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INFOWAR: *Fish* Re: Info Weapon Contest
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ARS ELECTRONICA FESTIVAL 98
INFOWAR. information.macht.krieg
Linz, Austria, september 07 - 12
http://www.aec.at/infowar
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One of the remarkable proposals in early utopian descriptions of the Web
(e.g. Bush, Nelson and even Berners-Lee) was the possibility of
cross-referencing knowledge through an endless series of hyperlinked
citations. Hypertext would open a doorway into further context to frame a
particular concept. The web would be an interconnected, interdependent
hyperdimensional knowledge structure. I am calling those views utopian in
the sense that they suggested a smooth, continuous "surf" through relevant
citations, often leading the fathers of the web to suggest a potential
"exhaustiveness" to the method since conceivably all references would be
eventually linked up in some way or another.
I have three nationalities: Mexican, Canadian and Spanish. Three years ago
two of my countries decided to go to war over a fish called "turbot"
(Fletan in Spanish). I had never heard of this fish until the Spanish fleet
headed to the North Atlantic to catch it in what Canada regarded as a
rightfully protected environment. The Fish war started when the Canadian
coast guard trapped, fined and temporarily confiscated one of the Spanish
ships in international waters. This is a pretty conventional war scenario
featuring: a) a scanty resource (turbot), b) new technology (Spain's
"high-tech" deep-sweep fishing gear), c) political opportunism (both
countries searching for a way to foster a questioned national unity by
looking for an external enemy), and d) territory (national versus
international waters).
Living in Madrid at the time, I started using my Mexican identity to avoid
any war-related hassles. At any rate, being exposed to Spanish media, I was
convinced that the Canadian "pirates" had depleted their own fish stocks
over decades of irresponsible fishing and now wanted to blame the poor
spanish fishermen. That is, until I got a web connection and started
logging onto Canadian media reports. As you can imagine:
CANADIAN media: Picture of fisheries minister Brian Tobin waving a baby
turbot with one hand and showing a spanish illegal net with a minuscule
mesh.
SPANISH media: Photo of a sad, very humble Gallego family, hoping the
Canadian pirates would release Manolo and let him come back home.
The web became a fabulous tool for comparative journalism. Every day I
would log on to several Canadian and Spanish resources to dissect the
making of a war. The results were as expected, following closely the
tactics that have been thoroughly described by many media critics:
disinformation, cheap nationalism, stereotypes, involvement of
personalities (Brigitte Bardot criticizes Spain's utter disregard for the
rights of turbot), alliances, fear mongering, escalation, polarization,
etc. While it is obvious that comparative journalism is one of the most
important info-weapons that may be utilized in a networked culture it seems
that the utopian vision of the web is in fact far from fostering such a
practice.
During the fish war, logically, what was *absent* from each nation's media
web sites were hyperlinks to each other's information. In fact the
condition of possibility of war was to engineer such an absence. So, not
any longer the smooth flow from one point of view to the other in search of
a richer context: the web sites, by definition, would be designed to appeal
to a clear sense of national narrative that could not afford contestation.
And that could be precisely one role of the artist or media activist: the
forceful or subtle connection of the artificial media realities.
A comparative journalism tool or engine would use the web not as a level
field that can be considered holistically but as a constellation of
"tectonic plates" of influence that reveal the cracks and fault lines of
the representation of power.
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