Blurting In A & L

Answer 2/11

Author: Thomas Dreher  
Posted: 08.11.2002; 00:59:02
Topic: Question 2
Msg #: 601 (in response to 418)
Enclosure:
Prev/Next: 600/602
Reads: 91145

To John and his answer 2/10:
The criticism of self-referentiality of net.art was repeated at the beginnings of a wider, non scientific use of the internet in the midst of the nineties. The early experiments with webness are developpeded further, with the danger of variants of elder forms of presentations instead of a progress of exemplifications of new possibilities of the medium.
Relevant are until today the possibilities of collaboration and the use of the data flow of the net. Here interpenetrations between internal characteristics - the programmed functions - and the external data became relevant. The actual relations between hybrid combinations of media and endless variants of stable uses of media ("art gang") are sketched out in answer 3/7.
You find tactical uses of media in a field between (h)ac(k)tivism and artivism. Criteria like webness are replaced by criteria of strategical values for activistic goals in social and political fields. The actual legislative processes for changing rights for the net in U.S.A. and Europe are one field of activists, examples for non netspecific forms of net activism can be found in fields like migration (f. e. Heath Bunting, Kein Mensch ist illegal, Deportation Class) and the biotechnologies (Critical Art Ensemble).
The tactical use of media presupposes sometimes experiments with new software or new uses of software. If these sources of media for tactical uses are developed by hackers or artists doesn´t matter: No art institution divides these fields of activities in art and non-art. The net architecture allows a deterritorialized data flow. This flow is the presupposition of alternative activities. But this data flow is in danger now because actual legislative and juridical processes tend to fulfill the needs of copyright owners which want a territorialized net with one-way possibilities of control (f. e. the external control of software on our open hard discs): Forget two-way communication, forget copyleft attitudes...become a member of a net variant of the consumer society. But the success of the net was possible because it offers chances for easy collaborations from different places for a fast distribution of new informations for research communities with members in different places and institutions.
If the influences of commerce win than they have misused the early web and transformed it into another web. The relevant question is: Which kind of net activities will be possible in the future? Restrictions of these possibilities imply restrictions of future activism, artivism and net.art. Thomas Dreher (TDreher@onlinehome.de)