[spectre] Announcing two new works about the NSA/GCHQ

[Nicholas Knouf]

Apologies for any cross-posting...

I wanted to announce two new works that explore the nature of
communication in the wake of Edward Snowden's revelations.

With Claudia Pederson, we released a project about the cultural
imaginary of the NSA/GCHQ. The project uses the texts and imagery of the
NSAs internal advice columnist, “Ask Zelda", as well as other documents
and images from the NSA/GCHQ released by Edward Snowden and reported on
by a variety of media outlets. Entitled "Art for Spooks", it is an
augmented reality book that takes a poetic angle to electronic
surveillance, asking what are the ways in which employees of these
agencies see the world, if all that we have to go by are the released
slides and text fragments. Using an iPad to examine the images in the
book, visitors can see alternative cultural imaginaries that are
provoked by the NSA/GCHQ images. Visitors have the opportunity to
"share" images of these augmentations, including their own portraits, on
various social networking services; metadata in these images are mangled
to hide scholarly texts about surveillance, coordinates of drones
strikes, and recombined versions of NSA/GCHQ texts. The spread of these
images is designed to add to the images and metadata collected by these
surveillance agencies, thus providing "art for spooks".

The project is on view at the Davis Museum at Wellesley College in
Wellesley, MA until December 21st. More information can be found at
http://art-for-spooks.org/.

Imagery from users of Art for Spooks can be found on the following
social media websites:

* Flickr: https://secure.flickr.com/photos/126630681@N03/
* Twitter: https://twitter.com/artforspooks
* Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/artforspooks
* Tumblr: http://art-for-spooks.tumblr.com/

The second project, “sylloge of codes”, asks what new means of
communication we might need to develop in light of the revelations by
Edward Snowden. If we know that everything is being surveilled, and if
we know that encryption is not a panacea, then it behooves us to develop
new, more poetic forms of communication. The project is meant to be
portable, and consists of a computer and projector within a box. The
computer opens up a local wireless network whereby visitors to the
exhibition can suggest new “codes” or means of communicating that are
resistant to computational analysis. Referring to the ancient practice
of creating a “sylloge”, or a collection of Greek and Roman
inscriptions, “sylloge of codes” asks us to construct a new sylloge for
the 21st century.

sylloge of codes is on view at:

* Davis Museum, Wellesley College, Wellesley, MA, "New View: 2014
Faculty Show", September 17, 2014 to December 21, 2014
* Galería Macchina, Escuela de Arte de la Universidad Católica,
Santiago, Chile, "In-Transit / En tránsito", August 20, 2014 to
September 23, 2014

More information is available at http://www.sylloge-of-codes.net/

Please let me know if you have any questions or comments about these
projects.

Best,

Nick Knouf