[Python-Dev] Python and e-art

[Tim Peters]

[Samuele Pedroni]
> Hi. For the curious I just discovered this (maybe someone knew
> that already).
>
> Isn't python incredible <wink>.
>
> A group of e-artists has presented an e-art "virus" biennale.py
> written in python:
>
> http://www.0100101110101101.org/home/biennale_py/
>
> at the Biennale, the famous international contemporary art
> exposition and gathering in Venezia.
>
> It seems a t-shirt with the source code is available too.

Ya, and last week Python-Help got its first question about how concerned
Python users should be about this.

It's a cute and silly "virus":  it's just a bit of Python code that reads
its own source code from disk (up to a "stop here!" marker), looks for some
other Python files, and prepends itself to them.  Thus the files it alters
will (probably) do the same kind of thing when *they're* run; and so on.
The infected files clearly say that they're infected (in comments), and the
"stop here!" marker makes it easy to remove the mutation later.

All in all, it's more an example of marketing savvy than virus technology.
At the Biennale, their "exhibit" is simply a computer infected with this
virus.  An article in Wired said they managed to sucker 3 people so far into
paying something like $1000.00 a pop for a CD containing the virus source
code.

all's-fair-in-war-and-art-ly y'rs  - tim