Begin forwarded message:

> From: "digitalcraft.org" <gabriele.reinartz@digitalcraft.org>
> Date: July 26, 2004 3:02:18 PM EDT
> To: rachel@rhizome.org
> Subject: digitalcraft.org | press release 26th July 2004
>
>
>
>  
>
> Press Release
>
> I love you [rev.eng]
> The Aesthetics of Computer Viruses. German Exhibition on
> International Tour
>
> Providence (USA) / Copenhagen: The return of “Made in Germany” - “I
> love you [rev.eng]”
> (rev.eng = reverse engineering), the extension of the successful
> exhibition in Frankfurt devoted to the phenomenon of computer viruses,
> is going on an international tour. It can be seen from September 11th
> to October 4th at the renowned private Brown University in Providence,
> Rhode Island, USA, and then from October 7th to November 14th in the
> Museum for Communication in Copenhagen, Denmark.
>
> Nowadays computer viruses are an integral part of our computerised
> everyday life. The damage to national economies caused by the more
> than 90,000 viruses that have already appeared world-wide runs into
> many billions. The independent US research institute Computer
> Economics puts the damage in the case of “I love you” in 2001 alone at
> 8.75 billion US $. But not all computer viruses are harmful. Computer
> viruses can also result from experimentation with (programming)
> language. “I love you [rev.eng]” is the first exhibition world-wide
> dedicated to the phenomena of computer security and computer viruses,
> and takes up both these aspects to carry out a controversial
> experiment with contemporary culture that goes far beyond current
> vehement debates on hacking.
>
> “I love you [rev.eng]” is divided into political, technical and
> historical areas of investigation and focuses on the controversial
> positions of security experts and hackers, of net artists and
> programmers, of literature experts and code poets. What actually is a
> computer virus? Who creates them, and why? What sort of world is
> hiding behind these everyday phenomena? The exhibition provides
> background information, presents artworks, and reveals the role of
> computer viruses as a destructive force and economic threat as well as
> an inspiration for creative art. “I love you [rev.eng]” is conceived
> and presented by the cultural organisation digitalcraft.org based in
> Frankfurt, Germany.
>
> “digitalcraft.org sees itself as a future oriented model for a
> changing understanding of cultural communication,” says Franziska
> Nori, the leader of the digitalcraft.org team. “The big question being
> raised by the exhibition as to what digital culture is today and will
> become in the age of the information society doesn't only determine
> contemporary artistic and cultural production, but is also intended to
> motivate cultural institutions to rethink their practice and their own
> role.”
>
>
> What can visitors to the "I love you [rev.eng]“ exhibition look
> forward to?
> ▪ Computer viruses in close-up. At isolated terminals (“in the
> zoo”), visitors can activate infected data with viruses like “Sasser”
> or “Suicide” and force computers to close down. A presentation of the
> 30 year history of computer viruses and their technical development
> offers background information on the development of this phenomenon
> right up to the present day.
> ▪ Virus outbreaks in real time. An interactive 3D game world has
> been developed specially for the exhibition to allow visitors, by
> operating a joystick, to experience in real time the otherwise
> invisible processes involved in a global virus outbreak. Visitors can
> also click together their own viruses using a computer with so called
> virus construction kits like the ones often used by budding hackers to
> flood the Internet with ever-new viruses.
> ▪ The web artists 0100101110101101.ORG and epidemiC present the
> computer virus “biennale.py”, which, over and above being a
> self-reproducing program, has been declared as a social work of art.
> The work “The Lovers” by the British artist Sneha Solankis creates,
> using two mutually-infected computers, an analogy between the
> distorted communication between the computers and that between lovers.
> ▪ Insights into the heterogeneous culture of hackers with a broad
> spectrum of film material created in the scene itself, including
> “Freedom Downtime” by the New York hacker community 2600, and “Hippies
> from Hell”. Historical and current material provide insights into the
> development of the scene from its origins in the late 50s, when the
> term “hacker” was a neutral word for students at the MIT who lived out
> their fascination for logical tasks and enthusiasm for understanding
> the new computers, to the criminalisation of what is now known as the
> VX Scene, to the commercialisation of the phenomenon, supplemented by
> a wealth of interviews in which various virus authors talk about their
> motives.
> ▪ The aesthetics of the source code. Apart from its pure
> functionality, a program code (which computer viruses are based on,
> just like any other computer program) can also be an aesthetic and
> artistic creation. “Obfuscated C Codes” are examples of such highly
> virtuoso programming. The exhibition presents two exceptional
> contributions from the “International Obfuscated C Code Contest” that
> has been held regularly since 1984, the three-dimensional flight
> simulator by C. Banks (1998) and the Saitou.c Code by Don Yang (2000),
> a program with a graphical layout that generates a set of mutually
> reproducing programs.
> ▪ Program code as language. Here, comparisons are drawn between
> traditional poetry and contemporary code poetry. The unbroken line
> from the Carmina Figurata of antiquity and the Middle Ages via the
> concrete poetry of the 19th Century to modern poets and contemporary
> code poets show a coherence of form that reveals the source code as a
> new material for contemporary poetry.
> ▪ Internet security. Security concepts and current methods for
> preventing global attacks on the network are presented for an
> interested audience.
>
> The burning actuality of this subject in its economic and social
> dimensions is demonstrated with the cooperation of experts from the
> Brown University's Watson Institute for International Studies and
> researchers from Symantec, the market leader in internet security. At
> both locations, the exhibition will be complemented by symposiums, in
> the USA with the theme “The Power and Pathology of Networks”.
>
> The cultural organisation digitalcraft.org is taking up with this
> project the challenge of exploring complex virtual phenomena for an
> interested public and presenting them in a visual way. “I love you
> [rev.eng]” (rev.eng = reverse engineering) is the revamped and
> expanded version of the initial exhibition which was successfully
> shown in June 2002 in the Museum for Applied Art in Frankfurt and in
> February 2003 at the “transmediale.03” in Berlin.
>
> Length of the press release 5.481 characters (without blanks).
>
> Further information on all exhibits, the digital version of the
> exhibition catalogue and extensive pictorial material can be found on
> the project's website www.digitalcraft.org/Iloveyou (+ press section)
> or direct from:
>
> Dr. Gabriele Reinartz
> PR and Kommunikation
> Phone: +49 (0)171 / 8 34 56 48
> Fax: +49 (0)69 / 48 00 61 32
> E-Mail: gabriele.reinartz@digitalcraft.org
>
> www.digitalcraft.org
> www.infopeace.org
> www.watsoninstitute.org
> www.ptt-museum.dk
> www.symantec.com
>
> Brief profile of digitalcraft.org
> digitalcraft.org started in 2003 as a spin-off of the “digitalcraft”
> section of the Museum for Applied Art in Frankfurt am Main
> (2000-2003). Its task was to research and document fast moving trends
> in everyday digital culture and present them to a wide public. Since
> 2003, digitalcraft.org has been an independent cultural organisation
> under the direction of Franziska Nori. Its work includes
> interdisciplinary exhibition projects such as “adonnaM.mp3” (2003) on
> the phenomenon of file sharing, “Origami Digital” (2003) on the
> digital demo scene, public lectures and publications, and advising
> cultural institutions and museums. The subjects it takes up reflect
> the rapid development in communications technologies and methods and
> their significance for modern society.
>
> Brief profile of the Watson Institute for International Studies
> Brown University in Rhode Island is one of the most renowned private
> Universities in the USA. One of its associated institutes is the
> Watson Institute for International Studies, named after its founder,
> which is dedicated to interdisciplinary studies. Under the direction
> of Prof. James Der Derian, the “Information Technology, War and Peace
> Project“ has been started up to make a targeted analysis of the
> potential impacts of network structures in the globalised society. In
> September, “InfoTechWarPeace”, a new, one-year research project, is
> starting up with the heading, “The Power and Pathology of Networks”.
> The central matters it will be dealing with involve analysis of the
> questions: What new forms of global security and governance are needed
> to manage the potential, allocate the resources, and reduce the risks
> of networks? How do we assess the dangers of global interconnectivity
> (networked terrorism, computer viruses, pandemics) against the vaunted
> benefits (increased transparency, higher productivity, global
> interdependence)? The research project will be inaugurated with a
> symposium and the “I love you [rev.eng]” exhibition.
>
>
>