Question:
When is 0100101110101101.org not 0100101110101101.org?
Answer: When it is www.0100101110110101.org.
‘Reverse engineering’ has replaced cut-and-paste in the net.art scene. So scarce are significant ideas and so poorly conceptualized the imperative to incorporate off-the-shelf novelty imposed by software like Flash or Dreamweaver (or to suggest wholly new media art niches like ‘software art’!), that cannibalism seems a fitting substitute. So instead of creativity, consumption; instead of principled questioning, parody; instead of politics, the aesthetics of repetition.
In late May a report appeared on Rhizome chastising them for refusing to host a splash page for 0100101110101101.org. This seemed plausible enough considering the limp policies that envelop Rhizome's approach to net.art. In a conversation, Alex Galloway reported to me that the 'original' proposal by 0100101110101101.org, contained protocols that sniffed passwords and that it was inappropriate for the Splash page. A reasonable explanation. A few days later I spoke directly with 0100101110101101.org and was reassured that there never was a plan for a splash page and the entire hoax was developed by Florian Cramer who registered the 0100101110110101.org domain (that alter one numerical combination), adapted texts from 0100101110101101.org, Marina Grzinic, planned the Splash page, and used the open system of 0100101110101101.org ‘s ‘Life Sharing’ project to apply for grants and negotiate in the name of 0100101110101101.org (didn’t this sort of childish tactic already occur with Heath Bunting!?).
In an interview with SNAFU posted on nettime (May 30), Cramer remarked:
'It was very interesting for me to see that the little twist of the zero and one had a social impact. I received invitations for festivals, I got fan mail by well-known people in the Net.art community. Everyone believed I was the 01 they knew. People seemed to care less about what I was doing than whom I seemed to be. I was simply using an established brand and pseudo-subversive rhetoric, and they liked it. Nobody checked the facts or got suspicious. If 'dates' and 'opensourcing rhizome.org' would not have had the 01 label, but unknown signature, I doubt anyone would have cared about them. This tells of course about the institutionalization, self-gratification and self-historification in this community which the original 01 project addressed as well.'
His concluding remark evokes many of the pretenses of the net-vant-garde: 'First of all you can't be subversive withouth being subversive to yourself, that's very important. You miss something crucial if you think subversion means to have clearly defined enemies and act against them. The enemy always is always you, too and in the first place.'
Surely the simplistic approach that Cramer takes in using the strategy of 'View Source' has benefits as a way of exposing the forms that are used to manage web pages dominated by protocols. Yet the mere replication, dare one say cloning, of code hardly extends into a serious debate about open-systems, security, reliable communication, or creative agency (though I one can be sure that this will be claimed!). And also surely, an artistic strategy that consumes colleagues could reassure the developers of software that artists are hardly necessary if their radical tactics are limited to the miniscule net.art scene or to the epidemic of cannibalism.
As the strident media analyst Armand Mattelart reminds us: 'In order to camouflage the counter-revolutionary function which it has assigned to communications technology ... imperialism has elevated the mass media to the status of revolutionary agents, the modern phenomenon of communications to that of revolution itself.'
Frage:
Wann ist 0100101110101101.org nicht 0100101110101101.org?
Antwort: Wenn es www.0100101110110101.org ist.
'Reverse Engineering' hat inzwischen das Cut-and-Paste in der net.art-Szene ersetzt. Wirklich schlagende Ideen sind selten, und aus Mangel an besseren Konzepten bleibt scheinbar nichts anderes über, als die neuesten vorfabrizierten Tools, die Programme wie Flash oder Dreamweaver liefern, einzusetzen (oder gleich die neue Gattung 'Software Art' einzuführen!). Kannibalismus scheint also ein passender Ersatz zu sein. Konsum an Stelle von Kreativität, Parodie an Stelle von Hinterfragen von Prinzipien, Ästhetik der Wiederholung statt neuen Strategien.
Im späten Mai erschien in Rhizome ein Report, der kritisierte, dass eine Splash-Page für 0100101110101101.org nicht veröffentlicht wurde. Dies schien angesichts der weichen Haltung, die Rhizome gegenüber net.art einnimmt, durchaus plausibel. In einem Gespräch sagte mir Alex Galloway von Rhizome, dass der ursprüngliche Vorschlag von 0100101110101101.org Protokolle enthielt, die Passwörter knackten und daher für die Splash-Page nicht geeignet war - eine vernünftige Erklärung. Einige Tage später sprach ich direkt mit 0100101110101101.org, und dort wurde mir versichert, dass es nie die Absicht gab, eine Splash-Page zu machen und das Ganze ein Hoax von Florian Cramer war, der die Domain 0100101110110101.org registrieren ließ (bei der die Ziffernkombination verändert ist). Er nutzt das offene System des 'Life Sharing'-Projekts von 0100101110101101.org, um um Subventionen anzusuchen und im Namen von 0100101110101101.org zu verhandeln (kennen wir diese kindische Taktik nicht schon von Heath Bunting!?).
