NEEN stands for NEENSTERS: a still undefined generation of visual artists. Some of them may belong to the contemporary art world; others are software creators, web designers and videogame directors or animators.
Our official theories about reality -Quantum physics- has proved that the taste of our life is the taste of a simulation. Machines help us feel comfortable with this condition: they simulate the simulation that we call Nature.
You may open the door of your room, or you may click on a folder at the desktop of your computer: both actions will send you to similar destinations: two versions of reality, apparently impeccable and dense, but which will dissolve after you start to analyze them.
While I speak to my mother in the kitchen of my apartment, a Sims couple is having an argument inside the PC. In the television, SuperMario is sleeping under a painting because nobody is playing with him at this time. My mother is convinced that she has her son in front of her. Who she is really talking to though, is a person that doesn't even think in his mother language any more. (I start to think in Italian when I move there from Greece).

Computing is to NEEN what fantasy is to Surrealism and freedom to Communism.
It creates the context but it can also be postponed. NEENSTERS glorify machines but they get easily bored with them and prefer to watch some assistants operate them. They want to have a formal control though: they will buy the newest products and they will watch as (the products) will create momentum. What NEENSTERS mostly do, is teaching stuff to machines. They will install programs to an empty hard drive. They will animate a character and send him sit on a corner. NEENSTERS prefere multiple operating systems: they want to try the same thing again and again on different platforms. "Take the stairs and go back to get the elevator". They find pleasure in the in-between actions. They also love copying, in the same way that the city of Hong Kong multiplies its most successful buildings. The same a little different: clothes style and architecture, are for NEENSTERS significant as well as their machines. They are great tools for their "surface navigation".

NEEN is not interested about identity, but NEENSTERS, may occasionaly use it (their identity) as a password in order to receive priviledged information .
The identity of a NEENSTER is his state of mind. Because he/she will publish everything on the web, his/her state of mind reflects on the public taste. NEENSTERS are public personas. If fantasy brought Surrealists to ridiculous and revolution drove Communists to failure, it will be curious to observe where computing will bring NEEN.

to be continued

Miltos Manetas 2000