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Categories: Internet | Communication project
Keywords: Aggression | Politics | Globalization | Surveillance | Underground
Source text:
Weibel, Peter «The Digital Hijack»
Vesna, Victoria «The Digital Hijack» Meszoly, Suzanne «Etoy»
Relevant passages:
Rudolf Frieling Dieter Daniels «Milestones of Media-Art»
Works by etoy:
Check as well:
Cornelia Sollfrank Heath Bunting Cornelia Sollfrank «Net Art Generator»
etoy
«The Digital Hijack»
Infiltration of Flat Hierarchies
In 1996, with «The Digital Hijack» the group «etoy» introduced an aspect into Net art which was subsequently thematicized by numerous artists and which would become a popular discussion platform: the questioning of supposedly flat hierarchies by way of the specific infiltration of system-immanent conditionalities.
The staid problem of gaining authority not only arose for the information provider, the user, too, was also meant to become aware of his/her necessary media competence. At the time, the user's hijacking of him/herself was both a technical trick as well as a legal tightrope walk. In the end, the CIA became active as far as Austria; the Federal Ministry of Internal Security was called in (unnecessarily). After more than 1,600,000 hijackings, due to an overloaded server the «Hijack» was discontinued.
Gunther Reisinger
