6.1 Embodiment, Territorialization and Digital Zapatismo
"The mass of mass action hacktivism cannot be the generation of packets of inormation through automation, something so easily done in the immaterial world of cyberspace. Rather, it must be the force of many people, embodied in the off line world, that gives mass action hacktivism its legitimacy and political force." (Jordan, 2004: 89)
Bodies Inc. (1996) is a made-to-order avatar realization program by net.artist Victoria Vesna, which allows users to construct virtual avatars in a piecemeal fashion using individual body parts. The popularity of the service suggests a desire in the online community to have quasi-simulations of one's physicality despite the apparent hypermediacy of mainstream browser's graphic user interface - GUI (Greene, 2004: 107). In this case net.art provides the software to appease this desire, but what - if any - tangible enhancement it has on internet transparency is unclear.
Although the original EDT Zapatista Floodnet operation conducted on January 9th 1998 required the un-automated voluntary virtual sitting-in of multiple users, the subsequent attacks on the Mexican government website and Chase Manhattan Bank were conducted by a 'small cadre' of highly trained experts.When they gained access to the Mexican Government server they posted pro-Zapatista slogans and rendered a MS-Dos Ping Action which returned subversive error messages such as 'human rights not found on this server' (Dominguez, 1998). This elicits net.art's vulnerability to being usurped by minority actors, whose critique does not enjoy popular support.
CONCLUSION
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