When considering the notion of trafficking identity, there are a range of issues to consider — the
218 Julian Dibble “A Rape in Cyberspace: How an Evil Clown, a Haitian Trickster Spirit, Two Wizards, and a Cast of
Dozens Turned a Database Into a Society” The Village Voice December 23, 1993
http://www.juliandibbell.com/texts/bungle_vv.html (accessed 4 May 2008).
219 Robert Yagelski, ‘Computers, Literacy, and Being’ Kairos 6:2
http://english.ttu.edu/kairos/6.2/features/yagelski/bungle.htm (accessed 20 November 2006).
220 Yagelski, R., Computers, Literacy, and Being. 221 Lister, M., et al., New Media,p. 169.
trafficking of information, movement of identity, borders, control and protocols of access. Galloway identifies a downed server as “the ultimate disruption of the Net continuity.” On the Internet information must keep moving, otherwise the user is under threat of data loss and software corruption.222 Rheingold comments that:
The Battle of Seattle saw a more deliberate and tactically focused use of wireless communications and mobile social networks in urban political conflict.223
This example demonstrates the connection of media to the physical context of traffic as well as a demonstration of how information is trafficked globally and locally.
As mentioned earlier, Blast Theory build on the use of wireless technology in a range of works. Aside from ‘Uncle Roy all around you’ the interactive work ‘Rider Spoke’ also explores the city using wireless communications technology. John Arquilla and David Ronfeldt coined the term ‘netwar’ which is used to describe the type of events represented by Seattle’99 (also known as the ‘Battle of Seattle’). In their text The Advent of Netwar they reflect on the non-hierarchical structure and tactical approach that informs this type of activity:
The capacity of this nonhierarchical design for effective performance over time may depend on a powerful doctrine or ideology, or at least a strong set of common interests and objectives, that spans all nodes, and to which the members subscribe in a deep way. Such a doctrine can enable them to be “all of one mind” even if they are dispersed and devoted to different tasks. It can provide an ideational, strategic, and operational centrality that allows for tactical decentralization.224
Another term that appropriately describes they sort of traffic that is created by these convergences is ‘swarming’. Kevin Kelly makes this observation:
The more fit-the more interesting or useful-a fact is, the wider it spreads. A pretty metaphor compares the spread of genes through a population with the similar spread of ideas, or memes, in a population. Both genes and memes depend on a network of
replicating machines-cells or brains or computer terminals. A network in this general sense is a swarm of flexibly interconnected nodes each of which can copy (either exactly or with variation) a message taken from another node.225
Rheingold comments about this strategy that:
222 Galloway, A., Protocol, p. 67. 223 Rheingold, H., Smart Mobs, p. 160.
224 Arquilla, J., and Ronfeldt, D.F., The Advent of Netwar, National Defense Research Institute, 1997 p. 180.
225 Kevin Kelly, Out of Control: The Rise Of Neo-biological Civilization, Addison-Wesley Publishing Company, 1994
Individual members of each group remained dispersed until mobile communications drew them to converge on a specific location from all directions simultaneously, in coordination with other groups. Manila, Seattle, San Francisco, Senegal and Britain were sites of nonviolent political swarming.226
When users online imitate the swarming movement of users within physical space , there is
potential to crash the servers because of overload. Too much traffic is an effective vehicle in raising awareness in both notions of space as both context offer a capacity for halting or changing other users movements, which then has an impact on the corporate or government entity that has been ‘swarmed’. However, what is of concern to users (activists or consumers) is that that through a range of technologies physical and virtual movement is surveillanced and tracked. The surveillance of the citizen is further explored in the next chapter.
In conclusion, the exploration of online identity has now reached epidemic proportions, with blogs and vlogs being increasingly published on the Internet in the social network spaces of Facebook, My Space and Youtube to mention a few. This phenomenon has challenged what it means to be a publisher, writer, journalist and artist, and by doing so has radically shifted what online identity means in the real world. What has emerged is a notion that identity is multi faceted and fluid, rather than a rigid and singular entity. What is also evident is that individuals have a sense of
empowerment over how they portray themselves and how they present visual and textual narratives of their identity in an online environment. All of these elements reinforce the argument of the Möbius strip — that the physical and virtual spaces are in fact part of the same environment, only presented in a different context and with differing implications.
The Internet and WWW have provided a sense of empowerment to those who have access to it, as they have the capacity to provide an alternative version of current events as well as building communities that have common goals. In the next chapter, the use of surveillance tools by nat- artists and net-activists will be more fully explored a means of engaging with the Internet on a
cultural and political level with outcomes that affect experience and have implications in the physical world.
Chapter 4: Surveillant vision — sedition, censorship and concealment
So far in this thesis I have put into context a range of artists and activists work being done by using the WWW; described the spaces between the real and the virtual; and addressed the formulation of identity online. In this chapter, I explore how forms of surveillance and counter surveillance have challenged power relationships in net-art, net-activism, alternative media and citizen publishing.
The political and technical landscape of the time frame between 2001 and 2008 has shifted
dramatically in two ways that are relevant to this dissertation: firstly in terms of how the Australian government is dealing with asylum seekers in detention and secondly in regard to the evolution of a massive range of online social networking tools that have shifted online culture and the way in which people interact and share media. The punitive approach taken in 2001 post September 11 appears to still occupy a contentious space with the Rudd Labor government initially dismantling the Pacific Solution and reviewing immigration detention policy, to moving back to an off-shore, incarceration approach to managing illegal boat arrivals. Whilst these changes have potentially represented a more lenient, humanitarian approach after the fear, panic and paranoia of September 11, the same can not be said about other civil rights, particularly those governing privacy. Since September 11 there has been an exponential increase in how people are monitored in society by the use of all manner of surveillance technologies including camera, data-tracking, biometrics and body scanning by the government. This in turn has created a notion within society that movement is controlled and managed through these means of surveillance. However, this scenario is not one where passive citizens are monitored by the Orwellian ‘Big Brother’. As Internet and media technology has become cheaper, mobile and more accessible there has been a sharp increase in the use of the of this media by artists, activists and the general public to report on events and
rise of re-mixing, open source and creative commons cultures where media, code and information is shared, added to and reconfigured. This shift in cultural values has challenged the arts establishment as these new methodologies challenge the authority of the artist as ‘creator’.
As this use of user generated ‘activist’ and ‘tactical media’ surveillance is the topic of this chapter, I will present a range of examples whereby online activists and artists have used counter surveillance to inform public opinion, challenge established concepts, create new work and to expose crime. These groups include Revolutionary Association of Women in Afghanistan (RAWA), Sarai, WITNESS, CAE, Soda Jerk and the discussion list –empyre- where as a moderator I organised a discussion on sedition in February 2006.