It's here: the CD of Alexei Shulgin's cyberpunkband 386 DX. After years
of begging and pushing by his fans Shulgin decided to approach
Staalplaat music publishers when he was in Berlin to give a concert
early this year. Recorded in London like every respectable music CD,
this CD is not just another collection of music on another silver disc
though: you can boot your computer from it and have your own 386 DX.
Ready for performance, ready to create both sound and vision in early
computer aesthetics. The CD contains an illegal copy of an early version
of Windows (3.1)and you can run your computer with it. But most
importantly the CD contains cyberpunkband 386 DX's most popular tunes:
pop songs from the last thirty years played and sung by a computer.

Alexei Shulgin 'founded' his 386 DX cyberpunkband in 1998. The year
before the first wave of interest in net art had rocked the intimate (or
had I better say inner) circles of net.art. 1997 had started hopeful
with heath bunting's secret net.art conference
(http://www.irational.org/cybercafe/backspace/), proceeded with the
first competition for net artists being subverted by Cornelia Sollfranck
(http://www.obn.org/femext/int_engl.htm), the departure of most
net.artists from the nettime mailinglist followed by the installation of
the notorious 7-11 mailinglist (http://www.irational.org/7-11/) , in the
fall the much disputed on line exhibition of Documenta X was hijacked by
Vuk Cosic (http://www.ljudmila.org/~vuk/dx/) and the year ended with a
coup in the net.art mailinglist 7-11 itself: heath bunting moved the
entire list of members from 7-11 to a new mailinglist
(http://www.irational.org/american_express/) on his own server as the
ultimate act of subversion in this experimental mailinglist. In december
of that same year Alexei Shulgin gave an important performance in Vienna
(http://kunstradio.at/FUTURE/RTF/INSTALLATIONS/SHULGIN/cyberknow.html)
called Real Cyberknowledge for Real People. Apart from the statement
Shulgin tried to make about the so-called democratization of knowledge
on the net his performance surprised in another way: apparently art does
not need a direct and technical connection to the internet to be
something called 'net art'. Net art depends on the net culturally, not
so much technically. It seems as if Shulgin was trying to provoke his
audience and his critics by doing something outside of the much hyped
technology of the internet and worldwideweb. Shulgin's mild ironic
criticism of the technology hype of the mid-nineties is present in all
his work and one could say it typifies it.

Like many members of the 'net.art group' (think mostly of jodi or heath
bunting) Shulgin has relativized his role of being the newest media
artist, a rather confusing attitude since both the computer and the
network are so important in his work of course. Alexei Shulgin seemed to
make it his job to subvert the expectations of his audience. He even
seemed to mock his audience and in particular art critics when the first
sounds from 386 DX appeared in Barbara London's diary from a trip to
Russia with the rather silly title 'Internyet'
(http://www.moma.org/onlineprojects/internyet/f-artists.html). The way
Alexei Shulgin always balanced his criticism of art and media with
creating art works within the new media is quite astounding and
pleasurable to observe. Shulgin both enjoys and rejects his position as
net artist and a big part of his success stems from doing exactly that
in a rather 'pop art way'. It is his slack and pop attitude which make
Shulgin's work so enjoyable and his cyberpunkband such a logical step in
his career: Alexei Shulgin is more then any of his collegues a cyperpop
artist. If it weren't so tacky and tasteless I would even go as far as
declaring him the first real cyberpop artist. In exhibitions and
discussion forums around the world art critics and curators like to
adress the 'popularisation' of art through computer games and computer
design. Most of the conclusions drawn from these are completely beside
the point however because they fail to include the most important aspect
of the popularisation of art through the influence of the computer: the
availability of cheap computers worldwide. True cyberpop includes and
works with technology that is often considered reduntant by web and game
designers. Alexei Shulgin not only includes these redundant
technologies, but with 386 DX he manages to show us the redundancy of
our own pop culture by covering 30 years of pop music and make the
result sound like all songs were created at the same time: just now.

The best of 386 DX has a sleeve that was designed by Alexei Shulgin and
Geert-Jan Hobijn (director of Staalplaat). It is an simple piece of
paper printed with an ascii version of the Rolling Stones's Sticky
Fingers album. On it are the titles of 15 songs. When you play the CD
you find out there are 16 tracks though. It seems as if the CD is
faulty, but the first track is a CDRom track. It is the 386 DX version
of Windows 3.1. As was written earlier you can start up your computer
from it and make it do exactly what 386 DX does: transfer songs into the
typical 386 DX sound. Not only that: you can also create the famous
early computer graphics which were used for the 386 DX concert at the
How Low Can You Go show at the Next5Minutes conference in Amsterdam in
1999. The music on the CD ranges from the very first 386 DX hit
'California Dreaming' to 'Anarchy in the UK' and 'I shot the sherrif'.
Also the nineties blockbuster 'smells like teen spirit' and all other
songs surprisingly don't loose their power but are rather given an extra
dimension by their transformation. The best of 386 DX offers a most
interesting experience: the ability to actually create and preserve
early computer culture yourself next to enjoying a culty, early sci-fi
sound of pop music. Alexei Shulgin simply is the King of Cyberpop.

The best of 386 DX is available via Staalplaat Records at:
http://www.staalplaat.com/

There are some difficulties with Shulgin's server, but you can try check
out the sound tracks at:
http://www.easylife.org/386dx/

if this does not work try:
http://www.easylife.artinfo.ru/386dx

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