Robert Nideffer: Proxy

March/April 2002

Robert Nideffer’s PROXY was a game about software agents that revolves around what the artist describes as “unorthodox methods of information discovery, file sharing, data mismanagement, and role play.” Users first customize and set up their agent and then can import personal data and begin exploring. As they navigate the game environment, they encounter “monsters”—such as the curator, the professor, or the hacker—in a commentary on the art world and academia. Users also can choose not to play, observing instead as their agent begins to act on their behalf.

Commercial software agents filter and customize data, create user profiles, and track user behaviors. By attaching themselves to these data bodies, agents turn users into easy targets for marketers and advertisers. While most of today’s software agents are developed as closed systems for commercial purposes, PROXY is an open-ended, multi-agent development environment that can be freely extended. By facilitating distributed, collective, and slightly out-of-control data processing, PROXY is a reminder of what software agents could be: a playful exploration of identity, community, and information exchange—but one that still raises serious questions about who we are and how we behave in online public space.

This project relies on CGI scripts and external files and services previously hosted on proxy.arts.uci.edu. What's available is reconstructed from nideffer.net and the Internet Archive, and it may not be comprehensive. Further description of PROXY can be found on nideffer.net.

Enter project View original Gate Page

Robert Nideffer (b. 1964; Ventura, California) is a professor at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute in Troy, New York, where he served as head of the Department of Arts until 2018. From 1998 to 2013 he was a professor of art at the University of California, Irvine, where he founded the Game Culture and Technology Lab (1999) and was codirector (2005–7) and director (2007–9) of the Art Computation Engineering graduate program. His work has been exhibited at a variety of national and international venues including the Museo Nacional Centro de Arte Reina Sofía, Madrid; the Laguna Art Museum, Laguna Beach, California; the Museum of Modern Art, New York; and the Whitney Museum of American Art, New York, in the 2002 Whitney Biennial. He has lectured extensively, and his projects have been discussed in books, journal articles, and films, as well as on television, the internet, and radio.

Gate Pages

Every month from March 2001 to February 2006, the Whitney invited an artist or collective to present their work in the form of a “Gate Page” on artport. Each page was meant to function as a portal to the artist’s own sites and projects. The Gate Pages comprise a range of artistic approaches to the format—while some of them are designed as entry points to the respective artist’s website or promote a recently launched work, others take the form of a more complex stand-alone project.

Wherever necessary and possible, these works are made functional through emulation and reconstructions from the Internet Archive. Not all of them have been restored to their original state and their conservation is ongoing. You can also view the original Gate Pages archive to see how they were presented at the time of their creation.

artport

View more on artport, the Whitney Museum's portal to Internet and new media art.