Alessandro Ludovico es un especialista en net art, desde la crítica y desde la práctica, y editor de una de las revistas, en papel y en la red, más relevantes sobre cultura digital, Neural. Régine Debatty le ha realizado una imprescindible entrevista en We-make-money-not-art. Realizan un repaso a la (necesariamente reciente) historia de la cultura digital, la música digital y al mundo de la edición a través del caso de Neural y la experiencia de Ludovico. Pero al tiempo reflexionan sobre los retos que para el mundo editorial supone la digitalización de la cultura.
Pero traigo aquí la entrevista por dos proyectos en los que ha participado Alessandro Ludovico como activista y artista. Son proyectos de los que ya se habló mucho en su momento y que, como sucede con buena parte de lo que se ha venido llamando new media art (en desuso por lo viejo que se ha vuelto el término new) o net art, son una forma de prospectiva del futuro próximo. La entrevista nos da una breve historia de ambos proyectos y, ahora que ya ha pasado la fase de máxima tensión y debate público, de las reacciones de los “objetivos” que no eran otros que algunos de los nuevos gigantes empresariales del mundo digital.
Google Will Eat Itself (que ha recibido los premios Honorary Mention Prix Ars Electronica 2005, Rhizome Commission 2005, nomination Prix Transmediale 2006) pretende lograr el control de Google mediante la compra de acciones con ingresos generados por la propia publicidad de Google.
Together with UBERMORGEN and Paolo Cirio you have realized Google Will Eat Itself, an artistic project that aims to buy out Google with funds generated from Google Adsense. How did google react to GWEI?
Well, the official reaction of Google was a 'cease and desist' letter of their German branch. But it was very different from the other 'cease and desist' letters I've seen, it was a sort of confidential letter, not the usual cold lawyer-lexicon style one. But nevertheless even more frightening. It basically said, "ok, we understand it's art, but you have to stop it now". It matches what I think is their status of 'funny dictator', as I've tried to define it. In fact there were so many mysteries and strange facts during the project that I and Hans Bernhard did a whole lecture/performance on that at the v2's TANGENT_CONSPIRACY night, in December 2006 (video). Furthermore Google Italy, indeed, terminated the Neural.it AdSense account without any explanation. I think that was quite stupid because Neural.it has never been part of GWEI (this was clear from the beginning to all of us). But Goggle Italy was too blind minded to understand that, so just after being invited to a public debate with me and Paolo, they simply refused to come and terminated the Neural account because of 'fraudulent clicks' that never happened there. But you'd take in count that they grant the AdSense money so they can anytime decide to terminate your account without any real proof. That's also part of what I defined as their 'porcelain interface'. GWEI was for me one of the most fascinating experience I had: it was (unexpectedly for me) incredibly successful and it let me experience for the first time the artistic dimension inside a very skilled team, so sharing with Hans, Liz and Paolo all the (good and bad) moments. I'm really grateful to them.
Amazon Noir (1st prize Stuttgarter Filmwinter 2007, Honorary Mention Share Prize 2007) realiza un proceso de hacking e ingeniería inversa del proceso de digitalización de libros de Amazon. Mediante robots “recuperan” los contenidos de la versión digital y la convierten en archivos en formato pdf y en libros físicos que son expuestos.
Let's talk about Amazon Noir. What are the latest developments? Has Amazon reacted to the project?
Amazon noir is still going on with its most visible outcome: the stolen book files. We're still re-embodying them in different forms. We developed an installation that physically (and very symbolically) embodies the project. It consists of two overhead projectors displaying the logo and the diagram of our software internal mechanisms, and an incubator with one of the stolen book inside, reprinted digitally. Symbolically we chose the American counterculture classic from the seventies 'Steal This Book' by Abbie Hoffman. We in a way re-embodied the book (obtaining cover and complete textual content from Amazon) in its mutated physical form. But we also placed a warning near the incubator. It stated: "The book inside the incubator is the physical embodiment of a complex Amazon.com hacking action. It has been obtained exploiting Amazon 'Search Inside The Book' tool. Take care because it's an illegitimate and premature son born from the relationship between Amazon and Copyright. It's illegitimate because it's an unauthorized print of a copyright-protected book. And it's premature because the gestation of this relationship's outcome is far for being mature." That was why I thought that we 'stole the invisible' [http://amazon-noir.com/thieves.html]. It's an installation showing a net art piece without any IT or internet connection. Actually, various people tried to steal the book opening the incubator, claiming that they simply do what is written on the cover (we personally kindly asked some of them to put the book back, and one of them actually succeeded in stealing it during the Shift festival opening in Basel and we had to find out how to replace it quickly). This is also a proof that, ironically enough, it was also very 'interactive'.
About the Amazon reaction, they reverse-engineers the software, making the robot useless. We, indeed, spread all the books we downloaded through peer-to-peer networks (bittorrent, gnutella, fast track, emule, etc.).
The installation was exhibited in various museums and festivals in different countries and it has been actually nominated for the upcoming Tansmediale Award 2008. I've tried to conceptually develop a whole theoretical concept about the big online corporations marketing strategies and their potential hacking in an essay entitled "The (online) economy of desire". It'll be online soon.
Estos proyectos suponen un desafío a uno de los modelos de control que la web 2.0 puede soportar. Aquel en que nuevos grandes nuevos actores se erigen un oligopolios que controlan las nuevas “cadenas de suministro” digitales. Este modelo se ha definido como una paradoja de control dado que un sistema aparentemente más abierto y que proporciona mayor libertad al usuario puede acabar siendo regulado y manejado por unos pocos actores. Hace un tiempo preguntaba si ¿existe una política de la web 2.0?, o dicho de otro modo si la web 2.0 conduce necesariamente a un único futuro o por el contrario éste dependerá de las estrategias y actividad de los diferentes participantes. Estas eran algunas de las preguntas que planteaba:
- ¿empodera la web 2.0 realmente a los usuarios y los libera de jerarquías o crea nuevas autoridades aún más poderosas, y sutiles, que las tradicionales?
- ¿la evolución de usos de la web 2.0 es una cuestión únicamente de evolución tecnológica o depende de decisiones “políticas” de ciudadanos y organizaciones?, ¿dejamos el futuro en manos de una aséptica evolución tecnológica o necesitamos tomar conciencia de nuestra libertad y responsabilidad para convertir las oportunidades tecnológicas en mejoras en nuestras vidas?, y
- ¿reinventa la web 2.0 los mecanismos económicos superando el mercado, al liberar a la mayor parte de las interacciones humanas de dependencia financiera, o lleva a su máxima expresión la economía de mercado al convertir (casi) todas las interacciones en transacciones económicas o de reputación?
Tanto el caso de Forbidden Lego como los proyectos Google Will Eat Itself y Amazon Noir, nos muestran que el papel de los usuarios si es relevante y que existen ciertas posibilidades de reapropiarse del control si se es consciente de como funciona este ecosistema digital y se diseñan estrategias inteligentes. Por ahora son solo juegos o net art (aunque ni Google ni Amazon las han entendido como tal), pero pueden ser el aviso de historias reales que empiecen a escribirse muy pronto.
