5 Unsettling Works of Encryption Art

Encryption is the process of encoding a message, and today we have incredibly sophisticated software and algorithms that make our encrypted messages almost impossible to decode. But how does it work? These art projects answer that question by exploring how encryption has become part of daily lives.

Once the domain of spies and engineers, encryption is now part of the art world. Artists are co-opting crypto tools to build installations, objects and sculptures that explore anonymity and digital surveillance.

Often the hardware and network infrastructure of encryption is invisible to us. These artists aim to change that by showing us what it really looks like, and how it really worksand in the process prove just how critical crypto really is.

In 2013, Der Spiegel published a long catalog of tools that the NSA uses to carry out digital surveillance. That leak served as a blueprint for artist Francesco Tacchini, who decided to reverse engineer two of those tools.

One, called CANDYGRAM, is used by the NSA to create a fake cell towerhelpful for tracking surveillance targets via their phones. Another, SPOOK-I, uses frequencies that humans can't hearbut that any gadget with a microphone can pick up. It "surreptitiously switches a target device's traffic from a cellular network's area of influence onto a surveilled radio frequency," according to the NSA's documents.

Tacchini describes his piece, SPOOK-I, as a joint "wireless jammer and sniffer." When you walk into the gallery, it jams your phone's Wi-Fi signal and throws your name up on a nearby wall. Soon, you'll receive an email from an @nsa.gov email reading "this device is now under surveillance: you have been added onto a radio frequency controlled by the US National Security Agency." Things only get weirder from there. Read more here, or over on Creative Applications.

If you've seen an aerial shot of the NSA headquarters recently, you probably have Trevor Paglen to thank. The artist (who you might better know from his work The Last Pictures), has spent the last few years focused on the agencies that surveil us, including renting a helicopter to take unprecedented aerial photos of the banal suburban headquarters of the NSA, the National Reconnaissance Office, and the National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency.

In his latest gallery show at Altman Siegel in San Francisco, Paglen is showing off something called an Autonomy Cube.

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5 Unsettling Works of Encryption Art