ARCHIVE

Our nights are spent plowing the Internet, like whales straining biomass, collecting the building blocks for our next composition. Each piece starts with a theme, a simple idea, and then we set out with instant coffee and potato chips or Skittles. I wish we could say that we are methodical, that we cut through cyberspace like lasers, like birds of pray, like the liquid terminator, like the drill of a rock star dentist—but we stray. We want to confess our weakness. We are sinners. “Wide open beavers?” That’s not what I searched for. On the other hand … the Internet is like that, full of temptation. For every gem we must claw our way through endless heaps of filth, sleaze, and annoying animated pop-ups. We turn off our content filters for you. We sully our pure heart and rewire our brains for you. We catch glimpses of hairy Russian men jacking off on chatroulette for you. We think it gives us power but we are wrong. We are not Gibson’s cyberspace cowboys, cybernauts, cyberpunks, wireheads, buttonheads, hippie hackers, or super hackers flying headlong through cyberspace. We are pale and brutish, soaked with sweat and bathed in blue computer light, our mouths reeking of Ritalin are drooling ajar. We are restless and unfit for this world. We are so hungry. We are starving Breatharians—we eat the light omitted from glowing boxes. We indulge in the Internet’s bounty. We will ride this torpedo to the end. We fill our screens, we gorge our hard drives, and like junkies, we are not satisfied.

More is more is more. More pics, more tits, more dicks, more bleeding of our collective lives. We cannot hold onto these files for very long. We forget what they were and where we put them. We have to put them to use. We copy and cut and compose them by the thousands and we own none of it. We do not claim exclusivity. They are only as good as our love for them and the media they are encoded to. They are share ware, creative commons, pirated, private, copyrighted, bought-sold-regained-replicated a million times. Have it. Take it from us. It is no good hanging on our walls. It doesn’t match our egos. It reminds us—a thousand images, a thousand times—of the days and months we spent collecting, cutting, and composing them.

We like it. Oh, you like it too. You can save us. You can pardon our squandered time! You can grant us terminal relief. We are believers but only you can confirm our faith. We are like scribes of religious doctrine. The very act of transcription is worship because transcription is dissemination. We worship and disseminate these images. We will thank you with tears in our wild red eyes. It’s almost too good to be true. We are alchemists now! We have turned dust into boulders with diamonds in them—fragments of our recent past into beautiful art. Call us by our names. We are Google mashers, remixers, samplers, appropriators, and DJs. We are no longer bored and passive viewers—a one way, dead-end feed. We plus you changes everything. Success is assured! We must do it! We are Gods now! We are creators, omnipotent and just. Our vision is unmatched—like eagles we zoom through the world with the stroke of a key, a swish of the mouse. Our memories are 1000 control Z’s long and 10 terabytes deep. We lovingly serve humanity by revealing its hidden structures from our comfortable armchair universes. We can show you. We need to collect your eyeballs.