Thank you for having us here. We're really pleased to be here.

Really happy to be here. We're Medin kopobidnik from Zurich. My name is Carmen. This is Dorma.

And we're an artist group who works in and on the internet. And we would like to show you two, maybe three of our latest works. We're going to try to start before football starts.

We'll start right away with a work called delivery for Mr. Assange. Our starting point for this work was our interest in the circumstances under which Julian

Assange has been living since seeking asylum at the Ecuadorian embassy in London in June 2012. So the embassy has been surrounded by British police since August 2012. I don't know if you know the situation. The Ecuadorian embassy is in the heart of London behind Harrods.

So you practically walk out of the tube station through tourists and shoppers and you stand in this war zone outside the Ecuadorian embassy.

So you have the Ecuadorian embassy surrounded by British police. There were like strange vans standing around with strange antennas where you just felt like surveilled also. For us as artists, it's always important to find images for what's going on around us, for our realities.

And we found that this embassy, this surrounded embassy in a Western European capital was a really good image for what's been going on on the internet

between people trying to make information free and people trying to keep it contained. And we asked ourselves, how can we intervene into this geopolitical stalemate? Because for us it's often about involving ourselves in situations we find that surround us.

How can we sort of do something to this extraordinary situation? Maybe also with the tools we have, like we use computers, we have the internet, there's live cameras. Is there something we can, I don't know, can we play with the situation?

Or can we introduce a bit of normality? And we quickly came across a system that was still working quite normally, which was the postal system. And we asked ourselves, is it possible to send Julian Assange a letter?

Will it arrive or would that be taken out of this system? We knew it was before Snowden and we knew that if we tried to reach somebody in the embassy from Zurich via email, that this mail, they would read it. Every border it would cross, the mail would have been read.

Because if it's unencrypted, it's just like an open postcard, so we thought, okay, there is some postal secrecy. We know that in the postal system. So why don't you use the analogue things and see, okay, if you send something to Julian Assange,

what route would it take, would they open it, who would open it, how long would it take? Just something like a trace route command we have on Linux or ping. Yeah, a system test in a certain sense. And so we decided to send Julian Assange a parcel with a hole in it,

because with the letter we wouldn't have known what was happening to the letter. So we built this parcel, inside it there was a camera which sort of took pictures out through that hole.

You see every 15 seconds and uploaded the images to the internet live. So we had this feedback channel from our parcel as it moved through the postal system. Yeah, we went to East London and the Ecuadorian embassy is somehow in Western London maybe.

And what we really like is to create situations which we don't control. So like here you drop off this parcel, you have a feedback channel, you have a live stream of it going through a system,

it produces images of maybe an unknown territory also, but you have no control over it. So it's us we know exactly as much as the people watching at home maybe, or watching the live feed. So yeah, we basically addressed the parcel to the Ecuadorian embassy and dropped it off at the post office.

This was the scan of the parcel, so you see more or less there's a camera and mobile phone, because it's the easiest way to have a camera and a device which can also send the picture somewhere,

then you have a lot of batteries and some electronics. So basically the box was empty, it was just like the medium was the message. Oh, this is wrong, so just a second. Thank you.

So Dorma went to drop off the parcel at the post office, maybe we'll see the images in a minute.

So this was the website and you had like the live images arriving here. And then because we wanted people also to be able to understand what was going on if they hadn't watched it from the beginning, we took images we liked from this stream of images coming in and sort of posted them on Twitter.

So the comment you see at the bottom is the tweet and sort of tried to the story, maybe me, is that better?

So you see in the mirror, you see Dorma queuing up, sort of an artist self-portrait. Yeah, it's 12 o'clock in the afternoon, 12 on like midday, and we're just like dropping it off.

And I'm like, the first question was, I'm like, would they take it? You know, because it has this whole, there's like electronic devices inside which are running. It was addressed to Julian Assange, it really felt like kind of, yeah. So here getting closer to the counter, that's Dorma.

It was January, so cold. So the parcel was immediately accepted, postal worker, and it would disappear in a reddish bag. Yeah, you'll see. I mean, we didn't know what to expect, what kind of pictures to expect, but this was our reality for the next 40 hours, basically.

Reddish pictures, really abstract paintings of reality. After an hour, nothing changed. We are in a postal bag, it's red, a little bit of light. At three o'clock, two hours later, three hours later, a little bit more light.

And at around four o'clock, we totally lost connection to the camera. It was off for an hour, and we didn't know what's happening. Our stuff we build is normally fragile, so it's really, you know, it's not well tested.

We test it in our studio, but things can break. So we were kind of unsure if the camera was broken or the internet connection was gone, or if maybe somebody has opened the parcel and, you know, just like has taken the device off.

But after an hour, we saw that GPS started to move. So we also had like a GPS feedback, but not a live map, just like coordinates. And we saw that it's heading like Eastern.

So at around six, we got readings from Central London. I think it's called the Mount Pleasant Mail Centre. And we were really excited. So because after eight hours, we got like the first picture from a postal system, which is...

And by this time, there were quite a few people following this on Twitter and on the website. So we did this basically starting out with an empty Twitter account. And we really weren't sure if anyone was going to be interested in this experiment except for us.

And so people also started to participate in the sense that they would tell us, you know, this post office is called Mount Pleasant. And I know this because, I don't know, I've worked at the post office or I just know the postal system.

And that was really interesting for us to have this channel through Twitter to have this channel, which also gave us a certain amount of feedback. Lags, people walking, still at the Mount Pleasant office. It's nine o'clock.

We are still like in the centre. We are pretty central in London. And we are changing bags. So we were in a red bag and now we're in a green bag. Greenish lights, pictures, bit of lights, package is moving.

So we are now near King's Cross Station, which is really central. So if Eastern London, Western London, we are going in the direction of the embassy.

Around this time, our servers actually started to crash from the amount of people trying to watch. So we weren't very prepared for this. And people started to set up mirrors and sort of run backup scripts, scraping the images because they were afraid.

We maybe lose them or? Yeah, the piece would go offline. And we were moving out of the city really fast. According to the GPS readings and arrived near Heathrow Airport at Seva Logistics,

sort of a royal mail sorting office. So most of the images were black and then we were like in a sorting area again. And so here we got, so the parcel was taken out of the bag again.

We called this unmanned photography. It sort of felt like this parcel was actually alive and being like sort of being pushed through the system.

It sort of felt like it had a life of its own and a view it shared with us. Yes, and now it's already four o'clock in the morning.

We are traveling since more than 12 hours and we were heading back into the city. It was kind of strange because we made a small loop, I mean like a detour. So we went from East London 30 kilometers out of town and are now in the morning heading back towards Western London,

where Julian Assange is based. So at six o'clock in the morning another office.

Yeah, we're back in the city now, actually quite near the Ecuadorian embassy. And our movement was really like stop and go. So we had like the feeling that it's nine o'clock in the morning, we must be really near now.

And we're maybe one kilometer away from the embassy, but another postal center nearby. It's ten o'clock in the morning. Around this time the BBC started to write about the piece.

So the piece went online on BBC and our server went offline. Luckily there were other servers to back it up, but it was really sort of hard to perform this piece and at the same time try to sort of run the infrastructure.

And people online were starting to complain going, hey why is this still not delivered? Hey Bitnick, I really need to get some work done, when do you think this parcel will be delivered? Hey, no one is working at our office. I've been watching this for 24 hours, I'm exhausted.

This is more exciting than a mouse rover or I mean like mostly black images. And you would say a black rectangle with life written in the corner of it has never been so interesting. So the life image had a life sign in the corner.

What I've learned from Bitnick, Parcel spent a lot of time in complete darkness. So at around 11 I think we had the feeling that we are just in front of the embassy. And now it was kind of a really tricky situation.

I'm like, would it pass the police barrier? How would they deal with it? How would the embassy deal with it? Because a live camera inside an embassy is always problematic. And in this case it's maybe more problematic.

So here we weren't sure, we sort of thought we must be in a van. And here we got proof. So sometimes when the door would be opened and other mail would be delivered,

we sort of got a view of the outside. And we were getting really excited. There were people on Twitter going, can't somebody go and take a picture of this van? You know what's happening?

Nearly empty, so we are maybe the last thing in this van. And we are really in the front of this embassy. And then at almost 2 o'clock this pic, and it looked like maybe a dump on the camera.

And this looked like flooring inside. And this, I don't know if you see it really well, but it looks like a delivery folder, a delivery list or something. So we think we are in front of the embassy now. Image is black, what's happening? Nobody knows.

Still black, same location. Diplomatic crisis, lunch break maybe. You can hardly see that. You can hardly see that, but here we have some kind of evidence of something which might be wood and maybe a floor.

So yeah, you can see, we basically got excited every time we could make out anything on these images. All dark again as somebody covered the hole. So now the GPS location would really say the same address as the embassy's.

Camera has been transmitting images from the embassy basically since 30 minutes. All images are black. We assume the parcel has been delivered to the embassy, so we thought maybe we are inside now.

But everything is black, so we are waiting, waiting. And then we got this tweet by WikiLeaks, hey Bitnick, the package has arrived and it's now with embassy security. So it was clear, okay wow, we made it inside. Now somebody needs to decide what's happening with it. Royal mail has delivered.

WikiLeaks confirms. Parcel is still sitting in total blackness. Nothing's happening. The parcel camera transmitted over 9,000 images. Most of them are black. We are referring to an internet meme. People immediately would respond that it's not true, that there are only, I don't know, 6,455 images black and the rest was colored.

So people wrote software to analyze the blackness of the images and to analyze differences inside the images. So they, you know, really had all the data. We didn't have it this time.

So the parcel, it's already 4 o'clock in the afternoon. So since, I don't know, since 8 o'clock in the morning we thought, I'm like, we are just going to be there. The performance is going to end. But yeah, we're almost waiting a whole, another working day in front of this, in front of our screens.

So there was a little bit of drama with the battery packs which were inside. Parcel camera has been online for 24, 5 hours now. We estimate that the batteries will last another 6. And then some light. You can see that. Gone dark again.

And some light again at 4 o'clock here. Strange. Battery status critical. Maybe a sofa. Black. And then this.

So this was like the first image we got of, we didn't know. We thought maybe the inside of the embassy immediately, there were people on Twitter saying they have been to this embassy and they knew this was like a sort of a waiting room.

And so something was happening. Yeah, it was just like some frames. And then it went black again. And yeah, it felt like that we've been alone in a room for some hours and somebody maybe came in, just like switched on the lights and switched it off again.

And yeah, 6 o'clock, nobody knows what's happening. Some movement, then more images with color. Maybe somebody standing in front. Looks like a bone it says here. Something fluffy.

Maybe a cloud. And then this. Would say it's a dog. Is it an image or is it real? Or it might be a cat. The internet was like, hey, it's a cat. It's a cat. And we're like, oh, it looks like a dog. Has Julian Assange taken over maybe?

Is somebody playing with us? And then this. Is this thing on? It was clear. Okay, wow. Yes. Back to black. Tiger. Hello world. Don't think we have to explain that to you here. It was clear.

Julian Assange is performing in the embassy. It's live with a car. And he's basically welcoming us to Ecuador. Postlot is contagious. Image of a lion. Welcome to Ecuador. Tiger with a green something.

Welcome to Ecuador. And then it would go wild. And then he would. He basically. Performed his solidarity with people in similar situations than him.

Justice for Aaron Swartz. Aaron Swartz had just. Passed away two weeks before. Two weeks earlier. Committed suicide. Free Bradley Manning now known as Chelsea Manning. Free Nabil Rajab which is a.

Iranian human rights activist. Free Anna Kata. Free Jeremy Hammond. Free Gudolf Elmer which is a Swiss whistle blower. Free Anons. Justice for Aaron Swartz. Transparency for the state. Privacy for the rest of us.

This was maybe the most shared image. Which there are like still stickers around of it. Postlot is contagious. Thank you Ecuador. Thank you to all our supporters. Keep fighting. 2013 will win. Out of cards. And this is it. And back to black.

So this was like a 36 hours journey. So you see that we like to work with physical objects which are. Been sent around but also like with live online performances. And we're really interested also in where this.

I mean if you can still call it separate names this online and offline comes together. And for the next work in 2014. We sort of felt we needed to reassess the internet from an artistic point of view. Because the internet is you could say our artistic home.

And with the Snowden revelations it became clear that it was actually not what we thought it was. It was just a tool for mass surveillance. And we sort of felt we really like for out of a very personal need.

Needed to look at this media again. And try to find out how to deal with this mass surveillance.

For a while we said we were producing art on the mass surveillance. We tried to react to this. And we became really interested in a parallel world or a part of the internet. Which has to do with internet subculture. The deep webs because of their encrypted and anonymous nature.

They sort of hold other potentials for communication. And sort of work differently than the surface webs. And we felt that we needed to visit these deep webs.

And do that with other artists. Get other artists to help us go on an exploration. So basically we teamed up with Digital Brainstorming. Which is a Swiss cultural institution. And Giovanni Carmine from Kunsthalle Zankalen which had an exhibition space. And we said okay let's just look into those topics.

Let's see how artists work with the dark net. With the dark net. With the deep webs. With the topics which are kind of around. Maybe there's also like we find traces in art history. And we'll produce something. And it will be something which is really you know which is an exploration. So the title was the dark net from memes to onion land an exploration.

It was an exhibition that ran from October to January this year. So October last year to January this year. And we had like twelve artists participating. And most of the art pieces would deal with topics like identity, anonymity, disappearing, memes, the questions of trust.

Things like that. So this was we're going to take you through the exhibition really quickly.

Sorry for this. For what? For doing it quickly. Because all these works deserve a much longer look. This is a work by Valentina Tanni. She's an Italian curator. The work is called The Great Wall of Memes. So she basically collects memes. She finds online most of them on 4chan I guess.

And she collects them. She's really interested in grouping them. You can see that here a bit I guess. So she's very interested in generations of memes. And of course this for an art space is very important work.

Because it talks of collective authorship or. Or maybe also contemporary image production. That you have more than one author working on something. Which is produced really fast and has this life character nowadays.

We had Simon Denny in the exhibition. With a work which deals with this figure of Kim Dotcom. Founder of Mega Upload and Mega Video I think the other website was called. So basically he showed like in several installations.

He shows all the confiscated objects from Kim Dotcom. Which were confiscated during a raid in New Zealand I think two years ago. And the work deals with. How should I say? Maybe it deals with these two poles of having all these free online services.

Like Mega Upload where they lure you as a user to participate. And everything is free. And at the same time there's so much wealth production. And there's somebody who owns so much. So the list of confiscated items has dozens of bank accounts.

Dozens of cars. And it deals with those things. There was also a work in the exhibition by Hito Steil. A German filmmaker called Strike.

Where she basically strikes the screen with a chisel. And sort of talks of this. I don't know the materiality of the screen. And going beyond or into the screen. Which we thought was very fitting with the exhibition.

This is Seth Price. Artist based in New York. Who let us reproduce work. Or a book also which is sold out. Yeah I think he produced a few years ago. Called How to Disappear in America. Which is sort of alludes to these 1960s counter cultural handbooks.

Providing instructions for dropping out of the mainstream. Or dropping off the grid. And this book he put together from content which he found online. Explaining how to delete your current identity and form a new one.

We had something from Anonymous also. This is a screenshot basically from the Imageboard 4chan. Where a user said or an anonymous user said.

Wrote this post which says. Art used to be something cheery. Now literally anything could be art. This post is art. Well somebody put the screenshot up for auction on eBay in July 2014.

And on the 1st of August 2014 it sold for 90,900 US dollars. So the art world went crazy. Anonymous piece which is. So but you weren't really sure if this. You know is it a performance for eBay. Is it real? Are those bidders real? But whatever it was it was like a performative act.

And you know somebody had to react on it. Or the public reacted to it. So we actually contacted the person who put this up on eBay. And asked for permission to show this in the exhibition. It was kind of funny because.

When the museum wrote him an official invitation. Letter and he wasn't sure if he should. You know claim authorship at the same time. I mean like he said this is a piece by anonymous. But then you know when it entered the art system.

He was like okay maybe I should take my name. And we were discussing that. And in the end we convinced him. That the author of this piece should maybe stay anonymous. This was also an art piece by anonymous.

It's called I'll be there in 30 minutes. Maybe it won't work. Well anyway I can tell you about it. It's a meme. And it's what in the art world you would call a performance work.

For now defunct specific webcam on Times Square in New York. So there was a webcam outside the souvenir shop. Which showed a New York card stand. You know a card stand with New York postcards. And then there was a post on 4chan. Where somebody said I'll be there in 30 minutes.

You know in front of this webcam you can all watch. And I'll pull down this card stand. And this happened a number of times on 4chan. It was a recurring meme. But at the same time of course it happened. Did not happen many times also.

So this I'll be there in 30 minutes also became this promise of you know eternity. You know watch New Yorkers walk through or across Times Square. And we re-enacted the piece. So we had a card stand in the lot.

Sort of the entrance of the exhibition space. And it was really pulled down twice. By people we don't know by whom. But who obviously knew the meme. And yeah. So the next piece is by Heath Bunting. Which is a really interesting piece.

So it's called The Status Project. And you should I think check it out online. And it deals with identities. And identities viewed from database systems basically. So Heath Bunting what he does. He's collecting since 10 years he's collecting identical torn.

Yeah the indicators. Of how identity is built. And stored. And stored in offline networks. So it has a lot to do with access. So he asks himself what do I need to provide to get a bank account.

So the question for it would be that you need to provide an address. And a name. You need to provide a gender maybe. And you need to provide several things. So he just like collects this knowledge. And he has this huge database. Now he's doing that since 10 years. And basically what he's been able to do.

At least in the British system. He's able to rebuild or build new. Identities. New persons yes. Yeah. New yeah. So he starts out. Well we actually did this during the exhibition. We tried it out for the Swiss context.

So we chose a name. And we in with a group of participants. Went and got that name. An address. And a postal box. So we looked for an address. We had access to which had like a mailbox. Where we could put the name. We got the name.

A telephone number. A loyalty card from the supermarket. And you sort of tried to go building up. Like trust in this identity. Through the documents you tried to obtain. And sometimes you need a document to get another document.

So basically this is what the map here shows. So this is like the way to go. How to build a natural person. And yeah it was like a fun workshop for an afternoon. He was there. And we always I mean like after the workshop we weren't quite sure.

I mean like does it really work? Is this really valid? You know how far can we go within the system? And it was kind of funny. Because the new identity we created. This Andrea Leutenecker. After weeks after some weeks. I think maybe a month or something.

It already got. She received a letter from the Swiss state. Requesting her to pay radio and television licensing fees. So that's basically the moment you know you're. You're living in databases. You don't have a passport or something.

But there's something creating data with this new name. This is a piece by Robert Zarkowski. Berlin based curator.

Who works on a platform called Curating YouTube. And we showed a series of online exhibitions. He's done called Curating Anonymous. So these are grids of videos found on YouTube. Around the anonymous identity.

And he is really very nice to sort of compare the various toolkits. That people use to create these videos. And the way this shared identity. It can work. Basically it has like this open source thing there. That you know there are like certain voices you need to use.

If you want to claim this identity. Which is really interesting to see with his collage. And we had in the last room.

We had two works. One was Emily's video by Epham Franco Matis. Who are Italian artists based in New York. They did a video where they basically. Put out a call for people to volunteer to watch the worst video ever.

I mean in stating their own words. And this video shows you the reactions of the people watching this terrible video. But you never actually get to see what they saw. So it's this second hand experience of this terrible video sourced from the dark net.

And then we had a piece by Aaron Bartle. Who is having a talk tomorrow. A Berlin based artist. Who finds I think he found a zip file or an archive of LinkedIn passwords.

LinkedIn was hacked. The social network. And they lost like 4.7 million passwords. And what Aaron did. He sorted them alphabetically and printed them out. So we had like some books with printed passwords in the exhibition.

The work is called Forgot Your Password. So you can sort of go and look up your password. If you've forgotten it. Aaron was also there for a workshop. He has a workshop. He does workshops which are called Kill Your Phone. Where he produces pouches.

Or with the workshop participants. Where he produces pouches for your mobile phone. So you really can be invisible with your thing. And it really disappears. And it can't send anything out. And it can't connect to the next cell tower anymore. And we.

So Medin Gulpibidnik produced a work for the show called The Random Darknet Chopper. Which you see here. Behind here. And we in our own research. We sort of started out with the question of how is trust formed in these anonymous networks.

So we surfed the deep web a lot. And sort of asked ourselves how do you. I mean how do people trust each other here. Where you don't know who's who. And where people are based. And you know. And we sort of thought that trust was something we could probably see most.

Where goods are exchanged. So we became really interested in these deep web markets. And all these questions led us then to develop The Random Darknet Chopper. An automated online shopping bot.

Which basically went shopping once a week. For twelve weeks during the exhibition. With a budget of one hundred dollars in bitcoins. And just randomly chose an article from the deep web market Agora. And had it sent directly to the exhibition space.

So in the exhibition space. Like those vitrines here. You see here. Were waiting. They were basically empty. And the bot performed once a week. And it should. This is the bot. Here is like some software output. And like those vitrines would be filled over the twelve weeks.

Yeah. So the first thing it bought was a fire brigade master key set. Which we thought was a really beautiful object.

Because it promises you access to. I don't know. Doors in the UK. And paid like fifty bucks for it. But you find the same keys on Amazon for eight dollars. So. Maybe ours can do. Yes. Yes. What we were really interested in is to connect those two spaces.

To connect the deep web directly with the physical space of the exhibition. And have like goods being sent around live. And have the bot also perform live. Yeah and in a sense it's also. I mean it's sort of a mail art piece.

Like the delivery piece. In the sense that you don't know if things will arrive. There was also. I mean for us. This Wednesdays were really tense. When the bot went shopping. It was always this sort of. Something between thrill and fear of. You know.

What's it going to choose. How many problems is this going to cause. And all this tension. If you would go to the exhibition you would feel this tension. And we performed this kind of live in the exhibition space. But we also had. We also had a blog.

On our website. Which would basically just like. Where you could follow it from. From your home. And it only showed some evidence of the bot being alive. So it would say. Hey it's Wednesday. The bot just bought this. Fribregate master key set. And at the bottom there is like a small console.

Showing you the output of the software. Where it parses the website. And buys something. Which is below 100 US dollars. And asks the seller to send it directly to the exhibition space. Things are paid with bitcoins here.

We were probably. I don't know. Yeah well. We didn't try to stay anonymous. I mean the random darknet chopper bot was called random darknet chopper. And so it was really important to us.

That these sellers also had the chance of sort of. You know guessing that they were part of an art piece. For the next. Yeah so after a few. Oh yeah sorry. No just continue sorry. So this is the keys arriving right?

Yeah the keys which arrive from the UK after some days. And which would then put into those routines. Then the bots bought Chesterfield blue 10 packs of cigarettes from the Ukraine. For about 40 US dollars. This seller actually started to.

It now says on his website. That he was part of the random darknet chopper performance. So the bots got quite famous I would say. We had like a large community following it. Through every every wetness day. The next item was.

Louis Vuitton 3B handbag for 95 US dollars. This unfortunately never arrived. It was out of stock. And the bots got the money back. So I mean like this was the only item which didn't arrive in the end.

And so there is like 100% delivery rate on Agora with our bot. Which is kind of. Excellent. Unexpected. Unexpected good. Work for us. Yeah so this trust system works. The next week the bots bought Lord of the Rings. This audiobook collection for 99 cents.

We received this in PDF format I think. This was a Visa platinum card it bought for 35 dollars. Where we received just like a digital file.

Saying this is all the information you need to buy things with the Visa card. Which we put on an encrypted USB key and where we threw away the passphrase. So we didn't want to break more laws than we already had. Then the next week it bought 10 Ecstasy pills.

Directly from Germany. For 48 dollars. Very good feedback from the users who already bought the Ecstasy online. We got a bit worried at this point. This is how it looked like.

It came in after a week or after 10 days. We already had it in our mailbox. You know being inside a DVD so maybe through an x-ray would look like a DVD case. But vacuum sealed 10 Ecstasy pills with a Twitter logo on it.

And also part of the exhibition. So the Ecstasy. I mean this is when the project really got much attention also from mainstream media. And it was kind of.

We spoke with a lawyer up front. And he said. I mean like the risk is kind of. We can calculate it. And he would say that the project is legal. Under the terms of freedom of art. Which we have in Switzerland. But I mean like you know you never know.

And so it also bought some Nike Air Yeezy shoes. Shoes from China. Which arrived really fast. High tech shoes. And I mean like you see most of the items are like pop cultural items.

So it's really. You could imagine somebody being 18 years old. And you know go to a rave with new shoes. With a little bit of Ecstasy. With a lot of The Rings book on his mobile phone. This was.

What was this called? Cap camcorder. DVR DVR remote control. So it was basically a spy cap. Like a cap equipped with a camera. Then we got.

Or the random darknet chopper bought a decoy letter. Which is a plain letter. Used or a service used to sort of test your mailbox. Maybe if you make a new identity to see whether stuff arrives. Or somebody opens your. Get access to it.

And this guy. He wrote to us that he would love to be part of the project. The seller. And he's fine with it. With the exhibiting exhibition of his piece. Then we got his stash can. To stash.

Maybe drugs or money. Some diesel jeans and. For 90. And a scan of a Hungarian passport. Which was a low quality resolution. 72 DPI. Nothing you could really use for physical borders.

But something maybe you could use for. For online identification. So. I think the bot touched on a number of questions. But after it bought the XSE.

I think for a lot of the media. The main question became. Who. I mean. Who is responsible if a code. Or an algorithm or a bot. Does something which is illegal. Can it be jailed if it commits a crime. Or is it the person responsible who programmed it.

What happens if it's open source software. There's more demand developer. It's complicated questions. And after the exhibition closed. When we were really not. Actually thinking it would still happen. The Swiss public prosecutor seized.

The work. And these global or these interesting questions became. Sort of. We had to negotiate them locally. So on January the 12th. The whole exhibition or our part of the exhibition was.

Confiscated. We had it sealed immediately. And called our lawyer. And were quite worried. But quickly found out that. The public prosecution was mainly after the drugs. So there were like beautiful headlines.

Daily Dot wrote. A drug buying robot arrested in Switzerland. 2015 will be remembered as the year. A robot got arrested in a performance art piece. And we asked ourselves. Why had the public prosecutor seized the work. After the exhibition closed. It sort of didn't make a lot of sense.

And the media also asked the police the same question. And they said. Well you know it's the police's lack of interest in art. We just didn't know about this. Until the last day. And so we were a bit late with our seizure.

And the local newspaper wrote. Our policeman art ignorance. So yeah basically I mean you see. Sort of from the reaction of the media. And also our reaction. It was actually quite funny. After being a bit worrying in the first moments.

Yeah and in March we got. Basically we were asked to come by for an interrogation. And we went there with our lawyer. And our lawyer had already written a public legal opinion. On the random doctor before. And there it would say.

I mean like we are in Swiss law. You should be able to breach the law with an art piece. If there is like a higher public interest in it. And the work has a temporary nature. Like it could be an experiment or something. And that the breach of rules cannot be too severe.

So basically we went there to find out. You know if this is the point. And the public prosecutor unfortunately did not want to arrest the bot. So it was for him it was clear that he would come after us.

So we were under investigation for possession of drugs. Which became a bit complicated. Because we had never actually possessed these drugs. Which was quite clear from how the work was handled. And this sort of made it sort of an exploration into new territories.

So basically the public prosecutor accused us of. That we. That basically everybody could have stolen the drugs during the exhibition. We said hey come on I mean like. You really need a lot of criminal energy to go there.

To open up this box with a drill. And it would be art robbery. You know if you would steal. These are art objects at the moment. It's an art piece. You know you don't do that easily. Yeah and then two weeks ago.

We received all the whole work back from the public prosecution. Except for the ecstasy. Which they had tested to be MDMA and they destroyed. We knew that beforehand. There were so many good responses on the net on those drugs.

We knew they are 100% MDMA. I trust 400 users saying that these drugs are okay. Yeah. The good thing was the charges were dropped. Because of the over weighing public interest in the questions raised by the work.

And so he didn't exactly say freedom of art. But. Yeah. It was how you could interpret the paper he wrote. So the software was innocent. We were innocent. It's an art piece. It should be okay to do something like that on Twitter.

People would make joke that it's okay to buy MDMA in Switzerland. If you are a bot in an art project. Things like that. So thank you very much. Thank you. See you soon.