10.

This is not an Interface. Rather, it is part of a disappearing act now in progress. This disappearing act isn't part some elaborate magic show, though the magic cookies we may have just fed your hard drive with will tell us exactly what kind of shows you like to go and see. Think of it as a present from us to you, part of the much talked about "gift economy." And if you're hungry for more, don't worry. There are lots of other cookie-pushers moving into your cyberneighborhood as you read this. They are all preparing for the final disappearance, the one where your digital apparition does all of your work for you so that you, Dear Reader, can find lots more time to consume! Forget that ideological framework everyone knows as holidays. Every day is a holiday is cyberspace. Here, take another cookie while I warm up the tea.

9.

I take it all back: Why be cynical? I say it's time we embrace the simulation of effects being transmitted by the global computer networks. Let's make all thought "sensual" again so that our attempts to bring meaning into this nascent online space are co-dependent on a creative process that cancels itself as it goes along. There are multiple forms of constructed Selves just waiting to be born, so what is holding you back? What will it take to let yourself out of the prison-house of official language and manners? Why not finally participate in the potentially liberating stream of sex-blood consciousness you've always wanted to activate yourself in? Whatever your excuse is, whether it be Web-envy, no roles to play in relay chats, dysfunctional email etiquette, html schizophrenia, why not accept the fact that there are no more ultimate Truths to be found in the printed word and that the disappearance of the print-interface is linked to a top-secret program whose market-penetration (can you feel it?) is being manipulated by an alien race of invisible mediators, code-crunchers, state-of-the-art compilers, micro-managers, head-hunters, business schools, computer science graphics labs and sexy entrepreneurs? Speaking of which: is it possible to have an orgasm even if you cant see the lab assistants who are busy pushing all the right buttons?

8.

Is it really necessary to tear apart the idea-apparatus and see what kind of inner workings make the time-machine tick? What will happen once you successfully crack the code to Digital Being? Will you then start developing your own unique interface that requires yet even more software for others to buy-into so that they can finally participate in your elitist construction of reality? These are important questions to ask as there is already a kind of battle being waged by artists who work with network technology and this fight is over the interface. Although it's not as simple as I am about to make it, I will break up these forces into two camps: one camp is more elitist and wants to create their own interface while the other one is happy to develop their projects with the more utilitarian interfaces being developed by major corporate enterprises. The difference between these two camps became apparent at the recent International Biennial of Film and Architecture in Graz (also known as film+arc).

The heated debate took place during a panel discussion called Net Art and The Exhibition Context. What I see as the elitist camp was represented most forcefully by a member of Knowbotic Research while the "Netscape or Microsoft Explorer interface is good enough for me" approach was voiced by panel-member Alexei Shulgin. The two sides started off by arguing if the Net could be considered a communications technology: Knowbotic Research voted a defiant no while Shulgin and Blast-director Jordan Crandall said that indeed it was a place for people to communicate. But they couldnt communicate that to the guy from Knowbotic Research (and the representative curators on the panel were relatively silent during this part of the discussion). The discussion then moved toward the subject of interfaces and whether it was the artist's responsibility to program their own unique interfaces or rely on the corporate whims of someone like Bill Gates. The irony here was that voting against corporate-developed interfaces was the corporate-sponsored Knowbotic Research while the (for the most part) un-sponsored nyet.artist Shulgin said he was happy to play around with the various versions of Netscape. What does this mean?

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7.

How do we want our artificial realities to be constructed? Do we want to have ultimate control over the way our interface operates and thus limit the distribution-potential of our work, or are we better off letting the heated-up Browser Wars accelerate the development of interface "standards" which can then be used to construct artificial realities that, by becoming accessible to larger audiences, open up the possibility of a more exciting interventionist strategy to employ via the new media? Maybe some brilliant programming-artists will want to have total control over the functionality of their technologically-enhanced projects, but when it comes time to interacting with them, most of us will still be left in the dark (where is the magic light bulb when you most need it?). And besides, what is this desire to "grasp" the detailed coding of the mechanism that delivers ones work to the public ear and eye? To reconstruct the dream-apparatus in a more rational way? That seems self-defeating. And what will it accomplish anyway? The creation of a more immersive illusion that this is how the machines really work? That's no way to artificially construct a reality. Besides, the Modernists already tried this and we decided that, as interesting an experiment as it was, in the end, it really wasn't worth our time. Why? Because too many REAL people got left out of the creative process. And besides, as my friend Ron says, "reality doesn't exist, time doesn't exist, personality doesn't exist. We have to start from scratch." Starting from t-zero is the way to go, getting rid of the interface, inventing knowledge all along the way: not reproducing the modernist mistakes of the past. Why would someone want to spend their creative energy developing elitist interfaces? To attract corporate attention to their aggressive technological gimmickry so that it can then be bought as "art"? But as Jordan Crandall asked on the panel at film+arc, "Why Art?" I just had an idea for a new bumper sticker: NO ART HERE, JUST US AVANT-POP NYET-HEADS.

6.

In his just-released book "The Plague of Fantasies", Slavoj Zizek, in an essay entitled "Cyberspace, Or, The Unbearable Closure of Being" (the pun is on Milan Kundera's "The Unbearable Lightness of Being"), approaches this issue in the following manner:

5.

Let's get one thing straight: reality is a fiction. A speculative fiction. Or, we can say: reality is a market. A speculative market. It cancels itself as it goes along. And in canceling itself as it goes along, it generates further disappearances of the interface and this is where we, the people, come in. When I talk about the people, I am talking about more than our flesh and blood, our dismembered organs-without-bodies, our machinic desires running rampant on the contaminated earth. I am talking about our avatar-others, our digital apparitions, our pointillistic presence that pixellates in the morph-world of electrospherical ambiance. We, the people, are what populate social space, wherever this social space may distribute itself. It could be some Moms-only chat-room, some S&M dungeon, some real-time dance club, or under the covers with an anonymous freak. In fact, the social spaces we populate are absolutely co-dependent on our digital apparitions distributing themselves with such density that the people we interact with come to see their experience with us as Real. It wasn't always this way. But then again, never before have we been so eager to rid ourselves of the interface.

4.

Rather than serving as a mirror of ones creative practice, the market-as-fiction model keeps supplementing the net-practitioner with an endless supply of resources to generate new work with. As the market itself becomes totally dependent on the creation of promotional metafictions that use "vaporware" constructions to drive The Story of Interface Culture further into the hyperfuture, avant-pop nyet-heads can use both the tools and the banal "content" that is being generated around this "new media mythology" to build an innovative work/play environment. We can see this work/play environment popping up all over the Net, from the viral interfaces of jodi.org to the ghostly interfaces of another Jody, designer Jody Zellen. Or what about the playful yet, dare I say, emotional interfaces of Richard Allalouf and Claire Cann's Keywords or Knut Mork's Untitled java applet that emits language-poetry in rapid morph-mode? If we are to take things at the their interface value, then the best place to start might be these sites.

3.

I have an idea for all of the silent curators who are trying to figure out what to do with these roaming avant-popstars and nyet-heads who keep attracting so much attention but whose work can't be easily absorbed into their institutional space. Take the influence you have accumulated over the years by preserving the past, present and near-future value of art, and create a new, admittedly ephemeral, interface. Yes, it will take a certain amount of missionary zeal to make it happen as fast as the culture needs it to happen, but this ephemeral interface is absolutely necessary and should help accelerate the disappearing act already in progress. And in the meantime, before it all fades away, why not focus on some of the essential ingredients this new interface demands:

	become responsible to future generations interested in the early development of hypermedia work being practiced on the web and invest the necessary time, energy and money in archiving the work, conducting formal discussions of the work, developing web-sites that help educate the public on the relevance of this growing phenomena and commissioning new projects exclusively for the medium
	work with the net-practitioners themselves on building the archives and creating innovative programs to showcase the developments being made in the field (many net-practitioners have thought out the implications of this network-media phenomena and are in a position to offer expert advise and consultation on how to expand your "influence" in an art market that is in the process of canceling itself out as it goes along)
	accept the fact that the practitioners you will be working with may have absolutely no formal relationship with the so-called elitist art-world you are part of and that is quietly being dismantled by the emergence of these very same networkers who, besides actively composing in the medium, are at once their own publisher, curator, publicist, critic and value-generator.

To some it may seem funny, but once the Documenta-X web site was pulled off of the net, it was not lost to history. Fortunately for us, Vuk Cosic had already downloaded the entire site and virtually republished it at his new self-styled domain name. When we included a "curatorial link" to the site from the Alt-X Digital Studies: Being In Cyberspace show, the readymade ironies were overflowing.

2.

What more is there to say? The disappearance of the interface is first of all the disappearance of language.

1.

Alt-X WebSite

Grammatron