If subversion is an art form, then Heath Bunting may well be the Michelangelo of the digital age. The self-taught British hacker calls himself an "artivist" – part artist, part activist. Employing pirate radio, bulletin-board systems, spray paint, and fax machines, he uses guerrilla tactics to overturn capitalistic ideals. In a now-renowned incident, he orchestrated all the pay phones in London's King's Cross Station to ring at once. More recently, he's been wreaking havoc on corporate Web sites by fucking with URLs. Two targets of his online performance-art antics were Nike and Adidas. Anyone using a search engine to track down either shoemaker was routed to www.irational.org, a page with a "URL FOR RENT" sign and a pointer to the competitor's site. "I'm sure businesses will develop these guerrilla search-engine tactics soon," Bunting says of his preemptive strike. "You have to fight your enemies with the same weapons."
This article originally appeared in the December issue of Wired magazine.
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