Electronic Disturbance Theater
A second iteration of the group, called Electronic Disturbance Theater 2.0, included Brett Stalbaum, Amy Sara Carroll, Elle Mehrmand, Micha Cárdenas, and Ricardo Dominguez.
[3] The group's objective was, with the use of digital media and internet based technology, to demonstrate nonviolent resistance in support of the Zapatista rebels residing in the state of Chiapas in Mexico.
[6] FloodNet would work on this basic idea taken from street theater practices and political rallies and protest, but instead present it on a much larger and international stage, with the facilitation of macro-networks and non-digital forms of action.
On December 21, 1995, the first world Virtual sit-in, conceived by Tommaso Tozzi, was created by the Florentine group Strano Network against the French government to protest against the nuclear tests in Mururoa and was defined as a "Netstrike".
[7] The EDT's mission was to allow the voices of the Zapatista Army of National Liberation to be heard, after the attack on the small remote village of Acteal in Chiapas, Mexico.
The Paramilitary, a government-funded military squad, surrounded a Catholic church during a Tsotsil Mayan (a spoken Mexican language from around the Chiapas area of Mexico).
This data request would be stored in a server's error log and in the eyes of the Zapatista Army of National Liberation and the Electronic Disturbance Theater group, a symbolic list of those 45 Acteal civilians who had died straight to their murderers.
However, on June 10, 1998, the EDT struck the Mexican Secretaria de Gobernacion (Secretary of Government), which is involved in immigration policies as well as Mexico's federal public security forces working in conjunction with the military Zapatista communities in Chiapas unsuccessfully.
The FloodNet system was used again against the World Trade Organization in 1999, where the group would release their online civil disobedience software to the public under the name "Disturbance Development's Kit".
The group received media attention for their 2007 project, the Transborder Immigrant Tool (TBT), which sends experimental poetry to users in addition to helping them find water and safe routes when crossing the Mexican-American border.
[14] Stalbaum and Poole were considering doing a locative media practice project that used artificial intelligence to consider and examine dangerous hiking roads for a virtual hiker system to aid in areas near Southern California’s deserts.
Some of the main features of the TBT include a guide for immigrants to find water caches, safety instructions for these routes and delivers experimental poetry in both English and Spanish.
This has led to differing opinions, with intrigue surrounding how TBT’s innovative poetry offers "the opportunity to consider art’s ability to intervene in the biopolitics of border security,"[19] while others find it controversial and misleading, calling it an "irresponsible use of technology.
[21][22] As a result, the main focus of the software was to integrate tools that would provide aiding material such as survival tips, guiding haptic sounds, and a visual interface that would facilitate the search for safety sites and resources.
[21] TBT was meant to be used during the most vulnerable and challenging parts of the migration journey, typically in desert regions where migrants face extreme temperatures, dehydration, and limited access to resources needed for survival.
Through vivid metaphors and carefully crafted imagery, Carroll’s contribution paints a picture of the emotions that accompany migrants during the journey, such as fear, loss, and spirals of hope.
Carroll’s writing addresses the dangers of this landscape through a dialectical approach, illustrating how nature "holds trauma and promise simultaneously," as a way to emphasize the desert's rugged beauty but harsh place for traveling migrants.
On March 10th, 2010, Fox News Channel (FNC) published an online article summarizing what they described as “inappropriate use of taxpayer funds and an irresponsible use of technology” regarding the project centers on helping migrants cross the border with the aid of the device.
Former U.S. representative Duncan Hunter shared with the outlet how he thought the Department of Defense was being too permissive since it was a public university, and underlined the danger of them functioning as a system that was aiding illegal activities.
[27] In an online article for Voice of San Diego, journalist Andrew Donohue has also listed other representatives such as Brian Bilbray and Darrell Issa asking for the funding origin for the project.
[28] Others, such as the spokesperson for the Customs and Border Protection Steven Cribby commented that it was not a matter for concern, but stressed the possible false assurance that it might give to future migrants when taking the unpredictable journey to traverse the desert.
[29] Dominguez also emphasized feeling like he was being silenced due to pressure by the University of California in San Diego to sign legally binding contracts that would prevent him from speaking about these events, and that forced him to stop his “artivist performances”.
