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The Prix Ars Electronica Archive is a collection enabling search and viewing of all the submissions since 1987. The award-winning projects are documented with catalogue texts and audio-visual media. All other submissions can be searched by title/artist and displayed with year, category in list form. Please cite the credits (artwork name, artist and photographer) and only use the materials if your article is related to Ars Electronica.
Face to Facebook - Hacking Monopolism Trilogy
Paolo Cirio,
Alessandro Ludovico
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*Face to Facebook* was a social experiment: stealing a million Facebook profiles, filtering them with face-recognition software and then posting them on a custom-built dating website, sorted by their facial expression characteristics. Our mission was to give all these virtual identities a new shared place to expose themselves freely, breaking Facebook’s constraints and boring social rules. So we established a new website (*http://lovely-faces.com*) doing them justice and granting them the possibility of soon being face to face with anybody attracted by their facial expression and related data.
The action was set in five days of intense media coverage and thrilling, fast-paced events, which became a global mass-media hack performance. It has been defined as a performance since it happened after a long preparation as a unique live act over a short time span, and it involved the audience in a transformation through an evolving storyline. So far it has generated a few thousand reactions by people involved, triggered by the official website, the hundreds of tweets and more than 1000 press reactions (http://www.face-to-facebook.net/press-coverage.php).
On a legal perspective, we received a cease-and-desist letter from Perkins Coie (the Facebook lawyers). The Facebook lawyers first asked us to take down the Lovely Faces dating website, which we did after a while, and now they are also pushing us to take down the Face to Facebook website, which hosts only the documentation about our artwork. We are fighting it on a legal basis, claiming that this an infringement of freedom of expression.
The project makes up the third piece in a series that began with *Google Will Eat Itself* and *Amazon Noir*. The trilogy is called “Hacking Monopolism”. These works share a lot in terms of both methodologies and strategies.
Links: http://www.face-to-facebook.net/
The action was set in five days of intense media coverage and thrilling, fast-paced events, which became a global mass-media hack performance. It has been defined as a performance since it happened after a long preparation as a unique live act over a short time span, and it involved the audience in a transformation through an evolving storyline. So far it has generated a few thousand reactions by people involved, triggered by the official website, the hundreds of tweets and more than 1000 press reactions (http://www.face-to-facebook.net/press-coverage.php).
On a legal perspective, we received a cease-and-desist letter from Perkins Coie (the Facebook lawyers). The Facebook lawyers first asked us to take down the Lovely Faces dating website, which we did after a while, and now they are also pushing us to take down the Face to Facebook website, which hosts only the documentation about our artwork. We are fighting it on a legal basis, claiming that this an infringement of freedom of expression.
The project makes up the third piece in a series that began with *Google Will Eat Itself* and *Amazon Noir*. The trilogy is called “Hacking Monopolism”. These works share a lot in terms of both methodologies and strategies.
Links: http://www.face-to-facebook.net/
Paolo Cirio (IT) works as media artist in various fields: net-art, street-art, video-art, software-art and experimental fiction. He has won prestigious art awards and his controversial works have been sustained by research grants, collaborations and residencies. He has exhibited in museums and art institutions worldwide.
Alessandro Ludovico (IT) is a media critic and has been editor in chief of _Neural_ magazine since 1993. He is one of the founders of the _Mag.Net_ (the electronic cultural publishers’ organization). He also served as an advisor for the Documenta 12 magazine project. He teaches at the Academy of Art in Carrara.
Alessandro Ludovico (IT) is a media critic and has been editor in chief of _Neural_ magazine since 1993. He is one of the founders of the _Mag.Net_ (the electronic cultural publishers’ organization). He also served as an advisor for the Documenta 12 magazine project. He teaches at the Academy of Art in Carrara.