The use of social media has become a daily routine for billions of people throughout the last decade. The problems and possibilities of this new media reality were reflected and questioned by artists long before its popularization. Cyberfeminism and Net Art layered a foundation as the digital realm as an artistic medium in the early 1990s. Today, contemporary art is almost unthinkable without the network effects of Instagram, Twitter, YouTube, TikTok, and Facebook.
Living by protocol queries the contemporary reflections of artists on, with, and by social media. The nine grid structured monitors within the Lightbox Gallery become a subface onto the social database structures secret of extraction. The program will consist of six weeks of curated, rotating media works and experiments. The show will commence with one week of talks, discussions, and other hybrid programming. Social media will be simultaneously the topic, platform, and space of experimentation.