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“A collection of background subversion and awareness applications for the desktop,”1 such describes the aptly titled suite of net art applications: Desktop Subversibles; Jonah Brucker-Cohen’s clever collection of net art pieces. And it is a fitting description, and of a theme not uncommon among his other slyly titled interactive projects available for download from his online presence: Coin-operated. As Desktop Subversibles is but one of Brucker-Cohen’s many interactive project suites which also include: Physical Networks, Physical Displays, Audio Spaces, Site-Specifics and Image Systems, all of which comprise of a number of interactive net art applications questioning how we experience digital media, networks, and interactivity.

Brucker-Cohen’s work is best described as a commentary of digital culture. Aiding his work is his experience in nearly every major facet of computer technology. Brucker-Cohen has worked as a computer programmer, an engineer, a game designer, a writer and most opportunely, an artist. It is in this capacity as that I discuss his work. But how does someone with such a breadth of expertise categorize himself? Brucker-Cohen:

I like to think my work is on the border of art and research. Although I'm not adverse at being called a digital artist, I think categorizations of art often fall flat since artists may be working within a medium but still tied to others. The classification is more exact when artists try to fundamentally change the way people experience and think about the medium in which they work. This is my focus with digital media. My focus is to shift how we interact with and perceive computers, the Internet, networks, and digital information. Compared to the traditional art world, this would also fall into the category of subverting media, places, objects to make them mean something else than their original intention.2

Brucker-Cohen's Desktop Subversibles project consists of a number of downloadable applications that together present a worthy commentary on digital culture. Clicks is a continuation of past works in this vein such as IPO Madness (2000), a slot machine which produces web addresses by chance, Crank the Web (2001), a crank-driven internet connection, which proposes a hilarious solution to equal-opportunity connection speed, and Live Window (2001), which records physical input from the physical world, virtually. The Desktop Subversibles series is but one more project commenting on digital culture.

Computers have occupied our world like no other invention is history and infiltrated every facet of our existence. The Desktop Subversibles consists of four inventive applications which according to Cohen, exploits the virtual ubiquity of computers and desktop metaphor in our daily lives. According to Brucker-Cohen, as computers reach an apparent omnipresence in our daily lives, they also become objects we take for granted.3 Taking routine, unexciting everyday activities such as dragging and clicking a mouse and copy and paste commands, he transforms shrewd observations into commentaries of activity and space within the virtual and physical world. This communal interaction is best represented in Clicks & Clicks_Livemixer, the latest of his Desktop Subversibles series which also includes Clipit!, MouseMiles, and MouseTraces. Clicks has two components, one physical, the other virtual. The physical component is an ambient sound installation at Media Lab Europe in Dublin, Ireland that serves “as an indicator of computer activity and use on a global scale.”4 Thus, Clicks functions in a physical space that people who are on-line can modify. Thus they interact with people who are physically present in the space. The virtual component is the downloadable application suite.

So how does Brucker-Cohen describe his creation? If I may borrow from his example, I will simply copy/paste his description of Clicks from Coin-operated here:

Clicks is a downloadable networked application that provides an ambient connection to other people's desktops by collecting and distributing desktop mouseclicks. Once collected, clicks are sent to a central server and each connected client is assigned a unique tone which is played in a physical location (currently installed at MLE), creating an ambient sound installation as an indicator of computer activity and use on a global scale.

Clicks_LiveMixer allows people to "hear" the incoming clicks and mix the sounds by changing pitch, tone, and duration of each note associated with the incoming clicks.5

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Site: http://www.mle.ie/~jonah/projects/clicks.html