Creative intervention onto LABoral’s website

A script installed on the host site allows all visitors to observe each others´ mouse movements at any one time. On a technical level, the work is based on a JavaScript that contacts a server where all individual mouse positions are stored, displaying all the cursors in ´real time´. In this way, users experience the virtual presence of others while they are controlled by a server.

Web platforms are being promoted as a privileged arena for emerging communities and open collaboration but www_hack aims to expose the internal web architecture as well as the protocols that reflect a server-client hegemony in which users are isolated from information and from each other. The project demonstrates that the server-client relation isn’t as open as it would seem or free from power struggles. In fact, all clients are subject to the ´dictatorship´ of a server, which is intrinsic to web architecture.

www_hack has been presented at several institutions and events, including “Antisocial Notworking”, a project curated by Geoff Cox for Arnolfini, Webcra.sh, curated by JODI, and the 2008 edition of Observatori de Valencia curated by KURATOR.