Do you copy?

The scarlet E of economic collapse may have soiled the Internet's reputation in mainstream culture, but artists are still hard at work milking the medium's subversive capacities. Some of the results will be on view at "Open_Source_Art_Hack" curated by Steve Dietz of the Walker Art Center, Minneapolis; New York artist Jenny Marketou; and Anne Barlow of New York's New Museum of Contemporary Art, where it opens May 3. Participants such as American programmer-artist Cue P. Doll, the global collective RSG, Critical Art Ensemble, And radioqualia, a duo based in Australia, are modern Lettristes fusing multimedia, self-criticism, and agitprop; their works combine industry strategies with cultural critique and outlaw agendas, kicking ass and literally taking names. (RSG's Carnivore, for example, sees the e-mail you write and receive and the Web pages you surf.)

What you won't find at this show are works that involve computerized breaking and entering. These "hackers" operate more tactically. Besides addressing themes of surveillance and code transparency (the death of the author updated as the death of the programmer), many projects don witty vaneers that give way to open-ended systems. Cue Jack, by Cue P. Doll in collaboration with distributor[R][TM] ark, plugs into at-home bar-code scanner CueCat to provide data outside the marketing plan (regarding environmental viability, safety recalls, and so on) instead of retrieving sanctioned product details. Its creator aims to erode imbalances of information between individuals and corporations. "Information capital," She says, is "infinitely copyable." Merging product (re)design, programming, and entertainment, "Open_Source_Art_Hack" will show socially conscious Internet art holding its own in the agitprop tradition.