Monday, February 2nd, 1998
Presented on a monitor » Like every other company Technologies To The People (TTTP) is highly aware of (the value of) its public image and how this image is presented through different media. In this promotional video a number of international tech-economic experts praise the values and ethics of TTTP. However, originally the experts were not hired and paid by TTTP but by its market rivals — global corporations like Dell, Microsoft, and so forth. The promotional video strings together sequences hijacked from corporate PR videos and the abstract concepts they use to deliver ultra-positive descriptions of their companies’ imagined role in the world. Thus, it adopts the language and visuals of business to promote the rival notion of a human-centred and common culture, subtly and humorously confronting the viewer with the question of which of the two cultural economies one wants to define ›freedom‹, ›the future‹, and not least ›access to technology‹. (Jacob Lillemose)
Tags:
1998,
Irational.org,
Jacob Lillemose,
Media Art,
Propaganda,
Technologies To The People,
TTTP Promotional video
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Monday, February 2nd, 1998
Presented with DVD Footage of a swinging suspension bridge with a car on it is accompanied by a heavymetal guitar riff. Suddenly the driver is seen to switch off his car stereo, the music stops, as does the swinging of the bridge, and one hears birds singing. All is peace. The guy looks into the camera and with a silly grin on his face says, »Sorry.« The video is a smart piece of advertising, a precise illustration of the way irational rocks our mental and physical infrastructures with a delicate balance of danger and humour. The video was originally used by a corporation dealing with technology. (Jacob Lillemose)
Tags:
1998,
DVD,
Irational Promotional Video,
Irational.org,
Jacob Lillemose,
Media Art,
net.art
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Sunday, February 2nd, 1997
Presented as large-format wallpaper installation » The Research Department of Technologies To The People devotes itself to statistically recording and presenting core areas of contemporary life. In regard to levels of technology ownership in the USA, the department tells us that 77.3 % of the population possesses a microwave, but only (only?) 55 % a supermarket price scanner. Another statistic reveals that Washington and California are the federal states in which UFOs are most frequently spotted (New York trails far behind at the other end of the scale). We are also given percentages for the distribution of religions over the continents, beverage consumption in selected countries, the frequency with which types of passwords are cracked, the primary online activities of women, and the distribution of employment in the USA (with data supplied by the Bureau of Labor Statistics of the U. S. Department of Labor). In the exhibition the statistics are presented as large-format printouts covering the walls of the room dedicated to irational’s Collecting data all over the net project. The collection of all kinds of data (via surveys, for instance, or loyalty cards) combined with the personalization facilitated by increasing linkage with databases has now become a powerful tool for consumer control. With its own requests for sensitive or wholly irrelevant information, irational began from an early date to confront the increasingly apparent mania for collecting data. (Inke Arns)
Tags:
1997,
Inke Arns,
Irational.org,
Media Art,
net.art,
Public Intervention,
Research department,
Technologies To The People
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Sunday, February 2nd, 1997
A long list of awards conceivably and inconceivably bestowed on the Technologies To The People website which, as its makers would have us believe, is »one of the most popular art sites on the internet «. Framed in silver like a collection of especially valuable postage stamps, the some 30 distinctions presented in the original thumbnail format include »Browser Watch — Net Fame!«, »An Internet cool site of the day«, »Magellan Star Site«, »Prescribed by Dr. Webster’s Web Site of the Day«, »Art Dirt« — »Your Webscout Way Cool Site«, and »Orchid Award for Page Excellence«. (Inke Arns)
Tags:
1997,
Awards and Acknowledgements,
Copyright,
Hack,
Inke Arns,
Irational.org,
Media Art,
net.art,
Public Intervention,
Simulation,
Technologies To The People
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Friday, February 2nd, 1996
Presented with original posters » Products offered by Technologies To The People (TTTP), the company founded by Daniel G. Andújar, range from the Street Access Machine® over the Recovery Card® and Internet Street Access Machine® to the Personal Folkcomputer®. All of these (fictitious) products and technologies aim to allow the socially underprivileged to participate in the emergent information society. While the Internet Street Access Machine® promises »access for all«, the Street Access Machine® and Recovery Card® enables beggars to accept payment by credit card. The project unmasks the belief, propagated by those who manufacture the associated products (and by »Californian ideology«*), that a democratizing potential is inherent to technology. The world shown by TTTP on its posters and leaflets is neither more just thanks to the deployment of these new technologies, nor is it accessible to all — despite the claims made by providers of telecommunications applications. Even if they use the latest info-society tools, beggars remain beggars, the socially marginalized remain socially marginalized. Technologies tend to reinforce, rather than alter, social structures. When the project was presented in Hamburg in 1996, a (bona fide) mail was received from Apple, announcing the company’s interest in the (fictitious) product range of TTTP.** (Inke Arns)
Tags:
1996,
Inke Arns,
Kunsthaus Hamburg,
Media Art,
Simulation,
Street Access Machine,
Tactical Media,
Technologies To The People,
Truth,
un-frieden
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