Title: Artists Running Data Centers
Description: <p>In the circles of servus.at, the expression ARTIST RUN DATA CENTER (ARDC) refers to a series of virtual machines (VMs) within the server cluster that artists and collectives use as an experimental production space.</p>
<p>A virtual machine (hereafter “VM”) is a computing resource that uses software instead of a physical computer to run programs and deploy applications. A VM can be imagined as a fully functional computer or server, just as every basic user knows it, without any dedicated physical components or a machine. Those components and resources are emulated, “virtualised”. In this way, several virtual “guest” machines can run on the same physical “host” machine. Each VM runs its own operating system and functions separately from the other ones, even though they all run on the same host machine. Because of their flexibility and deployability, VMs are often used as experimental collaboration platforms for and between collectives.</p>
<p>The first VM projects at servus were initiated in the early 2010s. They were made available to artists who, working on networking settings or experimental publishing, needed access to a server to develop their own research or test specific conditions. Around 2014, such experiments were conceptualised as ARDC and were structured in virtual residencies for research, often connected to the context of the Research Lab or AMRO – Art Meets Radical Openness.</p>
<p>After decommissioning the ARDC machine as part of a broader restructuring of the data center cluster, the expression and the residency concept also had to be reconsidered and freshly ground. The Re:ARDC – Rethinking the Artist Run Data Center – does not explore only the set of virtual machines, but also various other web services and the relation between servus, AMRO and their communities. Similar considerations around the ARDC and the self-hosted art and infrastructure were already circulating a few years ago. In 2021, we interviewed the artist, activist and researcher Manu Luksch about the art server scene of the 90s and how similar questions about autonomous networks could take shape now.</p>
<p>Within Re:ARDC, we continued researching the broader context of servus activities, investigating the topics of autonomous infrastructure and self-hosting, as well as the series of server projects that have been set up over the last decade in the data center, the machine called ARDC. Over the process, we exchanged with several actors of the media art and self-hosting scene that have surrounded servus since its beginning. We interviewed artists to get more context about ARDC projects and how they came to be, as well as information about current issues of the media art and critical tech scene. This was also a good moment to reactivate the ARDC format, initiating a few new projects.</p>
<p>This publication collects such interviews, with some further conversations with main actors from the context of servus.at and the communities of radical net cultures around AMRO. Its aim is not to provide a coherent history of net cultures, but rather to present different narratives and points of view, with a selection of projects from members and the wider community that have been in circulation but not yet documented. We spoke with Franz Xaver and Christoph Nebel about media art practices and needs before the explosion of net culture initiatives in the 1990s, and with Didi Kressnig about how servus began in the context of the Stadtwerkstatt. Aileen Derieg tells how the other Linz network <q>Eliot</q> came into being and how its domains moved to servus.at after Eliot had to close down.</p>
<p>After learning about the context where servus came from, we<br>moved to its main cultural project, the <q>Art Meets Radical Openness</q> festival. We collected stories from the AMRO founder and servus director Ushi Reiter, and from the long-time cooperation partners Christoph Nebel from the Department of Time Based Media at the University of Arts Linz and Thomas Warwaris from the Linux community, who is now on the board of servus.at.</p>
<p>All of this provides ground and context for the Artist Run Data Centers. In a conversation with servus board member – and previous system admin – Peter Wagenhuber, we discuss how the whole data center changed and grew by responding to the needs of its community, and the ARDC also follows the same principle of providing independent server infrastructure for artistic research practices. The exchange with Tanja Brandmayr and Claus Harringer from the Stadtwerkstatt and the Versorgerin addresses the combination of artistic and technical work activated with the idea of creating autonomous structures, something that has characterised the cooperation between the Stadtwerkstatt and servus from the very beginning.</p>
<p>Finally, we collected inputs from selected projects hosted in the ARDC, contextualising the different artistic positions and deepening interesting aspects regarding how such experimental data centers operate. The server admin collective LURK talks about their style and motivations in running community infrastructure, especially how new alliances with collectives working on social justice and ecological matters renew the discourse around F/LOSS. Kamo and Chae / DIWO – Draw it with others working group – explained the intentions and values leading the most recent ARDC project, Scatter Chatter, a research framework dedicated to the exploration of server- and smartphone-mediated interaction between people. Also the VPS by Vo Ezn /vɔ ɪzn/ deals with the dynamics between user and server, however, in this project, the focus is on the exploitation and burnout of both human and machine. The trans*feminist collective In-Grid contributed to the publication with their Femfester Server Manifesto, grounded on the metaphor of festering, frictions and leaking. The VPS operated by Inari Wishiki is an experimental space to test modalities of interaction among users and citizens, however, the focus is on (un)making items and the creation of value within the production of networks. Inari is also a part of irational.org, a server collective that is extending the idea of ARDC with a non-virtual-machine project. Namely, they administer a physical single-board computer installed in the server room hosting the digital infrastructure of the group.</p>
<p>Lastly, the conversation with long-time AMRO community member Aymeric Mansoux covered several aspects of the last 20 years of collective infrastructures: from the scene of the early 2000s and the trajectories of GOTO10 and then bleu255 – and their VPS at servus – to the emergence of corporate social media and the current trends of Big Tech, which have disrupted much of the critical art practices and theories based on autonomy and experimental networks. The exchange also highlighted the serious deterioration of working conditions, particularly striking in the exploitation of cultural workers who operate critically within academic or commercial circles. The exchange concludes, however, on a positive note, observing how out of this struggle we can see a strong political engagement and the creation of new alliances between autonomous infrastructure projects and other fields of action, from feminist and environmental activism to social justice and decolonial movements, challenging classic notions of openness and bringing server practices (back or finally) into the realm of politics.</p>
<p>The conversations are supported by a critical glossary compiled by Joak (Joseph Knierzinger) and Nami Kim, which helps the reade to navigate the technical terms and network modalities distributed throughout the publication.</p>
<p>We warmly thank all the participants of the wider Re:ARDC process and the team who took care of carefully collecting and editing the interviews to prepare the publication. We wish the reader a pleasant time in getting into the context and the practice of Artists Running Data Centers and hope that this collection of stories with radical ideas, collectivist values and autonomist intentions can serve as a substrate for a renewed wave of experimental servers.</p>
Subjects: ARDC, servus, servus.at, Data centers, Cloud computing, Artists, Collectives