HACK + ART = HART

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Over the last three years, 42, the Paris-based, nonprofit computing programming school, has revolutionized the way we conceive education.

Founded by Xavier Niel, the school aims to be the leading international institution for computer programming this year, and to top the 2017 GodinGame ranking. Open 24/7, and without any staff, 42 runs an intense program, directed by a number of dedicated missions. This week’s project aims to hack the art world: the school’s developers have teamed up with students from institutions such as HEC Paris, ICART and e-artsup to tackle a world where data are harder to digest and whose audience is all but technophile.

Most of the thirty participating teams, made up of 81 students, have focused on rethinking “disintermediation” in terms of sales and culture. One of the leading projects, CAPSULE, allows users to geolocalize travelling artworks through the use of a simple mobile application. Elsewhere, some of the participating teams have focused on technology as an artistic medium. DRIFFTER (a French contraction of the words “drift” and “float”) works thanks to a bottle thrown into the sea, which collects random messages in morse code. What might come across as an ancient system for communication works thanks to a mobile application which translates the messages transforming the rhythm of the winds and marine currents into morse code.

The art world, long considered as one of the last bastions of technology, has certainly felt its influence.

 
 
 
 
 
Photo: courtesy Fanny Bouton