Datamine project

Datamine was a two-year performance project during which I collected discarded computer components from The Ohio State University.

Ithen repaired these machines and installed them in the basement of my house, where I used them to make copies of files that had been left on

the hard disks of other discarded computers. The nature of the material retrieved from these disks ranged from internal departmental

documents to personal emails and pornography once belonging to employees of the university. This "computer lab" grew in size during the

duration of the performance and several thousand MB of recovered files were compiled and stored. For my MFA thesis exhibition I moved

the entire contents of my basement to a plywood crate in the gallery space. This crate had the exact dimensions of the basement room where

the materials had previously been installed, and text inscribed on the sides of the crate informed viewers of this information. This seemingly

oversized crate had several holes drilled in its walls at eye level to facilitate a view of the interior, which contained a fully functional computer

network, video, and sound. In fact, so much equipment was operating in the crate that the walls were warm to the touch, and audible beeps and

fan noise could be heard at some distance. The space was arranged as an exact replica of the original basement computer lab's configuration,

though there was no entrance allowing access to the inside.