FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
Linz, Sep 6, 1999
Media Contacts:
Marleen Stikker
Centrum de Waag
Amsterdam/ The Netherlands
Tel: (+31)20-5579898
Fax: (+31)20-5579880
Email: marleen@dds.nl
Website: http://www.waag.org
Dr. Christine Schoepf
ORF Prix Ars Electronica
99
Linz/ Austria
Tel. (+43)732-6900-24218
Tel. (+43)732-6900-24270
Email: christine.schoepf@orf.at
Website: http://prixars.orf.at
ARS ELECTRONICA
PLAYGROUND FOR CORPORATE STRATEGIES
We, the "net." jury, have just
learned that next years ars electronica festival will be
titled "OPEN SOURCE". This has been inofficially agreed on by the direction
of
the ARS ELECTRONICA
and the sponsors Siemens, Microsoft,
Oracle and HP, e.a. From reliable
sources we also learned
that the decision was made
weeks before the ".net"-jury decision on "linux".
WHY WE ARE GOING PUBLIC
Because we have also just learned
that the above-mentioned
IT-companies are involved in
a linux distribution joint
venture and a strategic alliance.
Their joint venture startup
will most probably become one
of the leading linux
distributors, directly attacking
Red Hat and SUSE.
This is the classic oligopolistic
strategy.
They cannot buy linux,
nevertheless, they will take control
over the distibution of the
competitor.
We were suspicious before, but
now we are strongly convinced
that there was indirect but
heavy influence by corporate and
ars electronica
executives to reach the "linux" decision...
THE JURY WEEK-END
For the jury welcome dinner,
a few corporate people had been
invited, too. Everybody was
discussing about where Ars
Electronica could or
should be going. For the corporate people
the main hype was of course
the .net category, e-commerce and
the commercial impact of the
"mass communications" medium internet... and they were all constantly talking
about the
creative potential of linux
and its open source strategy.
Then, at the actual jury meeting,
deciding on a winner appeared to be quite a hard decision (not to say compromise).
Whilst the majority of the jury had a clear favourite in the russian info-
intelligence startup "etxtreme.ru",
another juror started talking about "that we need to decide on something
that is really taking two steps ahead, not some arty-farty stuff". So "linux"
just came up as a smart solution. we took this path, we formulated our
statement and came up with the source code as art work, with our position
against "beautiful" web-sites. it was a strong moment. And we saw linux
as the perfect continuum to the corporate artwork of etoy.com, the Ars
Electronica winners of 1996.
TERRORVISION AND THE LOGICAL
CONCLUSION
But the information about the
secret linux distribution joint
venture between Microsoft
and Siemens in combination with next
years topic made us alert.
Our conclusion: the industry
has strongly lobbied and put
pressure on at least one jury
member to award "linux". We now have to interpret this in persepective
of next years ars topic. They pushed the topic. The idea is to use
the art and science
community to soft launch their
linux activities and control
open source strategies. They
do understand that open source
has evolved into a stronger
development strategy and they have
to jump that train early enough,
in order to avoid another
"internet" desaster.
So as artists writers and scientists
we are used as lab-rats
and cheap alternative researchers.
This is NOT what artists
need and it is certainly not
what Ars Electronica should be
aiming at.
NEXT STEPS
We believe that investigative
journalism is needed to further
describe and interpret this
incident..
We definitely want to engage
in bringing transparency into the
"who`s, when`s, where`s, and
for how much money" of this years decision making process of Prix Ars
Electronica.
For the press, we are available
for background information and
extended infos on the topic
via email or at our on-the-fly press conference:
sept 8, 1999,
1630h
brucknerhaus
in linz
Regards,
Derrick de
Kerckhove
Lisa Goldman
Joichi Ito
Marleen
Stikker
Contact:
Marleen Stikker
Centrum de Waag
Amsterdam/ The Netherlands
Tel: (+31)20-5579898
Fax: (+31)20-5579880
Email: marleen@dds.nl
Website: http://www.waag.org
--
Florian Cramer <paragram@gmx.net>,
PGP public key ID 6440BA05
combinatory poetry site: <http://permutations.home.ml.org> |
