start

Welcome to Imogen Clendinning's guest lecture on
HACKING and net.art in the early 2000s

In today's class we will review last week's materials concerning
the birth of net.art in 1995. We will then analyze net.art
and new media artworks from the early 2000s, discuss the
historical and political context in which these works were
created, and then discuss the reading for this week, an
excerpt from McKenzie Wark's incomparable "A Hacker Manifesto."

Learning Outcomes:

* Describe the shift in net.art practice from the late 90s to the mid 2000s, and dissect net.art works from 2001-2005

* Discuss the political motivations of the
artist-hacker and apply these concepts to the analysis
of Internet Art

* Practice the hacker-artist methodology in your own web use

Today we will be discussing the evolution from the net.art as tinkerer or community organizer to their move activist, political evolution of net artist-hacker in the early 2000s.

But first... a brief overview of last week's class on the birth of
net.art.

In December 1995, the term net.art was coined when artist Vuk Cosic
accidentally glitched software by opening an anonymous email, resulting in a digital file of alphanumeric randomized symbols.
Cosic couldn't make out any words or symbols other that the
phrase 'net.art' and so the term was born ("Web Work: A History of Net Art," Rachel Greene). In the following years this term would come to describe all manner of artworks made online, also known as the 'born-digital.' The medium of net.art was defined by the strategic misuse of Internet technology, producing political interventions, critique tinged with humour or interactive hypertext storytelling (last week we discussed Olia Lialina's "My Boyfriend Came Back From the War).

The aesthetic qualities of net.art, as you will see throughout the course, fluctuate in accordance with the evolution of The Web. The artworks we looked at last week reflect the capacities of Web 1.0 in the late 90s, while the works we discuss today will vary slightly, reflecting the look of the Web in the early 2000s. It should also be noted here that for many net artists, aesthetics was not their primary concern. An artwork was intended to fluctuate as Internet technology developed, and so many net.artworks made in the early 2000s can not be experienced in their original format today, they are altered by their current context within the contemporary virtual space.

*

One vital characteristic of the net.art was the community itself; Internet artists formed virtual communities through email chains and online forums. In the first phases of the net.art movement, these online discussions allowed artists to dialogue with one another outside of art institutions ("Web Work: A History of Net Art," Rachel Greene). And so, the basis of net.art is defined by both the subversion of Internet technology, as well as, building grassroots communities online.

Today we will look at how these core features of net.art practice inevitably led Internet artists to develop hacking methodologies in their creative works. We will look at the works of three "artist-hackers" working in 2000-2010, and also review McKenzie Wark's "A Hacker Manifesto," in order to investigate the political motivations of the artist-hacker.

Screenshot of "hacking.art" webpage

Screenshot of "My Boyfriend Came Back from the War" Olia Lialina, 1996. curtesy of Net Art Anthology.

"Super Mario Clouds,"
Cory Arcangel, 2002.
Image curtesy of the
Whitney Museum of American Art.

We will begin by looking at Cory Arcangel’s new media work, “Super Mario Clouds,” from 2002. A textbook example of the artist-hacker here, Arcangel’s work ‘hacks’ a game cartridge of Super Mario Brothers, a popular Nintendo game released in 1985. Arcangel tweaks the code of the original game, removing all sound and visual components except the sky and clouds from the original game. Importantly, the work was intended to be displayed on the web alongside an online tutorial teaching users how to hack their gaming systems. This work was first shown at the Whitney Biennial in 2002, in a sense removing the artwork from its intended environment.

I think this piece is vital to our discussion today, to situate us within the world of the net artist/in this time period. Whereas in the late 90s net artists and new media artists were meeting in online forums and producing groundbreaking works outside of museums and galleries, now, Arcangel and others were being invited into the Western canon. This work was premiered at the Whitney Biennial (a world known exhibition of contemporary American art), and in that same year ten net artists were featured in the biennial. In other words, by the early 2000s, net.art had gone mainstream, (yikes!).

Screenshot of Mary Flanagan's "[collection]," 2001. Image curtesy of artist's website.

Mackenzie Wark defines the hacker as, “someone who turns information— of any kind— into intellectual property. Hence, programmers can be hackers, but so too can scientists, artists, writers, designers, and so on,”

(Wark, interviewed by Melissa Gregg)

Screenshot of Keith and Mendi Obadike's "Blackness for Sale," 2001.
Image curtesy of Net Art Anthology.

This section of the lecture would include an analysis of Obadike's piece. We would think about the hack as a political intervention, touching on Wark's manifesto and also look at the Black net.art community in the early 2000s.

THE INTERSECTIONS BETWEEN

DIGITAL ART // HACKING

ACTIVISM //

A Hacker Manifesto | Review

"A Hacker Manifesto" was published in 2004 by Harvard University Press. This short book borrows its epigrammic style from Guy Debord's "Society and the Spectacle," the text also activates Marxism through the addition of a 'hacker class,' and 'vectorial class.' Wark dreams of the utopian potentials of the 'hacker class' to rise up and control by hacking, through the creation of new information and perceptions. For Wark, all information is code; the 'abstraction' she refers to is the doubling of an object or concept in the virtual space. The abstraction of information and concepts allows the hacker class to alter the information, creating new relations. In this sense Wark suggests that a hack can be achieved through art, music, science or other activations of information.

The 'vectorial class,' described by Wark are those who seek to commodify information. The vectorial class are the opposition to the hacker's utopian dream of free information. They are named the vectorial class due to their control of vectors (pathways where information flows). They represent corporate interest, specifically technology corporations, who own the means of production. The vectorial class conceptualize information as a resource, and they seek to dispossess hackers (creators) of their intellectual property (creative output/art/information etc).

INFORMATION
AS COMMODITY

First, divide into groups of two *or work individually if you prefer*. Together, discuss the artworks from class today along with the assigned excerpt from Wark's "A Hacker Manifesto." How do these artworks reflect Wark's description of the "hacker," the "vectorial class," and the concept of "information as capitol"?

Next, together write a short description of your collaborative analysis, and add it to the digital mind-map below. You may also write on paper and share this with the class if you do not have a laptop or are unable to write directly on hotglue.

QUESTIONS TO GET YOU STARTED:

1. How does this artwork disrupt your pre-existing relationship to the Internet?

2. Is the 'hack' an artist method or a political intervention? Discuss.

3. What are the implications of a purposeful malfunction?

4. What does 'free information' mean to you?

How to add text to our class site:

1) add "/edit" to the website URL

2) Type in USERNAME: hackingthenet
and PASSWORD: hackingthenet1466

3) To add your text, click the window once, then click the TOP LEFT SQUARE

Screenshot of archived view, Jodi.org's "OSS," 2000. Image curtesy of Rhizome ArtBase via artsy.net.

The last artwork we look at would be jodi.org's "OSS" project from 2000.

This section of the lecture would touch on the artist as programmer, and also the ways in which the artwork has an interactive component for those with background knowledge in hacking. The artwork can be added to by contributing a code to try to 'combat' the jodi.org pop-ups, inevitably leading to a feedback loop of frenetic pop-ups.

INTELLECTUAL
PROPERTY

IF YOU HAVE A LAPTOP PLEASE GO TO:

hackingthenet.hotglue.me

Arcangel's process encourages the dissemination of free information, but premiered at the Whitney?

The activity can also be completed on a phone or tablet

Why did the Whitney want
to collect Arcangel's work?

i am having fun in this class

How does net art from the early 2000s connect to NFTs in the 2020s

Wark's description of vector class...

2. In my opinion, it's a bit of both

Cory Arcangel's hack of Super Mario Bros