite Premiere: September 7 - 12, Ars Enectronica 2002, Linz

Kingdom of Piracy , was first conceived as an online floating work space to explore the free sharing of digital content - often condemned as piracy - as the net's ultimate art form. Sponsored by Taiwan Acer Corporation's Digital Arts Center for its ARTFUTURE2002 exhibition, was removed from Acer's server and its exhibition cancelled during Taiwan's aggressive anti-piracy campaign in Spring 2002. Deprived of an Acer domain name, had its world premiere at Ars Electronica 2002 and subsequently was adopted by and given residence on the web-server of the Ars Electronica Center. . Claiming itself to be a floating kingdom adrift in the codified open source / open sea, dropped its anchor in 2003 at the FACT media center, , Liverpool, UK. Along with an exhibition focused on the creative potential of shared networks, a CD ROM and print publication, DIVE, highlights the growth of a public domain in software and art with the development of free software and free networks. was developed by adding new online works and installations in Rotterdam (DEAF03/V2, 2003), San Francisco (Yerba Buena Center for the Arts, 2004), and Tokyo (NTT InterCommunication Center[ICC], 2005), etc. by mid 00s.

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Curatorial statement:
Kingdom of Piracy is an online, open work space to explore the free sharing of digital content - often condemned as piracy - as the net's ultimate art form. Commissioned by the Acer Digital Art Center [ADAC] in Taiwan for ArtFuture 2002, was designed to include links, objects, ideas, software, commissioned artists' projects, critical writing and online streaming media events. Hailed as the first international online exhibition sponsored by Taiwan's computer giant Acer Group, a pilot website was launched in December 2001 and presented with a press conference at the Museum of Contemporary Art in Taipei, Taiwan.
In April 2002 the leadership and direction of ADAC changed. At about the same time a major anti-piracy initiative was launched in Taiwan. became a politically sensitive issue in Taiwan and by May, the curatorial and artists' FTP access to the server was denied. By mid-June, was taken offline. ADAC demanded editorial rights to artists' links and requested a change of the title, Kingdom of Piracy. The joint curatorial team rejected this demand and sought ways of preserving the project as both a Taiwanese initiative and an International online art project. Through the efforts of ADAC's former director Ray Wang, server access at ADAC was resumed. However, an IP address 211.73.224.150 was assigned, the use of the domain name is denied.

Curatorial concept:
In the emergent information, or immaterial, economy, Intellectual Property (IP) - copyrighted content and patented ideas - constitutes the central resource of many of its biggest industries, from IT to entertainment, pharmaceuticals and biotech. The definition of Intellectual Property Rights in the digital domain has emerged as one of the central struggles to shape the culture of the information society.
Less than a decade ago, the Internet promised free and unlimited exchange of digital cultural goods. In recent years, however, the spectre of "piracy" has been replacing this utopia. In the wake of this shift a repressive regime is being installed to clamp down on what is seen as a threat to the information economy. Content industries employ armies of lawyers to shut down peer-to-peer file sharing networks and write laws preventing any and all circumvention of copyright protection mechanisms. The latter is aimed to bolster the relatively new approach to enforce copyright through special software, known as digital rights management systems (DRMS) which should make the unauthorized copying of ebooks, music and video files impossible. These systems fundamentally change the nature of ownership. Culturally important, even essential, notions such as fair use are being eroded in favour of total control of the owners over the uses of their content.
In this brave new world, the buyer receives a limited license to use a file rather than "owns" a record, video or book. The balance of power shifts to companies that hoard big libraries of copyrighted material. These companies, mostly big multinational conglomerates, have recently been brandmarked as 'data lords', because they can control how we can see, hear, read, process digital content that we legally own.
The rigid enforcement of intellectual property rights worldwide through patents, copyright, anti-piracy laws is resisted by a loose but growing alliance of scientists, researchers, free software and open source developers, artists, lawyers and teachers. They fear that the barriers for innovation are being set too high by the data-lords. By building digital and legal fences around information, the costs of access for educational, scientific and artistic institutions and practices are becoming prohibitive. As a consequence intellectual life and radical innovation are in danger of being choked in the interest of a few who control how existing information can be used for the creation of new one.
The purpose of Kingdom of Piracy is to consider the law and order provisions surrounding intellectual property in the context of geographical and cultural borders, and to examine the changes and challenges presented by them to artists and cultural producers world wide.
Contrary to frequent claims, intellectual property rights are not universal. They have no history in Asia, for example. Demonstrative destructions of millions of pirated CDs and DVDs in China, part of the spectacle of the country's entry into the WTO, do not change the fact that much of the Asian continent is still operating on its own terms. The burst bubble of dot-commerce in the early 21st century has plunged Taiwan and Asia's electronic supply industries into recession, keeping the divide between Western and Eastern economies as wide as ever.
The Kingdom of Piracy is everywhere where there is radical innovation: on the fringes and in the mainstream high-tech economies, from Asia to Eastern Europe to the data havens of Sealand and hackers' garages in Silicon Valley. The digital commons is bathing in millions of MP3s and an endless supply of warez. Codes for appropriation, cut-and-paste, replication, sampling and remixing have long been established as artistic practice. challenges artists, writers and practitioners to use these techniques to question, contribute to, analyse and otherwise address this growing Kingdom. It also asks them to become intimately involved in the processes of the Kingdom itself, a place in which all productions are part of an innately collaborative, derivative and intimately interconnected environment of intellectual 'properties'.
Kingdom of Piracy invites allied crews of hackers (in the sense of Eric S. Raymond "A person who enjoys exploring the details of programmable systems and how to stretch their capabilities") and artists to plug into the supply lines of digital abundance. The site is an active public sphere for global file sharing, de/scrambling and digital culture jamming. Commissioned works are engaged in artistic acts of "piracy" as a strategy for intellectual discourse and poetic intervention, but not as any endorsement of piracy as a business model.
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Venues:

2001: Acer Digital Art Center (Taiwan)

Artist Projects: Low Level_All_Stars (BEIGE vs. RSG), Global Village Health Manual v.1 (Raqs Media Collective + Joy Chatterjee), Stealth Waltz (Mukul Patel & Manu Luksch),
injunction generator(ubermorgen.com), The File That Wouldn't Leave
(0100101110101101.org), ResourceHanger+ (doubleNegatives), I love you, world (Vladimir Radisic), Explorer 98 game (EASTWOOD - Real Time Strategy Group),, HIGH BALL (exonemo), Warriors of Perception: Search and Manifest (Agnese Trocchi),
i_Biology Patent Engine: (i-BPE) (Diane Ludin),All Universe for heike, dragan and internet explorer (Olia Lialina),OmniCleaner (Dragan Espenschied, Andreas Milles and Alvar Freude)

Writing Projects: The Right to Copy: Local study on piracy as an art form (Whiteg weng), Towards an 淾rmy of Ideas - Oppositional Intellect & The Bad Frontier (J.J. King), Culture Without Commodities:From Dada to Open Source and Beyond (Felix Stalder)

2) 2002: Ars Electronica2002 (Linz)
Installation and events: “Kingdom of Piracy”

3) 2003 Fact Centre, Liverpool (February 22 - March 27)

Artist Projects: Frequency Clock (r a d i o q u a l i a ), Nine9” (Harwood/Mongrel), last.fm (Michel Breidenbruecker. Felix Miller. Martin Stiksel. Thomas Willomitzer)

Installation: “BURN”

Publication: “DIVE” CD ROM and booklet with essays, software, links

Symposium: Friday, 7 March, 2-6 PM

BURN Party: Saturday, 8 March, 2-5 PM (Djs: Mukul, Shane Solanki. Special VJ guest: jaromil)


4) 2003: “LOG” @ DEAF03, Rotterdams (February 25 - March 1)


5) 2004: “GAME COMMONS @ GAME SCENES”@ Yerba Buena Center for the Arts, San Francisco (January 17 - April 4, 2004)

Artist Projects: S3GA MarkII (portable[k]ommunity / Japan), Civilization IV - Age of Empire is a project (Eastwood Real Time Strategy Group / Serbia and Montenegro),
Logicaland (re-p.org / Austria)


6) 2005: Work-in-Progress Installation / Forum “Commons｜Tales｜Rules - KOP Research &was Development” Initiators: Shu Lea Cheang + Armin Medosch (KOP)
at “open nature” Exhibition @ NTT InterCommunication Center[ICC] (April 29 - July 3)

-Installation “Open Sea”
-June 4: Panel Discussion
-June 5: Workshop “PLAY THE RULES”