egoscope
Giselle Beiguelman

egoscope was presented to the public as a post-subject being mediated by global nets, someone operated by telecommunication systems, an archetype and a redundancy of all media available on line. An alter-ego of the urban culture of 21st century, egoscope is (or was) a disembodied character, made of reprocessed and recycled media fragments. A no-gender, ageless without nationality persona, a mutant produced by trademarks, gadgets and images, who inhabits networked spaces.

The teleintervention discussed not only new subjectivities formats, elaborated in networked environments, but also new forms of creation, based upon collective and anonymous practices of authorship, fundamental to the project realization.

From August 5th to 20th, Internet users were invited to send URLs answering to different situations: What are egoscope's readings, listening etc.? Does egoscope lives in an apartment, has an address, a car, a motorcycle? What kind of clothes egoscope wears? Does egoscope eat fast food? What kind of restaurant egoscope goes? Is egoscope addicted to something? What does /Where does egoscope go by night?

It was not obligatory to answer those questions and egoscope participants were free to submit any site site to the panel, and this was capital in order to multiply egoscope nuances as a mutant personality with multiple identities.

In short, the teleintervention worked in this way:

• The public choose and submitted an URL by egoscope web site
• The URL was then stored in a database hosted at Eletromidia (the panel company) Intranet.
• If the URL was already stored at the database it was automatically converted by software to VGA format, saved as avi file and uploaded to the panels
• If the URL was not stored in the database the system administrator (me) checked it to see if it matches the technological restrictions (no pop ups are permitted due to the database configuration) and editorial premises (child abuse, homophobic propaganda and racist web sites were forbidden, nevertheless nobody sent this kind of disgusting materials).

The URLs appeared as advertisements, dispersed among other adds, on two electronic panels of of 20 m2 each, situated at avenida Faria Lima, in front of Shopping Center Iguatemi, where 120 thousand people pass by everyday.

Drivers and pedestrians certainly understood some of these URLs as one more advertisement. Nevertheless, the street audience was submitted to the same processes of interaction and passivity of our protagonist. All material captured by server that manages the e-panels could be checked on line, by images shot with web cams located below the e-panels.

The web sites appeared following the submissions order and according to the panel schedule (1 insertion of 10" every 3'). Some of them were published twice or more times, depending on the users choices and on the on line traffic. Some were not displyed at all because of the short time I had in the panel (90 insertions/day).

Because of the project technological structure (see technology) and its conditions of vehiculation in the electronic panels, following the order of the ads scheduled to be vehiculated, its reception was intercepted by processes of passivity and interaction, entropy and acceleration, outlined by its delays.

Those delays stressed the confusion of limits between art, advertising and information, since it was very difficult to differentiate, on the panels webcams, what was an egoscope insertion from materials of the other panel's users (commercial companies ads and public services).

In this sense we say can that the delay in the context of this multi-user teleintervention between submissions and publication reinforced the hybridism of these terms (art, advertising and information), which are typical of all digital media based on on line systems.

Paradoxically, it is only now through the egoscope database, after the teleintervention and on the Web, the most fragmented media and space, where it is possible to have an unified vision on egoscope. Nevertheless, this unified vision will never compose an imaginary picture, a fake cut & paste body.

As it was said before egoscope is a post-subject, and because of this is "no-ontological", has many faces, identities, is multiple, fragmented and distributed. In a phrase, egoscope is a mediated by media character. A media only personality with everybody bodies who, at least, updated McLuhan, pointing to a new situation where the interface is the message.