Interview for CONT3XT.NET/furtherfield magazine (Uk) about Amazon-Noir. 2006. - Paolo Cirio - Media Artist

Interview for CONT3XT.NET/Furtherfield magazine (Uk)
about Amazon Noir. 2006.

Franz Thalmair: Crime, thievery, betrayal, the bad and the good guys and a final showdown with the blistering sun. Amazon Noir refers to 1940s and 50s film noir and crime fiction in its title, narration and visualisation. Why did you settle your newest project in this genre and who are the good guys, honestly?

PAOLO CIRIO (PC): The hype against piracy that comes from media propaganda is ever focused on the criminalisation of downloading and sharing content under copyright. Even though, the main controversial consequence of sharing content is the lucrative exploitation by big business of devices for playing MP3 and DviX. So we are the worst guys of the scene: we have staged a big crime and in the end betrayed our action, with a deal with the enemy. lt‘s also represents the ambiguity over copyright issues, where it seems that anything is breaking moral and ethical law for the sake of the market, more than for freedom of information.

FT: Despite all the storytelling, Amazon Noir is a socio-technical piece of art. What is the coding background of the "sophisticated robot-perversion-technology" abusing Amazon‘s Search-Inside-the-Book feature? Did you select books according to certain criteria?

PC: The background of our robot-perversion-technology was a system of four servers around the globe, each with a specific function: one in the USA for a faster sucking of books, one in Russia for injecting books in P2P networks and two in Europe for scheduling the action with intelligent robots. The main goal was to steal all 150,000 books of the Amazon.com's Search-Inside-the-Book feature, and then use the same technology to steal books from the Google-Print Service. It was just relative to the number of clusters of robots we could use. We should invest money in order to improve our project.

FT: According to a press release from the Edith Russ Haus, Amazon Noir is based upon the tradition of happenings and seen as a performative media event, which includes the reaction of conventional media in its concept. Are there already any reactions from Amazon.com or any other part of the show: media, press, lawyers? What kind of responses did you expect?

PC: Yeah, in the evolution of the net-art projects of historic groups like RtMark, CriticalArtEnsemble (CAE), ElectronicDisturbanceTeather, we are the synthesis of the best of their core style. In our show we engage different actors: the audience, media, art and legal system. Every layer of our complex society is in the scenography, because now happenings should be staged in the anthropological space of our contemporary culture. So I like this term "digital resistance“ from the CAE: "The aim of The Living Theatre to break the boundaries of its traditional architecture was successful. It collapsed the art and life distinction, which has been of tremendous help by establishing one of the first recombinant stages."

FT: Copyright/left, GNU, Creative Commons, All Rights Reversed - The discussions about the actual restrictions of the copyright are multifaceted and emanate from many different points of view. Where do you - as artists, writers, producers of intellectual, non-material goods - see the most striking clash between intellectual property and commodities in their original meaning as industrial property?

PC: The second step of the materialisation of the books in printed copy by Print-on-Demand technology and the distribution of these in public space of poor countries will be a concrete example of commodities. When a common good has been given to people for free or for a cheap price, the whole society grows. Every day we see the rampant privatisation of commons, as soon as people become more poor and ignorant. The latest movements of CC, Wikipedia, P2P free networks, etc. are a needed resistance in a world where the use of cultural content is ever less a right and ever more a business.