AMAZON NOIR INTERVIEW
with Franz Thalmair for CONT3XT/furtherfield
1 [setting/framework] Crime, thievery, betrayal, the bad and
the good guys and a final showdown with the blistering sun: Amazon Noir refers
in its title, narration and visualisation to the 1940/50ies Film Noir and crime
fiction. Why did you settle your newest project in this genre and who are the
good guys, honestly?
UBERMORGEN.COM: Dating back to
"the digital hijack" with etoy - using movie scripting and film plots
are very usefull aesthetically and technically for digital actionism (media
hacking). Noir is symptomatic for labeling art forms in retrospect. We were
also dealing with german expressionism at the time and from there it is not far
to Film Noir. The combination of the two is best described in the dialgoue of
Amazon Noir: http://www.amazon-noir.com/dialogue.html
ALESSANDRO
LUDOVICO:
A supposed 'crime' related to book could refer recursively to Noir (that is a
tale about crime in a certain style), so it was the perfect genre to involve in
a such a project. The good guys won in the end. But this is not happening in
any noir, as you probably know, and the twists are always possible.
PAOLO
CIRIO: The
hype of the spin against piracy that come from media propaganda is ever focused
on the criminalization of downloading and share content under copyright. The
main controversial consequence of increment of sharing of content is the
lucrative exploiting by the corporations, like actually Napster or the big
business of the devices for playing mp3 and dvix. So we are the worst guys of
the scene: we have done a big crime and in the end we have betrayed our action,
with a deal with the enemy. It's a representation of the actual ambiguity about
copyright issue, where in any case seem that everything haven't a right moral
or ethic roots.
2 [technolgy/coding] Despite all storytelling, Amazon Noir is
a socio-technical piece/process of art. What is the coding background of the
"sophisticated robot-perversion-technology" ab/using Amazon.com's
"Search Inside the Book"-feature? Did you select the books acccording
to certain criteria?
UBERMORGEN.COM: No, the books were
auto-selected by keywords - we entered a list of 23 keywords to the machine,
from then on it was tripping by itself. The books were then selected,
downloaded, stored and redestributed by the machine.
ALESSANDRO
LUDOVICO: And
some of the selection was surprisingly fitting the core project spirit. For
example 'Steal this book' by Abbie Hoffman turned out as one of the first
results.
PAOLO
CIRIO: The
background of our robot-perversion-technology was a system of four servers
around the globe, everyone with a specific function: one in USA for a faster
sucking of books, one in Russia for injecting books in p2p networks and two in
Europe for schedule the action with intelligent robots. The main goal was
steal all 150,000 books of the Amazon.com's "Search Inside the Book"
feature, and then use the same technology of us for steal books from the Google
Print Service. It's was just relative of the number of cluster of robots we
could use. After the deal with Amazon we can invest money in order to improve
our project.
3 [reactions/feedback] According to a press release from
Edith Russ Haus, Amazon Noir is based upon the tradition of happenings and seen
as a performative media event, which includes the reaction of conventional
media in its concept. Already any reactions from Amazon.com or any other part
of the show: media, press, lawyers, ... ? What kind of repsonses do/did you
expect?
UBERMORGEN.COM: We do not expect anything.
The setting is experimental and our research carries us into unknown
territories, socially, economically, politically and in terms of media (mass
media, internet, mobile communication). It was striking that the project was
fully running on a technical level (underground) and hyped on a mass media
level (overground) but there was a vacuum in the middle. We have not released
the project until Nov 15 2006 - but by then the project was over. This release
strategy was totally new to us.
ALESSANDRO
LUDOVICO:
We're not interested in generating a media hype, but in researching and then
sharing innovation on both conceptual and technical level. Amazon Noir was an
experiment in many senses. Among them the secret exploit of one of Amazon mostly
used technology was done via a special software and then the incoming files
where framed as results before any public mention. When people has known about
that everything was already done.
PAOLO
CIRIO: Yeah,
in the evolution of the net-art projects of historic groups like RtMark,
CriticalArtEnsemble, ElectronicDisturbanceTeather, we are the synthesis of the
best of their core style. We play in different stages: on the net, on the old
mass media and in the streets. We engage in our show different actors: the
audience, media, art and legal system. Every layer of our complex society are
in the scenography, because now happenings should be in the anthropologically
space of our contemporary culture. So I like this quote of 'Digital
resistece', of the CAE: " The aim of The Living Theater to break the
boundaries of its traditional architecture was successful. It collapsed the art
and life distinction, which has been of tremendous help by establishing one of
the first recombinant stages. "
4 [art (historic) background] Amazon.com , in both senses,
deals with books, one of the exemplary non-material good of our time. In the
late 1960ies Conceptual Art was controversially charcterised by the term
dematerialisation. Regarding works like Google will eat itself and Amazon Noir
from this point of view, the term dematerialisation gets an ambiguous kind of
meaning: Are you -- asked provocatively -- dematerialising economics by art or
even rematerialsing art? Do you see yourself as Conceptual Artists?
UBERMORGEN.COM: Yes. We see part our work
in the tradition of conceptual art. For the dematerialising part of your
question, click-economy and global finance already work on extremely abstract
levels. We love to short-circuit and to lay out very basic instructional text (code)
as the core of our projects. The Computer and The Network create our art
and combine every aspect of it. UBERMORGEN.COM is metaphysically influenced by
Lawrence Weiner and practically enhanced by ever reinventing Madonna, Jean
Tinguely, the Nouveaux RŽalistes and by the hardcore Viennese Actionists.
ALESSANDRO
LUDOVICO: The
material/immaterial dilemma is at the base of digital, but after so many
dematerialisation analisys, now it seem that to re-materialize stuff is an art
trend. What we do is to re-materialize digital paradoxes and de-stabilizing
potential markets in a 'conceptual' economy.
5 [copyright/property] Copyright/left, GNU, Creative Commons,
All Rites Reversed -- The discussions about the actual restictions of the
copyright are multifaceted and emanate from many different points of view.
Where do you -- as artists, writers, producers of intellectual, non-material
goods -- see the most striking clash between intellectual property and
commodities in their original meaning as industrial property?
PAOLO
CIRIO: The
second step of the materialization of the books in printed copy with Print on
Demand technology and the distribution of these in public space of pour
countries will be a concrete example of commodities. When a common good has
gave to people for free or for a cheap price, the society have to earning.
Every day we see the rampant privatization of commons, as soon as people become
more poor and ignorant. The latest movements of CC, Wikipedia, P2P free
networks, etc.. are a needed resistance in a world where the use of cultural
content is ever less a right but ever more a business.
UBERMORGEN.COM: One of UBERMORGEN.COMs
ongoing projects is called "Chinese Gold". It mixes up the
"virtual" (the game) with the "real" (money). In China
there are many Online-Gaming Workshops that hire people to play online games
such as World of Warcraft (WoW) day and night. The gaming workers produce
in-game currency, equipments, and whole characters that are sold to American
and European Gamers via Ebay. These people are called ăChinese Gold
Farmers". The future is now!
Image
Series:
http://www.hansbernhard.com/X/pages/photo/pages/chinese_gold_workshop.html
http://www.hansbernhard.com/X/pages/photo/pages/chinese_gold_screenshots.html
6 [final] One final question to all of you: What was the last
book you ordered on Amazon.com? And was it your last?
UBERMORGEN.COM: Anne McCaffrey, "All
The Weyrs of Pern". Yes, we stopped downloading books the moment the
contract (sale of the software) was signed with Amazon USA. Thanks for
your Qs. Amazon Noir is a project by UBERMORGEN.COM, PAOLO CIRIO,
ALESSANDRO LUDOVICO, 2006
ALESSANDRO
LUDOVICO: Mine
was 'Amazon.com: Get Big Fast' by Robert Spector