The artist gave an insight into his elaborate expert system, a thorough analysis of how the status of our identity is determined by administrative frameworks and identifying features stored in various commercial and governmental databases. Starting from his works in the NODE17 exhibition “Designing Hope” participants learned how identities are built and how new identities can be created in order to seek protection from direct traceability. Bunting introduced them to the manuals he has synthesized from his own inquiries and guide the participants through the first steps of using the freely available material.

More info on The Status Project:

http://status.irational.org/

 

About the Artist

Heath Bunting

irational.org/heath

Heath Bunting (UK) is a co-founder of both net.art and sport-art movements. He is banned for life from entering the USA for his anti genetic and border crossing work. He has had multiple works of art censored and permanently deleted (including all copies and backups) by the UK security services. He has had an artwork exploded by the SAS and is prevented from talking about this in public. He has been detained, arrested multiple times and classified as a terrorist by UK security services for his art projects. He is subject to constant global state and corporate hostile interventions. He is denied full access to the internet and is almost constantly unemployed as a result of being politically blacklisted.

In an environment where the UK Ministry of Defence can publicly state that their primary global adversary is the non-state individual artist, he now produces his art projects securely and in secret. He has been approached by both state and corporate security organisations on several occasions, but mostly declined these offers of work, especially when it involved the assassination of social justice activists.

His main work, The Status Project, involves using artificial intelligence to search for artificial life in societal systems. Aside from this, he is currently training artists in security and survival techniques so they can out-live organised crime networks in the forest during the final crisis.