Internet is becoming more and more densely populated with services that monitor data traffic, networks and users. Cloud computing services claim a good, safe and transparent use of your data, but these very data are stored in unknown places and ’served’ back to you wherever and whenever you want.
The artists in this traveling exhibition do not sit on a cloud and like to keep an eye on their own data. They ask themselves : Who does that server really serve?

In December 2013 Constant, Association for Art and Media, organised ’Are You Being Served?’, a 4-days gathering of digital artists, dates activists, lawyers and others who were interested in an ethical and experimental approach to digital network culture. Together they worked on the possibilities of
parallel analog networks, deep web, mesh, dark -net , tunneling and proxies . The mobile phones, the Kindles, the tablets and other tools that daily occupy your pockets are closed technological boxes that, according to the terms of use, you should surely not open. With the aid of free softwares and licenses, copy-left and F/LOSS culture, we try to establish a different relationship with this technology.

The artworks and documentation of the meeting presented in this exhibition, answer with humor and inventiveness to different questions: the stereotypical gender relations in IT environments, the power of ’root’ users, the privacy of medical data, the interception of network traffic, the distribution and commercial appropriation of data generated by users.

The exhibition will be present as part of the 7th International Conference "Computers, Privacy & Data Protection: The Global Perspective" to be held from 22 to 24 January 2014 at the Halles de Schaerbeek in Brussels.

CPDP is a non profit platform originally founded in 2007 by research groups from the Vrije Universiteit Brussel, the University of Namur and Tilburg University. Since 2011, CPDP exhibits works that question the issues of privacy, surveillance and art related to new technologies.

www.cpdpconferences.org
With, among others : Eleanor Greenhalgh, Olia Lialina, An Mertens,Wendy Van Wynsberghe, irational, Men in gray, Silvio Lorusso, Sebastian Schmieg.

Curated by : Constant (Femke Snelting + Peter Westenberg)