Cyber snafu? There’s an art for that

Utopic dream work is now an unwieldy mass​
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As soon as my coffee arrived in bed early Friday morning (don’t hate me) I jumped on Reddit to try to find news of the latest cyber snafu, because my regular first source of news was offline.

I found this, best read in Laurie Anderson’s Voice of Authority:
“7/18/24 10:20PM PT – Hello everyone – We have widespread reports of BSODs on windows hosts, occurring on multiple sensor versions. Investigating cause. TA will be published shortly. Pinned thread.”

I was thinking of pins and threads when I skipped over to BBC.com‘s lead photo, a sea of humanity at the Budapest airport. Ah. Global fuckupery. I see it now. 

I am not an abstract thinker. I need a visual, and if I can’t find one, I’ll make it up. As the cyber-security firm Crowdstrike’s oopsie is still unfolding as of this writing, my visual is The Network.

Take this fibre artwork, started in 2011 (please!). Not unlike the work of those early nerdy internet developers, The Network started in a little makeshift space, just a couple of studio-mates challenging ourselves to find a new kind of social connection. It began with a thread of an idea for actual, physical engagement that grew as we knotted up one strip of discarded petroleum-derived material to another. We invited our friends and family to step away from their screens and come in to tie one on at our hands-on happenings. Every knot, twist, braid and nodule documented actual social connection and soon The Network was impressive enough to drag out of our studio and into public spaces for wider community participation. For a moment, it was enchanting, utopic: a chaotic forest canopy of technicoloured tendrils just waiting to be taken into hands and joined to other tendrils in other hands, while little kids played underneath, among thick fabric vines, all within a pristine gallery space. Over time and through this public engagement, The Network started to droop and fold in on itself in a dense, unwieldy mass. It was impressive-looking in its state of collapse but unmanageable.

Like over-burdened IT technicians, we are now mostly trying to ignore the problem instead of facing the challenges of long-term storage, truck-transfer, and, if it ever sees the light of day again, aircraft cabling and an aerial lift. It is beyond our ability to wrestle this beast into submission, or patience to pick it all apart and re-use the non-recyclable material. We have become fully alienated from the means of this production. Seriously, take it.
I naively pictured The Network growth to be more voluminous and diffused, kind of like how we all envision the Cloud. I got my head straight on that only after googling images of “Cloud data centres Canada.” They are anything but ethereal; the visuals here are of hyperscale, featureless building complexes popping up all over this vast, cool country. Nor are they safe; the holders of 1.5 million credit card numbers stolen in a 2012 breach get the picture. 

Creating The Network was a phenomenological experience, a way of directly connecting with the world beyond unfathomable language and science. It is an ambiguous, abstract work that holds multiple layers of meaning, twisting up feelings and information. 
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In its most recent showing it is in a state of collapse, an eruption of knots and snarls suspended from a single point, just the way it began. It’s hard to not associate this heap with that havoc in our wireless, instant, interconnected world, but whether installed as an object for interaction or hung as an impenetrable mass, it is open to different interpretations and responses. You might see a zero-waste immersive environment of colour and texture. I might see a big non-recyclable, petrochemical monkey on my back.

Seriously, DM me. Let’s talk.