Aram Bartholl

Aram Bartholl is a German artist who is currently serving a artist residency in New York at the Eyebeam Art and Technology Center. Aram deals mainly with the connection between digital space and public space. In one of his most recent works, Dead Drops, Aram plainly makes the two spaces one. He carves out niches in walls around New York (5 locations so far) and places USB drives in them so they stick out into the public space. The USB drives contain a readme file that explain the project. You are meant to find the USB drives and connect your computer to them and use them as a free file-sharing "drop box." Since the locations are semi-secret, Aram has adopted the name "dead drops" for these USB drives, pulling from the idea of a secret location used to pass messages between people.

Aram's Dead Drops are a way to join digital and public space. The digital space becomes a message board for the people, out in the public space but in digital form. The digital space becomes part of the public space through its presence in the USB drive and the public space becomes part of the digital space through the sharing of files, almost like graffiti. Aram says that the idea behind this project is to create a free file-sharing environment, meant to be used for people to upload and download files they wish to share with each other. As technology becomes an increasingly large part of our daily lives, it is only a matter of time, Aram seems to be saying, before digital space and public, everyday space become completely combined. With the use of any public space, though, there is some danger. Humans are human and, as such, there is always a malicious use of a seemingly great thing. Right away on Aram's blog showcasing his new project, there was backlash against his idea for a variety of reasons. People worried about security, saying that, because the data is public and anyone can post, they will naturally become infested with viruses and hacks meant to hurt anyone who connects to them. People also were worried about the USB drives poking out of walls either because they could "poke a five-year-old in the eye" or because they could easily be damaged or damage the compute they connect to.

However, I think the people worrying about these things are missing the point--any public space has these same dangers. When dealing with people, you must learn to protect yourself (aka private space. In this case, yourself and your computer). As in any use of public space, one should use these dead drops with caution after protecting your computer to react to any harmful data that might be on them. The digital space, in this way, is no different from public space. We have programs in place to protect our public and private space (police, government, judicial system, etc) so it only makes sense to put programs in place to protect our digital space (virus scanners, etc.). These common threats just serve to draw more connections between digital and public space as well as reveal a very dark nature to humanity. We cannot appreciate a good idea and let it alone to play out its intent: what was meant to be a place for sharing interesting and enjoyable things has now come to be (if only theoretically) a place for the sharing of malicious and devious things. Hooray for the modern world!