\\ ... s0l

[integer at www.god-emil.dk]

>Like a successful leader of a sect, the programmer of NATO eventually bought himself a Ferrari sportscar.


-.-


2 f nn + e











Florian Cramer


         \\ z!mpl!.m9ndfukd




Software dystopia: Netochka Nezvanova

Code as cult

Jodi¹s aesthetic of contingent codes and user interfaces has been contrarily adapted as outright user enslavement. Using a comparable aesthetic of contingent and unintelligible code, the antiorp / integer / Netochka Nezvanova project turned the notion of proprietary software to its ultimate extreme. Dubbed by online magazine Salon.com the ³most feared woman on the Internet,² 10 N.N. turned up in the mid-1990s on various net.art and electronic music-related mailing lists and bombed them with messages written in a private codework language:



 Empire = body.  

 hensz nn - simply.SUPERIOR  


 per chansz auss! ŒreazonŒ nn = regardz geert lovink + h!z !lk  
 az ultra outdatd + p!t!fl pre.90.z ueztern kap!tal!zt buffoonz  


 ent!tl!ng u korporat fasc!ztz = haz b!n 01 error ov zortz on m! part.  
 [ma!z ! = z!mpl! ador faz!on]  
 geert lovink + ekxtra 1 d!menz!onl kr!!!!ketz [e.g. dze ultra unevntfl \  
 borrrrrrr!ng andreas broeckmann. alex galloway etc]  
 = do not dze konzt!tuz!on pozez 2 komput dze teor!e much  
 elsz akt!vat 01 lf+ !nundaz!e.  


 jetzt ! = return 2 z!p!ng tea + !zolat!ng m! celllz 4rom ur funerl.  


 vr!!endl!.nn  




1.      ventuze.nn  

     /_/  
                           /  
              \            \/       i should like to be a human plant  
             \/       _{  
                     _{/  
                                    i will shed leaves in the shade  
         \_\                        because i like stepping on bugs



The messages were obviously composed with the help of algorithmic filters, substituting for example the letter ³i² with ³!² or the word ³and² with ³+.² The project was radical chic not only in its syntax, but also in the semantic content of the messages that attacked well-known net cultural activists as ³korporat fasc!ztz² (³corporate fascists²). The style much resembled that of cracker cultural leet speech (see p. 160 ). To obscure the origins of N.N.¹s messages, a web of servers and domain registrations spanning New Zealand, Denmark and Italy was created. The messages pointed to likewise cryptic websites such as http://www.m9ndfukc.org and http://www.eusocial.org . After displaying codework writing similar to that on the mailing lists, the sites eventually lead to pages advertising NATO.0+55, an expensive video realtime processing plug-in for the musical composition program MAX. 

It is known today [hahahahahaha - knowledge++] that N.N. was a collective international project, with the person who wrote NATO differing from the one who wrote the message quoted above. The project presented itself as a sectarian cult, with its software as the object of worship. In a wilful perversion of proprietary software licensing, NATO licenses were revoked if licensees critically commented upon Netochka Nezvanova in public. The business model was to let people buy into an underground and a cult. Digital artist Alexei Shulgin characterized N.N. as a corporation posing as an artist, reciprocal to artists who had posed as corporations before. Local cults of NATO VJs used N.N. style in their names and acronyms. Like a successful leader of a sect, the programmer of NATO eventually bought himself a Ferrari sportscar.