NRD Van NRD Kit

computer programe, 2001

NRD Kit (New reality Development Kit) is a network tool for production and publishing of media contents. NRD Kit also educates its users and content recipients on difference between representation of data and data per se, as well as on importance of knowing and accessing an original program code.

NRD Kit users are news and stories producers. They use NRD Kit in order to specifically attract attention of an ordinary, benevolent internet user. Regarding use and input of the new contents, NRD Kit is very simple.

Dominant culture of interaction between man and machine favours - and aims at - ignorance of the ordinary user. Working together with his/hers insatiable hunger for sensations, it creates prerequisites for predictable reception of the contents formatted via NRD Kit.

To format its contents, NRD Kit uses address space and layout of the existent pages. Credibility, authenticity, objectivity and neutrality represented by their layout and name provide space of play and creation for the NRD Kit users. Possibility of their mutual hypertextual intertwining, actually very rare, also provides a chance to experience these established bigwigs's identity in a completely new fashion. The most popular web browser running at today's most popular operative system has been selected to mediate in this process.

NRD Kit is a freeware published under GNU GPL at http://www.picigin.netand has been developed at GNU/Linux, written in Python and based on Twisted network framework and Nevow template engine. Adding new specimen into the base of updatable internet pages should prove a relatively easy task even for the beginners in web technology.

The first interactive story in the base is NRD Van's 'homage' to a subversive media art, its theoretical articulation and – above all – the hacker culture in general. The story originated in February 2001.

NRD Van

NRD Van (New Reality Development Van) is a temporary sanctuary of identity with a temporary residence at TCP/IP space. TCP/IP protocol has been adapted as a military standard (MIL STD) in 1983. TCP/IP is based on the Open System Interconnect (OSI) Reference Model, which is a standard for describing structure and function of data communication protocols, developed in order to enable reliable communication in almost impossible conditions of the total war. TCP/IP knows no concept of the state borders or any form of discrimination based on race colour, sex, language, religion, political or other worldview, national or social origin, possessions, birth and other circumstances. When borders cease to be, NRD Van will gladly turn into a Volkswagen Caravan.

The noun van has 4 senses:
1. avant-garde, vanguard, van, new wave -- (any creative group active
in the innovation and application of new concepts and techniques in a
given field (especially in the arts))
2. vanguard, van -- (the leading units moving at the head of an army)
3. van, caravan -- (a camper equipped with living quarters)
4. van -- (a truck with an enclosed cargo space)