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By turning their attention to a new generation, Etoy is unexpectedly softening its image now. Etoy has started a project called «Etoy.Daycare,» in which Etoy «trains new Etoy agents.» The project has been performed in Turin, Italy and recently in Amsterdam, the Netherlands. On the «Etoy-Daycare» Web site it says «… we inject children with a first shot of experimental lifestyle and try to win them over for a sustainable friendship with art.» In Amsterdam, Etoy managed to train no less then 130 young Etoy agents, ages 6 to 11, which basically means that 130 children were involved in workshops in which they played physical and technical games, from using a fire escape (an inflatable slide) to designing the inside of an Etoy container on a computer. The kids go home with their own pass, some Etoy shares and information on how to visit their very own Etoy Web page.

The project documentation is full of pompous corporate language. Don’t let this fool you. Through its installation in the public space of a city and the fact that access to a workshop is free of charge, this project reaches a very broad audience. «Etoy.Daycare» is one of the very few new media projects that actually

 

successfully involves and inspires children. During the workshop in Amsterdam, local kids would hang around the container in which the project was housed, where they would play with the air cushions and try to obtain little bits and bobs (stickers, badges, Etoy shares in the form of little steel marbles) from the Etoy agents in charge. Etoy manages to let young children have a taste of art, of technology, and even of a mild form of subversion. The kids are taught a sort of secret handshake that allows them to recognize other young Etoy agents around the globe. This project is installation, workshop and media cultural access provider at the same time.

Like art in the old public domain (Public Domain 1.0), art of the new public domain, which includes mediated, virtual spaces, still seems to encompass a certain kind of locality. This locality, however, mostly translates into intimacy. It is intimacy of a personal or cultural kind, not necessarily connected to a fixed physical location but more to a meeting place. Artworks for the new public domain reflect its fluidity and instability, even if sometimes involuntarily by simply becoming obsolete or disappearing because of technical changes.

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