SITUATION #172

Images, texts, videos, and audio—data now circulates constantly across the internet in many different forms, variations, and combinations. But how do we deal with this data? And how do we use it and channel it to design the world and ourselves?

The internet has turned "copy-paste" into a key strategy for working with media. The creative approach to existing image material challenges traditional distinctions between producing and consuming as well as between creating and copying. Mash-ups, remixes, memes, etc. are the result of this new approach, the upshot of which is that often the origin of the material can no longer be identified. The same image crops up in the context of different keywords, and with one search term we stumble upon a rich fund of diverse visual material.

In a short input phase at the beginning of the workshop, current approaches to dealing creatively with the “copy-paste” phenomenon are presented as a prelude to the practical section in which experiments are carried out with the Copy-Paste Machine itself. Discover how your input is processed by the machine and surprise yourself with what may be some unexpected output.