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and the Internet to tell their own stories in and through these media. In workshops with neighbors, women, young girls, but also older people in the Black neighborhood De Bijlmer in Amsterdam, the very first users of this software were initiated in the world of hyperlinks and uploads.

Not just the software is designed with care; Mongrel also aims consciously at a specific type of audience, the public in the most democratic sense of the word. This implies a certain openness, generosity and political awareness on the part of the artists. In e-mail Harwood writes: «[With] social software it's hard all those tricky and sticky social relations, poverty, poor education—people’s frustrations and expectations. … All the workshops are different—whether ‹swooping› shoes for a day in South Africa or in the outback of Australia or at home with the neighbors or just working with my mum. People’s intelligence manifests differently depending on whom they are with (which mongrel) and in what context they are working.» The workshops are tailor fitted for each person or group of people. Harwood in e-mail again: «Working with people is what we all do in

 

whatever subcategory of media art we work in. It’s just part of the technology and networks. The question is who you work with and why.»

Etoy: «Etoy.Daycare»

The international group Etoy has done numerous performances inside and outside the Internet. When asked where they are from, they will reply they are from the Net. Their main tactic is to apply corporate strategies to gain what they call «cultural profit». The idea is to enhance the cultural sphere, not by monetary funding, but by adding cultural products. It basically seems to boil down to Etoy shareholders not getting money revenues, but their reward is that Etoy can make more art or that more art is produced. Period.

Etoy has always had a rather harsh image; something that may have to do with their strict application of corporate branding, which is dominant in everything they do (bright orange overalls, big Etoy logos everywhere, disappearance of individual Etoy members behind the Etoy image shell, and online Etoy has one of the few art sites that uses a .com domain).

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