etoy.CORPORATION (based in Zurich, CH, and Berlin, DE) is known for its pioneering role in internet art. Etoy is incorporated as a privately-held shareholder company. It replaces the older concept of the genius artist with a brand that is owned, controlled and fed by a group of stakeholders: etoy.AGENTS, investors, art collectors and fans. In the art market, the only etoy's available product is etoy.SHARE. Etoy is a typical early mover (online since 1994) and developed rapidly into a market leader in the field of contemporary art. Actions and services like the digital hijack (1996), etoy. TIMEZONE (1998), TOYWAR (1999/2000), etoy.DAYCARE (since 2002) and the etoy. TANKS (since 1998) are classics of digital art. Since 2005 etoy.CORPORATION is working on MISSION ETERNITY, an ultra long term project that allows pioneers of the information age to travel space and time forever.

Since 2006 the Swiss collective etoy.CORPORATION has worked on the MISSION ETERNITY project. Reflecting on how a person's identity can be reconstructed starting from the various traces left in interactions with the internet, the artists give individuals the chance to collect and save information about themselves such as photographs, videos and recorded monologues. The project involves the storage and representation of these different data, facing the problem of the conservation of memory and what remains of a human being in the digital age once his or her body is gone - "a technology-driven cult of the dead", in search of new forms of memory.
TAMATAR is one of the visualizations for this wider project. The white polystyrene spheres comprising it testify, as a whole, to the identity of an individual, whose voice can be heard coming from the spheres. Some of them have a motor inside that allow them to move through space, interacting with the public. The polystyrene, generally employed for packaging and thus a typical example of a temporary container, leads to further associations on the subject of the relationship between body and soul, to which the title of the work, TAMATAR (composed of the Japanese words "tama" - soul, but also sphere - and "avatar"), expressly refers. Its surface is marked by the traces of movement and interactions with the public, expressing an aspect of ephemeral fragility that contrasts with the durability of the digital data it holds and the principle of eternity underlying the project.