From "La Presse", 2001 (Unpublished)

 

biennale.py

Interview with 0100101110101101.ORG

 

Q.: In your work exposed at Venice Biennale, "Biennale.py", you use computer viruses as an esthetic vector for carrying your ideas. There is a strong tendency among artists and designers to use the look and feel of computer interfaces. For example, allusions to 80's computer interfaces, pixellization or "Atari nostalgia". But sometimes the computer interface is used both as the medium and the subject of the art, like in the case of Antonio Mendoza (subculture.com) or yourself with the new idea of exposing a computer virus at the Biennale. It's the esthetics of "computer terror" such as viruses, browser crashes, etc. How would you define and artistically justify that specific movement?

A.: 0100101110101101.ORG is not interested into computer aesthetic (considered as appearance), but rather in the mechanisms that are behind the working of the computer. Atari nostalgia is something that belongs to techno-fetishistic. The idea at the roots of the project is rather the opposite. Until '95 computer viruses, usually written in assembly, were extremely esthetical: letters that scroll down on the desktop (think at "Cascade"), balls that bounce on the screen ("Pingpong" or "Bouncing Ball"), alerts telling you terrible things happening to your PC ("Stone" or "Virus-B"). It was only recently that Internet-spread viruses - such as "Melissa" or "Love Letter" - became less spectacular and far more cute. This generation viruses are the inspiration for the making of biennale.py. First of all because they are net specific, secondly because they are more similar to biological viruses. Being biennale.py's main goal to "survive", it remains hidden the more it can, and replicates itself only once per time, not to crash the machine. Damaging the host is something a cute virus should never do, not to endanger its own existence.

Q.: There is a certain violence in "hijacking" machines to make them do what they are not intended to (a violence which is also added explicit sexual content in the case of Antonio Mendoza). Can it be seen as a subversive or critical form of expression?

A.: Even Adobe Photoshop makes my machine do what - in my opinion - it is not intended to. It only depends on WHAT you think your machine has been built for. Some people have this uncontrollable impulse to put their hands on things they later won't be able to repair, just to know how they work. Often this process of deconstruction produces some interesting effects that people generally, depending on the "broken thing", call cinema, poetry, music or hacking.

Q.: The fact that it requires some computing knowledge to be fully understood creates a gap between "those who will understand" and "those who won't", so that belonging to a certain social group (the hackers, or the "geeks") is a condition to understand this art or even to understand that it actually is art. What do you think about that gap?

A.: And what about the fact that to communicate with you I need to know English, which is a language that makes me sick? Isn't it a deeper gap than having or not red an Unix manual? As for English you only need to learn, any hacker would probably answer printing a RTFM (Read The Fucking Manual). But it's to say that we are interested in looking to what happens when the two fields - the one of technically skilled people and the one of non-expert - collide with each other. Computer viruses are exactly in between the two. Only programmers can understand their working, but any time a virus blows up anybody who owns a PC feel free to start spreading alert messages around the world. The consequence is a sudden hysteria. Most viruses are totally uninteresting, being only virtuosity made by skilled programmers with a medieval perspective, the kind of people that believes in the skill for the sake of it. Technical ability freed from awareness is at best useless, at worst harmful. Some of the most interesting viruses, are not viruses, and are able to create more damages than real viruses. This year started with one of the most effective of this kind of pranks. It's the SULFNBK.EXE warning. The whole thing started with an email from Brazil, stating:

[...] Do you believe that a friend of mine sent me an alert and the procedure that we have to follow for the possible infection of the virus SULFNBK.EXE. And I had checked, just to make sure. And then... the file was there, hidden even of antivirus software as McAfee and Norton, maybe waiting something to start work.
Well, see below the procedure that I followed step by step, and I found the file:

[...] Yes, Norton and McAfee do not detect it.
We do not know if it makes some damage on the machine, but I think that nobody will want to test it to know, will it?
Folks, this is not fun, I deleted it from my computer.
And my definitions are updated.
Do the same, ok?

Than a huge amount of people started spreading this email widely, translating the original email into other languages, adding new features to the former text and of course erasing the named file. After some chaotic days someone finally found out that not only SULFNBK.EXE is not a virus, but that it's an indispensable file for Windows to work properly, an utility used to restore long file names on the Start menu. What 0100101110101101.ORG is interested in is mainly this mediatic hysteria that surrounds viruses, and the reactions we got after announcing the spreading of biennale.py are showing exactly this. Faced with a virus that pretended to be artistic, let people become even more angry. This is a funny example of the reactions we got:

Date: Wed, 27 Jun 2001
From: "Douglas Trimble" dtrimble@insight.rr.com
To: 0100101110101101.ORG
Subject: python virus

You people are pathetic fools. Do you truly believe that a virus is art?
Innovative, perhaps. Interesting, maybe. But art? No. I'm not even saying what you're doing is dangerous. It's just stupid and petty. Find yourself a real medium to work with or get a real job. 'Cause this ain't art.

If you're so "proud" of your artwork, why won't you give interviews under your real names instead of hiding in anonymity?

Douglas Trimble

The following email explains better than any theoretical statement how this hysteria starts to propagate. Note that what this woman is saying is technically impossible because biennale.py only affects servers running Python environment on Linux or Windows:

Date: Wed, 13 Jun 2001
From: "Carolyn R. Miller"
To: 0100101110101101.ORG
Subject: help

I think I may have gotten the biennale.py virus from your website, 0100101110101101.ORG. I read the press release, which was circulated on AIR-L and visited both websites, but at the 0100101110101101.ORG website I got caught in an approval loop that seemed to tell me that "now we're in your computer." I certainly did NOT know when I went to the site that this would happen and I did not voluntarily download any virus.

48 hours later or so I started having major problems. I run a MacG3, OS 8.6. I can't find any information on an internet search about how to get rid of the virus, so I hope you can tell me what to do.

Thanks,
Carolyn Miller
North Carolina State University
Raleigh, NC USA