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<div>Hello All,</div>
<div><br></div>
<div>I wanted to share my solo exhibition at arebyte Gallery in London
titled <a href="https://arebyte.com/software-for-less">Software for
Less</a>. It presents a series of experiments over the last ten years
that examine how and why capitalist ideologies get embedded in big
tech platforms, and proposes radical alternatives that reconfigure and
reimagine what software platforms can be.</div>
<div><br></div>
<div>Many of the works directly manipulate sites like
Facebook/Twitter/TikTok/etc, while others analyze their design as well
as their makers. Several new projects are on view, including: <a
href="https://bengrosser.com/projects/deficit-of-less/">DEFICIT OF
LESS</a> (a massive Zuckerberg supercut that is a companion to my film
<a href="https://bengrosser.com/projects/order-of-magnitude/">ORDER OF
MAGNITUDE</a>); <a
href="https://bengrosser.com/projects/platform-sweet-talk/">Platform
Sweet Talk</a>, an examination of the "engagement romance"
behind social media notifications; and <a
href="https://bengrosser.com/projects/minus/">Minus</a>, a finite
social network where users get 100 posts-<i>for life</i>.</div>
<div><br></div>
<div>We have a <a href="https://arebyte.com/software-for-less">series
of events</a> that includes periodic
livestreamed recodings of my project Facebook Demetricator;
an online panel discussion between myself, Wendy Chun, Matthew Fuller,
and Joana Moll (on 14 Oct); and an artist talk about the exhibition
(not yet scheduled).</div>
<div><br></div>
<div>Rachel O'Dwyer wrote an essay about the show, titled <a
href="https://www.arebyte.com/text-more-or-less">More or Less</a>, and
a <a
href=
"https://bengrosser.com/files/Software-for-Less-Exhibition-Book.pdf"
>catalog of works is available</a> (25MB PDF).</div>
<div><br></div>
<div>The exhibition is up through 23 October, and I'll be in London
during its last week. Below is my statement about it:</div>
<div><br></div>
<div><b>Software for Less</b><br>
arebyte Gallery, London<br>
20 August - 23 October<br>
<br>
The last twenty years have been characterized by the rise of software.
Software has enabled the web, animated the smartphone, and made
possible, in the words of one big tech CEO, a world "more open and
connected." Yet software, which is now used by billions across the
planet every day, has embedded within it the capitalist ideologies of
those who make it. Coming out of growth-obsessed entrepreneurial
culture from Silicon Valley in the United States, today's software
wants what its creators want: more. This want is fundamental, driving
how software works, what it does, and what it makes (im)possible. The
result is a global populace now dependent on software platforms that
intentionally activate within users a "desire for more," a need
software meets with its "like" counts and algorithmic feeds and
endless notifications, all in service of what big tech most seeks to
realize their hopes and dreams: more users, more data, and more
profit. And though wealth and fame has come to those who craft the
platforms, their relentless focus on growth and scale has left a trail
of destruction across society. Mental health, privacy, and democracy
are all diminished, while authoritarianism, racism, and
disinformationism are emboldened. Twenty years after the rise of
software, big tech's drive for more has transformed its most lauded
asset into its biggest liability.<br>
<br>
After years of artistic efforts to define, examine, reveal, and defuse
how software activates the desire for more-to "demetricate"
social media, to defuse emotional surveillance, to confuse big data
algorithms, and to track and trace how the politics of interface
become the politics of humanity-this exhibition presents the first
outcomes from a new experiment, one that aims to generate a Software
for Less. How would users feel if software platforms actively worked
to reduce engagement rather than to produce it? What if software
interfaces encouraged conceptions of time that are slow rather than
fast? Why can't software want less instead of more? Utilizing custom
methods such as software recomposition, techniques like data
obfuscation, and genres that include video supercuts and net art,
Software for Less introduces functional applications and media-based
artworks that tackle those questions, presenting works that produce
less profit, less data, and less users. It includes a social network
that aims to limit compulsions to use it, systems that make AI-driven
feeds less attractive to those they profile, and the artifacts from
investigations that reveal how a tiny few manipulates a broad public
into a hyper state of more-and how disrupting that manipulation
could point the way towards an alternative future. Not software for
more, but Software For Less.</div>
<div><br>
-Ben Grosser, 20 July 2021<br>
</div>
<div><br></div>
<div>...</div>
<div><br></div>
<div>Please stop by if you're in London, or otherwise you can see the
works online.</div>
<div><br></div>
<div>thanks,</div>
<div>ben</div>
<div> # @nettime_bot tweets mail w/ sender unless #ANON is
in Subject:</div>
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