A Day in One Terabyte of Kilobyte Age

An exploration of the early web through the unique interface of the GeoCities Research Institute
with Olia Lialina

Saturday October 26, from 11pm to 5pm
CCCB, Room -1 (Hall)
only 8 seats available

Required skills: none in particular, except for some curiosity for a completely different idea of "social" networks and "being online"
Language: English
Technical requirements: bring your own laptop with the Firefox browser installed
Sign up: email talk -at- theinfluencers -dot- org (subject: "One Terabyte workshop") with a brief description of who you are, your background and why you're interested in this workshop. Applications open until October 15. After then, applications will be accepted on a first come-first served basis
This workshop offers to explore the early web through the unique interface of the GeoCities Research Institute, under the guidance of Olia Lialina, net artist, vernacular web researcher, and keeper of the archive.

The day will start with a short introduction to web history, methodologies of web history research, and especially notions of “Small, Weak and Stupid” as a productive and respectful approach to the digital vernacular.

Participants will be tasked with examining a particular collection of the archive, to find answers to an open question. There will be some hours to research and document the findings; and! to immerse in the material, resurfacing with more questions. The goal is to resist distant reading, abstraction, and algorithmic excavation; to rely instead on human time and memory, interpretation and serendipity.

The workshop will conclude with a recorded conversation that will become a reference for future research.

This workshop is part of a series of three sessions led by Olia Lialina during Fall 2019 in three renowned European venues:

October 23rd, 2019
Place: Merz Akademie, Stuttgart
Participants: 8 freshmen of Design Art and Media, students of "Go as deep or stay as shallow" group.
Collection: "Portal"
Question: What did people link to?
Big questions: How did web grow? How could a personal page be a catalogue, a portal, a serch engine)

October 26th, 2019
Place: The Influencers festival, Barcelona
Collection: “Dove”
Small question: What did dove.gif stand for?
Bigger questions: How did images from free collections got spread and interpreted.

November 1st, 2019
Place: Impakt Festival, Utrecht
Collection: “Lair”, “Realm”, “World”
Small Question: What’s the difference between Cyber Realm and Cyber Lair
Bigger questions: How did early web users imagined and described their cyber habitat
In collaboration with Merz Akademie Stuttgart