Knowbotic Research
«Minds of Concern: Breaking News»

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. (Knowbotic Research)
Matthew Mirapaul, New York Times, Mai 13, 2002: «The dispute calls attention to one of the very points the piece is intended to make. Because the lines between public and private control of the Internet are not yet clearly defined, what artists want to do may be perfectly legal, but that does not mean they will be allowed do it.»