The hundreds of USB sticks embedded in concrete are intended to stimulate thinking in Germany. However, the police are not very enthusiastic because they are sometimes used for criminal activities.
You can save your own data on the walled-in USB stick or retrieve data that someone has previously saved here. (Source: YouTube – Adam Bartholl / Screenshot: Netzwelt)
- As part of an art project, hundreds of USB sticks have been attached to public places in recent years.
- They should also enable file sharing offline and stimulate thought in times of cloud services.
- The content on it has even brought the police to the scene.
More and more data is being stored in online clouds, where it can be accessed from anywhere in the world. 24-year-old Aram Bartholl from Berlin offers an alternative to this total networking. Aram is an artist and started an art project in October 2010 that will probably still attract a lot of questioning looks to this day.
Starting in New York City, the Berlin artist and other volunteers have encased numerous USB sticks in walls, buildings and curbs where they are accessible to everyone. The own database According to this, there are more than 400 such sticks in Germany alone and over 2,000 worldwide. Aram invites everyone to take part in the project. He also provides one on the official website Instructions on how to securely wall up a USB stick.
Bomb plans call the criminal police into action
But the curious art project “Dead Drops” has a serious background: According to Aram, in times of online clouds and digital file sharing, it is intended to provide an alternative model in which data is still exchanged offline. Yes, the walled-in USB sticks are functional and freely accessible to everyone to exchange all kinds of data. All you need is a laptop that you carefully connect to the walled-in USB stick.
However, you should be careful, because since the USB sticks are accessible to everyone, there is of course no control over what data ends up on them. Aran also felt this, having to explain himself to the police after bomb construction plans were found on one of the walled-up USB sticks. He reveals that in one Interview with the Süddeutsche Zeitung. Plans to produce crystal meth were even discovered on a stick in Cologne.
Such USB sticks are then logically broken out of the wall by the police. Aran had to explain his art project to officials, but did not have to fear any legal consequences because the data came from strangers. Nevertheless, it will Projekt “Dead Drops” continued to this day.
USB sticks are meant to make you think
However, we would advise you not to use such freely accessible USB sticks. Apart from dangerous data, the possession of which could make you liable to prosecution, viruses or other harmful programs can also be stored on it.
Aram Bartholl is currently a professor of art with a focus on digital media at HAW Hamburg. He knows that the practical benefits of his offline file sharing network cannot compete with modern cloud solutions, but his main aim is to get the public thinking about file sharing, the dangers behind it and internet censorship.
Another strange art project
The developers Benedikt Groß and Mathias Vef are pursuing a similar approach. They invented Nuca, a camera that generates nude images using AI. It is intended to stimulate reflection on topics such as AI, personal rights and the social consequences of deep fakes.
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