SECRET Exhibition Launches At Science Gallery
What is a secret? Why do humans like to keep and reveal secrets and why are we attracted to cracking codes and solving puzzles? If you have nothing to hide, are you not looking hard enough? Science Gallery at Trinity College Dublin today launched SECRET: NOTHING TO SEE HERE, a new exhibition that cracks codes, spills secrets and examines enigmas.
From government surveillance to Hollywood spoilers, everyone shares, keeps or learns secrets every day. How do scientists, hackers, spies, journalists, psychologists, criminals, companies and governments approach this new world of secrets? From Easter eggs to cryptocurrencies, puzzles to politics, SECRET asks what is being hidden from us, what are we hiding, and why?
We often think of privacy as something passive that can be lost, taken away or diminished. Secrecy is more active, and sometimes more fun — it’s something we can share with trusted friends, keep from foes, protect from prying governments or destroy through whistleblowing. From gossip to encryption, speakeasies to tax havens, PIN codes to patents, secrets pervade every layer of society. Knowledge may be power, but secrecy is the gatekeeper of knowledge.
SECRET explores the social and technological aspects of secrecy, particularly the future of surveillance, espionage and privacy and features the work of more than 25 artists. Highlights include:
- A secret handshake training device.
- Crypto Bar, where visitors will be able to download cryptographic software to the their mobile devices or experiment with artist-generated privacy apps.
- ScareMail, a web browser extension that makes email ‘scary’ in order to disrupt NSA surveillance.
- Plans for an alternative ATM, where money is discharged when sniffer dogs decode your scent.
- Forgot Your Password invites visitors to flick through a list of over four million LinkedIn user passwords, leaked by Russian cyber criminals in 2012, to see if they can find their own
- A desk light that transmits audio files through beams of light
- An installation of notepads where the ruled lines are microprinted lists of Iraqi civilian deaths during the Iraq War. Some of these notepads made it into Capitol Hill meaning they will be memorialised in official archives.
- Visitors can swipe their credit card to compare an online approximation of their net worth with those of other visitors
- Transparency Grenade captures network traffic and audio, and streams it to a dedicated server where it is mined for information. This is then presented on an online, public map at the location of the ‘detonation.’
- An airport-style security conveyer-belt that catalogues what is in every visitors pockets when they pass through the doors.
Speaking at the launch today Ian Brunswick, Programme Manager and Interim Director at Science Gallery Dublin and curator of SECRET, said “Depending on your perspective and profession, secrecy can be reviled or revered. What we want people to see in SECRET is that everyone has secrets which they choose to encrypt or expose every day. As technology pervades more and more of our lives, we will have to be more deliberate about our personal level of secrecy, sometimes in ways we can barely imagine, and SECRET explores this eerie but exciting near future.”
SECRET opens to the public on Friday the 7th of August. The full list of exhibits can be found atdublin.sciencegallery.com/
LISTINGS INFORMATION
What: SECRET: NOTHING TO SEE HERE, a free exhibition that cracks codes, spills secrets and examines enigmas.
Where: Science Gallery, Trinity College Dublin, Pearse Street, Dublin 2, Ireland.
When: 07.08.15 – 01.11.15
More information: dublin.sciencegallery.com/
