Rhizome | Blog Posts tagged "privacy"

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Blank Spots on a Map: State Secrecy and the Limits of the Visible

Ceci Moss | Tue May 6th, 2008 3:34 p.m.

For the next New Silent Series program at the New Museum, Blank Spots on a Map: State Secrecy and the Limits of the Visible, geographer and artist Trevor Paglen will explore the network of hidden budgets, state secrets, covert military bases, and disappeared people that military and intelligence insiders call the "black world." Over the course of his talk, Paglen will lead the discussion from "non-existent" Air Force and CIA installations in the Nevada desert to secret prisons in Afghanistan and to a collection of even more obscure "black sites" startlingly close to home. Using hundreds of images he has produced and collected over the course of his work, Paglen shows how the black world's internal contradictions give rise to a peculiar visual, aesthetic, and epistemological grammar with which to think about the contemporary moment.

BUY TICKETS
Friday May 9th, 7:30 PM
the New Museum, New York, NY
$8 general public, $6 Members (Rhizome and New Museum)

Norwayweb (2007) by Bjorn Magnhildoen

Ceci Moss | Thu Feb 7th, 2008 4:13 p.m.

Artist Bjorn Magnhildoen in Norwayweb creates a "carpet" made of numbers derived from Norwegian tax payer information. Accessing roughly 4 million databases via "web scraping", the "carpet" is immediately triggered upon each visit to the web site, forcing the visitor to become a participant in the collection and redistribution of "private" information. Magnhildoen comments, "While the police earlier put goal-oriented tasks to suspected individuals and groups, now the whole population will be surveilled."

Marc Garrett of Furtherfield wrote a fascinating review of the work last month where he discusses the piece within the context of widespread digital surveillance.