19th February 2014

From mind programming as a route to high-performance efficiency in the new creative economy to becoming-loser online, via sincere spambots, bad faith and Google hangouts, I will be drawing on some of my in-progress and recent projects to explore what #winning means today. I’m also going to consider immediacy and pure presence as new values, and the ethics of audience interaction when art goes online.

Some questions I’ll be asking are: if the authentic self is over, then what am I (or anyone else) still doing on Facebook?  Do spambots act in good faith- or are they by definition an example of bad faith? Are celebrities cyborgs? Is it OK to ‘use’ stuff/ people you find online- or are they using you? I’m hoping there will also be lots of questions/ conversation, so, while I’ve prepared a Powerpoint, it should be less a formal talk and more of a discussion.

Erica Scourti is an artist working in video and performance often working directly within an online format. Her work addresses the mediation of personal and collective experience through language and technology within net-worked contemporary culture. She has recently completed an mRes Art: Moving Image at Central Saint Martins with LUX.