Open Call for Patent Violation INSTITUTE OF PATENT INFRINGEMENT

INSTITUTE OF PATENT INFRINGEMENT

Open Call for Patent Violation

BRIEF

To negate this top-down and closed system, The Institute of Patent Infringement thus invites submissions from students, industrial designers, architects, urban planners, artists, programmers and the wider public to merge, reimagine, infringe and hack existing Amazon patents.

The crux of the open call is to emphasise the radical and emancipatory potential inherent in these new technologies assembled by Amazon. To reveal this potential, submissions may chose to challenge: the hyper individualised and consumption based nature of Amazon’s wider patent filings; the emphasis on efficiency and quantification through data collection inherent in these new technological regimes; labour, social relations and the role of automation within this; the relationship with nature and the environment; unequal global processes of production and distribution; and the affect of these technologies on everyday life.
This may include ideas working at scales from the body to the planetary and from the rural to the urban. Relevant themes may ask: can patents for the wearable monitoring of workers be appropriated to hack and monitor nature? How could Amazon’s global distribution network be rethought? Can we think of new ideas to repurpose data centres, potentially merging these with other functions? What might arise from the collective ownership and control of data?

Could fully automated warehouses be refunctioned as spaces of infinite leisure? What role does labour play in this new world? Can smart road management systems for automated cars be used for an extensive and sustainable public transport network? How could Amazon’s quest for algorithmic efficiency, be used to plan a zero growth, zero carbon economy? And how might these technologies work if bottom up and participatory rather than top-down and monopolised?

Above all, submissions are encouraged to think of radical interventions challenging the essence of Amazon while considering the social role technology may potentially in any future.

Submission is open to individuals or groups of architects, urban planners, designers, artists, programmers, students and anyone interested in the wider theme of the open call.

SCHEDULE

Deadline for submissions is midnight (GMT) 16th April

All submissions will be evaluated anomalously with the most relevant to the open call selected for display in the Dutch Pavillion as part of WORK, BODY, LEISURE at this year’s Venice Biennale.

A wider selection of proposals will be displayed through exhibitions at Het Niuwe Instiuttut in Rotterdam and London during Autumn 2018.

Selection will be through Het Nieuwe Instituut’s research team and the Institute of Patent Infringement.