ARTIST RESEARCH: Eva and Franco Mattes

Please note that some of the information in this post was submitted for Contemporary art theory assessment. 

Eva and Franco Mattes (also known as 0100101110101101.ORG ) are a duo of artists based in New York City.they are counted among the pioneers of the Net Art movement. They produce art involving the ethical and political issues arising from the inception of the Internet. The work investigates the fabrication of situations, where fact and fiction merge into one. 

Audience interactivity is an integral part of the Mattes practice their definition of interactivity being associated with the freedom that the user has to not only govern their own movements but to duplicate, manipulate and simulate the subject matter. The Mattes state "by their mouse clicks they choose one of the routes fixed by the author(s), they only decide what to see before and what after"

"the beholder becomes an artist and the artist becomes a beholder: a powerless witness of what happens to his work" (Baumgartel 1999). These concepts of interactivity suggesting that the virtual space is comparable to the localised gallery space and visa versa as one decided what space to view and when.

ABOVE: Video Source https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=19DI0h8flVQ
A talk by artists and SVA faculty members Eva and Franco Mattes. Using the Internet, video and performance, the duo create work about the ethics of long-distance interactions—such as those that take place over social media—which often create situations where it is difficult to distinguish


https://vimeo.com/11467722
Look at this for a deep insight on the video:

brooklynrail.org/2010/06/artseen/eva-and-franco-mattes-aka-0100101110101101org-reality-is-overrated

Above image source: Eva and Franco Mattes No fun 2006, performance art. Source: 0100101110101101.org 2017. Accessed 15 September. https://0100101110101101.org/no-fun/

In No Fun, the Mattes staged a false suicide for people on the social networking and video chat website Chatroulette. As the websites name suggests, users are randomly paired with strangers and can video chat with one another until either of the participants decides to leave the chat and move on to another random pairing. While broadcast on the Internet, the suicide featured Franco's actual body, rather than that of an avatar, a key to the element of realism and real time was that a portion of the chat screen was visible, so that participants could see themselves in realtime. The event was witnessed by scores of Chatrouletters, their reactions were varied ranging from shock to disinterest, some in disbelief, others laughed and insulted the corpse, while some took photos with their mobile phones. It is important to not that some were completely unmoved by what was before them, and only one, out of several thousand, contacted the police.

As it is unclear to the audience on Chatroulette as to the authenticity of the event what they witnesses is closer in resemblance to subtle ad-disruption. Exaggerating the lack of real engagement and distance in online encounters, No Fun creates a situation of the most dire loneliness, to slow down the endless social media flux with a moment of absolute reality (Mattes 2010).

In No Fun the Mattes draw on the long history of public performance art which plays on interactions and permission, in this case the lack of permissions resulted in it being quickly banned from YouTube. Tho the key to the success of No Fun was its un-mediated interaction between an unsuspecting public and the Mattes through the internet, with complete disregard for locality during the entire interaction process.

(The video was banned from YouTube)