This is what we are doing: Colonizing the virtual geography of small Texas town. And then telling the town about it.

What is Marfa? Marfa, Texas is a desert town populated by 2000 people, not far from the Mexican border. In the 1970s, the artist Donald Judd moved to Marfa, and, with the financial backing of the DIA Foundation, purchased much of the dwindling town's real estate. Judd then created permanent site-specific exhibition spaces for his work and that of colleagues, consequently turning the sleepy hamlet into an international arts destination.

As such, Marfa's internet presence, which grossly exceeds the standard of comparably-sized towns across the United States, speaks largely to art tourism: it is a town whose identity, to outsiders, is as much virtual as it is concrete.

What exactly are we proposing? Because Marfa is small and its online presence fairly controlled, our goal is to mold and shift its online geography in a way that will directly affect the way the town is perceived by outsiders. Because of our extensive work "remodeling" Marfa's online, visitors' interactions with Marfa will be colored by their web-based preconceptions, as engineered by us. Although we cannot predict the effect this may have on life in Marfa, we imagine that the high rate of turnover of Marfa artists-in-residence and visitors, coupled with this manipulation of the primary information sources about the town, will affect the consciousness, identity, and physical form of the place.

How will we do this? We will create a traditional "Web Ring," generating traffic by hyperlinking our collection of domains between one another. Due to the Web Ring's high volume of interlinking, Google search results will be skewed in favor of our sites, as opposed to Marfa's legitimate web presence -- the sites devoted to its Chamber of Commerce, galleries, hotels, and museums.

Why are we doing this? Donald Judd acted on Marfa in a cavalier fashion, resulting in a colonization of its historic identity; our project is homage, and a similar experiment in sabotaging virtual geography. We are interested in the repercussions of this experiment: Can sabotaging a search engine depress or stimulate the economy of the town? How malleable is our sample? Can we change, negate, or complicate Donald Judd's colonialist actions? Can an audience interested in art tourism equally appreciate web-based work? Would Marfa residents ever notice how subtle changes in their town's virtual presence affect day-to-day life?

How will we utilize Rhizome's financial support? Primarily, we are interested in asking the community of Marfa about the ramifications of our actions. Our proposal requests funds in order to promote and conduct a "town hall" meeting in Marfa, TX explaining to the residents of said town what we have created. This performative lecture will outline the work, as well as explain the virtual and sociological changes to the town's geography implicated in the piece, both short term and long term. We will host a Q&A at the lecture, as well as hold a call-in talk show on Marfa's local NPR affiliate radio station, KRTS.

Furthermore, we'd use the commission to build up to 15 more websites, as well as hire a programmer to help us make some of the more difficult sites fully functional, primarily the Marfa Craigslist.

The domains, many of them already live, that are currently under the umbrella of Marfa Ring are:

www.marfaring.com
www.gaswatchmarfa.com (the prices of gas at Marfa's two gas stations)
www.marfa-lites.com (a conspiracy-theory explanation of the phenomenological lights that appear in the evenings outside of town)
www.food-shark.com (a carbon copy of Marfa's falafel truck's website)
www.marfa-looks.com (a street fashion blog)
www.marfachinati.org (a "grift" of the Judd museum)
www.applestoremarfa.com (a support center for the art organizations' computer problems)
www.marfagossip.com (a local gossip site)
www.marfalist.com (a craigslist for marfa)
www.marfatecture.com (an explanation of the gentrified architecture of Marfa)
www.rickspixofmarfa.com (pictures and movies of Marfa by a fictional character named Rick)
www.tumblemail.com (a website that will sell free range tumbleweeds to interior designers)
www.marfapolicedepartment.com
www.marfachamberofcommerce.org

Budget:
Domain Registration and hosting for 14+ websites for one year: $200
Airfare to/from Marfa for website presentations (three people): $700
Renting Marfa's Goode Crowley Theater for presentation open to the public: $500
One week's lodging & expenses in Marfa (three people): $1,000
Artists Fees: $500 x 3
Programming (implementation of the data-driven sites): $700

Total: $4,600

Narrative Bio:
Jona Bechtolt, Claire L. Evans, and Aaron Flint Jamison have been friends and collaborators for several years. Most of their work is individual: Jona creates music and video under the pseudonym YACHT, Claire is a freelance science writer and artist, usually under the blanket of her "Universe" project, while Flint's nebulous work in the print and media art world is too elaborate to fully address here.

However, the three have also worked together extensively, and they are very much involved in the criticism of each others' work. In 2006, they undertook a problematic North American performance tour called "Which Side Are You On?" in which all three performed complex Power Point pieces about technology, light, and darkness that necessitated hours of technical set-up. However, it was a success. Also, Claire is the associate editor, and Jona the web editor, of Flint's 18-issue, 5-year magazine project, Veneer.

Most relevantly to this project, however, is the fact that Jona, Claire, and Flint lived together in Marfa, Texas for two months at the beginning of 2008 where they were able to begin the planning stages of this project.