FloodNet Favorite 

Date: 

Jan 1 1998

Location: 

Online

FloodNet was a conceptual artwork and a tool for online collective action.

Developed by the collective Electronic Disturbance Theater (EDT), it took the form of a Java applet that allowed users to send useless requests or personalized messages to a remote web server in a coordinated fashion, thereby slowing it down and filling its error logs with words of protest and gibberish—a kind of virtual sit-in.

Initially developed in support of the Mexican insurgent group the Zapatistas by the collective Electronic Disturbance Theater, FloodNet combined political tactics with poetics. It aimed not to cause destruction, but to create a context for people to gather together online to “bear witness to injustice.”

Posted by srduncombe on

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