Cybermedieval Data-Stained Glass

Cybermedieval Data-Stained Glass is a portal to a speculative scenario in which the big tech corporations known as MAANG – Meta, Amazon, Apple, Netflix and Google (the top five by market capitalisation) – have replaced the territorial nation-state model and rule the world through their control of big data. Capitalism has become techno-feudalism: technology companies have established themselves as kingdoms whose sovereigns are CEOs, algorithms and artificial intelligences, and whose users are ‘Userfs’ (user + serf), a form of digital serfdom subject to the feudal contracts of ‘Terms and Conditions’. This allows them to use the virtual lands of the vectorialist lords (operating systems, data platforms, social media, search engines) in exchange for cultivating them through the restless production of content and the datification of bodies.

A ‘New Dark Age’ of information, where digital technology becomes a dominant force and where fairy tales of eternal economic growth and the fantasy of the knowledge bestowed by technology bring about the opposite: an era of disinformation, post-truth, precariousness, predictive algorithms, meticulous surveillance systems, autonomous military weaponry powered by AI, and a political system that is moving away from democracy.

Credits

Stained-glass window produced in collaboration with Jorge Aragone, stained-glass master craftsman.

¥€$Si PERSE

¥€$Si PERSE (a.k.a. Jesús C González & Miguel Gómez) is a fictional suit, a hyperstitional interface that allows users to enter alternative narratives. ¥€$Si PERSE uses the political strategies of science and urban fantasy to speculate about avatar identity, the digital economy and xenofeminist post-human future ecologies.

¥€$Si PERSE's work hybridises sound experimentation, video art, CGI, video games, the production of immersive experiences in expanded virtual reality and the mutation of institutional artistic performance. Their memetic variations emerge from popular formats like party formalisations (with the DJ/VJ set as their format), cosplay/LARP (live roleplay) conventions, online communities and virtual worlds.

In 2020, ¥€$Si PERSE founded the digital art collective and music label NeuroDungeon. They won the Generaciones 2023 award from La Casa Encendida/Fundación Montemadrid, the Can Felipa Arts Visuals 2022 award, the Barcelona Producció 2021 award from La Capella, the Miquel Casablancas 2020 award, the Premis Barcelona 2020 grant and the Art Jove 2019 award.

They have been a long-term artist-in-residence at the Hangar, Centre for Artistic Production and Research, in Barcelona. They have performed and exhibited in institutional arts contexts (HKW, MACBA, IVAM, EACC, La Capella, Santa Mònica, Fundació Joan Miró, MNAC, Matadero, V2_Lab for the Unstable Media), galleries (Okela, New Art City, PS Mirabel) and biennials (Manifesta, Athens Biennale, the Biennal de Pensament (Barcelona), The Wrong Biennale), as well as at art and electronic music festivals, including Primavera Sound Pro, Sónar, transmediale, CTM, Mira and New York Fashion Week.