Editor Betti Marenko

Deputy editor Leon C6

Art director: Amber Stoddart [email protected]

Translations: Betti Marenko & Gabriela Bettini

Web site: www.c6.org

Contact: [email protected] This book can be purchased online from http://c6.org

POD services and consultany http://openmute.org/

Special thanks to: Simon Worthington and Peter Carty from Mute whose patience and support on this project has made it possible.

The views expressed in ‘DiY Survival’ are not necessarily those of the C6. Anti-Copyright! Reprint freely,in any manner desired,even without naming the source.DiY Survival is published in the Uk by C6 with the kind help of Mute http://www.metamute.com and printed by http://lightning-source.com online digital print on demand (POD) services in the USA and UK.

This project has been supported by the Arts Council of England

This book is dedicated to the memory of Kate Lee.

C6 2005 ISBN: 0-9550664-9-2

CONTENTS 051 032 How to take on a 006 ViSuAL cHaoS – Multi-National with a The Call ‘DiY survival’ vandalism, brandalism Felt Tip Pen and Win & Letter from the & street art THE VACUUM CLEANER editor AMANDA JANIS C6 CHAPTER 2 053 Green to gold, an CHAPTER 1 DIY HOW TO alternative funding DIY THEORY strategy 036 GORDON BROWN 012 How to create a high bandwidth wireless Of Avant Gardes node… Consume-style 056 and Tail Ends RUTH CATLOW How to Arts Council MARCUS VERHAGEN S.ALBERT & LEON C6 038 015 There are those who 060 CCTV Nuts Manifesto: build and those who Press Office Handbook Big Brother as Our dismantle, notes on You are the Media Neighbor Trashware BLUELOOP YOUNGSOOK CHOI HACKLAB_PG 063 016 042 Cardboard Buddies The Work of Artists Sms to string: CHRIS LIN, INTERNATIONAL in a Databased Society: Turn text messages UNION OF FREE THINKERS net.art as on-line to a usable format activism BEN C6 RICARDO MIRANDA ZUÑIGA 069 Baci Di Dama: a recipe 045 NONNA PAPERA 025 Anti mobile Shopdropping. TSILA HASSINE Creating subversion 070 in the supermarket How to be a GABOR PAPP & RICARDO 046 Citizen Reporter CONTRERAS Action pishing JOANNA CALLAGHAN LEONARDO RAMOS 027 071 Linkania - The 048 Guidebook to find hyperconnected DiY Television infinitely small things THE INSTITUTE FOR INFINITELY multitude SLAVINA FEAT CTRL C + CTRL V HERNANI DIMANTAS SMALL THINGS

004 // DiY INTRODUCTION // DiY SURVIVAL CHAPTER 3 DIY CASE STUDIES 076 Collaboration as practice GILLIAN MCIVER 079 Bootleg art ERIC DOERINGER 080 The 8th sister MOTHERBOARD 085 How to make a mobile media lab SI VINNIE 086 Loca: grass-roots, pervasive surveillance DREW HEMMENT, JOHN EVANS, MIKA RAENTO, THEO HUMPHRIES 089 Truck art: A DiY London gallery space NATHAN DUNNE 091 Media Pop Art – Electronic Art as Satire on Everyday Life ROBERT PRAXMARER 096 DiY survival: Strategies of audience engagement ANNA BANANA 100 Tandem Surfing the Third Wave 5: Randall Packer, Secretary of the US Department of Art & Technology RYAN GRIFFIS 104 There is no subculture only subversion C6

DiY SURVIVAL // DiY INTRODUCTION // 005 The Call ‘DiY SURVIVAL’ (There is no Subculture, only Subversion)

6 invite submissions for a forthcoming publication on Cstrategies,methods and techniques Keywords: community,digital,tactical, of DIY art practices.We are seeking strategic,interactive,intervention,pervasive, innovative,critical and radical approaches collective,fine art sausage machine. to diverse art practice and organization Deadline for submission is 1st September focused on how to produce art unbound 2005.Comments and queries can be sent to by market,commerce,and whitecubes.The [email protected] aim is to produce a guide of tactical means The launch event will be held on the for collective art making. 28th of October at the c6 show ‘SOLD OUT’ We are looking for a wide range of in Cremer street Shoreditch London. perspectives,essays,case studies,artworks We are currently looking at and interviews to articulate and promote approximately 60 page book,A5 black and the idea of self generative cultural events white with limited graphics. and the collective production of art. There will be an initial 500 printed,these Contributions from artists,activists,cultural will be distributed at the event for free. producers,and other related professionals The book’s design ties into a Print On are welcome. Demand format and subsequent prints and C6 wish to keep the possible topics vague purchases through that system wll be enough for interpretation,a starting point charged at cost. may be: Disseminated via the below lists: G Ethos,history and politics of DIY art and G [email protected] culture G [email protected] G Occupation of territories G [email protected] G Culture jamming,guerrilla art practices G [email protected] G Strategies of audience engagement G [email protected] G Tales of endurance,invention and G [email protected] uncompromising passion G Resistance and the creation of communities c6 G Question of authorship/ownership in LONDON collaborative systems

006 // DiY INTRODUCTION // DiY SURVIVAL

LETTER FROM THE EDITOR

This book was published to coincide withthe C6 show SOLD OUT at Cremer Street, Shoreditch, London, October 2005. When we decided to organize a show it was clear that, in line with the standard C6 format of presentation, the gallery event would have to be accompanied by web based work, the usual ephemera of stickers, badges, armbands etc., as well as by some sort of printed material that the public could retain after visiting the exhibition. In the past C6 had produced self-funded zine-like editions collated from members and friends plus occasional contributors. Made in economy of means and in abundance of passion, their format was often dictated by funding constraints.

Recent developments within the printing industry have seen the start of a Print On Demand system (POD). POD allows an edition to be printed at a low cost for individual orders online. Brought to our attention by Mute magazine, this system seemed perfect for the production of a weightier tome at a reasonable cost, on a sliding scale dependent on funds.

At approximately 108 pages this new format in itself demanded a wider contributing circle. Therefore, as the format changed, so the structure of our publication had to undergo a considerable, and unplanned, shift. Rather than the self produced themed xeroxed zine, the new project would have been the result of an open call posted online to several net lists from which it was disseminated widely and randomly.

A call was formulated and sent out at the end of July 2005. We worked motivated by a clear objective, which is also the aim of this book: to offer a fast, immediate, snapshot of the DiY art slash activism field. Needless to say there is nothing definitive about this collection. It is a cross section of a moment, an instant book born out of the curiosity to see which realities, individual and collective, would reply when prompted by keywords such as tactical and DiY art. Another motivating factor was to operate a transferal of media, to disseminate on paper that which until this moment had been (mostly) available to an internet- savvy audience.

The replies we received from all over the world were enthusiastic. Immersed in a stream of proposals we realised that our task was to let chance take over. This adherence to a

008 // DiY INTRODUCTION // DiY SURVIVAL philosophy of casual encounters is totally in keeping with C6 practice.

C6 have been a self funded collective, involved with the invention of gallery spaces and with reaching potential audiences where there were none. Therefore, it seemed fitting that this book would be concerned with the art of DiY, DiY art practices, general subversion and forms of intelligent sabotage of the cultural markets. Under the umbrella of DiY we have found a wide span of practices, actions, events, enterprises and issues, which by definition have one main thing in common: they all lack institutional acknowledgment. They therefore rely on an unexpected use of resources, personal and community endeavours, smart use of creativity, oblique thinking and quick-paced solutions. As everybody knows, scarcity of institutional support often affects funding revenue. This, in turn, cannot but reflect upon the art enterprise in question. In other words, the lack of funding is a media in itself, insofar as it dictates the dynamics and the timing of the process of creation, the chosen media and how this engages the audience. DiY opens up new possibilities of connections - artistic, cultural, personal and social, that would remain otherwise unexplored. DiY practice is therefore a political one.

This book delivers a mix of Theory, Case Studies and “How To...” in keeping with the tone and practice of C6. We were interested in true DiY practices, such as step by step instructions manuals of kind, promoting collective awareness, circulating practical and subversive knowledge and disseminating real know-hows, against the egotrip of The Artist and cultural markets.

It may even make you smile.

DiY SURVIVAL // DiY INTRODUCTION // 009

>>012 Of Avant Gardes and Tail Ends Marcus Verhagen >>015 CCTV Nuts Manifesto: Big Brother as Our Neighbor Youngsook Choi >>016 The Work of Artists in a Databased Society: net.art as on-line activism Ricardo Miranda Zuñiga >>025 Shopdropping – Creating subversion in the supermarket Gabor Papp & Ricardo Contreras >>027 Linkania – The hyperconnected multitude Hernani Dimantas >>32 ViSuAL cHaoS – vandalism,brandalism & street art Amanda Janis

DiY SURVIVAL // DiY THEORY // 011 Of Avant Gardes and Tail Ends

t has often and convincingly been inventive,often tortured and self-destructive argued that the avant garde emerged in figure – an heir to the troubled genius of the Ithe mid-19th century as a result of the Romantics.And they countered the collapse of traditional forms of patronage. hierarchical organisation of the academy With the decline of the church,state and with bohemian solidarity; the avant garde aristocracy as patrons of the arts,artists had was not just a cultural platform,it was also – to compete on the open market.In other at times – a community of like-minded words,art became a commercial enterprise artists (and writers,musicians,etc.),who had like any other,the artist responding to the their own modes of dress,their preferred variable tastes and economic fortunes of an neighbourhoods and meeting places,their unknown clientele.The avant garde was a chosen periodicals and galleries. response to this new situation.It was an But their programme was in many ways expression of growing economic insecurity problematic,even contradictory.For one and a revolt against the dictates of the thing,nineteenth-century avant gardes often market.From the start,then,the avant garde combined radicalism with elitism; their was a political venture as much as an rejection of academic or official culture artistic one.From the time of Baudelaire was founded not only on a radical and Courbet,the avant-gardist generally assessment of the socio-economic order identified his economic interests with those but also on a dislike of cultural productions of the working classes.He rebelled against that they considered timid,retrograde or academic practices on the understanding facile,that is to say,on an aristocratic that academic culture derived its authority disdain for the middle-class values that they from the prevailing socio-political order and saw as underwriting academic production. that artistic subversions carried a political Next,the avant-gardist ethos of continual charge.Courbet,Baudelaire,Daumier, innovation inevitably shaded into a Flaubert: these and other figures did pose a vindication of progress as artists upheld threat.Their activities were in some cases novelty as a value in and of itself and critics monitored by the police and their work was began to see the history of art as the occasionally censored or proscribed.Some repeated displacement of one avant-gardist were exiled,others imprisoned.They used creed by another.This development is shock tactics and they shocked. disturbing for two related reasons; first Nineteenth-century avant-gardists because it was predicated on a reductive countered the academic emphasis on view of history as a succession of upheavals tradition and craft with an insistence on and second because it drew on and lent originality,presenting the artists not as the credence to the ideology of progress,that is possessor of specific manual and to say,the modern conflation of intellectual skills but as a spontaneous, technological change with socio-cultural

012 // DiY THEORY // DiY SURVIVAL betterment,surely one of the more dubious fall back on properties inherent to each stories that modern society tells in its medium,on,for example,the flatness, defence.Just as insidiously,the avant-gardist shapes and colours of painting; implicitly,to image of the artists as a tortured genius engage social forms and values was to undermined the avant garde’s own more mirror and be compromised by them.The collective impulses as it rested on the problem with this vision of avant-gardism is nineteenth-century credo of individualism, that it can,with only a slight shift in a credo that had its roots in entrepreneurial emphasis,be used to shore up a much culture and increasingly served to more dubious and self-interested view of glamorise and so excuse the atomising modernism. effects of the economic order. And that is exactly what happened. But for all its contradictions,the mid- Greenberg’s validation of the supposedly nineteenth-century avant garde saw itself as abstract or purely aesthetic qualities of the a locus of socio-cultural criticism,a thorn in medium gave other critics and curators the side of the cultural establishment and a licence to see in mid-twentieth-century force for political renewal.This notion of American work a radical expressive avant-gardism might be termed “critical”. freedom and to present such freedom as During the second half of the nineteenth symptomatic of the personal liberties century,another conception of avant- afforded by the American way of life.The gardism emerged,one that might be called virtuous withdrawal of Greenberg became “hermetic”; it is most clearly reflected in fin- the American triumphalism of Alfred Barr, de-siècle tendencies such as Symbolism. Irving Sandler and company,and the The hermetic avant-garde saw its hermetic avant garde become (what you marginalisation not as a motive for could call) the “classical”avant garde. A THORN IN THE SIDE OF THE This is the central problem.Whether critical or hermetic,the avant CULTURAL ESTABLISHMENT AND A garde defines itself as apart from FORCE FOR POLITICAL RENEWAL and ideologically at odds with a resistance but as a beneficial development. culture that has a phenomenal capacity for Its adherents argued for a virtuous absorbing and neutralising dissidence.Hip withdrawal from ordinary society,for an art hop,thrift-shop fashions,graffiti,piercing: that avoided the compromises and these and countless other sub-cultural materialism of social contention and practices have passed seamlessly into the instead concerned itself exclusively with mainstream,into the museum or aesthetic issues.They believed that art department store.And so it is with the more should abide by its own internal laws and rarefied subversions of the avant garde.Art that the artist should adopt a social posture that refuses or openly challenges given of monk-like apartness and abstinence.Of social forms is soon commodified and course,the idea that the aesthetic and the made to buttress those forms after all.Works social are distinct orders,that aesthetic by Manet adorn chocolate boxes,tableware properties are without broader experiential is fashioned after paintings by Mondrian, connotations,seems difficult to defend,but Barbara Kruger’s mock-advertisements are it proved compelling not just in the late used,tongue in cheek,as the models for real nineteenth century but well into the advertisements.Mass culture takes avant- twentieth.So for example Clement gardist work out of context and reduces it to Greenberg,whose writings still cast a long a look or style,turning the radical into shadow over art criticism today,wrote in radical chic. 1939 that the task of the avant garde was “to Plainly,artists today have less keep culture moving in the midst of manoeuvring space than the avant gardes of ideological confusion and violence.”To the nineteenth century; their subversions are Greenberg,the only way of maintaining a more muted,more circuitous,more vital culture in a decaying society was to provisional.The proud transgressions of >>

DiY SURVIVAL // DiY THEORY // 013 a Courbet or a Daumier are just not feasible culture,then,has not only replicated but any more.The cultural certainties that they often appropriated and redirected many of tried to undermine no longer carry the tools of the avant garde. conviction and the current order of society And today’s avant garde – if the term can rests on practices that are too adaptable and still be used at all – no longer presents a dispersed to be tackled in the same way. united front.Capitalism has brought about They contested the institutions of official the gradual atomisation of integrated culture – the Salon,the Academy and the communities,from the guild and the Ecole des Beaux-Arts.Today official culture neighbourhood to the extended family,and is not an instrument of centralised control the avant garde has undergone a similar but an epiphenomenon of commercial process.It is no longer a community but at culture.In a world saturated with images,in best a vague constellation of artists,engaged a world in which reality is commodified and not in a concerted dialogue with official served up as an anaesthetic,railing against culture but in a variety of non-synchronised, official culture is only marginally useful. non-cumulative encounters with the more Mass culture poses a much more serious fluid and diffuse phenomenon of mass threat than the cultural establishment.The culture.This change has certain benefits: it Hollywood film,the magazine advertisement has opened the doors of the avant garde to or hit single: these constitute a more once-excluded groups,to post-colonial powerful cultural force than the concert hall artists,gays and feminists.But it is also or the museum,they more faithfully deeply disempowering.And of course it represent the dominant values of the day shows that the avant garde is unwittingly and they are better suited to co-opting accommodating itself to the pluralism of the avant-gardist work; after all,commodification free market. is more effective than canonisation. If there is a way forward for the avant And it is worth emphasising that mass garde today,it lies in what Fredric Jameson culture has a huge appetite for avant-gardist has called “homeopathic”strategies,that is subversion.Marginality has become a to say,in efforts to examine and reproduce prized consumer item,transgression sells, mass cultural phenomena in the hope that shock has become a highly marketable their internal workings,their means and effect.The point here is not just that mass objectives,will begin to show through.There culture regularly adopts avant-gardist motifs are a number of artists today who work in and strategies,but that it has so thoroughly the idiom of mass culture only to chip away colonised certain areas of avant-gardist at it,to defamiliarise and historicise it,to practice that they are no longer available to show that the dominant culture serves the the avant garde itself.Two examples come interests not of society but of a particular to mind.First,utopian imagery,once portion of it and that that culture is not the conceived by a Signac or a Léger as a force necessary culture of our time.Homeopathic for social renewal,is now the preserve of works are more difficult for mainstream Benetton and Disney.How often are culture to appropriate because they are utopian visions offered without irony in already in some sense a part of it,because contemporary art? Second,novelty was they speak ostensibly the same language. once conceived as a means of upsetting a They are like parasites that are mistaken for hidebound establishment; today it is the ordinary cells by the immune system of the guiding principle of the fashion industry social body; they can get on with their and,for that matter,of all commercial critical,quietly emancipating work largely ventures that respond to the saturation of undisturbed.At a time when the grand old markets through the creation of new subversions of the nineteenth century are ones.To the avant garde today,novelty is not coming to seem almost quaint,such tactics so much an offensive tool as a desperate are surely more effective. I defensive measure designed to forestall the accelerating process of co-option.Mass © Marcus Verhagen, LONDON, UK

014 // DiY THEORY // DiY SURVIVAL CCTV NUTS MANIFESTO: Big Brother as Our Neighbor CCTV DIY SPIRIT While we ignore the camera or pretend not ritain is the most watched nation in to be conscious of it,Big Brother is enjoying the world with more than 4 million our naïve signal of that “I am not a criminal,I B surveillance cameras at the am a decent citizen.”Do not be scared of moment,2004.Especially in London,you facing him and his haughty eyes.With your have up to 300 chances to be captured by great consciousness,make his power very CCTV camera in a day.With this naked.Most of all,we need to give an extraordinary phenomenon,there has been instruction to Big Brother about what kind of all the time an argument between public manner he should carry for being more security and human liberty. friendly neighbor.Help him with your Beside this perennial argument,we creativity by inventing new warning messages noticed that most people perceive sporadic for your town and special place.Teach him CCTV installations as only “power”,or even how a sense of humor is important to our flat as a powerful “being”while calling it “Big daily life with your funny version of CCTV-in- Brother.”But most people easily forget who Operation messages.Instead of giving a tense, have given the power to Big Brother: your new message will make people share themselves-public commitment.Big Brother and laugh with it. should not superimpose us because we are the ones accepting him and giving the GLORIFY WARHOL’S PROPHECY power to him.Big Brother needs to change We can go even further with the Andy his attitude in this view. Warhol’s inspiration.Once ever-fame-thirsty artist,Andy Warhol,claimed that everyone BIG BROTHER AS OUR NEIGHBOR would be famous at lest fifteen minutes in We have decided to live with Big Brother the future.Be honest that we are greedy to because we do not have a choice not to. be famous,and notice that we have got Yes,we accept Big Brother as our neighbor. massive screens in our town.They will be But we do not see that this neighbor has an never turned off.24-hour reality TV shows go appropriate attitude; he is arrogant, on in this whole wicked town.You do not authoritarian and boring,and this attitude have a choice not to be a star.Take your right turns most of us his enemy because we are post.Don’t be shy.Expose yourself everyday treated as potential criminals.It’s not just as much as you can just like managing your because his relatively higher posture,but his own silent TV channel.Articulate this warning signs,mostly rigid and apathetic.As surveillance media as the gate of our long as Big Brother resides in our town,he public fame. I should shape up himself! by Youngsook Choi, UK www.cctvnuts.net

DiY SURVIVAL // DiY THEORY // 015 The Work of Artists in a Databased Society: net.art as on-line activism

applications,amongst them electronic mail, ABSTRACT 2 Over the last ten years,the Internet has and the world wide web. The individual embedded itself in the daily lives of a vast was able to interface with an enlarged number of people. As a new public,and a new dialogical space telecommunication technology,it allows the emerged. common individual to engage in a Given the numerous forms of exchange cybernetic system that is globally possible via the Internet,on-line activity networked.Today,however,a race goes on to parallels Nancy Faser’s re-articulation of establish the social dynamics of the Internet Jürgen Habermas’s public sphere as put as a public arena. Will cyberspace become forth in his 1962 book, The Structural a highly monitored and regionalized Transformation of the Public Sphere. control space or will the Internet retain its Habermas presents the public sphere as a radical potential for independent bourgeois arena for exchange where endeavors and ideological exchange? The citizens may discuss common affairs,a political implications of the Internet as a model based in the old town hall. In the social network present rich issues for essay,“Rethinking the Public Sphere”(1993), creative and critical cultural production. Nancy Fraser updates and expands the The nature of the Internet as a network of Habermasian public sphere beyond connected computers to exchange institutionalized public forums to include information engenders a sense of liberty the market place and the domestic space and freedom in the individual. Early in its (specifically in relation to domestic development,mainframe teams established violence). Whereas,Habermas places host-to-host protocols such as Telnet and market relations and domestic issues within File Transfer Protocol (FTP) that the private sector, Fraser argues that,in decentralized computer networking doing so,these arenas of human interaction between independent users from the main are restricted from “legitimate public 3 frame.1 As the network grew it evolved into contestation.” Fraser’s re-articulation a new,democratic public sphere of expands the public sphere beyond the communication via a globally expansive bourgeois domain to a space that is “open routing system and a vast array of on-line and accessible to all.” As the Internet

016 // DiY THEORY // DiY SURVIVAL becomes increasingly commonplace and surveillance. The questions then arise: how interweaves itself into general daily life in far will police,federal and even corporate such forms as list serves,chat rooms, monitoring of the electronic sphere extend? gaming communities,a host of multi-user How will we ever know its parameters? Is it domains it springs to life a multiplicity of a matter of trust or open systems or publics by Fraser’s definition. regulatory institutions? Where and how will Each public sphere is part of a civil the lines of personal and civil rights be domain that is governed by a set of laws drawn in a networked society? and policies. Therefore,just as any civil, The questions surrounding on-line public space,the Internet must have its own privacy are complex and encompass a set of policies that mirror those of our wide number of issues such as ownership, physical space. Amongst the on-line which in itself introduces a chain of other policies and regulations currently being questions. It is impossible to present an established are decisions pertaining to answer to these involved questions as they appropriate policing and monitoring of will continue to arise. However,I do cyber space,and determining the contend that unless non-governing boundaries of privacy in a networked independent groups protect the Internet as society. a space for independent production, The very nature of the Internet presents a dissemination and open discourse,the highly efficient means of surveillance,as a radical potential of the Internet will be networked electronic system that interfaces consumed,largely through its very nature. logical indexing machines,the computer. Therefore,if there exists today an artist The ability to digitize nearly all types of avant-garde,looking to merge art with daily records in conjunction with the computer’s social life,it is the growing number of indexing and networking efficiency has socially active artist engaged in cyber established the database as the most resistance as a critical practice in which the advanced archival utility. network and the database represent tools Use of such emergent technologies has for engagement. been a long time goal by policing I will present two primary forms of authorities. In the essay “The Body and the resistance as executed through three artist Archive,”Allan Sekula traces in detail the projects. First,TO INFORM: Brooke Singer use of photography to document,categorize exposes her own electronic data to and archive the human body by early enlighten a general public of one’s freely criminology. As the body became a subject available data. Second,TO SUBVERT:iSEE,a of the archive through photography,the collaborative project between the Institute fundamental problem of volume became for Applied Autonomy and the Surveillance apparent:“The early promise of Camera Players makes use of the database photography had faded in the face of a structure to subvert the monitoring of the massive and chaotic archive of images.” The public sphere. Third,TO EXTEND THE DATA electronic database’s vast storage SPACE INTO THE PHYSICAL PUBLIC capabilities solve the problem of volume. SPHERE:The Public Broadcast Cart,Ricardo Hence,the photograph once used to Miranda Zuñiga transforms a shopping cart document the body and help establish into a radio broadcast vehicle for identity is replaced by data. And as various pedestrian use that broadcasts to an online types of data such as our home address,our radio station,and an FM frequency. shopping patterns,our level of institutionalized education,our THE ELECTRONIC STRUCTURE, A NEW employment and income,for example,are PUBLIC ARCHIVE monitored and stored data becomes a basis It is of the utmost importance to recognize of identity. The electronic network used to that the Internet is not an isolated transfer data becomes a tool of electronic sphere,but that it is used to investigation due to its potential for statistically analyze society. By tracking >>

DiY SURVIVAL // DiY THEORY // 017 the movements of the individual, choice award or what? In the push to determining one’s economic status, digitize everything we are asking for our identifying one’s personal tastes,the movements and choices to be put under Internet is used as a corporate tool to the microscope. In the end the data design popular culture and even gathered will only be used to manipulate predetermine the physical geographic movements and desires. That is why it is locations of subcultures to target…ever collected and stored in the first place.”4 wonder why you only see malt liquor ads in The corporate data warehouse contains a poor and minority neighborhoods? The wide variety of data used for decision Internet has corporeal effects (yes,even support and analytical processing. more so than television). The network Relational database systems integrate increasingly interweaves the virtual and workers and disparate pieces of real. Unlike most of its predecessors, information. For example,many computer technology for processing operational systems used in production to information succeeds in part because of its run day-to-day business operations of a ability to store,transmit,and process a very company may dynamically load new data wide range of information types. And as into the warehouse in batch mode on a information becomes increasingly dynamic periodic basis via a network direct path due to new operating systems,software and option. database languages designed to interface In addition to the data a company may various applications and already own,it can databases to build INTERNET IS USED purchase data from information warehouses, AS A CORPORATE TOOL external data corporate goals and federal TO DESIGN POPULAR providers,to add to surveillance become CULTURE AND EVEN its warehouse. A increasingly efficient. The company may buy 1 PREDETERMINE THE new Oracle 8 is even information about capable of adding PHYSICAL GEOGRAPHIC socioeconomic multimedia data to its LOCATIONS OF demographics to warehouse,presenting new SUBCULTURES TO more closely monitor and possibilities to the photo TARGET… target consumers. By archive. adding customer demographic Currently there exists a strong corporate data,selected marketing can be performed, push to get consumers to use the web as a targeting those customers most likely to personal storage bin.As artist Brooke Singer respond to a sales promotion.Demographic points out “our lives are moving more and data can be used to help choose a location more into the digital prompted by new to place a new retail store. The data technologies and the promise they hold or warehouse facilitates highly sophisticated are told to hold which enable corporate analysis,reporting,on-line analytical and federal surveillance. For instance it processing and data mining. looks like the music we listen to whether at Data mining is part of the knowledge work,home or in the car even will be discovery process. By using statistical accessed via the web in some way. What techniques,vast quantities of data can be does this mean that some corporate transformed into useful information. Data is provider will most likely be able to know like the raw material extracted from what music we listen to,when,for how long, traditional mines: when turned into which songs we repeat over and over etc. information,it is like a precious metal. Data Digital TV is a big promise too. Maybe its mining allows business to extract previously vaporware so far but there is a big push for unknown pieces of information from their it,so the programs we watch will be equally warehouse and use it to make important surveyed and analyzed. But it offers hope business decisions.5 of interactive TV…more stuff like people’s The data warehouse has become such a

018 // DiY THEORY // DiY SURVIVAL prominent tool for marketing,that evolution of net.art over the last number of corporations will go to surreptitious lengths years has largely consisted of a movement to acquire more statistics. In January,the away from narrative, in the traditional sense New York Times reported that “thousands of of using the Internet to communicate and Internet users who installed popular exchange real experiences or fictions based software for sharing music and other in reality,toward constructions based in computer files also unwittingly accepted a data – that is working with the new bit- program that tracked their Web surfing based reality that we live with,in habits… The program collects information conjunction with our real space.In other about sites visited over the last two days to words,the move is largely toward better place ads.”6 visualizing and mapping the vast Internet. Of course,data analysis and exchange Brooke Singer’s Self-Portrait (v2.0) or SPV2, extends far beyond commercialism. Have a project launched in October 2001,is part you recently become a client of a multi- of this evolution in net art. state system for electronic financial Derived from the tradition of Western transactions operated by transportation painting,the portrait was once used solely authorities to shorten and economize your by the aristocracy to display an individual’s commute? Be aware,your information is wealth and power. In the mid-nineteenth shared with your auto insurance company, century,the photograph expanded the and you are being tracked. possibilities of portraiture to the petit- Are you a responsible citizen who has bourgeois. In SPV2 Brooke Singer updates registered to vote? Those pesky data the portrait to the information age.In an age providers make use of you voter registration when our data-selves may carry more for profit. In fact,if you have filled out an significance than our real,blood-pumping on-line or on the street questionnaire that and breathing selves,Singer has thoroughly does not state that your privacy will be investigated various databases accessible respected,and “this information will not be on the web to create an on-line application shared,”you have given away perfectly good cum portrait out of her very own data. personal merchandise. SPV2 offers the user a selection of The data self may have much more direct various data,related to the artist,which will load into the browser as a visual collage. consequence upon an individual.In The Electronic Disturbance (autonomedia,1994), Along the top of the pop-up window that the Critical Art Ensemble poses the presents the project,one is offered a row of scenario of one attempting to acquire a categories: DataMine,DataWake,Join Me! bank loan. The person enacts all the and ReadMe.DataMine and DataWake are appropriate social conventions as a loan drop-down menus that list various data applicant to give the impression of packets that will be visualized within the economic security – attire,and formal window.Within DataMine you have a etiquette. However,the “loan officer”is selection of data that Singer generates as primarily concerned with the individuals part of her every day life or is merely part of credit history:“P’s electronic double reveals her environment: Incoming Email,Webcam that s/he has been late on credit payments and Weather.Within DataWake you have a in the past and that s/he has been in a selection of data generated around her by credit dispute with another bank. The loan external entities:Web Search,Clickstream, is denied; end of performance.” Consumer Profile,Voter Registration Information and Singer’s FBI file.As the user makes data selections,the Self-Portrait grabs TO INFORM: data from the chosen source,deposits the REVEALING THE DATA SELF data into a visual representation and It is this data-based identity,this data self displays it to the user.One may layer the that artist Brooke Singer constructs as her various visual depictions to eventually continually evolving self-portrait.The achieve data chaos. The fact that Singer has chosen to >>

DiY SURVIVAL // DiY THEORY // 019 reveal these files,particularly the self Ameritech,and Pacific Bell which became generated files such as the Webcam and the gatekeepers of the principal access Email,points to the delight of many Internet points”(Winston 333). This is an all too participants who choose to reveal their familiar pattern of mass media,a pattern private life to a vast anonymous audience. that has highly limited independent The concept that many people enjoy the production in radio and television,in both attention of a public stage and make use of technologies,the dialogical potential was the Internet for that purpose is not new. But consumed by corporate enterprise (please the juxtaposition of DataMine and view notes for ellabotation).8 DataWake makes explicit the complexity of By publicly revealing her data-self,Singer the Internet as a sphere that we help turns the user into a data-voyeur while compose for our enjoyment,though it may giving the user a glance at the sort of data have regulating and normalizing effects. that exist within the Internet in relation to This dichotomy is not unlike the double each one of us.To further drive this point, system of photographic portraiture as Singer has also included the Join Me! Sekula describes “a system of representation category which allows users to enter one’s capable of functioning both honorifically own name and/or zip code to effect the and repressively.” Photography functions visual representation and give one just a honorifically in that it documents and taste of her/his own data-self.In effect,the memorializes “the ceremonial presentation applied value of Singer’s work is of the bourgeois self,”and repressively in information. The project takes the first step that it entrenches a social hierarchy by of activism – it informs its documenting and defining the other. Both viewer/participant – of just how open one’s the other within western culture itself by history may be for public inspection. documenting the physiognomy of the Although,once viewer enters her/his criminalvii and in Oriental practice by name and zip code the information one documenting the savage and lesser races. gets back is limited to weather and an Have you purchased your credit report image grabbed from Google,the viewer is lately? Are you quite sure that you would rewarded for participating by gaining qualify for a new credit line? Where does access to view past Join Me logs. As Singer your data self put you in the social scale of explains: approval? When entering the logs,you see other’s Singer reminds us that the Internet is an information and its more than weather and increasingly corporate space with such image. There is also potentially birthday icons as the Microsoft Passport Butterfly. In information and descriptions of type, SPV2 the MSN butterfly comes to life and income based on demographics. You are flies out of the browser when one chooses rewarded for participating with this access Incoming Email. It reappears later once the but also you realize that your information email has choked the browser full of email will now be viewable to the next Join Me to sweep away the text to create a new participant. You are now not only a voyeur space for more incoming information.The but also an object of the Internet began its commercial viewing/dissection. Participation usually transformation in 1979,the year the makes you see or feel the benefits,but National Science Foundation (NSF),the hardly ever the consequences.” once proprietors of the Internet agreed to sell part of its new virtual frontier to Compu TO SUBVERT: Serve.“Fifteen years later [Compu Serve] REVERSING SURVEILLANCE claimed 3.2 million users in 120 countries If Singer’s SPV2 presents the first activist and was part owned by Time Warner. The step through awareness and pedagogy,how NSF,finally,in 1995 handed the backbone can art and the electronic network be used and its management over to the private to take the second activist step,action? telecommunication giants Sprint,

020 // DiY THEORY // DiY SURVIVAL Over the last three years the Institute for is as well being used practically,as users are Applied Autonomy (IAA) has been mapping routs,zooming into the map and searching for tools that turn the camera printing the path of least surveillance. upon the authoritarian figures that impose In contrast to Singer’s SPV2 which surveillance onto the corporeal public depends upon the dynamic data existing in sphere. IAA “an organization concerned networked databases to stir questions of on- with individual and collective self- line privacy in its viewer/user,iSEE tackles determination”asks itself,“How can we the issue of optical surveillance in “real” monitor surveillance?” Most recently, space. When asked which form of Germany’s ZKM,Center for Art and Media, monitoring has the greatest significance offered IAA the opportunity – funding and today,IAA responded that public optical a deadline – to produce the poject iSEE,as surveillance will be electronically part of the exhibition titled CTRL [SPACE], networked.Although currently most an exhibition that uses Jeremy Bentham’s surveillance cameras are single channel, conception of the Panopticon as a means new applications are being designed to of curatorial departure.4 interface surveillance camera Once the exhibit was set in place IAA documentation with various network 11 approached the New York Surveillance databases. “CCTV is evolving and Camera Players (SCP) to continues to be developed by collaborate by permitting BEYOND FACE corporate and IAA to make use of the RECOGNITION, WE HAVE university research SCP’s mapping of all closed through face SEEN SOFTWARE THAT 12 circuit television cameras recognition. Beyond STUDIES HUMAN face recognition,we (CCTV) in the Manhattan GESTURES AND ACTIVITY borough. A couple of have seen software years ago the SCP had a TO FIGURE OUT WHAT that studies human team of people document ONE IS DOING. IF THE gestures and activity all CCTV surveillance SOFTWARE INTERPRETS to figure out what one cameras in the streets of ONE’S GESTURES AS is doing. If the Manhattan. SUSPICIOUS, WELL YOU software interprets Using the data provided by MAY BE PICKED UP one’s gestures as the Surveillance Camera Players,the IAA suspicious,well you may constructed iSee,“a web-based application be picked up.” Hence,these seemingly charting the locations of closed-circuit disparate forms of surveillance on-line television (CCTV) surveillance cameras in versus physical public space are not distinct urban environments.With iSEE,users can issues,but rather will lead to enhanced find routes that avoid these cameras – paths surveillance of an enlarged public sphere – of least surveillance – allowing them to physical and virtual. To IAA physical and walk around their cities without fear of virtual surveillance represent a continuum being ‘caught on tape’ by unregulated toward a surveillance society,under the security monitors.”10 Granted that this data is guise of national security,the fight against now outdated and from the onset crime,and antiterrorism. contained an unknown margin of error,the The subtitle of iSEE is “v.911:‘Now more collaboration does not take away from its than ever’”and the phrase “Now more than symbolic,pedagogical and potential. ever”is in direct protest to the USA Patriot iSEE is composed of both an on-line Act,the anti-terrorism measure signed by mapping application and an essay the Bush administration following the discussing the public use of CCTV events of September 11th,2001. The law surveillance cameras. Although iSEE is strongly sets back the U.S.citizen’s ability to primarily a pedagogical discourse and a protect individual liberty,particularly for symbolic gesture engaging a wide audience immigrant residents and citizens. Amongst about CCTV,it appears that the application the various provisions set by the new law is a strong reduction of judicial >>

DiY SURVIVAL // DiY THEORY // 021 supervision of federal telephone and which runs through the whole social body, Internet surveillance by law enforcement much more than as a negative instance authorities. And it expands the ability of the whose function is repression. government to conduct secret searches, The IAA will do its part in keeping the including on-line investigation and discourse alive as there are plans to further monitoring. develop iSEE which is only one part of a On January 4th,the New York Times much larger project. IAA would like to reported the first case directly influenced make greater practical use of iSEE data in by the USA Patriot Act in which a federal real time protest,so that marching activists judge in Newark,New Jersey ruled that may inform one another of police locations evidence surreptitiously gathered by the FBI via the customized mapping application on about Nicodemo S.Scarfo’s reputed loan handhelds. Such use would avoid potential shark operation can be presented in a trial disruption of protest. IAA would also like to later this year. map CCTV surveillance camera use in U.S. District Judge Nicholas Politan said other cities such as London,and Seattle,two last week that it was perfectly acceptable cities where surveillance cameras are wide for FBI agents armed with a court order to spread across the public sphere. Lastly,IAA sneak into Scarfo’s office,plant a keystroke plans to develop a handheld kit with GPS sniffer in his PC and monitor its receivers that allow operatives anywhere to output…Late last year,news leaked about document a CCTV camera when spotted by an FBI project code-named “Magic Lantern” wirelessly feeding the data to a remote that would install surveillance software database. Therefore the documentation remotely using well-known backdoors in and surveillance of public surveillance browsers,e-mail clients and operating would be entirely decentralized. systems… The flap started last week,when The IAA looks to subvert corporate and news reports began to appear about an FBI governmental use of the Internet as a project code-named “Magic Lantern”[that] mechanism of social analysis and reportedly works by masquerading as an surveillance by turning it into a tool to innocent e-mail attachment that will insert make the actions of public protest for self- FBI spyware inside your computer.13 determination more efficient. The judge went on to state that each day, advanced computer technologies and the TO EXTEND THE DATA SPACE INTO increased accessibility to the Internet THE PHYSICAL PUBLIC SPHERE means criminal behavior is becoming more Public Broadcast Cart is a shopping cart sophisticated and complex....As a result of outfitted with a dynamic microphone,a this surge in so-called ‘cyber crime,’law mixer,an amplifier,six speakers,a miniFM enforcement’s ability to vigorously pursue transmitter and a laptop with a wireless such rogues cannot be hindered where all card.The audio captured by the constitutional limitations are scrupulously microphone on the cart is fed through the observed… mixer to three different broadcast sources. The position of the judge and the work of The mixer simultaneously feeds the audio: the Institute for Applied Autonomy present G to the amplifier that powers the six a social dialogue on authoritative power speakers mounted on the cart that illustrates Michel Foucault’s observation G to an FM transmitter transmitting to an on power as a dynamic force: FM frequency What makes power hold good,what G to the laptop that sends the audio to the makes it accepted,is simply the fact that it thing.net’s server from which the audio is doesn’t only weigh on us as a force that broadcast on line at http://radio.thing.net says no,but that it traverses and produces The Public Broadcast Cart is designed to things,it induces pleasure,forms enable any pedestrian to become an active knowledge,produces discourse. It needs to producer of a radio broadcast.The cart be considered as a productive network

022 // DiY THEORY // DiY SURVIVAL reverses the usual role of the public from Internet indeed represents a dialogical audience to producer of a radio broadcast vehicle more so than any other media. and online content - such a vehicle for However if we allow corporate public use and radio subterfuge may be surveillance and federal policies allowing constructed by individuals with little greater monitoring of cyber space the electronics know-how and a very low Internet’s dialogical potential will be budget. consumed by a decentralized panopticon. As U.S.Administrations and the FCC seek The public sphere no longer only implies to hand over our media resources to the the embodied street space,as it now wealthiest corporate media entities looking encompasses the virtual space of the to monopolize the media from print to Internet. Hence,new forms of cultural radio to television,it is up to the production that make use of emerging independent producers to subvert big technologies must assimilate and subvert money domination of our culture. the corporate and governmental means of documenting,indexing,and monitoring the public domain to enact contestation. THE INTERNET AS A SUSTAINED Brooke Singer’s SPV2 and the Institute for DIALOGICAL SPACE THROUGH Applied Autonomy’s iSEE,present two CULTURAL PRODUCTION alternative uses of the Internet and the The movement to merge art with daily Database as tools that provoke and enable social life is the legacy of the revolutionary activism through independent production avant-garde,a legacy that is bound to the and dissemination. I rise of technological invention in modern Brooke Singer’s Self-Portrait (v2.0) is society. Print,photography,the telephone, available at: http://www.bsing.net/ radio,film,video,and the Internet have each And use Institute for Applied Autonomy’s awakened a vision of artistic production iSEE at:http://www.appliedautonomy.com/ embedded in the broad social fabric of the public arena. The tendencies of the By Ricardo Miranda Zuñiga, technologically driven avant-garde have NICARAGUA, SAN FRANCISCO. been socialist – aiming to debunk the art object from its pedestal through mass REFERENCES production and perhaps more importantly to free electronic media into a dialogical 1 Brian Winston documents the early history of the Internet in his book Media Technology and Society,MIT public sphere. press,1999 Hans Magnus Enzenberger in his 1974 2 Mark Poster elaborates upon “CyberDemocracy”as a essay/manifesto,“Constituents of a Theory of space where “individuals construct their identities…a 14 ‘democratization’ of subject constitution because the the Media” presents the following table to acts of discourse are not limited to one-way address and summarize the social dichotomy of the not constrained by the gender and ethnic traces media: inscribed in face-to-face communications.” What’s the Matter with the Internet? Poster,University of Minnesota If we apply Enzensberger’s set of Press,2001,pg.184 emancipatory objectives to the Internet,the 3 Nancy Fraser presents the concept of “public arenas of citizen discourse and association”in >>

REPRESSIVE USE OF MEDIA EMANCIPATORY USE OF MEDIA Centrally controlled program Decentralized program One transmitter, many receivers Each receiver a potential transmitter Immobilization of isolated individuals Mobilization of the masses Passive consumer behavior Interaction of those involved, feedback Depoliticization A political learning process Production by specialists Collective production Control by property owners or bureaucracy Social control by self-organization

DiY SURVIVAL // DiY THEORY // 023 explaining Jurgen Habermas’s theoretical definition of the public sphere in her essay,“Rethinking the Public Sphere A Contribution to the Critique of Actually Existing Democracy”included in The Phantom Public Sphere, edited by Bruce Robbings,University of Minnesota Press, 1993. 4 Email interview with Brooke Singer. 5 Much of this description is based the use and structure of Oracle 8i as presented in Fundamentals Database Systems and Oracle 8i by Ramez Elmasri Navathe Shamkant V.Navathe,Addison Wesley Longman,Inc.1999. 6 “Music Software Users Installed Tracking Program Unknowingly”by The Associated Press,NY Times,January 5,2002 broadcast,such idealization of cable and video has been 7 Sekula pg.347:“…this archive of images of the body lies marginalized to the extent of public access television in the fact that by the mid-nineteenth century a single stations (that now run on badly outdated equipment due hermeneutic paradigm had gained widespread prestige. to the rise of corporate cable enterprise). The This paradigm had two tightly entwined branches, distribution of independent video productions has as physiognomy and phrenology. Both shared the belief well been marginalized to small video banks that must that the surface of the body,and especially the face and overprice their collections or independent video rental head,bore the outward signs of inner character.” Where stores that struggle to survive against the Blockbuster you may have once been displaced by your image,you monopoly. may now be displaced by your data. 9 “In its exploration of the historicity of surveillant 8 In radio Bertolt Brecht’s suggestion of its use for dialogue practices in their relationship to changing logics of was ignored:“radio is one-sided when it should be two-. representation,CTRL [SPACE] will offer both a state of It is purely an apparatus for distribution,for mete sharing the art survey of the full range of panopticism —in out. So here is a positive suggestion: Change the architecture,digital culture,video,painting,photography, apparatus over from distribution to communication. The conceptual art,cinema,installation work,television, radio would be the finest possible communication robotics and satellite imaging— and a largely unknown apparatus in public life,a vast network of pipes.”– Brecht history of the various attempts to critically and creatively “The Radio as an Apparatus of Communication”, appropriate,refunction,expose and undermine these Radiotext(e),Semiotext(e) #16 (Volume VI,Issue 1),pg. logics.”– ZKM web site,http://on1.zkm.de/zkm/e/ 15,1993. 10 from the IAA web site, And in the world of television the 1960s heralded the http://www.appliedautonomy.com/,currently featureing first consumer video equipment introduced by Sony, iSEE media artists and activists immediately sprung upon it. 11 However current surveillance cameras melded with face- Portable video presented immediacy rare in network recognition systems don’t appear to pose much of a television. In the pages of Radical Software and in the threat: alternative movement’s 1971 manifesto,“Guerrilla “Operator logs obtained by the ACLU show that the Television,”written by Michael Shamberg and Raindance, system not only has not produced a single arrest,but it they outlined their plan to decentralize television so that also has not resulted in the correct identification of a the medium could be made by as well as for the people. single person from the department’s photo database on Adopting a sharply critical relationship to broadcast the sidewalks of Tampa… Tampa police detective ‘fessed television,they determined to use video to create an up that the system was such a waste of time that cops alternative to the aesthetically bankrupt and stopped using it.”Reported by Declan McCullagh,“Face commercially corrupt broadcast medium. – Boyle,D. Recognition Needs a Lift,”wired.com Jan.5,2002 1990 “A Brief History of American Documentary Video,” 12 “Facial recognition has been in development for essay published in Illuminating Video:An Essential Guide decades,but recent advances in computer power and to Video Art,edited by Doug Hall and Sally Jo Fifer, software have made the systems less expensive and more Aperture in association with the Bay Area Video accurate — though just how accurate remains a subject Coalition,p.55 of debate. Due to the expense of video production and Most systems work by taking pictures of faces, comparing them to a template and making dozens of measurements of each one,including factors like the distance between the eyes… The mathematical description of those features is stored in a database,to be compared with other.”Reported by John Schwartz in “New Side to Face-Recognition Technology: Identifying Victims”NY Times,January 15,2002 13 “Judge OKs FBI Keyboard Sniffing”by Declan McCullagh, NY Times January 4,2002 14 Originally published in 1974 in “The New Left Review,”the essay is included in Electronic Culture,edited by Timothy Druckery,Aperture,1996.

024 // DiY THEORY // DiY SURVIVAL Shopdropping Creating subversion in the supermarket

n a society were everything is commodified,art is no exception.In consumers could hear Barbie bellowing I addition,artists’ work can hardly get “Vengeance is mine!”or “Dead men tell no noticed in a gallery setting among the lies”,while the altered Joe said things like general public.How can an artist reach the “Let’s plan our dream wedding!”or “Math lay-men when everyone is engaged in their class is tough.”BLO tried to make a consumerist lifestyle? By conveying their comment on gender stereotyping and the messages using the supermarket shelves. way toys can encourage violent and sexist Shop-dropping is an interventionist art behaviour in children. tactic whereby places of commerce are Some other art pieces,like Packard used similarly to the way in which street art Jenning’s Il Duce Action Figure,openly claims back public space.It is the reverse of force the apparatus of commerce to shoplifting.It takes back and subverts the recognise their alterity by using extreme commercial space for artistic use. imagery and content.The packaging was Shopdropping artists inherit and part of the subversion in itself,the box of understand the situationist strategy of the figure advertised others in the fictional diversion from the ’60s by stealing cultural series,including George W.Bush,Margaret elements from their original sources and re- Thatcher and Wal-Mart founder Sam Walton. routing them for subversive ends.The Finally,the Mussolini figure was placed into Droplift Project – the alliance of 29 audio the store and re-purchased by the artist, collage artists – reversed the Situationists’ while secretly video documenting the definition: instead of exploiting cultural ensuing comical situation. artifacts,they began surreptitiously giving Other artists involve the financial value of them away by sampling and remixing the piece in itself.Zoe Sheehan Saldana sounds of recordings,movies,TV created a secret relationship between mass- commercials,and shopdropping them to produced Wal-Mart clothes and their hand- retail stores.Their act was conceived as a crafted reproductions,which were returned response to archaic copyright laws that to the shop and presumably sold for the criminalise the art of audio collage.By that initial price,while the original clothes were they voiced their protest using media- displayed in a gallery and given the value of activist methods. a commercial artwork.Ryan Watkins- The most well known example of Hughes,a Brooklyn photographer replaced shopdropping is a project by the Barbie the packaging of canned goods with labels Liberation Organization,who swapped the created using his own photographs and voice boxes of 300 G.I.Joe and Teen Talk then placed them back onto grocery store Barbie dolls and covertly placed them back shelves.The original bar codes and price on the toy store shelves in 1989.As a result, tags were left intact,therefore it was possible to purchase the cans before >>

DiY SURVIVAL // DiY THEORY // 025 they had been discovered and removed from the shop.In his latest project,Watkins- Hughes invites everyone to submit all types of works on paper: photographs,drawings or paintings to be used in his next advertising technique.As a matter of fact, shopdropping trip. shopdropped art items are produced in a very small run,a few dozen or SINCE THE ARTWORK IS THE ACTION hundred at most are created.It AND NOT THE OBJECT ITSELF, THE would not make much of a AFTERLIFE OF THE PRODUCT OF difference if the message of the artist is conveyed to a handful of SUBVERSION IS NOT IMPORTANT people only.Furthermore,most Usually it does not matter much to the pieces are removed from the shelves right artist whether their shopdropped product after the first futile purchase attempt or fits to the economic environment of the when a shop assistant notices the product shop and have,or have not,significant she has not seen before.In fact,the most economic consequence.Saldana and important part of the shopdropping act in Watkins-Hughes leave the possibility of order to make the project effective is the purchasing the art object as a supermarket media coverage,which is received largely item,while other artists don’t.One of the by the strategy of dissemination of press reasons of this is that these two artists releases.This gives the artwork the altered or reproduced regular items listed possibility to expand its boundaries in the inventory database of the stores by initiating its life in a shared world of relying upon the legitimate bar codes of the heterogeneous interpretations where it products.Nevertheless,the main goal of the eventually finds new relations with the artist cannot be to sell the product,for society,which is the ultimate aim of every several reasons.Firstly,the price of the artwork in the end.I artwork would be a small amount contributed to the retail store or by Gabor Papp supermarket and not to the artist.Secondly, HUNGARY most interventionist artists emphasise the and Ricardo Contreras gift giving nature of their work.These issues MEXICO lead to the observation that the most www.altzenter.org important aspect of shopdropping is not the product but the act itself.The aim is the action of planting the art piece in an unwelcome retail environment,and to have REFERENCES it discovered by unsuspecting customers. 1 Barbie Liberation Organization (1989),Barbie Liberation, Since the artwork is the action and not http://www.sniggle.net/barbie.php,16 August 2005 the object itself,the afterlife of the product 2 The Droplift Project (2000),http://www.droplift.org,7 September 2005 of subversion is not important,unless it is 3 Marisa Jahn (2005),Shopdropping — Three case studies, orchestrated as an extension of the event Crosswalk 1(2),pp 18, that happens in the private realm of the http://www.zoesheehan.com/press/jahn_shopdropping.pdf 4 Packard Jennings (1998-2000),Wal-Mart project consumer and not in the supermarket.In http://centennialsociety.com/walmart.html,6 September the shopdropping event,corporate stores 2005 are tricked to give away their most 5 Zoe Sheehan Saldana (2003-2004),Wal-Mart clothes http://www.zoesheehan.com/art_work/index.html,17 cherished item,their shelf space.One would August 2005 think that shopdropping is a very effective 6 Ryan Watkins-Hughes (2005),Shopdrop Marketing — Ad jamming at the corner store,Crosswalk 1(2),pp 19, http://www.pipsworks.com/crosswalk/ships/shipimages/c rosswalk1_2.pdf

026 // DiY THEORY // DiY SURVIVAL Linkania – The hyperconected multitude

link therefore I am Wilson 1 To philosophize we have to take part. Likewise,in order to live in the web we have I 3 To think of citizenship in a web society is to “brush up the bits” from the inside increasingly complex.It requires to think at outwards. how chaos and order could fit together in a In the same way in which people,mass concept that puts the individual in or State are words now empty and possession of the civil and political powers excluding,citizenship is a term that of a State. presupposes an outside perspective.Our Individual is now an eroded word.A goal is to enter citizenship.Our idea is to human being cannot be considered as an take part,or “citizenize”.I want,however,to indivisible entity.In a modern society go a little beyond this concept. people are multifaceted and are able to live My reference is linkania.A movement of many lives contained within a single one. self-organization of chaos.Linkania is an Schizophrenia blooms in this digitally- idea.It is an addition in the world of ideas mediated society. and things.Marcelo Estraviz 4 says: Heidegger asks:What is this – ...I'm getting tired of the empty speech philosophy?,and says: about this citizenship.Empty because it We talk about philosophy.Questioning this means almost nothing,but it's pretty to say. way we remain somewhere over philosophy, Citizenship,in its essence,is entailed and this means outside it.However,the point (linked?) to rights and obligations.Instead of of our question is to get inside philosophy,to talking and fully exercising this,of remain there,to submit our behaviour to its discussing,spreading,we talk of the vague laws,that means ,“to philosophize”.The terminology of citizenship. course of our discussion must therefore have The concept of citizenship is being not only a well defined direction,but this emptied.Many activists against mass media direction has to,at the same time,assure to sit at night on their couches and enjoy the us that we are moving in the realm of colourful screen plugged on Rede Globo. philosophy,and not outside and around it. Soap operas full idle lives pass in front of The course of our discussion must therefore their eyes. be of that kind and direction so that what We must aim beyond tactics.Activism philosophy handles touches our must go beyond criticism and constitute responsibility,touches us,exactly in our itself as a thought in action,beginning with being. 2 a deep understanding of linkania and starting from a new model of relations >>

DiY SURVIVAL // DiY THEORY // 027 among people,and between people and a collaboration society a digital ecology technologies. must prevail. Linkania has to do with people.Here I Collaboration demands generosity. mean people in a more encompassing There is no collaboration without form.Through digital technologies we are generosity.Collaboration is not about help. able to perceive feelings that did not exist in Nothing to do with “don't give the fish,teach standard metaphysics.We are able to probe how to fish”.It has to do with common our singularities (and our schizophrenias). interest projects.It is an incentive to search There is a crowd within each of us.Linkania for relevant information.Those who don't creates the bonds for self-organization. “brush up the markets”will not get to Therefore,linkania is opposed to the understand that the world is more Hegelian idea of citizenship.Linkania is collective. immanent.It is connected to people. However,this collective does not destroy Toni Negri gives an interesting insight: the individual 6.We are living in a collective Against all avatars of the transcendence of of individualities.In the web we can perceive the sovereign power (and nominally that of the power of individual publications.The the “sovereign people”),the concept of the publishing of texts and ideas,at low cost,and multitude is one of immanence: a the engagement of people united through revolutionary monster of the non- blogs,bulletin boards,home pages and representable singularities,it begins with the forums mark a difference.The sum of idea that any body is a crowd in itself,and singularities in collaboration shapes the consequently,expression and cooperation.It's collaborative group. in the same manner a class concept,subject Ideas sparkle in this process. of the production and subject to exploration, Conversations are asynchronous and join this being defined as exploration of the people,they create communities that cooperation of singularities,a materialistic overlap,interact,intersect and build dispositive of the multitude can only start themselves. from a prioritary taking of the body and from Internet has already broken the elitism of the struggle against its exploration.5 information.Moreover,it has also In this sense the internet brings novelty.It decentralized fame.Unlike what occurs in allows us to perceive these singularities and mass communication,with internet the to understand how this monstrous world becomes without “heroes”.In the multitude maximize and empower the web, being is being seen.Blogs,the same as debate.It lets us understand that power their publishers,exist to be seen,with no tends to decentralization.The catalysis of celebrities and Olympians,no emitters nor collaboration is a virtual reality. receptors.In cyberspace we are all just Collaboration is a process that wasn't born people. with the computer.It is in people's mouth, In order to live in a network society we rounding the dusty asphalt of the outskirts. must understand this new dynamic.We Linux was born,grew up,ripened and have to perceive ourselves as people in a reaches right now its technological orgasm. process.One of the ideas completely turned To break the logic of “market share" is the on its head by virtuality is identity.Digital apex of pleasure for the hacker resources allow the existence of many communities.But I don't want to restrain “self”,all becoming real.These “selves” myself to Linux.I've been saying that Linux depend on a socially constructed is only the tip of the iceberg in this repertoire. knowledge revolution.The free software communities constitute the model for a SOCIAL NETWORKS possible collaboration society,the What is the novelty of a social network developers that broke the barrier and culture? Fundamentally,there is nothing imposed themselves over the dogmas of the new,we have forever been living immersed industrial era.But software is only a tool.In

028 // DiY THEORY // DiY SURVIVAL in networks.The network is the standard link,to link and to link.: this is the motto of configuration of human beings all along the new world. history. Linkania...is citizenship without cities.It's However,during the last two decades,the un-territorialized.The action is local,but the concept of network has been used as an connection is global.It's the friend's link,the alternative organizing parameter that neighbour's.It's the cue.It's business provide answers to a series of demands for between two companies in different flexibility,connectivity and decentralization continents.It's the help given by your cousin of social activity.With communication and from Madrid by e-mail.It's the discussion interaction technologies,networks begin to flowing in the forum to visit some facilitate contact through distance in real exposition,and the link to the exposition, time.They motivate and maximize that somebody prints and pins on the conversation.They readdress nursery mural.All these are links.It's the text communication to a organized systems by some blogger that makes you think.It's logic able to unite people and institutions the valuable discovery by the jobless who in a decentralized and participative form. visits an infocentre and registers for a Capitalism,albeit dominant,can no government programme that sends him to a longer sustain itself.Its main foundations, job.And it was a hint by a neighbour,he 8 economy,the paradigm of bureaucratic gave the link. ethics and mass culture,are in crisis.The Conversation in the internet is very crisis is a cue that a new order is urgently different from live,face to face interaction. necessary.A re-shaping is mandatory.The At the moment,for instance,thousands of 20th century demands,therefore,structural people,and thousands of Brazilians among changes in power.It is in this scenario that them,are using the blog as a conversation the social networks acquire their and decentralized information tool.One of importance. the more immediate consequences of this Technology catalyzes people's conversation concerns journalism.Why intelligence:“The revolution of information read José Simão? I can read Cora Rónai's technologies acts by reshaping the material blog [http://cora.blogspot.com].Why do I bases of society and by inciting the rise of need to read news about cinema in the informationalism as the material basis of a Folha de S.Paulo? Nemo Nox has already new society”[7].But we cannot ascribe done the critique in burburinho these changes only to technology.The [http://www.burburinho.com].Why wait for R(evolution),including the one promoted the analysis about the planet's situation in by the internet,has nothing to do with the Estadão? NovaE computers.It has to do with people. [http://www.novae.inf.br] does it every Internet makes possible the blooming of week.There are so many alternatives to new social and cultural network know what is happening throughout the movements.It enables the organization of a world that the traditional press is losing,step civil society in new forms of conduct and by step,its power and its place as “opinion the return to human networks after years of shaper”.Taken singularly most of the blogs domination by machines and bureaucracy do not add anything,at least for the networks. unconnected majority.But for those who believe in the making of a reputation,blogs are aggregative,powerful,influential: they TO LINK, TO LINK AND TO LINK are a extraordinary novelty.They exist in the To link for generosity.To link because we agreement between people,in the kindness have interests in common with real people. of a hyperlink.They extrapolate concepts, To link has objectives: recover the lost voice, thoughts,missions,campaigns and disputes. seek for a hope lapse in the digital Paulo Bicarato makes an interesting interlines,to find a more human humanity. analysis on the extent of the blog Linkania is the collaborative evolution.To phenomenon: (...)there are still some analysts that >>

DiY SURVIVAL // DiY THEORY // 029 surprise me with their myopic view: speaking Gentileza (kindness) says: Kindness leads to of blogs,they question the number of kindness.Sharing the concerns and the accesses,for instance,along with other care for others makes us more human. characteristics which have only and Religare is that simple: an act of generosity. exclusive commercial interest.But blogs Religare is happening for us who have don't have any commercial interest,in access to internet.We are “digitally principle.In some cases they can even give included”,we are in bunkers in our cities, origin to some project with commercial we exercise (or not) a pretend citizenship. outcome,but then they cease to be blogs.The We are in the “RE”phase of re-ligare.Poverty personal voice of each one,reverberating was always in the “ligare”.For the poor it through the web,is what characterizes this was the only choice.Among them fraternity effectiveness of the expression liberty.And happened for survival and naturally.That is every one of us has something to say .9 how they stay alive,because they help each I agree with Bicarato,albeit I do not make other.We do not help them because we are this distinction between commercial and disconnected from them,we dehumanized non-commercial.This rancour is outdated.I them.What is lacking then? Time.The time would rather make reference to the for the new generation to grow while the amateur work,by those who love what they poor's children grow connected in their do.Blog has much more to do with lust, schools and neighbourhood associations.In with the urge to protagonize one's own life. the web without hierarchies and Blog is about decentralized conversation. compromises,things will happen 11. And decentralization belongs to the Religare is about a new paradigm,with a process of linkania. non-religious spirituality.The possibility of In spite of all this,the concept of linkania breaking the chains that make us less is not to be confounded with the blogger human. neighbourhood,nor with social softwares. Linkania is not a list of links.Linkania is the THE EDGE IS THE CENTRE. kindness to link.It is the act,the pleasure, During the preparations for the event Midia the love of seeking in collaboration a new Tática Brasil [http://midiatatica.org],which way to produce and to be happy.To was inspired by the Projeto Metáfora understand oneself as a link.Linkania is debates12,we incorporated the idea that the about thehyperconnected multitude.Thus,it edge is the centre 13.On the ground of this is no longer appropriate to consider the city idea,we proposed ways and possibilities for as the space par excellence of sociability low-earning people living at the urban and culture. outskirts to amplify their voices by accessing tele-centres,monitors,and by THE RELIGARE having the support of progressive public Estraviz remarks on the importance of policies whose objective is the creation of religare: necessary infrastructure,that is,the setting While linkania is a word of the future, up of interconnected community centres. religare is a word of the past.It is whence On this ground,even though global access the word religion originated.I like religare is still restricted,we are working for the more.A much more beautiful word because possibility of exercising linkania.To link is it does not imply creeds,rituals or to reach for inclusion. institutions.It does not imply faithful or unfaithful.Fundamentally it implies re- connect-oneself.With life,with the world,with DIGITAL TROPICALISM. the All.And with your neighbour .10 Music,images and texts are being spread in We are eager to live this time of changes. a free manner,and in a quantity never seen We believe in a better world.In the before.Nevertheless,there is a question maximization of connection and in a which remains unanswered: how to create planetary consciousness.Our popular poet the means to reward all this creativity?

030 // DiY THEORY // DiY SURVIVAL We do not have answers,we have ideas.I billboards.Any reader can create and believe that these people,even having reverberate their message in the web.And remuneration as a final goal,are trying to many others are happening right now,while get a firm hold,to step on hard ground. you read these words. They want to be recognized for their Does it seem complex? It is not.Linkania creativity and for the quality of their work. is the expression of the engagement of People are looking in the communities for a people in networks.A generous exchange re-encounter with linkania. of links that catalyzes conversation,incites This process is particularly important in and solidifies the engagement.The web is Brazil.We have an antropophagic tradition made by knots.Knots linked one to another. which is totally coherent with the hacker It is the power of links.To link,to link and to culture,melting elements of different origins be linked.To live,to think,to do.We are in creative products.We are historically facing the future.And in order to maximize peripheric.And the edge is now the centre. our hopes in a better world we have to It lives from “mutirão”,it breaths believe.Believe in the vital illusion of collaboration.[14] Collaboration has always virtuality,which extrapolates reality.Believe been a survival strategy here.Where this in the ludic as existential strategy.For,as country would be without the kindness Oscar Wilde said,“life is too serious a thing between people playing on the same to be taken so seriously.”I misery team,the now called “excluídos”. Excluded from access to the technological by Hernani Dimantas tools that allowed the elites to take hold of BRASIL the cultural and artistic patrimony of www.marketinghacker.com.br humanity and to transform it in private property,to the advantage of a few. But not REFERENCES excluded from the culture of collaboration, creativity and survival. 1 WILSON,Edward,Consilience:The Unity of Knowledge http://www.2think.org/hii/wilson.shtml 2 Heidegger,Martin - What's philosophy http://www.heidegger.hpg.ig.com.br/que_e_isto.htm PEOPLE WANT TO BE HAPPY 3 Hacker reference of code cleaning Digital media make it possible to access 4 ESTRAVIZ,Marcelo,Linkania e Religare - The Linkania “technological”resources of creation, and the Religare production,transformation and circulation http://www.novae.inf.br/estraviz/linkania.html 5 NEGRI,Toni,Pour une définition ontologique de la of knowledge and culture.Communities multitude engaged in linkania projects,such as free http://multitudes.samizdat.net/article.php3?id_article=29 software and free ideas communities,are 6 DIMANTAS,Hernani (2003) ,Marketing Hacker - a revolução dos mercados,Editora Garamond,pag 118-119 growing and ripening.We are testing 7 RUIZ,Osvaldo López,Manuel Castells e a "era da alternatives for the creation of a informação" decentralized communication,independent http://www.comciencia.br/reportagens/internet/frameset /net16.htm and aimed to the edges. 8 ESTRAVIZ,Marcelo,Linkania e Religare - The Linkania The message is linked.It is in the sites,in and the Religare the blogs,reverberating in the e-mails that http://www.novae.inf.br/estraviz/linkania.html 9 BICARATO,Paulo,PalAVr@s LivRes - Free W@rds we exchange daily.The message is in the http://www.novae.inf.br/bicarato/livres.htm web. And it can be processed in any of the 10 ESTRAVIZ,Marcelo,Linkania e Religare ends.What one needs is simply to copy a 11 ESTRAVIZ,Marcelo,Linkania e Religare - The linkania and the religare link,download the documents,join the 12 The very first conversation about the Mídia Tática Brasil pieces.It is up to the people at the different organisation has been taken on the Projeto Metáfora ends of the process,to transform a digital mailing list [http://www.projetometafora.org] 13 ESTRAVIZ,Marcelo,A periferia é o centro - the edge is the file in analogic content.The medium,as center such,is no longer the message.It is the http://www.novae.inf.br/mundopop/periferiacentro.html living voice of each person.An example of 14 Mutirão means when the poor people organise this kind of project is given by the NovaE themselves in collaboration teams in order to build infrastructure to their survival. 15 magazine in the campaign for digital 15 http://www.novaeconomia.inf.br/outdoor/

DiY SURVIVAL // DiY THEORY // 031 ViSuAL cHaoS – vandalism, brandalism + street art

esus Christ is popping up all over Popular blog The Londonist notes “the London,and it’s really starting to inexorable spread of the Sagatiba cachaça Jannoy street artists and their ‘Jesus Man’ stencil across the streets of enthusiasts. London with some interest,and a bit of A stencilled,spray-painted icon dread”,while predominantly negative reminiscent of the legendary statue that postings have poured in on towers over Rio de Janeiro,Christ the woostercollective,a website devoted to Redeemer,is appearing on London’s street art and culture jamming in its various sidewalks and buildings at an alarming rate; forms,as well as chronicling its employ by but it’s not a part of the city’s world- corporations. renowned,controversial street art scene – One post echoes Eelus’ sentiments it’s advertising,courtesy of Saatchi and precisely,screaming that London’s artists Saatchi. have united in “a mission to clear the streets East End artist and graphic designer of this tainting piece of bullshit street art!” Eelus has been involved with the street art The street artists’ dismay is scene for the past few years.He rolls his understandable – their tools and eyes and groans when asked about the techniques are efficiently being employed Saatchi-sanctioned stencils:“It’s just the by the very entities they mean to contest. latest in a long line of advertisers cashing According to woostercollective,more in.”When they first started appearing in than 200 corporations including Adidas, April,he says,“Everyone went around Puma,Lee Jeans and Red Bull,have used Shoreditch,pasting over them and ripping street art to hawk their goods or have them down.” incorporated its elements into their The stencil portrays a longhaired figure products.While many feel that this with outstretched arms,dressed in jeans ultimately defeats its counterculture, and a tee shirt,and is part of the $38 million subversive roots and principles,corporate “Sagatiba Pura”campaign.The Brazilian endorsement does serve as a litmus test of company Sagatiba produces cachaça,a sorts as to the influence and implications of sugar cane liquor that is the key ingredient street art in contemporary culture. for fashionable ‘exotic’ cocktails like And it’s not just corporations that have caipirinhas. begun to recognize the considerable

032 // DiY THEORY // DiY SURVIVAL influence of these art forms customarily political graffiti is still visible on brothel and deemed unconventional.In many critics’ public house walls. and galleries’ opinions,street art and its Its parallels to the past are abundant and constantly morphing forms and fascinating,but the modern conception of classifications will be – or indeed,already “graffiti”and its contemporary styles were are – the art world’s next big thing. effectively born in the 1970s on New York Paul Jones,owner of the Elms Lesters subway trains. Painting Rooms in London,told The The first graffiti artists,or “writers”,that Guardian:“This is the next movement in art. popped up in New York concentrated on It has that feel about it,as did Pop Art or the distorting and stylizing the letters in their Futurists.It’s been building gradually for 30 names,nicknames or pseudonyms.As more or 40 years and all of a sudden,you know and more artists began spray-painting their it’s the thing.There’s nothing else around “tags”,or signatures,across the city,writers like it.When I look at contemporary art found different ways to make their work magazines and see the same conceptual distinctive.The tags swelled in size until the artists - the Chapman brothers,for example - first “pieces”(short for masterpieces) began they look old school by comparison.” appearing on subway trains,and they But what exactly is street art? And is it eventually developed pictographic really art? components.This aerosol-based tagging Michael Quine,lecturer in cultural policy approach is very frequently associated with and management at City University of hip-hop culture,and while its styles London,is hesitant to give definitions.“Is continue to evolve today,it remains the street art a style of work,or a place of overriding form of graffiti art worldwide. work?”he asks. Post-graffiti,neo-graffiti,aerosol-art,and He points out that the issue is absolutely street art are terms that many contemporary subjective,but in his opinion it all boils street artists and writers prefer to use to down to property and placement.“I think describe their work rather then the generic, the issue is not so much about whether it’s all-encompassing term “graffiti”.Not only art or not,but where it is.It’s where it is that does “graffiti”carry negative connotations of makes it street art,”he explains. vandalism and crime,but the term is so According to Eelus,“The common strongly associated with the classic New understanding is that anything at all that’s York style pieces,that it fails to incorporate out there on the street – whether it’s a the other aspects and history of street art. stencil,a ‘throw up’,wheat paste,sticker, Street art encompasses much more than whatever – is classed as street art.But saying just pieces,tags and “throw ups”(quickly that,there is a very thin line that’s always done aerosol tags),and the artists’ tools under discussion as to whether graffiti in its have grown to include oils,chalk,acrylics, original sense is street art.” airbrushes,paintbrushes,stencils,posters, “I know other people have quite different stickers and wheat pastes. views on where the line is drawn,”he “The whole scene has really progressed a continues.“I heard an interesting idea the lot in the last few years,”says Eelus,“and it’s other day that was anything aerosol-based nice to hear the term ‘street art’ be used is classed as graffiti,whereas everything else more and more.At the end of the day, is street art.I’m not too sure about that,but though,the people out there who do really like I said,the boundaries are very different frown upon the whole thing are going to from person to person.” see it as a negative part of society no matter To even understand what’s under what label it falls under.But I think ‘street discussion here,a crash course in art’ helps put things in a new,positive light vocabulary may be in order.For starters,the that will hopefully create a bit more word “graffiti”is Italian for “little scratches”, understanding.” and the concept dates back to antiquity. London’s local councils simply don’t Visit Pompeii today,for example,and agree – whatever the labels and terminology,it’s estimated the >>

DiY SURVIVAL // DiY THEORY // 033 boroughs spend more than £27 million a year on graffiti removal. “Graffiti is vandalism and contributes to people’s fear of crime,”says Islington Council’s communications officer,Charles Dean. Mr.Quine understands the council’s While street artists’ methods,media,and position:“It makes them nervous.I messages differ greatly from one to the understand that they make that association, next,they do seem to share a common because there’s no control.You feel safe if frustration with the notion of “public space” you have a sense of control.” and feel justified in their efforts to challenge Mr.Dean does admit,however,that the the status quo. difference between graffiti and art is a “I’m not a Banksy with any deep social subjective assessment and recognizes that or political messages behind what I do,” some graffiti artists feel they’re expressing confides Eelus. themselves in a valid way.But nonetheless, Then why does he put himself at risk, he says,“We will prosecute when we can.” stenciling and pasting stickers around the Most street artists are quick to distance city? What exactly is the point? their work from true vandalism,and often “The world is dominated by point out the ways that capitalism has overpowering advertising campaigns defaced cityscapes. ramming a product or lifestyle choice down Banksy,Britain’s most prominent street our throat at every single turn,”he says.“Why artist who’s known for his sociopolitical shouldn’t we claim back the city for stencils,as well as his pranks (the “art ourselves through engaging,democratic terrorist”recently hung his own unsolicited street art whose only purpose is to bring a pieces in some of New York’s most bit of life and colour to what can be a dull, prestigious museums),coined the term soulless landscape? “brandalism”for a 2003 London exhibit; it “Street art gives people a voice,a chance works to describe both corporate to be seen and heard without being advertising and iconographic street art that certified by an art school or gallery. encroach upon public space. Anybody can get involved,that’s the beauty “A lot of people think that scuttling of it.”I around stencilling images onto buildings in the middle of the night is the action of a sad,frustrated individual who can’t get By Amanda Janis, attention or recognition any other way,” LONDON Banksy tells fellow street artist and author, Tristan Manco. “They might be right,”he says,“but I’ve SOURCES done gallery shows and,if you’ve been Eelus,known by day as Lee Pennington,East End stencil hitting people with all sorts of images in all graffiti/sticker/wheatpaste artist (face-to-face interview)

sorts of places,they’re a real step Michael Quine,Dept of Cultural Policy & Management,City backwards.Painting on the streets means University (face-to-face) becoming an actual part of the city.It’s not a spectator sport.” Dr.Lisa Pieraccini,archaeologist and professor of classical studies for Temple University’s Rome campus (email interview)

Rhiannon Pickles,art PR (email interview)

Charles Dean,Islington Council Communications Officer (email interview)

Rosey Thewlis,BA Art History from Cambridge (face-to-face)

034 // DiY THEORY // DiY SURVIVAL >> 036 How to create a high bandwidth wireless node… Consume-style Ruth Catlow >> 038 There are those who build and those who dismantle,notes on Trashware HACKLAB_pg >> 042 Sms to string: Turn text messages to a usable format Ben C6 >> 045 Anti mobile Tsila Hassine>> 046 Page No.Action pishing Leonardo Ramos >> 048 DiY Television slavina feat ctrl C + ctrl V >> 051 How to take on a Multi- National with a Felt Tip Pen and Win The vacuum cleaner >> 053 Green to gold, an alternative funding strategy Gordon Brown >> 056 How to Arts Council S. Albert & Leon C6 >> 060 Press Office Handbook. You are the Media Blueloop >> 063 Cardboard Buddies Chris Lin, International Union of Free Thinkers >> 069 Baci Di Dama: a recipe Nonna Papera >> 070 How to be a Citizen Reporter Joanna Callaghan >> 071 Guidebook to find infinitely small things The Institute for Infinitely Small Things

DiY SURVIVAL // DiY HOW TO // 035 How to create a high bandwidth wireless node… Consume-style

t’s an old line....Internet years are like dog years.Bearing this in mind,this explored and promoted by Consume in the I how-to is not intended for the old UK (and wireless network communities dogs of free wireless networking in around the world) since the late 90s and London but more for artists with a new and more recently in projects such as the perhaps tentative interest in exploring Boundless2 broadband co-op.Using wireless media. strategically positioned D-link omni- The Holy Grail for London’s free wireless directional antennas (as well as a range of networking enthusiasts is the free,mesh others produced by the DiY 2.4 Ghz network which would allow citizens to community) to broadcast bandwidth across create a blanket of nomadic-noded,ad hoc, a 4 mile range,this project aims to provide local area networks with their wirelessly free wireless Internet access across the connected laptops and bluetoothed mobile whole borough of Lewisham,to its local devices.Relatively independent of the government workers and its constituents, Internet as supplied by telecoms,the nodes promoting an “enthusiasm to share would form parallel networks,dark-nets, resources”. clouds of promiscuous file exchange and What follows are my notes from a digital communication. workshop in ‘Network Self Provision’ run by OLSR1 is the routing protocol for mesh James Stevens of Consume3 and Alexie networks which daisy chain mobile nodes Blinov of Take20304,as part of the Pervasive allowing them to join and leave the Connections event in London in April 20055. network in real-time.The limitations,at time During this workshop I learned enough of writing,lie with the radio to build a DiY wireless network node.So transmitters/receivers that either listen or here are my notes,technical and anecdotal, broadcast but cannot do both at once.No reflecting the style of the workshop.If you one has yet invented a cheap solution to prefer your instructions dry check out the this problem. Consume FAQs6. The next best thing is what has been

036 // DiY HOW TO // DiY SURVIVAL A 9 STEP GUIDE TO CREATING A DIY HIGH BANDWIDTH WIRELESS NODE. HINT: you will need to source some (inexpensive) kit so read to the end before you get started.

Step 1 Download MeshAP from http://locustworld.com and copy to CD. Step 7 Go into UNIX and hit the keys “Ctrl, Notes: MeshAP utiilses old computers alt and backspace”(this works on a PC) (often found in skips). login : root MeshAP installs its own operating system password : terra7 and offers a Graphical User Interface (GUI) : ping [your new ip] for network administrators,it also features : wianaregister military level security encryption. This software was created by Jon Step 8 Connect the antenna from the Anderson,who is known for his ‘SMS Club’. wireless access point at the back of the He also works in the commercial sector machine,along a cable called a Pigtail (brand to hand SMS). through a surface mounted n-type connector to a 2.4ghz antenna that you find Step 2 Find an old computer in a skip. listed on any DiY 2.4ghz antenna website. … a free and totally doable option in London… or beg a cast off from family, Step 9 Through the GUI interface,you the friends or work; the minimum specification network administrator,can customise your for the machine is 128mb ram and a 60mb splash page to inform users of terms and hard drive.It doesn’t need this high power, conditions of entry to the free network,wish them an anarchistic day and share but it’s what old computers generally come I with- it really only needs the equivalent bandwidth and share the love. power of a compact flash card. Taken from a longer article by Ruth Catlow, Step 3 Buy or find a PCI wireless card featured on Furtherfield.org & Mazine.ws- (approx £50 new) and stick it in the “Lets Do Lunch: Pervasive Connections- computer. Instructions Included”by Ruth Catlow

Step 4 Plug an Ethernet cable with access http://www.richair.org to the Internet into the computer. http://www.furtherfield.org http://www.http.uk.net Step 5 Reboot the computer from the MeshAP CD.It will throw up the GUI by Ruth Catlow, interface LONDON UK

Step 6 Register your wireless node with WIANA who register every node on the REFERENCES global wireless network and assigns a 1 OLSR-Optimized Link State Routing unique IP number (address) to each. 2 Boundless,http://boundless.coop/ Once the machine has fully booted you, 3 James Stevens of Consume,http://www.consume.net/, the network administrator,connect via the ConsumeX,http://dek.spc.org/x/consumex.html,and DeckSpace,http://dek.spc.org/ Internet to http://www.wiana.org to register. 4 Alexie Blinov of Take2030,http://www.richair.org and Raylab,http://www.raylab.com/ 5 Pervasive Connections was an event organised by SPACE Media Arts and INIVA that focused on opportunities for artists to work with new social technologies. 6 Consume FAQs http://www.consume.net/wiki/index.php/FaQs

DiY SURVIVAL // DiY HOW TO // 037 There are those who build & those who dismantle NOTES ON Trashware BY HACKLAB_pg

erugia Hacklab (Hl_PG) was born in initiatives aimed at bridging the digital 2001.It is a laboratory,a social and divide,that is,the difference in available P digital network that uses free means and resources between those who software,a place of experimentation and are digitally fluent and those who are not.”* critical thinking within digital technology,a LTSP is a package for the system net-point offering everybody equal web GNU/Linux.It allows the creation of low access,a group of people mounting and cost terminals by using slow,outdated unmounting computers. hardware.Applications are run by the server Hacklab_PG uses and distributes free hardware while input and output are run by software such as GNU/linux because it the terminals. stands against the monopoly of the big The workshop explained how the LTSP software houses and against the idea of system works and showed how to install copyright. and configure the system,as well as offering There are those who build and those practical experience on how to use the who dismantle. LTSP system. Hacklab_PG last project is Oziosi.org.,a self managed server whose aim is to offer HERE IT IS A SCHEMATIC DESCRIPTION space and resources to those subjects and realities,organized and not organised, OF HOW PACKAGE LTSP WORKS: situated outside commercial logics and Definition of Terminal with no means and money to gain such The web offers several definitions:Terminal spaces and resources. is a dispositive that allows you to send In April 2005 HackLab_PG presented a commands to a computer.It is usually Linux Terminal Server Project (LTSP) made by a keyboard and a monitor and workshop run by Gabriele Zucchetta. “some simple circuit”; a keyboard and a “Trashware is the practice of monitor,plugged to a computer (a recuperating old hardware,putting together mainframe),used to insert commands and bits of different computers,and making to visualize them.Unlike computers, them work and useful again [...] terminals do not have their own CPU or The informatic material obtained in this Hard Disk; a combination of keyboard and way is given to people or realities that may monitor that together allow to interact with need it,specifically in connection with a computer.

038 // DiY HOW TO // DiY SURVIVAL Use supply),mother board,ram (usually 16 Mb), Terminals (graphic or character) make cpu (usually 486 or Pentium),video card, possible the creation of nodes for the network card,mouse (for graphic access to a computer (server); the terminals). workload (ram,disk and CPU) is entirely on the server; it is the correct approach to Optional multi-user systems (intended as multi- Sound card,cdrom,floppy. nodes). Useless Advantages Hard disks,ram (128 Mb,256 Mb,521Mb ,...) They do not need any care,and their installation and configuration are simple and fast; the administrator deals only with HARDWARE CONFIGURATION the server and can “almost”forget the OF THE SERVER terminals.Otherwise,they must administrate It depends on how you want to use it, a quantity of computers equal to the however actual technology allows you to number of nodes.The users cannot access set up a server at a cost only a little more the server console,this avoids many than a PC problems; the terminals hardware is low cost as they do not work to execute the 1. How does it work programs.Terminals are extremely quiet When the workstation is switched on,its (they have no disks). hardware test (POST Power On Self Test) begins; during POST,bios searches available The LTSP Project rom of expansion. It is a “simple”system to create terminals If the network card has a eeprom (graphic or character) by using PC Etherboot bios executes it; hardware; the mind behind this project is Code Etherboot proceeds to initialize the James A.McQuillan; the project started in network card (ip 0.0.0.0) asking (via 1999; today it is available version 4.1; broadcasting) a valid IP for the own MAC licence GPL. address;

LTSP in practice 2. How does it work The project consists of a compilation of A server dhcp gives the following software and configuration files. information to the network card: G The terminal is called workstation; the IP address (and NETMASK) for the computer (which provides resources) is workstation called server. G directory and name of the kernel to The package LSTP allows you to create a download (from server) diskless computer that executes the server G directory and name of filesystem NFS to X which points at the computer server. set up as root G optional parameters to pass to the kernel Hardware configuration of the G through TFTP (Trivial File Transfer terminal Protocol),Etherboot code contacts the It is important to remember that terminals server and downloads the kernel; the do not execute programs,therefore they do kernel is loaded onto the workstation; the not need powerful hardware.For this reason control is then passed to the kernel,that parts of old computers can be recycled and initializes the entire system and the new hardware can be chosen among the peripherals that acknowledges; cheapest. 3. How does it work Necessary Attached to the end of the kernel,there is Monitor,keyboard,case (with power the image of a filesystem which is >>

DiY SURVIVAL // DiY HOW TO // 039 G Services configuration; loaded onto the memory as if it was a G Terminals configuration. normal ramdisk,and temporary mounted The software is available in a single file (root=/dev/ram0) as root filesystem; ISO or it is possible to rely on network a script linuxrc (init=/linuxrc) is executed installation. that recognizes the network card and loads Ltspadmin script allows you to install tgz the driver; packages. the network card is initialized again with another request to the dhcp server; 2. Server configuration now a new root filesystem is mounted ltspcfg script allows you to configure the via NFS (first on /mnt then on /: the server services in a simple and interactive pivot_root is executed that exchanges the way: current filesystem with a new one); Runlevel Selection of network interface 4. How does it work configuration DHCP,TFTP,NFS,XDMCP linuxrc job is over and init starts; creation of file /etc/hosts the file /etc/inittab is read; the command creation of file /etc/hosts.allow rc.local is launched that creates a 1mb creation of file /etc/export ramdisk to contain the files that need to be creation of file ltsp.conf modified during the functioning and is mounted in /tmp; 3. Server configuration • the filesystem /proc is mounted; /etc/dhcpd.conf • the system X-Windows is now configured, default-lease-time 21600; creating on the spot a configuration file max-lease-time 21600; through the scripts /etc/rc.setupx or option subnet-mask 255.255.255.0; /etc/rc.setupx3 respectively for versions option broadcast-address 192.168.0.255; 4.X and 3.X of X-Windows (parameters option routers 192.168.0.254; are found on the configuration files in the option domain-name-servers 192.168.0.254; server); option domain-name “ltsp.org”; option root-path “192.168.0.254:/opt/ltsp/i386”; 5. How does it work shared-network WORKSTATIONS { The control is back to init that creates the subnet 192.168.0.0 netmask 255.255.255.0 file /tmp/star t_ws responsible of X start; { the file /tmp/syslog.conf is created and } the process syslogd begin.Logs are sent to } the server specified in the configuration file; the system enters in runlevel 4. Server configuration 2 - in this level the script set_runlevel group { begins.On the ground of a parameter found use-host-decl-names on; in the server it activates one of the three option log-servers 192.168.0.254; “true”runlevel: host ws001 { 3 - Shell for debug; hardware ethernet 00:E0:18:E0:04:82; 4 - Terminal modality character (telnet fixed-address 192.168.0.1; session); filename “/lts/vmlinuz.ltsp”; 5 - Graphic modality (GUI) (X windows is } launched and sent a request XDMCP to the } server). 5. Server configuration 1. Server configuration /opt/ltsp/i386/etc/lts.conf There are four stages: [Default] G“LTSP utilities”installation; SERVER = 192.168.0.254 G Installation of packages tgz for the XSERVER = auto Client; X_MOUSE_PROTOCOL = “PS/2”

040 // DiY HOW TO // DiY SURVIVAL X_MOUSE_DEVICE = “/dev/psaux” X_MOUSE_RESOLUTION = 400 X_MOUSE_BUTTONS = 3 USE_XFS = N LOCAL_APPS = N = 5 RUNLEVEL

6. Server configuration [ws001] USE_NFS_SWAP =Y SWAPFILE_SIZE = 48m RUNLEVEL =5 [ws002] XSERVER = XF86_SVGA LOCAL_APPS = N = Y USE_NFS_SWAP SWAPFILE_SIZE = 64m RUNLEVEL = 3

WORKSTATION CONfiGURATION The workstation needs only a boot system. As said this is found in the network card eeprom. Package Etherboot: http://www.etherboot.org/ Rom-O-Matic: http://www.rom-o- matic.net/ The rom can be loaded also onto boot floppy.

VARIOUS It is possible to configure the system so that one or more applications (mozilla,xmms,.. .) are executed by the workstation; it is possible to install a printer plugging it directly in the workstation; it is possible to use the workstation sound card; it is possible to access the workstation CD-Rom or floppy reader.I

*http://it.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trashware Linux Terminal Server Project (LTSP) Official homepage: www.ltsp.org Workshop By Gabriele Zucchetta:

By Hacklab_Pg ITALY http://oziosi.org

DiY SURVIVAL // DiY HOW TO // 041 Sms to string: Turn text messages to a usable format

t the core of any mobile phone based work there must be a GSM A modem.C6 made use of the easy to Since gsmsmsd.exe helpfully produces use and setup Samba modem by Falcom all output from the GSM modem to the (http://www.falcom.de).This modem is standard input of any application it is easily connected and setup to any recent possible to parse this data with a variety of Windows or Linux operating system.There different applications. are various other modems available on the The C++ code in figure ,can be compiled market so the issue then is how to get the using the MySQL++ library available at data from the GSM modem into some http://tangentsoft.net/mysql++/.This useful form. provides a simple STL style access to the The simplest way of doing this is with MySQL database (available at GSMlib available from http://www.mysql.com).Instructions for its http://www.pxh.de/fs/gsmlib/.This lib use are available on their website.Obviously comes with a simple application any code using MySQL will require MySQL gsmsmsd.exe.When run with the proper to be installed correctly and may require command line parameters (in our case linking to the libmysql.lib that comes ‘gsmsmsd -dCOM1’) it will output the with it. content and other data from any SMS So our simple C++ in figure 1 can be message received by the modem on the used to compile an executable that will given port (in our case COM1).This makes parse the data given from gsmsmsd and it incredibly easy to work with and debug place it into a database for use in web since all the format of an SMS from this applications such as Want and Need or application can be seen quite simply on the indeed any other use one can come command line.It will also send this data up with. directly to the standard input of any other application through the use of the ‘-a’or action parameter,e.g. ‘-ademo.exe’.

www.c6.org/sms

042 // DiY THEORY // DiY SURVIVAL FIGURE 1.

#include #include #include #include #include #include #include

using namespace std;

string GetData(vector messages, string templ) { // find the entry in messages that starts with templ vector ::iterator iter;

for (iter = messages.begin(); iter != messages.end(); iter++) { string tempLine = (string)*iter; int i; // search for the location of templ if ((i = (int)tempLine.find(templ,0))!=-1) { // pull out all the content after the end of templ return tempLine.substr(i+templ.size()+1,(tempLine.size()-templ.size())-2); } } return string(“”); }

int main(int argc, char *argv[]) { string input; vector sms; char line[512];

try { // read data from standard input while ( !(cin.eof()) ) { // read a line cin.getline(line,512); // store it in the vector sms.push_back(string(line)); }

// connect to the database mysqlpp::Connection con(mysqlpp::use_exceptions);

if (!con.connect(“databasename”, “databasehost”, “username”, “password”)) >>

DiY SURVIVAL // DiY HOW TO // 043 { cerr << “Error connecting to database.” << endl; return -1; }

// create a query object that is bound to the connection mysqlpp::Query query = con.query();

// parse the data out of the lines we’ve read in string msg = GetData(sms,”User data: “); string caller = GetData(sms,”Originating address: “);

cout << “SMS received from : “ << caller << endl; // insert the sms into the table query << “INSERT INTO sms (time,caller,msg) VALUES(“ << (long)time((time_t)NULL) << “,”; query << “\”” << mysqlpp::escape << caller; query << “\”,\”” << mysqlpp::escape << msg << “\”)”; // store the data query.store(); } catch (mysqlpp::BadQuery& er) { // handle any errors cerr << “Error BadQuery: “ << er.error << endl; return -1; } catch (mysqlpp::BadConversion& er) { // handle bad conversions cerr << “Error BadConversion: Tried to convert \”” << er.data << “\” to a \”” << er.type_name << “\”.” << endl; return -1; } catch (exception & er) { cerr << “Error Unknown exception: “ << er.what() << endl; return -1; }

}

By Ben C6 CAMBRIDGE www.c6.org/wantandneed

044 // DiY HOW TO // DiY SURVIVAL Anti mobile

ot so long ago a great new invention entered our lives,the Nmobile phone.The front runner of pervasive communication has completely transformed the way we perceive long mobile owner's great joy.... distance communication.While we are This device is composed of cheap units,a certainly greatly benefiting from this detection unit and a playback unit.These invention,there is also a price we are units were taken out of cheap gadgets,and paying.Our public space has been simply hacked together.The external design shattered,and these days it consists mainly consists of re-used tin cans,like the ones of fragments of virtual private children used to connect together with a conversations.Everyone is familiar with the wire in order to build low tech image of people walking in the street, communication devices. physically very close to each other,while This simple and tactical set up forms a mentally worlds apart,each immersed in a guerilla device to reclaim our public space! virtual space,the temporary private space created by this conversation This device enters the triangular DIY INSTRUCTIONS relationship formed between mobile 1 get one of those gadgets that blink when phone,mobile phone owner,and their they detect a mobile call coming in passive audience. ("blinky") The moment this detects a mobile phone 2 get one of those greeting cards that enable conversation (through its antennae),a recording a short message and playing it playback system is triggered.A per recorded back message is repeated over and over until the 3 connect the output of "blinky" to the play conversation is terminated.The user of this button of the recording circuit device may record every desired message - 4 connect the ground part of "blinky”to the such as "your conversation is very ground part of the playing circuit I annoying",or: "take your conversation outside!" (much like the answering machine).The user may even record the http://pzwart2.wdka.hro.nl/~thassine/noise ongoing conversation it is detecting,and 4noise/n4n.html play this bit over and over again,to the more info about me can be found at: http://pzwart2.wdka.hro.nl/~thassine

by Tsila Hassine NL

DiY SURVIVAL // DiY HOW TO // 045 ACTION he city has always succumbed to the imposition of power,always monuments in order to give a different T giving its main places of the public meaning to these places.Smells are poured space to commemorative monuments. in the area around the monument.These These places have been occupied by smells may be self generated by each statues of heroes and benefactors.By participant or may be synthetic.[1].One means of art,history commits to memory possible way of action pishing is to their power. consider what the monument and its At the end of the XIX century,this custom surroundings suggest: violence,piety, started losing its meaning and innocence,etc.and to imbue that place commemorative monuments lost all with fragrances chosen to highlight that political and religious significance.This very concept or deny it,according to the coincided with the power shift to capital,an sensations the social group wants to work anonymous entity that employs other ways with. of representation. For instance,to perceive a smell of There are other factors to consider about naftalina,a smell of age and enclosed the crisis of monuments,the first one being space,around a monument dedicated to inherent to the anthropomorphic sculpture, Justice,can suggest either an irony or an rejected by modern architecture which affirmation of that concept.Here,we must dispense from it for the sake of purity and prepare our chosen synthetic fragrances in rather turns to the best exponents of pots,and then pour them next to the painting from the 20th century. monument. Also,modern urbanism creates an impersonal public space,which not only URBAN ME_HITO (PISS) TO does not require monuments,but rejects COMMEMORATIVE MONUMENT them,making them invisible. Democracy does not produce heroes. HOW TO DO IT Instead,it claims that everyone participates The action pishing technique in this case is to citizenship and contributes to public called Me_arte and it is practiced in the good. urban spaces of thousands of cities by This is the reason why we propose a millions of citizens.In the city,we will focus direct action throughout the techniques of our attention on a specific monument in action pishing,to give a new meaning and order to re-create it and give it a new to create a new visibility to commemorative visibility.Me_arte is a technique that uses monuments. the liquids excreted by the kidneys as a WHAT IS ACTION PISHING? matter of creation.The purpose is to It is a practice of artistic and urban evacuate them on the plinth of the intervention which deploys fragrances to monument so that,after some minutes,the immerse a certain monument in a different fragrances will produce an urban context.It is a direct action on the intervention with a peculiar smell.We will immediate surroundings of commemorative have re-created the monument into an urban Me_hito.

046 // DiY HOW TO // DiY SURVIVAL PISHING HOW TO ELABORATE A SELF MANAGED PAINTING A quick way to produce liquid from the kidneys is to ingest a lot of drinks, choosing those that you prefer: water,juices,beer,etc.

HOW TO BE A ME_ARTISTA (PISS ARTIST). Each of us can be a Me_artista if we use the previously described techniques.It would be perfect if it could be done as a group action. Also,pets which have the ability to express themselves trough Me_arte,can be included.If,for unexpected reasons [2],the action cannot be developed within the public space,an alternative is to collect the self produced fluid and,after,pour it on the surroundings of the monument.I

by Leonardo Ramos ARGENTINA translated by Gabriela Bettini,Madrid,Spain

REFERENCES 1 To avoid legal troubles it is better not to us corrosive liquids. 2 For modesty,gender or surveillance of monuments etc. Cut & spray www.c6.org/la_pissor

DiY SURVIVAL // DiY HOW TO // 047 DiY television the Italian experience: Telestreet and New Global Vision

elestreet and NGVision are two ignored more or less this initial experiments made in Italy for the experience) in a few months street distribution of autoproduced video televisions had grown exponentially in T number.Today,in the national territory,there contents.Stirred by the depressing are more than 200 telestreet. peculiarity of the national airwaves system, Street televisions were created to provide where frequencies plan does not local services and information (the contemplate public access television reception span of an average transmitter – spaces,and in a monopoly of commercial placed in optimal conditions – is about 5 broadcasting,often of low quality and out Km).They usually have open palimpsests, of reach for the multitude that creates and which can be eventually filled with self produces contents,these two media contents and formats.They represent the have found a valid,working and antidote against generic,homogenised tv, reproducible form in the micro-dimension and often emerge as themed ones (for of the neighbourhood and in the macro- instance Disco Volante,a telestreet space of the net. managed by a disabled cooperative in Senigallia;TeleFabbrica,Termini Imerese TELESTREET: FROM TELEVISION FOR telestreet born during the time of crisis in ALL TO EVERYBODY’S TELEVISION the Fiat plant,the regional centre of Telestreet are neighbourhood televisions employment; Gli Anelli Mancanti,Firenze that,thanks to low intensity antennae, telestreet organized by an immigrants broadcast their signal in shadows cones, association) that is,in areas which are emptied of The broadcasting infrastructure of a frequencies (channels) already allocated to street television may have a minimum cost others. of 1000 euros.To this sum you must add the Telestreet was born in 2002 in Bologna, cost of the reproduction devices of the where a group of intellectuals/activists, broadcasted content.It is enough to start previously involved in experiences such as with a simple vhs. the 70’s Radio Alice,set up the first Italian As for transmitters,street television do not street television,Orfeo TV.Their aim,a use real television broadcasting apparata, provocation,was to create a case: far too costly and powerful: to cover limited broadcasting with no licence is in fact a areas,such as those shadows cones,it is crime punished by law.Because of the enough to rely on the systems for negligence of media and institutions (that distribution of video signal used in

048 // DiY HOW TO // DiY SURVIVAL apartment blocks.Any antenna repairer antenna man ;). with good will can install them. This will be rewarding from both To set up a transmitter of this kind you technical and human aspects. need three objects. Once you have completed your Modulator: the appliance that generates palimpsest and installed all broadcasting the base transmission frequency (main). devices,it is now the moment to let your This controls the broadcasting channel and neighbourhood know that a street gathers the audio and video contents television is born. (modulation) that form the television Leafleting,megaphones,parties, message. broadcasting from public places,open Amplifier: it captures the weak signal phone lines…the feedback of the produced by the modulator and sends it to neighbourhood from where you broadcast the antenna providing the power necessary is one of the vital factor to ensure the for the broadcast. success of the operation and supply the Transformer: it provides the amplifier necessary enthusiasm to make it grow. with the necessary power to convert domestic electric current into the one CASE STUDY suitable for these apparata (direct 12 Volts). TeleAut,Rome telestreet,broadcasting from Broadcast signal is positioned on UHF the sixth floor of a squatted building in the band.Now it is necessary to do some San Lorenzo neighbourhood.In this case, research: among all the available channels studio location and broadcasting position (from 21 to 69) there must be some that are coincided perfectly.As a joke,one night in not reached by any signal.Your transmitter September 2003,the audience was invited must be positioned on that channel to switch on and off the lights of the room (frequency). where they were at the time.The view from However,the cable that sends the signals the sixth floor was clear.It was poignant to from the transmitter to the antenna has a watch from there dozens of lights going on flaw.It loses power proportionally to its and off,to reveal a presence,no longer length.You must therefore position the passive,but willing to actively be part of the transmitter as near as possible to the game of everybody’s television. antenna. The antenna is the main element of the transmission system.It has an optical span, NEW GLOBAL VISION – A MOVEMENT which means that it manages to radiate the OF IMAGES signal only when there are no visible NGV is a file sharing project whose purpose obstacles or uneven terrain.For this reason is the creation of online video channels,at it is crucial to position it as high as possible. low cost and independent.It contains a Usually,receiving antennae work also public access video archive constantly well as transmission antennae (you just updated; its material are under licence need to increase the quantity of signal,i.e. Creative Commons and distributed to some power,that traverses them).Antennae can servers set for peer to peer usage. be directive or multidirectional,that is,they New Global Vision,born a few months direct the signal in only one direction or before Telestreet,has grown thanks to the share it among several directions.On the cross pollination with them.Actually,the market there are several types.You must find majority of street televisions uploads the your ad hoc solution dependent upon the productions made on NGVision and requirements of the territory and the studio broadcasts in its palimpsest archive videos. placement. New Global Vision’s development is due It would be far too lengthy to describe to the collaboration of networkers who the many possible options in this basic practice horizontal work strategies,through how-to… the advice is anyway to become a public mailing list and by sharing friends with your local neighbourhood knowledge and resources,with the common aim to disseminate the >>

DiY SURVIVAL // DiY HOW TO // 049 knowledge needed to the development of the project. NGVision archive is a visual data bank which today includes over 200 video ‘autoproduzioni’ (self produced materials), both Italian and international.It is grounded on the standard usage of open compression and free software, technologies that have made possible the creation of the infrastructure required to download and circulate video. In order to be uploaded in the archive, videos must be encoded,that is, compressed in Dvx format (no proprietary) and completed with credits and presentation.Once uploaded they can be downloaded by any network user. The site contains all the information and hows to necessary for its running and a complete link directory of programmes to download to participate to this movement of images.I

New Global Vision and Telestreet won the Award of Distinction in the category “Digital Communities”,Ars Electronica Prize,Linz (Austria),2005. www.telestreet.it www.ngvision.org

by slavina feat CTRL C+ CTRL V ITALY

050 // DiY HOW TO // DiY SURVIVAL How to take on a Multi-National with a Felt Tip Pen and Win

he vacuum cleaner interviews the match had to be close but not perfect,so it vacuum cleaner was clear that the fuck off was already part T of the company.We came across an Edding PART F – A SORT OF INSTANT DESIRE 383 flipchart marker,this was perfect.We When you want a Starbucks you shouldn’t liked how easy and gutter tech it was to do. have to cross a road or search around,you At night we would do lots of colouring in. shouldn’t be made to queue or wait too People liked them and would want one,we long for that £4 grande double skinny began to hand them out,they became a bit liquid.Starbucks know that the period of a novelty.It was only then we understood between desire and fulfillment has to be how effective it could be.In starbucks they short.If you begin to think about where the keep the cups in stacks next to the coffee coffee came from,or who picked it,or how machine.We began a cycle of helping much they were paid,or how old they were, ourselves to these cups and then or what cost it had on their environment as substituting them for fuck off cups,leaving a well as ours,you may well not buy it.If your non-subverted cup on top.That way the fuck coffee is instant you can avoid reality and off wasn’t immediate and it could end up you get that manufactured desire fulfilled. sitting there for days,a slow release fuck off. We loved the idea of someone getting a fuck PART U – A SORT OF OVERFLOWING off double skinny tall caffe latte. ANGER Starbucks Coffee logo + green felt tip pen. PART K – A SORT OF EXPANDING Cross out the S,the T,the A,the R,the B EMPIRE becomes an F and you lose the S,the C and On a sunny Friday afternoon in November the double E,you get Fuck Off. 2003 we meet 10 people into the City of London,where there are over 35 Starbucks PART C – A SORT OF GREEN within one Square mile.Armed with over SUBSTITUTION 300 fuck off cups we substituted,placed Firstly,from Starbucks bins or their stores,we them in stores prominently,or stood at the collected 100’s of their paper cups.We entrance to the stores drinking a fuck off became familiar with the location and coffee.We experimented to see which was layout of each Starbucks in London,one is the most effective way of spreading the new never far away so we don’t get lost logo. anymore.Secondly,we searched for the Getting as many people as possible to see right kind of green to fill in the letters.The this transformation or perhaps,this normalization had now become our >>

DiY SURVIVAL // DiY HOW TO // 051 main objective.With the images,video and stories from our trip to City of London we made a page for our website,which was fine,but it wasn’t really getting up the search engine rankings - we needed another way to do this.Luckily,the domain With a few friends a solidarity group was www.starbuckscoffee.co.uk hadn’t been formed,creating the image that we had a registered; it cost £1.99 so we bought it.This broad base of support.This was to make is where things really took off,within a few Starbucks think that their decision to take weeks the site was getting more and more legal action had released a hornet’s nest. hits. ‘Domino Domain Disruption’ - We asked All this time we were still giving out cups, supporters to buy starbucks-related domain leaving them on the tube,in Starbucks, names,such as starbcuks.co.uk and point keeping up and building the pressure, them at our website.Starbucks were forced talking about the kids in the fields working to either spend thousands more in legal from sunrise to sunset,about how their fees or accept that they couldn’t get rid of parents died from disease caused by us unless they pull the whole website, fertilisers.We followed up the City of which would have been even messier. London visit with a trip to the Starbucks’ in Just before the European Social Forum Chicago substituting hundreds more cups, we produced stickers,thousands of them, hundreds of slow release truths.Again we which wasn’t enough by half.They self put documentation of this on our website. distributed and it wasn’t long before we received pictures of them on a Starbucks in Malaysia. PART O – A SORT OF GIFT HORSE We organised another After Chicago we left the starbucks thing action/performance in the City of London, alone,we continued to give out cups and jamming lots of the Starbucks we had such like,but it was no longer our priority. before. However on the 4th of October 04 we got an e-mail informing us that Starbucks wasn’t happy about us using the domain name PART F – A WIN WIN starbuckscoffee.co.uk.We got a big ‘fact file’ The reality of the situation was that we lost through the post from their lawyers,on the the legal battle.We didn’t bother to fighting front it said our name v’s Starbucks it.Yet the traffic to the website shot up to Corporation. tens of thousands of hits per week.The To be honest this did scare us at first, domain was supposed to be pulled on the mainly because we didn’t understand the 14/01/05,however it didn’t actually happen legal jargon.Once decoded it turned out all until 28/08/05,meaning tens of thousands that would happen was the loss of the web more people saw the website.You can now address,it wasn’t going to cost us a penny, find us at www.starbuckscoffee.org.uk Starbucks were paying lots for their lawyers We haven’t actively continued,we and giving us more mileage. wouldn’t want to flog a dead horse.But you can still see the stickers around,you can still get hold of green felt tip pens… and PART F – A SORT OF ACCIDENT Starbucks,although unfortunately they are WAITING TO HAPPEN still with us they’ve had their brand dented, Now that we had roasted Starbucks’ beans, and they can still Fuck Off. I it was only natural for us to take advantage. These were our tactics: By the vacuum cleaner, UK www. thevacuumcleaner.co.uk

052 // DiY HOW TO // DiY SURVIVAL Green to gold, an alternative funding strategy sill,repot in March,leave on the sill until sprouts appear.Repot,and when the weather unding has always been a problem becomes more clement (depending on for art and those practicing it.There is where you live),plant out in the garden, Fof course the arts council and wasteland,national park.Harvest as late as various other funding bodies that offer you can (September or October if in the UK funds for the production of art.However,the of course dependent on the weather) and forms and procedures may or may not be let mother nature do the rest. applicable to the timescales or possible The benefits of indoor gardening in an acceptability of your proposed project.In urban area are that,dependent on the strain these cases the urban artists may be left of your crop,an urban gardener can harvest with the problem of how to fund their work, several times a year allowing an alternative event or server costs themselves. Many revenue stream throughout the year.There urban activist artists may find themselves in are numerous ways of growing indoors: in this predicament,not wishing to approach a soil,hydroponics,misting systems.There are governmental funding body with their anti numerous media to grow in: rockwool, governmental culture jamming activities coconut matting,soil etc.The method such as graffiti,fly posting,shop dropping, detailed below is probably the cheapest and psychogeographics,etc. readily available on the high street.Low start An alternative funding stream may be up costs can produce a crop that may or needed to cope with the expense of these may not be reinvested into different systems counter culture street-based interventions: a at a later date.There are many sources cash crop that itself is outside of the online that can be referenced and the aim conventional white markets. of this article is not to be definitive but There are of course many ways of purely to seed a struggling community with cultivating your own specific cash crop,see a possibility of self fulfillment.God knows, the numerous resources for cultivation terrorists and organized criminals have been online.However,in the true spirit of DiY the using these methods without giving anything instructions detailed below will outline the back to the community in the way that basic and cheapest way of production,in artists do. keeping with the meager expenditure that is available to most urban artists.If of course WHAT YOU WILL NEED your situation is more rural,then there is an Seeds:These can be bought online or picked altogether easier procedure to follow.Start out of produce you may have already your seeds in late February on a window bought.Cuttings may sometimes be obtained and you will skip a tricky sexing stage in the procedure detailed below. >>

DiY SURVIVAL // DiY HOW TO // 053 G Soil,John Innes potting compost No 2 (1 that may be produced during the grow.A part) handy tip is to place a box or cupboard GVermiculite (1 part) space next to a chimney so that they can G Perlite (1 part) be vented through this aperture allowing various odor to be released high into the Pots: These should grow in size with your urban or suburban sky.A rotating fan can plants,to start with a fibrous seeding pot often reduce any rot that may occur. (the best) and can be replanted into a larger pot when needed without disturbing Aquarium ph testing kit: Most cash the delicate root system.The rule with pots crops water and nutrients will want to be at is that the larger the better.Old 10 liter paint 5.5 to 6 ph.This is often essential for the containers with holes drilled in them are production of a healthy plant.If your final the cheapest skip alternative to the costly mix of nutrient and water is too acid or garden center pots,although you can use alkaline,drops of lemon juice or vinegar almost any container,dependent on size. can be added to balance your ph. Instructions on how to test for the ph come Feed: There are several NPK fertilizers on with the testing kit the market,these are sometimes expensive and alternatives can give good results for Timer: security timers from any hardware the initial gardening alchemist.Chempak shop will do.They must be set to the times orchid fertilizer for vegetative growth was most convenient for you to have the lights found to be a reasonable and easily and the fans on.The specifics will be available cheap fertilizer with African violet detailed later. by the same company as an alternative flowering one. HOW TO Germinate your seeds,surely you remember 400 watt ballast powered light will Lights: your mustard and cress,peas or beans produce enough lumens for 4-6 plants,they experiments at primary school Soak some are the cheapest and can be often found in cotton wool or tissue in water,place seeds building sites skips or bought from an onto it,place on a warm windowsill not in electrical wholesaler under £100.There are direct light and keep moist.If you have better lighting sources and these may also obtained cuttings,then you will already be found or borrowed or bought.You will have a miniature adult plant ready to go. also need a reflector (bulb housing) and When your seeds germinate transplant bulb.The bulb is best bought from a them to your growing media.Small fibrous specialist shop as you will require the seeding pots that can be replanted into correct spectrum for the plants you are larger pots without disturbing the delicate growing. roots are ideal and cheap.Keep your seedlings on the windowsill until they form his can literally be a cupboard, Space: T several leaves,and gradually introduce your attic,built box.The possibilities are as fertilizer balanced to the ideal ph.Start with endless as you ingenuity.The space should a quarter strength fertilizer and increase as be light tight (not seen from outside and your plant becomes bigger. the light outside should not leak in). When your fertilizer is at full strength and your plant is approximately 4 to 5 inches Varies according to the Ventilation: high,you are ready to introduce your plant space,however desktop fans are good in a to its new growing space.Your timers should attic or room,while silent running be set to give the plants 16 hours of light computer fans (again from skips) can be and 8 hours of darkness.Place your plants essential if living or sleeping in the same around the edge of the space and not space as you cupboard or box.Good directly in the center of your light.They will ventilation is often key in reducing aromas

054 // DiY HOW TO // DiY SURVIVAL need some time to adjust to the new strength of light and the resulting heat.At this time it is important to make sure shorten the time spent on initial stages, regularly that the plants remain moist.This there are of course numerous resources is the vegetative cycle and ensures the plant online that detail these stages and gets maximum light to produce a strong techniques. and healthy base that will give your crop at When the plants are about 10 to 12 the end of the flowering cycle.It is spring inches high you can change your lighting to and early summer in your space now and the flowering cycle,that of 12 hour light and the growth of your plants should be 12 hours darkness.Change your fertilizer to matched with the amount of water that you your flowering mixture remembering to test provide.Be careful of under and over and adjust the ph.The decision on when to watering and make sure that the ph of your change the cycle may be governed by the feed is constant by checking. space that you have to grow in.A shorter Your lights height within your space height will mean that you may change should be adjustable.This is easily done earlier or a tall height may mean that you with chains or cords.On your plants initial can wait until the plant is a little bigger. entry the light should be as high as possible Plants can often burn during this period as to give a gentle introduction to its new light they can suddenly put on a spurt of growth source.Over the first weeks this light can be and get to close to the bulb.Simply move dropped down lower to give maximum the light upwards as your plants grow to light as the plant hardens to its new reach it.Plants can also be bent down away environment.Beware of burning your from the light,this can improve yield and plants.Err on the side of caution. gain better results for a smaller space. Your timers should be switching on and Approximately 2 weeks from the end of off the fans as they switch on and off the your flowering period (which is light.This will regulate the temperature approximately 7 weeks depending on your within the box and cool the atmosphere as variety) stop fertilizing and flush any the light produces light and heat. chemicals out using ph balanced water. There are a whole set of issues with Often this coincides with one third of your sexing your plants if you have grown from flowers turning brown.Two weeks later you seed,there are many guides and helpful tips can turn off the fans and light and harvest online.It is too complicated to detail here your crop.Your space now becomes the and is done better with pictures that you drying room unless you have the next batch will find online.When the lighting cycles of clones (taken before from your mother changes as detailed below this will show plant) ready to enter.Drying in your you which plant is which sex.Weed out the growing space can often reduce odors as it males and continue.At this time it may be is designed for that purpose.Why not wait advisable once the sexes of the plants have until your crop is dry before starting again. been ascertained to return your plants to a After all this is funding for specific art vegetative light cycle for a week or two.This projects we are recommending and not the will enable you to take the best female joining of cooperate profit fuelled industry. plant and return it to the window sill or There are literally hundreds of pages out separate cupboard or space lit by a there.These two are examples of the help standard fluorescent strip.These should be you can find online.I kept on 24 hours a day and will enable you to keep a fully matured mother plant that http://greenmanspage.com/guides/ never flowers and that you can take cuttings http://www.growkind.com/ from in the future.There are advantages to using clones,they are all the right sex,and they are mature plants that remain shorter By Gordon Brown than plants grown from seed.They also LONDON. UK

DiY SURVIVAL // DiY HOW TO // 055 C6, How to Arts Council

uring eight years of self funded art Obviously each section will be production we at C6 never imagined specific to your work or event,the hope is Dthat we would either apply for that this is of some help when formulating funding or be accepted for it by the Arts your own proposal Council.Times have changed,probably more so for us at C6 than for those at the Arts Council.The irony of C6’s first foray into 1. YOU AND YOUR WORK funding being spent on a show called What you want to do? SOLD OUT will not be lost on anyone.All C6 have always worked fiercely the trademark elements of previous C6 independently,using their own resources shows have been retained; the zine under and initiative to produce and distribute self production becomes this book with the challenging,humorous and engaging aid of arts grants.There will be numerous artworks to an international art audience, stickers and badges and free gifts,be them and ‘new’ audiences in the U.K.– i.e. of a higher quality and greater quantity with Audiences that would not usually attend an the assistance of better funds. art gallery.Through this application,C6 will The whole process of arts applications produce: have been a mystery for years even though A week long shop-front showcase of members of the group have worked within challenging,innovative interactive art, other funded arts groups,those successful bridging artistic,technical and theoretical documents remaining all along,closely approaches to street-level artistic guarded secrets,unseen by members of the communications. group who finally produced the works.It is Develop and exhibit multiple forms of for this reason that C6 felt it their duty to artistic intervention: pervasive/locative publish the below template to make media,such as bluetooth broadcasts and available the format and language needed wireless networks,as platforms for artists’ to be successful within the funding sphere. work. By the time you read this the terminology Attract and engage the participation of or buzz word bingo will have already new audiences in a range of innovative and changed,as will the grants for the arts internationally touring interactive artworks funding process that change from and installations. September 2005.However our intention is Produce,launch and distribute a ‘how-to’ clear.The process of application should be publication:‘C6 DiY Survival Handbook’ an open one with those who are past with practical instructions on how to re-use masters at it helping those that are not. the technologies and techniques in the Thankfully C6 have found their coven of show,along with critical texts and funding witches but have changed their commentary from leading artists and names in this document to save them any theorists in the field. embarrassment. The exhibition environment will be a re-

056 // DiY HOW TO // DiY SURVIVAL creation of a 90’s new media company Provide a practical and experience-led reception area.The ergonomic reception example of artistic use of emerging desk,furniture design and digital art communications technologies projected on plasma screens conjure to create an environment of passive Artworks and program of events participation during periods spent waiting On each day the gallery delivery system for corporate attention. (screen based,wireless and bluetooth Broadcasts) will host specific works or Why here and now? events,bringing together strands of Shoreditch has become a thriving marketing and street interventions community of artists,galleries,media companies,clubs and bars.It is an area that 25th Oct / Want & Need has seen a massive change in its Want & Need,an interactive sms work demographic and appearance.The media commissioned by National touring has earmarked it as ‘cool’.Shoreditch has exhibition Norway,will be seen for the first become a saturated market for pervasive time in London.An aggressive marketing communication from both commercial campaign will engage with locality that advertising and artist-based intervention. visually collaborates via sms.Early evening These pervasive media invasions of the presentation: C6 explain their approach to street create connections to spaces, marketing using Want & Need and other concepts and products located elsewhere,a works as case studies. practice that is central to C6.Strategies for www.c6.org/wantandneed credibility inhabit the streets of Shoreditch: stencils produced by major car 26th Oct / Live manufactures (Volkswagen) jostle for space C6 are joined by Motherboard & Nood, with urban commentary by Urban artists. Norway and the laptop owning public for a C6 wish to join and expand this dialogue day of audio visual collaboration. to include cross media broadcasts. Presentations by those involved scheduled By connecting the works - rather than throughout the day. products - included in the show an www.liveart.org alternative dynamic of no-profit marketing is mapped out.By linking these signs and 27th Oct / Echo signifiers C6 hope to create an experience Launch of C6’s 3D community chat software, that is between these broadcasts: a treasure exploring dynamics between relationships trail of corporate subversion. made online and their mapping.Early Core of this project is the creation of a evening presentations: C6 describe creditable space for the dialogue between development and reasoning behind the C6 product-less conceptual marketing and project Echo.Motherboard present their commercial counterpart strategies. recent echo sounding project 8th sister.The 8th Sister is an art project that investigates What you want to achieve? the practical and contextual implications of Document and present the last year of C6’s creating an underwater sculpture in which arts activities to a U.K.art audience,and its “true”form is manifested as an image on provide educational material for those an ultrasound/echosounder display. interested in using C6’s strategies and http://www.notam02.no/motherboard/8thS technologies for independent art ister/index.html production Form partnerships with relevant groups 28th Oct / C6 DiY Survival and organisations in London, Contributors,artists and the local public Attract and engage new audiences for gather for the distribution and presentation interactive Media Arts through street-level of the C6 Publication DiY survival. communications Explanation of technical systems and artistic strategies explored within the book. >>

DiY SURVIVAL // DiY HOW TO // 057 Why it is important to you and your organisations?

C6 Coming from London,and having toured collaboration with artists at Location C.will extensively in Europe for the last four years, transform the space into a viable venue for C6 wish to develop partnerships with showing art in the future.This will also be London-based collaborators and partner the first high-profile show in the space,and organisations,and to expand its existing art- will leave a lasting legacy both in terms of gift economy.Having been self-funded for 8 the physical development of the space,and years,and engaging primarily with in terms of engagement with local and international and web-based-audiences,this London-wide audiences.Location C.is a is an opportunity for C6 to build their large studio with over 100 artists and groups capacity as a professional arts organisation, operating from the space.Developing the and to promote and sustain their activities shop-front space as a gallery/showcase will in London. be immensely valuable for all the artists working there,and will help to develop a Arts Organisation A community of interest in the immediate Working with C6 in October,during the ‘test area. period’ for Arts organisation A’s technical The names,skills and experience of and organisational infrastructure will artists and other main people involved provide us with a practical,experience-led example of these systems in action,on the Project Leads street,communicating outside of the Artist A : Creative Director C6,indika.net professional art producers and technical / Artist B :Video artist,C6,indika.net free networks groups. Artist C: Software consultant,Innovations

Arts Organisation B Specialist Advisors Developing a partnership with C6 in Mr X,Arts organiser and administrator October will test Arts organisation B as a Miss X,Gallery representative. peer-evaluation framework and context.The Mr Y, A london magazine . shared themes of pervasive/locative media, free networks and street-intervention will External Advisor also provide Arts organisation B with a Mr Z, Arts Practioner. testing ground for their London-wide activities in a month 200x,and will act as a How you will bring in and involve practical example of the artistic potentials other artists or skills? of the methodologies and technologies G Presentations and skill-swap events under discussion during the Art event B. during the show G Commissioned writing for the Location C publication Location C has recently (in the last year) G Open call to web based lists and artists moved from self-management to being an groups to submit texts and ideas for Another organisation-run space,and has publication begun a programme of exhibitions and G A wireless hotspot and free internet ‘open studios’.So far,they have had little access as a platform for media art impact and have not attracted significant exhibition and production during the attendence and participation.C6,who have show extensive expertise in renovating and G Musicians,Djs,and Vjs invited to play developing exhibition spaces,in nightly during the show G A ‘Live Day’ of workshops involving international and local artists

058 // DiY HOW TO // DiY SURVIVAL 2. MAKING IT HAPPEN Objectives Creation of media tools and stratagies for media workers.Reparation of shop frontage engaging local audiences as well as creation of furniture for future G Blue tooth,sms based incursions into presentation and events within the space. passing media devices G Street art People the activity will reach G Printed media,button badges,stickers G Artists etc. G Local public G Network space G Local media workers G Community Wireless Networkers Wider networks G Community Groups G Partnership with web networked arts G Corporate wireless users organisations G World wide Sms and web campaigns How will you reach them? G C6 web,Shoreditch artists and wider G Existing Networks local community G Existing Contacts G Mailing Lists Outputs G Press G Exhibition space G Street campaign G C6 publication ‘C6 DiY Survival Handbook’ Evidence of demand for the activity G C6 marketing materials: arm-bands, G Existing Web based audience badges,stickers,flyers G Increasing experimentation with wireless G Blue tooth delivery software and media by artists G An interactive,exhibition-specific G Strong existing social networks (locally, extension of the C6 website nationally,internationally) G Ongoing attempts (so far unsuccessful Time Schedule due to lack of C6’s experience) to put on July: Arts council application,decision by art shows in the shop-front gallery at October Cremer St. July 28th: Call for submissions for the C6 catalogue ‘C6 DiY survival ‘ 4. MEETING OUR AIMS August: Collation of content for catalogue, How does this project meet the Arts design of website and finalisation of Council aims? installation design G Development of an accessible event, October 1st week: Decision from which will allow a diverse audience to funding application,DiY goes to print engage in media art October 23rd: installation of works in G Evaluation of practices that are central to Cremer St.venue the expertise of C6 October 25th-29th: Show opens each G Work with new partnerships,skill sharing days schedule to be found at proposed and pooling strategies website G Showcasing new resources to artists November: catalogue goes to POD (print G Contribution to local,regional and on demand system) national partners G Development of what should be a key 3. BENEFITS venue in the Shoreditch area With a series of presentations and events this C6 showcase reposes to produce and By S.Albert, Wireless London explain complex systems using simple themes to both the local public,artists and and Leon, C6,LONDON,UK

DiY SURVIVAL // DiY HOW TO // 059 Press Office (you are the media)

ou may find yourself in need of a communication campaign,or at Y least,of a press office,for the most Select your target diverse reasons.Better to be ready to face To communicate that the Thing exists and this eventuality.If you take this path,you will manifest – this is your primary must be equipped with a good dose of objective. patience,perseverance and boldness.Show If it is an event,you must notify it to off creativity. various regular columns,agendas,editorials, diaries. GET READY Pay special attention to the press of your Who am !? chosen field – it is the one most interested At the beginning,you must decide which in your campaign. message you want to circulate in the media If you aim at the mainstream,you need to and,ultimately,reach your intended ride the principle of plagiarism: aim at audience. having a press agency copying your order Take notes on Who you are (in this words and other media will themselves instance) and What you want to achieve copy them. (this time) By immaculate conception,you will have Make a list of everything you want to say . dictated titles and texts.

Realism Logistics: you need: Evaluate your real strengths – people, Paper and pens.A computer with word finances – and make a distinction between program,Internet and printer.Fax and minimal objectives and framework to try phone line.A mobile phone (better not to out.Planning not only will save you energy, use your own). you will also achieve much better results A graphic frame – where to insert the fax cover and your texts.You will be easily Strategy and Tactics recognized and this will increase the Time is important.So take all the time you chances of not getting instantly binned. need to think and organize what you are Prepare materials: photos,releases, going to do in the short time span when videos,baits and gadgets.Envelopes to post you will be plugged into the machines. them. If your enemy can hear you,beware of You need a space devoted to the phones and internet.You will never control enterprise and some comfort goods (food, them as your enemy does. drinks,any other substance if compatible)

060 // DiY HOW TO // DiY SURVIVAL Handbook

Two lists that you will be glad to have done. Resources One: your deadline plan – that is,When Valuable to monitor communication: you must do What Google alert.Once a keyword is entered,it Two: the directory of all media and comes up with all the webpages where it journalists relevant to your Thing,inclusive appears in realtime. of addresses. http://www.google.com/alerts?hl=en

One: timing Media are organized like a factory,their GET IN Chameleon variations depend on what they produce. The message is as important as the media. In newspapers brains switch on in the Dynamics of day news have an effect on it late morning – between 11am and 4pm too. they decide what comes out tomorrow. In practice,it is crucial the extent to Articles may change and be dropped which you manage to think and act like a anytime. journalist. Night time faxes usually disappear.Send Journalists are your recipients and them during the day and call to check if clients: you must broadcast them news so they have arrived in good shape and in the that they will pass them on. right hands. You must therefore edit Your news,or Weeklies close issues between 2 and 6 vision of the world,in a way they will be weeks before publication. able to understand,appreciate and Monthlies between 40 and 90 days. divulgate,either for pleasure or work obligation. Two: intelligence You need journalists – either interested or Body to body in charge of the field – compatible with the To deal with journalists means to enter in a Thing.Become familiar with the media,take Relationship with them – one to one.The note of names and enter them in a search more you manage to do this,the better engine. chance you will have in promoting the Office receptionists are a goldmine of Thing.You do not have to prostitute yourself. information,if handled with care. But doing yoga helps. Be polite and determined in asking for name,fax and e-mail of a journalist who CTRL+alt may be interested in the Thing. Communication is a manoeuvrable good: do not be afraid to control its movements. >>

DiY SURVIVAL // DiY HOW TO // 061 Strategy and Tactics A press release is unavoidable.Be concise and clear: your clients have little time and often also little fantasy.Call for a press conference only you have something to sell prepared for Serpica: website,press cuttings, – a surprise action or an appetising bio,designs,a logo and even a controversial personality. past,disseminating the news that the Do not be ashamed to exploit any designer,in 2001,had claimed to be a gay necessary media. activist to convince several members of the Japanese gay community to model for an Tricks alternative fashion magazine,while actually A playful spirit and detournement are good she used their images in her advertising. for your mediatic health.To shoot at the Included in the official programme of the moon is useful,if the Thing is innovative. fashion kermesse,reviewed by newspapers Journalists are a lazy breed,who are and even on TV.But she was actually the averagely bored and usually do not care to anagram of San Precario,the patron saint of investigate: you can help them to build the precarious workers.www.serpicanaro.com news.They will be grateful and will better divulgate your texts. guerrilla marketing – Fuck the market to penetrate it Take care From the Manifesto: GM is a mix of non The relationship with the media can be conventional communication techniques to an uncomfortable one for those who are obtain maximum visibility with minimum not used to it. resources (…) GM encodes and injects in If you are the one in charge of dealing the system memetic viruses able to with the media within a collective,keep replicate themselves in the heads of the everybody informed on the line of consumers (..) GM is a process that communication you will be pursuing. disperse the trust placed by consumers in Establish a policy together.Be open to the economy as a whole,to the advantage others’ curiosity and creativity: they are of a single enterprise: yours”. fertile terrains for communication. Live:“The isolation in which the media apparata keep those subjectivities that more radically criticize this system,has taught us 2 CASE STUDIES MADE IN ITALY serpica naro strategies and techniques to reach the Everybody fell for it – from the police to the pages of the most important newspapers, newspapers,with those in charge in independently from the will of their between.Serpica Naro has been a editors”,they sneer.“We have decided to masterpiece prank.An Anglo Japanese reinvest our competences in a fashion designer “internationally known for communication project to the benefit of innovative use of high tech fabrics and those who are willing to risk and play”.A unusual cutting techniques”,reviewed in successful campaign: a fake UFO landing. international magazines,showrooms in The most recent one,in collaboration with Tokyo and London.She is about to the creators of “political videogames participate at the prestigious Milan Fashion www.molleindustria.it is: www.where- Week – but her slogans (Why save the next.com.http://www.guerrigliamarketing.it/ I world,if you can design it?) are feared to raise the “no global”protests.Pranksters had by blueloop SWITZERLAND

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DiY SURVIVAL // DiY HOW TO // 067 Chris Lin TEXT FROM INTERNATIONAL UNION OF FREE THINKERS http://alicri.com/iuft/

068 // DiY HOW TO // DiY SURVIVAL BACI DI DAMA

INGREDIENTS:

200 g white flour 200 g butter 200 g sugar 200 g toasted peeled hazelnuts a bar of dark chocolate

Switch on the oven at 180 degrees Mix together in a bowl sugar and butter (at room temperature) until smooth paste is obtained Take the hazelnuts and grind them finely. If using an electric mixer pay attention not -15 minutes until they become light brown. to overgrind them as this will turn the paste Take them out and remove the now into a oily mass.Otherwise,place the squashed balls from the tray to cool.In the hazelnuts into a cloth,fold the cloth and meantime melt the chocolate by breaking crunch its contents with a rolling pin or the bar into pieces and place them in a cup. sturdy bottle.Add this to your mixture. Place this cup inside a larger pan with three Slowly add the flour – better use a sieve fingers of water and put the pan on a low and keep on mixing flame.When the chocolate is melted and still Better to knead by hand now.It will be hot you are ready to complete your Baci di initially very sticky,but persevere.If too Dama.Take two squashed balls (each one a sticky just add a tiny bit of flour to your half of one Bacio di Dama) and stick them hands and keep on kneading,until you get together by dripping a bit of melted a smooth paste that you can shape into a chocolate onto one half and by pressing ball without it sticking to your fingers. them delicately together.Repeat until all Now make tiny balls approximately the paste and chocolate are turned into Baci di size of an eyeball and place them onto a Dama.Put them in metal box and see if they well buttered baking tray,making sure you will last. leave enough room between them – at least Baci di Dama are perfect carrier of THC. 2 cm - as they tend to expand. Simply add to the corrected butter and Cook in the preheated oven for about 10 follow the recipe.Ideal for bite sized psychotropic gifts.

by Nonna Papera, GROPPO, ITALY

DiY SURVIVAL // DiY HOW TO // 069 How to be a Citizen Reporter

STEP 1: GET OUT FITTED

Headphones: UF monitoring audio,listening to news via mobile Spectacles (p. unfashionable): & ignoring unwelcome comments UF appearing intelligent or thick depending upon situation requirements

Scarf: UF changing ather conditions,altering we appearance Microphone: UF interviews & (e.g revealing or obscuring observations & for breast size) & hiding under being taken seriously

Daily newspaper: ree or found) Media Speak Cue (P.f Cards uf research & as for photographic stimulus for opportunities discussion with strangers

Handbag: UF carrying recording devices; minidisk, Mobile phone: UF communication, DVcamera,& digital stills camera recording (if other devices fail) & appearing popular

Jeans: uf appearing casual, unlikely to arouse suspicion if clean & well fitting (not Laptop mobile studio: UF too well fitting as other publishing of research & archiving problems may arise)

UF walking sensibly Sensible Footwear: KEY An evolving guide by UF: used for Joanna Callaghan ferably P.pre http://www.elastic.org.uk/KISSS /mediawatch.html

070 // DiY HOW TO // DiY SURVIVAL GUIDEBOOK TO FIND INFINITELY SMALL THINGS

BOUT THIS GUIDEBOOK: This G FIND A POINT OF PRECISION guidebook was produced from a G FIND ANOTHER PARTY calculus textbook entitled G FIND WHAT IS MOST CURIOUS A G FIND SURFACES OF BODIES “L’Analyse des Infiniments Petits”written in G FIND THE LIGHTS 1696 by Mr.le Marquis de l’Hôpital.Using G FIND BETWEEN YOUR HANDS the calculus problems posed by l’Hôpital G FIND WITHOUT A DOUBT (and translated poorly into English by the G FIND THINGS THAT ARE ALREADY KNOWN Institute) as pragmatic instructions,the G FIND A TABLE Institute hopes to collect as many infinitely G FIND THE SOLUTION TO SOME PROBLEMS small things as possible in our online G FIND AN ANALYSIS OF INFINITELY SMALL THINGS database at G FIND A SMALL SPACE http://www.ikatun.com/k/infinitelysmallthi G FIND THE SAME THING ngs/. G FIND AN ADVERTISEMENT G FIND MANY QUANTITIES ADDED TOGETHER G Choose one instruction. FIND ANY POWER,PERFECT OR IMPERFECT DIRECTIONS: G FIND THE FIRST OF TWO HALVES Then go find a thing that G FIND A DOUBLE OR A TRIPLE corresponds to it.Send your infinitely small G FIND A PRODUCT thing to: G FIND ANY BROKEN NUMBER G FIND A GENERAL RULE GUIDEBOOK: G FIND A VARIABLE QUANTITY G FIND AN ANALYSIS OF INFINITELY SMALL THINGS G FIND SOME THINGS THAT DIMINISH WHILE OTHERS G FIND A HOSPITAL CROSS G FIND INFINITELY SMALL DIFFERENCES G FIND ONE OF THE SMALL SIDES OF A POLYGON G FIND INFINITY,THE INFINITY OF INFINITY,OR AN G FIND HALF THE DIFFERENCE INFINITY OF INFINITIES G FIND THE FOLLOWING EXAMPLES G FIND AN EXTREME FORCE G FIND THE OPPOSITE SIDE G FIND A WORD G FIND AN AXIS G FIND ANOTHER SIDE G FIND A POINT FALLING FROM THE OTHER SIDE G FIND THE SPIRIT OF A SMALL TRIANGLE G FIND HERE BELOW G FIND THE BEST MATHEMATICIAN G FIND AN ORDINARY HYPERBOLE G FIND SIGNS OF RADICAL INDIFFERNCE G FIND THE REST G FIND ALL SORTS OF CURBS G FIND WHAT WAS PROPOSED G FIND A NEW WAY OF SERVING YOURSELF G FIND AN EXTERNAL ANGLE G FIND BOOKS THAT ONLY CONSIST OF DETAILS G FIND A PROBLEM G FIND THE NINTH SECTION G FIND WHAT YOU SHOULD HAVE FOUND

DiY SURVIVAL // DiY HOW TO // 071 G FIND ANOTHER CURVED LINE G FIND A BIGGER CAR G FIND AN EXTREMITY INFINITELY FAR FROM THE G FIND A PART IN THE MIDDLE OTHER G FIND A SPHERE G FIND A FIXED AND INVARIABLE BEGINNING G FIND A CUBE G FIND AN INFINITELY SMALL ANGLE G FIND AN ORDINARY CURVED LINE G FIND THE RAY THAT JOINS FIXED POINTS G FIND THE TWO SIDES THAT YOU ARE SEEKING G FIND A NUMBER WHOLE OR BROKEN G FIND HALF THE SURFACE G FIND A CONTINUAL INTERSECTION G FIND A REQUIRED POSITION G FIND HAVING IMAGINED A MAP G FIND THE SMALLEST OR THE BIGGEST OF ALL G FIND A CURB IN THE COMPANY OF A PARABOLA SIMILAR THINGS G FIND A FIXED POINT OUTSIDE OF THESE LINES G FIND SOME LENGTH G FIND THE CENTER OF A CIRCLE G FIND THE LEAST POSSIBLE G FIND A PROBLEM G FIND TWO FIELDS SEPARATED BY A STRAIGHT LINE G FIND A STRAIGHT LINE G FIND THE LEAST AMOUNT OF TIME POSSIBLE G FIND A VALUE EXPRESSED IN TERMS ENTIRELY G FIND THE CENTER OF AN INTERVAL KNOWN G FIND A VOYAGER G FIND A QUARTER G FIND A VALUE YOU SEEK G FIND A RAY BY IMAGINING ANOTHER RAY G FIND A BIGGER ONE G FIND ANY INTERVAL G FIND HERE IN FRONT OF YOU G FIND SMALL TRIANGLES G FIND THE DAY WITH THE SMALLEST G FIND NOTHING BUT CONTINUATION TWILIGHT G FIND MECHANICAL PRINCIPLES G FIND THE HORIZON AND THE G FIND THE OTHER SIDE EQUATOR G FIND A CAR BRINGING A POINT INFINITELY CLOSE G FIND COMMON SECTIONS G FIND CURVED LINES WITH FIXED BEGINNINGS G FIND THE SUN G FIND EVERYTHING ELSE G FIND WHAT YOU SHOULD G FIND A VERY REMARKABLE PROPERTY FIND G FIND THE WEIGHT OF A CIRCLE G FIND THE DIFFERENCE OF G FIND A COMMON CENTER THE DIFFERENCE OF A G FIND THINGS STAYING IN THEIR STATE QUANTITY G FIND AN INFINITELY CLOSE SITUATION G FIND AN ADVERTISEMENT G FIND A CONSTRUCTION G FIND DIFFERENCES G FIND WHAT YOU SHOULD HAVE FOUND EXPRESSED G FIND ANY TWO LINES G FIND THREE SMALL PARTIES G FIND A GIVEN POINT ON THE CURB G FIND A FIXED POINT G FIND A NEGATIVE QUANTITY G FIND SMALL PORTIONS OF THE CURB G FIND THE THIRD CURVED LINE G FIND DIFFERENT ORDERS OF INFINITELY G FIND SIMILAR TRIANGLES SMALL THINGS G FIND DIFFERENCES DESTROYING THEMSELVES G FIND AN INTERVAL G FIND TWO SMALL STRAIGHT LINES G FIND A PROBLEM G FIND SOMETHING STAYING ALWAYS THE SAME G FIND A LINE ON A CURB G FIND A SMALL PARTY G FIND A PATH TOWARDS THE SAME SIDE G FIND DIFFERENT WEIGHTS G FIND A CONSTANT G FIND IN THE FIRST INSTANT G FIND THE SAME THING IN A DIFFERENT G FIND A FORCE DISTRIBUTING ITSELF WAY G FIND OUT HOW MANY G FIND FALLING OVER EACH OTHER G FIND THE THIRD CURB G FIND THE SAME THING G FIND ONE OR MANY INDETERMINATE THINGS G FIND MAKING NOTHING G FIND A QUESTION OF MAXIMAL OR MINIMAL G FIND A CAR THINGS G FIND PROPERTY G FIND ANY QUANTITY THAT INCREASES OR G FIND ONE OF THE ROOTS DIMINISHES CONTINUOUSLY G FIND HAVING IMAGINED G FIND A RAISIN OTHER APPLICATIONS G FIND A POINT FALLING OVER A POINT G FIND THE VALUE OF AN G FIND A COMMON ANGLE UNKNOWN G FIND THE BIGGEST OF ALL PRODUCTS FORMED IN G FIND THE NEIGHBORS THE SAME WAY G FIND TWO IMAGINARY ROOTS

072 // DiY HOW TO // DiY SURVIVAL G FIND A CENTER BECOMING SENSIBLE G FIND TOUCHING POINTS G FIND AN INTERCEPTED PART G FIND A SEGMENT OF A CIRCLE G FIND A CROSSING G FIND A SPACE PRECEDING THIS ONE G FIND A PLACE TO CONSTRUCT G FIND A SPACE G FIND AN ENTIRE CURB G FIND THE SAME WAY G FIND AN EXTREMITY G FIND NUMBERS G FIND TOUCHING CONTINUOUSLY G FIND A CURB THAT SHOULD BE MECHANICAL OR G FIND A CLEAR INTERSECTION TRANSCENDENT G FIND ALL THOSE THAT TOUCH THE INSIDE G FIND INFINITE LINES G FIND THE SMALLEST G FIND STRAIGHT LINES EQUAL TO A CURVED LINE G FIND A GENERAL PROBLEM G FIND THIS CURB G FIND A CAR G FIND INFINITY OR ZERO G FIND THE NATURE OF A CURB G FIND A RAISIN G FIND MANY OTHER WAYS OF FINDING RAYS G FIND TWO RAYS INFINITELY CLOSE G FIND POINTS THAT TOUCH THE INTERSECTION G FIND REFLECTED RAYS G FIND THE CENTER G FIND ANOTHER WAY G FIND INFINITELY SMALLER G FIND INFINITE SIDES G FIND THE FIRST WAY G FIND A LUMINOUS POINT G FIND THE SECOND WAY G FIND A LUMINOUS POINT G FIND A POINT ON THE SAME SIDE G FIND A HALF G FIND TWO WAYS G FIND THE DIRECTION OF THE INCIDENT G FIND ALL THIS PERFECTLY G FIND ANY TWO OF THREE POINTS AGREEABLE G FIND WHAT YOU SHOULD HAVE FOUND G FIND A BEGINNING G FIND A POINT PERPENDICULAR TO THE CURB G FIND THE THIRD CURB G FIND DESCARTES G FIND A POINT BECOMING G FIND SIMILAR TRIANGLES INFINITELY CLOSE TO THE SUMMIT G FIND ANY OTHER POINT G FIND ANOTHER WAY G FIND ONE OF THE EXTREMITIES G FIND THE SAME CONSTRUCTIONS G FIND ANOTHER CIRCLE AS BEFORE G FIND,ETC. G FIND NATURE G FIND A GENERATOR G FIND AN ADVERTISEMENT G FIND A THING WORTH REMARKING G FIND THE OTHER SIDE G FIND A DIFFERENCE IN SPACE G FIND BY PAYING ATTENTION G FIND A POINT G FIND GENERAL CONSTRUCTIONS G FIND A MOBILE CIRCLE G FIND A NULL FRACTION G FIND A LUMINOUS POINT G FIND AN INFINITE FRACTION G FIND HALF A STYLE G FIND AN OTHER PART CONTINUING TO INFINITY G FIND A POINT INFINITELY FAR FROM THE CURB G FIND A BACKWARDS POSITION G FIND SIMILAR TRIANGLES G FIND AN ORDINARY PARABOLA G FIND ANY REFLECTED RAY G FIND AN ELLIPSE BECOMING A CIRCLE G FIND INCIDENTAL ANGLES G FIND THE LARGEST CURB G FIND THE SUM OF ALL THE DIFFERENCES G FIND A RAISIN G FIND A GENERAL PROBLEM G FIND ONE FINDING G FIND A SMALL ARC G FIND INFINITELY SMALL AND EQUAL ANGLES G FIND RECTANGULAR TRIANGLES G FIND WHAT YOU JUST FOUND G FIND A CONSTRUCTION STAYING THE SAME G FIND HAVING NAMED G FIND THE OTHER SIDE G FIND A POINT BECOMING NULL OR ZERO G FIND THE CURB G FIND A BACKWARDS SITUATION G FIND BROKEN RAYS G FIND HAVING IMAGINED A PERPENDICULAR OTHER G FIND SOME GRANDEUR G FIND THE BIGGEST WHEN THE SMALLEST IS ZERO G FIND A QUARTER G FIND ALWAYS IN THE SAME SPOT G FIND RAYS OF LIGHT PASSING THORUGH THE AIR G FIND A TRAPEZE G FIND A LUMINOUS POINT G FIND TWO G FIND ANOTHER SOLUTION G FIND AROUND ANOTHER IMMOBILE CIRCLE G FIND THE NATURE OF THIS PLACE G FIND SUCCESSIVE CENTERS G FIND THAT WHICH BECOMES USELESS G FIND A REVERSED SITUATION G FIND THE RAISIN

DiY SURVIVAL // DiY HOW TO // 073 G FIND A LUMINOUS POINT G FIND A NEW WAY OF SERVING YOURSELF G FIND HERE BELOW G FIND THE LEAST LARGE G FIND AN INFINITY OF LINES,GIVEN IN POSITION, G FIND THE SAME UNKNOWN STRAIGHT OR CURVED G FIND A NEW WAY OF CONSIDERING DIFFERENCES G FIND THE POINT OF THE INTERSECTION G FIND THOSE WHO MULTIPLY G FIND A LARGE AXIS G FIND AFTER HAVING ORDERED G FIND ALL POSSIBLE ELEVATIONS G FIND THE CUSTOMARY WAY G FIND AN INFINITY OF CIRCLES G FIND WHOLE OR BROKEN,POSITIVE OR NEGATIVE G FIND ANOTHER WAY G FIND ALL THE OTHERS G FIND ANY CURVED LINE G FIND THOSE BECOMING EQUAL BETWEEN THEM G FIND INFINITELY CLOSE G FIND WOULD HAVE FOUND THE SAME G FIND GENERAL CONSTRUCTION CONSTRUCTION G FIND A GIVEN CURB G FIND THE LAST AS UNKNOWN G FIND A SMALL ARC G FIND A NEW ONE G FIND AN EQUAL TO THREE-QUARTERS G FIND TOUCHING AND CUTTING G FIND A POINT TOUCHING VARIABLE C G FIND ANOTHER SOLUTION G FIND INFINITE SMALLNESS G FIND THE REUNION OF TWO POINTS TOUCHING G FIND ANOTHER WAY G FIND BEING MULTIPLIED G FIND HERE BELOW G FIND A NEW ONE FORMING G FIND BEING JOINED ONE TO THE OTHER G FIND EACH MEMBER G FIND THE POINT SOUGHT G FIND THE LETTER X OR Y G FIND TOUCHING CONTINUOUSLY G FIND AT LEAST FOUR POINTS G FIND WHO PASSES G FIND SHOULD TOUCH AND CUT G FIND A COMMON AXIS G FIND THREE EQUAL ROOTS G FIND EACH ONE BECOMING ZERO G FIND A PRODUCT OF TWO G FIND THE QUESTION OF FINDING THE G FIND THE NEIGHBORS OF A GIVEN POINT RELATIONSHIP G FIND A PROBLEM IN REMEMBERING YOURSELF G FIND WHAT WE SHOULD HAVE FOUND G FIND THE REUNION OF TWO POINTS TOUCHING G FIND AS BEFOREHAND G FIND REFLECTED RAYS G FIND TWO FIXED POINTS G FIND A CROSS G FIND ALWAYS ARRIVING AT ANY PLACE G FIND TWO PROGRESSIONS G FIND TWO HALVES G FIND A SMALL PORTION G FIND HAVING IMAGINED ANOTHER G FIND CONTINUAL INTERSECTIONS G FIND A VALUE ENTIRELY KNOWN G FIND INTERCEPTIONS G FIND THE SAME THING G FIND A DOUBLE G FIND IF YOU WANT TO FIND G FIND NOT HAVING A REASON G FIND OUTSIDE,INSIDE G FIND A FIN G FIND BECOMES INFINITE G FIND THREE MONTHS FROM NOW G FIND AT WHICH POINT IT FALLS INSIDE G FIND COPIES G FIND INFINITELY SMALL THINGS G FIND WITHOUT ASKING PERMISSION I G FIND INFINITELY CLOSE G FIND BIGGER,SMALLER OR EQUAL TO G FIND NOTHING IN RELATIONSHIP TO THE OTHERS G FIND A WAY VERY DIFFERENT FROM THIS ONE MORE INFORMATION: G FIND A MOBILE CIRCLE G FIND A PROBLEM http://www.ikatun.com/k/infinitelysmallthings/ G FIND A CONSTANT QUANTITY www.infinitelysmallthings.net G FIND A SMALL SPACE G FIND THE WHOLE SPACE G FIND ANOTHER SOLUTION by the Institute for Infinitely G FIND WITHOUT HAVING RECOURSE TO ART Small Things G FIND BENEATH THE INSTITUTE FOR INFINITELY SMALL G FIND TWO THAT YOU JUST MARKED THINGS G FIND SOME INSIDES 144 MOODY STREET G FIND HOW TO MAKE ALL OF THIS AGREE BUILDING 4, 4TH FLOOR G FIND TWO PARTIES OPPOSING EACH OTHER WALTHAM MA 02453 G FIND IN PASSING G FIND THE SECOND

074 // DiY HOW TO // DiY SURVIVAL >> 076 Collaboration as practice Gillian McIver >> 079 Bootleg art Eric Doeringer >> 080 The 8th sister Motherboard >> 085 How to make a mobile media lab Si Vinnie >> 086 Loca: grass-roots,pervasive surveillance Drew Hemment, John Evans, Mika Raento, Theo Humphries >> 089 Truck art: A DiY London gallery space Nathan Dunne >> 091 Media Pop Art – Electronic Art as Satire on Everyday Life Robert Praxmarer >> 096 DiY survival: Strategies of audience engagement Anna Banana >> 100 Tandem Surfing the Third Wave 5: Randall Packer, Secretary of the US Department of Art & Technology Ryan Griffis >> 104 There is no subculture only subversion C6

DiY SURVIVAL // DiY CASE STUDIES // 075 Collaboration

ver the past eight years of working as Luna Nera the group has come Oto a few conclusions about how collaboratively,in order to “share the pain”. collective cultural action works and how it In the words of the Critical Art Ensemble, works for us. Collective action solves some of the The collective operates as a kind of problems of navigating market-driven mobile gallery or institute of urban projects. cultural economy by allowing the We make onsite residencies and researches, individual to escape the skewed power and have created a number of large-scale relationships between institution.More live and visual art events in disused sites,in significantly,however,collective action also London,Berlin,St Petersburg,Zurich and helps alleviate the intensity of alienation Belfast.We have commissioned various born of an overly rationalized and local and international artists to produce instrumentalized culture by recreating live and visual site-responsive works. some of the positive points of friendship Over time Luna Nera has changed from networks within a productive environment. 1 being a tight knit group of four persons into If a group of artists decides to come a network of projects and persons.We have together to work collectively,they need to nodes of operation in Berlin and Barcelona decide in advance how collaborative and and partners in Russia. collective they want o be.True collaboration The main elements in successful is not the production of a “group show” collaborative practice are the shared where disparate artists show disparate process of making,joint ownership and works under some loosely defined theme. responsibility for the project and the Collaboration comes about where the exponential increase in opportunities. participants have a shared vision,collective In an “art world”dominated by a few goals and create something which is more institutions and their bevy of curators, than the sum of its parts. commercial galleries which are,basically There are different kinds of shops,artist-run or DiY practice has collaborations.In a project-specific emerged as an important outlet for art and collaboration,the artists come together in cultural development.However,the reality is order to create a specific project,and then that there are many artists pursuing tiny they (usually) disperse.On the other hand, amounts of funding.And it cannot be a collaborative art group will normally have denied that many so-called artist run a more formal structure of membership,a organisations have drifted into being group identity and sense of group institutions themselves,with even more commitments and will develop a group rigid and impersonal application ethos over time.Luna Nera has both: procedures and faceless bureaucratic members don’t always feel obliged to join attitudes. every project.Also we usually invite Given this reality,it is no wonder that different artists in the network to join us in many artists are turning to work specific projects,and then we operate

076 // DiY CASE STUDIES // DiY SURVIVAL as practice

within the project as “Luna Nera”. The process of collaborative art practice matter of funding.If the project is unable to involves questioning one’s artistic process access a fund which will cover the entire in a new way,a way in which certain factors project,the participating artists need to can take on great significance and can access their own national funding bodies radically change one’s methodology.These for support.Some countries offer generous factors include: funds to international project,some offer G shared process of making little.In cases of un/underfunded projects, G joint ownership/joint responsibility there can be large discrepancies in what G expansion of resources/opportunity that participants can bring to the project.Since can result the funding has to be shared in order to G new perspectives achieve the project,the danger is that those G encouragement to try new things who supply the greater funds could take G cross-genre/cross-disciplinary practice over the decision-making process.This is G hierarchy vs.equality always going to be partially inevitable,since Collaborative art practice is changing the accounts and reports have to be written,but artist’s experience of making art,and again,there needs to be agreement and increasing opportunities for artists’ negotiation if the endeavour is to remain education,exhibition and experimentation. truly collaborative. At the same time it can be difficult as in Within the international context,cultural many ways it transgresses the Romantic differences can at times cause problems concept of the artist as the individual within the collaborative process,but creator,a mimesis of the original Creator - a overcoming these is part of what makes the god among “his”creations. process interesting.Additionally, Hierarchy is also a factor: in most cases international collaboration offers almost leadership needs to be established,but in limitless opportunity for artists to learn, collaborative process,this is negotiated.But experiment and exhibit.Collaborating is a it can be a delicate and at times difficult proactive way to distribute one’s work and balance. ideas.Collaborating can be a way of trying In some cases,collaborative projects out different kinds of practice,by working begin with inequality and part of the within a supportive experimental process of collaboration is to try to environment.Working collectively on a overcome that inequality.An example might performance,an installation,a video be,when one more established artist works projection,is different than taking with an emerging artist,or one artist in the responsibility for it oneself and it can be a group is much better-known. unique opportunity to learn real technical Another problem arises with and critical skills.Each artist in international collaboration,often over the collaboration has a whole world of knowledge and experience,and >>

DiY SURVIVAL // DiY CASE STUDIES // 077 collaborations allows that to be shared. The biggest danger in collective practices is not that they can get stale and wither away.This can be good or bad depending how it develops.It may be good to take “time out”and work individually.Bringing new people in from time to time is good, but it can take time for them to adjust to the group’s dynamic.Jettisoning people from the group will also sometimes be necessary, since otherwise bad feeling will break up the collective anyway. The worst danger of all is that the collective will institutionalise itself,and become not an art group but an art administrator group.Only vigilance and healthy dose of irreverence will prevent this. Our conclusion is that collaboration is exciting.The end result is not dependent only on the artist’s own abilities but on the dynamic of the group.The process allows the artist to step outside of his or her own creative process into the larger picture.This can be itself a liberating process,and can lead to renewed inspiration and fresh ideas for one’s individual practice.It can be a good way for an artist used to working individually to gain fresh perspectives by working within a group on a project or two. Or it can be a lifelong practice.In either case,working collectively does not necessitate subsuming one’s artistic identity, but can enhance and develop it in multiple ways and directions. I

REFERENCE “ Observations on Collective Cultural Action,”Critical Art Ensemble,Variant 15 Summer 2002.

By GILLIAN MCIVER LUNA NERA, UK SITE RESPONSIVE ART INTERVENTIONS www.luna-nera.org

078 // DiY CASE STUDIES // DiY SURVIVAL BOOTLEG ART

uch of my art has to do with rsions of nearly 100 different artworks. I subverting the traditional role of ve Man artwork. I have tattooed copies don’t necessarily copy artists I like: any well- of my moles onto other people’s bodies (a known artist is fair game. You can find me “drawing”that can never be sold and which selling my Bootlegs on West 24th Street in is so well camouflaged that it is practically New York most Saturday afternoons when invisible),sold copies of every CD I own the weather is good,although I have been (but without any indication of what music is travelling to sell them outside of art fairs in contained on each disc),created a fake “fan cities like London,Miami,Chicago,Basel,and site”on the internet dedicated to artist Milan. Matthew Barney,and made a series of I like the Bootleg project because itbreaks sculptures containing various articles of many of the rules of the art world. As a contraband (drugs,counterfeit money,child “serious”artist you’re not supposed to paint pornography,stolen property,etc.) that are on pre-stretched canvasses and you’re illegal to buy,sell,or exhibit. definitely not supposed to sell your art on In the Fall of 2001,I began selling the street. However,selling the Bootlegs on “bootleg”copies of contemporary art the street is an integral part of the project outside of art galleries in New York City. The and means that I don’t have to hand over Bootleg series includes paintings,sculpture, half of my profits to a gallery. photography,video,and drawings. Most of I produce the Bootlegs in open editions the Bootleg paintings are made through a instead of following the usual practice of combination of painting and collage. This producing a numbered limited edition. allows me to make a bunch of paintings When I run out of a particular design,I make quickly and keep my prices low while more. Thus,ironically,the less-popular retaining the look of a hand-painted picture. designs are rarer and potentially more I was inspired by the vendors of bootleg valuable. The project also plays with the designer handbags and apparel that one infamous criticism of modern art that,“My 3- can find in any major city. I figured I could year-old could paint that.” Although that’s apply the same economic model obviously an exaggeration,it’s true that it’s (inexpensive versions of luxury goods) to not very hard to reproduce a lot of the world of contemporary art. Very few contemporary art. people can afford to spend $200,000 on a I find the Bootleg project an interesting painting,but I suspected that a lot of people way to explore the idea of the “art star”. The would be willing to pay $60 for a copy of a artists I copy are stars in the art world but $200,000 painting. I thought most of my pretty much unknown to the general public. customers would be young people who Taken together,the Bootlegs present a love contemporary art but can’t afford to snapshot of the contemporary art world. buy it. However,a surprisingly large number These are today’s “hot”artists,but how many are people who also collect the “real”artists. will be remembered in 50 years? When I started selling my Bootlegs,I copied the work of about forty different By Eric Doeringer, artists. Since then,I have continued to add NYC artists (and eliminated the artists that didn’t http://www.ericdoeringer.com/bootlegs.html sell well) and have now created bootleg

DiY SURVIVAL // DiY CASE STUDIES // 079 THE 8TH SISTER

TV2 NOVEMBER 2004 HOLMGANG just can’t but help wondering what kind of The following excerpt is taken from a Christmas parties they have.When I take a recording of a Norwegian TV chat show in look at all the oddities and strange projects which the controversial new board they support ...and I have tried to get a member of the Arts Council Norway is picture of what’s going on there (pause) ...it under crossfire due to his right-wing is said that a good laugh makes life longer, leanings and previous position as founder and I think that I’ll manage to survive my and chief editor of the most popular gossip four years in the Arts Council because a lot magazine in Norway,“See and Hear”.The of funny things must happen there.Possibly man in question is called Knut Haavik and the following grant was given during a we pick up the discussion at a point where Christmas party,I’m not sure.But I have The Haavik uses The 8th Sister as an example of Evening Post here,where it says (quote): the worst case of throwing away public The art group Motherboard is going to money. make art for seafarers.A sculpture will be Another panel member is defending sunk to the bottom of the sea in the island Haavik’s appointment and alleged lack of community of Træna,off the coast of any deep knowledge about The Arts by Helgeland,made of a material that will attempting to convince the public that make it possible to see the sculpture via an Haavik is not alone in making decisions.He echosounder.It will look like a naked has several expert committees to contend woman.The sculpture,called The 8th Sister, with who are able to “dive down”into their will lie in the visual vicinity of the mountain various disciplines; music,literature ...... range known as The Seven Sisters.Arts Knut Haavik:“Dive down! I’m sorry to Council Norway has supported the project interrupt you,but with regards to diving with 75.000 kroner.So I guess all you have down into the various disciplines ....it’s to do is to buy yourself a boat with an been rudely said here that fish and chips echosounder and have a wonderful artistic don’t belong in Arts Council Norway - but I experience! (laughter)”

080 // DiY CASE STUDIES // DiY SURVIVAL PHOTO BY TERJE MORTENSE TERJE BY PHOTO

MOTHERBOARD JULY 2005 THE 8TH SISTER G an exercise into Freudian perception. It is also .... G an underwater sculpture whose true form can only be seen on an echosounder display screen. G in principle,strongly related to the notion of synaesthesia as the image on the screen is created solely through soundwaves. G a form of “virtual graffiti”on the seabed - an intervention in the way experienced fishers interpret depth relations through graphic instruments. G named after the mountain range called The Seven Sisters in Helgeland,North Norway. G sunk beneath the sea in Træna,an Per: This is just a sketch. archipelago of 1.000 Islands and skerries We’ve thought about a form that looks 50 km off the mainland on the Arctic like this.She must at least have a body. Circle. Lars Inge: Breasts and that kind of thing? G made of 15.000 m of silver threads Per: Yes.Breasts are important and legs are weighted down with 5.000 one-kroner very important! The most important thing is coins. Lars Inge: Her upper body. G constructed by Per Platou and Amanda Per: This is a view from above.A form that Steggell of Motherboard with Annesofie has two legs.A figure that looks more or less Norn,Neptun Sports Diving Club with like this. Lars Inge Ingebrigtsen,Rolf-Olav Lars Inge: So,she’s lying on her back. Andresen and Jon Kåre Olsen,and,last Per: She’s kind of lying on her side. but not least,Kjell Johnny Johnsen. Lars Inge: So she’s lying on her side. Per: Seen from above,she’s lying on her The extract below is taken from an on- side.You see ... location video recording where Per initiates Lars Inge: She’s lying in the recovery the divers into our plan for constructing The position! 8th Sister immediately before the work Per:Yes.The recovery position.We can >> begins.

DiY SURVIVAL // DiY CASE STUDIES // 081 forget her arms for the time being.As you Lars Inge:The 8th Sister,that’s Lekamøya! can see we’ve used one-kroner coins. “According to one version of the legend, These were the cheapest weights we the seven sisters,skinny-dipping in the sea found that were suitable for the job.They with the beautiful Lekamøya,were chased are part of the artwork.So now there’ll be a by the horny Horseman.The sisters threw treasure hunt here.But these are in fact themselves to the ground while Lekamøya weights,and what I’m holding now has tried to escape southwards before been tested,because these threads aren’t everything turned to stone.” too buoyant,we couldn’t use heavy weights Lars Inge: I’ll willingly sink The 8th Sister either.They are quite light,but I’m not to the bottom of the sea,but I want a exactly sure what the conditions are like on guarantee in case I get sued afterwards, the sea bed.Hopefully they aren’t too light. because this is blasphemy in relation to the Lars Inge: Up to here there’s a good deal history of Helgeland.Just a quick question.I of seaweed.But how long out on the sand didn’t bring my digital camera with me,but bed do you want her? I see you’ve got a digital camera with you. Per: Mostly where there’s black seaweed, Because I’d like to have a photo of us three but she can just as well lie on the boundary. boys and The 8th Sister before we jump in. That would be really nice. Per: Of course. Rolf-Olav: 3 m.Is that what you want in Lars Inge: We have to have one! width? Per: We have an underwater camera too, Per: Width.Yes. with a lamp and everything ... Rolf-Olav: About 3 m wide? Lars Inge: You must agree that it’s hard to Per: Yes.And about 10 m long. see who’s who with diving suits on ... Rolf-Olav: 10 m long. Per: We should absolutely take a band Per: Approximately.It really doesn’t have to picture.Shall we take it now or wait till ... be very precise.8 or 12 m - it doesn’t really Rolf-Olav: We’ll take it right away! matter.This is a kind of .... Creating The 8th Sister takes 3 dives over Lars Inge: ...gravestone! Do you realize a period of 36 hours.In between the dives that what you’re doing is twisting history? Per, Amanda and Annesofie tie kroner to Per: Well,I know that this is a big thread,kroner to thread,kroner to thread. discussion,but ...

082 // DiY CASE STUDIES // DiY SURVIVAL Left to Right: Lars Inge, Kjell Johnny, Rolf-Olav & Jon Kåre

On the final dive the commemorative stone, or gravestone as it is called,is put into place and the mission is complete.

THE RUMOUR OF THE 8TH SISTER SPREADS QUICKLY OVER TRÆNA. Shopkeeper/fisherwoman: The first time we sailed over her with the echosounder,she looked like an angel.And the second time I think she looked more like a mermaid.And when we looked down at her visually all we could see was something glittering. Electrician: Yes,I’ve seen her.Technically speaking,I shouldn’t be able to see her with my echosounder turned off.From a technical point of view,if you sail over her lengthwise,you see the whole of her. But if you sail over her the other way .... - You only see her breasts. No.You can’t see anything.But it is possible to get a reflection. Coast guard: The 8th Sister? No.I haven’t heard about her. - And The Seven Sisters? Yes,I’ve heard about them ...Oh.,that! Yes, Ole Johnny told me about having seen her on his echosounder....Aha ...Okay.Have you got anything to do with her? Is that so? Well well well well. >>

DiY SURVIVAL // DiY CASE STUDIES // 083 Casual labourer from Sweden: So you’ve filmed the sister under the sea? - Yes. With an underwater camera? - Yes,exactly. Well,I expect she’ll be beautiful.We’ll have to take a look at her.Take a look at her “Depth has become profound even as it has become increasingly superficial.The idea that the deep harbours the truth is an old one; surfaces have prevaricated since the Greeks,appearances deceive,and it is foolhardy to trust the eyes.” - Judith Roof 1

Fisherman: I’ve heard she’s a really pretty woman.But it’s a pity she only draws men out to see her.You’ll have to sink something for the ladies too! - So what do you think about The 8th Sister lying on the sea bed? How does it fit in with the legend? It’s rewriting history. Shopkeeper/fisherwoman: I don’t associate her with the Seven Sisters mountain range.I think it’s quite natural, because what people talk about,it’s always how many men have drowned at sea.But there are many women too who have lost their lives.So at least we know where she is now.We don’t know where all the others are.They’re gone forever.So she can be a monument for all the women who’ve drowned at sea.

URLS The 8th Sister: http://www.notam02.no/motherboard/8thS ister/ Motherboard: www.liveart.org

by Amanda Steggell Motherboard NORWAY www.liveart.org

NOTES 1 Judith Roof “Depth Technologies”,p21 in “Technospaces - inside the new media”by Sally R.Munt (ed),Continuum 2001.ISBN 0-8264-5003-2.

084 // DiY CASE STUDIES // DiY SURVIVAL How to make a mobile media lab

he mobile media lab came about through a collaborative process T between Brave New Brum ,The Laboratory of Insurrectionary Imagination introductory lecture on the history & and Clandestine Insurgent Rebel Clown practice of civil disobedience as taught by Army (CIRCA) Dr.Skip Justice Tallahassee”.As the evening Over a period of several weeks the passes and the sun is ready for bed,the caravan was completely redesigned, caravan explodes and out tumble members transformed from a drab 70s style brown of the Clandestine Insurgent Rebel Clown into a wonderous deep green.Camo Army who present a ridiculous recruitment curtains and cushions fashioned from show,whilst a deliciously strange feast is recycled mattresses ensured that visitors prepared and served in preparation for could sit down and relax,perhaps perusing dancing “ some of the agit-prop available on the Info The show was followed by two days of stand,designed and built by special guest intensive training in the techniques of Rebel David Solnit Clowning,and involved workshops on ‘The On the tech side the caravan was kitted Battle of the Story’ and interventions in the out with 300W of solar panels,some storage form of Praying to Products with the The batteries and an invertor meaning that it Church of the Immaculate Consumption. can be powered off the grid. Lab of II tour : The Lab of II and CIRCA used the mobile www.labofii.net/tour05/trainings/ media lab for a recruitment tour of the UK, Praying to Products: www.consume.org.uk on their way to the G8.Every few days the This was all in preparation for the visit to caravan and bus would roll into town: Scotland by the G8 nations on July 6-8th “Evening falls,a caravan pulls up in the Thousands of people went to Scotland to town centre,cushions and rugs are thrown challenge the legitimacy of these 8 rich to the waiting crowd as tales are told about men in determining the future of the global the joys of resistance,the vacuum cleaner economy.Actions were many and varied. present their latest work,a performance See lecture called ‘Dr Branson,Or how I learned www.indymedia.org.uk/en/actions/2005/g8/ to stop buying CD’s and love free for news,videos,reviews and reports of the downloads’ followed by lecture (involving huge protests and direct actions that egg boxes and strawberries) on the history happened during the summit. I of civil disobedience - “Power: an BY Si Vinnie , UK A2:RT www.bravenewbrum.org

DiY SURVIVAL // DiY CASE STUDIES // 085 Loca: grass-roots, pervasive surveillance

oca is an exercise in everyday interaction with performers. surveillance,tracking digital bodies in The purpose of these messages is to L physical space.It asks what happens make the presence of the Loca network when it is easy for everyone to track known,and to illustrate the types of data everyone,when surveillance can be that can be gathered and the inferences effected by consumer level technology that can be drawn from it.These messages within peer-to-peer networks without being could highlight people’s daily routines, routed through a central point? reveal the ‘others’ within the network,or Loca explores the shifting nature of even be used to control people’s behaviour. surveillance as it ceases to be the preserve Loca aims to lightly touch large numbers of large State or commercial bureaucracies. of people.The aim is not complex The project foregrounds secondary interaction,but subtle affect,and only a characteristics of mobile communications, minority of people will receive it,let alone such as the ability to locate consumer give it any more than passing thought.It will mobile devices in real-time and near-real- be like a picture glanced at sideways,a time,and the kinds of peer-to-peer pervasive message caught in the corner of the eye,or surveillance that is possible as a result. a mosquito swatted on the arm.Like a Deploying a cluster of interconnected, mosquito it will not always be welcome,but self-sufficient Bluetooth nodes within inner can be expected to infuriate,annoy and city urban environments,Loca observes provoke. people’s movements by tracking the Loca looks at the surveillance potential position of the Bluetooth enabled devices of different consumer platforms.The current that they carry.Each node is running a iteration of the project focuses on Bluetooth modified version of ContextPhone software, for a number of reasons.One is that this each gathers data and then uploads it to a provides some independence from the modified version of the Aware platform, mobile phone companies.But also because enabling anyone with any device that has Bluetooth has been designed in a way that Bluetooth set to ‘discoverable’ to be tracked. is problematic for privacy management,and New nodes can be added or old nodes because Bluetooth is the first ‘everyday’ removed to create a surveillance swarm.As network technology that enables people to the project develops,inferences based on be tracked,and to track each other,within analysis of the data (server-side) will guide the physical environment (WLAN is similar, communication with the Bluetooth users, but is not always-on and is less mobile; GSM via ‘Bluejacking’ (unsolicited messages sent tracking remains the preserve of the mobile to Bluetooth devices),or through

086 // DiY CASE STUDIES // DiY SURVIVAL phone companies; RFID is still not GSM you are not allowed.All you need to established in the consumer domain).The participate – to watch or be watched – is a privacy trade off found in pervasive Bluetooth device. surveillance (you need to incrementally Loca explores peer-to-peer surveillance, give up every more privacy in order to and yet,like many such projects,it is peer-to- access new services) is common to all peer only to a point.Surveillance data is network technologies,but here it is not just generated independently on each node,but data but also bodies in space that are being then that data is relayed between the nodes tracked. and a server via the GSM network.This does An immediate aim for Loca is to make not compromise the principle,however.The people aware that they have agency,that surveillance is independent,a server is only they can avoid being tracked by turning off used for convenience within this project as their device,or in this case,switching their it simplifies implementation,and the data Bluetooth device to ‘invisible’.But Loca also could be relayed between nodes in sets out to reveal the limit of this agency. alternative ways,but with less mobility,or With all technologies that are susceptible to higher cost.This would lead to a new set of pervasive surveillance techniques,the only parameters,alternative questions,and a way to opt-out of the surveillance is to change in the nature of the project. switch off altogether,which is often We are not asking people in advance.We impractical,and means losing the benefits do not want their permission.Then it would of that technology.This was not inevitable, not be surveillance,but a performance by and we need to ask why these technologies them for us.One principle of the project is are not privacy preserving: why,for example, that people should be able to participate do all network technologies use permanent through their own mobile phone without unique IDs,who made those decisions,on being given any additional technology,and what agenda,who gains benefits? Equally, without their own device needing to be computers that are invisible are bad for modified in any way,either through privacy: do you want the things that are installing software or by altering settings. tracking you to be hidden? Loca advocates Working under the banner of ‘art’ offers the development of countermeasures and license that could not otherwise be of better privacy management provisions in obtained.But equally an art project is easier policies and protocols.An issue with to write off and disregard.Art is a frame to Bluetooth is that Bluetooth scanning is be used sparingly. currently anonymous.Should not the Pervasive surveillance has the potential person or device doing the scanning have to be both sinister and positive,at the same to provide their identity before they obtain time.The intent of Loca is to equip people the identity of the devices that they are to deal with the ambiguity and to make scanning? Many such measures will involve informed decisions about the networks that a cost,so unless an argument is made and they populate.During the first public demand exists,then it will not happen. presentation of the project in Kiasma and Loca works independently from the m-bar in Helsinki during PixelACHE2005 mobile phone companies and other service the project inspired one person to google providers,so that it is clear to participants Bluejacking and give it a go,and afterwards that the project can be done in a low-cost to switch their Bluetooth device to way,and so it is not swayed by commercial undiscoverable.Ultimately,the impact of interests in technology.Each node is built projects such as Loca needs to be using readily available,cheap parts,and is measured beyond the responses of the encased in concrete in order to be kinds of individuals that attend deployed in the urban environment.Nor do international art events,by the influence you need any special privileges or to break they can exert on both policy and the law – nothing stops you from scanning, protocols. in fact it is part of the protocol,whereas Loca is an anticipated accident.The project was initiated in 2003,out of an >>

DiY SURVIVAL // DiY CASE STUDIES // 087 variety of contexts – if,for example, someone wished to gain an overview on an event at which they were present.This contextual information leads to unforeseen consequences,such as the ‘accidental’ tracking of people present during the media arts festival ISEA2004 in Helsinki.If someone wanted to reproduce what interest in how surveillance and social Aware/ContextPhone had been found to control emerge as a residue or unforeseen do,but for commercial gain or unethical effect of otherwise virtuous information ends,how hard would it be to implement systems and network technologies.Then it technically and legally? sat in waiting for the accident to happen. Projects and debates surrounding The accident was when the Aware / surveillance have yet to properly address ContextPhone collaboration started Locative Media.Likewise Locative Media generating surveillance data,unforeseen by has yet to fully address its own critical its designers.When users publish media to context.Loca seeks to make a contribution Aware directly from their phone,using to these debates,while at the same time software called ‘ContextPhone’,it critically assessing its own methodology automatically annotates this media with and the risks of its approach.How can contextual information derived from the creative work with surveillance phones actual surroundings,e.g.time,GSM technologies add to or distract from cell-ID (an approximate geographical traditional campaigning strategies? Does it locator),and the Bluetooth environment – risk getting the public used to a new i.e.a list of the Bluetooth devices around at control technology prior to its deployment the time.The premise of Aware and in a coercive way? How may both positive ContextPhone (themselves developed by and troubling sides of a new technology be Loca participants),was that the social simultaneously explored? I context of the media can be used both to situate the media and to help organise it. The Bluetooth information would allow by Drew Hemment, John Evans, queries like ‘show me all the pictures Mika Raento, Theo Humphries captured when I was in the vacinity of that MANCHESTER,UK person’,which would be useful in a wide http://www.loca-lab.org

088 // DiY CASE STUDIES // DiY SURVIVAL TRUCK ART: A DiY LONDON GALLERY SPACE

assimilation and re-cognition by the artists t has been some time now since the involved.This approach was not in itself famed “Freeze”exhibition took place in wholly new.There had been other artist-run a Docklands warehouse in 1988. I galleries and initiatives,such as Matt’s Seventeen years in fact.Freeze,put together Gallery,initially set up in an artist’s studio in by Damien Hirst,came to be regarded as 1979,that had gone before.Therefore Freeze, the inception of a period of optimism for which took place almost a decade later,may contemporary art in Britain that had been be seen as the cooptation of pre-existing DiY absent since the 1960s,symbolising models. Thatc herite enterprise and an embrace of Considering the faux-“outsider”façade the commercial.The irony of course is that initially exhibited by yBa as a strategy for the exhibition was also seen as an example tabloid provocation,what is the role of the of the DiY ability to create a space outside DiY gallery space in the 21st Century? Does the commercial art world.In this sense,it it have the potential to engage with fresh was not so much peripheral cultural activity developments within the avant-garde that had pretensions of maintaining itself as without the overarching goal of commercial such,but rather,it was a strategy for assimilation? commercial Truck Art is a mobile gallery space that moves around galleries in the East and West End of London,temporarily inhabiting the space of a gallery.The shows happen quickly,often within the time-span of private-view openings.The fact that the shows are temporal is integral to the Truck Art project,which is in pursuit of combining different art audiences in an innovative and progressive way. Truck Art may be seen as a paradigm of a 21st Century artistic nomad.Deleuze and Guattari have described the nomadic war machine as ‘a rhizomatic structure that travels a path from one point to another.The nomad does not harm its environment but intensifies its growth.’ Prague Biennale 2, May 2005 DiY SURVIVAL // DiY CASE STUDIES // 089 pipeline.With the opportunity presented by the Biennale,we will hopefully be able to undertake a range of new projects. N: Do you see Truck Art as an artwork in itself,or is it solely a space for art? J: As an artist myself I very much work with Truck Art under the criteria that I would with any other work I produce.I see it as a curatorial project but for each project my role changes.I believe this is what makes it such an exciting space. N: What sort of responses have you had to the project so far? J: Good.Curators and artists that we have approached have all been keen to get involved.Some gallerists (remain unnamed) have made it quite clear they wouldn’t be happy with us being parked outside their gallery. Prague Biennale 2, May 2005 JOE N: Would you call yourself an activist? FRAZER, A RECENT GRADUATE OF J: (laughs) There was a message posted on GOLDSMITHS COLLEGE & FOUNDER the Truck Art website (www.truckart.org) a OF TRUCK ART, TALKS TO NATHAN while ago,which said:“How are you going DUNNE to reinvent the London art world?”My Nathan: Where did the idea for Truck Art answer was that we are not a virus that originate? feeds off established artists and their Joe: Truck Art came about after the projects.Truck Art has its own follower,its frustration,as a young artist living in own crowd.Our mission is to bring new, London,of not having any place to show fresh talent to a stale scene.We my work.Many of the previously used acknowledge the prevailing hegemony and spaces around Hoxton just didn’t appeal to the power it wields and that’s why we park me.The shows just seem to be full of the outside the commercial galleries.Truck Art same art made by the same art college allows for the possibility of a new dialogue, students.I wanted a space that would give one that not only enables people to see my friends and I more control of how we new work but to experience it in a temporal showed our work. environment.We are not aggressive N: What sort of shows have you had so far? terrorists,nor are we simply a bunch of J: Truck Arts biggest show so far has been bored artists trying to re-invent the art taking part in the Prague Bienniale 2 (26 world. May – 15 September 05).We were invited to N: How can people get involved in Truck curate a show for the 3-day–long opening Art? celebrations.The show was “Truck Art J: We accept artists/curators proposals presents the Trucker Prize 2005.”Visitors to through [email protected] the truck were asked to vote for their favourite artwork and we announced the All photography by Truck Art. winner on the last day.The whole prize thing was obviously a parody but I felt that by Nathan Dunne the show was an amazing success.There LONDON are also many other exciting projects in the www.truckart.org

090 // DiY CASE STUDIES // DiY SURVIVAL Media Pop Art – Electronic Art as Satire on Everyday Life

ABSTRACT (T)ERROR – A MIXED REALITY SATIRE In this paper I will give an outline of my ABOUT WORLD POLITICS AND THE practice as a young media artist and introduce GAMING INDUSTRY some of my strategies,thoughts and works.I Whom would you like to play to get the world will try to formulate my subjective view of back into shape? George W.Bush,Osama Bin media culture and media art with a special Laden,or rather Tony Blair? Starting the focus on game art.On the basis of some computer game (t)Error,the player is spoilt for illustrative works I will introduce the term choice.A camera tracks the player’s movements Media Pop Art,and highlight the importance of and a projector throws the players outlines in socio-political aims in my works. original size on a white wall in front of him,all Keywords: Game Art.Media Art.Pop Art. in real time.When the player kicks,his shadow Activism.Installation.Interactivity.Socio-political will kick.When the player ducks or jumps to Art. avoid bumping into an enemy jet,his shadowy avatar will do exactly the same in real time.The INTRODUCTION empty silhouette of the player gets filled out - My first encounter with a computer was at the and this is the players choice – with the face of age of ten.This early computer (Amstrad CPC George W.Bush,the flag of a state which 6128) was relatively powerful for the time but supported the Iraq war,or the body of Osama not supported by many programs or games. Bin Laden .For gaining a good game score,you Thus I soon started programming my own little will have to fight evilly.Being slipped into this games and drawing programs.I was stereotype role,you have to avoid tanks, overwhelmed by the possibilities it gave me on submarines and fighter planes,you have to the one hand but was often frustrated by the collect oil pumps and dollar notes,and you strict rules and difficulties writing code that have to kick civilians begging for help.If you would run as expected.Luckily however I grew succeed in all these matters,you are the lucky up in the 2D era,where I was satisfied winner and rise to the next game level. programming circles which had to shoot at I always felt that at least for me there is a lack boxes.The kids growing up now can choose of meaning in a lot of media pieces.I decided from a myriad of games incorporating complex to express my feelings about the war in Iraq stories and puzzles coupled with realistic with a protest computer game and tried to use graphical representation of the real world.These this genre as a protest medium.In former times kids grow up with these advanced media forms, a revolution started with a song,in our time frequently consuming them in an uncritical console kiddies play games,it’s as easy as that.I way.I see my role as an artist to work with the see a transition in how information and protest gaming media,analyze,deconstruct and works for the younger generation.Fakes, reconstruct it 6.In the next section I will write Adbusting and Semiotic Sniping are the ways to about my project (t)Error,which was my express your feelings in a world ruled by global attempt to use the medium computer game to players.The logos and signs of these companies transport a protest message 7.(t)Error is can be found everywhere.Resistance is futile? exhibited at the COSIGN 2004 Art Show.After Not if you undermine their symbolic system, that I will shortly review the projects fight with their weapons and use corporate Orgasmatron,StencilU and City Obscura and on disinformation.That’s what I try to do with my the basis of these works I will try to formulate art.I’ll define this kind of work as Media Pop Art. my ideas and thoughts about media culture. DiY SURVIVAL // DiY CASE STUDIES // 091 It takes well known objects,structures,media, what makes the artistic examination of etc.and sets it in a different and sometimes computer games so precious and powerful: funny context.For me that’s more interesting The sudden liberation,which is triggered by the than to make a serious art work,which in the dramaturgy of computer games,the role games end doesn’t reach anyone,except some par excellence.Nowhere else it is as simple specialists. 6 and as easy to slip into the role of authorities, to play with the overthrow of established social systems and experience the dynamism of (T)ERROR CRITICIZES THE IRAQ WAR “A rt is the cry of distress uttered by those who action and reaction without any danger.At the experience at first hand the fate of mankind.„ same time,(t)Error provides its players with a 12 This interactive video installation was my strange closeness and directness:It’s not a reaction on the Afghanistan campaign and the joystick that helps our avatars to jump hundred following Iraq war.It is a political persiflage on meters high,but everyone is actively playing world politics,a mixed-reality game,which him/herself.(t)Error is an attempt to dismantle playfully atempts - through the whole body the gaming industry and the stereotype roles interaction - to participate,but at the same time and behavior patterns taught by it.All these are the not very playful content of (t)Error wants to the semiotics our children are confronted with provoke reflection and self-reflection.This play since birth.We need to analyze them to get to with the aspects of fun and seriousness or know our children’s world.The simple,pixel game and reality forms the basis of my work graphics of my game was developed following and media analysis.Laughter lures the visitors, early,famous computer games like for and not only an elitist gallery audience,but example Space Invaders or Defender.(t)Error also the people from the street,who do not creates a manageable (art) space,a system of know too much about contemporary art.Fun, signs and symbols,which are well known by games and interaction cause motion,it is then the followers of computer games,who always much easier to get involved in the game,and associate these sign systems with fun and so the change from laughter to sadness is more leisure time.Society codes and conventions powerful and obvious. which everyone takes for granted,can now be seen from a different perspective and open up new possibilities for dialogue and debate. (T)ERROR CRITICIZES THE GAMING INDUSTRY To transform this combination of laughing and (T)ERROR CRITICIZES crying into the world of computer games,and THE MEDIA SOCIETY so into the world of our children,was my main Our contemporary life and society consist of aim.“Fifty percent of all Americans age six and brainwashing media flashes,consumption and older play computer and video games.”14 pseudo-happiness paired with an up and “In 1998,over one in four American coming depression.My work uses the same youngsters reported playing games between media and the same mechanisms however the seven and 30 hours a week.More than one in goal is the deconstruction of this failed system four homes has a game console.”4 This is one of and a reflection of this media junked fake.Just the reasons why I like to show my installation the unbroken popularity and fascination of at parties and clubs or in public spaces 10.This computer games speaks for an artistic analysis. year at the beginning of April,for example, There is a whole “culture of external activities (t)Error was exhibited in Berlin,in the “Club zur that has developed around these games – from Möbelfabrik”.The young audience of this trading of customized game patches to venue participated with enthusiasm.The demands that the manufacturer provide more reflection hit them a couple of minutes later, levels,to whole web sites devoted to one’s 3 when the youngsters squatted down besides avatars”. In consequence of her examination, the installation,tired after the exhausting Antoinette La Farge stresses that in the near movements. future,computer games will be as important in “I just played Osama Bin Laden in the game. the modern cultural landscape as art,music I was killing people.Was that fun?”And this is or film.

092 // DiY CASE STUDIES // DiY SURVIVAL Towards a sex thrilled society,Viagra,penis (T)ERROR CRITICIZES THE ABUSE enlargement,porn.Sex sells,it’s a simple OF COMPUTER GAMES THROUGH equation.Orgasmatron is my persiflage of a MILITARY AND ECONOMY culture which certainly thinks more about sex Another important point of criticism shown in then about Mozart.I tried to promote the (t)Error lies in the close connection of installation with fancy flyers and in a pop computer games with military and economy. cultural way,to make it look like a clubbing, It’s now fairly common knowledge that which worked very well I printed 700 flyers and Operation Desert Storm was prepped for by they were all gone in 4 days.I don’t think this is doing simulation strategy exercises down in because people in Austria are so much into Florida,and that the US military is currently media art; it’s more about using the references pumping large amounts of capital into figuring and the same language as youth culture. out how to appropriate gaming principles for battle training in massively multi user SimNet environments.”4 This list of strange STENCILU simultaneities and surprising cooperation’s StencilU is a quite simple but powerful real 9 It is could go on and on and on.“According to the time visualization of time and personality. Interactive Digital Software Association’s 1999 an interactive installation,where your silhouette sales information,over 6.1 billion dollars in U.S. is captured with a camera (see Figure 1) and entertainment software sales in 1999 went to the frames of the silhouette are made smaller games.”4 In a time where professional and arrange around the actual silhouette.The computer games have more production small silhouettes arranged are the different budgets as Hollywood films,you must question time frames.With this technique your motion this media,analyze it artistically and bring it up creates floating small representations around in a topic.A whole generation grows up with your big real time shadow.According to the games,mostly just having one goal:“You speed of the movements of the user the visual achieve your aims with violence.”Artists and output is inverted,this gives a stroboscope creatives must click in at this point,dismantle effect,which resembles a club aesthetic and a these games,rearrange them with new ideas motion blur is switched on randomly which and reflect the media itself.The transformation makes the visualization even more club like. and modification of games are also interesting The project was developed at Schmiede 04, in the historical context,if you consider that a media gathering of vjs,djs,audio producers, military institutions have taken a great part in coders,hacktivists,sprayers,etc.,in one word the development of this gaming technology. young individualists who have something to 13 The With the second version of a modified 3D say and do it with their possibilities. Shooter the American Army is at the present aesthetics in black and white look like pictures time hunting for new recruits; let’s hope that in the sprayer/stencil community and therefore this shot was off target. I came up with the idea to photograph street art (graffiti tags and stencils) and integrate it in the project.So your stencils are combined with ORGASMATRON the street art stencils,respectively icons Orgasmatron is an interactive sound (communist star,guns,bush,etc.) and result in installation.It is designed as a glass piano. 8 the visual output.In this project I used the When you move your hand over a glass the language of the street and the signs which can vibrator next to a glass starts and generates a be found out there which is for me a visual certain sound.All the glasses are filled with a short story of contemporary youth culture,so certain amount of liquid which so build up a it’s a very interesting project for me and I would scale.A camera from above detects which be interested to make it available to everyone glasses are triggered.This installation has been with a web cam. exhibited at the Ars Electronica Pixelspaces Exhibition 2003. I used real sex vibrators and put them in CITY OBSCURA another context.It is my reaction about the City Obscura is an interactive video installation floods of spam mail about sex,porn,etc. which deconstructs and then reconstructs >>

DiY SURVIVAL // DiY CASE STUDIES // 093 the urban space and architecture of the city of digital data streams has its equivalence in the Judenburg,and was exhibited in July 2004 at the “Brownian motion”.– The more movements are Liquid Music Media Art Festival in Judenburg, generated,the more the particles begin to Austria [11].A wide range of different shots of chaotically move.This principle of chaos and the city’s architecture,people and crucial places order builds the basis of City Obscura.The awaits the visitor’s eye.When the spectators start Second Law of Thermodynamics can be seen to move in front of the video screen,their as a consequence of probabilities,which is our movements get tracked and these gestures metaphor for our work.After deconstruction and trigger a process of mingling the digital data reconstruction a new,a different structure arises. streams of the videos itself.You can see the On the residents of Judenburg,this pixels as tiny bits and pieces of colored blobs, installation had a very subtle impact as they like a snow storm,revolving around your own knew both,the original video of course,but shadowy figure on the video screen and also the new parts of the altered one,and so following you wherever you go within the they saw different parts of their home installation.The recipients can be seen as landscape in a flawless,but newly changed planets which have a gravitational force on the entity,according to the principle of déjà vu.Out videos.When the visitor stops to move around of this déjà vu-effect,the artists create a new and stands still,the whirring pixels start to consciousness of the city in the heads of their compose themselves again to the video shot the spectators and support a critical occupation visitors have already seen before they started to with something,that was,before,taken for walk around – but slightly changed.For granted and which was,until now,seen as example,one of the original videos shows us the something well-known and established and view of one of the main streets of Judenburg, unchangeable. cars passing by,residents walking off doing their The main aim of City Obscura is so to show daily shopping.After the deconstruction through a city – and this can be any city – in its the gallery visitors,this video emerges again out flexibility and mobility.Stand-still means there is of the chaotic data streams – but now the river no chance to change and no possibility to alter of Judenburg – the Mur – is running through this the future.And this installation tries to show us main street,water instead of asphalt.A new – with its particular interactivity mode – that it utopia of Judenburg has developed.So this is us,the residents,who can feel free,and who points out quite obviously that we only worked have the power,to alter the infrastructure we with footage we found in and around the city of have to deal with daily,but also to get a Judenburg.This was one of the main goals we different perspective on things we perhaps had to achieve to stress one central thought don’t appreciate anymore as we see them day concerning urban architecture: It is always the by day.City Obscura was a more subtle work residents who create the architecture they are because the people the piece was intended for using daily.But there are not too many people were not really into media art.But for us it was who realize the important role they play in clear that the work did its job,when my generating the infrastructure and atmosphere collaborator Reinhold argued with an 65 year they are living in and what they can do old lady about computer based art and she themselves to make it either better or more thought that she is too old too understand it functional or worse.This installation attempts to and there is no meaning and suddenly she saw allow people to play with their own the city,she has seen so often,differently,and surroundings,and this process should lead to a then she was quiet,looked to us and said that critical consideration of their home town’s she now is able to understand the work,which images and to a reflection of the good and bad was one of the best compliments I ever got for parts of the place they are living in.The a work. installation also emphasizes that there is always more than one possibility to design urban MEDIA POP ART - A WAY OF space.Architecture grows through the CREATING SOCIO-POLITICAL ART interactivity of its residents - so the real process As the works above show,I try to use the signs in everyday life is analogue to the way the and the language of pop culture and installation works.The mixing of the video’s everyday’s life .I believe that in

094 // DiY CASE STUDIES // DiY SURVIVAL this way I am able to reach more people a simple piece,but for that it must be easy and so my works are more likely to have an ascertainable.There the drawback arises,that impact on society.“Joseph Beuys is perhaps the curators and media theorist’s critic this kind of best post-1960s example of an artist whose work as immature or unsubtle.An advantage work changed society.Rather than adopting a however and what makes this kind of work so perception of art that is formal and aesthetic tempting for me,is that you recycle your own or only,his concept of social sculpture includes other works and make different variations with the kind of human action that is directed at the same piece,to give it a new meaning or structuring and shaping society - Beuys calls it look 9.Media Art is associated with a lot of hard the social organism.When seen in this way,art work,at least if you belong to the group who is is not just a material artifact: it is also,and programming this art themselves.Each piece above all,action designed to have social takes you a long time in planning, consequences.Beuys’idea of relating plastic programming,tuning,etc.,so it’s quite creativity to socio-political activities took up the reasonable to recycle the algorithms you’ve social utopias of the historical avant-garde. already created and vary the content and Beuys was not primarily interested in including context again and again.For me there is just no and using media in this context,but many post- other option to make my art and get some 1960s artists have both addressed media attention for it.Most of the museums are far too explicitly,and also used them to pursue conservative to commission computer based concrete socio-political aims.They start by art 2 so as a young unknown media artist you assuming that in a society increasingly have to draw some attention on you and your influenced by media,an (artistic) change of work,by embedding it in the pop cultural media content or media structures can context.I grew up with pop culture and I try to contribute significantly to democratizing reflect the media and the culture behind it with society.And ultimately,behind this idea there my works,so therefore my pieces often can be lies the hope that art can change society.” 1 Guy interpreted as media or social critique.I Debord among others formulated a radical social critique and also a radical critique of media society.It rejected creating aesthetic REFERENCES objects in favor of socially constructing 1 Arns,I.Social Technologies Deconstruction,subversion,and the utopia of democratic communication,2004. situations aimed not at art but at life.”1 “The http://www.medienkunstnetz.de/themes/overview_of_media_art/soci demand not to limit oneself to producing ety/1/ works of art any more,but to raise artistic 2 Frieling,R.Form Follows Format - Tensions,Museums,Media practice to the level of the technological Technology,and Media Art. 3 LaFarge,A.An Introduction to the Convergence of Computers, possibilities offered by modern industrial Games,and Art.http://beallcenter.uci.edu/shift/essays/lafarge.html societies.”5 This demand of Guy Debord is met 4 Nideffer,R.F.Mediating the process of academic exhibitionism. by modern Computer Based Art.My demand http://beallcenter.uci.edu/shift/essays/robertn.html though is that the produced art should use the 5 Ohrt,R.Situationistische Internationale.DuMonts Begriffslexikon zur zeitgenössischen Kunst,273. technology and media with a sensible 6 Praxmarer,R.Game Over Mr.President:Artists discover computer understanding of how to reach people and games as a protest medium.RebelArt Magazine #1,78-87. provoke the reactions you intended.“Form 7 Praxmarer,R.(t)Error – A mixed reality persiflage on world politics. http://www.servus.at/cubic/(t)error.htm follows function”is not only the famous 8 Praxmarer,R.Orgasmatron – Interactive Glass Piano. Bauhaus motto,in my work it is a credo as well. http://www.servus.at/cubic/Orgasmatron.htm If I want to communicate something to kids,I 9 Praxmarer,R.StencilU http://www.servus.at/cubic/StencilU.htm 10 Praxmarer,R.,Bidner R.Fun Anyone ? – A public space intervention will use their medium the computer game.“As a with (t)Error.http://www.servus.at/cubic/fun_anyone.htm rule,media installations work as a link between 11 Praxmarer,R.,Bidner R.City Obscura a (media) view of the public sphere and a http://www.servus.at/cubic/city_obscura.htm 12 Reich,W.Arnold Schoenberg:A Critical Biography.Praeger,New York, subjective view of the world.”2 1971 13 Schmiede Media Conference 04 http://www.c-a.at 14 Statistics about gaming.http://www.theesa.com/pressroom.html CONCLUSION Media Pop Art has some advantages and some drawbacks.One of the benefits for young artists By Robert Praxmarer AUSTRIA is that you can reach a lot of people with even www.servus.at/cubic

DiY SURVIVAL // DiY CASE STUDIES // 095 DiY SURVIVAL: STRATEGIES OF AUDIENCE ENGAGEMENT

unknown to me,and I find it generally OBJECTIVES: G to actively engage the public in creative restores my faith in the positive side of acts,rather than presenting a passive, human nature; that people CAN still play,let “spectator event.” their hair down,become involved without G to offer a humorous critique of every-day premeditation. events and forms; competitions of all Another plus of events that employ sorts: sporting,literary,artistic,fashion i.e., spontaneous involvement is that little can established conventions that are go “wrong”,since the work is about generally taken seriously. exploring what can/might/will happen G to demonstrate public ability to engage between me and the public.If people walk in a free-wheeling creative process away without engaging,that response is a G to bring art practice into the public valid reaction to my work.For the most part domain,thus engaging far more however,people do engage,and are individuals than possible when events rewarded with a spontaneous interaction. are sequestered away in galleries, On some occasions,they are awarded a theatres etc. Degree of Bananology in recognition of G to break down barriers to speaking with their breaking out of the public mold of a “stranger,”thus creating a new openness non-involvement; ie.their spontaneity is and trust in public spaces and acknowledged. exchanges. G to break down the barriers between “art” 1. STRUCTURED EVENTS: and “life”: the following approaches Conceptualize,organize and advertise an provide “fellow performers”without the event in which the public is invited to hassle and compromises of more formal participate in creative and crucial ways. types of collaboration. If people are given sufficient details to perceive the event as non-threatening and Events built on a foundation of humour fun,they will engage.While humour and fun are more easily accessible to the public may seem “light”,in terms of making a than serious,confrontational ones.Thus,I critique of contemporary culture,it makes enjoy the interaction with persons the event accessible to a wide public,and

096 // DiY CASE STUDIES // DiY SURVIVAL delivers a subtle commentary on the values other factor that detracted from my goals of our competitive culture.I successfully on that occasion,was that the banana used this approach in my 1975 and 1980 company I’d approached for bananas “Banana Olympics”(BO); a parody of the offered a trip for two to Hawaii as first prize Olympic Games which attracted over 100 when they learned I’d lined up the TV participants in both San Francisco (1975) venue for the event. Of course that and Surrey,BC (1980).While there was still increased participation,but for all the an element of competition in the BO,the wrong reasons.I’m quite sure appearing on individual and team races were open to all, TV was sufficient incentive for most of the and the oversized prize ribbons,(not 36 individuals who arrived in costume the exactly “serious”prizes,) were awarded not night of the event. on the basis of who crossed the finish line The “Banana Art Contest,”on the other first,but who did so with the most “appeal.” hand,while staged for Global TV,was Costume and style of performance were the conducted outdoors at Vancouver’s public criteria on which the judges based their market,and offered no prizes.Degrees of decisions.As much as possible,the races Bananology were awarded to all 16 parodied official Olympic events while contestants whose banana creations ranged some were simply goofy.Some examples: from the “reconstituted banana,”a banana G the bureaucrats marathon,in which dragon,the exploding banana (which only contestants were wrapped in red tape, fizzled),several undescribable creations then proceeded around the track taking using sparklers and candles,and my own, three steps forward,two backwards,and the flag of Canada done in bananas. one to each side. G the 100 yards dash backwards 2. SEMI STRUCTURED EVENTS: G the banana javelin throw The “Mona Banana Smile Test,”Vancouver G the appealing relay,in which each team Art Gallery,1973 April Fool’s Day event. member pulls on a girdle,sashes,wiggles, In this case,the venue gives the structure strides or whatever,down the track, that allows the public to engage,although it removes the girdle for the next team would probably also work in a street set-up. member to put on and perform. Ingredients: a large print of the Mona Lisa, G the hurdles,in which contestants had to banana in hand,with the face cut out, jump over a low hurdle,and go under a mounted on a board.I invite gallery goers high one. to take the Smile Test by putting their face G the back-to-belly-banana race,in which in the hole.I take a polaroid photo of them, teams of four had a banana between pin their photo up on a board and give each back and belly,and had to travel the them a Degree of Bananaology for their distance of the track without dropping effort.Most gallery goers accepted the their bananas. invitation. Dressed as the first female pope,I Both my 1982 “Going Bananas Fashion conducted the “Banana Communion,”at the Contest,”and 1983 “Banana Art Contest” Sarenco Art Club in Verona in 1998.It took required preliminary engagement of the form of a communion service,with participants.The former,through CKVU,the amended bible readings,a bottle of banana TV station that hosted the event,the latter a liquor,and several pre-sliced bananas word-of-mouth round up of art students.The representing the “blood and body”of the spoof on fashion shows was ruined by the “big banana in the sky.”After chanting some TV station which claimed models moving mumbo jumbo and the amended bible on a ramp would be too difficult to tape. reading in which Jesus feeds the masses Instead of vamping on a ramp,contestants from a banana and a jar of peanut butter, had to stand in batches of twelve and have the audience was invited to come forward one of the stations announcers ask them and receive the communion; the inane questions about their costumes! The miraculously pre-sliced banana (sliced >>

DiY SURVIVAL // DiY CASE STUDIES // 097 in the peel) and a shot of the banana do my two tests; the “Roar Shack Banana liquor.While the choice to engage or not Peel test,”(12 cards with banana peels was there,most in the audience came strewn on a black background,) and the forward,knelt and received the “Personality Inventory for Banana communion,and my blessing; being Syndrome”(parody of the Minnesota touched,in the form of the cross,with a Multiphasic Personality Inventory MMPI).I banana. gave my introduction to the project,and conducted my person-in-the-street interviews in German.Both tests and the 3. USING RECOGNIZABLE PUBLIC response forms were translated into ROLES: German,and set up to look exactly like We are all familiar with public petitioners, official test forms.In most cases,those so it’s a role that can easily be utilized for approached in the street were patiently public art practices.Props include a clip answering my questions,very few shying board,pen,and possibly a sign that outlines away as people did when I approached the issue.In 1983,I got hundreds of them dressed as a banana. I returned to signatures on a petition I conducted for Canada three and a half months later with three weekends,at the entrance to the over 270 completed test forms. public market.The issue was explained on In 1998 I again used the researcher the sign I held;“Help free bananas from approach in my street performance, DMV Subjugation”on one side,on the other, “Bananas in Distress,”presented in Toronto a blow-up of a letter from the Department at the 7a11d Performance Festival.In three of Motor vehicles refusing my application different districts of the city,I ran with a for the license plate BANANA on the large fuzzy banana under one arm,a grounds that it had “sexual connotations.”I suitcase full of banana items (toys,kitchen asked people to sign the petition that I items,jewellery,etc.) in the other.While should be allowed to have this word on my running,I sprang the suitcase open,spilling car license plates. the contents in the path of pedestrians at busy intersections. I then appealed for 4. USING “PROFESSIONAL” assistance in collecting the spilled bananas, APPEARANCE: asking someone to hold my big banana After eight years of appearing in public in while I did so.As we were picking up the banana costumes and other outlandish, bananas,I offered a Degree of Bananology clownish costumes,I discovered the magic to those who helped,which led to of the “professional”look; ie.the lab-coated conversations about the project.I explained researcher.Using a concept developed with that I was researching public responses to a a group of artists,the Specific Research person in need of assistance. Institute,I designed a logo,had it produced My latest “public researcher”event,“Tie a as cloth badges which were sewn onto Knot on Me,”was conducted in Berlin, white lab coats.Each member of the group outside the Nordbahnhof subway Station. was free to conduct their own “research” This event was staged in conjunction with projects in the public domain. an installation inside the station,of knots In 1993,I used this approach in the made by artists from N.America,Europe, course of an 8 city tour of Germany,to Africa,Australia and Asia.From the front,my conduct tests and interviews for my “Proof appearance was professional,with a small Positive that Germany is Going Bananas” Specific Research Institute Canada logo on (PPGGB) project.In each city,I set up an my black jacket.The back of my jacket was exhibit of over 100 articles relating to laced with dangling,multi-coloured strands bananas,(blown up for easy viewing) from of wool.I approached people in German, the German press.At the openings,white-lab telling them I am an artist and art coated,clip-board in hand I asked visitors to researcher from Canada,then asking them make an appointment to come back and to participate in my research project by

098 // DiY CASE STUDIES // DiY SURVIVAL tying a knot on me.If they agreed to do so,I turned my back to them so they could access the strands of wool,and told them that tying a knot was a symbolic gesture of uniting all the peoples of the world.When they were done,I asked if they to give me their name,place of birth and age.All those who tied a knot supplied that information without question! Two thirds of those approached accepted my invitation to tie a knot on me. In conclusion,I would highly recommend any of the above tried and true methods for engaging and activating audience participation.The least successful of my interactive events,was a parody of a TV Game show,called “Banana Splits.”I presented a series of questions drawn from my “Encyclopedia Bananica”material,to which teams from the audience were asked to MAKE-UP answers.That put people on the spot to improvise and talk spontaneously, something,I was sad to discover,was not something everyone can do.This project might have been fantastic if presented to an improve theatre company, but to a mixed bag of people drawn from the audience,it was more awkward than hilarious.While some people were able to rise to the challenge,more of them were stymied by it,and made uncomfortable by their inability to respond.I had to chalk that one up to experience.

By Anna Banana CANADA www.annabananastamps.ca

DiY SURVIVAL // DiY CASE STUDIES // 099 Tandem Surfing the Third Wave 5: Randall Packer, Secretary of the US Department of Art & Technology

his interview took relationships do you see between Virilio’s place via email in the Spring of Total War T 2004.More information on Randall (http://webseitz.fluxent.com/wiki/PureWar) Packer and his work can be found at: and Wagner’s Gesamtkunstwerk? http://www.zakros.com/bios/packer.html RP: The totalizing properties of the RG: I’m curious about the initial formation Gesamtkunstwerk (Total Artwork) have of the US Department of Art and driven my own research and artistic Technology (http://www.usdat.us).What production over the past 15 years.I was was the process that led to it,and who was fascinated early on by Wagner’s approach to involved in the beginning? the theatre,he could not fully realize his RP: Four years ago,I moved to Washington, work until he had completely overhauled DC.After some exploration of the “nation’s the “platform”of the opera house,creating a capital,”with its monuments,the US Capitol, medium for immersing and directing the the White House,etc.,I found myself in the full attention of the viewer on the midst of the greatest of all spectacles,the illusionary or ‘virtual’ space of the theatrical most ostentatious of all theatrical sets,the stage. backdrop for America.I wanted to insert With US DAT,I was thinking about the myself as a performance and multimedia total collapse of the fourth wall,that artist into this space.I wanted to imaginary line between audience and the incorporate it through appropriation and stage (still sacred in Wagner’s theatre),in transform it into an alteration of what it was order to extrude the work from the stage originally intended to articulate as a into the space of the “real world,”to dissolve proposal that repositions the role of the the distinction between the two.This is to artist on the world stage.This was the me is a further implementation of the germinal idea of the US Department of Art Gesamtkunstwerk,in which the totalization & Technology.US DAT became a site- of the experience of art is one in which the specific performance work emulating “real world”is transformed using techniques systems of government in order to re- of media and illusion.(Regarding Virilio, engineer those systems through the prism you could say that war as theatre of the artistic lens. constitutes the ultimate transformation of RG: Your art and writing (and from what i the physical space.) gather,your teaching as well) often I was invited to speak at the Transmediale addresses the ever-expanding ‘totalizing’ Festival in Berlin in 2002 as the Secretary of effect of what is called ‘multimedia.’There’s US DAT for their opening ceremonies, both a utopic and dystopic side present to alongside several politicians and diplomats. notions of singularity.What kinds of No one was told I was a fake but there was

100 // DiY CASE STUDIES // DiY SURVIVAL great confusion in the air.It was arranged breaking the 4th wall,is dispensing with the that I was to be introduced by an actual theatrical space altogether.Whereas Critical government official,the Cultural Attach? of Art Ensemble,and particularly Electronic the US Embassy in Berlin.Now if there Disturbance Theatre,in my estimation,are really were a Secretary of the US more activist oriented,in terms of using Department of Art & Technology,this would electronic means to intervene or even be the protocol.And so he played it disrupt,US DAT is more concerned with the completely straight.He gave a stirring power of illusion (an age-old political tool). introduction,indicating that the US It is a delicate balancing act between the Government was now embracing a real and the virtual - the emulation of significant role for the arts.I couldn’t have government systems in order to transform said it better myself. them,to critique them from the inside out, My speech,delivered to an audience of rather than the outside in.US DAT is using over 1,000,was a dadaesque collage of multimedia techniques to parody the President Harry Truman’s address to the political obsession with image and the United Nation’s in 1945,mixed with texts spectacle.And unlike the site-specific nature appropriated from the Futurists,Berlin of political theatre,or activist techniques Dadaists,and even some of the hyper- that occur in the physical space,the utopian descriptions of artist works transformations of US DAT often take final presented at Transmediale.The conclusion form in the digital space.This medial space of the speech ended,appropriately with the is wide and varied,ranging from news following line,taken from the famous words releases distributed via email,to the of President Kennedy,“In this city of dada, Department Website where you can find decadence and indulgence,ich bin ein ideologies of the artistic avant-garde Berliner,Kunstler!).Most everyone superimposed with bureaucrat-speak recognized by this point it was a extracted from the real government,to performance,except for one rather video works that hype Department events, confused media critic whom I won’t initiatives and speeches of the Secretary.I mention by name,but who thought I was an consider the combined use of text,video, American government official posing as an sound,Net,etc.,in the context of live artist.I found this reversal most delicious. performance,to embrace the techniques of RG: The breaking of the “fourth wall”you multimedia in relation to the mentioned in terms of the US DAT project Gesamtkunstwerk. has of course a history with political avant- RG: I’m wondering what your thoughts are garde performance,but with more complex on the potential (positive and negative) of communication technologies,the “fourth aesthetic/conceptual collaborations with wall”seems to transform into something of research/science are currently,especially more consequence.I’m thinking of other given the fact that there is now a history performance-based projects like the (albeit a limited one) of such work.The big Electronic Disturbance Theater collaborations now are obviously biotech (http://rdom.thing.net//ecd/ZapTact.html), and IT.What are your thoughts on the Critical Art Ensemble (http://www.critical- known directions in these areas? art.net),subRosa RP: US DAT in many ways parodies and (http://www.cyberfeminism.net),and US exaggerates collaboration between DAT where the difference between government,arts,science,and industry, symbolic action and “real”action is not so while at the same time,promoting it.While clear.This seems to have something to do it is naive to think that artists can with the openness of “outside the theatre” successfully change the thinking of the participation and effect,maybe.How do corporate world or government,US DAT you think the practices of performance are constructs a utopian view of such an reacting to multimedia technologies? overblown,world-stage role for the artist.For RP: What is actually happening here,in a brief moment during a speech,while the suspension of disbelief is in full effect, >>

DiY SURVIVAL // DiY CASE STUDIES // 101 the Secretary becomes quite a real a broad array of tactics and artistic possibility and the message is very clear strategies that range from performance,to and plausible.This is how I believe it is appropriated and remixed government possible and necessary to articulate the documents,to the use of email,the net and vision of US DAT.Since it would never be other electronic media,to stage a taken seriously as a “real”initiative,losing its transformation and virtualization of the impact as an actual entity,I implement it physical space - in this case,Washington, through the power of performance and the DC,the center of power in the Western suspension of disbelief.When reality is not a world.Through these means,as mentioned concern,the mind can reach to the most before,I activate the “suspension of far-flung places of the imagination,and that disbelief,”allowing the viewer to experience is where I prefer to live.I am an artist,not a a changed environment,a set of new bureaucrat,and so I fake bureaucratic possibilities,new ideas,thus subverting the systems in order to deflate them,to original intent of the US Government.It is transcend them,to virtualize them.Perhaps all about ownership.Who owns the it is at that moment when you can paint a environment,the monuments,the White better world,to go beyond what is and House,the Capitol? Who owns the show what could be.Is this changing the government,isn’t it the people’s world? Probably not.But artists are able to government? Isn’t it the job of artists to visualize through models,and perhaps... challenge the status quo? I believe it is the change may occur. role of the artist to make this challenge by RG: Maybe the “tactical media”model of visualizing,re-engineering society (and art collectives like the EDT wasn’t a good fit government) according to their own vision, for what you’re doing with the US DAT.There through whatever tactics of media are aren’t that many examples of this kind of useful to the situation.To quote the motto of theatre,at least not that actually function in the Experimental Party,an initiative of US a larger sense.The Yes Men DAT (http://www.experimentalparty.org), (http://www.theyesmen.org) come to mind “Representation Through Virtualization.”This as a project with similarities.The suggests that the artistic technique of relationship between the “creation of representation can serve the dual purpose consent”and information technologies of envisioning for aesthetic objectives,as seems to create a strange situation that well as engaging in the political process provides both a stage for critical, through social critique. multimedia theater,as well as a curtain that RG: Have you received any form of renders it almost invisible,as the Yes Men responses from the US bureaucracy illustrate quite well.Maybe you see the regarding the US DAT? situation differently? RP: The US Government has surprisingly RP: The illusionary nature of US DAT’s left me alone,though I imagine someone, intent is very important to the somewhere in the Fed has compiled quite a transformational effect,in which the curtain file.I know in fact they are aware of the or fourth wall is meant to be invisible,or project.In May of 2003,a feature article on possibly seen as shifting.This is carried out US DAT,written by the art critic Jessica through a careful consideration of various Dawson,was published in the Washington types of media.I believe this to be in line Post (http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp- with Critical Art Ensemble’s definition of dyn/articles/A63065-2003Apr30.html).The tactical media,in which the term refers to “a front page of the style section included a critical usage and theorization of media full color reproduction of the Department’s practices that draw on all forms of old and official seal.Since the article mentioned new,both lucid and sophisticated media,for President George W.Bush,the White House achieving a variety of noncommercial goals press office would have been required to and pushing all kinds of potentially distribute copies to its staff,perhaps even subversive political issues.”US DAT employs the President.Regardless,I have been left

102 // DiY CASE STUDIES // DiY SURVIVAL quite alone.Perhaps we really do live in a projects? free country? Only time will tell. RP: Collaboration is essential to the US RG: There are some obvious qualities that Department of Art & Technology.I have seem endemic to the US in terms of media worked very closely with many collaborators and government (and definitely in the including: Mark Amerika,Jonah Brucker- relationship between the two) that allow for Cohen,Jeff Gates,Jon Henry,Lynn the US DAT to be quite effective in many Hershman,Andrew Nagy,Trace Reddell,Rick respects.What are the sources that most Silva,Wesley Smith,as well as the 50 or so inform the direction and thematics of staff members of the Department,all of projects like the US DAT for you? Does whom are listed with their grandiose titles on institutional critique,whether it’s Hans the Website(http://www.usdat.us/staff.html). Haacke or Bill Moyers,provide any sort of When the Secretary gave a speech to open foundation or parallel form of investigation Transmediale two years ago,he called on an to follow? international group of artists to form the RP: US DAT is a critique of government Global Virtualization Council systems and bureaucratic processes that (http://usdat.us/gvc/),and designated them functions somewhat like a virus - inserted as Ambassadors in order to “mobilize and into the system,it emulates the system,but coordinate artistic forces of virtualization carries a new,subversive message.The internationally.”The Canadian media artist Department has been constructed as an Luc Courchesne is the Secretary General appropriation of legal documents, and has been an ardent supporter of the government news releases,political Department. speeches,and executive orders remixed with In late August of 2004,in conjunction with manifestoes of the avant-garde and other the Republican National Convention,US hyper-proclamations and prognostications of DAT is staging the Experimental Party the contemporary digerati.This literary form (Un)Convention and (Dis)Information has been referred to as “socio-poetic Center at the LUXE Gallery in New York City assemblages of intimate bureaucracies”in - engaging delegates in hyper-political Craig Saper’s book,Networked Art.I have propaganda.The writer and digital artist drawn texts from Futurism,Dada,Surrealism, Mark Amerika is my principal collaborator Constructivism,Fluxus,Situationism,etc.and in this project,along with several others who used them in the transformation of political have been participating in US DAT over the texts derived from the White House Website, past three years.The featured project will be Presidential speeches,and texts culled from the Media Deconstruction Kit a range of government agencies and (http://www.experimentalparty.org/mdk), departments.In fact,the official biography of created in collaboration with Wesley Smith, the Secretary of US DAT is a remix of in which we will be re-mixing Convention Attorney General John Ashcroft’s.I believe coverage from the cable networks live and this is a way of subverting the status quo, in real-time.The altered material will be transforming bureaucracies into poeticisms, streamed instantaneously out to the what I would call a form of artistic mediation Internet.We believe these techniques can be - viewing the US Government as a vast used to swamp the mass media with total repository awaiting cultural appropriation illusion as the Convention rhetoric heats up. and transformation. This is our plan - to spread the spirit of RG: I’m wondering if you could talk about experimentalism and hyper-political the working methodology that the US DAT propaganda through the power of artistic has employed up to this point...how are mediation.This is the role of the artist in I decisions made via the different nodes society - and yes,we will prevail... (The Experimental Party,We the Blog (http://www.wetheblog.org),specific media By Ryan Griffis projects...)? How important is collaboration LOS ANGELES USA. (in all its different interpretations) to these US DEPARTMENT OF ART & TECHNOLOGY http://www.usdat.us

DiY SURVIVAL // DiY CASE STUDIES // 103 there is no

painted on the windows of a Central Line carriage.From the onset of its planning,it was clear that this campaign would have been as joyously risky as highly temporary, due to the curatorial polices of London Transport.At dawn during the hottest weekend of the year the C6 nucleus made its way to the tube.Advance logistics had t may help the reader to understand suggested as the most suitable tracts the the eclectic mix of articles gathered farthest points of the eastbound Central I here by explaining a little about the art Line as the distance between stations group who were the driving force behind allowed more time to act on the carriage this book.Then again it may not. windows.Even so,the two fly-men had only They have been defined as art wankers, 9 minutes to cover each side of the carriage outsiders,pranksters,tactical artists,guerrilla with two stencils cut to size and sprayed in marketers,chaotic instigators of subversion, red and black.9 minutes to create the first art terrorists,mind openers…who or what mobile commuter installation. is C6? Want & Need (2005) A RANDOM SAMPLE OF C6 ACTIONS A pseudo-guerrilla marketing campaign Man in a box (1998) using sms,street graffiti,stickers,badges and One of C6 members locked himself inside a the culture jamming of local telecoms 2.8m by 2.8m box lit 24/7 and under advertising.The combined attack of these constant surveillance CCTV cameras.He hyper-pervasive media tempt the public into stayed there for 7 days with no food,just sms-ing a phone number with a word/s water.The entire event was broadcast online describing their wants and needs.These and relayed to the gallery space and the texts in turn generate google-hunted images adjacent street via monitors for the whole to be displayed in the gallery through a 168 hours of its duration.The event brought software that recreate them by using the 50,000 visitors to the site,crashed servers, original text sent by the user.It is the latest attracted world press coverage and caused C6 work,exhibited at the detox exhibition mayhem to the Brighton street where the in Oslo,Norway. gallery was located.Survival meets Whether C6 are producers of Tactical surveillance in this very public and Media or practitioners of Strategic Art is controversy-stirring experiment in unclear.Their distaste for the latest endurance,being watched and being buzzword bingo of the art fields is only forced to a stripped-bare core of existence. matched by their aversion for the pin down On the fly (2003) classification that increasingly characterizes Rampage on the London Underground: a the assimilation of creative output into the mobile action/installation stencil campaign well-trodden and funding bodies-proofed of that resulted in 1260 buzzing flies spray- what can be called “application art”. However,they like to refer to themselves as

104 // DiY CASE STUDIES // DiY SURVIVAL subculture only subversion

‘conceptual marketers’.Indeed,‘conceptual broadcast medium and message.Examples marketing’ seems to be quite a suitable of this can be seen in C6 works such as definition for the proffering of non Want and Need,Nest,New Media Spy and consumer-oriented concepts that rely upon Fuck you. multi media broadcasts to elicit active This creation of a multi layered and audiences’ participation.This is done by unpredictable dialogue back and forth invading,reclaiming and subverting between the artist and the viewer is central consumption-occupied territories both in to C6 practice,as it is the reclaim of public, virtual and real spaces.If you are thinking virtual and mental space through that no matter how sleek its situationist multimedia based invasions of territories to veneer may be,C6 strategies bear uncanny create localised reactions and disturbances similarities to those of the advertising and in the everyday.None of this could be marketing world we are all too familiar achieved without C6 trademark and with,think again…The beautiful catch is lopsided irreverence,though.Used as a tool that there is no C6 product or commodity. to reverse conventional usage of media and Not only was C6 set up as a no-profit as a trigger to provoke and disorientate,an making organization; it actually makes a irreverent dumbing-down of technical point of consistently making a loss:‘Make a layers of communication leads to a loss.It is good for your soul’ was a notorious different,lateral awareness of the processes 1998 strap line. involved,for instance the circular networks This is connected to another crucial built to destroy data in Nest (Network aspect of C6: the creation of liberated zones Examination of Serendipitous Transfer) or of gift economy where C6 members donate the faking of an ATM machine online. free limited edition works to passers-by as a For design critic and curator Max way to instigate public collaboration, Bruinsma,who has included C6 in his Deep feedback and critical engagement.This Sites.Intelligent innovation in contemporary random circulation of C6 promotional gifts web design,published by Thames and wants to question the status of private Hudson (2003),C6 are “the raw life of ownership of goods and the London’s artistic scene beyond the famed commodification of the artwork,while Brit Pack”.For us,C6 are a cell of like instead providing a-functional powerful minded agents provocateur whose relics of instantaneous chance encounters unrepentant mission is to trigger events, and potential collaborative actions.C6 have actions and operations that invade called this tactical practice E.D.A.A.(Event establishment-held territories with their Driven A-functional Art).EDAA emerges specific brand of counterproductive art. when an audience is provoked into taking Somewhere in between interactive and part in a counterproductive system whose activist,C6 resolutely invite the audience to aim is never simply machinic exchange but take part in their enterprise,which has been full-fledged entropy that brings all described as vandalism,marketing,media participants to awareness through pranking or apolitical activism. dysfunction.Any process that engages the Nevertheless,they always present it as audience in unpredictable usage of media radically anonymous art.A typical C6 event sow the seeds for a new awareness of the happens in multiple arenas,often linking the street web and gallery with phones, >>

DiY SURVIVAL // DiY CASE STUDIES // 105 computers and mobile devices.They have mix a Dadaist sense of humour with exhibited websites,written network political propaganda,high art with pranks, software,stenciled cities all over the world, media experiments with cultural created spoof companies and marketed subversion.Since their beginning in 1997, unprofitable concepts,mixing digital work, they have exhibited in the UK,Romania, performance,graffiti and stencils Norway,Sweden,Germany,Iceland,Italy,US campaigns,printed media,stickers,badges and New Zealand.Their website gets and t-shirts,magazines,fly-posting,sms, around 50,000 hits a day mostly due to the answer machines and small ads,in pubs, very popular Toogle (www.c6.org/toogle) clubs,galleries,in the streets and on the Not only C6 is resolutely anti-copyright.It web. also actively promotes and encourages any Take for example their ‘Bomb Soho’ sort of participation,contribution, campaign,something of course not be association and name-usage from like- meant literally – especially after the vicious minded spirits.This means that you can bombing of a gay pub in the Soho district happily use the C6 anti-brand for your in 1999 that left three dead and many projects,events,tactical disruptions or the injured – however,it makes clear C6’s zero like.Just get in touch with concession to PC politics and their aversion [email protected] for further details of un- with all the ‘media whores’ sipping their coordinate operations and get involved frothy cappuccinos behind ‘ergonomically with the C6 fine art sausage machine! curved desks’.Indeed,C6’s online shop sells a very limited edition of highly politically Betti C6 incorrect T-shirts. LONDON From their operative visual,tactical and www.c6.org/box psychogeografical departments in London, www.c6.org/fly Sweden and New Zealand,this anarcoid www.c6.org/wantandneed collective of artists,coders and designers

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