New work, Ergenekon.tc will be exhibited by Deluks on February 18th 2009 Wednesday. Official announcement below:
Deluks 01:
Burak Arikan – Ergenekon.tcMusic: Baris K.
Opening: 18.02.2009 Wednesday 19.00
You can visit the exhibition on Thu – Fri – Sat between 17.00 – 20.00.“Every society has its diagram(s)”*
Ergenekon.tc shows the diagram of the society depicted in the 2455 page Ergenekon bill of indictment. Ergenekon is an illegal covert network found in Turkey, the lawsuit is in progress. Connections between the actors of Ergenekon including people, institutions, groups, places, theories, ideologies, and beliefs, together form a crack in Turkey. The complexity of this crack can not be explained with a single leader nor with a complete hierarchy. Ergenekon does not have a center, it is a decentralized network. Ergenekon network existed because it was able to diffuse in to hierarchical structures such as government and military organizations.
The Ergenekon.tc project does not look for a meaning in the complexity depicted by the Ergenekon bill of indictment, but signifies its complexity.
Ergenekon.tc combines two computer programs. The first program reads the 2455 page bill of indictment document, filters the nouns, and connects them based on their distance in the text. The second program visualizes this networked structure. In the resulting map, the size of fonts represents the frequency of the names, the relative distance represents relationship weights, dark colored areas show the centers formed by high connectivity.
The inspiration that triggered the Ergenekon.tc project is the digital illiteracy of the way bill of indictment presented by the Turkish court. The bill of indictment was first written in a digital form, then printed, scanned as images, made a PDF file, and distributed in this digitally illiberal form.
* “Foucault”, Gilles Deleuze, Sean Hand. Continuum International Publishing Group, 2006
Burak Arikan
http://burak-arikan.comBurak Arikan is an artist and researcher who focuses on creating networked systems that evolve with the interactions of people and machines. His work confronts issues ranging from cultural sustainability to micro labor and politics in networked environments. He shows the instances of these systems online and onsite through diverse media including prints, animation, software, electronics, and physical materials. His work has presented and performed internationally at institutions including Venice Biennale, MoMA, Ars Electronica, Neuberger Museum of Art, Sonar Festival, DEMF and at independent venues such as Art Interactive, Turbulence, Upgrade! International, and Hafriyat. He has lectured at institutions including Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Rhode Island School of Design, New York University, Istanbul Technical University, and Istanbul Bilgi University. Arikan is also a contributing author at dugumkume.org. In 2006 Arikan completed his master’s degree at the MIT Media Laboratory in the Physical Language Workshop (PLW) led by John Maeda.
Delüks
http://deluks.orgDelüks aims to generate ‘intellectual capital’ by converting the surplus time, place, and labor that fails to yield ‘financial capital’. We suppose that it’s possible to invest this capital in any medium that interests us. Since we are a distributed, un-hierarchical network of individuals from various backgrounds, our set of instruments extend into a suite that includes art, activism, cultural studies, criticism, etc. As demonstrated in ‘Ergenekon.tc’, a Delüks activity might consist of getting involved and providing support for anyone with a fresh perspective we trust.