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Forkbomb (McLean, Alex), 2001dot.walk (socialfiction.org)
 
 
 

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area for a bourgeois society. … The digital domain produces a form of chaos—sometimes uncomfortable because unusual, although fertile—to surf thru: in that chaos viruses are spontaneous compositions, lyrical in causing imperfections in machines made to serve and in representing the rebellion of our digital serfs». [36]

Jaromil’s «Forkbomb» is a form of public rebellion (he makes no secret of his identity or of his intentions), which serves as reminder of a free space in digital media that has become almost invisible to the general audience. It is in this sense also an invitation, like many other projects, especially some new media performances, to start fooling around oneself. (cf. also Alex McLeans «Forkbomb») [37]

Conceptual software: «.walk»

Imagine walking through a city as a means to run code. The project «.walk» by Wilfried Houjebek turns people into flesh-and-blood software executors. In «.walk» computer code prescribes the movements of participants through a city, and the complexity of the movements depends on both the basic code and whether or not participants meet other participants along the way. Since the code is not written for a

 

specific physical space it may have to be altered along the way for the participants to be able to keep moving (when participants walk into a dead end street for instance). All movements are gathered centrally by the artist as the outcome of a specific run of «.walk.»

«.walk» is based on a Situationist art practice from the 1950s called Psychogeografie. Houjebek, a long time advocate of open source and anti-copyright in the arts and beyond, takes his urge to open up code very seriously. By making people walk through a city by taking computer code as a guideline, the artist uses the body as a means to perform software. Florian Cramer calls it «walkware» in his review of «.walk» on the RunMe site. «.walk» actually won an award in the Transmediale software art competition. The e-mail which announced its nomination said this: «‹.walk› by socialfiction.org is a futuristic project for public spaces, combining the mundane with the exceptional». Houjebek himself says in e-mail: «I regard it as Do-It-Yourself urbanism, a project like «.walk» is meant to add a new layer of functionality to cities. As such it is architecture and as such it is engineering». It might seem as if this project really belongs in this text’s

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