Unsteady Information Flows
In 1994, in a project called "Communication Creates Conflict", Heath Bunting set up a message service over the Internet and invited people, via BBS (Bulletin Board Service) notifications, to submit messages. The notes were then collected, printed as leaflets and delivered to commuters and passerbys at major subway stations and on the street in Tokyo. Information was allowed to flow continuously, off the net and onto the street, but along the way, with the loss of a shared language and context, the ensuing (mis)communication was filled with conflict, misunderstanding, humor and at times, poetry. The rhetoric of transparent, direct and free flows of information, so toted at the time in discussions around the Internet, was exposed as a myth.

Similarly, in 1998, Alexei Shulgin, in an action called Cyberknowledge for Real People, stood on the icy streets of Vienna distributing copies of print-outs from the lively on-line net-politic/net-criticisim mailing list, Nettime to passerbys. Using his body as the modem/interface through which he connected these different sites, information again was allowed to flow literally from the net to the street, and was once again jarred with conflict, as cold, rushing and mostly uninterested so called "real people" passed him (and his free information) by.