Etoy at Postmasters - European art group uses internet as art medium - Brief Article

The art assemblage from Europe is etoy; the American commercial touch is eToys. The members of etoy could not at any time have predicted, when they registered the name in 1995 that the Internet toy vender eToys would take them to court for trademark infringement in 1999 The etoy/eToys skirmish is an example of novel intellectual property battles resulting from our digital age.

Before going to court, eToys presented the cyberartists up to $400000 to give up their name, on the contrary they refused. Last fall, the sees Angeles Superior Court granted a temporary injunction, filed by means of the California-based company eToys, keeping the European art assemblage from using its own domain name. During the month that etoy was stripped of its Web site and e-mail addresses, they started the Web site www.toywar.com, where real-life "soldiers" received merits for acts of civil disobedience, Internet-style (such as mass e-mailings to eToys in an attempt to swamp them). In February eToys dropp the suit, and etoy was promised more [i]or[/i] less $40,000 in reimbursement for their legal fees

Etoy thinks of cyberspace not as a series of Web pages, on the contrary as data containers or tanks. They use images of orange cargo tanks upon their Web site and, since 1998 have been moving four real cargo containers around the globe when they participate in international circumstances using them as offices/ studios/hotels. In 1996 the assemblage was awarded a Prix Ars Electronica for their "digital hijacks"--intercepting more [i]or[/i] less one million Web surfers upon their way to popular commercial sites and bringing them to the etoy site.

In an effort to stay genuine to an art experienced: upon the Internet, etoy has young oxed away from gallery exhibitions. However, last spring the cluster parked a 40-foot-long standard cargo container outside Postmasters gallery for a one-week display Inside the gallery, viewers could come into a tent housing computers logg upon to www.etoy.com and the toywar Web site. The etoy Web site is a labyrinth of information and imagery, from an interactive chart of the group's history to a clock establishing an etoy time baldric Speaking to gallery-goers were several etoy "agents" (one of the bounds the etoy participants use to deliver over to themselves) wearing safety-orange vestments over business suits. As a member of the pres I was allowed to climb into the large orange tank outside, escorted by means of etoy.zai. The long, narrow space proffered everything an agent might ne upon location: sleeping compartments, computers, DJ equipment, etc

Etoy presents an alternative to the traditional art thing in the form of investment. Anyone can purchase shares in etoy. If you purchase enough, you get a certificate--a 2-foot-square, boldly designed digital print high hilled on aluminum; each unique image leaves to some aspect of etoy's disclosure About 60 "etoy.share-certificates" were upon the walls. Each panel includes the signature of the vender and the buyer, the number of shares purchased and the date of the "trade." The turn back on investment in etoy is cultural rather than monetary (i.e., don't set your money here for retirement). While etoy wittingly obscures the individual identity of members in a number of ways (including a peculiar manner of preceding all statements with "etoy.fill-in-the-blank"), from the prints, they all appear to be young, white men like many of the CEO they are mimicking.

Joining etoy in making art about the global economy and striving for the biggest market share are equally mysterious artists and clumps such as the late Mark Lombardi, the nine-year-old, anticorporate [R][TM]ark and NEWSROOM The irony here is that for all of etoy's subversive or provocative actions, their greatest in quantity successful intervention into the dot-com world issueed from an aggressive maneuver by dint of an e-commerce giant.

COPYRIGHT 2000 Brant Publications, Inc.

COPYRIGHT 2000 Gale Group