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Sometimes, grafting concepts one on top of another can clarify, or at least correlate, complex relations between the different points of view from which a set of data can be critically examined. The Conceptual Crisis of Private Property as a Crisis in Practice, by Robert Luxemburg, merges the paradoxes of bodylessness and the possibilities of their obfuscation in an artifact which can cast a light on several different problems at once. In a single screenshot, in fact, the author encrypted the whole content of the massive novel 'Cryptonomicon' by Neal Stephenson and, in this image, there are several elements, none of which was chosen randomly: a background by Jon Haddock, an artist who reconstructs famous photos with the perspectives and techniques of a videogame, the video 'Burn Hollywood Burn', by a.s.ambulanzen, the unauthorized .pdf version of 'Empire', by Toni Negri and Michael Hardt, as well as the icons of the applications used by the author, taken from the dock of mac os x. All the materials fall on the fine border between fair use and illegality, between legal and illegal digital material, a challenge to the american laws which are trying to obfuscate it even more. The possibility of 'hiding' an information inside another intersects the technical field with the political and legal ones, turning into a contemporary comprehensive collection of the means of reproduction and manipulation of data, impossible to regulate with traditional techniques of protection. Thus, this image synthesizes a manifesto of the endless duplicability of digital information and, at the same time, of its invincible ability to spread and manipulate real-world artifacts, making it immune to any kind of censorship. Neural, November 2003 Das Projekt 'The Conceptual Crisis of Private Property as a Crisis in Practice' von Robert Luxemburg ist vordergründig ein technisches Kunststück, bei dem der gesamte Text eines Romans zum Thema Verschlüsselung in der Datei eines Screenshots verborgen wurde. Das Projekt zeigt die Verquickung politischer, technischer und juristischer Bedeutungsebenen im Medium digitaler Software - ein Labyrinth, in dem der Ariadnefaden, der in die Freiheit führen könnte, selber wieder ein Stück verschlüsselter Code ist. Transmediale Catalogue, November 2003 The lengthy title indicates the critical trajectory of this work based on a quote from Hardt and Negri's Empire. Submitted to competition under the pseudonym of Robert Luxembourg, you are presented with a script (crisis.php), an explanatory text file (crisis.txt) and a screenshot (crisis.png) as a conceptual puzzle that together sits uneasily in an arts context. If you run the program it parses the screenshot into the full text of the novel 'Cryptonomicon' by Neal Stephenson. The project thus forms a neat conceptual loop between form and content addressing issues of encryption, privacy and intellectual property rights. It allows the reader to gain access to the novel in such a way that the author of the software remains within the legal constraints imposed on the author of the novel by the publishers. The work thus pushes the limits of the legal apparatus that Hardt and Negri see as underpinning the power structures of contemporary capitalism (Empire). Property rights are only infringed on execution of the script itself. The software on the other hand is distributed overtly as free, open software (under the terms of the GNU General Public License agreement). On closer examination, the work emerges from earlier works by textz.com/project gnutenberg and the production of the software that lies behind the encryption process (pngreader v1.1) that works under the principle that images and texts have the same underlying code of zeros and ones. Any output that is encoded in such a way (using the pngwriter) can be decoded (using the pngreader) allowing for the covert distribution of copyrighted materials. The user is 'instructed' to perform an illegal act by running the php script by executing the simple instructions in the text file. Furthermore, the submission plays an ironic joke on the nature of competition itself, the commodification of software and the production of art (available expensively as a limited edition or free over the network) that we hope is somewhat enhanced by its inclusion as exemplar of good practice in software art. It unashamedly reveals contradictions and is thoroughly ideological. Transmediale Jury Statement, November 2003 El arte contemporáneo es cada vez más político, y la crítica del concepto de "propiedad intelectual" tiene en él cada vez más presencia en todos los medios artísticos, sean videojuegos, net.art o piezas de galería. Robert Luxemburg tiene una obra llamada "La crisis conceptual de la propiedad intelectual", consistente en un programa GPL que transforma una captura de pantalla (en la que aparece el propio programa) en el texto completo de Criptonomicon de Neal Stephenson. La imagen contiene el texto del programa que la modifica y también la documentación, así es una obra autocontenida, algo así como el literate programming, pero en ofuscado. Aunque en su sitio web Luxemburg ofrece el programa en PHP que modifica la captura de pantalla, el que quiera la imagen entera tendrá que pagar los 20 dólares que cuesta el CD firmado y numerado o rebuscar en su red P2P favorita. Según la legislación de algunos países, el mero hecho de transmitir o poseer esta imagen podría ser un acto ilegal. Y más aún lo puede ser seguir las instrucciones que aparecen en ella. Hay una anécdota (puede que se trate de una leyenda urbana) que dice que, durante la Prohibición en Estados Unidos, vendían ladrillos de uvas pasas con las instrucciones: "no meta este ladrillo con agua, azúcar y levadura en un recipiente grande ni lo mantenga apartado de la luz durante un mes, porque obtendría una bebida alcohólica, lo cual es ilegal". Pues eso. Como dice el propio Luxemburg, se trata de una prueba de concepto que ilustra que "incluso los sistemas de computación más "seguros" siempre tendrán puertas traseras que permitan contra-aplicaciones artísticas". Al igual que algunos ejemplos de la galería de descodificadores DECSS de Dave Touretzky se trata de un ejemplo de hacking técnico y legal al mismo tiempo, y una propuesta para la reflexión sobre si es posible la "propiedad" de algo tan maleable y fluido como las información y las ideas. Barrapunto, February 2004 In der Reihe nunmehr als solche anerkannter Kunstwerke innerhalb des Netzes soll hier - nach 'walser.php', 'forkbomb.pl' oder 'form art competition' - Robert Luxemburgs 'crisis.png' vorgestellt werden. Das als Freeware konzipierte Programm definiert die neue Bildgewinnungs- und Bildspeicherungsvariante des Screenshots als eigenständige Kunstform, indem es eine Vertextlichung des zuvor komponierten Shots erlaubt. Mit dieser Arbeit reiht sich Luxemburg alias Sebastian Lütgert in die Riege der Künstler, die bewusst mit der fraglichen Bildhaftigkeit von 'Bildern' im Netz arbeiten, die eine letztendliche Textbasiertheit jeglicher netzimmanenter Darstellunsgform zum medienkünstlerischen Inhalt erklären. Mit Vorläufern wie dem hier mehrmals vertretenen Vuk Cosic oder den Netzkünstlern JODI kann 'crisis.png' als Hybrid von klassischer net.art und software.art beschrieben werden. Medienturm, March 2004 'The Conceptual Crisis of Private Property as a Crisis in Practice' is a screen-shot, i.e. a digital image, whose code can also be executed as a program - when executed, the file produces the novel 'Cryptonomicon' by Neal Stephenson. The project is a riddle about the different representational and juridical layers at which coded, and thus also encoded intellectual property, can exist. Here, 'runtime' is not only the condition, but the problematic medium, interface and gateway to the borders of representation and legality. Runtime, June 2004 |