@CSA2D7: Interview with internet artist Mika Ben Amar on digital art, crypto

This McCarren Park Bench is all about the online with the mysterious Mika Ben Amar (@100o111) - the internet as a stable presence, the transactional internet, the aesthetics of the internet, the sadness of the internet, the pockets of the internet, the internet people, the personalized internet, the unknown and anonymous internet! mika 😳 CSA2D7 Heya mika ! mika Hey hey >.< excited to be here CSA2D7 Im excited to have you here! I feel like there's not a lot of information about you on the internet, despite you being an internet native artist? Or maybe Im just like one of those truffle pigs that likes information too much mika lol, i was thinking about it yesterday. I feel like everything is all around in different social media accounts, makes me want to redo my website CSA2D7 Can you even call it a website! Its more like a work of art 😂 mika I feel like everything is on twitter but i also post a lot of unrelated information that u need go sort through, it makes me feel evil I love my website i dont want to change it but i feel like i need to, lately, for my career lol CSA2D7 This is kind of like shl0ms (not to bring another artist in here) but most of the information lives through like backstories and second hand stuff even though there's a first person account on X! Its strange how that works... internet is about having too much information, and too much data Yeah, you've kind of taken off, right? Do you want to give us the mika ben amar backstory (official or unofficial)? mika Lol maybe, i am not trying to be mysterious on the internet tho. Maybe i should make myself and my story more clear lol CSA2D7 Being mysterious is important, but I think its also a natural function of being kind of like an introvert and an interesting person imo Not saying you are, just like my general experience mika I am not exactly sure when i started to make art but i spent most of my life around artists even tho i never really studied it, i think i started to take it more seriously when i moved to tbilisi in early 2023. And then i accidentally got into crypto a year later I always really loved being online and internet surfing so realizing that i can just do digital art seriously felt right CSA2D7 Its hard to disentangle art from the consumption of art. But I tend to have a very loose idea of what constitutes art, and maybe its just a little shy of "anything I want to be considered art by myself" What do you love about being online and internet surfing? I was looking at your piece "techno-ontological network map" and it strikes me as created by a very online individual mika I spent most of my childhood on the computer, i had unrestricted internet access so i also spent a lot of time on forums making friends and reading a lot of weird stuff lol. And when i moved abroad i moved between countries every few months. I think thats when i realized i really loved being online, bc no matter where i moved everything on my browser kinda stayed the same I dont really think the internet is a stable thing but it felt more stable then my life maybe CSA2D7 Were you speaking in the same language on the internet as you were moving physically between countries? mika Yes, always english. There is barely anything online in my native language so it makes sense CSA2D7 What is your native language? mika Hebrew The Israeli internet is just zionist propaganda so it never really appealed to me in any way Finding out there is an entire “internet” in English as a teenager was really cool CSA2D7 What topics drew you in as you were moving country to country? Was there a community or forum that drew you in, or was it mostly you observing and reading? mika I love reading things and observing mostly, i feel like i am too shy to take part of discussions on online forums besides maybe twitter comments I also feel like there is not a lot of active forums these days? Its mostly social media or very very niche things CSA2D7 Does reddit count as a forum? mika Lol yes ofc CSA2D7 You don't think its active? mika Ofc it is i just feel like everything there is very weird Lol A lot of small niche forums CSA2D7 What is not very weird? mika True true CSA2D7 Isn't that the [one of the] driving thesis behind the internet? That it is the end of "mono-culture"? mika I feel like reddit will slowly stop being active with the rise in ai use tho CSA2D7 Or another way to phrase it - what is not a niche thing? mika I feel like people use reddit mostly to get answers on weird things And now ai helps CSA2D7 Really? I think its more about community than necessarily getting answers… mika Maybe we are looking on different parts of reddit, the only times i use it is to get answers about things Maybe i am missing the entire thing I think i saw a video of someone talking about it tho, i wish i could find it CSA2D7 I dunno - because when I think about reddit it strikes me as a very different thing than quora, or maybe like a predecessor - ask jeeves, or even google? The nature of question asking I suppose - when one typically and practically asks a question they are seeking the consensus answer Thats not what Im trying to do here, but I think that might be what characterizes that difference for me Is there a moment on the internet that you remember growing up, moving place to place? mika I really liked moving from tbilisi to berlin to prag to paris in like half a year. which was crazy and i feel like the landscape and the people changed so drastically every time, which was very stressful. But i open my phone and check my social media and the content i consume and the people i was catching up on on my social media stayed the same, even tho everything around me changed so much Realizing it was weird CSA2D7 Yeah, thats interesting because as you said above the internet served as this stable presence for you despite being very temporal in nature. Like X topics that shift hour to hour. Part of the reason I really liked internet flowers is because it plays with this tension - normally we forget things we're looking at because of the sheer volume, but your project tracked your search history on the internet and "leaked" it for us to see But that's for me, is that what the impetus behind internet flowers was for you? mika I think the original idea behind internet flowers was just to sell my data, browsing history specifically. I leaned towards it being about flowers very naturally i think. Maybe actually because i travel a lot. I think someone asked me that lately actually and it made me think about how its probably right I also wanted it to be something that is considered beautiful that we might be overlooking when we go around So it makes a lot of sense This project also made me realize how the internet is lacking color these days i feel like I expected to see way more flowers when scraping all my browsing history CSA2D7 Metaphorical flowers for part 2 😂 What interested you in selling your data? In a way we all sort of sell our data just by browsing and using stuff like google? mika We sell out data by just existing online i feel like, wanted to take it into my hands and i feel like i cant avoid it but i can decide to just do it myself maybe? CSA2D7 Well, you did it very successfully! I remember internet flowers being an instant hit mika Thank you!! I am so happy it went so well actually, i feel like i am still so excited about it CSA2D7 Definitely. Its a big feather in your cap. You said that in creating internet flowers you felt that the internet is lacking color - did you mean that only literally (as in the capturing of colorful flowers)? What is capturing your attention now when you are online? mika I feel like everything online is mostly grey. I remember the internet being very colorful. Thats when i realized it. Its kinda sad. I like to think of it as the internet is lacking green areas lol CSA2D7 Literally? or symbolically? Or maybe I should say aesthetically? mika Both i think lol. Barely any flowers on the internet actually So sad CSA2D7 Do you still enjoy browsing the internet? mika I do, ofc I spend most of my free time online, i also really like to try to find actual interesting and colorful websites I try to not get distracted by instagram reels and actually surf the internet mostly Bc instagram reels are very colorful but they are evil CSA2D7 Evil? mika My attention span is really bad i know its from things like instagram reels unfortunately I do fall for this kind of stuff Lol CSA2D7 Its designed to be addictive, sort of like a drug, as Ana Maria said in our last chat It doesn't really matter whether you are conscious of its addictive nature mika Yes its kinda fun but in the long term i feel bad about it When i do watch them i tell myself its artistic research but i know its not I just love staring at colorful things on the internet I really want my digital work to be very colorful, my physical works are very grey CSA2D7 Is that intentional? or the nature of the respective mediums? mika Its not intentional but i kinda want it to be intentional I really love a very clean physical space and very minimalist works maybe but on the internet i love when things are very colorful and eye catching I mean i also work with MacBooks a lot, they are usually grey Which makes sense CSA2D7 Can you walk us through your process for finding interesting and colorful websites? What does a typical online session look like for you? mika I kinda hate sharing this publicly but i usually start with this website that shows random images from imgur. When i see something interesting i will reverse image search it and see where it takes me, finding very interesting things like this. Sometimes it gets too weird but its fun I have a collection of images i found on imgur that i want to archive somehow Not sure how yet I like that the way their image hosting links works u can make an algorithm that will show u them randomly Its like internet surfing cheating CSA2D7 What do you find interesting in an image (besides color)? mika Nothing specific i think, some of those images can just be so cool. I also like to guess from what year the images i see are from, sometimes its really easy to tell also. [Editor’s note: Mika Ben Amar inserts a link to her random imgur images on arena] CSA2D7 What are some of the tells for guessing accurately? mika Usually i cant actually check, unless i find them in a website that tells me, but maybe i am missing something and i could have know all this time Lol I kinda like the mystery And the fact that its a mix of images from so long ago and some seems like they were probably uploaded yesterday CSA2D7 Thats always kind of interesting, when the act of uploading groups together an otherwise divergent set of images How about space, if not time? Do you think about the geographic source of images? mika Wow no i never really cared and no i feel like i should CSA2D7 In your eyes, how different does the internet in Prague look from the internet in Berlin? There was a really cool project from Aaron swartz from 7x7 where he showed how different the internet looked from place to place country to country mika I feel like besides google searches being a bit different it feels the same for me I should really look into it, idk how i am going to feel about it lol CSA2D7 It was from a while ago though, and the internet has changed a lot, become a lot smarter at individualizing the experience so maybe now if its you it knows its you irrespective of what country are you are looking from mika I hate saying this but i barely search anything on google anymore CSA2D7 Other than those with great walls mika Besides using their reverse image search CSA2D7 Well, not just google, its everything mika Curious if its different in different countries, probably it is CSA2D7 Could be - unless you succeed in colonizing the internet with your websites! mika I need to buy more domains lol just for domain squatting The domain chronically dot online is being renewed all the time by someone who doesn’t use it Made me want to make the domain market a little bit more annoying too CSA2D7 Do you have any more NFTs? I was just checking the Raster website to make sure I was being comprehensive… mika I actually did not check my raster profile yet So idk if it got all of them Moment I have some things on shape that are missing actually CSA2D7 So, you have things on tezos, ethereum L1, and shape L2? mika Yes exactly i have this work that is missing from raster the first 1/1 i sold [Editor’s note: Mika Ben Amar inserts an image of designed for humans] CSA2D7 Ah yes, I remember seeing that on your X timeline You mentioned that you are used to moving around a lot, but I saw recently that you found a new apartment in Berlin.. is that your home for the foreseeable future? mika I stayed here yes, i was moving around looking for a place to stay. Not thinking too much besides if something feels right or not, i stayed here for a bit and moved after but i decided to come back and stay, still feels right :—) It probably will not feel right in the winter but i will get over it lol CSA2D7 Do you know a lot of the Berlin NFT people? I saw you met recently with Anika Meier, not sure if she's in Berlin or somewhere else in Germany mika Yes! I met her here and most of my friends here are artists. But idk much nft people here In my head all the nft people are in nyc CSA2D7 In my head, the berlin NFT people are just internet people mika Cant believe the people from my twitter tl are real CSA2D7 Internet people sounds terrible. like gremlins mika I like that actually I hope a lot of people see me as an internet person CSA2D7 There's no way for me to tell if you are real or not to be fair mika I have no way to tell if you are real either Lol Are you in nyc? Or its just the discord thing CSA2D7 Well, we got to a good place! From certainty to uncertainty A bit of both 😂 I think this may be a good place to wrap? I really enjoyed this conversation mika Yes yes, thank you for inviting me <3 Sorry for my very basic level English lol But enjoyed this conversation! CSA2D7 Thank you for accepting. I take comfort in knowing that anyone who needs to research for you for an interview must now read this as part of the canon I had no idea it was not your native language. thank you for taking part 🙂 mika I hope it makes everything more clear, please let me know if i need to make a normal website lol CSA2D7 Haha, I think your website is great. Time will put everything where it needs to go. Will throw this into a doc and send it over to you for review mika Thank you!