Luser Story
International Brud Day

  • Luser Story

    Thesaurus opticus Titelblatt

Performance: Maria Barnas, Bea McMahon, Honorata Martin, Katy Bentall, Tymek Borowski, Vaari Claffey, Sarah Pierce & Staś Welbel, Tomek Kowalski, Indigenous Genitalman, Krzysztof Unrug, Magia Tounta, Edyta Jarząb

1. If you have used a website, or an app in the recent past, then you have been taken on a journey known as the "User Story".

2. "User Stories" are metafictional narratives that capture what the user does; the function that the user performs.

3. The MIT Artifical Intelligence Lab in Cambridge, Massachussets, birth of Hacker lore, affectionately termed users of computer systems "Lusers".

4. Today's Luser is a performer. The Luser performs the Luser Story.

Brud traces the origins of the "performance-lecture" to the "Golden Age of Islam", circa 700 A.D. - 1300 A.D., a period which gave us many gifts. Physics, mathematics, economics, engineering, art, and culture flourished. Some credit the Renaissance to this.

Optics were an especially fertile field. The birth of media lies in these beginnings; the camera obscura, lanterna magica, the phenakistoscope, and zoetrope, were some of the many instruments born in Arabia.

These devices were termed "philosophical toys"; their display and montage were accompanied with elaborate presentations and religious propaganda.

The voice of God spoke through the mouth of Reason.

Today we have a different term for the use of optomechanical dogma; we call it Powerpoint.

"Luser Story" is a compendium of PDF-performances.

The Portable Document Format, introduced in 1993 by Adobe Systems Incorporated, is a file
format used to present documents independent of software, hardware, & operating systems.

The PDF houses within it the entire history of the media arts, & then some.

It may contain (hyper)text, images, sound, and video, act as a slideshow, or be printed out.

It is, seemingly, the ultimate format.

Luser Story asks you to think of mimesis & dogma.

Of performance as propaganda.
Of crowd-pleasing, mass-market presentation.
Of the choreography of TED.

Information as News. News as Entertainment.
Entertainment as Performance.
Read these lines backwards.

See also:

Exhibition and other archival events connected:

DzieńGodzinaNazwa wydarzeniaMiejsce wydarzenia
12:00 In public space Continental Drift Then and Now: Update on a Decade-Long ExperimentA walk with Brian Holmes and Claire Pentecost Museum of Modern Art in Warsaw, Emilia Pavilion
ul. Emilii Plater 51, Warsaw
15:00 Guided tour Guided Tour of the „Making Use” project Museum of Modern Art in Warsaw, Emilia Pavilion
ul. Emilii Plater 51, Warsaw
18:00 Book presentation BOOK RELEASE: The Projectariat ABC's. On The Misery of a Project-Driven Life Meeting with Kuba Szreder Museum of Modern Art in Warsaw, Emilia Pavilion
ul. Emilii Plater 51, Warsaw
18:30 Guided tour Guided Tour of the „Making Use” project Museum of Modern Art in Warsaw, Emilia Pavilion
ul. Emilii Plater 51, Warsaw
18:30 Guided tour Guided Tour of the „Making Use” project Museum of Modern Art in Warsaw, Emilia Pavilion
ul. Emilii Plater 51, Warsaw