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Holger Friese
«In meiner Nähe»
The shopping system homepage «In meiner Nähe» (Near Me; 18.4.1999) offers «the fastest possible access to shops and services». As soon as users put their address in they are given a list of businesses - shops, workshops, offices etc. - in alphabetical order. The list of business suggested is supposed to come from searching an archive based on the post code submitted. But when you call up individual items you soon realize that «in meiner Nähe» does not relate to businesses in your post code area, but to the user's nearness to the monitor, which is showing fictitious business sites.
The fictitious businesses appear in part as hybrid forms of models that are typically close to reality or that vary the elements of reality imaginatively. […] The company contact is not created through order forms and shopping carts, but through an e-mail site that can be defined as wished by completing the address «…@inmeinernaehe.de», making the shopping system seem like an additional offer from a provider whose internet access is used by all the listed businesses. Friese receives all the e-mails, and «answers most of them».
(source: Thomas Dreher, Lektionen in NetArt, Lektion Nr. 10, November 2001)
