[spectre] The Sound of eBay - Pressrelease - Enjoy the Silence!

Mon Jul 7 15:00:14 CEST 2008

OFFICIAL STATEMENT
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE – Enjoy the Silence!
Vienna, San Jose, July, 2008

http://sound-of-ebay.com/pdfs/SoE_Press_Release_no_1.pdf

The Sound of eBay
an UBERMORGEN.COM project
http://www.Sound-of-eBay.com

Forget the technology,
it’s lustful entertainment, baby!

ABSTRACT

How does it really work?

We generate unique songs by using eBay user-data. You simply enter  
any eBay username (your own or someone else's) and add your email  
address so we can notify you as soon as the song is ready for  
downloading. Then click „generate“ and our robots sprawl out into the  
net to collect data. Then the robots bring back the data to our sc3  
supercollider soundgeneration-engine. Finally, the complex software- 
machine starts generating a score-file which is then transformed into  
your unique but uniform song and presented in teletext porn style! We  
sell out your human needs digitally...

STORY

First there was silence...
Then there was data...
But there was no story...
Just images and sounds...

Cities were built and a grid was laid on top of the topography

Within this global grid a company named eBay became the largest  
marketplace, with very local marketspaces. eBay is romantic and  
seductive, not like the local fleamarkets in Paris (Le marché aux  
puces de Saint-Ouen) but sexed up a million times bigger and  
spherically transcended, much more effective and thoroughly  
commercialized. We love it! "The Sound of eBay" is the affirmative  
high-end low-tech contribution to the atomic soundtrack of the new  
peer-to-peer hyper-catastrophic shock-capitalism.

The sound is cool, the machine produces masses of songs and  
replicates millions of times throughout the networks – flooding the  
net, a bubbling sea of artifical songs visualized in CONTEMPORARY  
teletext – a continental drift within a macromusic universal urban  
scape. Trash-Radio.

Forget the technology,
its lustful entertainment, baby!

http://www.Sound-of-eBay.com

EKMRZ-TRILOGY

UBERMORGEN.COM is attracted by the surface of Google, Amazon and  
eBay, the three historical e-giants brilliantly surviving the dotcom  
boom and the legendary crash at the end of that era. Back then and  
still today the three kings form the powerful spearhead of e-commerce  
(EKMRZ). By creating the third piece – The Sound of eBay – we wrap up  
the trilogy we had started in 2005. Thanks to Alessandro Ludovico and  
Paolo Cirio for the GWEI - Google Will Eat Itself and Amazon Noir –  
The Big Book Crime collaboration

GWEI – Google Will Eat Itself, 2005/06
http://www.gwei.org

Amazon Noir – The Big Book Crime, 2006/07
http://www.amazon-noir.com

The Sound of eBay, 2008/09
http://www.Sound-of-eBay.com

SONGS

We love it! The Sound of eBay is our affirmative low-tech  
contribution to the ATOMIC soundtrack of the peer-to-peer hyper- 
catastrophic shock-capitalism. Reference: Peter Weibels Song "Sex in  
der Stadt" (Sex in the City) from 1982 - Hotel Morphila Orchester,  
where PW "raps" (sings) sex-ads from a newspaper.

Here some sample songs from the SoE-Database:
http://sound-of-ebay.com/songs/080611_014322_jibscott.mp3
http://sound-of-ebay.com/songs/080611_004144_girlnumber4.mp3
http://sound-of-ebay.com/songs/080610_234922_beautifulcynic.mp3
http://sound-of-ebay.com/songs/080610_221629_toastyfrog.mp3
http://sound-of-ebay.com/songs/080610_212727_rhit_mst3kjunkie.mp3
currently REGISTERED 560.544 eBay accounts - 1.3 million songs (6.5  
TB data)

TECHNOLOGY

eBay's concept is based on transactions between buyers and sellers –  
transactions between human beings, not consumers and companies. The  
eBay-Generator software reflects this concept in a way that it does  
not only generate your free personal song. The black box will be  
released a standalone application published under gnu public licence  
– written in supercollider (sc3). A free application that any user  
can install on her/his Computer to produce an endless stream of  
bubbling eBay-grooves. Each song has a SoE-MD5 key of authentification.

Every user has a signature which corresponds with another users  
signature. Chains of transactions, a swarm of bots, each song has a  
memory and therefore has it’s own history. Steganography of songs...  
can you reverse engineer the string? The robots run into the bazar of  
fraud (eBay.com), grab sensitive (creditcard information, bank  
details,  passwords, etc if available) and non-sensitive user-data  
(bought and sold items, prices, comments, ratings, etc),  
recontextualizes them and creates new, individual and unique  
profiles. In-depth tech description:

http://sound-of-ebay.com/pdfs/SoE_Technology.pdf

SCORE

5.075  n_set 1093 gate 0
  5.1  s_new hat 1094 0 1 out 0 ts 5 amp 0.3
  5.1  s_new blipBase 1095 0 1 out 0 freq 1.2857142857143 length  
0.083333333333333 rq 0.35 emph 20 amp 0.45 a 38 b 39 n1 2 n2 3
  5.1  s_new bd 1096 0 1 out 0 amp 0.5 rq 0.35 emph -20 delaytime  
0.001 decay 0.4
  5.1  g_new 1097 1 1
  5.1  s_new sd 1099 0 1 out 0 amp 0.3
  5.100000001  s_new system_link_audio_2 1098 3 1097 out 0 in 16  
fadeTime 0.02 gate 1 doneAction 3
  5.100000002  s_new sampleOutMono 1100 0 1097 out 16 bufnum 0  
startpos 0 duration 3.7151927437642 amp 0.6
  5.100000002  s_new panHelper 1101 1 1097 out 16
  5.100000002  s_new vocodeIt 1102 1 1097 out 16 base 0 bufnumA 143  
bufnumB 144 note 0.75 xfade 1
  5.2  n_set 1095 gate 0
  5.225  s_new hat 1103 0 1 out 0 ts 5 amp 0.3
  5.225  s_new blipBase 1104 0 1 out 0 freq 2.5714285714286 length  
0.083333333333333 rq 0.35 emph 20 amp 0.45 a 38 b 39 n1 2 n2 3
  5.325  n_set 1104 gate 0
  5.35  s_new hat 1105 0 1 out 0 ts 7 amp 0.3
  5.35  s_new blipBase 1106 0 1 out 0 freq 1.2857142857143 length  
0.083333333333333 rq 0.35 emph 20 amp 0.45 a 38 b 39 n1 2 n2 3
  5.350000002  n_set 1102 out 16 base 0 bufnumA 143 bufnumB 144 note  
2.6666666666667 xfade 1
5.45  n_set 1106 gate 0

THEORY

"...As part of their sustainable trilogy the critical level of  
"UBERMORGEN.COM"’s media-integrated storytelling has reached the  
coastline of business-island "eBay". Braking the waves of cyberspaced  
e-commerce tsunamis by transforming singular binary micro- 
transactions of homo oeconomicus into auditive vortexes and granular  
compositions by pirating privacy....

...By discovering this undetected entropolis, the colonization of  
data-hungry network-crawlers and blackboxed info-transformers is  
feeding a suspicious synaesthesia within the neatly structured  
columns of profit-orientated socio-technological networks..."

Theorycoding by Grischinka Teufl
http://www.Sound-of-eBay.com/700.html
http://sound-of-ebay.com/pdfs/SOE_UBERMORGEN.COM_grischinka_teufl.pdf

VISUALCODING

Visualcoding by  LIA
http://www.sound-of-eBay.com/visualcoding.html

The visualcoding by LIA - http://www.strangeThingsHappen.org - is  
created in „Director“ and viewed with shockwave, proprietary software  
- with restrictions on use or private modification. The Free Software  
Foundation issued the rule that we cannot install any proprietary  
program on our computers except temporarily for the specific purpose  
of writing a free replacement for that very program.

STYLE

Teletxt-porn by lizvlx: by working with the three main EKMRZ (e- 
commerce) web-sites Google, Amazon and eBay, the last target was  
approached with an antique but royal discipline: TELETEXT. Now  
teletext has to appear in full glamour and with it`s highest visual  
attraction: PORN. lizvlx scanned thousands of porn pages of austrian  
cable television to come up with the finest pixel-boobs & pixel-pussies.
Please see also „The Teletext Babez“ video by drx/Bodenstaendig/ 
Maarten Ploeg, 2001:
http://drx.a-blast.org/~drx/projects/teletext/index.en.html

AUTHORS

UBERMORGEN.COM [A/CH/USA, *1999], UBERMORGEN.COM is an artist duo  
created in Vienna, Austria, by Lizvlx and Hans Bernhard, a founder of  
etoy. Behind UBERMORGEN.COM we can find one of the most unmatchable  
identities – controversial and iconoclast – of the contemporary  
European techno-fine-art avant-garde. Their open circuit of  
conceptual art, drawing, software art, pixel- painting, computer  
installations, net.art, sculpture and digital actionism (media  
hacking) transforms their brand into a hybrid Gesamtkunstwerk. The  
permanent amalgamation of fact and fiction points toward an extremely  
expanded concept of one’s working materials, that for UBERMORGEN.COM  
also include (international) rights, democracy and global  
communication (input-feedback loops). “Ubermorgen” is the German word  
both for “the day after tomorrow” or “super-tomorrow”.
http://www.ubermorgen.com

CREDITS

Soundcoding Stefan Nussbaumer
Visualcoding LIA
Theorycoding Grischinka Teufl
Scriptcoding Erich Kachel

The project is supported by Rhizome.org commissions, BM:UKK  
(Austria), City of Vienna (MA7/Netznetz.net), The Austrian Embassy in  
Mexico, net culture lab, eine Innovationsinitiative von Telekom  
Austria, Jan Lauth, Rencontres Internationales Paris/Berlin/Madrid,  
lo-res.org
http://www.sound-of-ebay.com/800.html

„The Sound of eBay“ is an UBERMORGEN.COM project

TEAMWORK

Networking is working... The different parts of „The Sound of eBay“  
were compiled in various geotechnical-locations: The soundcoding by  
Stefan Nussbaumer was mainly realized in Vienna, Tyrol and Madrid,  
the Scriptcoding was realized in Germany and implemented in Austria,  
the visucalcoding by LIA was done in Portugal and implemented in  
Spain and the theorycoding was prepared in Berlin, written in Vienna  
and Tokyo and implemented in Madrid. Teletextporn by lizvlx was  
created in St. Moritz (Switzerland), the first interactive AV- 
installations were put together in Mexico-City and in Madrid, the web- 
server is located in the „crypta“ (VIVI Vienna, lo-res.org server)  
and the coordination, PR and web-implementation were realized in St.  
Moritz and Vienna...  There was one real-life meeting in Vienna; all  
other communication took place in various skype-conferences, via  
email and through phone conversations.

CONTACT

UBERMORGEN.COM, Vienna (Austria), St. Moritz (Switzerland)
silence at sound-of-ebay.com
+43 650 930 00 61
http://www.sound-of-ebay.com/600.html

Mailing Address
THE SOUND OF EBAY
FAVORITENSTRASSE 26/5, A-1040 VIENNA / AUSTRIA