Social Hacking seminar

Saturday 24th March, 14.00 - 17.00
hosted by Plymouth City Museum & Art Gallery

‘While not everyone is a hacker, everyone hacks.’ (McKenzie Wark, A Hacker Manifesto, 2004: 088)

The practice of ‘hacking’ is a particularly overused and misunderstood term in popular culture. In the popular imagination, hacking usually carries negative connotations and is used to refer to the activity of breaking into computer systems. However, among the computer programming community, the term ‘hack’ refers to a clever solution to a problem, therefore a creative and transformative act.

‘To qualify as a hack, the feat must be imbued with innovation, style and technical virtuosity.’ (Steven Levy, Hackers, 1994: 23)

New material is hacked out of (old) found objects undermining existing property relations. One can think about hacking all sorts of everyday objects and everyday life situations – for instance, hacking buildings, bodies, machines, code, texts, ideologies, and public art.

Hacking in the sphere of human communications and social interactions is often referred to as 'social hacking'. The seminar aims to explore this theme, extending ideas of hacking to the public sphere and the usual expectations of what constitutes public art. In the context of Plymouth and cultural regeneration, the idea of social hacking provides an alternative view to the ways in which the city can be further influenced by creative human intervention.

Programme
14.00 keynote lecture: McKenzie Wark (author of 'A Hacker Manifesto' 2004 and 'Gamer Theory' 2007)
14.45 Saul Albert, The People Speak and University of Openess
15.00 c6
15.15 break
15.30 Mikro Orchestra Project
15.45 Ludic Society
16.00 The Institute for Applied Autonomy
16.15 moderated discussion
ends 17.00

Contributors

venue location:
download a map (PDF 72KB) city_museum_map.pdf
Plymouth City Museum & Art Gallery
Drake Circus, Plymouth PL4 8AJ, UK

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