Norwayweb by Bjorn Magnhildoen
Norwayweb was originally part of a series called Protocol Performance realised in 2007 with the support of the Norwegian Cultural Council, section for art and new technology. This work uses specific data collected from a source or sources originating from the national system’s database. The information is scraped from about 4 million Norwegian tax payer’s databases. As soon as you visit the web page, you automatically trigger off the action of collecting the data. On the left side of the interface figures cascade down the page before your very eyes, which gradually evolves into what Magnhildoen calls a carpet. The term carpet is a reference to the textile based craft of weaving.
When opening the web page the viewer becomes a participant in the collection of the data, each number represents one singular individual which is added as you watch it in real-time. It stops when you close the browser and starts all over again if you return. Once the total of the numbers reach 3943077 the carpet is completed. If you leave the browser open on the page of the Norwayweb artwork for I minute, you will have triggered off and received information equivalent to 60 people. The whole work itself is complete once there has been 555 hours of viewing of it. By taking part in the process of web-scraping we become affiliated as peer scrapers in the accumulation other people’s personal tax details based in Norway.
Bjorn has mentioned that he is aware that collecting such data could be ethically questionable and is not clear himself how real it is that a law is actually being broken. As a kind of opt out clause or fail-safe he suggests that, visitors to the artwork could also be peer criminals due to the fact that they are (or we are) going through the systematic process of collecting this information and are not necessarily just passive observers. The complexity of acting out a simple thing as clicking onto a web page and becoming a co-conspirator without the intention of criminal intent, poses some confusing questions. Not only regarding our liberties in respect of are we really to blame for someone’s work of art by just viewing it? But it also begs the question that if Magnhildoen unintentionally (or intentionally) broke the law and involved other people visitors to the work, surely he is the main culprit. Like a drug dealer who peddles drugs, perhaps he is peddling illegal information, by actively setting up a system in sourcing it and then distributing it to others to potentially use. My guess is that all is fine if the Norwegian Cultural Council funded and supported the project.
Bjørn Magnhildøen uses network media for creation, distribution, exhibition, and documentation of his works. His main practice is analog and digital net media and covers a period of twenty-five years ranging from mail art to net art. His work might be characterized as marginal, fleeting, transient; changing, casual; unstable, deviant; ironic, contextual. Many of his recent projects deals with net art books, writing machines and software implemented on the net, live or performative writing and programming, codework, hypertext, and e-poetry. He’s the author of more than fourty books, many of them collaborative and generative works, and also publishes books concerned with net art and net writing.
In the eighties he got involved in mail art. These activities migrated into the emergent electronic networks in the nineties, as did his academic interests, from philosophy, via language, logic and information, to computer science. He has supported himself as a system developer, later as freelance programmer and artist within the field of art and new technology.
via: http://www.furtherfield.org/displayreview.php?review_id=295
Posted on April 28, 2008 at 10:33 AM | Comment (0 comments)
