Projects

the digital hijack, 1996
by etoy

Net.Art, digital Actionism / Media Hacking [digitaler aktionismus]

Digital net-action-entertainment for the travelling generation.

With this action, etoy demonstrates the "room" behind popular interfaces of the world wide web. Weak points and twilight-zones of this medium are the place of action...

Search-server-databases turn into projectors of individuality... etoy.Software-Agents control this systematic illusion and the hijack of bored net-travellers.

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 600,000 hijackings, due to an overloaded server the «Hijack» was discontinued.

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