Nowadays computer viruses are an integral part of our computerised everyday life. The damages to national economies, caused by the more than 60.000 viruses appeared until now, generate costs of many billions. In the case of the “I Love You” virus the Independent US research institute Computer Economics estimates the damage to 8,75 billion US $. The exhibition “I Love You” is an experiment with contemporary art in the era of digitalisation. It uses its own paradigms und until now very unusual ways of expression. Basis are the latest technologies, for the creative output they are material as well as means of communication. A growing new generation of artists operates with these modern technologies and enlarges its area of influence to the reality of a permanently changing society of knowledge and information. Divided into several sections on an area of 150 square meters the exhibition creates a connection between computer viruses as causes of economic damage and inspiration for art. With the help of several computer workstations the effects and interesting payloads (payload = end result visible on the monitor after a virus contami­ nation) of selected viruses are demonstrated. Stand-alone terminals enable visitors to navigate a collection of approx. 400 viruses, activate virus infected files and cause the crash of the computers. Background information is provided by a chronology of the by now 30-year-old history of computer viruses and their technical evolution. The net artists 0100101110101101.ORG and "epidemic” are presenting their viruses “biennale.py" and “bocconi.py”, that transcend their mere quality as self-reproducing programs to a piece of social art.

The hacker and Free Software programmer Jaromll offers an inside view of the hacker ethics and the aesthetical connotation of viruses. A selection of his work will be shown. “Obfuscated C Code" authors like Carl Banks will be presented demonstrating the fascination of coding as a creative act with form and function. One of the perspectives the exhibition takes up devotes itself to the programming code as a lan­ guage, which, besides its mere functionality, has a high artistic and aesthetic standard. Comparable to the experimental poetry of the early vanguard - Baudelaire, Rimbaud, the poètes maudits as well as Apollinaire and the surrealists - code poets nowadays experiment with contemporary materials such as source code.

A different prospective upon the economical and social dimension is added by the viewpoint of a global player in antivirus and content security soft-ware and services, Trend Micro. In juxtaposition to artistically motivated hacktivists of the digital
art scene the security experts present their concept of “Intuitive Information Security”.