We have already seen a range of interventions on the public space that is the Internet, but Influenza Skin manages to intervene in our own desktop. Like an invisible browser offering links that are interlinked with our desktop icons, this piece by Raquel Renno and Rafael Marchetti conducts a reflection on the notion of the limits of the art "work", as well as on browsing, authorship and presentation models. The action of leaving the "frame" recalls the attitude of the avant garde movements by highlighting the value of the process, the intentional nature of artists' work, the significance of the medium. The resulting pollution, on the other hand, is not merely formal, in that tangle of private and external icons. What is really being polluted is our idea of what it is to use and surf the net, as we are pushed toward a concept which has more to do with drifting than with moving toward a set destination.
Note: This piece cannot be played by newer versions of QuickTime Player 5.