[spectre] What the heck? - hacking HEK

[Garrett Lynch]

Dear HEK - Haus der elektronischen Künste, Basel (http://www.hek.ch/)

What the heck?

Your net-based audience award is a joke and discussed on social media with
derision.  Users and artists wonder not which artwork will win but instead
which hacker or bot will dominate the voting.  Your absolute trust in
net-based technologies belies your ignorance about the very form and
platform you aspire to promote.  The award's poll has been hacked for the
second year running - this time by me.  I have no vested interest in the
nominees or who wins, simply that you cease to use such a ridiculous
selection process and abolish the audience award in coming years as its
selection is unjust to nominated works and does not raise the credibility
or profile of net-based art.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RhBqPtoVuSI


-----------------------------------------

Since 2016 HEK the Haus der elektronischen Künste (House of electronic Art)
in Basel have organised a net-based award for art that employs the
"Internet as a platform for artistic activities".  In addition to a jury
prize, an audience award is voted for by internet users on HEK's website.
Votes are cast through Pinpoli, a web-based poll system, that can and has
been easily hacked in the past.  The poll was hacked in 2017, presumably by
one of the artists nominated for the award, with first and second places
surpassing other nominations by over 1400 votes.  Yet for the 2018 award
HEK continue to use the same flawed polling system.

As a consequence, the award is reduced to little more than a fixed
popularity contest.  It is discussed on social media with derision, users
and artists wonder not which artwork will win but instead which hacker or
bot will dominate the voting.  This is unjust to nominated works and does
not raise the credibility or profile of net-based art.

In the last week of voting I deployed a clicking application through
TorBrowser to cast over a thousand votes.  It raised several of the poorly
performing nominations above the winning nominations and arbitrarily
selected one to win by an exaggerated number of votes.  The intention was
to undermine HEK's confidence in their poll, confound the process of
selection of the audience award and hopefully sufficiently embarrass HEK to
abolish it in coming years.

-----------------------------------------


-- 
regards
Garrett
_________________
Garrett at asquare.org
http://www.asquare.org/

Current events and soon:

Real Virtuality The Networked Art of Garrett Lynch:
http://realvirtuality.peripheralforms.com/

A network of people who attended an exhibition and contributed to the
creation of this work
http://asquare.org/work/peoplenetwork/

Pick up a postcard and participate at any of the following galleries:
Aksioma Institute for Contemporary Art (Ljubljana, Slovenia), Bannister
Gallery (Rhode Island, USA), Centro ADM (Mexico City, Mexico), Centro de
Cultura Digital (Mexico City, Mexico), Gallery XY (Olomouc, Czech
Republic), Gedok (Stuttgart, Germany), Guest Room (North Carolina, USA),
Human Ecosystems (Rome, Italy), Kunst Museum (Stuttgart, Germany),
Laboratorio Arte Alameda (Mexico City, Mexico), Le Wonder (Bagnolet,
France), MUTE (Lisbon, Portugal), NYU Art Gallery (Abu Dhabi, United Arab
Emirates), Open Signal (Portland, USA), Plymouth Arts Centre (Plymouth,
England), The Gallery at Plymouth College of Art (Plymouth, England),
Transfer Gallery (New York, USA), Upfor Gallery (Portland, USA), Watermans
(London, England), Wilhelmspalais (Stuttgart, Germany), WOWA (Riccione,
Italy), ZKM | Center for Art and Media (Karlsruhe, Germany)
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