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Electronic Disturbance Theater

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Electronic Disturbance Theater 2.0

The Electronic Disturbance Theater (EDT) is an artist and activist collective founded in 1997 by Ricardo Dominguez, Brett Stalbaum, Stefan Wray and Carmin Karasic. The group became known for developing FloodNet, a web-based tool used to stage virtual sit-ins and other forms of electronic civil disobedience, initially in solidarity with the Zapatistas in Chiapas, Mexico.

History

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The Electronic Disturbance Theater was founded in 1997 by Ricardo Dominguez, Brett Stalbaum, Stefan Wray and Carmin Karasic.[1] Taking the idea of the American Civil Rights Movement of the 1960s, the EDT members used their real names.[2] As a collective, they organized and programmed computer software to show their views against anti-propagandist and military actions, mobilizing micronetworks to act in solidarity by staging virtual sit-ins online and allowing the emergence of a collective presence in direct digital actions.

A second iteration of the group, called Electronic Disturbance Theater 2.0, included Brett Stalbaum, Amy Sara Carroll, Elle Mehrmand, Micha CÃĄrdenas, and Ricardo Dominguez.[3]

FloodNet

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Floodnet software, September 9, 1998

FloodNet was a Java applet developed by EDT member Brett Stalbaum for conducting coordinated virtual sit-ins. Participants accessed a FloodNet page whose software repeatedly requested pages from a selected target website. When used simultaneously by large numbers of participants, the requests were intended to slow or temporarily make the target site unavailable, functioning as a denial-of-service attack.[4][5] EDT first used FloodNet in 1998 in support of the Zapatistas in Chiapas, Mexico. An April 10 action targeted the website of Mexican president Ernesto Zedillo; later actions targeted Mexican government sites and, in September 1998, the websites of Zedillo, the U.S. Department of Defense, and the Frankfurt Stock Exchange.[4][5] FloodNet drew on earlier forms of online protest in which participants simultaneously and repeatedly accessed a target website. In December 1995, the Italian collective Strano Network organized a coordinated "Net' Strike" against French government websites in protest against French nuclear testing in the Pacific. Participants manually reloaded the targeted pages; FloodNet later automated a similar process.[6] The 1997 Acteal massacre, in which 45 members of the pacifist indigenous group Las Abejas were killed in Chiapas, became an important context for EDT's early actions. In an April 1998 action against the website of Mexican president Ernesto Zedillo, FloodNet allowed participants to request nonexistent pages containing terms such as "justice" or "human rights", causing the server to return 404 error messages. In another iteration, participants submitted the names of people killed at Acteal, placing them in the targeted server's error log.[7]

FloodNet also prompted technical countermeasures from its targets. During a June 10, 1998 action against Mexico's Secretariat of the Interior, EDT reported that the target site deployed code that opened repeated browser windows on participants' computers, potentially forcing them to restart their systems.[8] During the September 1998 action against the U.S. Department of Defense, Pentagon technicians used a Java applet that detected FloodNet requests and repeatedly opened empty browser windows on participants' computers.[5] On January 1, 1999, EDT released the Disturbance Developers Kit, which included FloodNet and made the software available for use by other activist groups.[9] Later that year, during the 1999 Seattle WTO protests, the British activist collective Electrohippies adapted FloodNet for an online action against World Trade Organization websites.[10]

Electronic Disturbance Theater 2.0

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The group received media attention for their 2007 project, the Transborder Immigrant Tool (TBT), which sends experimental poetry to users in addition to helping them find water and safe routes when crossing the Mexican-American border.[11] EDT have described this project as the next step of electronic civil disobedience, or ECD 2.0.[12] The Transborder Immigrant Tool was shown in numerous museums and galleries in 2010, including the California Biennial at the Orange County Museum of Art, the Museum of Contemporary Art San Diego, and the Galería de la Raza in San Francisco.[13][14][15] The project is maintained by California Institute for Telecommunications and Information Technology.[11] Electronic Disturbance Theater came under investigation for their virtual sit-in in support of the 2010 March 4 strikes and occupations in support of public education.[16]

The Transborder Immigrant Tool (TBT)

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Origins

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The TBT project was initiated in the late 2000s. In an interview for Arte Útil, Dominguez tells performance art researcher Gemma Medina how the project was inspired by a work that Stalbaum was doing with his artist partner, Paula Poole.[17]

Stalbaum and Poole were considering doing a locative media practice project that used artificial intelligence to consider and examine dangerous hiking roads for a virtual hiker system to aid in areas near Southern California’s deserts.[17] In reaction to this, Dominguez saw the potential to apply this type of location media project to aid migrants' travels through the Sonoran Desert, and later on to also help them potentially locate water caches that would be left by non-governmental organizations.[18][19]

The project received funding from a Transnational Communities Award, the Center for the Humanities at the University of California, San Diego, and the California Institute for Telecommunications and Information Technology (Calit2). In a 2010 interview, Dominguez said that the three sources had provided approximately $15,000 in funding since 2007.[20][21] The project also worked with Water Station Inc. and Border Angels, which provided locations of water caches for inclusion in the tool.[18][19] === How TBT Works === The TBT was designed as a mobile application for inexpensive GPS-enabled phones. It used preloaded coordinates to identify nearby water caches maintained by humanitarian organizations and guided users toward them through visual, audio, and haptic cues. The application also provided desert-survival information and played experimental poetry by EDT member Amy Sara Carroll.[22][23] Brett Stalbaum and UC San Diego undergraduate Jason Najarro wrote the core software in Java 2 Micro Edition (J2ME) for the Motorola i455, using Stalbaum's Walkingtools software library.[23] The developers described the application as addressing a "last mile" problem: assisting a traveler who had already crossed much of the desert but had become lost or dehydrated and needed to locate nearby water.[23][24] Its navigation system incorporated a metaphor of dowsing, using changes in sound and vibration to indicate the direction of a selected water cache.[23] ===Art, Activism, and Ecopoetics=== Amy Sara Carroll's The Desert Survival Series (La serie de sobrevivencia del desierto), a collection of 24 prose poems, formed the poetic component of the Transborder Immigrant Tool. The poems combined practical desert-survival information with experimental writing and were intended to be delivered alongside the tool's GPS guidance.[25][26] Scholars have analyzed the series in relation to ecopoetics, migration, and border security. Melissa F. Zeiger argues that the poems use design, rather than the randomness associated with some forms of avant-garde political poetry, as a political and ecological strategy.[27] J. D. Schnepf examines the combination of poetry and GPS technology as a way of imagining alternative forms of infrastructure in the U.S.–Mexico borderlands.[26] ===Deployment=== Although prototypes of the TBT were tested, the tool was never distributed to migrants crossing the border. In a 2011 interview, Dominguez said that investigations at UC San Diego had delayed deployment because the project's lawyers advised the group not to proceed while the investigation was ongoing.[28] Subsequent scholarship has described the TBT as remaining largely an artistic and conceptual project rather than a tool actually distributed to its intended users.[29]

Controversy, Media and Public Reaction

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The project received substantial media attention in late 2009 and early 2010. In March 2010, Fox News reported criticism from U.S. Representative Duncan Hunter, who questioned the use of public funds for the project. U.S. Customs and Border Protection spokesman Steven Cribby said that the agency was aware of the tool and was not particularly concerned about it, but warned that it might give migrants a false sense of confidence when crossing dangerous desert terrain.[30] Later that month, Hunter and U.S. Representatives Brian Bilbray and Darrell Issa asked UC San Diego chancellor Marye Anne Fox for information about the project's funding.[31]

UC San Diego subsequently investigated the use of university resources for the TBT project.[31] A separate investigation followed Dominguez's March 4, 2010 virtual sit-in against the University of California Office of the President, which was organized in solidarity with statewide protests against university budget cuts.[31] Minutes of a University of California faculty committee later noted that the TBT project and the electronic civil disobedience investigation should be considered separately.[32] The university's review of the TBT ultimately found no inappropriate use of university funds or effort.[33]

See also

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References

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  1. ↑ Blazevic, Marin; Feldman, Lada Cale (2014-07-02). MISPERFORMANCE : Essays in shifting perspectives. Lulu.com. ISBN 9789616572361.
  2. ↑ "One of the first cyberattacks was an 'art project' that targeted the Pentagon". March 2017.
  3. ↑ Cardenas, Micha (March 2011). "Lotte senza confini. L'Electronic Disturbance Theatre 2.0" [Struggle Without Borders: The Electronic Disturbance Theater 2.0]. Digicult (in Italian).
  4. 1 2 "When Art Meets Cyberwar" Forbes.com, December 14, 1998 12:00AM, Adam Penenberg, https://www.forbes.com/1998/12/14/penenberg_1214.html/
  5. 1 2 3 "Pentagon Deflects Web Assault" wired.com, September 10th, 1998, Niall McKay, http://archive.wired.com/politics/law/news/1998/09/14931/
  6. ↑ Denning, Dorothy E. (2001). "Activism, Hacktivism, and Cyberterrorism: The Internet as a Tool for Influencing Foreign Policy". In Arquilla, John; Ronfeldt, David (eds.). Networks and Netwars: The Future of Terror, Crime, and Militancy. RAND Corporation. pp. 239–288.
  7. ↑ Wiegmink, Pia (2011). Protest EnACTed: Activist Performance in the Contemporary United States. UniversitÃĪtsverlag Winter. ISBN 978-3-8253-5838-9.
  8. ↑ "Electronic Civil Disobedience". Electronic Disturbance Theater. Retrieved September 7, 2026.
  9. ↑ Giannachi, Gabriella (2007). The Politics of New Media Theatre: LifeÂŪâ„Ē. Routledge. p. 20. ISBN 978-0-415-34946-8.
  10. ↑ Sauter, Molly (2014). The Coming Swarm: DDoS Actions, Hacktivism, and Civil Disobedience on the Internet. Bloomsbury Academic. p. 111. ISBN 978-1-62356-822-1.
  11. 1 2 "Arte Útil / Transborder Immigrant Tool". www.arte-util.org. Retrieved 2018-09-08.
  12. ↑ Morlan, Kinsee (September 8, 2010). "After the Storm". San Diego CityBeat. Archived from the original on September 11, 2010. Retrieved September 20, 2010.
  13. ↑ "2010 California Biennial". Orange County Museum of Art. Archived from the original on 2011-10-21. Retrieved 2012-02-04.
  14. ↑ "Artists announced for Here not there: San Diego art now exhibition – opens june 6, 2010, at Museum of Contemporary Art San Diego in La Jolla". Museum of Contemporary Art San Diego. April 12, 2010.{{cite web}}: CS1 maint: deprecated archival service (link)
  15. ↑ "Transborder Immigrant Tool". Galeria de la Raza. Archived from the original on 2011-07-19. Retrieved 2010-09-20.
  16. ↑ Goodin, Dan (April 9, 2010). "'Virtual sit-in' tests line between DDoS and free speech". The Register.
  17. 1 2 Arte Util (2015-04-20). Gemma Medina Interviews Ricardo Dominguez. Retrieved 2024-12-07 – via YouTube.
  18. 1 2 Marino, Mark C. (2013). "Code as Ritualized Poetry: The Tactics of the Transborder Immigrant Tool". Digital Humanities Quarterly. 7 (1). ISSN 1938-4122.
  19. 1 2 Mark Marino, Brett Stalbaum Complete Interview, retrieved 2024-12-07
  20. ↑ Cavanaugh, Maureen; Burke, Megan (January 11, 2010). "UCSD Artists Develop Tool To Guide Illegal Border Crossers To Water". KPBS. Retrieved September 7, 2026.
  21. ↑ "Ricardo Dominguez". University of California, San Diego. Retrieved September 7, 2026.
  22. ↑ "NET ART ANTHOLOGY: Transborder Immigrant Tool". NET ART ANTHOLOGY: Transborder Immigrant Tool. 2016-10-27. Retrieved 2024-12-10.
  23. 1 2 3 4 Marino, Mark C. (2013). "Code as Ritualized Poetry: The Tactics of the Transborder Immigrant Tool". Digital Humanities Quarterly. 7 (1). ISSN 1938-4122.
  24. ↑ Marino, Mark, Brett Stalbaum Complete Interview, retrieved 2024-12-07
  25. ↑ Theater, The Electronic Disturbance (2015-06-02). "The Transborder Immigrant Tool/La herramienta transfronteriza para inmigrantes". CTheory. ISSN 1190-9153.
  26. 1 2 Schnepf, J. D. (2019-05-27). "'Hopes and Dreams toward Survival': Art and Security at the US–Mexico Border". International Feminist Journal of Politics. 21 (3): 512–518. doi:10.1080/14616742.2019.1611381. ISSN 1461-6742.
  27. ↑ Zeiger, Melissa Fran (2019-04-27). "The Ecopoetics of Survival: The Transborder Immigrant Tool and The Desert Survival Series // La ecopoÃĐtica de la supervivencia: Transborder Immigrant Tool y The Desert Survival Series". Ecozon@: European Journal of Literature, Culture and Environment. 10 (1): 99–116. doi:10.37536/ECOZONA.2019.10.1.2857. ISSN 2171-9594.
  28. ↑ Warren, Louis (2011). "The Art of Crossing Borders: Migrant Rights and Academic Freedom". Boom: A Journal of California. 1 (4): 26–30. doi:10.1525/boom.2011.1.4.26.
  29. ↑ Newell, Bryce Clayton; Gomez, Ricardo; Guajardo, VerÃģnica E. (2016). "Information seeking, technology use, and vulnerability among migrants at the United States–Mexico border". The Information Society. 32 (3): 176–191. doi:10.1080/01972243.2016.1153013.
  30. ↑ "Critics Blast Transborder Immigrant Tool as 'Irresponsible' Use of Technology". Fox News. 2010-03-10. Retrieved 2026-09-07.
  31. 1 2 3 Donohue, Andrew (2010-04-06). "Developer of Cell Phone Tool for Migrants Under Investigation by UCSD". Voice of San Diego. Retrieved 2026-09-07.
  32. ↑ "University Committee on Computing and Communications meeting minutes" (PDF). University of California. July 1, 2010. Retrieved September 7, 2026.
  33. ↑ Losh, Elizabeth (2012). "Hacktivism and the Humanities: Programming Protest in the Era of the Digital University". In Gold, Matthew K. (ed.). Debates in the Digital Humanities. University of Minnesota Press.
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