THE PIRATE CINEMA BY NICOLAS MAIGRET

Aksioma – Institute for Contemporary Art, Ljubljana, in partnership with Kunsthal Aarhus, transmediale 2015, Berlin and Abandon Normal Devices, Manchester, presents:

********Nicolas Maigret********
The Pirate Cinema


In recent years, piracy and peer-to-peer file sharing of audio-visual contents have become a massive activity involving millions of internet users, and one of the main ways in which cinema is experienced at home. This does not only raise obvious copyright and legal issues, and not only floods us with poor, downgraded versions of the hi-quality original but also potentially challenges cinema’s materiality and the idea of a movie as a linear narrative.

The Peer-to-Peer Sharing protocol is based on small samples file fragmentation. This fragmentation smoothes the exchange between different recipients: when all the “chunks” have been downloaded, the file can then be reconstructed sample by sample until completion, from chaotic scraps received from distinct users. This hidden architecture reveals extraordinary narrative implications, automatizing and randomizing the remix processes widely used in art since the Avant-gardes.

The Pirate Cinema takes off from here to make the hidden activity and geography of Peer-to-Peer file sharing visible. The project is presented as a monitoring room, which shows Peer-to-Peer transfers happening in real time on networks using the BitTorrent protocol. The installation produces an arbitrary cut-up of the files currently being exchanged. This immediate and fragmentary rendering of online activity, with information concerning its source and destination, thus depicts the topology of digital media consumption and uncontrolled content dissemination in a connected world.

The Pirate Cinema is based on a data interception software. It reveals, through a simple diversion, different aspects of exchange platforms, such as the global and multi-situated nature of Peer-to-Peer networks (P2P), the potential for viral transmission, and alternative social models. Its purpose is to make available for aesthetic exploration the pre-existing potentials of Peer-to-Peer architectures. The installation of The Pirate Cinema relies on an automated system that constantly monitors the most viewed torrents. The intercepted data is immediately projected onto a screen, after which it is discarded. The 3 screens installation at Aksioma project space visualizes fragmentary files received and sent all over the world.


Related events:

- Launch of The Pirate Cinema (Online): Tuesday, 20 January 2015 in the framework of the conference Digital Utopias
Hull Truck Theatre, Hull (UK): http://thepiratecinema.com/online/

- The Pirate Cinema (performance): Thursday, 29 January 2015 at 9pm @auditorium how, Berlin (DE) in the framework of transmediale 2015

- The Pirate Cinema (Online)
4-29 March 2015
Link Cabinet


Credits:
The Pirate Cinema is a project developed with the support of ArtKillArt (F), CNC / DICREAM, La Maison populaire, Conseil Général de Seine-Saint-Denis (F), Eastern Bloc (CA).

Concept: Nicolas Maigret
Software development: Brendan Howell

CHECK OUT TUJE ONLINE VERSION OF THE PIRATE CINEMA: http://thepiratecinema.com/online/