The Autonomy Cube was an art project run by American artists and technologists
Trevor Paglen
Trevor Paglen (born 1974) is an American artist, geographer, and author whose work tackles mass surveillance and data collection.
In 2016, Paglen won the Deutsche Börse Photography Foundation Prize and he has also won The Cultural Award from the ...
and
Jacob Appelbaum
Jacob Appelbaum (born 1 April 1983) is an American independent journalist, computer security researcher, artist, and hacker. He studied at the Eindhoven University of Technology and was a core member of the Tor project, a free software network des ...
which places relays for the anonymous communication network
Tor
Tor, TOR or ToR may refer to:
Places
* Tor, Pallars, a village in Spain
* Tor, former name of Sloviansk, Ukraine, a city
* Mount Tor, Tasmania, Australia, an extinct volcano
* Tor Bay, Devon, England
* Tor River, Western New Guinea, Indonesia
Sc ...
in traditional art museums.
Both have previously created art pieces that straddle the border between art and technology,.
The cube is in line with much of Paglen's and Appelbaum's earlier pieces in targeting the field of surveillance and government snooping.
The sculptures consist of 1.25 ft blocks of acrylic Lucite containing Wifi-routers based upon two
open source hardware
Open-source hardware (OSH) consists of physical artifacts of technology designed and offered by the open-design movement. Both free and open-source software (FOSS) and open-source hardware are created by this open-source culture movement and a ...
Novena
A novena (from Latin: ''novem'', "nine") is an ancient tradition of devotional praying in Christianity, consisting of private or public prayers repeated for nine successive days or weeks. The nine days between the Feast of the Ascension and Pen ...
-motherboards.
Overview
The first sculpture was installed in Oldenburg, Germany in 2014 and acts as both a Tor exit-relay and Wifi-hub for visitors of the museum.
Any user who connects to the museum open Wifi called ''Autonomy Cube'' is directed through the Tor-network for all their activity.
This effectively anonymizes and hides the traffic from many forms of surveillance and interception.
In January 2016, four installations had been made in New York, London and Frankfurt, beyond the one in Oldenburg.
More sculptures are planned, with three coming during May 2016, one at
Altman Siegel Gallery in San Francisco.
Institutions that have shown the cube in limited exhibitions include
Metro Pictures Gallery
Metro Pictures was a New York City art gallery founded in 1980 by Janelle Reiring (previously of Leo Castelli Gallery), and Helene Winer (previously of Artists Space). It was located in SoHo until 1995 when it moved to Chelsea. The gallery close ...
on Manhattan which exhibited Paglen's work,
Whitechapel Gallery
The Whitechapel Gallery is a public art gallery in Whitechapel on the north side of Whitechapel High Street, in the London Borough of Tower Hamlets. The original building, designed by Charles Harrison Townsend, opened in 1901 as one of the fir ...
in London as part of the ''Electronic Superhighway (2016–1966)'' exhibition and the
Smithsonian American Art Museum
The Smithsonian American Art Museum (commonly known as SAAM, and formerly the National Museum of American Art) is a museum in Washington, D.C., part of the Smithsonian Institution. Together with its branch museum, the Renwick Gallery, SAAM holds o ...
in ''Trevor Paglen: Sites Unseen''.
The willingness of museums to host these installations was a surprise says Paglen, who hopes the relays can play a potentially important role in the Tor network.
Omar Kholeif at Whitechapel Gallery has commented on the idea that "when we enter civic institutions we expect them to have Wi-Fi,
ndwe just hand over our data", and how the Cubes bring this agreement forth to discussion.
Inspiration for the Cube came from a 1962 art project by
Hans Haacke
Hans Haacke (born August 12, 1936) is a German-born artist who lives and works in New York City. Haacke is considered a "leading exponent" of Institutional Critique.
Early life
Haacke was born in Cologne, Germany. He studied at the '' Staatlic ...
called ''Condensation Cube''.
It similarly consisted of a plexiglass cube, but which contained water which would move through different states of liquid to gas.
Paglen also states he wants to raise the question: "What would a more civic-minded version of the Internet look like? What could the Internet look like if the Internet hadn't been turned into the greatest means of mass surveillance in the history of humanity?"
References
External links
{{commons
Trevor Paglen's Autonomy Cube (2014)
Arts organizations based in the United States