According to Cory, Jonah and Chelsea Paretti's website blackpeopleloveus.com is where the future of net art is."Because of it's charged content" Cory says.The website is made to look like the website of a "white" couple that is loved by "blacks." New medium? Yes. New issue? Well maybe not.

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That’s strange I would think the opposite. I was very much into Nintendo. I'd still be into gaming except I'd be left with no time for my other projects.
I never actually owned a Nintendo Entertainment System, I had Intellivision, do you remember Intellivision?

Oh yeah, I do remember it! So as far as games are concerned you only hacked the code right? -so what about the actual physical casings of systems, ever try modifying that? There was an article in the New York Times tech section about modifying the computer boxes late last year Escape From Boring Beige: 'Modders' Soup Up the Box by Howard Millman. NYTimes, December 5, 2002.
Not really, I didn't read that article either but I did read that article about people who modify car chips -modifying their cars to go from 0 to 60 in less 3 seconds. That type of acceleration is really uncomfortable for the consumers car which is why car manufacturers cap the car chips. They give the cars a nice acceleration.
Gentlemen, Start Hacking Your Engine by Chris Dixon, NYTimes 2002.

What else can these guys modify?
They modify the speed and acceleration. Basically you can change how much oxygen and fuel the engine receives. The best part is that once they have finished drag racing, the owner can just plug in his palm pilot, program it back to normal, and drive away -so cool!

Are these guys just garage tinkers or programmers?
No, they're just mechanics!

It sounds like "folk hacking". They don’t even think about the conceptual implications of what they are doing, they just do it.
Yeah, it’s normal hot rodding. People are always gonna need to hot rod their cars. You gotta make your cars faster if you can -that's very American!

Back to the idea of physically altering systems, you’ve never cared about the outsides of things?
No, but I like stuff like that, it's awesome. If I had more time on my hands I wouldn't mind doing it. Except I don’t really see any reason to do it artistically. If you're trying to over take consumer technology that's a lame way to do it. I mean an aesthetic change is not a true school hack.

Jodi.org seems to also be doing a type of game modding like what you're doing with Mario, right? For example with SOD a Wolfenstein 3D mod.
Yeah, they're doing all this modification of all old Spectrum games. Spectrum is the European version of Commodore or Atari. It was never sold in America. It's a cute little toy computer. They're doing a modification of an old game which is kinda like Dig Dug. It wasn't Dig-Dug though…

Oh Yeah, the Spectrum games mod that they've modified is Jet Set Willy. I wonder what they would do with Dig-Dug, Dig-Dug is great. Dig-Dug is already very abstract to begin with! (laughing)
They (jodi) are great. There was this one time I was researching their work for an article I was writing but I couldn't figure out this one site. So I emailed and told them that their sites were a mess and half of the time I had no idea what was going on, and if they could please help me out. They said sure and then the next time I went to their web site I landed one this page that contained essay about their work. I was thinking that it was so nice, I can't believe they changed their sites for me! Later on, I was telling my friend about how helpful they were by putting up all this info for me. So I made her pull up the site on her computer but when we loaded the page it was all back to normal! What they had really done was fish out my computers IP from my emails and wrote a script that would check my IP and if it match to the one taken from my emails it would bump me to that info page. That's how clever they are -they're my heroes!

They're intense like that! I can spend hours on their sites, like 404 - did you write about that site?
I wrote about 404, ASDFG, OSS, and TEXT. The one that I thought was the most wicked was ASDFG -that's one of those that make your screen go crazy. Not many people wrote about it. I actually used to think it was pretty stupid too -I didn't understand it. They told me to look at the project for 20 minutes then go to my history window in Internet Explorer. So after 20 minute on that page I pulled the history down and there was this pattern -it was an artwork for your history window!

That reminds me of this other project/email that was sent to the Rhizome list. It was an email that looked like all this mess of slashes and back slashes. It was really long but if you scroll it fast enough and evenly enough you start to see a cigarette burning… I wonder how they did that? Video to ASCII? It looked so real, like live smoke! -you know, the way real smoke rises.
All their projects are very aesthetically pleasing and conceptually better.

They do seem a touch smarter than most computer artist out there. Maybe because they are two people pair-programming like Extreme Programmers would do to crank this stuff out?
They are a couple.

When did you meet them?
I met them on a trip to Barcelona. I imagined them to live in this huge dungeon or broken down factory, but to my surprise they lived in a very beautiful flat in the center of Barcelona, with kids' toys all over the place. They didn't even have Internet connection when I was there. They said they had been busy with the baby.

Why where you in Barcelona?
I went to Barcelona in the fall of 2002 for a lecture at Art Futura at the CCCB (Barcelona Center of Contemporary Culture) as a member of the Radical Software Group -totally unrelated to anything. I spoke about the Carnivore for the conference. I was really there for only a week and I only spoke for half an hour.

You weren't there for the Sonar festival?
No, I was there for a conference "Issues in New Media" at the CCCB.

By the way, how did you get involved with the Radical software Group (RSG)?
Alex Galloway got invited and couldn’t go so he suggested that I go and speak in his place. Aside from the use of Carnivore in the Boo-Yaa client, the Carnivore project was all Alex Galloway's and those whom he collaborated with. I think it is a really great project.

Especially right now, with the FBI going fast forward on "terrorism" using apps similar to Carnivore to sniff and snoop here and there.
Yeah, a very timely, smart, and current internet project. It’s a good example that Internet art doesn't have to be browser art- it's a very good example of Internet art that has nothing to do with the browser. That's why I like it -it's very site specific Internet art and it's not site specific for a dumb reason, it's site specific for good reason.

So what about influences that aren't web or tech related -like the masters, who do you get inspiration from?
Truthfully I don’t know much about art history, so I don't have any art influences. Of the influences I have, only a very few of them are not contemporary. For example some of my contemporary influences are Detroit Techno Artist in general. Like Drexciya (James Stinson) -it’s a Detroit Electro artist whose records are all about underwater race of African American who where thrown over board and managed to breed in the ocean and are going to attack us one day -really intense Detroit Electro! It's people like that, people like Rammellzee, and all my friends basically.

So you never really just hang out at the Met to look at the craft of it all.
Opps -I never been to the Met! I've been here for three years. I just haven't had time. I've been too busy -I've never even been to the Guggenheim either…

Not that you would know what's in their collection but when do you think computer art will make it into the Metropolitan Museum's Collection?
I hope never. I just think it should be a while because computer art is a bit whack right now. I think people should take their time to understand it before they start to collect it.

So you still think it is in a period of growth? You don't think it is at all over?
Over? No! Hasn't even started!

I am always wondering whether it will totally die before it even starts. I don’t exactly mean die, but rather live in the margins.
I think it will be popular but in a different way from how it is now. Net art is in a state where people are still taking old ideas and applying them to this new medium which is always lame.

For example?
Like flash animation, blah! My example of a good internet art is Jonah and Chelsea Peretti, they did Blackpeopleloveus.com. He does those Meme sites. He did that personalized Nike Email Project, where he tried to get the word "sweatshop" on personalized Nike shoes. He sent out that email and within 3 days it hit 15mil people. It's because these emails have really charged content. They make people think -Now that's Internet art. More art like that is gonna start happening. Museums should just cool off and wait some 20 years before they start collecting. I am really optimistic that really wicked things are going to happen. Sure the first wave of Internet art came and went but in the end it will be fine.

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