JONATHAN ALLEN RESEARCHES THINGS VIRAL FOR CYBERSALON

hi lewis

here's five slightly jumbled things to be looking thru re viral marketing...more to come if i have time, but i know you need to be cracking on with it..virus, by the way is from the latin for 'poison, or slimey'...

hope some of this is useful.

1. A book review of 'Viral Art – strategies for a new democracy
<www.intellectbooks.com/journals/jvap/jvap_abs/jvap1_2.htm>

Viral Art – strategies for a new democracy
Malcolm Miles
 
Contemporary visual art practice includes a strand of ecological and environmentalist work, developed independently in Europe and the USA, one aspect of which is the development of practical solutions to industrial pollution, another the use of shock tactics to draw attention to the green agenda and the underlying contradictions of capitalism which produce environmental destruction. Amongst artists in this field are Mel Chin (USA) and the London-based group PLATFORM. The essay looks at aspects of their work, and argues that the viral-like approach of which both Chin and PLATFORM write offers a realizable prospect for radical social change – change in which art has the role of agency.

(James Marriot, who runs PLATFORM is an old friend of mine and may have an interesting contribution to make...see their site for contact details <www.platformlondon.org/contact.htm>

2. a useful link reviewing an exhibition of computer viruses as artworks...
<www.wired.com/news/culture/0,1284,64724,00.html?tw=wn_9culthead>

Exhibit Features Viruses as Art
By Michelle Delio

02:00 AM Aug. 27, 2004 PT
A major art exhibit exploring the beauty of programming code and the ugly ways in which some people use it will begin its world tour in September. Curator Franziska Nori says the primary focus of the show, which features the work of open-source software programmers, digital artists, computer security experts, cryptographers and sociologists, is documenting how hackers have put the words of the Dalai Lama, Tibet's spiritual leader, into practice.

"The Dalai Lama has said, 'Share your knowledge and you will achieve immortality,' and, 'Learn the rules so that you will know how to break them,"' Nori said. "This Buddhist and hacker spirit is the entire point of the show. Learn and share. Open-source your brain and your life."

First presented in May 2002 in Frankfurt, Germany, under the name I Love You Computer_Viren_Hacker_Kultur, the show that will be on display this autumn in the United States and Denmark is a brand new variant, in the spirit of the computer viruses that it documents.

The new name for the show is I Love You rev.eng, with "rev.eng" standing for reverse engineering. More than 98 percent of the exhibit is new material, said Nori, who is also head researcher at digitalcraft.org, an organization that investigates and documents trends in everyday digital culture.

The unchanging part of the exhibit's name refers to the Love Bug virus that circulated widely in May 2000 and was one of the "computer virus family's first media stars," according to Nori. The show makes a sharp distinction between hackers and virus creators and those who deliberately release viruses in the hopes of mucking up as many computers as possible.

"Most viruses remain to a large extent in private collections within the hacker community and were deliberately never made public," said Nori. "Just because someone creates a tool that can be used to cause trouble doesn't mean that they will use it to cause trouble." Nori believes hackers and their experiments have helped shape the internet more than any other group, even if, in some peoples' eyes, "they caused plenty of trouble along the way."

Visitors to the exhibit will get a close-up view of the trouble a malicious virus writer can cause. One section of the show, dubbed "The Zoo," will feature a dozen non-networked terminals that visitors can infect with an assortment of viruses in order to observe what malware does.

The idea is that few people will ever be able to come in contact with a computer virus and watch its progress calmly. Typically the owner of a newly infected computer is either oblivious or frantically trying to kill the virus before it eats data or sends e-mail missives of undying love or lust to everyone in his or her address book.

Visitors who want to experience virus infestations on a larger scale will be able to play an interactive, 3-D game that allows them to experience in real time the otherwise invisible processes involved in a global virus outbreak. Players will set the virus loose, control its progress with a joystick and watch as the world gets whacked.

Visitors can also click together their own viruses using a computer loaded with simple, script-kiddie-favored virus-construction kits and then release their very own beasts into the zoo.

"Some have questioned why we've included the virus kits in the show, but my feeling is that it presents a safe way for the curious to explore this phenomena without harming their own and others' computers," said Nori.
Story continued on Page 2 »

3. Not hugely relevant, and poorly translated from italian, but I like the idea of viral 'contaminations' between artforms (memes again). sorry, I've lost the link...

Books - VIRUS ART

"Virus Art" is not one new artistic tendency: it is the title it of a fremente graphical book, witnesses and images on patinated pages in gold, silver, black the publication collects a selection of witnesses appeared in last the 8 years on the from Milan review "Virus Mutations", directed from Francesca Alfano Miglietti (with FAM, nom de guerre), one critical combative young person and, that it has focused the own attention on the multiple contemporary experiences centered on the body and its mutant identity. Consequently, the contaminations between art and fashion, cinema, music, video interlace it and. In the book they parade le"viste and interviews "of various authors, with great representatives of the extreme guidelines of the art in the globalizzato world. Authors by now "storici"come Louise Bourgeois, Orlan, Gilbert& George, Abramovic Navy, Wim Wenders, Urs Luthi, Small wheel, with folta a formation of protagonists on the international scene, Stelarc, Pipilotti Rist, Vanessa Beecroft, Lock, Nan Goldin, Shirin Neshat, Mariko Moors..., beyond to criti and curatori to us. Encounter, talks, signallings, covered from one tension towards the new frontiers of the time, in the spirit of the neoavanguardia. One interesting documentation firsthand on "all that that in the contemporary art has created scandal, enthusiasm, excitation,

4. not read it all yet...an informal but interesting essay on computer viruses..
<www.techonline.com/community/related_content/20042>

Today's Artless Art of Virus Writing
Peggy Aycinena

Writing viruses used to be a mark of distinction. Now it's just a hackneyed skill available to anybody with too much time on their hands.

Computer viruses are a pain in the butt. Ask anybody with half a brain and they'll agree. You can go on-line and spend man-years reading up on the latest facts, fictions, and innuendoes surrounding the topic, so what's the point in adding more discussion to the discussion?

Well for one, I've got a system at home that's dead in the water because somebody's idea of a good time somehow made its way onto my system and killed it. Thanks a lot, Buddy.

Secondly, the world has always been complicated, but since September 11th, people in this country have had their eyes opened and been reminded just how complicated it is. There are some really tough problems facing us and having even a small fraction of the brain-trust of this or any other industrialized nation dilly dallying around trying to outsmart and disable other people's computers is just nonsense. Wasting additional fractions of that brain trust trying to outsmart the "outsmarters" is even more ludicrous.

Working within this distinctly cranky mindset, I recently tracked down a congenial and articulate computer science major at a local university who was willing to talk candidly, albeit anonymously, to me about computer viruses. What he told me is...etc..etc..

5. Two MAIL ART-related items, Mail art being the art godfather of viral marketing etc..(see also 'corrospondance art')

a. 'The Envelope is the Museum'...a GREAT online mail art resource, including a beautiful online artist's stamp museum.
<www.actlab.utexas.edu/emma/>

b. an extract from a thesis on the history of mail art..with reference to its originator Ray Johnson

full thesis at:<www.fortunecity.com/victorian/palace/62/>

MAIL ART 1955 to 1995

Democratic art as social sculpture
thesis by: Michael Lumb - 1998

RAY JOHNSON

1. Introduction.

Whilst, arguably, mailart could not have begun before the introduction of the postage stamp - which gave a formal structure for distance communication - there are clear and uncontested precedents for the use of the postal system by artists expressly for artistic purposes. In particular, writers on mailart have cited the Futurists who, before the first World War, printed postcards, envelopes and writing paper, in the manner of commercial companies advertising their corporate identity.1 Although part of a body of work produced by a movement dedicated to subverting the establishment of both art and society and with the clear intention of communicating, it did not require networking and the communication was solely within an elite and closed circle. Other forerunners in terms of subject matter have been cited, for example Rene Magritte,2 because he used verbal puns, but this citing does not differentiate between process (working through the postal system as a medium) and subject matter, which is entirely open in the case of mailart, and does not necessarily use verbal (or visual) puns. Similarly, the love of play, demonstrated by Dadaists has been a recurring theme in mailart. Dadaists also used the postal system, although usually for no more than to send works to each other. However, the use of the postal system by artists to send works to each other, whether related to the postal system or not, does not in any way foretell or inform us about mailart because the sendings were one way and not part of an exchange.

It might seem to be possible to look further to Marcel Duchamp as a forerunner of mailart in terms of the anti-art and antiestablishment agenda that he demonstrated in his subversive and abusive defacing of a postcard of the Mona Lisa, 'L.H.O.O.Q.' 1919.3 Yet Duchamp and the Dadaists readily exhibited in the established art marketing system, thereby supporting the very institutions that they purported to attack. Mailart however has always eschewed art marketing, even if mailartists have at times - or as parallel activity - used the art marketing system for their non-mailart activity. Whilst many artists have used the postal system, there are no contenders for the position that Johnson holds as originator of the system of exchange that is mailart.

Mailart is both the creation of a product and a social act - the sending (exchanging) of that product. Although in mailart the product and social act are indivisible, an examination of the Fine Art culture in New York in the early 1950s and Johnson's education help in an understanding of the influences on Johnson's products and his decision to use the postal system as a way of working (a social act). I will deal with this argument in conjunction with discussion of Johnson's work.

1.2. Ray Edward Johnson.

In the absence of diary entries and/or definitive catalogues and collections the only evidence for the beginning of Ray Johnson's mailart is to be found in the media and it was in October 1955 that John Wilcock in the village VOICE wrote of Johnson's use of the postal service for artistic purposes.5

In the mid 1950s in New York there was a change of emphasis away from serious and often intense subject matter such as the angst ridden paintings of the Abstract Expressionists. This move indicated a recognition of play as being important to the well being of society.6 This more relaxed culture was also noticeable in the move from a primarily literary based media to a primarily visual one, brought about by picture magazines such as Life (1936 - 1972)and Look (1937 - 1971) which were well established and by the rapid rise in ownership of televisions.

In New York the emergence of Pop Art expressed optimism and playfulness with combines and collages. This was in the context of an interest in Dada in the USA at that time. Robert Motherwell's book The Dada Painters and Poets was published in 1951,7 other books which included Dada,8 had been published earlier in New York but none had covered Dada so thoroughly as Motherwell. The book included a number of reproductions of collages with, particularly relevant to Johnson's mailart work, pages from Dada journals and catalogues exploring jokes, puns and the apparent random placing of both images and text in juxtaposition to each other as well as the use of a repeated popular image, for example the bicycle.9 Repeated popular images have been important to many Pop artists and mailartists alike as has the sense of fun, iconoclasm and play, in particular to mailart. Dada was also in evidence in New York galleries in the early 1950s10 and in 1953 MOMA acquired several Kurt Schwitters collages to add to their existing collection.11 In the same year, Marcel Duchamp organised the exhibition 'Dada 1916 - 1923' at the Sidney Janis Gallery, New York. Rauschenberg began making 'combines' in 1953, a form of collage often involving everyday objects with painting and in 1954 made collages out of a mixture of comic strips and reproductions of European works of art. Rauschenberg's first solo show was in 1951 and Andy Warhol had his first in 1952, both in New York.12 It was as a close friend of Johns, Rauschenberg and Warhol, in this New York Fine Art environment in which Johnson was to produce his own collages, which Suzi Gablik cites as: " pioneer[ing] in the use of graphic techniques and images."13 It was in this environment that Johnson began the experiment of work that acted between art, play and life that was to occupy him for the rest of his life - mailart.