Edge Rewrite
restyle Source code View original
// HTMLRewriter · presentation

This page was redesigned at the edge.

Cloudflare fetched the original article and streamed it through HTMLRewriter to apply an entirely new visual system without rebuilding the source page.

Jump to content

RTMark

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

RTMark /ˈɑːrtmɑːrk/ (stylized as ®™ark) was an activist collective founded in 1991 with the goal of subverting corporate power and monopoly.[1] The name is derived from "Registered Trademark".

RTMark is itself a registered corporation which brings together activists who plan projects with donors who fund them.[2]

History

[edit]

The 1993 Barbie Liberation Organization action involved switching the voice boxes of talking Barbie and G.I. Joe toys and returning the altered toys to stores. In 1996, programmer Jacques Servin inserted male characters in swimsuits who kissed one another into the Maxis computer game SimCopter. More than 50,000 copies were shipped before Maxis discovered the addition and fired Servin.[3]

RTMark became public in 1997 after previously relying on deliberately limited word of mouth. In April of that year, the group made its email address publicly available to recruit participants for funded projects.[4]

At the time, RTMark claimed to have financed the Barbie Liberation Organization action. Igor Vamos, a member of the group, told Wired that RTMark had paid him $10,000 after the project. Servin said that RTMark had paid him $5,000 for the SimCopter intervention.[5]

RTMark gave $5,000 to Deconstructing Beck in 1998, a 13-track compilation using samples from recordings by Beck. The CD was released by Illegal Art. Beck's attorney later contacted RTMark about the unauthorized samples.[6]

In 1999, The New York Times reported on a redesign of RTMark's website that incorporated parodies of corporate websites. Every tenth visitor was shown a facsimile of the McDonald's website that instead led to information about RTMark, and the site's designers were working on similar variations of other corporate sites.[7]

In 1999, RTMark worked on gwbush.com, a parody of the official campaign website of then-Texas governor George W. Bush. After the Bush campaign sent a cease-and-desist letter, RTMark redesigned the site and made it more directly critical of Bush. The campaign subsequently filed a complaint with the Federal Election Commission.[8] Later in 1999, RTMark became involved in the Toywar, a dispute between the art group etoy and the online retailer eToys over the etoy.com domain. RTMark established an "etoy Fund" to support the campaign, which included publicity efforts and a planned virtual sit-in against the eToys website.[9] Wired later described RTMark as having led the online campaign against eToys.[10]

RTMark was one of nine Internet art selections for the 2000 Whitney Biennial. Instead of using its exhibition space only for its own website, the group invited people to submit URLs, which were then rotated through RTMark's section of the Biennial website.[11]

In 2000, RTMark helped arrange the sale of voteauction, created by James Baumgartner, to Hans Bernhard and lizvlx of UBERMORGEN.COM in Austria. Wired reported that RTMark had brokered the sale of the website after Baumgartner shut it down in August.[12] UBERMORGEN's project archive identifies Bernhard and lizvlx as the buyers and describes Voteauction as one of the group's projects.[13]

Later activity

[edit]

Jacques Servin and Igor Vamos later continued their collaboration as The Yes Men.[14]

See also

[edit]

References

[edit]
  1. ↑ "®™ark". Daniel Langlois Foundation for Art, Science, and Technology. Retrieved 6 September 2026.
  2. ↑ Helfand, Glen (June 12, 2001). "Q&A With RTMark, Media Activists / Raging Against The Corporate Machine". SFGate. Retrieved September 6, 2026.
  3. ↑ Silberman, Steve (3 December 1996). "Boy 'Bimbos' Too Much for Game-Maker Maxis". Wired. Retrieved 6 September 2026.
  4. ↑ Frauenfelder, Mark (8 April 1997). "Secret Prankster Fund Goes Public". Wired. Retrieved 6 September 2026.
  5. ↑ Frauenfelder, Mark (8 April 1997). "Secret Prankster Fund Goes Public". Wired. Retrieved 6 September 2026.
  6. ↑ Silberman, Steve (20 February 1998). "Beck Sliced, Diced by Culture Hackers". Wired. Retrieved 6 September 2026.
  7. ↑ Mirapaul, Matthew (18 March 1999). "A Different Kind of Demonstration Software". The New York Times. Retrieved 6 September 2026.
  8. ↑ Raney, Rebecca Fairley (8 June 1999). "Bush Shows How Not to Handle the Internet, Experts Say". The New York Times. Retrieved 6 September 2026.
  9. ↑ Stalder, Felix (13 December 1999). "The Toy War Escalates". Telepolis. Retrieved 6 September 2026.
  10. ↑ "Did RT Miss the Mark This Time?". Wired. 16 June 2000. Retrieved 6 September 2026.
  11. ↑ Hill, Logan (25 March 2000). "The Bob Jones Biennial". Wired. Retrieved 6 September 2026.
  12. ↑ Anderson, Mark K. (30 October 2000). "Selling Votes or Peddling Lies?". Wired. Retrieved 6 September 2026.
  13. ↑ "Voteauction". UBERMORGEN.COM. Retrieved 6 September 2026.
  14. ↑ Doll, Martin (2008). "Widerstand im Gewand des Hyper-Konformismus. Die Fake-Strategien von The Yes Men". In Becker, Andreas; Doll, Martin; Wiemer, Serjoscha; Zechner, Anke (eds.). Mimikry. Gefährlicher Luxus zwischen Natur und Kultur (PDF). Schliengen: Edition Argus. pp. 245–246. Retrieved 6 September 2026.

Further reading

[edit]
  • Baumgärtel, Tilman (2001). net.art 2.0 - New Materials towards Net art. Verlag für Moderne Kunst Nürnberg. pp. 106–113. ISBN 3-933096-66-9.
[edit]
Retrieved from "https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=RTMark&oldid=1373480654"