PRIOR ART AUTOMATON is one-part proposal for a forthcoming sculpture to be exhibited and one-part a piece in itself (see attached PDF) created by Studio Alight. Studio Alight is an artistic collective consisting of Samantha Hookway, Fredrik Garneij, Christofer Kanljung and design curator Anna Bloch. PRIOR ART AUTOMATON exhibited in the Dutch Pavilion, WORK, BODY, LEISURE of the 2018 Venice Architettura Biennale, in the V&A during the 2018 London Design Festival and finally at Het Nieuwe Instituut in Rotterdam. This work was included in the concept The Institute of Patent Infringement (IoPI) by Jane Chew and Matthew Stewart. The collected body of work in the satirical Institute of Patent Infringement acts in the space described by Chew and Stewart as: “The dubious world of intellectual property rights allows ‘Big Tech’ multinationals to create a monopoly on ideas concerning automation. Focusing on the political dimension of labor, the Institute of Patent Infringement encourages architects [and designers] to appropriate the frameworks under which these multinationals operate, and subvert their patent drawings, revealing a possible radical and emancipatory potential inherent in these technological regimes, as well as a space where architecture [and design] can play a role.” Studio Alight answered the call to participate from The Institute of Patent Infringement “to merge, reimagine, infringe and hack existing Amazon patents.” And our answer to the call was the following text and the attached PDF: --------------------------------------------------------------------PRIOR ART AUTOMATON A proposal which does not concern the patents Amazon has already taken. But the ones which they intend on taking in the future. In patent law, before any patent claim can be issued, there is a need to investigate what is referred to as prior art. Prior art refers to the information that has been made public before a patent application was made and can, if it exists, question a patents originality, i.e if a patent is described in prior art it is not valid. The definition of prior art is as follows: Prior art must be available in some way to the public, and in many countries, the information needs to be recorded in a fixed form somehow. [1] In order to address the system of patent claims companies such as Amazon are implementing, we are creating a machine learning algorithm that automates the creation of prior art through combining Amazon's already existing patents with other fields - THE PRIOR ART AUTOMATON. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Prior_art -------------------------------------------------------------------- The Venice Biennale ran from May 26, 2018 – Nov 25, 2018, the London Design Festival ran from Sept 15- Sept 23 2018 and the work was exhibited from Oct 16 – 29, 2018 at the Het Nieuwe Instituut Rotterdam. The attached PDF illustration was exhibited in paper form in a range of sizes, and curatorial formats under the entire programming of these three exhibitions.