Keynote speech 1 – Unlocking Proprietorial Systems: For a More Expansive Artistic Practice

Marc Garrett’s Keynote asks, what role do arts-led cultural producers working with technology play in unlocking the proprietorial systems that dominate our everyday social interactions both online and offline? It examines beyond the accepted idea associated with proprietary software that certain uses of technology can and should be limited by the commercial agendas of the few. It explores how coercive social relations are through proprietorial processes, embedded software, and technical infrastructures that involve user suppression. It examines how the spirit of hack value, and re-examines the hacker ethic, where both approaches find expression and agency in cultural production. Highlighting those actively finding ways around these locked in systems.

Garrett will be reading a paper from his last chapter of his PhD of the same name.  As part of this, Marc will also discuss the book Artists Re: Thinking the Blockchain published in 2017, edited by Ruth Catlow, Sam Skinner, Nathan Jones and himself, and the short film Ruth Catlow initiated called The Blockchain: Change Everything Forever, in 2016. The final part of the presentation reflects on Furtherfield’s research, programming, exhibition, events, workshops, writing, and publication, in the area of blockchain experimentation and its critique.