 Hi, hi We're meeting up a bit Nick. This is dorma. My name is common. We're really happy to be here. Thanks for having us and we'd like to show you a series of works we don't quite know how many we've been kind of Changing the slides, so we'll have to see what fits I Think just two words about meeting up a bit Nick. We're from Zurich originally. We're based in Berlin now have been based for one and a half years and We work on the digital but usually our works also affect physical spaces as you'll see in a minute and We'd like to talk about recent works around bots Remote code glitch Yeah So the first work is called random dark net chopper We produced this work in 2014 together with Kunsthalle Zankalen This was after the Snowden revelations in 2013 where we kind of felt that as artists we needed to Reassess our cultural high mutt the internet You know as a kind of it was his mass surveillance Thing and we kind of felt we couldn't work there anymore or that many of our works were too naive and So together with Kunsthalle Zankalen, which is an art space in Switzerland We put together a show around dark net because we felt that By looking at internet subculture, we could kind of question ideas around anonymity Intimacy identity Yeah, trust and In this show we had 12 works by various artists around these topics and our work was random dark net chopper Basically the random dark chopper is a piece of software is a small bot Which we started in autumn 2014 We started with the interest in the question of trust how do you gain trust in Encrypted networks where you don't know to whom you're speaking to how does those trust mechanism work when Everything is kind of obfuscated and and and encrypted and we wanted to challenge this question basically on on the dark net markets, which were just like Kind of a big topic a controversial topic after the Silk Road rate and We thought that it might be good to evaluate these questions with a bot Question also how does like trust building work when you have goods which are shipped from all over the world to the buyers and So we wrote this bot, which was called the random dark net chopper, which had a hundred u.s. Dollar weekly budgets based in bitcoins and The idea was that the bot would log in into the dwebs and go to the biggest Darknet market at that time. It was called a Gora. I think and Randomly select an item and then buy it and Directly send it to the exhibition space without our kind of Interference so the idea was that in the exhibition. We had like 12 of those vitrines. They were empty basically waited to be filled over the 12 weeks of Duration of the exhibition So we basically connected the Like the very dark markets of the dark net with the very visible space of the art gallery And technically it was pretty simple was basically a small python script which Remote-controlled Firefox and basically logged in to the dark net markets to tour and Then just like clicked around to choose like a random category get all the items below a hundred u.s. Dollar Randomly choose one hit the buy button Send an encrypted message to the seller to send it directly to the exhibition space and Pay the fee or the things in in bitcoins so Over time We wanted to have a whole landscape of goods from the dark net There was also a lot of talk in the media at the time where there still is about You know the dark net and what you can buy them. We kind of didn't believe you know what they were telling us We really wanted to see what we would like randomly like a random selection what we would Randomly get from the dark net and the first item was called Fibergate master key set Which the seller said was a set of keys and Usually owned by the fiber gate in the UK to open storage Public space gates in public spaces stuff they need access to So we have no idea whether it's true or not But it's just I still really like that object because it has that potential of you know opening doors in the UK The second item was Cigarettes from the Ukraine So basically, you know in in very good dark net fashion circumventing the taxation on tobacco in the European Union. Yeah, I think it was about 35 US dollars Yeah at the time Third week we had like this Louis Vuitton heavy handbag for 95 US dollars and actually If we speak about trust this was the only items item which wasn't delivered But the seller was kind enough to send the bitcoins back because he knew like he couldn't deliver So also here it kind of worked Then we received The Lord of the Rings collection by J. R. R. Tolkien in PDF format which for one dollar which we printed It's like several thousand pages Then the first like or neither second like super digital item Was called the visa Visa platinum top card sent from Talland for 35 dollars Apparently this was a visa prepaid. No Yeah, we received visa so the visa number the expiry date the name and the Little number you have on the back and we didn't dare to use it then Sixth week the random dark net chopper selected 10 yellow ecstasy pills with a Twitter logo on them Sent from Germany for 48 dollars to Switzerland. They actually arrived there We took them as a title for the talk also because we really like the description Yeah, we played them like they came like in this stealth packaging You know kind of pretending to be a DVD in this aloe foil and then vacuumed again Yes, and around about this time Also the press started picking up on on the work because They kind of felt that this random dark net chopper was questioning or posing questions around You know who's responsible if a bot commits something illegal so What happens when a software bot goes on a dark net shopping spree? The Guardian asked You know who is responsible who is responsible when a bot Randomly shops for ecstasy in the dark net. Is it the person that who programmed it? Is it the person who executes it can a robot or a piece of software be jailed if it commits a crime? And also what happens if the code is open source and written by many people like if you have like a algorithm Which goes wild Yeah, yeah But the random dark net chopper just continued shopping and it bought some Nike air GC to limited edition trainers For seventy five dollars If you convert like the bitcoins into nowadays value, it would be around three thousand US dollar Yeah, it costs at seventy five dollars at the time Then we received a cap with the built-in camera That little yeah, that's where the camera is From the US for ninety nine US dollars Then a thing I really liked it's called like the decoy first-class letter So it's basically a plain letter you receive like a service and it came from Australia addressed to like our exhibition space in Switzerland and It's basically an empty letter just like to basically Trace through to your Postal to trace through the postal system to check if the system is okay. If you can receive Mails if it's you know, maybe somebody opens it so the idea like by you know buying stuff in the deep webs is basically also to anonymize somehow your postal your postal box and To test that you can basically, you know send yourself a letter and see if something happens It's also good tactics to basically if you want to introduce a new address somewhere, you know start sending letters there and the post office the post Like post person the delivery person will kind of you know get used to it and basically You know yeah The next item was a sprite stash can You probably know this. This is a soda can an empty soda can Constructed to weigh the same as it as a full one and you can screw the top on so you can place whatever you want inside And it's hidden away Then the next one diesel man jeans a replica from Hong Kong for 79 US dollar and the last item we received was high quality scan of a Hungarian Hungarian passport for online verification So here you see this is basically how we displayed the items and This all went really well until we took down the exhibition in January 2015 and the day after The exhibition closed the public prosecutor of St. Gallen in Switzerland basically seized the whole work and We we were a bit confused This was So we were a bit confused in the first moment because of the timing so after the exhibition closed they seized the whole work and But it kind of turned out that they were For them it was mostly about the drugs the random dark net chopper have bought We were kind of worried about the passport and the visa card as well Which they felt was totally okay And then like in the and in the first moment I mean like you know the question also by the public prosecutor was raised and like it was about Responsibility who is responsible in this specific moment? Is it the artist who wrote the codes? Is it the museum who basically hosts the show? Is it the curator? Is it the people who work there because I'm like me and Carmen We've never touched those drugs. We've not basically, you know, it was all done somehow automatically or Yeah, is it is it the bottom self who is somehow its own legal entity and could be punished so in order to somehow also protect the staff of the museum and to also You know to get our items back without something like this stuff is ours We want the things back we raised our hands and said no I'm like, I think if you should if you want to charge somebody you should charge us and We were summoned for an interrogation Which was really interesting and there we learned that the drugs actually contained MDMA So the police had tested them and confirmed that they did I mean like we knew through the ratings on the drugs On the dark net markets that I mean like this stuff was good but then we We kind of had to discuss, you know Or We kind of tried to explain what we were that we were trying to raise these questions in public through public You know publicly accessible art piece because we felt it's very important that we talk about these things Nevertheless the public prosecutor decided to destroy the drugs Which was very unfortunate. We of course claimed they were an art piece So you're destroying an art piece here and our lawyer was also kind of you know referencing all other artworks which involve drugs Like from like the whole history. Yeah but we did receive the whole work back in the end except for the drugs and all charges were dropped against us and The public prosecutor Wrote a very nice Letter saying that we actually were allowed to break certain laws To raise certain questions within society Without naming specifically naming freedom of art. Yeah, so basically our understanding of why they kind of Seize the whole thing is what that they were kind of afraid what the next artist would do So the first one, you know buys it the second one takes it as a performative act And the third one gives it to the audience, you know, and it's kind of clear that they need to draw line So, yeah, so the question about responsibility was not kind of solved. No, we still have yeah Yeah, so We kind of then continued with this question of bots and the mechanical Gaze, oh Okay, you're jumping. Sorry wrong introduction No, well similar. No, um A year later, no the same year we were asked to do public art piece, which is always the case in Switzerland when public buildings are built part of the Money has to go into an art piece and usually that art piece is sculptural It can be a sculpture in the lobby or a sculpture in public space. It should there's like the different kind of Things you need to address There's I'm like the public art piece should work for 30 years should be sustainable So it's mostly made out of stone. Yeah, so for us as digital artists This was a very kind of an interesting question Also, because the building Was or is the house for electronic arts in Basel also, Switzerland? So for us the question was how can we talk about digital? Topics, but not using digital media and And and we ask ourselves is there kind of is there a way of I mean like we thought a lot about architecture and software and how basically the software you use is also Infecting or yes the architecture which is built and And since this is all software, but what we have never seen is basically a software error kind of you know, so we asked us have Is it possible to build or is it funny to build like a software error into stone? and We we kind of had to try that. We had to try that so we took a picture of the place of this house and and basically glitched it through a small script and told them to rebuild it and Yeah This is how it looks now. This is what the building looks like today So basically they yeah, you can see it they and it kind of it kind of When you stand there, it kind of gives you a surreal Feeling to there's a like a square in front of this facade and you you're kind of not sure whether You know your eyes are wrong or the building is wrong And then you when you come closer you then of course see and also like you know Also here like the glitch reveals stuff like you know people came to us and that's I mean like how does the piping system work? You know, I mean like is it still is it still here? And this is something, you know, which we like about software glitches that you kind of Sometimes you you you get an understanding how system works only by kind of breaking it or by Forcing it to to throw arrows and yeah Um Then we Yeah, we need to discuss Yeah, okay. Yeah, so okay. Yeah, so we'll skip another project because we're running out of time Yeah, um, I Think the last piece we'd like to just quickly show you is very recent. We we're still not Yeah, we still We're still kind of amazed at this. So this year we were asked to Do a book on our work and we kind of felt This was really difficult for us because usually we do websites and you can change websites And then you do a book and you kind of it's printed and then it's there and that really it was very Very kind of hard for us, but once we decided to do this We kept thinking about how can we break this very static print format of the book and together with the two designers of the book Conrad Renner and Christoph Knott We thought about you know, we said well the title should be code because maybe through the title you could Kind of inject Code into various websites because books, you know, they're online. You can buy them online and we decided To go for script alerts meeting up a bit Nick Yeah, which is yeah, just like a stupid title JavaScript basically which normally Like you know me like you can't write JavaScript into a commentary field on Facebook because these things is parsed out And so the browser does not execute that code so they check it But we thought maybe I'm like if it's so deep in the databases like the ISPN databases the national by bibliographies and whatever, you know it might pop up somewhere and so the And Well the book came out in September and then in October we realized that on a Volta Koenig, which is a big art Bookseller with a big online Website It worked so when you search for meeting up a bit Nick on the website Hope this works and you Go to the catalog so This one this one is pretty okay. I mean like normally if you another website it breaks the buy button, which is like Yeah, not in our interest, but Yeah, so yeah, you can still buy it on Buchan-Lenwalda Koenig just like click okay, and then it's okay so yeah, here's just like a small collection of like 1012 which are popping up. It's like every day we get more and Yeah, and we can show you a small video like of two to three pieces Yeah, um Don't know what we're gonna see now. I think eBay Okay Yeah, this is eBay so eBay.co UK Bam and This only worked on or they already fixed it. So somebody made a bug report. I like this one Yeah, thank you. Thanks. Yeah already people are allowed. Yeah, please number two. Thanks I'm from Switzerland. So I wonder you were lucky that you got dropped with the charges How much would it got for the charges if you would not drop them? Do you know I? Don't know. I'm like those basically or here. It was about drug possession and I'm like 10 ecstasy pills and We were totally okay to take this fine. We don't know no no it but it was kind of It would have been a fine because in Switzerland According to our lawyer, it would have been For personal use. I mean this is not the amount you carry around apparently if you're selling So we would have gotten away with a fine So and I um, thanks very much that you said that actually Riding the code and then the program buys it makes you actually responsible, right? So would you also you at the end you said like it was your So I would take the charge because you were writing the code Yes Yeah, the problem was that usually at least in Swiss law possession of drugs Needs to mean that the drugs were either found on your person or in a space that can be You know that definitely belongs to you And the problem was that it was clear from the process that we hadn't touched the drugs and we didn't want Somebody else to get fined for drug possession that would have made no sense We wanted to also publicly discuss this you know this having to Yeah step up and say no it was us Thanks Okay final one Hi, sorry. Thanks for the talk. I have to ask does the plumbing work? Yeah Um, it works because so the pillars were Yeah, I'll try to explain briefly so architecturally this building was a Storage for dry goods and the pillars used to support the building But when they turned it into a museum, they actually filled the space Between the pillars with insulation so the pillars were gone and then the architects didn't like it like You know they thought the pillars should be there because the building didn't look good. So they actually Put fake pillars onto the facade again And so we could just kind of take the empty pillars and cut them up and put the plumbing inside So now the visible plumbing is fake, but the real plumbing is inside the pillars. That's how it works One final big round of applause for me. Thank you. Thanks. Thank you