176 MB 6.27 min. audio-visual viral attack quicktime movie
(mac) C++ viral programming by Stéphane Sikora Courtesy
of Music2eye and Galerie Mabel Semmler (Paris)
black attack: eternal return is a 176 MB 6.27 min.
audio-visual viral attack quicktime movie looped and played at
full screen captured from a viral attack from Joseph
Nechvatal’s Computer Virus Project 2.0 project.
Nechvatal’s Computer Virus Project 2.0 follows along
the same lines as previous viral works by Nechvatal in 1992 -
works where an unpredictable progressive virus operates on a
degradation/transformation of an image. Using a C++ framework,
Joseph Nechvatal and his programmer Stéphane Sikora have
brought Nechvatal’s early computer virus project into the
realm of artificial life (A-Life) (i.e. into a synthetic
system that exhibits behaviors characteristic of natural
living systems). With Computer Virus Project 2.0,
elements of artificial life have been introduced in that
viruses are modeled to be autonomous agents living in/off the
image. The project simulates a population of active viruses
functioning as an analogy of a viral biological system. A
genome-program changes with a mutation operator. Every cycle
produces a change in the energy level of the virus. The virus
will lose a set amount of energy with every run, and when it
runs out of energy, it dies (i.e. it disappears) – here only
to return again in an endless repetition - the eternal
return.