project description
This project consists of a gallery installation, a Web interface (called Public Domain Scanner) and a free downloadable news ticker. Through the Web interface: the Public Domain Scanner, visitors can select "Minds of Concern" groups, movements, or NGOs like Oxfam, the Freedom from Debt Coalition and COSATU that are engaged in critical global activities in the networked society. This list also includes artistic media activists and international media artists. Through a virtual slot machine (part of the Public Domain Scanner), visitors "win" one of the NGOs or artists as a target (mind of concern), and can trigger network scans which investigate the security conditions on the target‚s Internet server. These scans sense whether the targeted server is secure or open to hacker attacks. The results of these scans, the riskfactors of the servers, are made available in the exhibition on a hyperbolic weaved spatial matrix , visually depicting the strength or vulnerability of a server to people worldwide.
Network context :
”The internet as a representational network with its nodes and graphs seems to be more appropriate to global organisations such as the NGOs that rely on stable nodes organised with a view to act on specific issues. Virtual social movements, on the other hand, seem to exceed the network because of the intrinsic mobility of their elements, connected together by a multiplicity of communication channels, converging and diverging in mobile configurations.” New ways of public acting must not fall into the trap of the worn dichotomy of private and public but instead open new possibilities of public agency for domains of the commons and include tactics which have been seen as inappropriate for the contextualization of the public domain in the modern sense. Instead of referring only to the concepts of transparency, visibility and manifestation, we suggest upgrading public agencies with non-representational activities like encrypting, rendering invisible, disinforming, hiding, fleeing, tunneling, disturbing, spoofing, and other camouflage tactics.
What we seek is the potential for the production of a different kind of network agency, where a fluid capacity to connect and disconnect through heterogeneous coded enactions is used productively as a kind of degree zero (where power comes from), which it is important to return and relate to.
Such capacity is, in fact in itself not so much neutral as not immediately given. Tactical and coded connectivity allows for difficult or easy communication, for long-term commitments, encrypted and fleeting affairs. It is crossed by conflicts, gives no guarantees of success, and possesses a weird kind of memory, collective, fleeting and yet durable. It demands a sustained effort to redefine, design, and act out the domain of the commons.
Why do we show the vulnerability of NGOs and media artists?:
NGOs and media artists are an important part of the contemporary enlargement and diversification of the political and cultural landscape. They enact a reconstruction of the public domain in a globalised world. The Internet is a crucial tool of these social and political agencies. It facilitates a broad and potentially open system of communication and information. At the same time, there is an increasing awareness that the Internet is encroached by concerns about security: data security, privacy, military security, etc. The dilemma of these security concerns is that they seek to protect a public domain which is corrupted by the very attempts to secure their functionality.
This dilemma is the central theme of this project. By scanning the ports of the NGO's and media artists servers we are trying to pinpoint the dilemma of NGOs and media artists having to protect an independent and progressive political and social practice through security measures which are constantly being tried, tested and attacked with ever new invasive tools. In the project, we are using non-invasive security scanning tools, which systems administrators alike use in order to detect security holes on the Internet servers.
What is Public Domain Scanner?:
Public Domain Scanner is software which remotely audits the public domain on the Internet and determines whether bad guys (a.k.a. "crackers") can break into it or misuse it in some way.
Public Domain Scanner is a port scanner which examines the available protocols and services on Web servers of the public domain. It then analyzes the available services and protocols for vulnerabilities.
Public Domain Scanner is smart and non-destructive. It only asks for version numbers; it does not test login passwords, create a significant amount of traffic, or access or alter any data on a scanned computer. Public Domain Scanner explains how to prevent crackers from exploiting security holes found in the public domain and displays the risk level of each problem found (from Low to Very High).
Public Domain Server encrypts identifying information about whose server has been found to have vulnerabilities.
What is Portscanning?:
The act of systematically scanning a computer's ports. Since a port is a place where information goes into and out of a computer, port scanning identifies open doors to a computer. Port scanning has legitimate uses in managing networks, but port scanning also can be malicious in nature if someone is looking for a weakened access point to break into your computer.
Types of port scans: - vanilla: the scanner attempts to connect to all 65,535 ports - strobe: a more focused scan looking only for known services to exploit - fragmented packets: the scanner sends packet fragments that get through simple packet filters in a firewall - UDP: the scanner looks for open UDP ports - sweep: the scanner connects to the same port on more than one machine - FTP bounce: the scanner goes through an FTP server in order to disguise the source of the scan - stealth scan: the scanner blocks the scanned computer from recording the port scan activities. Port scanning in and of itself is not a crime. There is no way to stop someone from port scanning your computer while you are on the Internet because accessing an Internet server opens a port, which opens a door to your computer. There are, however, software products that can stop a port scanner from doing any damage to your system. http://www.webopedia.com/TERM/P/port_scanning.html
Artistic network practice:
Is it possible for an artist to question the legal and security conditions of the public domain in networks, and is it possible to do this in the framework of Art institutions? - How far do exhibitions under the label of ‘hacking’, ‘piracy’ or ‘open source’ open up a framework for critical art work? - Is it possible to place tactical media, which are hybrid agencies per se, into the art field without reducing their transformative potential Knowbotic Research, in its recent projects, enters the unstable zone of legal and security conditions of networks and demands new tactics and agencies inside the domain of the public .
Such new ways of public acting cannot fall into the trap of the worn dichotomy of private and public but rather open new possibilities of public agency for domains of the commons and include tactics which were seen as inappropriate for the contextualization of the public domain in the modern sense. Instead of referring only to the concepts of transparency, visibility and manifestation, we suggest to upgrade the public agencies with non-representational activities like encrypting, rendering invisible, disinforming, hiding, fleeting, tunnelling, disturbing, spoofing, and other camouflage tactics.
What we are looking for is a potential for the production of a different type of network politics, where a fluid capacity to connect and disconnect through heterogeneous coded enactions is used productively as a kind of degree zero (where power comes from), which it is important to return and relate to. Such capacity in fact is in itself not so much neutral as not immediately given. Tactical and coded connectivity allows for difficult or easy communication, for long term commitments, encrypted and fleeting affairs, it is crossed by conflicts, gives no guarantees of success and possesses a weird kind of memory, collective, fleeting and yet durable. It demands a sustained effort to redefine, design, act out the domains of the commons.
Open Law http://eon.law.harvard.edu/openlaw/
Politics for the Public Domain:
"Social space is produced and structured by conflicts. With this recognition, a democratic spatial politics begins.…..The political sphere is not only a site of discourse; it is also a discursively constructed site. From the standpoint of a radical democracy, politics cannot be reduced to something that happens inside the limits of a public space or political community that is simply accepted as 'real'. Politics, as Chantal Mouffe writes, is about the constitution of the political community. It is about the spatializing operations that produce a space of politics. Oliver Marchardt shuddha@sarai.net, emailing dak@sarai.net on the nettime mailing list:
Let us stretch the classical western notions of the 'public' as an open and local space of conversation, solidarity and dialogue towards the dimensions of the hidden and the ubiquitous. This will bring into meaning the very opposite of what we commonly understand when we say 'Public.' There is an Indian song which says, 'The Public, it knows everything.' This suggests that the public includes things that are not necessarily apparent, or visible, or transparent. It means, the Public knows more things than the 'marketplace of the knowable.' It suggests codes and protocols of encryption that circulate in self-governing constellations of people, data and cultures. It evokes the idea of very public secrets, of whispers, rumors, prophecies, blandishments, fantasies and calls for insurrection that no one may be willing to speak out loud for fear of being caught but which, nevertheless, everyone is murmuring. This means that the Public Domain may be the safest refuge for those ideas that are vulnerable because they are the most radical. The ones that need to be most obscure to the censor, and at the same time most understandable in common speech, because they are the closest to lived experience. The designs of identification and the disguises of anonymity are equally attractive forms of costumes in this domain. In shifting between one and the other, between secrets and announcements, lies the enigmatic attraction of surfing the Public Domain."
Knowbotic Research was established in 1991, and has experimented with
formations of information, interface and networked agency. Their more
recent projects present artistic practice with media in an attempt to
find viable forms of intervention in the public domain. Since 1998, Knowbotic
Research has been teaching and carrying out research in the New Media
Department at the University of Art and Design, Zurich, Switzerland. Their
projects have received major awards including: the Hermann Claasen Prize
for Media Art and Photography 2001; the international Media-art award,
ZKM, Karlsruhe, 1997 and 2000; August Seeling-Award of Wilhelm Lehmbruck
Museum 1997; Prix Arts Electronica, Golden Nica 1994 and 1998. Knowbotic
Research has recently exhibited in major new media exhibitions including:
Borderhack 2.0; "Defining Lines, Breaking down borders,” online-exhibition,
2001; Biennale for Architecture and Media, Graz, "Infospheres";
Transmediale Berlin, "netbased participation and social software",
2001; ISEA Paris, 2000; and ZKM Karlsruhe, "net_condition",
1999, and in international art exhibitions such as Art Basel, "Liste2001";
Kunstverein Hamburg "Aussendienst", 2000; 48. Biennale Venice,
Austrian Pavillon, "Open Fields of Action" 1999;
Peter
Sandbichler is an independent installation artist and sculptor, who
has been collaborating with Knowbotic Research on their major installations
for several years.
Credits:
knowbotic research in collaboration with , Peter Sandbichler (installation)
thanks to
Schweizer Botschaft Seoul, Helvetia,
Ania Kurowska, Marco Klingmann, Christoph Burgdorfer
Credits:
knowbotic research in collaboration with , Peter Sandbichler (installation)
thanks to
Schweizer Botschaft Seoul, Helvetia,
Ania Kurowska, Marco Klingmann, Christoph Burgdorfer
