<nettime> Fwd Minds of Concern

["Lachlan Brown" <lachlan@london.com>]

'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.'


Message: 1
Date: Mon, 13 May 2002 18:33:40 +0530
To: commons-law@sarai.net
From: Monica Narula <monica@sarai.net>
Subject: [Commons-law] more on the public domain server
Reply-To: commons-law@sarai.net

http://www.nytimes.com/2002/05/13/arts/design/13ARTS.html

Museum's Cyberpeeping Artwork Has Its Plug Pulled
By MATTHEW MIRAPAUL

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 Hñáler 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. Hñáler 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. Hñáler 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."

Web Site: wwww.newmuseum.org
-- 
Monica Narula
Sarai:The New Media Initiative
29 Rajpur Road, Delhi 110 054
www.sarai.net



Lachlan Brown
T(416) 826 6937
VM (416) 822 1123

                                       

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