After the the guerilla-marketing campaign for WiFi-SM was launched at the Tirana Bienniale of Contemporary Art in 2003, the real product was shown for the first time at galerie Sollertis in January 2006: the WiFi-SM patch is now for real
You have the impression that the disasters of the world do not touch you anymore? You feel vaguely sorry for other people’s misfortunes but you don’t feel the inner urge which used to make you help your neighbour? WiFi-SM is the solution!
WiFi-SM is an Internet connected wireless device that you can fix on any part of your body. It automatically detects the information from approximately 4,500 news sources worldwide updated continuously and analyses them looking for specific keywords such as death, kill, murder, torture, rape, war, virus etc.. Each time the text of the news contains one of these keywords, your WiFi-SM device is activated through the Wi-Fi network and provides you with an electric impulse. This impulse is calibrated so that you can feel a certain amount of pain, but is completely safe.
Exhibitions:
2007: Diva Fair, New-York
2006: Fifth Nuit Blanche of Paris
2006: Galerie Sollertis, Toulouse
2004: Third Nuit Blanche of Paris
2004: Version 04, invisibleNetworks, Chicago
2003: Tirana Biennale of Contemporary Art
« The Web is a text. It tends towards the sum of all the speeches of mankind, the sum of all our dreams and our pains. Like the unconscious, it is structured and regulated: free association emerges from the subversion of search engines, computer programs try to watch over our least thoughts, automatized global news portals supply us with the everlasting spectacle of death and fear. There is no escape here, no space of freedom, no open source of life. Mankind has become your closest neighbour and the Web is your ultimate mirror, the global accounting of your being. You have reached the “age of access”, the ultimate stage of surplus value: Generalized Semantic Capitalism. So, feel the ultimate private enjoyment of Global Pain! »
Christophe Bruno, September 2003