APPLIED & INTERACTIVE T h e a t r e G u i d e

Hacktivism

Hackers and activists belong to two separate social movements which have close ties in the online world. Hackers are often misrepresented by the popular press as petty-criminals with a tendency for cyber-terrorism, however most of them are simply playing with and learning from technology. Hacking is not just concerned with security breaches, as is most often the case when the term is used in news stories. Within the hacker movement, such people are known as “crackers” and are often shunned upon for giving other hackers a bad name.

When computer enthusiasts are also politically active and tend to use their knowledge of computers and the Internet to further their activism, they are known as Hacktivists. Their activities often borrow trends from Radical Theatre or other applied and interactive theatre formats.

Top : Hacktivism

Related Categories:

Books:

Activism!: Direct Action, Hacktivism and the Future of Society by Tim Jordan	Cyberpower: The Culture and Politics of the Internet by Tim Jordan	Dark Fiber: Tracking Critical Internet Culture by Geert Lovink	Hackers: Heroes of the Computer Revolution by Steven Levy	Hacker Culture by Douglas Thomas	The Hacker Ethic by Pekka Himanen with Linus Torvalds and Manuel Castells

Links:

• American Action Market - Inspired by the futures market in terror and war that the Pentagon released towards the end of July 2003 (and then immediately yanked), a consortium of computer scientists, political scientists and others announced an online futures market in White House behavior. This website will be fully functional on October 1, the day the Pentagon's now-defunct futures market was scheduled to open. (Added: 1-Aug-2003 Hits: 712 Rating: 0 Votes: 0) Rate It
  

• Bed-in for Peace - Frustrated by the events post-Sepember 11, 2001, Andy Cox and Amy Berk took to bed for 48 hours of fasting and communicating globally about alternatives to war and ways to achieve a lasting peace. This site offers online documentation of that event. (Added: 20-Mar-2003 Hits: 671 Rating: 0 Votes: 0) Rate It
  

• borderLands hackLab - The borderLands hackLab aims to provide technology for radical groups in San Diego, work towards technical self-sufficiency within their radical community. They also challenge the tradition of racism and sexism in technical education while educating people about free software ideals and the usage of free software. Generally, their goals are to create more radical technology in San Diego and provide tech solidarity abroad, specifically to the Zapatistas in Chiapas, Mexico. (Added: 30-Mar-2006 Hits: 501 Rating: 0 Votes: 0) Rate It
  

• Center for Digital Storytelling - A non-profit project development, training, and research organization dedicated to assisting people in using digital media to tell meaningful stories from their lives. Their focus is on developing large-scale projects for community, educational and business institutions using the methods and principles built around their Digital Storytelling Workshop. (Added: 9-Jul-2003 Hits: 720 Rating: 0 Votes: 0) Rate It
  

• cheesebikini - Mob Project-related website by San Francisco designer and weblogger Sean Savage. (Added: 11-Aug-2003 Hits: 714 Rating: 0 Votes: 0) Rate It
  

• Chilling Effects Clearinghouse - A joint project of the Electronic Frontier Foundation and Harvard, Stanford, Berkeley, University of San Francisco, and University of Maine law school clinics. Chilling Effects aims to support lawful online activity against the chill of unwarranted legal threats. The website offers background material and explanations of the law for people whose websites deal with topics such as Fan Fiction, Copyright, Domain Names and Trademarks, Anonymous Speech, and Defamation. (Added: 17-Mar-2003 Hits: 744 Rating: 0 Votes: 0) Rate It
  

• CriminalAnimal - A space for web-aware art and criticism about animals, humans, and the stuff in between. The idea of CriminalAnimal evolved from a Graduate Seminar in Art, taught by Lane Hall at the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee, during the spring of 2003. The site has art/criticism created specifically for the site and a selected list of scholars, artists, scientists, practitioners, activists engaged in work on animal and human cultures. (Added: 23-Jan-2005 Hits: 546 Rating: 0 Votes: 0) Rate It
  

• Cult of the Dead Cow - Established in 1984, cDc is a pioneer of hacktivism. cDc member Omega is credited with being the first to call technology-enabled political activism "hacktivism" in 1998. (Added: 17-Aug-2004 Hits: 639 Rating: 0 Votes: 0) Rate It
  

• Digital Storytelling Association - In November of 2002, representatives from 8 countries and over 25 U.S. states, came together to launch the Digital Storytelling Association. The Digital Storytelling community believes that there is a need for maintaining an ongoing collaboration between individuals and organizations, across countries and continents, with regard to the production and educational goals sustained by the potential members of such an organization. (Added: 9-Jul-2003 Hits: 662 Rating: 0 Votes: 0) Rate It
  

• Electronic Disturbance Theatre and Electronic Civil Disobedience - Electronic Disturbance Theater is a group of activists and artists engaged in developing the theory and practice of Electronic Civil Disobedience. Working at the intersections of radical politics, recombinant and performance art, and computer software design, the group has produced an device called Flood Net - web software used to flood and block an opponent’s website. (Added: 17-Mar-2003 Hits: 1029 Rating: 7.75 Votes: 4) Rate It
  

• Flash Mob New and Information - Online portal for a loosely associated group of people that come together for the express purpose of taking part in a brief and often whimsical event, organized through email and/or text messages on mobile phones and handheld devices. (Added: 11-Aug-2003 Hits: 625 Rating: 0 Votes: 0) Rate It
  

• FlockSmart - FlockSmart's goal is to facilitate the formation of Smart Mobs and build a community around them. There is no profit motive and no business model...simply the desire to take part in what Howard Rheingold calls "the next social revolution." (Added: 11-Aug-2003 Hits: 650 Rating: 0 Votes: 0) Rate It
  

• FLUX Art Space - Presents and exhibits digital art works and interdisciplinary projects by both established and emerging artists, providing an artistic forum for underprivileged and underexposed sections of multicultural communities in New York City. (Added: 27-May-2003 Hits: 654 Rating: 0 Votes: 0) Rate It
  

• Free Range Activism Website - This site carries the information produced by the Free Range Network, and a number of its partners. The idea is that community and environmental activists can work together, with no organisation except that which they agreed to, and with no limitation to the range of issues and tactics they choose to work on. The network has been very loosely operating since 1996, putting activists with needs in touch with activists with resources to service those needs. (Added: 28-Mar-2003 Hits: 491 Rating: 0 Votes: 0) Rate It
  

• Government Information Awareness - Modeled on government programs designed to consolidate information on individuals into massive databases, this system does the opposite, allowing you to scrutinize those in government: explore data, track events, find patterns, and build risk profiles, all in an effort to encourage and motivate action; giving people similar tools and technologies to those held by their government. (Added: 13-Jul-2003 Hits: 698 Rating: 0 Votes: 0) Rate It
  

• GuerrillaGirlsBroadBand - Formed in 1999 to tackle the primordial discrimination in our technologized world. Their mission is to combat racism, sexism and social injustice in the art world and beyond through electronic and other means. (Added: 13-Nov-2003 Hits: 673 Rating: 0 Votes: 0) Rate It
  

• HackLabs - We are the expression of a thousand thoughts, we are migrants across the City and the Net; we are searching for a place where our commonalities and practices can open up space-time discontinuities. We want to hack reality, and we need a lab to reassemble its basic elements. Our collective mind is replete with digital/analog technology, info-communication, knowledge-sharing, meme-spreading, participation-catalysis, and much much more. (Added: 30-Mar-2006 Hits: 506 Rating: 0 Votes: 0) Rate It
  

• Hacktivismo - An international group of hackers, human rights workers, lawyers and artists that evolved out of The Cult of the Dead Cow (cDc), a publishing and computer security group. They believe that privacy and access to information are basic human rights. Hacktivismo assumes as an ethical point of departure the principles enshrined in the Universal Declaration on Human Rights and the International Convention on Civil and Political Rights. They also support the Free Software and open-source movements. (Added: 22-Sep-2006 Hits: 426 Rating: 0 Votes: 0) Rate It
  

• Hactivist - A collection of tactical media artists, activists, engineers, and programmers attempting to regain autonomy for themselves and others through communication system reclamation. By entering this site you understand that this is a work of art and no illegal action is endorsed or performed by the creators of this site or any of the material linked to within. Autonomy by whatever means. (Added: 23-Apr-2005 Hits: 471 Rating: 0 Votes: 0) Rate It
  

• LRPD Vandal Squad - Over the past several years graffiti vandalism has exploded across the Internet, costing the industry millions of dollars. Many individual Internet users and community-based groups are working to stop the vandals and repair the damage they are causing. To investigate online graffiti vandalism, the Less Rain Police Department has put together a special task force: the Vandal Squad. Information collected by the Vandal Squad on various crime scenes is published on this website. (Added: 22-May-2003 Hits: 704 Rating: 0 Votes: 0) Rate It
  

• Mapping Contemporary Capitalism - McC is a long term software development project with the goal of creating a tool for collaborative mapping of power relations. The Software will enable groups to share their data, and then plot the interconnections between organisations, political entities, corporations, and individuals that constitute society. (Added: 2-Jun-2003 Hits: 710 Rating: 0 Votes: 0) Rate It
  

• Minneapolis Mob - This group was created to facilitate communication to individuals who have taken part in Mob events in the Twin Cities. It is a randomly occuring event that will converge on a single location for 10 minutes, take part in some form of activity and then disperse as quickly as it arrived. (Added: 11-Aug-2003 Hits: 678 Rating: 0 Votes: 0) Rate It
  

• Mob Project 1.0 - MobProject.com is a website for everything having to do with flash mobs, as well as the Mob Project of NYC. Read all the latest news regarding the subject, as well as stories/experiences, interviews, pictures, videos, etc. If it has anything to do with the Mob Project or flash mobs in general, you'll find it here. (Added: 27-Aug-2003 Hits: 691 Rating: 10.00 Votes: 2) Rate It
  

• MobLab - A live art & communication project with young artists from Japan and Germany (MobNauts), who develop creative ideas with mobile technology while traveling Japan in a bus. While traveling, the MobNauts will create occasions for individuals to meet, on both real and virtual levels, and connect to different local realities each time they stop and get out of the bus. A platform for practical experimentation in the public meeting of individuals and media. (Added: 11-Oct-2005 Hits: 507 Rating: 0 Votes: 0) Rate It
  

• OpenMute - An ambitious free resource project aiming to support cultural practice in the information era. Through the provision of server space, tools, guidance and research, OpenMute demonstrates and advocates open and collaborative ways of working and contribute to public knowledge architectures that serve practitioners’ needs over the long term. (Added: 2-Jun-2003 Hits: 654 Rating: 10.00 Votes: 1) Rate It
  

• OpenNet Initiative - The ONI mission is to investigate and challenge state filtration and surveillance practices. Our approach applies methodological rigor to the study of filtration and surveillance blending empirical case studies with sophisticated means for technical verification. Our aim is to generate a credible picture of these practices at a national, regional and corporate level, and to excavate their impact on state sovereignty, security, human rights, international law, and global governance. (Added: 19-Feb-2006 Hits: 449 Rating: 0 Votes: 0) Rate It
  

• Pervasive and Locative Arts Network - PLAN is an international and interdisciplinary research network in pervasive media and locative media funded as part of the Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council (EPSRC) Culture & Creativity programme of the UK. The network brings together practitioners from a range of disciplines including artists, technology developers and ethnographers, with the aim of advancing interdisciplinary understanding and building consortia for future collaborative projects. (Added: 24-Jan-2005 Hits: 527 Rating: 0 Votes: 0) Rate It
  

• Practical Design for Social Action - This wiki was established as part of the Technology and Social Action project to foster dialogue and collaboration between activists in social movements, voluntary and community organisations and technology designers. It was funded under the Designing for the 21st Century initiative of the Arts and Humanities Research Council and the Engineering and Physical Science Research Council. (Added: 2-Jun-2007 Hits: 409 Rating: 0 Votes: 0) Rate It
  

• Preparing for Emergencies (from HM Department of Vague Paranoia) - This is a parody of the official UK Government PFE website. Parodies are permissible under copyright law and if anyone actually mistakes this for the genuine Government web site, then they probably have more problems than getting unhelpful advice. Site creator Thomas Scott received a "firm worded" cease and desist notice from the the Cabinet Office within twelve hours of this site going online in July 2004. (Added: 28-Jul-2004 Hits: 608 Rating: 0 Votes: 0) Rate It
  

• Remote Labor Systems - Agricultural and 'service' work have, so far, largely escaped automation. But what if 'cybraceros' could replace traditional braceros? Remote Labor Systems (RLS), a project of media artist Alex Rivera, is a mock company that satirically combines the utopian promise of telepresence and robotics with US/Mexican border politics. (Added: 21-May-2003 Hits: 584 Rating: 0 Votes: 0) Rate It
  

• RTMark - RTMark receives project ideas from Internet users, acting as a brokerage that benefits from "limited liability" just like any other corporation; using this principle, they support the informative alteration of corporate products, from dolls and children's learning tools to electronic action games. Each project has its own discussion list on the RTMark website. (Added: 20-Mar-2003 Hits: 452 Rating: 0 Votes: 0) Rate It
  

• SimpleTEXT - A collaborative audio/visual public performance that relies on audience participation through input from mobile phones. The project focuses on connecting people in shared spaces by merging distributed devices with creativity and collaboration. SimpleTEXT focuses on dynamic input from participants as essential to the overall output. The result is a public, shared performance where audience members interact by sending SMS, text, or voice to a central server from their input devices. (Added: 3-Jan-2004 Hits: 521 Rating: 0 Votes: 0) Rate It
  

• Subservient President - The act of rendering and manipulating the image of another - often in ridiculous and derisive ways - is an act of protest. A traditional stomping grounds for editorial cartoonists, political criticism through caricature is something that newspaper readers have enjoyed vicariously for years. Now, with Subservient President, George W. Bush is your boy toy. Modeled after Burger King's Subservient Chicken, the site lets visitors type in commands that an animated Dubya responds to. (Added: 15-Oct-2004 Hits: 550 Rating: 0 Votes: 0) Rate It
  

• Surveillance & Society - On-line journal Surveillance & Society, edited by Dr David Wood. The website has a 'resource base' on surveillance studies, so whether you are a simple webuser, webstalker, or a border X-er, be an informed one. (Added: 1-Jul-2003 Hits: 649 Rating: 0 Votes: 0) Rate It
  

• Surveillance Camera Players - Formed in New York in 1996 to protest against the use of surveilance cameras in public places because they violate the consitutionally protected right for privacy. The group performs specially adapted plays directly in front of such cameras, and is also active in New Orleans, Tempe, Arizona, and handful of European cities. (Added: 17-Mar-2003 Hits: 635 Rating: 0 Votes: 0) Rate It
  

• Swipe - The SWIPE Toolkit is a collection of web-based tools that sheds light on personal data collection and usage practices in the United States. The tools demonstrate the value of personal information on the open market and enable people to access information encoded on a driver's license or stored in some of the many commercial data warehouses. (Added: 11-Feb-2004 Hits: 578 Rating: 10.00 Votes: 1) Rate It
  

• Teatre Virtual - A program by the Mercat de les Flors and DogonEfff developing and exploring connections between theatre and the Internet. The programme assumes the challenge of proposing another way to think about theatre in the context of the Internet. What value does theatre have in regard to live art on the Internet and what can the Internet bring to theatre making? (Added: 22-Jul-2003 Hits: 677 Rating: 0 Votes: 0) Rate It
  

• Teatron.org - A digital environment created to give life to a series of online events raising awareness of the cultural mutations that arise from theatre, the first great technology of communication. (Added: 3-Jan-2004 Hits: 602 Rating: 0 Votes: 0) Rate It
  

• The Bomb Project - A comprehensive on-line compendium of nuclear-related links, imagery and documentation. It is intended specifically as a resource for artists, and encourages those working in all media, from net.art, film and video, eco-intervention and site-specific installation to more traditional forms of agitprop, to use this site to search for raw material. The project was originally created in 2000 by Joy Garnett for First Pulse Projects. (Added: 10-Mar-2004 Hits: 528 Rating: 0 Votes: 0) Rate It
  

• The Electrohippie Collective - The electrohippies first came together in 1999 to consider how online activism could be promoted to counter the 'dot.com' take-over of cyberspace. Three years on, with the collapse of the fully commercialised Internet, they decided to break the centralised co-ordination of their activities, and agreed that their aims can be better achieved the working with other groups independently, without the publicity overhead that the electrohippies attracted. (Added: 28-Mar-2003 Hits: 689 Rating: 0 Votes: 0) Rate It
  

• The File Room - Archive of censored artistic practice which began as a physical installation in Chicago in 1994 and is now available online. Since 2001, The File Room has been maintained by the National Coalition Against Censorship in the United States collaboration with the Media Channel/One World Project. (Added: 15-Mar-2003 Hits: 464 Rating: 10.00 Votes: 1) Rate It
  

• The Hacker Ethic (Book Companion Site) - This is the companion site for the book The Hacker Ethic by Pekka Himanen with Linus Torvalds and Manuel Castells. The site contains bios, reviews and other material related to the book. (Added: 16-Jul-2003 Hits: 758 Rating: 0 Votes: 0) Rate It
  

• The Hacktivist - Dedicated to examining the theory and practice of hacktivism and electronic civil disobedience while contributing to the evolution of hacktivism by promoting constructive debate, effective direct action, and creative solutions to complex problems in order to facilitate positive change. (Added: 3-Apr-2003 Hits: 650 Rating: 0 Votes: 0) Rate It
  

• The MIT Gallery of Hacks - The site lists "Interesting Hacks To Fascinate People" since 1989. The word "hack" at MIT usually refers to a clever, benign, and "ethical" prank or practical joke, which is both challenging for the perpetrators and amusing to the MIT community, and sometimes even the rest of the world! The site makes it clear that this has nothing to do with computer (or phone) hacking, which we call "cracking". (Added: 16-Jul-2003 Hits: 617 Rating: 0 Votes: 0) Rate It
  

• The Post-PATRIOT Magnetic Motto Maker - American artist Amy Alexander's work PPMMM contends that the government has pilfered the popular 'exquisite corpse' magnet poetry sets -- consisting of dozens of magnetized words ready to be creatively configured -- that usually adorn refrigerators. Alexander has programmed a desktop version of word-magnet-poetry, an application for home-sloganeering and motto-making, available for both Macs and PCs. (Added: 9-Jul-2003 Hits: 655 Rating: 10.00 Votes: 1) Rate It
  

• Together We Can Defeat Capitalism - A loose collective of cultural guerrillas, whose aim is to raise questions about early 21st Century Capitalism and have some fun too. Foremost among their projects is The Anti-Capitalist Operating System, a stripped-down desktop available to anyone via a free downloadable program, which tweaks a site visitor's browser so it appears as if a new operating system is being used. (Added: 20-Mar-2003 Hits: 682 Rating: 0 Votes: 0) Rate It
  

• Turbulence - A project of New Radio and Performing Arts, Inc. that has as its core mission the commissioning of net art works by emerging and established artists. Since 1996 Turbulance has has proven an invaluable resource for quality new media projects and provided vital material for teaching and new media initiatives in universities, galleries, festivals, conferences, and museum exhibits worldwide. (Added: 11-Feb-2004 Hits: 578 Rating: 0 Votes: 0) Rate It
  

• WebActive - WebActive offers progressive activists an up-to-date resource on the World Wide Web to find other organizations and individuals with similar values and interests. WebActive aims to bring the networking power of the Web and the Internet to bear on social and political issues. This is a project of RealNetworks, Inc., which was founded in February 1994 by its Chairman & CEO, Rob Glaser. (Added: 18-Mar-2003 Hits: 454 Rating: 0 Votes: 0) Rate It
  

• WJ-S: web performances - A software and a flexible, high speed connexion public device for web performances which allows actors of the Internet, webjockeys, sound and image artists, netartists, bloggers, graphic designers, flashers, programmers, curators, hacktivists, new media theorists, pioneers and web mutants...to play live with the full scope of contents available in the wideness of the web. (Added: 14-Aug-2007 Hits: 343 Rating: 0 Votes: 0) Rate It
  

Designed and maintained by Toni Sant
Last updated on: 13-Feb-2012 - 13:07:53