At the same time, his friend Hans – another failed student from the Anna Göldin-Gymnasium – decided that he would also apply. As large as Herbert was small, Hans was a skinhead whose mood-changing drinking habits and aggression made him a dominating force. His real love, however, was more sublime. ‘I wanted to be a poet, a voice in the world,’ he remembers. He had spent his teens writing acres of poetic rants that he described as WORDWAR. In ‘Reality’ he wrote, ‘my brain is splattering in the flames’ and that he was suffering ‘the permanent reduction of the physical-body functions, the retracting of the limbs, mutilation of the extremities, medical dependence on the higher lifeforms in the body’. Much of his poetry was nonsensical, testosterone-fuelled adolescent ranting, but it had energy and force nonetheless.
The relationship of Herbert and Hans was intense, borne of teenage enthusiasm for each other. Together they felt much stronger and more likely to succeed than they did on their own. Though they were not lovers, they behaved like a couple – finishing each other’s sentences, sharing confidences and trust in one another. Hans had a kind of immediate and spontaneous courage that fired Herbert up, and in the past they had goaded each other into doing increasingly outrageous stunts. But their friendship masked a rivalry and was, in part, an expedient alliance. ‘I know that I am greedy,’ says Herbert, ‘but Hans is endlessly greedy. I always said that, if you let him, he empties the buffet without caring about other people.’ Hans remembers, ‘We decided to be friends rather than enemies.’
Enthusiastically the two forged plans of how they would conquer Vienna together. Herbert used an illustrated portfolio of the HIRN-lein project to gain a place in the graphics department of the Vienna Academy of Applied Arts. Hans was determined to be radical, so chose not to submit any images to the same department. Instead he presented the text of the WORDWAR poems and was summarily rejected.
Despite this set-back, Hans and Herbert were not ready to give up their desire for a common future and Hans moved to Vienna anyway. They were so short of money, though, that they were forced to share a tiny bedsit, which they crammed with their video cameras and computers. They formed another association, Elastic Worldwide 4D, which was little more than the name and their enthusiasm; days and nights were spent taking drugs, making computer animations and talking about their future. And at some point they discovered the Academy’s department of visual media, run by Professor Peter Weibel, a man whose strange role in the seventies art scene they found very appealing.
Weibel had been a member of an art group called the Viennese Actionists, a bizarre descendant of Dada. The Actionists performed some of the most unsavoury and sadomasochistic public performances to have ever been described as art. One member of the group was arrested following a performance during which he sang the national anthem while masturbating. Weibel himself was led around the centre of Vienna by another Actionist, Vallie Export, on a lead as if he were a dog.
Herbert and Hans applied to join Weibel’s department together, but were required to submit their portfolios as individuals. Both boys were offered places and both were delighted. But by the autumn of 1994 this was not enough. They wanted to create a larger vehicle for their ambition, and felt that their combined skills alone were insufficient for them to make it to the big-time. So they decided to gather together a group of like-minded friends.
Herbert’s HIRN-lein collaborators were also interested in doing something else. Alberto continued to study architecture; Thomas, to everyone’s surprise, had enrolled at law school, but felt uncomfortable with his conservative colleagues; Juri was still an apprentice electrician and was desperate to give it up.
Herbert also got in touch with a couple of other friends, who had lent a hand at the beginning of HIRN-lein: Peter, a singer and charmer, and Franco, a keyboard player and guitarist, both of whom used computers to make and record music. Aged fourteen the pair and Herbert had founded their first club, the Gesellschaft für professionelle Amiga-Anwendung (GPA) – the Society for the Professional Use of the Amiga – to feed a shared enthusiasm for Amiga computers.
The Amiga computer was released in June 1985. The lineage of the computers dominating the market at that time could ultimately be traced back to the telegraph; the user could communicate only in letters and numerals, typing in complicated commands that would appear on the monochrome screens. By contrast Amiga was the first truly multimedia machine, with capabilities for sound, moving images and colour. At the launch Blondie’s Debbie Harry sang along to one. The computers were marketed under the tag line ‘Only Amiga Makes it Possible’; even Andy Warhol was said to own one.
The Amiga was never very popular but did develop a cult following. In a forerunner of today’s free-software movement, Amiga enthusiasts created an entire set of publicly available software which they distributed via bulletin-board systems and through small-advertisement sections in the back of magazines. And, in the mid-1980s in Switzerland, Herbert and his friends Peter and Franco jumped on the bandwagon. They produced a regular fanzine for their pro-Amiga society and recruited hundreds of members from around Europe – mostly from behind the Iron Curtain, where kids were desperate for contact with the computer magazines and software of the West. The society eventually disbanded, but the three boys remained friends.
While the others were provoking Zürich with HIRN-lein, Peter and Franco had set off on a pilgrimage to the heartland of world rave-culture: Manchester. The place was engulfed by the latest, ecstasy-fuelled dance phenomenon – Newsweek even splashed its cover with the city and its clubs, under the title ‘Madchester’. Peter and Franco had gone there thinking that it would be the perfect proving ground for their band, SuperSex, but they landed in the most violent part of the city, Moss Side. They met a lot of musicians, but nobody really understood why they had come. ‘We wanted to feel like pop stars – at least for a couple of months,’ remembers Franco. They finally ran out of money and their immigration status became perilous. Back in Zürich, both were only too happy to hear from Herbert.
In the early autumn of 1994, Herbert sent an invitation to his chosen friends, requesting their attendance at a meeting in the Swiss resort of Weggis on Lake Lucerne. Herbert titled the invitations ‘The Company – The Family’ and outlined his and Hans’s ideas for possible collaboration. The front of the invitation asked, ‘Fun, money and the new world?’ On the back was the icon of an attaché case in front of an emerging and radiating sun, in the centre of which was a dollar symbol.
The Magnificent Seven – Herbert, Alberto the brainy architecture student, Juri the shy hacker, Thomas the muscled law student, Peter and Franco the musicians, and Hans the radical poet – piled into two cars and drove the two hours from Zürich to Weggis. A century previously, Weggis had been an opulent resort that had played host to royalty and celebrity. It was also the place where Hans Arp, one of the founders of Dada, had come to break away from the tradition of representational art.
Amid an alpine landscape of old farmhouses, stables and orchards, the location for the meeting was an eyesore of a seventies concrete apartment-building. The borrowed apartment might in another time have been the location of a family holiday – happy snaps taken on the long balcony, the snow-capped mountains as backdrop.
As the boys rolled out their sleeping bags and cracked open beers, they were still uncertain as to what was about to happen. Their motivations and aspirations were a confused desire for fame amalgamated with a determination for political change and a belief in the power of art. All seven of them shared a rebellious sensibility, wanting to poke fun at and denounce the overbearing and monotonous tone of the society in which they lived. They all hoped that this meeting would produce something new and innovative that would further their collective anarchistic take on the world. More than anything, they hoped they could find a way to control their own destinies, to save themselves from dull, office-bound careers. Like young men the world over, they were also in search of visceral excitement and both emotional