Pora Pora

The letter b does not excist in Tahitian, so “Bora Bora” is in fact “Pora Pora”, what means First Born.

When our artist Herenui (Big Love) — don’t miss her picture in the new window on the top in a few moments — typed the original name of the island in the browser location bar, she was redirected to the “verisign.com site finder” you see on the left. She and actually we all were puzzled by it. Why instead of a simple and honest answer — that such site does not exist — we are offered to visit some puru-puru, para-pari, poro-poro and other places we did not ask for?

This incident became a good reason to talk about current state of the web and the context in which works of applet artists will exist and will be perceived. Total commercialisation, giving up on the many-to-many principe of communication, user’s fears and provider’s conspiracy.

As Hiro Arenui pointed out: “It is great that our exhibition will be an Island of purity in this cruel world, but it is also important to remember and remind that such ‘services’ as verisign exist and try to doom and fool us while we search or surf.”

Herenui’s verisign is not interactive, it is disabled; it is not dangerous, just colorful.