Re: [-empyre-] transgression anyway

[marc <marc.garrett@furtherfield.org>]

Hi Jeremy,

I half agree with your notion regarding the spectacle related notions of 
hackers. Yet, there are actually many positive things in respect of 
hacker sensibilties and much more than the singular over-promoted hacker 
'sensationalism' mode. Hacking of course, has been filtered and 
mediated, packaged to a mainstream adience culture (like movies) in a 
usually non creative way. Not delving or thinking about the more fluid 
and creative ways that artists have used such (flexible) methods in 
order to create engagement with the world, as material for art and 
diversion.

>  Hell, I was one myself; I tested highly gifted and still did the answers
>in my head, was anooyed and tuned out for a while as i still wasn't
>challenged.  I think the academic community really needs to be careful
>about what seems sexy in discourse.  I have had several major virus
>attacks over the years ruin files, require complete re-installation of
>the hard drive etc....

Yes, a complete pain in the never regions. Yet, even though we have been 
hacked at Furtherfield (last October 04) we are open to the wider gamut 
of hacking and its many different, fluent and imaginative strategies. It 
is a way out of conforming to imposed ideologies from top down, ruling 
organizations. Much important work has come out of such actions that do 
offer creative minds alternative ways in presenting their ideas and 
work, beyond institutionalized remits and limited, historicized canons.

If one views (activist/creative) hacking by its behaviour rather than by 
its physical tools alone, and the extremely limited propogations and 
many misrepesentations labeling it. Hacking can be and is to many a 
transgressive way of playing and finding ways around systems. Hackers 
are usually mistaken to be Evil, and Crackers are the ones who screw 
things over as far as creating virus, cracks, spyware, and destroying data.

It was Hakim Bey, who put forward the idea of 'poetic terrorism'. Of 
course to use such a term these days would get many people's alarm bells 
ringing. But once, poetic terrorism was seen as a positive form of 
protest using a kind of hacker sensibilty.

"Organize a strike in your school or workplace on the grounds that it 
does not satisfy your need for indolence & spiritual beauty."

"Grafitti-art loaned some grace to ugly subways & rigid public 
momuments--PT-art can also be created for public places: poems scrawled 
in courthouse lavatories, small fetishes abandoned in parks & 
restaurants, xerox-art under windshield-wipers of parked cars, Big 
Character Slogans pasted on playground walls, anonymous letters mailed 
to random or chosen recipients (mail fraud), pirate radio transmissions, 
wet cement..." Hakim Bey.

Urban hacking is a less discussed mode of activity worth ex0plring as 
well...
"UEM is a small group of urban explorers based in Montreal, Canada. Our 
particular characteristics such as name or age are not important: the 
cynosure of our group is a passion for the exploration of urban 
locations. See the Group section for more information on us."
http://uem.minimanga.com/index.php?section=about_us

"Urban exploring is the art of going places off limits to most and 
unseen by many. Explorers are brave souls who often dredge through great 
dangers for their art. Often they research and document historic 
abandoned places to accompany pictures and video taken on the locations 
of sites with enormous history. Otherwise they are simply in search of a 
beautiful view." The Hacking Quaterly.

Hacking possesses many different levels of acting and not all of it is 
directly digitally connected. Art and activism, has worked well with 
creative hacking ands transcends structural conformity. And perhaps 
discussing the more imaginative and variant functions and its 
transgrssive forms of hacking is more likely to touch upon what hacking 
really is.

Definition of Hacktivism: A person who enjoys exploring the details of 
programmable systems and how to stretch their capabilities" and one who 
is capable of "creatively overcoming or circumventing limitations". 
Metac0m (December 2003).

"HACK (1) to change a program so that is does something the original 
programmer either didn't want it to do or didn't plan for it. Hacking a 
program is not neccessarily cracking, and vise versa.
http://www.irational.org/APD/HE/html/H.htm

Perhaps others can offer examples, for I just wanted to put across the 
point that hacking can be a positive and creative action...

marc

some links below:

http://shop.store.yahoo.com/2600hacker/urexhacphysw.html
http://www.v2.nl/FreeZone/ZoneText/Diversions/Broadsheets/PoeticTerrorismBS.html
http://www.hackaday.com/
http://www.thing.net/~rdom/ecd/oecd.html

>>What is the line between tech fetish and intellectual rebel fetish and
>
>the discussion of this "new" voice?     The good hacker works with
>security systems and tests bugs and holes but is benign.  The bad
>hacker......well, i'd be a fool to even bother to redundantly define
>this.  Isn't it really dangerous to glamourize this outlaw stance and
>shadow mythology?  This is what creates the malignant hacker ( the
>manifesto even says so).  The dangerous rebel is exciting to analyze at a
>distance, but that distant voice if reiterated in publication seems very
>dangerously equivalent to just making this invisible netherworld and
>impotent virulence seem that much sexier to more awkward 15 year olds
>bored in school.
>
>  Hell, I was one myself; I tested highly gifted and still did the answers
>in my head, was anooyed and tuned out for a while as i still wasn't
>challenged.  I think the academic community really needs to be careful
>about what seems sexy in discourse.  I have had several major virus
>attacks over the years ruin files, require complete re-installation of
>the hard drive etc....
>
>This manifesto is a call to arms, nothing more.
>
>jeremy
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> We have to reinvent; if we went out of the era of the production (of the
>
>>criticism of the political economy) then let us take place beyond the
>>question of the technique as resource of class: which possesses it, who
>>produces thanks it, who fires his resource from it, etc...?
>>
>>But ubiquity of hypermedia and the recent laws of control which accompany
>>it: what do you think of? What transgression (malpractice) is possible
>>which
>>can be otherwise watched or only of the mist expert hackers? (thus far
>>from
>>the common social practice shared in the every day life?)
>>
>>We are far from situtationnists in that case.
>>
>>I know well that there is a position at the same moment new, poetic, but
>>ambiguous
>>at the same time -traditionally political- of McKenzie Wark in A to 
hacker
>>manifesto (of which personally I get ready to publish the long version to
>>French-speaking territories with his agreement; because I followed the
>>development of this text since the first version in subsol - that we have
>>translated to our symposium in 2002- until the publication by Harvard
>>Press -in any case) and moreover: what do you think of it concerning the
>>theme of this debate?
>>
>>http://www.hup.harvard.edu/catalog/WARHAC.html
>>
>>http://www.google.fr/search?hl=fr&q=a+hacker+manifesto&btnG=Recherche+Google&meta=
>>(but I am sure that you know of Ken -ever you feel good ever you feel bad
>>of
>>him - personally he sis a friend of me but I can hear any criticisms 
- and
>>I
>>make so for any one by myself)
>>http://www.criticalsecret.com/n10/A%20HACKER%20MANIFESTO/index.php (short
>>version and translation)
>>
>>http://subsol.c3.hu/subsol_2/contributors0/warktext.html
>>
>>His conference during our symposium
>>http://www.criticalsecret.com/n10/McKENZIE%20WARK/ (bi-lingual) " Escape
>>from the dual empire "
>>
>>http://www.criticalsecret.com/n10/index.php#sommaire
>>
>>
>>Frankly what you do think?
>>
>>""You will go at the church and say of your voice: "God is dead" " of the
>>Stasbourg manifesto is far from us... Or say: hypermedia -that of the
>>early
>>time of Free media- is dead and say it online. Could you imagine 
that? -or
>>not possible.
>>
>>We are addict with the hypermedia, addict with the transitive
>>communication
>>in real time and all that... But for another part it is our peculiar
>>knowledge, this way to invent of a part of us, this way to meet together
>>with this part and to meet all anyway from East to West and from North to
>>South of the planet and much more: so what right now?
>>
>>And this another vision of the hacker as the mentor?
>>http://cybercrimes.net/Property/Hacking/Hacker%20Manifesto/HackerManifesto.html
>>where transgression is the subject.
>>
>>(all the contrary of the situationnism: so what? which changes and
>>differences of our times is it designed in such texts?)
>>
>>A.
>>
>>
>>
>>
>>_______________________________________________
>>empyre forum
>>empyre@lists.cofa.unsw.edu.au
>>http://www.subtle.net/empyre
>>
>
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