A Cyberarchaeology of Checkpoints
Seated Talk Presentation, followed by Mix & Mingle Happy Hour
Sunday, February 18, 2024
Doors: 6:00PM
Program Begins: 6:15PM
Sliding Scale Admission $0-30
All Ages
Free for Members
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To celebrate the publication of his new book, A Cyberarchaeology of Checkpoints (2024, Irrelevant Press), Gray Area will host author, designer, and ethnographer Ruby Thelot for a performative reading and book talk. He will be joined on stage by Gray Area Incubator Member, Chia Amisola, an internet artist interested in post-coloniality and virtual space.
Join us for a conversation between the two, in which Thelot and Amisola will discuss the modern decline of digital third spaces, why they are still of vital importance, and some pathways forward for the preservation of digital memories. Afterwards, stick around for Happy Hour and book signing with the speakers.
Limited copies of the book will be available for purchase.
"Checkpoint: My newborn son means everything to me, even if sometimes he’s a little shit and I haven’t had a good night’s sleep in months."
The book is an homage to the innumerable efforts at staving off the ineluctable demise of all digital memories. Specifically, it is focused on Checkpoints, an emergent behavior which occurred in the comment section of a YouTube video from 2012 to 2021. There, the users, when algorithmically recommend the video, would write a “checkpoint,” a personal life update.
This book contains a curated collection of 99 Checkpoints, along with two essays and an interview with Rebane2001, the user who archived the video before its unfortunate deletion by YouTube.
"Remember: memory is a radical act." - Thelot
Learn more about A Cyberarchaeology of Checkpoints in Thelot's recent interview with Dazed Magazine.
Ruby Justice Thelot is a designer, cyberethnographer, and artist based in New York. He is an adjunct professor of Design and Media Theory at NYU. He is the founder of the award-winning creative research and design studio, <b>13101401 inc</b>. His work focuses on the interactions between humans and artificial intelligence, the metaverse, and the implications of being-on-line. His work and research has been presented internationally.
Chia Amisola is an internet & ambient artist from Manila, Philippines. Amidst a postcolonial internet of extremes, their (web)site-specific art (sites, poetry, games, social networks, archives, & tools) posits self-preservation as communal preservation, creation as synonymous with liberation, and identity as a source of infrastructure-building. They received a BA in Computing & the Arts from Yale University in 2022 and are a NEW INC Art & Code member. They are the Founder of the Filipino critical technology institute Developh and the Philippine Internet Archive, operating on the premise that the history of the Filipino internet is the history of people.
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