<nettime> The Byzantine Generals Problem @ distant.gallery

Dear profiles, avatars, and online flaneurs, Aksioma is summoning you to:

The Byzantine Generals Problem

ONLINE EXHIBITION

https://aksioma.org/byzantine.generals.problem

4 July 2022–end of the internet

distant.gallery

Curated by: Domenico Quaranta

Featuring: Anna Ridler, Ben Grosser, Constant Dullaart, DIS, FaceOrFactory, Kyle McDonald, LaTurbo Avedon, Moxie Marlinspike, Nascent, Rhea Myers, Sarah Friend, Sarah Meyohas, Simon Denny, Guile Twardowski, Cosmographia, Sterling Crispin, The Miha Artnak

-----

THE DOORS TO THE ONLINE GALLERY WILL OPEN ON

Monday, 4 July 2022 at 1 PM CET*

at https://distant.gallery/the-byzantine-generals-problem

Bookmark the link or attend the FB event for reminder: https://fb.me/e/1Ccb1jokr

While waiting for the opening, you are kindly invited to read the CURATORIAL ESSAY:

https://aksioma.org/pdf/Domenico-Quaranta_The-Byzantine-Generals-Problem.pdf

-----

*For the best experience, please join us via Chrome browser. Make sure you use headphones to avoid the sound looping when multiple people are speaking.

-----

An alternative to capitalism, or capitalism at its worst? An emancipatory network economy where everyone has a stake, or a dystopian panopticon where only the best man wins? An opportunity for democracy, or a techno-libertarian wet dream? A new creative economy or a pyramid scheme? A planet saver or a planet burner? Rarely has the debate around a technology been so polarized as with blockchains, web3 and NFTs. We are facing a problem of consensus, trapped within a Byzantine Generals Problem.

Some generals are besieging Byzantium. In order to avoid catastrophic failure, they must agree on a concerted strategy, but some of them are unreliable. Used to illustrate how consensus is reached within distributed systems, this allegory can be applied to blockchains and to societies as well. Yet, in a peer-to-peer debate with no central authority, consensus is hard to reach for a reason; and the disagreeing general, the unreliable actor, may be our best resource against the common sense of the crypto-yuppies.

The Byzantine Generals Problem is an online exhibition focused on artworks which, while not avoiding to engage with blockchains and crypto culture, do it in a critically constructive way: questioning dominant narratives, raising problems, and sometimes proposing alternative solutions.

-----

Domenico Quaranta is an art critic, curator and educator interested in the ways art reflects the current technological shift. His texts have appeared in numerous magazines, newspapers, books and catalogues. He is the author, among other things, of Beyond New Media Art (2013) and Surfing with Satoshi. Art, Blockchain and NFTs (2022) and the editor of several books, including GameScenes. Art in the Age of Videogames (2006, with M. Bittanti). Since 2005 he has curated several exhibitions, including Collect the WWWorld. The Artist as Archivist in the Internet Age (Brescia 2011; Basel and New York 2012); Cyphoria (Quadriennale 2016, Rome) and Hyperemployment (MGLC, Ljubljana 2019–2020). He lectures in Interactive Systems and is a co-founder of the Link Art Center (2011–2019)

-----

Production: Aksioma – Institute for Contemporary Art, Ljubljana, 2022

Realized in collaboration with and in the framework of: distant.gallery

Supported by: the Ministry of Culture of the Republic of Slovenia and the Municipality of Ljubljana

Marcela Okretič

Aksioma - Institute for Contemporary Art, Ljubljana