Heath Bunting
Heath Bunting ( b. 1966 ) is a British artist from Bristol, which deals since the 1990s, with issues of new media. He achieved fame in particular by net art works; he is the founder and operator of irational.org. Aim of his work is the creation of open, democratic communication systems and social relations. His works often exceed the limits of conventional categories, both in physical reality as the Internet. With his work online Visitors Guide to London Bunting was represented at the 1997 documenta X. Another variety of his media art is the creation of false websites for organizations such as CERN and companies like GlaxoSmithKline. This site, developed in cooperation with his mother, an ex - Greenham Common activist, urges the Glaxo employees to provide their pets for experimentation and vivisection available.
Own, Be Owned Or Remain Invisible
1998 Bunting created with _readme.html a work of appropriation art, a " just - brilliant project ", a " bizarre little search engine" that " only through the guidance of the subtitle a meta-statement replaced by: Own, be owned or REMAIN invisible" (Georg Seeßlen: But is it art, concrete, 2/2011 )? . It is in _readme.html to a Web page that consists simply of a newspaper article about Bunting, the British writer James Flint had written for The Daily Telegraph, where almost every word is linked as a domain name. Example: The first sentence reads Heath Bunting is on a mission. " Heath " and " Bunting" are not linked, the remaining four lead by hyperlinks on the pages www.is.com, www.on.com, www.a.com and www.mission.com. At the beginning of the project had many of the so -reach domains still no owners, others have become free again. Not Linked words are virtually invisible (light gray on a white background), these include
Words in medium gray are linked domains, after you have clicked on them, they are black and therefore visible. The non- linked words have aspects of Bunting's identity that he does not want to see in foreign ownership. In this way, Bunting discusses the ownership of the Internet.
In an interview with Tilman Baumgärtel 1997 Bunting called visibility as a key criterion for the separation of public and private on the Internet, with visibility only depends on the skills and marketing strategies of search engines.
King's Cross Phone-In
"King 's Cross Phone-In ' is one of Bunting's performance art and one of the first flash mob actions. At its former site cybercafe.org he had the phone numbers of the cells in and around the London King 's Cross listed and prompted, on Friday, August 5, 1994, from 12 noon clock perform one of the following actions:
- To call the numbers in a specific order
- To call the numbers at a specific time
- To call, and if someone takes off to talk to this stranger
- To go to the station to lift one of the phones and talk to this stranger
Bunting himself went to King's Cross station and took calls. " The station was transformed into an art platform and the unsuspecting travelers and workers in this area were to the audience "