The work of artists in a databased society: Net.Art as online activism - Features - Internet standards and a Free Society - Excerpt

Afterimage, March, 2002 by Richard Miranda Zuniga

The fact that Singer has chosen to reveal these files, particularly the self-generated files such as those from the Webcam and email, points to the delight of many Internet participants who choose to reveal their private life to a vast anonymous audience. The concept that many people enjoy the attention of a public stage and make use of the Internet for that purpose is not new. But the juxtaposition of DataMine and DataWake makes explicit the complexity of the Internet as a sphere that we compose for our enjoyment with the knowledge that it also serves a regulating and normalizing function. [paragraph]

This dichotomy is not unlike the double entendre surrounding the photographic portraiture that Sekula describes in "The Body and the Archive" as "a system of representation capable of functioning both honorifically and repressively." Photography functions honorifically in that it documents and memorializes "the ceremonial presentation of the bourgeois self," and repressively in that it entrenches a social hierarchy by documenting and defining the "other"--both the other within western culture itself, characterized by documenting the physiognomy of the criminal, (11) and in the anthropological as well as ethnographic studies that captured the "savage" races. In this day and age, where biology has also become a question of data, it is equally pertinent to ask if you have purchased your credit report lately? Are you quite sure that you would qualify for a new credit line? Where does your data-self put you on the social scale of approval ratings?

Singer reminds us that the Internet is an increasingly corporate space by introducing such icons as the Microsoft Passport Butterfly. In "SPV2" the MSN butterfly comes to life and flies out of the browser when one chooses Incoming Email in the DataMine menu. It reappears later, once the email has choked the browser, to sweep away the text and create a new space for more incoming information. The Internet began its commercial transformation in 1979, the year the National Science Foundation (NSF), once proprietors of the Internet, agreed to sell part of its new virtual frontier to Compu Serve. "Fifteen years later [Compu Serve] claimed 3.2 million users in 120 countries and was part owned by Time Warner. The NSF, finally, in 1995 handed the backbone and its management over to the private telecommunication giants Sprint, Ameritech, and Pacific Bell which became the gatekeepers of the principal access points." (12) This is an all too familiar pattern of mass media, a pattern that has resulted in a highly limited production of independent radio and television programs. In the case of both telecommunications technologies, the dialogical potential was quickly consumed by corporate enterprise. (13) [paragraph]

By publicly revealing her data-self, Singer turns the user into a data-voyeur while simultaneously giving the user a glance at the sort of data that exist within the Internet in relation to each one of us. To further accentuate this point, Singer has also included the join Me! category, which allows users to enter their name and/or zip code and launch the visual representation of her/his own data-self. In effect, the applied value of Singer's work is information. The project takes the first step of activism--it informs its viewer/participant of just how open one's history may be for public inspection. Although once a viewer enters her/his name and zip code the information one gets back is limited to weather reports and an image grabbed from Google, the viewer is rewarded for participating by gaining access to view past Join Me! logs. As Singer explains: "When entering the logs, you see other people's information and it's more than weather and image. There is potentially also a person's date of birth as well a s their personality type and income based on demographics. This access is your reward for participating, but you also realize that your information will now be viewable by the next Join Me! participant. You are now not only a voyeur, but also an object of observation. Participation usually makes you see or feel the benefits, but hardly ever the consequences." (14) [paragraph]