Document:Q11015

[phage] is a computer application which is viral-- an artificial life form.
[phage] filters through all available material on a specified workstation and places it in an alternate context-a visible and audible moving 3D spatialized computer world. I encourage this virus lifeform to spread via email (but only by the consent of the host).
[phage] explores a workstation's architecture and creates a poetics of
the computer as an autonomous object, with host data as material for
creative fodder. The name [phage] refers to a bacteriophage-a
constructive human virus that preys on harmful bacteria. [phage]
creates new living sculptures from our own data; she/he eradicates
gender notions an foundations in the life creating process.
With this project I seek to counteract traditionally masculine
paradigms of the technological age. [phage] creates a feminist map of
the machine through its non-hierarchical organization and its divorce of
creative control (and reproductive control) from the user to the machine.
[phage] allows the user to experience his or her computer memory
as a palimpsest of life experience rather than understand the computer as
simply a tool for daily use. By mapping a user's unique experiences-
through images,downloads, web sites visited, emails-it will
create spatial memory maps that not only reflect the computer and
technoculture in content, but the user's artifacts from his or her
interactions, exploring ideas of public, private, and memory through the
process.