Museum's Cyberpeeping Artwork Has Its Plug Pulled

[Dave Monroe]

>From Matthew Mirapaul, "Museum's Cyberpeeping Artwork
Has Its Plug Pulled," NY Times, Monday, May 13th, 2002
...

n 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.

[...]

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....

[...]


... "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.

[...]

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."

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

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