This artwork documented over twenty-thousand patents of socially manipulative information technology. In
, Cirio collected and rated Internet inventions submitted to the U.S. patent office. Subsequently, he invited the public to share, flag, and ban the technologies designed to monitor and manipulate social behaviors. The patent images and data were obtained by Cirio through hacking the Google Patents search engine. Then he rated the patents and created thousands of compositions with images of flowcharts and titles of inventions, which were published on the project’s website,
. The visual compositions on the website were printed in form of posters and a coloring book for informing on devices that enable discrimination, polarization, addiction, deception, and surveillance. The concept of turning patents into vehicles for regulation aims to exploit intellectual property law as a tool for democratic oversight. This work integrates both the dystopia surrounding technology and the utopia of its participatory governance with flowcharts of patents taking the form of documentary and protest art. With this problematizing piece, Cirio exposed evidence of social manipulation and questioned the ethical, legal, and economic structures of such technological apparatuses. In the exhibition, the public confronts large-scale compositions with hundreds of images of flowcharts that abstractly invoke the complexity and magnitude of such uncanny plans to program people.
Honorary Mention, STARTS Prix Ars Electronica, 2020, Linz - Austria
Selected shows and presentations history
Perfect Behaviors, exhibition at the OGR museum, 2023, Turin - Italy
Safe Mode, exhibition at the Project Gallery, 2022, Athens - Greece
Private, exhibition at EXPO Chicago Art Fair for NOME, 2022, Chicago - U.S.
Warszawa Biennale, exhibition at Warsaw Biennale, 2022, Warsaw - Poland
Transmedia Activism, workshop for UC3M University, 2022, Madrid - Spain
Deprogramming Today’s Sociality, workshop for Ca’ Foscari University, 2022, Venice - Italy
Monitoring Control, solo show at Fondazione Modena Arti Visive, 2021, Modena - Italy
Blocks, exhibition at the Real Albergo dei Poveri, 2021, Palermo - Italy
Data Fiction, exhibition at the Cairotronica Festival, 2021, Cairo - Egypt
Cybernetics of the Poor, exhibition at Kunsthalle Wien, 2020, Vienna - Austria
Ars Electronica, exhibition and lectures at Ars Electronica, 2020, Linz - Austria
NOME, a lexicon, exhibition at NOME Gallery show, 2020, Berlin - Germany
Die Digitale, exhibition at Die Digitale festival, 2020, Dusseldorf - Germany
Starts Prize, exhibition at Centre for Fine Arts BOZAR, 2020, Brussels - Belgium
Artissima, exhibition at booth Giorgio Persano Gallery in Artissima art fair, 2020, Turin - Italy
Information Critique, exhibition at Museum PAN Palazzo delle Arti Napoli, 2020, Naples - Italy
Part of the Labyrinth, exhibition at the 10th Göteborg Biennial, 2019, Gothenburg - Sweden
Forecast Forum, exhibition and performance at RadialSystem, 2019, Berlin - Germany
Data & Network Forensics, workshop at the Mutek festival, 2019, Montreal - Canada
Sociality the Coloring Book, lecture at Printed Matter bookshop, 2019, NYC - U.S.
Reclaiming the Future, exhibition at Fort Mason, 2019, San Francisco - U.S.
Tactical Tech, exhibition at The Glass Room, 2019, San Francisco - U.S.
Sociality, exhibition at Baltan Laboratories, 2019, Eindhoven - Netherlands
DataMaze, exhibition at DOX Art Center, 2019, Prague - Czech Republic
Strange Temporalities, exhibition at Ars Electronica, 2019, Linz - Austria
Systems of Systems, exhibition at Giorgio Persano Gallery, 2019, Turin - Italy
Festival della Tecnologia, lecture at Politecnico di Torino, 2019, Turin - Italy
Cassata Drone, exhibition at Fondazione Sant’Elia, 2019, Palermo - Italy
Touch Me, exhibition at 1st Strasbourg Biennale, 2018, Strasbourg - France
MIT Festival, exhibition at MIT, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, 2018, Boston - U.S.
Regulatory Art, lecture at Berkman Klein Center for Internet & Society, Harvard University, 2018, Boston - U.S.
