Plagiairc

Chat with the words of others

Plagiairc (2010) proposes a critical perspective on the limits of copyright in the digital age, with the Internet renewing the use, storage and availability of personal data.

Plagiairc is designed as a chat software that uses the Facebook network or Google Talk (jabber). It allows you to communicate with your Facebook / Google contacts privately. To emit a new sentence via the Plagiairc interface, the speaker will not be able to write freely through a conventional keyboard. He will be forced to use the words of "others", the semantics of textual chat room users. It will be able to draw from a database of 40,000 "public" French or English sentences recorded on the Internet Relay Chat (I.R.C.), an instant text communication protocol used mainly for group discussions.

By selecting one by one of the "public" words, the speaker will create a textual patchwork the concept of author is questioned because of its complete dissolution.

Sentences

Dialogue extracted from a Plagiairc chat.
Sentences written by disparate authors reinterpreted by a new author.

Extract from a chat the 16th of July 2010

14:32 Author 1: you? hungry from?14:33 Author 2: i can fake many happy yearsAuthor 1: the sweet list think lol14:34 Author 2: i didn't blamed it on a bucket of anchoviesAuthor 1: yeah walkin but back:)some difference spell Androids14:35 Author 2: i'm from the islandAuthor 1: Linux response :)) take your self nervousAuthor 2: what ? rich old ladies wants my precious14:36 Author 1: this one? live america many girl r liarAuthor 2: stop being wrong with meAuthor 1: I though I've heard dangerous cake14:37 Author 2: i can see her face so we will pick oneAuthor 1: you can move here enough ?14:38 Author 2: the insanity rule the worldAuthor 1: i havnt talked New York City

Download (2010-2016)

Plagiairc 1.2 (Windows) (2,7 MiB) Plagiairc 1.2 (Mac OS) (2,8 MiB) Plagiairc 1.2 (Java) (2,8 MiB)

Plagiairc did work from 2010 to 2016. It doesn't work anymore because Facebook and Google abandoned the open chat protocol Jabber XMPP.

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Credits

Conception and realisation : Nicolas Boillot

Java programming : Jean-François Lahos

Java, Processing, Geomerative, Java jabber client

Plagiairc was created during a netart production residency in la Chambre Blanche, Quebec city, Canada within the framework of the France-Quebec exchanges program, Géographies variables.

With the support of La Chambre Blanche, Incident.net, the Consulat Général de France à Québec and the Ministère des Relations Internationales du Québec.

Publications

Plagiairc cited in Chapter "épistolaire" from :

Plagiairc on Abécédaire du Web website, first online exhibition of Laboratoire NT2 de l’UQAM, Montréal, Canada, May 2012

Plagiairc on Répertoire des arts et littératures hypermédiatiques (nt2) (french)

Plagiairc on Rhizome Artbase