Recovered Files

Recovered Files, 1993/94

Light boxes, dura transparencies

Purchased by Statens Kunstfond / The Danish Art Foundation

Deleted files found on five art schools in Helsinki Finland, Groningen Holland, Paris France, Cologne Germany and Tokyo Japan. I accessed computers through the internet and stole the images that the proper users of the computers had deleted. Their computers, unprotected by passwords, were broken into with a program to control the computers with then a computer recovering program reconstructed deleted files on the computers. And then, still on the net, the files were picked up me in Denmark. In the project I focused in particular on destroyed pictures, that is, pictures that the computer had difficulty in finding an order in with a distortion of the signals as a result, and thus giving a distinct “digital” look to make the images refer to the production method. The distorted pictures are then transferred to dura trans and displayed in light boxes, and an aesthetic dimension is added to a hacker-like strategy. In the selection of images, the original filename and its relation to the concept has gotten first priority. The name of the file and the place from where they originate is written on the image to further explain the process. In my working process it was like a psychoanalysis of the computer.