http://www.nytimes.com/2002/05/13/arts/design/13ARTS.html
By MATTHEW MIRAPAUL
May 13, 2002
An Internet-based artwork in an exhibition at the New Museum of
Contemporary Art was taken offline on Friday because the work was
conducting surveillance of outside computers. It is not clear yet who
is responsible for the blacking out - the artists, the museum or its
Internet service provider - but the action illuminates the work's
central theme: the tension between public and private control of the
Internet. The shutdown also shows how cyberspace's gray areas can
enshroud museums as they embrace the evolving medium.
The work in question is "Minds of Concern: Breaking News," created by
Knowbotic Research, a group of digital artists in Switzerland. The
piece is part of "Open Source Art Hack," an exhibition at the New
Museum that runs through June 30. The work can be viewed as an
installation in the museum's SoHo galleries or online at
newmuseum.org. Although the installation is still in place, and the
work's Web site remains live, the port-scanning software that is its
central feature was disabled Friday evening and was inactive yesterday
afternoon.
Port scanning sounds like a cruise-ship captain's task. The term
actually refers to a technique for surveying how other computers are
connected to the Internet. The software essentially strolls through
the neighborhood in search of windows that have been left open. Merely
noticing where they are is no crime. Things get dicier, though, if
what is seen is conveyed to a ne'er-do-well relative, who then breaks
in somewhere, rearranges the furniture and makes off with a
gem-encrusted putter.
One court has ruled that port scanning is legal so long as it does not
intrude upon or damage the computers that are being scanned. Internet
service providers, however, generally prohibit the practice, which can
cause online traffic jams. That prohibition appears to be what led to
the shutdown.
After the Knowbotic work started its peeping, the Internet service
provider for one of the targets of the scan complained to the museum's
Internet service provider, Logicworks. In turn, Logicworks notified
the museum that port scanning violated its policies. On Friday, Lauren
Tehan, a museum spokeswoman, said the museum was seeking a creative
technical solution to keep the work online.
That effort did not succeed. Ms. Tehan said the museum, at Logicworks'
request, shut down the work after the museum closed on Friday evening.
On Saturday morning, Christian Hübler of Knowbotic Research said the
group realized the port-scanning software had been disabled and
decided to move the work's Web site to an Internet service provider in
Germany. Ms. Tehan said that the museum suggested a way to put the
work back online but that Knowbotic rejected the proposal.
The dispute calls attention to one of the very points the piece is
intended to make. Because the lines between public and private control
of the Internet are not yet clearly defined, what artists want to do
may be perfectly legal, but that does not mean they will be allowed do
it.
Before the New Museum exhibition opened on May 3, Knowbotic Research
had already decided to remove the most troublesome features of the
port-scanning software. Mr. Hübler said the group changed the work
after consulting with a lawyer who specializes in Internet law. "I
wanted to know the situation I'm in," Mr. Hübler said, "because when I
work with the border as an artist, I want to know at least what the
border might be."
When it is functioning, "Minds of Concern" resembles a slot machine.
Viewers are prompted to scan the computer ports of organizations that
protested in February against the World Economic Forum. While colored
lights flash, a list of the vulnerable ports and the methods that
might be employed to "crack," or penetrate, them to gain access to
private information scrolls across the bottom of the screen. No
internal information is exposed, but the threat is suggested.
European digital artists are more politicized than their American
counterparts, and "Minds" is designed to advance a social agenda. By
choosing to explore the computers of anti-globalization groups instead
of Nike or Coca-Cola, Knowbotic is warning those groups that they are
at risk of losing sensitive data.
But to present the work at the New Museum, Knowbotic had to defang it.
At first, the group reviewed the 800 tools in the port-scanning
program and removed 200 it deemed intrusive or malicious. After
consulting with a lawyer, the group then encrypted the name of the
organization being scanned because it was unsure if publishing the
information was illegal. In place of the name on the screen, one saw
the phrase "artistic self-censorship."
The group's disappointment in having to scale back the work was
obvious in a message to an electronic mailing list: "Due to the
ubiquitous paranoia and threat of getting sued, the museum and the
curators made it very clear to us that we as artists are 100 percent
alone and private in any legal dispute."
There is a sense of a missed opportunity here. The dozen works in
"Open Source Art Hack" are intended to prompt discussion about the
public versus the private in cyberspace while demonstrating how
artists "hack," or misuse technology, to creative effect.
Port-scanning software, for instance, is meant to be used for
reconnaissance, yet Knowbotic has made it a political tool.
But "Minds of Concern" is also the only online work in the exhibition
to operate in a legal gray area. In its fully functional state, it had
the potential to cause a ruckus that might have yielded some
black-and-white rulings. But instead, the exhibition commits no real
transgressions.
Steve Dietz, the new-media curator at the Walker Art Center in
Minneapolis, was one of the exhibition's curators. Its goal, he said,
"was more nuanced than bringing cracking to the dull havens of a
museum."
"Being bad and doing something illegal hold very little interest for
me," he said, "but being tactical and creative hold a great deal.`
Artists like to be bad, and although museums are sometimes their
targets, they can also serve as shields when artists become
controversial. A recent example was the exhibition "Mirroring Evil:
Nazi Imagery/Recent Art," for which the Jewish Museum, not the
participating artists, took most of the heat.
As museums embrace cyberspace, its fuzzy rules are posing unfamiliar
problems, and "Minds of Concern: Breaking News" is a case in point. As
for how well those issues can be raised within a museum's walls, Lisa
Phillips, director of the New Museum, said: "That really is the
dilemma. We can only go so far."
-
ISN is currently hosted by Attrition.org
To unsubscribe email majordomo_at_attrition.org with 'unsubscribe isn'
in the BODY of the mail.
Received on May 15 2002
Intro
