Vopos de 0100101110101101.ORG; 2002

A Self-surveillance System for Complete Digital Transparency

The telephone, satellites and the Internet: Vopos exploits and merges three kinds of net. Eva and Franco Mattes, internationally known as 0100101110101101.ORG, are the cell under control. For an entire year they have been wearing a GPS transmitter, sending their co-ordinates to their website. A software drew their exact position on a digital geographic map, establishing a path that traced all the movements of the nomadic couple. Over one year the performance will touch cities all over Europe and the US, including Valencia, Torino, New York, Courmayeur, Karlsruhe, Barcelona, Linz and Amsterdam, just to name a few.

Global Positioning System

The Global Positioning System (or GPS) is a collection of satellites owned by the U.S. Government. GPS receivers on the earth's surface listen in on the information received from satellites and, from that, determine the precise location of the receiver, as well as how fast and in what direction it is moving. Some GPS receivers have been integrated into mobile radios, cellular phones and mobile data terminals. In the next future they will probably be installed on each vehicle and miniaturized to the point of being wearable.

Vopos

Vopos represents the second stage of a wider project, Glasnost, started on 2000, that consists on monitoring and making public, in real time, the biggest quantity of data concerning an individual in the actual society. With the first stage, Life Sharing, active from 2000 to 2003, the Matteses were giving every Internet user free 24-7 access to their computer: programs, system, desktop, archives, tools, ongoing projects and even private mail were all public. Life Sharing radically challenged the concept of intellectual property and explored the contradictions of privacy in the era of information technology.

The Matteses are trying to give an account of how vast amounts of personal information are moving into corporate hands, where they can be developed into electronic profiles of individuals and groups that are potentially far more detailed and intrusive than the files built up in the past by state police and security agencies. They reveal how ordinary citizens are losing control of the information about them that is available to anyone who can pay for it.

Sound

In January 2002 the Matteses put their own telephone under control for the entire month. All Internet users had real-time access to any phone conversation trough the website. All the files have been manipulated by the experimental-music and art collective known as Negativland, by remixing and sampling the conversations. The result is the pop-song What's this noise?.

Hace unos días buscando el contacto del clásico del net art Jodi para incluir el magnifico Geo Goo en un proyecto que llevo entre manos, contacto con los otros clásicos 0100101110101101.ORG, que además de ayudarme, me pasaron este proyecto de aquí encima.

Aparte de eso son los responsables del evento anual de culto que no me cansaré de recomendar (y de desear ir), the Influencers, el que dicen en su blog:

There’s a small kind-of-cult festival that we organize together with our friend Bani every year in Barcelona, it’s called The Influencers. It’s a gathering of artists, impostors, conceptual hackers, deviant geographers and crazy characters, those people you can get inspiration from.

The next festival is taking place April 14-15-16, 2011