Introduction
Internet art, also known as net.art, first developed in 1993 becoming a tool of ‘pure political action’ from 1998 onwards (Stallabrass 2003:9). During this brief period, net art changed dramatically from ‘being a minority pursuit practiced and seen by a very small number of people to being a phenomenon that receives mainstream press attention, and is becoming a substantial presence in the art world’ (Stallabrass 2003:9). An explanation for this development of a new art form is demonstrated in the shift of interest from traditional art media to the rise of new technologies. Additionally, in the United States, funding for traditional genres like the National Endowment for Arts is gradually declining while funding for technological creativity is rising (Balis, Ippolito 2006: 7). The greatest advantage of net art for artists and consumers is that it ‘cuts through the regular systems of media dissemination’ making works more easily published and accessible for viewing' (Stallabrass 2003:9). Thus, the Internet creates what Habermas (1992) describes as a ‘public sphere’ where participants can freely engage in political, cultural and social discussion. Similarly, Licklider believed that ‘such systems could create a political world in which all citizens, being connected and informed, would make meaningful contributions to debate’ encouraging democracy (Hafner, Lyon 1996:34).
However, there are limitations of net art as a political tool, one of which being the Internet’s unequal distribution across different social groups and countries around the world, also known as the digital divide. Other than this, the elitist nature of net art has a tendency to set limits on a proportion of the population from understanding and conceptualizing certain works of art. It is for these reasons that the role of the Internet as a free and open space are placed under threat.
Authors Blais and Ippolito (2006:125) argue that while ‘politics attempts to change the world directly and with force; art seeks to question it, often with humor or irreverence’. In this essay I will discuss the works of two net art projects, Mongrel and Toywar in their attempt to politically criticize the internet as an inclusive democratic space. I will first focus on Mongrel’s attempt to raise consciousness of racism that is depicted within the bias of search engines. Because search engines are not completely neutral, not everyone in the population are equally represented which exists as a barrier to achieve an 'inclusive democratic space'. Following this, I will analyze the ‘war’ between eToy and eToys over site names as an illustration of the general power struggle over cultural ownership and free speech. Through these two key examples, I will argue how the commercialization and capitalism of the Internet can threaten the prospects of a free public space for all members of society to engage in discussion about political, social and cultural matters.
Mongrel
The art group Mongrel, which emerged out of London, created a search engine focusing on the racial classifications of people called Natural Selection in 1996 aiming to break through the propaganda of ‘official multiculturalism’ (http://www.mongrel.org.uk/?q=about; Stallabrass: 2003). A
relevant project called Colour Separation developed in 1997 used the software package Heritage Gold to manipulate images of eight masked and sutured mongrel faces covered in spittle to investigate the image of racial conflict and identity that is rare in British art (Stallabrass 2003:87). Harwood (1997) explains that ‘in this work as in the rest of society we perceive the demonic phantoms of other races. But these characters never existed just like the nigger bogeyman never existed. But sometimes...reluctantly we have to depict the invisible in order to make it disappear’(http://www.mongrel.org.uk/?q=colourseparation). The producers of Natural Selection, Fuller and Harwood (1996) expressed their view that "along with porn, one of the twin specters of 'evil' on the internet is access to neo-nazi and racist material on the web. Successive governments have tried censorship and failed. This is another approach. - ridicule” (http://www.mongrel.org.uk/?q=naturalselection).The function of Natural Selection is similar to any other search engine but when a search regarding race or ethnicity is made, the user is lead to enter Mongrel’s strategically accumulated network of anti-racist websites. Each of these sights draw upon ‘frames of reference familiar from contemporary cultures of the Internet (porn sites, MP3 download sites, game sites) while injecting into these readily discernible contexts an unexpected commentary on the racial politics of the 1990s culture society’ (McGahan 2004). The commentaries have an impact on a user’s consciousness prompting them to re-examine some of the assumptions in which cyber culture and identity is organized and formed. In order to understand the tools Mongrel uses in creating race- consciousness, I will examine one of its participant sites, Mervin Jarman’s Yardie’s Immigration more closely. Jarman’s site examines the fastest way a Jamaican gangster, referred to as a ‘yardie’ can get pass British immigration through a collision of ‘officialese, Tel Aviv realism and pure criminal mindedness’ (http://www.mongrel.org.uk/?q=naturalselection). The site suggests that the British intelligence service MI5 is ‘willing to turn a blind eye to violent crimes that some of the yardies it uses as informants continue to commit after they have been recruited to supply information’ (McGahan 2004). Also, the site focuses on the unfair treatment of asylum seekers and those under order of deportation by the state. Jarman’s political aim is to question ‘how race and postcoloniality factor into the British nation-state's policing of its territorial and cultural boundaries’ (McGahan 2004). Although the Yardie site points to the fact that Jamaicans have made an outsize contribution to UK cultural life, Jarman argues there still exists a tendency to see visitors and migrants from places like Jamaica as an “alien wedge” (Runnymede Trust Commission 2006: 36).
Limits of Repetition
White (2006:113) believes that Natural Selection uses repetition as part of its political strategy when users are lead to web sites full of ‘confusing rants and images that repeat aspects of hate’ as demonstrated in Jarman’s site. He is critical of the repetitions that Mongrel employs as they rely on knowing spectators in order for their critique to make sense. 
Harwood explained the goal of the project ‘was guaranteed to stop you smearing skin lightener on your computer’(http://www.mongrel.org.uk/?q=naturalselection). However, he failed to acknowledhe the limits of repition and failure. Feminist, Butler has argued that that although repetition can be used to ‘unravel dominant cultural beliefs’ it also has a tendency to ‘reproduce traditional categories and forms of power’ (White 2006:112).
Political Bias of Search Engines
Mongrel’s attempt to ridicule the “racialization” of the Web raises questions the political bias of search engines (Thacker 2000: 70). In contrast to liberal claims about the Internet, Mongrel questions the way in which race and ethnicity is classified and strategically encoded into search engines. The end result is online culture serving stereotypical roles and managing the distribution of monoculture placing the population in homogenous positions (Thacker 2000:70). Authors Introna and Nissenbaum’s (2000) study of search engines found that they systematically give priority to more powerful and wealthy sites at the expense of others. This is possible through the ‘technical mechanisms of crawling, indexing, and ranking algorithms as well as through human mediated trading of prominence for a fee’ (Introna; Nissenbaun 2000:186). These harmful political effects threaten the Internet’s role as an inclusive democratic space as it minimizes the opportunity for minority and weaker population to have a voice in debate.
A similar net art project that uses humor aimed to ridicule and raise questions of search engines bias is doogle.org. Unlike Mongrel which employs more political techniques, Doogle uses humor to emphasis the point that search engines are not merely a technical matter but also a political one. Doogle appears to work and look the same as the search engine Google but search items that are entered are manipulated by automatically fitting an Irish word at the end of your search every time the user clicks Doogle Search (http://www.doogle.org/).
Lawrence and Giles (1999) conducted a statistical study of search engines and estimated that none of the search engines they studied, taken individually, index more than 16% of the total indexable Web, which is approximately 800 million pages. Given how wide the Web is, search engines are only partially satisfying our need to find information. There is therefore a fair amount of competition for individual Web pages to gain recognition from search engines via two key tasks: being indexed, and achieving a ranking within the top 20 search results (Intorna;Nissenbaum 2000:180). Search engines link web page content with keywords. It is thus important for web page producers to know what are the key words of the indexing software of search engines. On the other hand, ranking is dependent on two main factors, position and frequency of key words (Pringle et al.,1998). Sites with a high frequency of keywords in the beginning of the document as well as containing high level of links in their site are seen as more relevant.Fierce competition has led to practices such as ‘one organization’s retrieving a competitor’s Web page, editing it so that it will not do well in the ranking, and resubmitting’. (Introna; Nissenbaum 2000) An example of this happening is law suites filed by Playboy Enterprises Inc., and Estee Lauder Companies, Inc., against Excite, Inc., for buying their names for banner ads (Kaplan 1999). Search engines work on the basis that they can turn any site into something only one click away from their search result (Fuller 1999). Portal sites are a way of turning the Internet from a distributed network into a centralized one. Hierarchies such as Name Space allow every object on the net to have a unique address accessible from a central root-node (Fuller 1999).
Political Power of Domain Names
While the Web is widely believed to be non- hierarchical, the naming of sites is strictly controlled. Naming is now managed by the corporation ICANN whose policy on getting further extensions such as ‘com’, ‘org’ or ‘gov’ has become a lengthy and costly process (McIntosh 2000). Therefore, site names are controlled with a mix of enforced convention and litigation (Stallabrass 2003: 103). Paul Garrin’s Name.Space is the first project that allows names to be ‘used freely without incurring legal action or other forms of suppression’ (http://name-space.com/). The artist and activist stated that the commercialization of the Net is a threat to ‘freedom of expression within the very system of communication that has the greatest potential to develop participatory politics’ (Stallabrass 2003:102). Name.Space allows new names to prove themselves by demand for their use rather than administrative dictat. This creates an opportunity for free naming so they are no longer classified into rigid categories or branded by initials of their nation. Garrin explains the goal of Name.Space ‘to buy as much bandwidth and processor power as possible to ensure that there is always a home for free media and alternative voices and visions on the ever changing Internet’ (Schultz 1997). However, Name.Space is reported to only have very few long term participants because of the suspicions of theorists towards a net.art project with a functioning alternative. Garrin explains that ‘Name.Space is about real action which requires the responsibility to act on one’s propositions and suffer the consequences or reap the benefits. Certainly not as safe as plain old ASCII. It becomes another dilemma for them whether to think or to act, or how to reconcile thought into action’ (Shultz 1997). Thus, for the above reasons, the dispute over trade names and intellectual property points to signs of commercialization and capitalism emerging on the Internet slowly threatening its role as a democratic political tool.
A similar project to Name.Space is Heath Bunting’s readme.html, which is a playful formal trick encouraging spectators to think about the conventional structure of linking and power of domain names on the web. The very subtitle of his work, Own, Be Owned, or Remain Invisible- emphasizes the power names have in an attention economy.
The British hactivist net-artist raised consciousness of the politics and power of domain names by making every word on the web site clickable (http://www.irational.org/_readme.html). Blais and Ippolito(2006:136) argue that ‘some companies spend exorbitant sums purchasing such names or defending their trademarks over them for in an attention economy like the Web, the right domain name can mean the difference between a dot-com’s success and failure’. The words such as and links to ‘and.com’ and is links to ‘is.com’ demonstrates the commercialization of ordinary words and also emphasizes the extent to which words are increasingly owned by companies. Blais and Ippolito criticize Bunting’s techniques as ‘Stone-Age’ given executable technologies that are available, but nonetheless ‘get a lot of bang for his buck’ ((Blais; Ippolito 2006:137).
Toywar
An illustration of the issues of cultural property and dispute over domain names is the confrontation between the art collective eToy, popular for DigitalHijack, and the toy company, eToys. The clash between ‘capitalism and arts’ started in 1999 when eToys filed complaints that when customers missed out the ‘s’ at the end of ‘etoy’ ending up at the etoy.com site where ‘there was profanity, there was sadomasochistic images, there were images of terrorist activity’ (Ken Ross cited in Kettmann 1999). Although etoy registered for its domain name two years before etoys a US court granted a temporary injunction to block access to the artist domain. Despite etoys offer to compensate etoy in cash if they changed their name, etoy was not interested in compromising artistic integrity. Etoy member, Zai, explained that ‘our emotions, our artistic integrity, our whole thing is the domain name. Probably the logical response is to get some money rather than lose. But our project was always radical so better for us to risk everything and fight’ (Barliant 1999).
In response to the dispute, corporation, RTMark launched a vocal propaganda campaign, also known as Toywar to destroy the toy company (http://www.rtmark.com/legacy/etoymain.html). A key tool used was, software called Floodnet designed by Brett Stalbaum that ‘overloads the site with calls to load its pages, and also returns error messages’ (Stallabrass 2003:99). Stalbaum describes Floodnet as a ‘tool of political protest, is also a work of art- a collaborative, activist and conceptual art work on the net’ (Stalbaum; http://www.thing.net/~rdom/ecd/ZapTact.html). During the course of this campaign, etoys stock shares dropped by 70 percent of their original value and etoys withdrew their law suit in January 2000. This shows the that ‘large numbers of people- or at least enough people- were prepared to act in favour of cultural freedom’ (Stallabrass 2003:101).
Toywar Timeline, http://toywar.etoy.com/timeline.html
Etoy’s attack on etoy hence proved successful through the creation of art via ‘a transformation of corporate structure, playing with its components conceptually just as others played visually with the elements of interface’ (Stallabrass 2003:101). Etoy even allowed people to invest in shares to get dividends, not in money but in seeing the realization of etoy’s cultural output. As etoy agent, Zai puts it ‘we decided to involve people into a very special process. Not in the traditional way but in an entertaining story. It worked because people loved to be part of the war that was not really terrible (no killings… the only thing that could be lost was a domain name and lots of money). It was not by chance that we called it ‘Toy-war’…we tried to play with the irony of the situation… but hit many peoples deep feelings’ (Ippolito 2003:157).
An author for the magazine Mute, Josephine Berry criticized etoy in their pursuit of its domain name, in their issuing of ‘share’s and their awarding of loyalty points to have ‘come close to the corporate activities that they set out to undermine as to be indistinguishable from them’ (Berry 2000:22). She argues that ‘failed interventions can always be interpreted as conceptual art experiments, but successful ones must leave the realm of art for politics’ (Berry 2000:23). Thus, art groups risk loosing its autonomy as they enter the world of legal dispute and market manipulation, and especially if it’s effective. Although the toywar was a tactical victory, RTMark have acknowledged that legal policies of branding names and copyright still have not changed. Sites are still under thereat from litigious corporations, for example the art and technology magazine Leornado (RTMark 2000; http://www.rtmark.com/legacy/2000.html).
Conclusion Stallabras (2003:104) argues that the ability for net artists to make their work as political or social agents without commercial or state constraints are crucial factors to the development of democracy and free speech. However, disputes over intellectual property, the political power of names and the political bias of the Internet such as racism which are culturally embedded within search engines, set limits for democracy and free speech to develop. As the net.art examples discussed in this essay has shown, it is difficult for the Internet to detangle itself from commercial and capitalist tendencies that ultimately threaten the prospects for free debate in Habermas’s (1992) conception of a public space.
