Door: Constant Dullaart
“In his project Dullaart used the names of the original Hessian mercenaries who were paid by the English to fight in the American Revolution and created thousands of artificial profiles on Facebook, forming a “fake” army to stand up in the war against the current American social media revolution. The research entailed the use of software packages like Facedominator, Friendbomber and Massplanner hosted on remote servers through thousands of proxies and registering accounts on phone numbers bought in bulk in multiple countries like Pakistan, Bangladesh and the Philippines. Moreover, the artist conducted Skype conversations with people contacted through black hat websites like Blackhatworld about PayPal payments, and money being transferred to Pakistan often getting blocked due to suspected terrorism financing; using credit card and gift card constructions with multiple PayPal accounts often helped.
With an entire industry of fake identities working against Facebook security measures the project called to engage the quantification of social capital as a conflict, while discussing the value of online identity and the hidden labor in the sharing economy. “
Aldus e-flux.com
“Provocateur
Zijn werk beweegt zich op het snijvlak van wat echt is en wat nep. Dullaart: ‘Ik pretendeer niet de oplossing te hebben voor complexe issues over data. Ik ben geïnteresseerd in de wrijving tussen het fysieke en het digitale. Als kunstenaar zie ik mijzelf vooral als provocateur; ik laat zien welke rol data spelen in ons leven. Ik probeer mij kritisch te verhouden in dit mijnenveld waarin we commerciële Amerikaanse bedrijven, zoals Facebook en Google steeds meer voor ons laten bepalen.”
Aldus dutchculture.nl
