<nettime> Shops are Clones Re: olia lialina: Re:art.hacktivism

["Dr. Future" <richard@dig-lgu.demon.co.uk>]

> Subject:  Re:art.hacktivism
> Date: Fri, 09 Jul 1999 11:10:54 +0400
> From: olia lialina <olialia@teleportacia.org>

<...>

>
> LB: We wish to see hundreds of 0100101110101101.ORG repeating sites of
> net.artists endlessly, so that nobody realizes which was the "original"
> one, we would like to see hundreds of Jodi and hell.com, all different,
> all original, and nobody filing lawsuits for copyright infringement, there
> would be no more originals to preserve.
>
> OL: Are you really familiar with net art or net in general? if yes you
> should know that copying is not a big deal. You can make hundreds of
> Art.Teleportacia galleries, but next day they will be only hundreds of
> outdated pages with not actual information and broken links, because I
> will update only http://art.teleportacia.org .. The same with all on line
> art and not art works. What is done on the net is not a book or cd or tape
> kind of product. It is not complete, not frosen, but can be changed every
> moment. And this moment is a difference between copies and originals.


Perhaps it's more like trying to clone a shop like Waitrose supermarket. 
You could rent a large space on a high street and fill it up with shelves
full of soap powder and biscuits and Mother's Pride bread. And then you
could get your friends to dress up in brown overalls or stripey dresses
and walk up and down carrying empty cardboard boxes all day. But the
ORIGINAL Waitrose would keep updating their stock every day and
introducing new lines and moving the aisles around so that you can never
find what you're looking for. 

But everyone knows that the real reason that they keep changing things
around is so you will get confused and wander up and down different aisles
and see products you haven't noticed before and think "oh, that looks so
tasty, I think I'll buy one for tea". So the best way to clone a web site
would be to randomly shift things around every so often just to give the
impression that everything is fresh and new and to keep the viewer mildy
disorientated and ready to buy. So a successful clone is really more a
case of reproducing a similar state of mind in the viewer. In which case
we wouldn't have to bother copying the content - we could just put any old
crap on the web site as long as it is surrounded by little borders and ad
banners and broken image icons and those little signs that say "netscape
4.5 now!" And then stick price tags on everything. 

Which is what most web sites look like now anyway.


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