Final Project
Web Design, November 8

Final project - website that focuses on the net as a medium for aesthetic and social transformation.

Topic - Mediation of Politics: Virtualization of the Collective Social Body

With the proliferation of information technologies, the impact has been significant in terms of how we view ourselves in relation to the social body and our political system. The recent election is a case in point: everyone, from the viewer to the network, has been bombarded by real-time information distributed over the network, the speed of which has proven to be historical in its volatility to the American political process. The 2000 election has shown just how mediated the process has become: from Ralph Nader's "Nader Traders," who have swapped votes over the web, to the oversaturation of email campaigning, to the plethora of campaign web sites displaying everything from candidate biographies to controversial ads, to on-line requests for campaign funds, up-to-the minute on-line polls, and on and on.

Information technologies have mediated, filtered, and thus transformed our relationship to the electoral process, and thereby transformed the very political system itself, as well as the way we perceive ourselves as a part of the collective body of society. Are we mere pawns capable of being swapped on-line? Has democracy been undermined by the speed and pervasiveness of the network? Or, has the internet empowered the individual and society by increasing our access to information.

The Net is clearly changing our perception of the political system and in the process virtualizing the very collective body of society, a society which is growing increasingly interconnected through the Network. What does this mean? What is the significance of this? That is the purpose of the final project.

Consider how Roy Ascott defines the nature of telematics: "It involves the technology of interaction among human beings and between the human mind and artificial systems of intelligence and perception. The individual user of networks is always potentially involved in a global net, and the world is always potentially in a state of interaction with the individual."

Your assignment is to critique through the eyes of the artist what society is becoming as a result of our absolute acceptance and therefore reliance on information technologies to carry out what one of the most fundamental and precious aspects of our social being – the political process.

What will the future look like if the collective social body has become completely virtualized, when we are totally reliant on the network to experience, communicate and execute the political process: if we vote through our Palm Pilots; if all political messages are digitally disseminated; if all political discussion takes place via the media and on-line; if we solely rely on computers to forecast the outcome of elections, thus altering the way people vote and think about the candidates; if in short, the entire political process becomes an interactive spectacle played out on the telematic stage of the Internet.

In this project, respond to these issues and this projection of the future by appropriating, documenting, archiving, and manipulating information via the Web as it proliferates over the next few weeks after one of the most extraordinary elections in American history. Use this documentation to paint your view of a future society dominated by the ubiquity of information technologies. Utopian? Nightmarish? Anarchic? Empowering? Destructive? This is your projection.

As an example, RTMark, a political-activist artistic collective, is using the web itself to subvert this trend. They have created VOTEAUCTION, a satirical site that allows the viewer to become part of a voting block to receive money directly from special interests, thus eliminating the political consultant and other hired intermediaries who have profited enormously from the campaign. They are also offering cash to the first person who can redirect the domain of a major candidate's website to their VOTEAUCTION site at http://62.116.31.68 .

Also, see articles in the NY Times, CNN, and MSNBC describing the role of the Web in the elections, as well as CNN's forecast that the Web will someday alter the way we vote.

The final project is due on the last day of class, December 13th, when we will have presentations and critique.