From "Content-Type", 9 march 2001

Take - Away

by Sarah Thompson

..."It is no longer necessary to deface paintings (like Alexander Brener) or to put a mustache on postcards of Mona Lisa (like Duchamp), now art can be downloaded, modified and uploaded again, with absolute delight."... [luther blissett] *1

To be or not to be assimilated? That is the question. There is no progress, no avant garde... only the assimilation of humans by machine networks, or at least that is what 0100101110110101.ORG seem to be saying. Sharing networked space with their work 'life_sharing' in which "every Internet user has free access twenty-four hours a day, 365 days a year to 0100101110101101.ORG's computer: they can rummage through archives, search for texts or files they're interested in, check the software, watch the "live" evolution of projects and even read 0100101110101101.ORG's private mail"*2, this practice challenges both privacy and ownership. This very collective approach is making manifest the power of the networks to undermine identity and objectivity, behind which lie motivators of both desire for and fear of assimilation.

Rejecting the individual approach of net artists, 0100101110110101.ORG oppose their controlled and discrete net spaces with collective activity, originally cloning artists' websites, "0100101110101101.ORG downloads the web sites if the most popular net.artists and then s/he/it manipulates them as it wants, using them in an interactive way"*3, or even the groupings of net artists like Hell.com and Art.Teleportacia.

As with any work of art, they still have to negotiate with the individual user. Visiting the website, you are confronted with java script alerts. 'You are now in my computer' says a sequence of alerting buttons. This is the 'You are now part of an artwork' approach. But it is also a sequence through which the user is being manipulated in order to perceive something. Later, the browser is taken over by scrolling text, then crashes, and it is clear that 0100101110110101.ORG like to create 'ruptures' in communication. In their recent 'self-interview' they say: "our early practice of breaking off and stealing little pieces from sculptures and installations in museums is an example of trying to create similar ruptures as Alexander Brener's spray can attack on the Malevich painting ..." 4* They anticipate that this kind of activity might be seen as 'oldfashioned', but they compare them to the "pseudo-ruptures induced into digital data by Jodi, Heath Bunting and Vuk Cosic... we have to reject their surface hype appeal on the basis of our dislike of the media art hype and the factual Net Art star cult surrounding them."5*

0100101110110101.ORG are very bothered about the idea of being assimilated into 'traditional art' organisations. They are offended by the media attention towards net art, and they do have a point. Without effective 'ruptures' how will the full extent of potential assimilation be perceived? It's all very nice and cosy this net art thing, it's in museums now ...but assimilation of human life by machine networks is actually HAPPENING.

Not that it's all bad of course. We can experiment with: "new forms of interaction and networking, on the condition that we are willing to leave evidently obsolete practices behind us."6* This is in order to perpetuate the faith. The Net art stars have 'devalued' their own work: "Bunting's and Cosic's resignment from Net Art was intentional and contrived precisely to trivialize their work"7*. 0100101110110101.ORG are the iconoclasts, originally of sculptures, of the browser and now of net art itself. They believe it's something else, something real.

 

1*, 3* art.hacktivism, luther blissett, http://subsol.c3.hu/subsol_2/contributors/01orgform.htm
2*, 6* RHIZOME_RARE /// 0100101110101101.ORG /// life_sharing, PRPGND at 0100101110101101.ORG, 2 Mar 2001
4*, 5*, & 7* RHIZOME_RARE self-interview of 0100101110110101.org, propaganda at 0100101110110101.org, 5 Mar 2001