The Re: Dakar Arts Festival project documents an ongoing art scam form. The scammers approach artists and galerists with open calls for a fake festival in Dakar, Senegal. To appear professional, they adopt different identities. To unveil their practice, three virtual characters including their online identities were created to scam the scammers. Investigate their stories in an installation and find entrance points to continue following the story online.
The “Re: Dakar Arts Festival” project brings out into open the practice of Internet scammers and questions the trust we put in online representations. The fictional story worlds created by scammers and scambaiters reveals the dystopia of Internet. This is a world of false representations, abuse of trust, humiliation and desperation for opportunities. The interaction between scammer and victims or scambaiters reveals that Internet is not equal and is not to be trusted.
Paper:
Exhibitions:
2013:
26ER STUTTGARTER FILMWINTER Stuttgart/Germany.
2012:
SIGGRAPH ASIA, Singapore.
DYSTORPIA, LP Artspace, NYC/USA (versio(n) 2).
PARAFLOWS, Vienna/Austria.
2011:
CYBERIDEOLOGIES, UAVM Virtual Museum, Portugal.
SCHMIEDE, Hallein/Austria.
Publications:
- Kronman, L., Zingerle, A. (2013), Re: Dakar Arts Festival-Exploring Transmedia Storytelling Methods to Document an Internet Scam. Interactive Storytelling. Springer International Publishing, 253-256.
- Kronman, L., Zingerle, A. (2011), Transmedia Storytelling and Online Representations–Issues of Trust on the Internet. Cyberworlds (CW), 2011 International Conference on. IEEE.