UBERMORGEN - LIZVLX & HANS BERNHARD

Artnode & cph:dox & Overgaden

presents

ubermorgen, Hans Bernhard

8.11.2004, 1930h
soundtrack by micromusic.net

lizvlx - hans bernhard - ubermorgen - etoy
1994 - 2004

10 years digital actionism
legal art
net-exhibitionism
manic insomnia
and
media hacking.

etoy
Voteauction

cphdox
8.11.2004, 19h

Han er blevet kaldt netkunstens ”slemme, geniale dreng”. Med god grund. Hans Bernhard, også kendt som Hans Bernhard from ubermorgen, hans_extrem, etoy.HANS og net_CALLBOY, har siden netkunstens fødsel i midten af 90erne hacket og provokeret online. Med lige dele sagsanlæg og anerkendelse som resultat. Han har gjort det muligt at sælge sin stemme til det amerikanske præsidentvalg under slogant ”Bringing Capitalism and Democracy Closer Together”, kidnappet merkantile websurfere og lavet en falsk hjemmeside for det tyske indenrigsministerium på adressen naziline.com. Det er performance-dada-punk for de digitale mediers tidsalder. Fuld risiko, ingen respekt og et tæt kendskab til Internettets subersive kanaler. Til dette foredrag viser han en film fra sin optræden på CNNs program ”Burden of Proof” og fortæller om sine aktiviter med Übermorgen og netkunstfirmaet etoy, som stod bag det legendariske værk TOYWAR, der endte med at koste legetøjsfirmaet eToys 4,5 milliarder dollars i aktieværdi. En garanteret underholdende førstehånds-beretning fra den aktivistiske netkunsts forfron

the etoy.GANG - the first street-gang on the internet, 1996

brainhard.com & WORDWAR [1994]
brainhard.com & WORDWAR

corporate identity / corporate philosophy
1994-1996

"yes!...and all our children will be playing in their garden of joy surrounded
by glamour and perverted disco tunes... etoy, immature priests from another world..."
björk

interview with etoy

etoy - slogans 1994-2004

LEAVING REALITY BEHIND

ALWAYS ONLINE - SOMETIMES LOST

etoy: the popstar is the pilot is the coder is the designer is the architect is the manager is the system is etoy

etoy: TWISTING VALUES

WE ARE NOT NATURAL ANYMORE!

LOGISTICS FOR THE NEXT LEVEL

FLASHING INTO THE FUTURE

THE FUTURE IS NOW

kill netscape by using it!

etoy.TANK-SYSTEM - phase I 1994
etoy - leaving reality behind

c3.hu/tank-system

etoy.HISTORY - the basic-concept: hans X
digital emigration / reality emigration; internet tech, lsd & peter weibel

etoy.TANK-SYSTEM
c3.hu/tank-system

tv-hijack.zip 1996

The Internet-Art-Terror organisation etoy has hijacked a TV-Show on 7.12.96 / 2100 hours. After their Live-Act in the Swiss TV-Infotainment Magazine "Zebra", the etoy.AGENTS have intruded the Prime-Time Show "Benissimo" and they controlled the Swiss TV-Reality for a few seconds. Our anonymous etoy.AGENT has entered the stage, asked the Show-Master Bernhard Turnheer where the way to the Internet is... he told him, that he couldnt stand this TV-Reality anymore and that he needs to know the way to the internet...

Only after massive pressure of the etoy.LAWYER, wich was at this moment not inside the Television Building, the 4 remaining Agents have been released out of Custody around 2300 hours, just before a Police-Task Force arrived at the Swiss Television Building. This Action has received massive Press-Reactions: 3 Headlines from Sunday to Tuesday... in the biggest Swiss Rainbow-Paper "Blick". International Feed-Back from England, Norway and Italy...

leaving reality behind helicopter-action
.rm 1996

Riefenstahl was severely injured in a helicopter accident in Sudan. She was flown back to a hospital in Munich. Meanwhile etoy.AGENTS were up to a dada foto-tv-shooting on "glitzernde Gletscher" in switzerland on a SFDRS assignement [swiss national television station]

.rm

the digital hijack 1996
hijack.org

don't fucking move - this is a digital hijack
search-engine hack
meta-refresh=0
1.5 mio internet users hijacked in 3 months
free kevin mitnick
cia / austrian secret service - house search 6 a.m.
email threats ulrike meinhof anonymous remailer

ars electronica - phase II 1996

golden nica - ars electronica 1996

-1999

etoy.TANK-SYSTEM exhibition design center linz

etoy.SHARES

share.etoy.com

budapest residency & performance
etoy.PROTECTION 1997

etoy.TANK[-17] 1999-200x

usa-emigration 1998
Los Angeles - San Diego - San Francisco

the last original crew picture, san francisco 1999

TOYWAR 1999-2000

legal battle
4.5 billion dollars eToys share-value lost during campaign
domain temporarily shut-down
community fight
toywar-army

etoyholding - phase III 1999-2004

founding 1999

mother-corporation
legal art / legal affairs
strategic planning
etoy.trademarks europe, asia& usa [etoy.CORPORATION zurich / switzerland]
etoyholding - the corporate network

subcompanies

etoy.venture-association cayman islands
etoy.ag st.johns / antigua
etoy gmbh berlin / germany
etoy.corporation zurich / switzerland
etoy.com global
etoyholding.com global

leaving reality behind
the battle for the soul of the internet

etoy.BOOK 2002/2003 [us-edition]
amazon.de [search: " leaving reality behind"]

"leaving reality behind has everything. a court case, a cast of unforgettable characters, and a story that could only have happend during the internet insanity. a fascinating read."

online: prologue / 1.chapter

break

ubermorgen:: : 1999-20xx
ubermorgen.com

founded 1999
artist duo lizvlx and Hans Bernhard

ubermorgen is the author of projects such as "Voteauction, Naziline, Injunction generator, The Agency"

ubermorgen "we have no nationality"

Voteauction
[V]ote-auction - vote-auction.net

Seal

http://vote-auction.net

legal documents

Chicago TRO
Chicago Complaint
Chicago Memorandum of Law
Chicago Preliminary Injunction

screenshot

CNN "burden of proof", 27 Min. [DVD], live-broadcast.

Voteauction was a Website which offered US citizens to sell their presidential vote to the highest bidder during the Presidential Elections 2000, Al Gore vs. G.W. Bush.

The Website was conceived by the student James Baumgartner and then sold to the austrian business-artists Hans Bernhard (founder of etoy [5]) and Lizvlx from ubermorgen[1] in Austria and (V)ote-auction Inc. in Sofia/Bulgaria [a subsidiary of the ubermorgen group] for a undisclosed sum. Voteauction was ubermorgens feature Media Hacking performance in the year 2000.

Several US States (Missouri, Wisconsin, Chicago, Arizona, Nevada, California, Massachusetts, New York) issued temporary restraining orders or injunctions for alleged illegal vote trading. This led to the shutdown of 2 domains (voteauction.com and vote-auction.com). Federal Attorney Janet Reno, the FBI and the NSA were investigating the case to ensure the integrity of the voting process on november 7th, 2000.

Over 1800 global and national News features in online media, print, television and radio have been reported (including a 27 min. CNN exclusive "Burden of Proof")[2].

"[V]ote-Auction" is one of most risky and paradoxically successfull projects by ubermorgen: it is "the only platform in the world that provide the final consumer an effective role in the American election industry". A true interchange system that finally "brings capitalism and democracy closer together“.

ubermorgen exhibited the [V]ote-auction CNN tape, Voteauction-Seals and [F]original legal Documents in the Aldrich Contemporary Art Museum 2001, The Premises Gallery Johannesburg 2002, Museu d`Art Contemporani de Barcelona 2003, Read_me 2.4 Helsinki 2003, Konsthall Malmoe 2004, Kunsthaus Graz 2004.

A follow up „legal art“ action called "The Injunction Generator" [4] was awarded with a "Honorary Mention" at the Prix Ars Electronica 2003. The Injunction Generator [4] is a artistic software module which claims to generate on request legal injunctions and personalized documentation in .rtf/.pdf format to force a site into taking its contents offline.

Carrying on with their principles of 'radical corporative marketing strategy' (Media Hacking), the artists group ubermorgen has produced an effective and credible interface which helps creating one's own documented cease-and-desist request, which is also automatically sent to the DNS administrators, to the site's owner and to some journalists to trick them into supporting the 'public trial'. Fall 2004, ubermorgen collaborated with Jorgen Follested on SELLtheVOTE.COM[6] and exhibted *THE*AGENCY* [for manual Election Recounts] in a solo-exhibition at Kunsthaus Graz, medien.KUNSTLABOR Gallery.

http://vote-auction.net

THE INJUNCTION GENERATOR
ipnic.org

ubermorgen's legal art.

With their usual controversial and iconoclast spirit, Ubermorgen, an artist group created by some of the members of etoy, realized The Injunction Generator, a software module which claims to generate on request legal injunctions and personalized documentation in .rtf/.pdf format to force a site into taking its contents offline. Carrying on with their principles of 'radical corporative marketing strategy', the group has produced an effective and credible interface which helps creating one's own documented cease-and-desist request, which is also automatically sent to the DNS administrators, to the site's owner and to some journalists to trick them into supporting the 'public trial'. The project is published on the IP-NIC domain, an acronym which mimics the official protocols (Internet Protocol - Network Information Center), revisited as 'Internet Partnership for No Internet Content'. This sarcastic provocation (a 'public shutdown service') was conceived after experiencing a similar mishap for the [V]ote-auction project, which invited american citizens to put up their vote for auction. At the time (2000) an email injunction by an american court was sent to the swiss provider hosting the site, who took them immediately offline even though email documents aren't legally considered official and even though Swiss is outside of american jurisdiction. [Neural.it]

2004 *THE*AGENCY* [for manual Election Recounts]

*THE*AGENCY* SEAL, Pixel on Screen
Courtesy of the artist, medien.KUNSTLABOR, Kunsthaus Graz, 2004

Gallery-Visitor votes on Florida Absentee Ballot
November 2, 2004

Foto courtesy of the artist, medien.KUNSTLABOR, Kunsthaus Graz

http://ubermorgen.com/*THE*AGENCY*/