Sarkofree

Describe your idea and concept of your work in relation to the festival outlines:

This work takes the shape of a small, easy to install add-on for the Firefox web browser. Once installed, the user has the ability to make French president Nicolas Sarkozy and his wife disappear from the Internet -- and I don't mean blocking pages, but more subtly removing the pictures and text paragraphs that mention them.
So yes, it's a joke. But it's also
1. A very serious reaction to the hysterical media exposure of those two characters (although they've gotten slightly better since the first release of the add-on).
2. An invitation for people to imagine "a world without...", with direct illustration.
3. An experiment in the semantics of tools: here is a computer program, it is purely a tool, isn't it? But it carries meaning, it raises questions, and triggers debates on hundreds of blogs...
4. An invitation, finally, to meditate on the power of the web browser, as a tool, in an age where we rely more and more on the Internet to know the world around us: you trust your browser blindly, you don't even see it -- it's "just a tool" --, but what if it starts distorting "reality"?

What kind of communication approach do you use?

Minimal direct communication, although a blog was open after the tool gained popularity to answer some common questions and criticisms. But it was initially just "lying there" on a webpage for a few months until a few people tried it and it "caught": the meaning, the communication, is the tool and the experience of using it.

What are in your opinion concrete benefits to the society because of your communication?

I suppose it's triggered a few discussions, but no "epiphany": the hyper-exposition phenomenon it denounces was never an original find. The most positive, concrete, touching and surprising thing for me was the number of emails i received along the lines of "Thank you so much for this" -- I had intended it as a joke, and then realized that there were actually not a few people for whom the omnipresence of Our Presidential Highness was a source of real distress... A young woman told me she'd had dreams of him chasing her! So, they liked the rosy glasses; it's not how I'd meant it, but it's also useful in a way, I guess.
More than a year later, there are still, according to Mozilla's site, hundreds of people using it, and I still get complaints when I'm not fast enough to upgrade the code for new version of Firefox.

What did you personally learn from creating your submitted work?

The main lesson seems, to me, that tools carry meaning, probably even more so than text. When you use the tool, it directly interacts with your perception, your "doing", not your rational thinking, so the message touches you more intimately. I suspected it, but did not imagine it would work so well.
A second lesson is the power of simple, minimal things : one use, one button to click. Technical refinement gets in the way of semantics.

Why is your work, GOOD communication WORK?

It's simple, efficient, accessible to a very wide audience (only minimal computer-literacy is required), and stands on its own without needing the author next to it to explain what it's about.

Where and how do you intent do implement your work?

It has been implemented as an experimental add-on and left on a stand-alone "googlepage" until it caught momentum a few months later (why then? I have no idea!)

Did your intervention had an effect on other Media. If yes, describe the effect? (Has other media reported on it- how? Were you able to change other media with your work- how?)