[Robotgroup] Food for thought and discussion

[Clendon Gibson]

There is some difference between the circuit board in the back of your car complete with rats nest of wires count down timer display etc... and such a device being placed on a bridge or other public structure. While it's easy to make a case for Boston over-reacting, at the end of the day an individual is not permitted to place artwork on a random structure without the permission or knowledge of whoever owns that structure. It's just that at other times the penalty was minimal and people who did it anyway were not pursued. 

I suppose you could also make the case for Boston being guilty of selective enforcement. I doubt they put the kind of police resources on graphity artists that they have on these guys.

----- Original Message ----
From: Vern Graner <vern at txis.com>
To: The Robot Group Mailing List <robotgroup at puremagic.com>
Sent: Thursday, February 1, 2007 1:28:57 PM
Subject: [Robotgroup] Food for thought and discussion

You may all be aware by now that Turner Broadcasting / Adult Swim is in
pretty hot water for an ad campaign that used electronic LED devices
placed around the country:

http://slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=07/01/31/2314214

The artists who created the devices were recently arrested:

http://www.cnn.com/2007/US/02/01/boston.bombscare/index.html

The devices they created and placed around looked like this:

http://www.flickr.com/photos/xjohnpaulx/361613084/in/photostream/

http://www.flickr.com/photos/vanderlin/sets/72157594512553078/with/358742603/

Arguably, this guerrilla art ad campaign has much in common with the
"throwies" that were featured in make magazine and elsewhere:

http://www.instructables.com/id/E9D2ZJ3FG0EP286JEJ/

http://c2.com/cybords/thumb/mt/demo.html

Right now, I have a couple of circuit boards on the front floorboard of
the passenger side of my car. These boards consist of batteries, wires,
resistors and LEDs. These very parts were deemed by the Boston
authorities to be "consistent with an improvised explosive device":

http://www.thedenverchannel.com/news/10888268/detail.html

So, the topic for discussion is how, in this increasingly security
paranoid society, do we continue to make and use technology and art
without having someone mistake us for terrorists?

Do we go into "hiding" making sure our component laden circuits are
always boxed or bagged to avoid the paranoid? Or do we proudly hold out
our work for inspection and hope to educate others as to what it is and
what we do?

Or is it just a matter of time till someone sees one of our circuit
boards accidentally left on a chair at Pokejo's and the bomb squad is
called out?

All in all, this recent development is very troubling to me... :(

Vern

-- 
Vern Graner CNE/CNA/SSE    | "If the network is down, then you're
Senior Systems Engineer    | obviously incompetent so why are we
Texas Information Services | paying you? Of course, if the network
http://www.txis.com        | is up, then we obviously don't need
Austin Office 512 328-8947 | you, so why are we paying you?" ©VLG
_______________________________________________
Robotgroup mailing list
Robotgroup at puremagic.com
http://lists.puremagic.com/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/robotgroup