Maisa
I do research about the basic human relationship with technology, but specifically web design as a translation of human behaviors, senses, and meaning. I'm also specifically interested in the division of roles in that domain. How do web developers perceive humans and how do they further program them as users through code? It's very basic, transactional. And recently, since I'm doing a fellowship in Berkley, I'm focusing on how AI sees the user, while working with AI. I’m interested in perception of what a human is and how it's further programmed through technology, but specifically through web development. So I thought that, you know, we can all talk about websites, even if that revolves around the topic of social media platforms…We're all users and to a certain extent we do depend on these tools and especially when it comes to art creation. We heavily depend on digital archives that preserve the cultural heritage in order to remain, or to exist basically. I think what I'm exploring for this context is: Can all of your works, from all the STRP artists, exist without the festival? And what would that look like? If there is a digital component to the hybrid work, then why do we need the festival. I think, obviously, that we need it, but if we imagine that we don't think the festival, what would the cost of that work be? But to begin with the initial questions, can you describe what your project is about?

Sara
During the research, the idea of the project changed slightly. My initial thought revolves around the ownership rights to the Internet domain and domain was a metaphor of the piece of land. I have a domain which I bought one year ago when I was living in Berlin. It’s called prussia.tech. Let me explain such word play. There’s a phenomenon of cybersquatting, you know it? When scammers or internet entrepreneurs purposely buy domain names resembling existing brand names written with mistakes and typos (like gooogle.com). It is expected that users will click on your address and this will bring you some profit. I'm originally from Russia and in English transcription names Prussia and Russia sounds like a cybersquatting project. The beginning of it was 2022, hardcore political crush — at the beginning of the war, I immediately got a lot of discount promotions from the Russian IT companies to buy the domain in the Russian zone, because thу reputation of the country went down. It depicts an economical aspect. When the country, or the state, makes crucial mistakes, the price of assets goes to hell and you can buy a chunk of the country. I was shocked and also was thinking about how advanced technologies can match with conservative agenda. I bought a domain in domain zone dot tech called prussia.tech as I saw a kind of similarity in the reputation of historical Prussia and current militaristic behavior of modern Russia. So I just got it, and was then thinking a lot about what to do with it because, you know, it's like you just have an asset with a speaking name. The origin of domain’s word is like an embryo of the state and coming from medieval times with their specific attitude to sovereignty and landlording. So I started to think about the metaphor of the domain and that maybe I can transfer my rights of the domain to someone who deserves it. Someone who thinks about what to do with the state, the owner of the state or someone who works for the state, like citizens, laborers, I don't know.

Maisa
Somebody who wants to maintain it basically.

Sara
I was thinking about the infrastructure of the Internet - it could include routers, wires, artificial intelligence, algorithms, bots, digital workers of all kinds. Because there was some discussion about AI in the EU Parliament... They recently took a serious look at the term "electronic person" - how to define them, how to make them more responsible, and so on. And maybe we'll need some sort of entity for these algorithms because they're going to get smarter and smarter. So my first idea was to transfer my rights because I am the owner of the web domain. Actually not the owner, but the registrant. You register a domain, then renew it, but it doesn't last forever. You can't actually own a domain, but that's a topic for another day.

Maisa
What does it take to own it? Do you need to be in charge of the physical server?

Sara
The domain is just a name in the nomenclature, or the book of registration. It’s just a list of data. There is an American corporation ICANN that is in charge of the domain name registration, but it's more foundational and implementing the international standard. Also there are some meetings and suggestions from different interessants about what to do with domains because not only English language exists on the Internet. There’s Arabic keyboard, Cyrillic, etc. Also, it’s very patriotic to promote your language on the internet, because it’s very inconvenient for international communication but it works well for domestic consumers. You can use your keyboard with your local alphabet, but there’s a system that converts, for example, Cyrillic, or German umlauts into standard form. It's another interesting topic revolving around names…

Maisa
It's linguistics.

Sara
It's all the others. Without the name of the doman, it's just numbers and digits. Anyway. I was thinking about how to transfer the rights, symbolically or not. I started to think that maybe there was a loophole, that can hack the legal system. I was thinking about another entity who are not fully humans, for example like LGBT+ people. In different countries you're not completely human because you have oppressed rights. For example, in some countries, gay marriage is illegal, but you can model your bond using other types of bond. So then you create an emulation of this marriage. For example, in the USA, i found two historical cases when one partner adopted another one, it happened before America decided to legalize same gender marriage. But that was weird because you could have a sexual relationship with your adopted child. Also you can imitate marriage with any kind of legal connection with your partner. You can make a business together, you can buy property together. These are exemplary loopholes for same gender couples. But think about that children are also not fully humans. Everything is not allowed for minors — no property, they can’t open a bank account, or even register themselves on Instagram. Or slaves back then. Foreigners, migrants, women. Animals too. But there are several cases in history. If you’re a wealthy person who has a favorite cat or a dog, you can establish a trust fund, which has a director or a manager who controls the money. But technically it's a trust fund for your non-human friend. Anyway, there was a search on the way on how to symbolically go around the law. Yeah. For this project, I interviewed a designer and a researcher of network culture, Lukas Engelhardt. I asked him how to hack the system in order to transfer the rights to AI. And he answered that it’s potentially possible to hack the server and then re-write the rights. So it's almost impossible, but potentially you can do it. You can symbolically transfer it. So then I started to discover more and more, which I didn't even include in the video because it's a lot. But I think I will write an article or an essay about it, for the Institute of Network Culture, for example.

Maisa
They would love it for sure.

Sara
…Otherwise a long movie about websites is really hard to consume.

Maisa
I love your research. Remembering it from before, I thought: Wow, this is such an interesting story, but I can't visualize what's going to be the material aspect of it.

Sara
I suffer because I just dry facts and it's hard to visualize. Anyway, I started to discover more information about the metaphor of the domain itself. Domain means controlled area by the owner within. Domains can be disputed territory, like in a real political map. I found several cases — not for video, but definitely for text demonstration. One is a story about the domain which is called Deutschland dot de. German governments just took it from a tech company Medianet after legal disputes lasting for two years. The German government really wanted it and some articles say it was time just before an election. So the domain with a significant and capricious name works like soft power. A Lot of good names were taken back then in the 90s. People who were in tech got domains like game dot com. It’s a good asset. Deutschland dot de is about Deutschland. But the owner was a private company. So I found all these articles titled “Who owns Deutschland?”. Another case is also very strange. I was thinking about disputed domains and territories. I imagined some unrecognized countries like [ name of the country ] dot com. Speaking about another war between Azerbaijan and Armenia, which recently ended. Unrecognized country called Artsakh in Armenia, and Nagorno Karabakh in Azerbaijan was the point of interest between the two sides, if you really simplify that problem. Someone owns both domain names. According to who.is. If you put on Google Artsakh dot com, it transfers you to Karabakh dot com ((https://www.zerbaijan.com/var/qarabagh.htm)). That’s only one step of the strange story.

Maisa
Wait, is it like a redirect that changes the URL as well?

Sara
Yeah, it’s a redirect. So the website redirects to Azerbaijan's site which portrays only one side of the war in English. No-one knows who is the owner of both domains…It was like several years after the Soviet Union fell apart. They had a lot of disputes about the borders and so on. So this story about the domains flags the situation on the ground. It’s kind of like a virtual level of projection. It's so strange. But I didn't put it in the video because it's really hard to explain in a short project.

Maisa
It's such an interesting discovery. That’s why I'm interested in the translation from physical to digital. Usually it happens in a very literal sense which creates some kind of standard web development syntax or whatever. I'm always interested in other forms of representing something. I wish to read an article about this because, you know, as users we don't necessarily pay attention to the URL changing. There's not much literacy around these things, unless you're doing research like you are, or unless you know how the web technically works and that there's the possibility to redirect from website to another. Users usually take these things for granted, so this is such a great research discovery.

Sara
You focus on these details if you're really rational. In Russia now it’s getting harder and harder, especially with the internet. There is a concept in Russia still developing now, which is the concept of sovereign internet, which is a concept of an isolated system. Authorities and the people who are in charge have meetings with people from Iran and China now because they have technologies, especially China, how to isolate…There is a bunch of oppositional Russian media in exile. Recently, more and more attacks have appeared on the web domains of specific media. And these media channels make a lot of mirrors, like millions of mirrors. It’s a good metaphor, by the way, broken mirrors. What that means, for example, is that you buy a lot of domain names, maybe you can generate this even…And then you’re sending from this site to your mirror or opposite. Maybe they have an automatic system of algorithms and it creates an endless war. A chain of crashing mirrors. It’s part of the problem of censorship. When we're speaking about censorship, we're speaking about a lot of tools. For example, good censorship is to block someone. For specific domains, you are not only against the main server, but the address. If you have authority, you block the address. The thing is that you can buy more addresses. But your server is another thing. Hosting is just a redirection. That’s the war with domains. You can also speak about the propaganda of domestic names and domestic nationalism. By the way, I noticed that you have your website in the dot eu zone.

Maisa
Exactly.

[ A 2 minute chunk of conversation flagged as TMI for publicity ]

Sara
What I found also like advertising campaigns in the domain because it’s not super old, it’s relatively new. You can register dot eu if you’re not in Europe. They have restrictions, like China. It's quite hard to get a Chinese domain. You need proxy people and companies. Some zones are under restrictions. Like for foreign people or people from outside. For example, you can show the proof that you work in the zone, area, country, city. I mean it's quite rare but it still exists.

Maisa
I wonder if those regulations are leaning more towards business or the national pride…Do you have to prove in a way that the domain is almost like your passport, that is that you come from a specific country. Or do you have to do it because you have business, and for the the business to thrive it has to be within a certain national territory…

Sara
It's mostly for business. For example, there are domains with dot Asia and dot Africa that promote local initiatives. I also saw a promotion campaign…Speaking further, I told you about my initial idea of asking some specialist if it’s even possible to transfer my domain to a non-human such as AI. Then I started to dig more and more to dig for information about how close the internet domain is to the real domain. I started to think more about the difference between ownership and control. Because during the interview with Lukas Engelhardt told you about the web researcher, he mentioned that when we’re talking about an ownership of a domain, we’re speaking about controlling the domain. I almost started to think about that control in Russia, also in political terms. The state has monopoly for control. And then I started to think more specifically about the role of the state and the entity and the problem of control. I was trying to find the transformation and I found a very interesting video source on the internet. Maybe you heard about it two years ago, just after the war in Ukraine started, the Netherlands held a huge international summit called ''REAIM 2023. Responsible AI in the Military Domain''. It was very Dutch style: fancy, expensive, with entertainment. They also collaborated with the Rijksmuseum. There were a lot of people from military domains and from different countries. Yeah. More than 80 countries were represented. They published videos from the summit and it's fascinating because the main topic was how we can reduce the harm because we’re in the war and how we can do it is more or less clear. In contemporary wars, there’s a lot of dirt and damage and there's a problem of more accuracy. Discussion was about working with AI in the military domain, one specialist called it human-machine teaming. I was thinking, okay, AI has no rights because the initiative about electronic personhood was just an idea. It doesn't work now. There was no personhood. But you, as a state, or as a political entity, recruit AI for your national interests. For the war, for example. But you don’t grant them citizenship or personhood. But you hire them. It’s like a subject without subjectivity. I mean, that's nonsense.

Maisa
That's insane.

Sara
I remember this story from medieval times — animal trials. Some happened in medieval Germany and medieval France. There are several cases of pigs or insects that do damage on someone's property. And then there are several trials. What to do with this specific pig? Punish. In this case, a pig has no personhood, but when it damages something, it has to answer for it. It’s an imbalance of duties and rights in which you have only duties. So of course, when you’re speaking about AI, you’re only speaking about the metaphor because there is no real intelligence in artificial intelligence. I mean, it’s an advanced algorithm. Maybe in the future, it's going to be more advanced. Who will be in charge of its decisions? So these are all ethical problems. There is no intention, but there is agency anyway. And agency doesn’t mean that you have a soul. It's also about animism. It also points to this problem, maybe new types of animism. It fits to the problem of control and problems like national interest because, in state capitalism, speaking from the view of animism, everything has anima/soul, but everything is equally oppressed by the authorities. You have your personality. My table has personality. AI has personality. We all equally have the right to exist, but we’re all equally oppressed.

Maisa
Cool. That's such an amazing project. You have a lot of material!

Go to Sara's project website: http://prussia.tech/

This conversation took place over Zoom in March 2024. It has been edited for clarity.