The Work

I don't think in one piece, but in the discourse between pieces.
--A. Muntadas

Q. What's black and yellow and blinks all over?
A. A poorly designed, hyperactive, web storefront that reminds you of nothing so much as one of those anonymous "miracle mile" strip malls that were already going to seed well before anyone had even heard of location-based entertainment and theme malls. This "Technologies to the People Foundation" must be some non-profit that knows computers but not marketing....

Or does it?

When you take the time to go through the Technologies to the People® site, you are led up blind alley after blind alley:

The point is clear. Don't believe the hype. Choice is just another word for control. Learn how to read the signs. In the end, Technologies to the People® is a bit like the Mel Gibson character in the movie Conspiracy. In its own madcap way, it points up not that there is some ultimate truth out there but that we may be just as crazy for believing in our "securisms," especially about technology and the Net, as TTTP® is for trying to convince us.
--sd









 

/daniel is a poignant view into corporate culture. It grows on you for what you begin to see about corporate identity.
--ch

While one of the commonest "insights" about net art is that it is a medium waiting for its D.W. Griffith to invent a new language, Technologies to the People® is a veritable deconstruction of contemporary net semantics.
--sd

So-called "fake" projects are also very popular. Netartists try to park themselves with them in other art territories without being exposed. For that they copy creative elements of a particular communications context and transfer them to their own projects. Products are offered that can never possibly exist, services are promised which no one can possibly keep. Lying is therefore explicitly allowed. In this way believers, unsuspecting surfers can become a component of a netart project. Through such projects, fundamental questions are raised about truth, the credibility of the exchange of information in a media-dominated society. Netartists are experimenting with the belief in the progress of techno culture and are working with its material - information and communication. They are using metaphors from the real world, pseudo-individualizing software and playing with the vanity of their virtual visitors.
--Joachim Blank
"(History of) Mailart in Eastern Europe"