Imagine erasing any reference to a brand name on your computer's desktop.
No more Mac or Windows icons -- just a blank screen, empty except for a couple of generic icons.
And when you click on the icons -- one to surf the Web, another to send email -- the services arrive without self-promoting reminders that you're using Netscape, Internet Explorer or anyone else's products.
Sound like a world you don't live in? Something you'd like to own?
Well, it might not be just a dream for anyone sick of ubiquitous capitalist branding. It's also a work by San Francisco artist Andy Cox.
The Anti-Capitalist Operating System is a stripped-down desktop available to anyone via a free downloadable program now online for public beta-testing.
On the heels of the Windows ME and Apple OS X operating systems, ACOS takes a different approach to the corporate operating system paradigm.
"By building our own operating systems, we can hack our way out of the current impasse of capitalism," Cox says.
"I think the Web is a public space, or at least that's what we're struggling to protect, if it isn't already too late," Cox says. "The operating system itself is this weird kind of controlled space we enter everyday, which promotes the illusion of freedom of choice, while tying us all into the same way of working."
Of course, Cox's grand pronouncement is more talk than action. ACOS doesn't really function as an operating system. It just tweaks a site visitor's browser so it appears as if a new operating system is being used.
ACOS is the latest offering in Cox's Together We Can Defeat Capitalism campaign, created to get the public to question the oh-so-sacred notion of capitalism itself.
"I like to think of it on the borderline between art and activism, somewhere between hacking and satire," says Cox, whose MO echoes that of popular Net artist collectives RTMark and etoy, which all use the Web to deliver subversive satirical messages about commerce and society.
ACOS is Cox's first foray into the realm of digital art. He's best known for producing provocative public art pieces.
Lately, Cox has been commenting more on the relentless capitalism of the computer and Internet industries.
In May, he placed blinking display boards, usually used for traffic warnings, near San Francisco's South Park, home of many multimedia and software companies.
In a piece called May Day, the boards flashed messages such as "Danger, digital divide ahead."
Perhaps it makes sense that Cox is now working with the Web and the concept of the operating system, since both can be conceived of as everyday spaces.
Some critics think ACOS is refreshing, even if it isn't Cox's strongest statement against capitalism.
"We take our operating systems for granted now, just as most of us take capitalism and its consequences as a given. It's good to have that pointed out every so often," said Robbin Murphy, who teaches a class on information systems for the visual arts at New York University's Department of Art and Art Professions.
"No, it might not be his most successful piece," continued Murphy, also a founder of artnetweb.com, a network for artists that explores the use of new media in art. "But it does point out those references we may not be paying attention to and that any software comes with a (usually corporate) agenda coded into it."
Although ACOS allows you to erase any corporate agenda from your desktop, you'll find your system taken over with promotional materials for Cox and his work.
Hit the "Help" icon when you've got ACOS running and you'll link to Cox's mission statement. Click on the "Documents" icon and you'll find a series of press clippings on Cox's Together We Can Defeat Capitalism.
So isn't Cox just as guilty of brand-building as Microsoft or Apple?
"Yes," Cox says. "I've thought about stopping it, but people seem to like it.
"Who knows, maybe an IPO?" he says. "One of the sign sequences for the May Day project was: 'Investor Alert -- Initial Public Offer -- Free Shares in Socialism.'"
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