<incom> http://www.picidae.net/

[Geert Lovink]

Surfing the Internet and the world shrinks to the size of a village. 
The farthest regions are just one click away. But taking a closer look, 
the infinite freedom of a virtual space is just an illusion. Why does 
not even one single website from North Korea exist? Why isn¡¯t there a 
website about the Tiananmen Massacre from within China, no right wing 
extremist propaganda from Germany, not one single Pin-Up girl from 
Iran, no criticism of Islam from Saudi Arabia, no call for a protest 
rally from Syria?

The World Wide Web, the nervous system of a simultaneous communication 
and the platform for global data exchange, is quite a diverse 
heterogeneous formation. Many nations have an active Internet 
censorship. Government, Internet providers and Internet Services are 
observing, controlling and even blocking content. Therefore the 
Internet appears in different forms: tidied up, and in other ways 
trimmed or fragmented. So what¡¯s about this world that appears on our 
computer monitors?

Disposal of language

The criteria of censorship and its technical accomplishment are also 
clandestine. While continuously eliminating specific content, 
censorship eradicates criticism as well as discussion, language, and 
the medium itself.

Automated censorship is unable to make value judgements: targetted 
words get wiped out arbitrarily. Google China deleted the web site 
www.bassexperts.com because of the word ¡°sex¡± in the domainname. The 
word ÍÀɱ (massacre) is such a huge problem for the Chinese censorship 
authorities that all results listed from the search engine www.baidu.cn 
are immediately replaced by a notification of a network problem. (Baidu 
search for massacre)

Any action of control and censorship influences the handling and 
meaning of the media itself. The range and conditions beyond our 
perception and communication are fundamental for our own world view, 
cognitive ability and expression.

The power of pictures

Because of the fact that information is only detectable automatically 
in specific encodings and because the bandwith of user Internet 
connections are already fast enough, we developed the pici-server that 
generates pictures of websites to access web web pages. We installed 
the first pici-server in Zurich and started for our self-experiment a 
journey to the end of the Internet.

Berlin was the starting point of our journey. It was for decades a city 
divided by the wall, now slowly recovering from the separation. From 
Berlin we flew to Beijing, a mega city almost exploding by the speed of 
its development. China is experiencing a massive boom and is still 
strictly controlled and kept under surveillance by its communist 
regime.

http://www.picidae.net/

For three weeks we checked the functions of the Golden Shield, the huge 
Chinese firewall, in Beijing and Shanghai. For most Chinese the 
numerous Internet Caf¨¦s are their only access to the Internet. Entering 
the Caf¨¦ everybody is asked for identification, and has to be 
registered. Like most places within Chinese cities even the rooms are 
observed by cams. As Europeans it was not possible to avoid being 
noticed ¨C but even under these aggravating circumstances picidae was 
running very well. Our server delivered us with all the web sites that 
are usually only reachable on the other site of the firewall.

With our media art project ZONE*INTERDITE we unveiled some blind spots 
in our own perception. picidae follows up here and explores our 
perspective and imagination in relation to the digital information 
transfer. picidae takes the questions for the image of the world 
literally. The pici-server delivers images of web pages and uses the 
image as digital encryption. The power of an image is not calculable.

The research how we see and depict the world is in the project picidae 
even taken literally. The picture serves as the digital encrypting. The 
power of pictures is not to calculate.

We have torn a hole in the Chinese firewall.

The first holes in the Berlin wall were torn by so called 
¡°Mauerspechte¡± (engl. wall woodpeckers). The project is named after 
these first wall breakers: picidae (Latin for woodpecker). The hole in 
the wall presupposes uncertainty. What is beyond it? A new sight can 
lead to a new impression or might result in a new notion. Catching 
sight is a borderline experience: Will I be, will the world be the same 
afterwards?

One way to evade the firewall within China is to install a server or a 
proxy abroad. Foreign companies in particular benefit from this option. 
However, people who don¡¯t have such connections abroad, most of them do 
not even own a computer, are hit by the restrictions even harder. 
Chinese censorship is disguised as a network problem, or the request is 
redirected directly to a dummy site. picidae allows us to compare 
websites from different regions. In this way the amount of censorship 
appears is exposed openly within China.

picidae allows a glance into another world and opens a new prospective.