The spanish group Santofile lugs the meme concept in the discourse about the creative potential of digital technologies, being in favor of the content and public sources appropriation. The meme is the cultural factor that transmits itself in time replicating its own data through an imitation process. Some of the practices involved are the remixing and the plagiarism approach, that are essential when mingling different sources found on the net. That's how X Reloaded has been made. It's a net.art project that offers different interpretations of the Cervantes' Don Chisciotte, rendered with the style of famous artists of reference. So discovering how Jodi, Jenny Holzer, Olia Lialina, Barbara Kruger, El Lissitzki, Tony Scott or Ferran Adrià would have told the same story (with their own technique and aesthetic) is amusing as playing a language game. These authors, very varied, has been selected for their cultural model. These models are based on different assumptions and promote different experiences using found materials and culturally identifiable symbols. They are decontextualized from the original conceptual frame and shaped in new forms, that bring new meanings. In X Reloaded, even the choice of Don Chisciotte is not a random one, because it starts from the chivalry romance and ends defining a new genre. So the project by definition is not concluded, but it's open to networked users collaboration.
Francesca Colasante