Id! Manifesto [ fr - en ]

Intro

Id! is an art experiment, based on the generalization of codes, the self-created communities and their social significance. Codes are everywhere as languages, signs, speech habits, dialect, clothing style. We naturally express codes and perceive them to create meaning from our perception. In fact, Codes and Culture define our capacity to understand. These are our maps to the territory.

Id! tries through multiple interventions in different social spaces to highlight such codes by raising questions about codes, their clarity or their opacity, their reach, the form - space - or even group they define by showing boundaries of several natures.

The project which is shown here uses a coding technique which is very popular in Japan but totally unknown in Europe and the US. Urban intervention is in progress in several cities to indicate discreet information through these cryptic-looking codes. There's a double impact of these urban codes. Random people notice this and wonder what it is, making note of the peculiar graphical aspect of these codes. On the other hand, a few people - mostly Japanese and asians - will get the message by taking picture with their phone. Each asian phone has software which translates the code into human-readable form: text. ID! messages provide information about the urban and social space or give questioning sentences to the reader. The codes also provide unique links (URL) to a specific website. This website can only be reached through these special links. This "elite-only" space that we question is also defining the "filigrane" aspect of networks which expands the world and the reach of some humans far beyond their physical limits.

Survival capacity in information society

The presence of these codes and the form defined by the ones who get it and the ones who don't question the notion of elite-ness, the capability of some people as code breakers, defining some new survival capability in the information society. This can be compared to a critic of the digital divide through a creation of an even more hardcore digital divide. It also raises the question of all the codes that you can't see, such as RFID, your cell phone positioning etc.

Mobile telephony and geolocalised interation

The reaction of the public is documented through pictures, video and interviews and their online feedback. These new materials become also a form of code which is used as a new basis for work. This points to the tree-like structure of culture which was the base for earlier work of the artist (Arbostructure, 2002). The social network is also documented in the virtual world by tracking the connections on the unique URL. Each of these links can be reached right on the spot from a cell phone browser or later on from an internet connection.

From domination to identification

Id! takes its name from the current domination shift. We moved from the 60s-80s order "OBEY!" to a more 90s-00s order that is "ID!". It says that you ""have to identify"" in order to comply with the society. The tracking and documentation of actions is now more important than the strict respect of rules. The reason is that the multiplicity of rules and laws makes it impossible for anybody or any corporation to respect all the rules at all times and at the same time be creative and alive. As a result, if you track and identify each action of a person, you can decide anytime to put him in legal troubles just by showing questionnable acts and places he may have done anytime in the past. This is the threat of data retention, mobile phone tracking, RFID embedding etc. This is the flip side of enabling technologies such as codes (RFID codes for example). Technology can be used in a human respecting way, but also the other way around.

This textual and pictorial information is compiled into "Id! Praxis" book (to be published).

>>> Mobile Phone Art >>> Identification & Codes >>> Social Networks >>> 2-level reaction >>> Babel-tree like structure >>>