ars electronica DEPLOGGED

Linz, 7th to 12th September 2002: The internet is free, it can't be controlled, information flows decentralized and effective – »deplogging« Ars Electronica is a project to prove that this is an urban legend.

The topic of this years' famous exhibition/festival Ars Electronica was »Unplugged«. There were three locations where visitors could use the Internet. We covertly installed a proxy on every computer and manipulated every single result shown on the visitors' web browsers. Sometimes there were only a few changes, sometimes the whole content of the original website was exchanged and forged.

Our main contribution to Ars Electronica »Unplugged« was to »deplog« the users and see, how they would react. Frequently we interrupted the surfing users by putting a full size window simulating the end screen of Windows OS, that said: »You have been deplogged. It's now safe to turn off your computer.«

Beside deplogging 419 users (most of them switched off the computer), the surfers got 22404 changed web pages with the sum of 260852 manipulations – between 7th and 12th september 2002.

The filtering proxy is part of insert_coin by Dragan Espenschied and Alvar C.H. Freude; ars electronica DEPLOGGED was created by Alvar C.H. Freude, Andreas A. Milles and Dragan Espenschied. Please read also the short english description of insert_coin and a translated summary about the filter.

Learn more ...

• How to setup and test the proxy/filter -- get filtered now!
• Deplogg yourself
• Live protocol of filtering: see, which pages are manipulated at the moment with which manipulations
• Complete protocol of manipulations during Ars Electronica 2002
• Read a short english description of insert_coin filter, the english summary of the german description of our filter experiment or the complete german description of insert_coin

Questions?

Write an email to info@odem.org