Hacking the art operating system

Cornelia Sollfrank interviewed by Florian Cramer during the annual congress of the Chaos Computer Club (German Hacker's Club).

28 December 2001

[Florian Cramer]

I have questions on various thematic complexes which in your work seem to be continually referring to each other: hacking and art, computer generated, or more specifically, generative art, cyber feminism, or the questions that your new work entitled 'Improvised Tele-vision' throw up. And of course the thematic complex plagiarism and appropriation - as well as what can be seen as an appendix to that, art and code, code art and code aesthetics.

[Cornelia Sollfrank]

Surely code art and code aesthetic are more your themes than mine. I think I should be the one asking the questions here. (laughter)

FC: ...no, this refers very specifically to statements made by you, for example in your Telepolis interview with 0100101110111001.org, which I found excellent because of its rather sceptical undertones. If that really is more my area though, then by all means we can bracket it out of the interview.

CS: No, no. I didn't mean it like that. Quite the opposite in fact. However that is what is so interesting and difficult about the relationship between these complexes - and which I often find myself arguing about. A lot of things appear to run parallel, or better put, one invests more in one area for a particular period of time, then returns back to something else. To keep an eye on how these various activities link together is not easy.

FC: When I look at your work, I notice that on the one hand you are a very important net artist, on the other hand - what nevertheless seems closely related to the this - you work as a critical journalist for among others, Telepolis, and frequently write about hacker culture: for example, you've written about an Italian hacker congress and interviewed the Chaos- Computer-Club spokesperson Andy Müller-Maguhn about the Cybercrime Convention. Am I right in supposing that when you write about hacking, you always maintain an aesthetic interest in net art - and that, vice-versa, when you are writing about net art, you investigate to what extent it tends towards computer hacking.

CS: I see myself foremost as an artist, and that is my point of departure for everything else; it gives me the motivation too to slip into other roles. Being a journalist is more a means to an end, because as a journalist I obtain information that as an artist I would not obtain. That means, I instrumentalise this function, as I did at the ars electronica 2001. The theme there was 'Takeover' and I was invited to participate on the panel Female Takeover. An interview that I did for Telepolis with the head of the ars electronica, Gerfried Stocker, helped me understand what he thought about the theme - and how this somewhat vague concept came about. That's why journalism and scrutiny are basic tools of my art. My product though - I don't know if I should refer to it like that - is ultimately artistic, or if you want to call it that, aesthetic.

FC: In the conclusion to your review on ars electronica you write: "perhaps art no longer needs ars electronica either?. I have to add that I warmed to that remark. (laughter)

CS: But perhaps it does! "Perhaps? is what is written and meant. (laughter)

FC: The motto of the event does not imply that art wants to appropriate technology, rather to the contrary, that technicians want to control art and make artists superfluous.

CS: I saw another 'Takeover' there. Stocker felt it was a 'Takeover' by people working in the free market who have virtually taken over art. And basically for the very reason that they are more creative than artists. His whole concept of art circles around creativity; nothing else seems to occur to him about a possible definition of art. (Quoting our good colleague Merz here, creativity becomes something for hairdressers!) Sure, Stocker's thesis was meant as a provocation to artists - on the lines of look at yourselves for once, what a bunch of boring shits you are compared to the young laid back super-kids in the companies who come up with the wildest things. But even that can be interpreted in various ways. You could open up a wider spectrum to 'Takeovers', just like we did when we discussed and engaged with the issues of 'Female Takeover'. By the way, one result of our panel was that at a future ars electronica there should be a 'women only' ars electronica.

FC: In order to come back to the question of defining contexts - such as art and non-art, art and hacking: it occurred to me while reading your article on the hacker conference in Italy that usually the domains of art and the hacking are kept apart from one another. Even if in Italy this division was not so rigorously kept in force. That seemed to be a sociological observation, and not a thesis that you support and want to concretize. Is hacking then for you art and does hacking have something to do with art?

CS: Both. As far as sociological theories on art and hacking go, I've come increasingly to the conclusion over the last four, five years in which I have been involved in hacking, that hack culture always has something bordering on a national...(laughter) flavor. That's why it is interesting for me to visit other countries and especially Italy, where it appears as if there does not exist the slightest fear of contact between artists, activists, philosophers etc. They coexist there naturally, dialogue with each other and create a common language in which they can communicate (laughter), which is something I haven't experienced in Germany. As a female artist in the Chaos Computer Club, I have come face to face with some of the worse preconceptions, accusations and verbal abuse of my life (unfortunately).

FC: You said: as a 'female artist' in the Chaos Computer Club. What do you put the emphasis on? Being an 'artist' or 'female artist'?

CS: On both. As far as gender goes there is a basic frankness involved. When one deals with the same themes identically and speaks the same language, gender means less hurdles to cross. (laughter) Since that is seldom the case it becomes one. The bigger problem however is art. That left me utterly dumbfounded. I was having a nice chat with someone at one or other of the Chaos Computer Club's parties and was asked what I do. When I replied "an artist?, the reaction I got was a hoarse exclamation: "I hate artists?, which left me thinking, oh, that's a pity! That usually makes for an abrupt end to any conversation you might have. I find it very difficult to find new topics to talk about, or reasons to stay and ask questions. That has no doubt to do with the fact that hackers see themselves as artists - and more to the point the only genuine ones - and that everyone else is just an idiot and hasn't a clue (laughter). On the other hand though a connection to art has arisen out of the formative days of the Chaos Computer Club. For example in Bielefeld, where padeluun and Rana Tangens see themselves as being active as both artists and gallerists - although they are by no means equally loved and cherished by everyone at CCC.

FC: ...Felix von Leitner for example, one of the most skilled computer experts in the CCCler, enjoys giving padeluum a regular bashing...

CS: In the German CCC that has a lot to do with the person involved in padeluum - who many simply can't stand. padeluun embodies for some what they are accustomed to in art, and which means the subject is put to an end.

FC: Is that not a problem perhaps of the definition of art? Because since the middle of the 18th century, and at the latest since Romanticism, we have a definition of art that is no longer focused on the 'ars', the actual skill involved, but rather on the genius and the aesthetic vision? If one nonetheless sees hacking as art, this cannot have a lot to do with the older definition of 'ars'

CS: That can also have to do with a newer definition of art, if it is exists in the minds of people. For me this has less to do with skill directly, because one person alone in our times does not have the skill to produce something relevant, rather different people with different skills have to come together. A typical hacker would fit into such a team. However it is very tough to get a foot into the German hacker culture with that idea. You probably don't know my work with women hackers?

FC: I know the interview that you also did with a female hacker at a Chaos Computer- Congress in 1999.

CS: ...Clara SOpht...

FC: ...right. And you are working on a comprehensive video documentation of this theme!

CS: I'm making a five part series. Due to my experience in the CCCs, I narrowed my research down and tried to find women who see themselves as hackers. Besides postings and numerous mailing lists and newsgroups, I asked a diverse number of experts. Bruce Sterling, for example, who has written an erudite book "Hacker Cracker?, and is seen as an expert in the American scene, or the American hacker hunter, Gail Thackeray, who was the co-founder of the Computer Crime Unit in the USA. They are really specialists who know the scene very well, and all of them confirmed that there are no highly skilled women in this area. That proved very depressing for me. In my fantasies, I imagined there were all this wild women, complete nerds, exotic, anarchistic and dangerous, courageous enough to want to cross borders and break all conventions... psychopathic and with criminal tendencies, politically active, artistic and more: however they just didn't exist. That's when I switched from the journalist-research modus to the artistic-modus and said to myself, I have to try and reshape this boring reality. And that's why I did the interview with Clara SOpht for example, who doesn't really exist. (Laughter) I just started to invent female hackers.

FC: Oh, I see! (laughter) Great!

CS: I did show the videos which come out of this process in the art scene, where they went down really well, although sometimes certain clever people ask what they actually have to do with art. Depending on the situation I then reveal that the female hackers do not exist or STILL do not exist. I preferred showing them though in a hacker context. For example I gave a talk at the CCC congress on women hackers and showed the interview with Clara SOpht. It was pretty well attended, including a lot of men, who watched everything and then attacked me for not defending sufficiently Clara SOpht privacy, because she had stressed that she did not want details about herself being publicized. At the end of the event I mentioned casually that the woman did not exist and that I had invented her. Some people were gobsmacked. Quite unexpectedly they had experienced art, an art which had come to them, to their congress, and talked in their language. I found that very amusing. These little doses of 'pedagogy' can trigger off a lot and no doubt help CCC to develop itself further.

FC: You were being a hacker, but in a different system from that of computer codes. You were a 'social hack'.

CS: Exactly - my favorite hack in the CCC concerned the Website of the Hacker Clubs, the 'Lost and Found' Page, which I always liked to study after every congress. I found it fascinating to discover what things hackers have on them and have forgotten. I then turned that around. While I was working on the theme 'women hackers', I deliberately left things in the CCC so that they would turn up on the 'Lost and Found' page and cause commotion and upheaval. By that, I mean I left things there which normally only women have or possess. The main object was a small electronic device with a display and two little lights that women use to calculate their fertility cycle. I handed that in to the 'Lost and Found' and added that I had found it in the ladies' toilets. Five hackers grouped around this device and studied it...(laughter) to find out what it is. This ominous device became the center of a lot of heated discussions before it was finally pinned up as a large photo in 'Lost & Found' Page. Those are examples of some of my small hacks at the CCC - back then while in the process of leaving clues to female hacker and characters who do not exist.

FC: In the early nineties the art critic Thomas Wulffen coined the phrase 'art operating system'. Can you relate to that in any way? Or do you find it problematic? Your artistic hacks that you've mentioned do not engage directly with the art operating system!

CS: I can relate to that in a big way because what interests me most in art are operating systems, the parameters which define it, and how they can be changed and the possibilities used to develop new medias. What also belongs to operating systems is the concept of the artist, the notion of an artistic program, from the working title to the interfaces - who and what will be exhibited and who will look at it. This system is actually what interests me most in art. To intervene and be able to play I have to know how it functions.

FC: But then isn't it difficult to be a net artist as well? In my perception of net art what astonished me most and what affects you too, is how petty bourgeois, reactionary and utterly humorless this contemporary art scene really is - although one always thought it was the most aesthetically permissive around. In the example of net art, one could see how in the very moment in which no new objects were being produced which lent themselves to being exhibited, that it (net art) lost its footing and was not given proper recognition in the art operating system. I still find it astonishing how much net art has to fight against this in order to be taken seriously in the first place by this art operating system. Is that not difficult for you, as an female artist, to want to try and hack the art operating system, and to do so of all things as a net artist?

CS: First of all I do not see myself solely as a net artist, but rather as an art concept artist. I find the net indeed very interesting, and to be active in it fulfills many of my wishes, but that aside, I also work with video, text, performance and whatever else is required for a particular project. That net art is not recognized in the art world and has problems there is primarily due to the fact that, in my opinion, there are no pieces/objects which can be exchanged from one owner to another in a meaningful way. An art which is not compatible with the market system is hardly of any interest, because in the last analysis the market is the governing force in the art operating system. Another further difficulty is the ability to exhibit. What justification is there to show net art in the 'White Cube'?

In that way all exhibitionists have to ask themselves: why should we actually show net art here in our museum? Some net artists quickly understood that they wouldn't get far with their non-commodifiable, difficult to represent art culture in the market, and moved over and started working with installations. That has worked well - just as it did in the video arts. It is not a new phenomenon that is happening to net art. Before it, there was also ephemeral art, Fluxus(?) and performance art for example, or technically perfect reproducible art forms such as video and photography. All these art forms had enormous problems at the beginning, but then opportunities surfaced in the market and certain intermediaries really supported them and managed to create a space for them. And when everything becomes too much, then a new decade of fine arts is heralded in order to let the market recuperate.

In net art I think there is an interest in the art world. For a long period it was given a lot of hype, and at the moment I see a kind of consolidation. Ultimately there are a few big institutions like the Guggenheim, the Tate Gallery or the Walker Art Center that actively support the production of net art by giving commissions to artists. What goes wrong in net art is that artists - I'm talking about the group net.art and that scene - have not developed collective strategies as to how they should deal with the art operating system - which is one of the great strengths of the fluxus artists. There is missing a willingness to accept that a problem even exists in the first place.

That was fittingly enough one of the awful outcomes of the meetings we had. As far as I can fathom, people came with the attitude: " I'll show my work at the documenta or in Whitney Museum, but it doesn't mean anything?. That is unpolitical and weakens everyone's position.

Vuc Cosic acted similarly at the Biennale 2001 in Venice. Leaving aside the strange circumstances which lead to him ending up in the Slovanian Pavillion, it was a success for net art and for him personally, and it was generally an interesting Pavillion. And instead of celebrating that - which would have been honest - he tried to convey through his actions that everything was utterly futile. Some people found this very unpleasant and there arose quite spontaneously the idea of defining what was happening. The result was the very controversial 'flower action'. In the name of the Old Boys' Network three cyber feminists handed him a large bouquet of flowers at the opening of the Pavillion in order to gratulate him and pay tribute to his achievements in net art.

I like this action, because it works at different levels: the Slovanian press were proud of their artist, and the Insider would remember very clearly Vuk's gesture - as part of the opening of the net.condition at zkm - of laying down a bouquet of flowers to symbolize the death of net art through its institutionalization. A wonderful gesture, I think. I believe too that it was also quite painful.

As I said, the lack of a collective strategy for net artists is a big problem. In 1997, a further symptom of this occurred in the form of the Hamburger Art Hall Net Art competition. Like the introduction of net art at the documenta x, artists here were very insecure and didn't know how they should deal with the idiotic and incomprehensible conditions. And so they contributed half-heartedly. Though at this conjuncture it would have been so easy to hack into the art operating system. It was definitely a missed opportunity.

FC: You see yourself as a female concept artist, and on your Homepage there is what could be seen as an analogy: "A smart artist makes a machine do the work?. Is that supposed to mean that concept art first lets the machines transform the concepts has become real concept art?

CS: No, I wouldn't formulate it so radically, so one dimensionally (laughter). Ultimately one could takes slaves instead of machines to produce art (laughter).

FC: À la Andy Warhol Factory...

CS: Yes, somewhat similar. Or simply craftsmen and women, or keen art students who implement the master's idea.

FC: ...Jeff Koons...

CS: Yeah Jeff Koons is the best example. I don't think that one needs a machine to transform this concept into art. If the aethetic program is developed with which the artist works then it doesn't matter who varies the program or produces it. The artist is a purely representational figure... He or she just has to fulfill well the parameters set by 'image' of the artist.

FC: I want to add on something there. Yesterday I read on the 'eu-gene' Mailing List for generative art - which was set up by among others Adrian Ward - what I feel is the first enlightening definition of generative art. It comes from Philip Galanter, a Professor at the New York University, and dovetails nicely into what you just said:

"Generative art refers to any art practice where the artist creates a process, such as a set of natural language rules, a computer program, a machine, or other mechanism, which is then set into motion with some degree of autonomy contributing to or resulting in a completed work of art."

I find that an interesting definition, because it not only reflects computer art, but also spans a lot more.

CS: Yes, I think so too. It's a good definition.

FC: Would you say that what you do is generative art?

CS: Not everything that I do. But definitely the work I've done with the net art generator. Whether these processes from which he speaks apply to my work... I'd have to really give that some more thought. What seems to support this though is that my point of departure is founded on not being creative, in the sense of creating new Images or a new Aethetic. Rather, I work with material that is already available. This material is then reshaped under certain structural conditions or simply reworked. But I couldn't give a NAME to this program. (laughter)

FC: I ask myself, however, whether for you in "Female Extension? - where you set up several hundred Websites under different female artist names for the net art competition at the Hamburger Art Hall, and which were in fact generated by a computer program - the generative is simply a vehicle, a means to an end. "Female Extension? was also a 'social hack', a cyberfeminist hack of the net art competition. How your generators were programmed was actually pretty irrelevant!?

CS: In principle, yes. (laughter) However after 'Female Extension' I continued to develop the concept of net art generators.

FC: What springs to mind now is that in one of your net art generators, you used the 'Dada Engine' by Andrew Bulhak, which is also the basis for his very humorous 'Postmodern Thesis Generators'.

CS: That's right. Unfortunately that is also the most complicated generator and often causes problems.

FC: So the net art generators were not inspired by the 'Postmodern Thesis Generator'?

CS: No, that was different. While the competition at the Art Hall in 1997 was taking place, it was clear to me that one of the crucial points was: museum want to incorporate net art. I wanted to intervene and clarify things: on the one hand for the artists or net artists. I felt we had to watch out with how we dealt with the situation, so that the potential of net art - which had been acquired was used in a subversive way - was not thrown away, given away to easily, and on the other hand, that the museum was given a lesson. That's how 'Female Extension' came about.

At the start I intended to make all the web sites manually, using copy and paste, because I was not capable of programming them. The programming happened more by chance through an artist friend of mine. I was very happy with the results; the automatic generated pages looked very artistic. The jury was definitely taken in by it, although none of my female artists won a prize. Through 'Female Extension' and the social hack I got caught up in the idea to conceptualize the generators in even more detail. Three versions have now been around for some time now: one, which works with images, one which piles images and texts on top of each other, and one that is a derivative of the 'Dada Engine'. This one is specialized in texts and invents wonderful word combinations, sometimes even with elements from different languages. Two more are in development for particular applications.

FC: There is a corresponding simultaneity that can be perceived in various aesthetical processes in your new work 'Improvised Tele-vision'. You are referring to Schöneberg's piece 'Verklärte Nacht'. It was recoded by Nam June Paik, who let the record run at a quarter of its normal speed, and then its recoding by Dieter Roth, who restored Schönberg's music to it original tempo by speeding up Paik's version. Then you join in, by building a platform for the 'Ultimate Intervention', upon which the user can decide which tempo to choose. That immediately reminded me of the literary theory of Harold Bloom, his so-called influence theory, according to which literary history is the product of famous writers, who each in turn take the place of their predecessor as an oedipal super-ego (laughter) ... and who then manage to disconnect from him/her.

CS: Oh yes? The sub-heading for 'Improvised Tele-vision' was originally 'apparent oedipal fixation', which I then threw out again. (laughter) It was the 'apparent' which was so important to me.

FC: I guessed as much. There are - from my point of view - these tremendous artists, like Schönberg, Paik und Roth, who take each other down from the pedestal in order to put themselves on that very pedestal.

CS: Exactly. [Laughter.] By the way I've heard this theory in art history from Isabelle Graw, who uses it in a lecture about Cosima von Bonin to talk generally about female artists.

FC: ...and clearly your work uses it too. You wrote yourself that you would leave open the speed at which the piece can be hear.

CS: Yes, with the exception of the original speed, which cannot be played on my platform.

FC: ...with the exception of the original speed. You nevertheless write: "The decision is to be made by observer/listener and not by the composer, or an intervening artist or female artist?. But you nevertheless set massive limits, for example by not allowing a one to one recording to be heard.

CS: Whoever wants to hear the original can get hold of it without any problems. For me what is interesting is the fact that the three artists who worked on the piece before me wanted to determine the one and only tempo possible. That is a gesture which I bypass by offering a tool by which the piece can be played at completely arbitrary speeds.

FC: Isn't the contextualisation in connection with Schönberg, Paik, Roth a defining feature? And also the decision to pack all four interventions into a room, as you did in the case of the room installation, which forms the second part of the work?

CS: Yes of course! My rhetoric about the ultimate intervention which is made possible by the internet, such as participation, interactivity and self-definition etc. is really a pure piece of irony! (laughter)

FC: Yes, that was precisely my question. Whether you really take that seriously or not!? Or whether that is just some naïve term for interactivity.

CS: It is not naÏve, but rather I am making fun of it. And I take my assumptions and lead them through the room installation to the point of ad absurdum. On the four walls of another room there are portraits of all us four. They create the impression of being painted on canvas - but in fact they are nothing more than Photoshop manipulated photos - which were then actually printed onto canvas and stretched onto adjustable wooden frames. Next to each one of them there's an artist's text which refers to 'Verklärte Nacht'.

What one hears is a piece which I composed and upon which four tracks of the original by Schöneberg are laid, the version by Paik and that of Roth, which is practically the original, but not really because of the vinyl cracklings and the fact that the speed is not quite the same and is therefore not synchronous, and can only ever approximate the original. On the fourth track I play Roth's version backwards. This is also a reference to Schönberg and his later composition theory and twelve tone music, in which the melodic motives of crabs and crabs returning are played backwards. I was gobsmacked how good the playing backwards worked together with the 'Verklärten Nacht'. I then mixed these four tracks into a new piece. This music can be heard in the installation and has nothing to do with the release, the ultimate intervention, but is rather an additional variation of the composition. And I also found the visual transformation of the portraits important; that makes it clear again where I position myself and inscribe myself in the genealogy. I, as a woman, as an essentially younger woman, accuse them of arranging (Setzung), whereas I leave everything open, moan about how they put themselves on the pedestal and by doing so put myself on that very same pedestal.

FC: Precisely. But is that not the tragedy of every anti-Oedipalen intervention, that it automatically - whether it wants to or not - becomes inscribed in the Oedipal logic again? That's what I see in this piece!

CS: If that is the case, then that's definitely tragic. Probably that's the reason why I've made it into such a theme. I find the public's reaction amusing, which was partly very aggressive. I received such accusations as: "You don't want to be any different than they are?. (laughter) What it is actually about, however, is showing the processes involved, how it functions. That I cannot extract myself from it, if I want to be inside, is logical. And that is a decision that I made. Nevertheless I want to know and reflect on what the conditions are - in other words, I want to make that precisely my theme. If that is intolerable, then I can always step back. But I lack the belief that a real alternative is possible. As long as I manage to handle this, like how I'm handling it now, then I find it acceptable. It is a state of being simultaneously inside and outside.

Another example for this, which once again leads us back to the market compatibility of net art, is the invitation of a five-star hotel to partly decorate their interiors. Actually I was always fairly sure that I was the last possible artist anyone would invite for such a task. But it did interest me and I began to experiment with this. Fortunately I had the net art generators which could produce for me, which meant I just had to find a way to materialize the 'products' being created. Normally I print on canvas or paper and frame everything. That's how I create a series or photo series, and it is astonishing what actually transpires. It is through the arranging however that I manage to tell stories, which of course is massive manipulation. In that way I find the idea of the rematerialization of net art interesting - by packing it into accessible formats and then seeing what happens. I started by being convinced that it was not actually possible. The whole episode took place with a fair bit of raised eyebrows. However, I extended the idea further at my first gallery exhibition that I recently had in Malmö (Sweden). And it was overwhelming to see what the images were like and how they were flushed out of the unconscious of the net and onto the surface.

FC: Is that still concept art?

CS: Yes, of course. At least for me it is. I have now offered the hotel to let me do series for them. I insist that my images are hung in endless rows in a long corridor (which for other artists would be an interesting place). And of course I hope to make a good deal on it: first of all the money on offer is interesting. But over and above that, this will be the first sale in the history of net art that is worth mentioning! [laughter].

FC: That reminds me a little bit of Manzoni and his strategy in the fifties to sell air in tin cans...

CS: Yes, whereby I don't sell air, rather real images (laughter). What is interesting however is that there is no printing technology involved which insures that the images remain in tact. They might well pale over time. I sell them as products, though in a few years they could very well be just white paper, which I also find an attractive thought. (laughter)

FC: And with that you once again have an Oedipal reference to Dieter Roth, who came up with the chocolate objects in the sixties and which are now preserved by specialised restorateurs...()

CS: Yes, or the work with rubbish and bacteria. The ephemeral is a very important aspect. And the example of the hotel was a successful masterstroke for two reasons. One because I received money, which is always important, and two, because I set an example to the net art colleagues who lease or sell their web sites for ridiculously cheap sums.

FC: I want to try to make the jump from here to cyberfeminism, which is difficult... let's start with the key word "strategy?"

C.S: I can say what this term means to me or how I work with it, and maybe in that way we can build a bridge.