Interview appeared in ATTITUDE The Mercury, 16 April 2010.
Here is an exclusive Abridged version of the shorter one originally published in the Mercury newspaper, www.attitudeclub.com.au
Hack in the box REBECCA FITZGIBBON interviews NANCY MAURO-FLUDE
MOST of us work with computers on a daily basis, but how often do we look inside the case and touch things?
Not often: hacking is a dirty word and breaking into computers, jailbreaking iPhones and cracking open gadgets and gizmos are taboo activities.
We are warned "do not drop, disassemble, open, crush, bend, deform, puncture, shred, microwave, incinerate, paint or insert foreign objects into this device".
So if you take a screwdriver to your iPod, what are the repercussions?
Find out with Miss Despoina’s Hackspace Hobart, breaking out the tech tools to encourage people to explore the insides of electronics, with old computers, mobile phones, tape recorders and kitchen appliances heading in to surgery.
Tech hardware may be a mystery and seem difficult to decipher but Miss Despoina’s workshop facilitator and UTAS e-media lecturer Nancy Mauro-Flude sees it as a lot of fun.
Her hands-on "demolition and reconstruction" workshop teaches how to hack into technology, exploring the difference between memory and storage and getting intimate with the components of your computer.
"Hackers are adventurers, visionaries, real risk-takers, artists and the ones who clearly see why the computer is a truly revolutionary tool," Mauro-Flude said.
“While it's true there are ‘crackers’ (or ‘script kiddies’) who disturb the system and don't respect borders, positions, rules and codes, there are bad eggs in all sub-cultures.”
There are actually very healthy ethics in hacking practice, she asserted.
“Most interesting hackers and people are in fact a provocative force for the community and are not for self-aggrandisement, which means having a philosophy of sharing, openness, transparency and decentralisation.
“What contemporary hackers are in 2010, are people who point out gaps and holes in the system to show that security is an illusion, and that perhaps another attitude and approach in general to information should be adopted.
“At the bleeding edge of contemporary art and culture, hackers are actually very geeky artists whose practice involves the modification (‘modding’) and the re-creation of already existing technology and whose mission is to display a critical perspective on issues relating to this through their artistic practice.”
One example she offers is Jaromil's forkbomb art, as a clear example of the integration of the two fields coming together. You can see it at: http://jaromil.dyne.org/journal/forkbomb_art.html.
It’s also easy to see how some remnants of the hacker culture, such as writing in what they term as ‘1337 slang’.
“Digital graffiti has infiltrated to mainstream,” she said.
“We see similar codes in hip hop culture where, for example, 2pac stands for rapper (Tupac Shakur) or pop singer Ke$ha (Kesha). There are loads of examples - we are everywhere!”
A well-known saying in hack culture is ‘if you cannot open it, you don’t own it’. That means, if you shift things around, you remove the strict barrier between users and developers.
“Then the software and hardware is very open to hacking; then it’s very open to wild configurations, can be more tailor-made and more specifically deployed and installed,” Mauro-Flude said.
As an average tech consumer, you cannot copy music from your own iPod to a friend’s portable music player.
We usually just play with hi-tech toys without realising their potential, Mauro-Flude believes.
"Opening them up has an agenda of [asking] where this technology comes from, what is the real use of a computer, what are its social issues?
“I was never intimidated by machines but enchanted. When I look inside them, I like to touch their inner parts, I guess this stems from my childhood, as when someone would turn the T.V off. I’d run to see if I could catch the TV people leaving from behind, curious and mystified.
“According to Baudelaire in the Philosophy of Toys, he wrote 'This is the first metaphysical tendency’.”
She also toured in a band called Toydeath, hacking electronic children’s toys to make noise art and music with them.
What does it sound like?
“Picture a hyper band of aliens channelling through a broken AM radio, and someone’s playing with the speed control' was how we were once described,” she said.
“And they are still playing! I moved on when I discovered what I could do with networked media, software and electronic performance tools that had more complex meanings to explore.
“It's no secret that girls are not encouraged to experiment with technology although they truly have a more diverse ideas and can interface unexpected elements, intrinsically they have a more experiential and collaborative approach.
“Like Ada Lovelace, the world's first computer programmer, a geek-girl’s favourite role model. She understood what a computer actually was and articulated it, as a machine for information processing, more than a calculator alone.
“She put into everyday terms the abstract and complex material that Charles Babbage was working on for his calculating engines that later on became the computer.”
“We need Ada Lovelace Byron to make a guest appearance today and explain to the kids in museums and classrooms all over the world what a computer really is. I try my best!”
Privacy, surveillance, control paradigms embedded into the technology and the way the technology is designed is complex both socially and politically, she said.
“Information feudalism affects not only information society and subsequent issues of ownership, privacy, sharing - clearly seen in the overabundance of patents and agreements to ‘harness the user’.
“In my view, [it] is an attempt to strip humanity of all civil freedoms; what products to use, what plants to grow and consume, what seeds to cultivate, and to an extent our how ability to even engage with molecular living matter is being restricted.
“The Internet should be accessible to anyone and censorship sucks! Infringement on free speech, Internet surfers' privacy and over-commercialization of the net are major problems.
“At this rate the net is almost one huge billboard where multinational companies are providing the world with clean family fun. Enter the 1950s! Many dark things going on underneath the surface, [and] that’s why it's paradoxically safer to actually make things transparent.”
Our ability to know our environment makes us responsible for what we create and for how we chose to live in that creation.
“Copyright, having turned from regulation into subsidy of publishing industries, is the 21st century equivalent of drug legislation,”
“Everyone knows that it is obsolete, dysfunctional, and depriving people of their rights; absurd wars are fought in its name. The simple fix is to abolish it.”
Don’t be scared; brace yourself for Miss Despoina’s Hackspace Hobart: www.sistero.org/mdhhh