As technology gains ubiquity in popular culture, the rules and contexts that govern its use have begun to draw our attention. Check out this turntable PC:
From lawsuits against Napster to federal hearings about Microsoft’s Internet Explorer, the problem of digital rights management is becoming a mainstream phenomenon. Exploring this clash between mass consumption of technology and personal use, Danish artist Mogens Jacobsen creates work that challenges the incorporeal existence of digital objects and the physical incarnations they assume. From examining the legal restrictions of file sharing in “Crime Scene: Installation for 2 Computers,” where a copyrighted file is transferred between two computers ad infinitum, to creating a PC-turned networked record player with “Turntablist PC,” Jacobsen’s work explores how mass culture is striving to amalgamate and restrict digital objects into categories that previously only existed for physical ones. Gizmodo recently caught up with Jacobsen to discuss his work and why media art is often laid to rest on the fringes of the official, commercial art world.