The growth of the internet into a organic meta-organism
Hans Bernhard [UBERMORGEN.COM] & Alessandro Ludovico
While the net could become the nerve center for a social superorganism, it
remains frustratingly rudimentary. Documents lack uniformity and integration;
linking is unintelligent and unstable; interaction is limited, controlled by authors
and browsers. However, things are changing. Advances in artificial intelligence
could be applied to the WWW, transforming it to a globally distributed, massively
parallel, wetware-oriented universe and pervert viruses and media hacks are
interacting in our daily communication.
We are interested and involved on two layers of this topic which we will briefly talk
about today:
The first layer involves the "natural" - or better said biological - aspect of the
super-organism internet, the intelligence and specially the communications within
it – the memetic level – with a focus on the virus as organism.
The second layer deals with the core nature of the organism itself and the bridging
into traditional mass media networks: The human being and the machine in
combination and the slow growth of interconnected intelligence into a new humanmachine entity. Simply documented by two on-the-edge „Digital Actionism“
projects from our art practice, the „Media Hack“ classic „Vote-auction“ and the
currently very successful „GWEI – Google Will Eat Itself“ Project.
The virus
Our perception of viruses stems both from the way we consider the most recent
epidemic diseases, such as AIDS, and from an innate fear of having one's own
body invaded by other efficient organisms, capable of re-arranging their working
patterns in order to facilitate infiltration into their host. This perception applies to
the principles of knowledge society with similar consequence. Many are concerned
with cultural infection, as it may change our identity, and as communicative
distances grow shorter, this process seems to become even more inevitable.
Viruses are able to adapt and to transform themselves very quickly - hence their
dark charming powers. Computer viruses actually do have quite the same
qualities. They have proved to be important and influential to a large section of
net.art, as their ability to invade foreign systems in a very obvious manner reveals
any badly protected system controls.
The loss of innocence.
A code's possible destructiveness may be programmed and activated from a
distance like an explosive device. This mechanism, however, makes its user lose
his innocence, forcing him to discover the very existence of uncertain possibilities
among the fascinating traps on the screen. It even calls into question the user's
rule over the machine, which he usually exercises by means of his keyboard, a
word-generating artificial limb, and the mouse, as a sceptre. Net.artists have often
used methods related to the idea of pre-programmed invasion, and they have
mostly taken the winning side in any conflict.
etoy, for instance, a group of media agitators, has been among the first to make
use of the concept of 'cultural viruses' by systematising their propaganda as to
make it infiltrate the systems of market and commerce (etoy.CORPORATEIDENTITY, 1994), and of finance (etoy.SHARE, 1998/99). Typically viral
appearances have been used like a weapon, to 'penetrate', allowing both invasion
into and dominion over foreign territories, even if, as in this case, the conflict is
modelled after David and Goliath.
In their early works such as the emblematic 'OSS', Jodi, a pair of enfants terribles
in net.art, have developed a disquieting aesthetics of abnormal and unpredictable
computer behaviour, evoking the real or imagined presence of something 'alien'.
Their aim was to make the computer user gradually believe that 'there's
something going wrong'.
Canadian Tara Bethune-Leamen, head of 'Virus corp', also defends the idea of an
offensive device, too. To computer users, she offers the possibility to destroy (at
least symbolically) parts of pre-chosen web sites with the help of an animal-like
symbol opposed to the aseptic and heavily armoured aesthetics preferred by big
companies. In this view of sight, however, the 'virus' tends to become a tool used
by its author. It helps anybody who is able to use it radically to make ancestral
destruction fantasies come true. As an insidious 'virtual object' confirms in the
net.art literary work 'Hypertextual Consciousness', by Mark Amerika: 'I'm not at
all polite. Would you mind me infecting you with my latest virus?'
The group Epidemic joins the technological aspect with an explicit preference for
the aesthetic part of the source code. During their 'biennale.py' they succeeded in
contaminating the Venice Biennale media. The computer virus strolling around the
exposition pavilions was made front page news. In spite of all this clamour, the
code could work only in a programme language that is not very common, the
Phython. It is far more interesting that this group of programmer-artists
demonstrated that a virus' only purpose is to 'survive'. Hereby they gave a new
social and aesthetic value to viruses and refused of the traditional notion of
natural malignity of any form of virus whatsoever.
The differences between good and bad viruses.
As famous zoologist Richard Dawkins explains, viruses are not simply invasive
organisms, but they respond to two characteristic environment conditions in order
to exist and to multiply. The first is the ability of the hosting system to copy
information accurately and in case of errors, to copy an error with the very same
accuracy. The second is the system's unconditional readiness to execute all
instruction codified in the copied information. Refined virus writers are of the same
opinion, like Dark Fiber from Australia who declares 'A good virus should infect a
machine without interrupting its use in any way.' Virus programmers, or at least
those who succeed in conceiving the magic of an executing code, are writing a
true and deep literature in computer language, and obviously appreciate viruses
not just as simple tools. In many cases, they started writing viruses after their
own personal computers had become infected, thereby arousing curiosity to study
the very code that has been responsible for an upheaval within their
'computerised territory'. This is what had happened to one of the most respected
virus creators of the first half of the 1990s: Hellraiser, a member of the
Phalcon/Skism group and founder of 40Hex, an electronic magazine for virus
programmers whose concise and eluding contents have influenced a large part of
American virus writers. One of the most famous definitions we owe to Hellraiser
says, 'Viruses are an electronic form of graffiti.' It is marvellously typical of them
to per- petuate themselves over the years, apparently for ever, and to become a
medium themselves, as to be seen in the Internet at any time.
Jean Baudrillard says in Cool Memories:
'Within the computer web, the negative effect of viruses is propagated much
faster than the positive effect of information. That is why a virus is an information
itself. It proliferates itself better than others, biologically speaking, because it is at
the same time both medium and message. It creates the ultra-modern form of
communication which does not distinguish, according to McLuhan, between the
information itself and its carrier.'
Viruses have their own methods to survive and to reproduce themselves within
computerised systtems. On the one hand their necessary egoism stands in sharp
contradiction to the user's wishes, and it expropriates him, step by step, from his
possession of the computer. On the other hand, many users try to secure free
access to all means of virus production, thus trying to regain intellectual control
over the instrument. Romanian virus writer MI_pirat, for instance, has
programmed his web site in order to make it generate simple viruses of the
'macro' type. It works at the base of simple programme commands anybody could
use, even without any experience in programming. The author insists on the point
that nobody writing this sort of codes would be interested in provoking
devastation, but in expressing and appreciating innovation.
It is worth considering some interesting social and cultural reflections related with
electronic communication when affected by a virus like 'sircam' or, even better, a
'worm' propagating within the net. Sircam chooses a document from the hard disk
and sends it to all addresses found in the e-mail address book. So everything
private, public, and interpersonal gets mixed up because of the possibility to
reproduce information and to transmit them instantaneously in the net. Basically,
the working patterns of both computers and the net form a wonderful
environment to make viruses proliferate. But if we compare the way personal
computers send signs and information to the net with the way human nerves and
brain do the same thing, we may well compare viruses and their ways of collecting
and generating information to the way we produce language. This should open
new insights into the role computer viruses play, and into their very nature, as a
form of language. Maybe these insights are nearer to reality than we could
successfully imagine today.
Media Hacking and Digital Actionism
This second layer deals with the core nature of the organism itself and the
bridging into traditional mass media networks: The human being and the machine
in combination and the slow growth of interconnected intelligence into a new
human-machine entity. Media Hacking is generally described very vaguely as
manipulation of media technology. A more specific definition is the massive
intrusion into mass media channels with standard technology such as email or
mobile communications, mobile phones, etc.. With such a simple modus operandi
– in the end only courage, intelligence and basic know how with technology is
necessary – we can achieve enormous reach and frequency in this age of the total
networked space.
The „hanging inside the network“, to be connected to millions and millions of
invisible channels, the sensation of beeing a thin membrane within the selfinflicted mass meda storm... thats where it happens. Playground is the whole body
of the „Actionist“ and especially the Head. It vibrates, it becomes threatening, it
accelerates, the communication gets out of control and the network suddenly
turns into a global menace.
The Vote-Auction Project
[V]ote-Auction is a classic Media Hack by UBERMORGEN.COM, pure media
madness and judical troubles over a intense period of 4 months. What was it all
about: During the presidential elections 2000, Al Gore und G.W. Bush, a art
student (James Baumgartner) opened a Web-Site under the name
voteauction.com for selling and buying of individual votes.
The project almost immediately went out of control. The New York Election
Committee and the FBI interfered and James Baumgartner sold the Web-Site to
UBERMORGEN.COM for a undisclosed sum.
Now because UBERMORGEN.COM operated from Bulgaria and Austria, they were
outside of US-jurisdiction (in europe it is not illegal to buy and sell US-votes, but it
is illegal to do so in the US). Because of this fact UBERMORGEN.COM could push
the project to the outmost limits. Within no time 14 District Attorneys, the FBI,
the CIA, the NSA and Federal Attorney Janet Reno were investigating the case.
UBERMORGEN.COM were interviewd up to 30 times per day by print and online
media, tv and radio stations. Over 2500 global media clippings were counted after
the project.
UBERMORGEN.COM was sued 4x, 3x because of illegal selling and buying of votes
and once because of wrong promises (consumer fraud). This is interesting insofar,
as UBERMORGEN.COM was constantly accused of not publishing this Media Hack
as a FAKE, as a internet performance, as a media stunt. But for them this
revelation would have rendered the whole action senseless, because the clue was
to keep the audience insecure about the aim of the project. In interviews,
UBEMRORGEN.COM constantly claimed to be eastern european businesspeople
going trying to exploit the american voting market.
And that was correct, everything UBERMORGEN actually did was to combine the
basic principles of the greatest democracy on earth: capitalism and democracy.
Therefore the slogan of the whole action was: „bringing capitalism and democracy
closer together“
UBERMORGEN.COM operated with affirmative strategies. Bazon Brock coined the
term „negative affirmation“, meaning the 150% agreement, the total superaffirmation. And they only pushed the bringing together of capitalism and
democracy to the next level, the logical next step of the evolution of US american
society, only prevented by historical laws about individual selling and buying of
votes. In other areas of society, privatisation and the bringing on the market
already happend – for example the U.S. correctional industry (Prisons).
But how did Vote-Auction actually appear in public? The most important element
was through the press, the media. Through them, the project had a global voice of
unknown dimensions. UBERMORGEN.COM estimates that over 500 million people
were reached.
CNN especially broadcasted a 30 minutes show, including 7 lawyers, 2 technicians
and a politician to discuss wheter the project was a real threat to the integrity of
the U.S. election or wheter it was a political satire.
A Quote from Flash Art Magazine: "There are not many artists who can present
live action and the documentation, in one piece, of an artwork in the form of a
videotape containing a 27 minute broadcast from CNN"
But, most important there – through the media strategy of Voteauction, they were
not able to determine the role of vote-auction because the press-speaker used
communications strategies from the political and corporate world – saying nothing
by talking.
Now this insecurity concerning the motivation behind Voteauction was even more
dramatic State Attorneys investigating the case. This insecurity cost the
governement of the United States millions of dollars, because the judical system
was working non-stop issueing temporary injunctions and other court orders.
UBERMORGEN.COM received over 700 kilograms in court material by UPS and
Fedex over this 4 months period. Their task was to protect the integrity of the
voting process – so the judical apparatus had to defend the system and fight back
as hard as possible.
Essential for this kind of projects, there is no underlying ideology or political task
connected. UBERMORGEN.COM does not care who is president of the united
states, they dont care wheter the voting process is corrupt or not, they dont care
if corporation X uses child labour or not, etc. UBERMORGEN.COM does basic
„freestyle“ research, they experiment live within the networks, they invent stories
and infiltrate the media, work with the feedback-loops of such stories and bounce
them back into the media and the networks (spinning), they can observe these
processes as participants and as non-precise researchers. There is no goal, this is
basic research in the area of the art of communications, they call it „digital
actionism“ or „Media Hacking“.
The second project...
GWEI – Google Will Eat Itself
We generate money by serving Google text advertisments on our Websites. With
this money we automatically buy Google shares. We buy Google via their own
advertisment! Google eats itself - but in the end "we" own it!
By establishing this model we deconstruct the new global advertisment
mechanisms by rendering them into a surreal click-based economic model.
After this process we hand over the common ownership of "our" Google Shares to
the GTTP Ltd. [Google To The People Public Company] which distributes them
back to the users (clickers) / public.
GWEI.org is a show-case and to unveil a total monopoly of information [Google
search-engine & added services], a weakness of the new global advertisment
system and the renaissance of the "new economic bubble" - "reality" is, Google is
currently valued more than all Swiss Banks together (sic). Let's open their
goldmine to the people.
Google's position is predominant in the same moment it entered a new business
field with a new service. It's the Google effect: creating consensus on a new
business, even if it instantly got the predominant position. The greatest enemy of
such a giant is not another giant. It's the parasite. If enough parasitites would
suck small amounts of money in this self-referentialism embodiment, they will
empty this artificial mountain of data and its inner risk of digital totalitarianism.
This is all for today.
Thank you very much!
partially quoted from http://english.neural.it/iloveyou.htm