Selected projects for the INCA EXHIBITION: Big Tech and Counter-Technologies

25 September 2024 By

After an unforeseen quantity of applications, we are very pleased to announce the four projects selected for the INCA EXHIBITION: Big Tech and Counter-Technologies.

INCA is thrilled to financially support the research of these practioners, and accompany them as the projects evolve through a range of formats.

The final exhibition will focus closely on the materiality of techno-capitalism on micro, meso to macro scales. Questions of labour, logistics and spatiality thread each project together to pose the following question: what is the spatiality of the digital? 

Selected projects:

Compiler Machine – Raul Silva 

Compiler Machine seeks to map the mechanical-biological work behind the global telecommunications system. With particular focus on Spain and Italy, the research will address migrant technical workers as a primary case study. The project also speculates on the need for new formats of digital design aimed at revealing the material dimension that sustains the global interconnectivity of late capitalism.

Notes on the Future – Morgane Billuart 

Notes on the Future is a mapping project exploring alliances and strategies in the semiconductor industry, focusing on the relationships between Taiwan and Europe. It examines geopolitical and educational ties, highlighting cultural proximities and media cultures attached to labor, scalar-paradigms and speculative visions as collaboration deepens.

Re-imagining Buckminster Fuller’s World Game with SpaceMusic – Michel Kessler

This proposal outlines the creation of an interactive, real-time simulation platform that transforms global data into accessible visualizations on an LED screen. By engaging participants with dynamic, real-time data displays, the platform aims to foster informed decision-making and collaborative problem-solving on global issues. This concept is still under development and open to further refinement.

Internet Cafe – EXTENTS, McClian Clutter & Cyrus Peñarroyo

McClian Clutter and Cyrus Peñarroyo of EXTENTS propose a media-archeological recovery of the early internet cafe. A space that engages with the urban context of Bologna, it will become a space that insist on the materiality of the digital sphere, re-spatializing internet consumption in order to critique pathologically naturalized and desocialized digital habits. Celebrating connection — digital, social, and tectonic — the cafe would be assembled from a melange of building component systems, hacked to playfully unite.

More details on the biographies of the selected artists will be published soon.