#Webmaster of cotres furtifs (Furtive Cutter Ships), a website that tells
stories in 3D
The cotres furtifs was launched on October 20, 1998, after they had become a
group. Following a break to show solidarity with the Altern web server (which
fell foul of the inadequate French laws about the Internet), they are now
offering two parts and preparing a third. The aim is to tell stories in 3D and
explore how a 'link' opens the way for 'hyperwriting,' which is a set of
characters, sounds and animations. It gives priority to words.
Jean-Paul is a writer and a musician. In June 1998, he wrote: "The Internet
allows me to do without intermediaries, such as record companies, publishers and
distributors. Most of all, it allows me to crystallize what I have in my head
(and elsewhere): the print medium (desktop-publishing, in fact) only allows me
to partly do that. Then the intermediaries will take over and I'll have to look
somewhere else, a place where the grass is greener..."
*Interview of August 5, 1999 (original interview in French)
= How do you see the future of cyber-literature?
The future of cyber-literature, techno-literature or whatever you want to call
it, is set by the technology itself. It's now impossible for an author to handle
all by himself the words and their movement and sound. A decade ago, you could
know well each of Director, Photoshop or Cubase (to cite just the better-known
software), using the first version of each. That's not possible any more. Now we
have to know how to delegate, find more solid financial partners than Gallimard,
and look in the direction of Hachette-Matra, Warner, the Pentagon and Hollywood.
At best, the status of the, what... hack? multimedia director? will be the one
of video director, film director, the manager of the product. He or she's the
one who receives the golden palms at Cannes, but who would never have been able
to earn them just on their own. As twin sister (not a clone) of the
cinematograph, cyber-literature (video + the link) will be an industry, with a
few isolated craftsmen on the outer edge (and therefore with below-zero
copyright).
= What exactly is a cutter?
It is called that because it seems to cut through the water. It's sturdy little
naval vessel with a single mast. Cutters were an important part of naval fleets
because they were quick and easy to operate. They were the favourite boats of
pirates, smugglers and... maritime postal workers.
"Now that the earth is flat and the seas desalinated, it's time for our cutters
to thread their way through the 6 billion (soon six and a half billion) stars
that we are. And for them all to link up with each other." (The running cutter)
Why do you use just your first name, instead of your full name?
My reasoning is that, on the Web, there's everything to be done. Except for CERN
(European Center for Particule Research) and the Pentagon (which are going to
make another web, designed just for their own use), nobody knows what exactly it
offers us. So we can work freely while believing that probably everything is
open. And use this unlimited, internal space as widely and quickly as possible
before the rapacious star-spangled banners of 0 and 1 catch up with and overtake
us.
But if it's just a matter of repeating the same things as before, what's the
point?
This business of using a surname (directly linked to the copyright problem)
takes us back to basics, to the central untouchable principle of our planet:
private property. Within the space of a few centuries, we have been reduced to a
name, just one name, all the "cleaner" because it has been stripped of all
humanity and reduced to a social security barcode. It's not something natural,
but a choice of the society, desired by managers. How could we run a modern
society and give back to Caesar his due if each of us could change our
administrative identity several times in our lives, from "Daredevil on Rollers"
to "Motorcycle on the Curves" and then "Hippy Smoking on the Verandah" (you
know, like me, that a simple software programme could easily take care of all
this)? "Human nature is basically evil and all criminals take advantage of that.
But we're here to protect you and your identity." (The Pentagon) And the first
thing a down-and-out person does to assert themselves, someone whose papers are
never in order, is to scribble their name on a billboard advertising some big
commercial product.
On our site, we discreetly try something else.
We exist, we have an address. We know it's hard to speak to each other in
anonymity or in a group, so we keep a few landmarks -- the time factor, the
human factor, and for the cutters, the cutter mailman, who happens to be
Jean-Paul. A first name that is not really one's own name because the thing
about a name is that it isn't ours, it's a name passed down by a dynasty, from a
string of legally-registered names of our male ancestors.
But we're not rejecting our ancestors. They created our world, what we call
reality. But we build up the Web to create another dream. And we launch our
cutters in all directions, to make contacts.
= What do you think of the debate about copyright on the Web?
We don't feel involved.
a) If it means "respect", it's a matter of morality and style, so there's
nothing to discuss. On the Web, as elsewhere, we quote our sources. Complete
respect. For most of us.
b) If it means "copyright", we're on legal ground, which is by nature shaky.
Copyright is a recent notion the French attribute to Beaumarchais, a business
man with a dark side, an arms dealer and great writer. The advent of
digitization, and therefore cloning (which raises a different problem to the one
of copying, which was solved long ago), forces us to reconsider this notion.
c) If it means "author's rights" (in the plural), we're in the economic field,
where we know what the attitude is: competition, withholding information, being
top of the class and stopping others from getting there.
Sony publishes CD (audio and ROM) because it earns them good money. And it makes
CD-engravers (which enable you to clone its own CDs, as well as those of its
rivals) because it earns them more good money. Philips was doing the same thing
until it sold its Polygram division (which, according to the rules of economics,
it could buy back if it wanted).
"It's not enough to be big to be successful but, in a totally globalized
financial world, it helps." (Hervé Babonneau, Ouest-France (French daily
newspaper), August 6, 1999). "A funny aim", says the sturdy cutter. Jurassic
Games and tyrannosaurus more or less rex.
Although it's marginally economic (we have to pay for a domain name and a
subscription to the server), our cutter-space isn't limited to that and we don't
have a competitive attitude. Our site can be freely downloaded, and we download
sites we think are creative.
It's normal to clone someone else's work and give it away as a gift. It's a way
to share. What's disgusting is to sell a clone.
The job of legal experts is to prove the authorities right: yesterday it was the
guillotine for backstreet abortionists, today the social security reimburses the
cost of abortions (in France, though not in Poland).
Copyright or author's rights, a European vision or a US one, which will prevail?
The sacred principle of private property. The property of those who have the
means to keep it. Through the World Trade Organization (WTO), for example, which
is in charge of settling "rights" issues anywhere in the world (even the virtual
world) and, they hope, permanently.
If your house is the path of a future highway, you know the real price of
something untouchable.
So the rights of authors, creators, inventors...
Orson Welles was gobbled up by the big studios, but Kubrick carefully stayed
independent of them. The law made to measure by Uncle Picsou matters little.
Over time, small mammals have eaten tyrannosaurs. And we've cut off the heads of
kings, who supposedly drew their power from the gods. And we did that more
quickly.
"To give a purer meaning to the words of the tribe", Stéphane Mallarmé wrote.
And when the credit cards have won (apparently in three years time), we must
invent other ways to take us to another Cape of Good Hope, where we can watch
"new stars rise from the distant horizon", like J.M. de Heredia.
= How do you see the growth of a multilingual Web?
Your book (which is really good and useful -- I get something out of it every
time I read it, and it has good addresses too) deals with this whole subject:
"Sooner or later the presence of languages on the Web will reflect their
strength around the world." Depending on the energy of those who speak them.
= What is your best experience with the Internet?
How light-headed we felt when we received our first message... coming from
Canada. 10.000 (?) years after the Inuits, our cutters had just discovered
America!
= And your worst experience?
All the sleep I'm missing...
*Interview of June 25, 2000 (original interview in French)
= How did using the hyperlink change your writing?
Surfing the Web is like radiating in all directions (I'm interested in something
and I click on all the links on a home page) or like jumping around (from one
click to another, as the links appear). You can do this in the written media, of
course. But the difference is striking. So the Internet didn't change my life,
but it did change how I write. You don't write the same way for a website as you
do for a script or a play.
But it wasn't exactly the Internet that changed my writing, it was the first
model of the Mac. I discovered it when I was teaching myself Hypercard. I still
remember how astonished I was during my month of learning about buttons and
links and about surfing by association, objects and images. Being able, by just
clicking on part of the screen, to open piles of cards, with each card offering
new buttons and each button opening onto a new series of them. In short,
learning everything about the Web that today seems really routine was a
revelation for me. I hear Steve Jobs and his team had the same kind of shock
when they discovered the forerunner of the Mac in the laboratories of Rank
Xerox.
Since then I've been writing directly on the screen. I use a paper print-out
only occasionally, to help me fix up an article, or to give somebody who doesn't
like screens a rough idea, something immediate. It's only an approximation,
because print forces us into a linear relationship: the words scroll out page by
page most of the time. But when you have links, you've got a different
relationship to time and space in your imagination. And for me, it's a great
opportunity to use this reading/writing interplay, whereas leafing through a
book gives only a suggestion of it -- a vague one because a book isn't meant for
that.