I just came across a reference for the "Open_Source_Art_Hack" exhibit at The New Museum of COntemporary Art in New York City.
It runs 03 May 2002 through 30 June 2002 and is located in the museum's Zenith Media Lounge. More info at: http://www.newmuseum.org/medialounge/Art_Hack%20detail.htm The Web site's blub seems to be a mish-mosh of good, excellent, and questionable statements. But it does present hacking as something beneficial in many ways: --- In mainstream culture, hacking has many-mostly negative-connotations. Acts of hacking can range from relatively harmless pranks, to those that have economic consequences, to criminal actions. The activity itself elicits both fear and fascination, and its aura of anonymity and inscrutability makes it ripe for media exaggeration. Especially after September 11, 2001, the usual official response to any kind of hacking has been to indiscriminately codify it as "cyber-terrorism," diverting attention from its significant social implications. In an age of increased surveillance, rampant commercialization, and privatization of everything from language, to biological entities, to supposedly personal information, hacking-as an extreme art practice-can be a vital countermeasure. Particularly when combined with the ethics of the "open source" movement, hacking represents an important form of institutional critique. [...] This exhibition includes the work of artists from the United States, Switzerland, Denmark, Australia, and the United Kingdom who approach hacking as a creative electronic strategy for resistance, rather than as a merely destructive act. By using media and technology tactically, transparently, and collaboratively, the artists reveal and subvert the way in which society, institutions, governments, or corporations undermine individual identity, local control, and citizen agency. The work in Open_Source_Art_Hack is new, but not without history, since it shares an important legacy with artists who have always been interested in the politics of art as a mechanism of protest. <rest of the page's text snipped> ---- I like the concept of hacking as an extreme art practice. Doesn;t totally define hacking but does justice to hacking as an esthetic as well as a technique. I am planning to go up to NYC sometime in late June to see the exhibit. One of the things that the blurb about the exhibit in Information Week said was that the exhibit includes a display which allow visitors to "scan the network security condition of servers at a business wihtout actually accessing data." (Well, in a sense, one is accessing data, that is, the data about the security conditions. Oh well.<g>) The IW blurb said that this exhibit could be put up on the museum's Web site because it would violate their current ISP's acceptable use policies and the museum hasn't found another Web host for that part of the exhibit. J.D. Abolins
