{"id":46,"date":"2025-05-27T23:10:28","date_gmt":"2025-05-27T23:10:28","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/mosys.art\/wordpress\/?p=46"},"modified":"2025-05-27T23:10:28","modified_gmt":"2025-05-27T23:10:28","slug":"i-rebranded-myself-as-a-system-file","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/mosys.art\/wordpress\/i-rebranded-myself-as-a-system-file\/","title":{"rendered":"I Rebranded Myself as a System File"},"content":{"rendered":"","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[10,9],"class_list":["post-46","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-field-notes","tag-identity","tag-mo-sys"],"acf":{"subtitle":"My name was already taken","feature_image":47,"summaryexcerpt":"My name is <strong>Mark O\u2019Connor<\/strong>. It's the name I was given, born into \u2014 but it\u2019s not the name I create under.\r\n\r\nThere are already Mark O\u2019Connors established and building reputations in music, poetry, and visual art. To keep that name would be to risk confusing identities, and losing signal. I needed something distinct \u2014 not to erase myself, but to make my practice legible on its own terms.\r\n\r\nSo I renamed myself mo.sys, a system file.\r\n\r\nIt sounds minimal, but the reference is dense. \"mo\" are my initials but also reference <em>modus operandi<\/em><span data-mce-type=\"bookmark\" style=\"display: inline-block; width: 0px; overflow: hidden; line-height: 0;\" class=\"mce_SELRES_start\">\ufeff<\/span>, a method, a pattern, a signature approach.  In computing, .sys files are system files \u2014 hidden by default. They\u2019re foundational. These are the drivers, the boot loaders, the core instructions that tell an operating system how to behave, how to boot, how to communicate with the outside world \u2014 keyboards, displays, audio, memory. They sit deep in the system. Often overlooked. But remove the wrong one, and the whole thing collapses.\r\n\r\nThat\u2019s the metaphor.\r\n\r\nMy work interrogates systems: how we move through them, how they structure experience, how they fail or enslave or endure. Political systems. Media systems. Ritual systems. Naming myself mo.sys puts that interest front and centre. It turns the artist\u2019s name into a file path \u2014 an instruction set, a ghost in the machine.\r\n\r\nThere\u2019s also a more human echo. Phonetically, it becomes \u201cMoses\u201d, a reference to my lived life and themes I have yet to explore in my work, a religious layer. I was raised in a Christian household and schooled by Capuchin monks. My childhood was full of rituals and silences, surveillance and shame. Ireland\u2019s church was already crumbling under scandal by then. The experience left behind a kind of residual theology \u2014 not belief, but shape: obedience, redemption, hidden sins, whispered commands. The same structures you now find in algorithms, media platforms, and feedback loops.\r\n\r\nSo this isn\u2019t just a pseudonym. It\u2019s a framework. A provocation.\r\n\r\nmo.sys is a system file. A name built for bootstrapping identity in a fractured world.","featured":true,"themes":["Digital Collage"]},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mosys.art\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/46","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/mosys.art\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/mosys.art\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mosys.art\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mosys.art\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=46"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/mosys.art\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/46\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":48,"href":"https:\/\/mosys.art\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/46\/revisions\/48"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mosys.art\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=46"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mosys.art\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=46"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mosys.art\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=46"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}