Dark Arts

Contemporary life plays out amid a profusion of technical systems whose inner workings are obscure—if not locked. There is no master key. And yet, this encrypted world must be bornesomehow. Fortunately, the term “encryption” contains a latent spatial imaginary. And this imaginary yields insight into what is hidden by and within tech. In the face of information asymmetries, and when cryptographic de-coding cannot (or does not) happen, this perspective affords aesthetic purchase.

A spatial imaginary enablespoiesis—the sense of making or creation which lies at the core of art—even in the face of the uncrackable. If an encrypted matter cannot be opened up and inspected, it may yet be rescored.Poiesis supplies narrative and pictorial inroads, a kind of endogenous psychological map of strange terrain—or, at least, certain points of orientation. While reviewing select artworks from the last decade, this book runs counter to Big Tech’s erroneous claims regarding a new culture of transparency and openness—showcasing, instead, apoetics of encryption.

The word “encryption” is built around the image of a crypt, as a primary figure for an enclosed or hidden place. Harking back to ancient funerary practices, the “crypt”contains a latent history that far predates modern technology. As an implicit corollary, the question of burial techniques, and the ritual and performative aspect of sealing-up are raised (like the dead) by the term itself. A crypt, by definition, contains a body. Negotiating its built structure thus activates drama concerning whether the buried figure can rest in peace, whether it may be disinterred by a sanctioned practice, such as archeology, or de-crypted by grave robbing.

A crypt is an occult place. The knowledge that it contains is esoteric, and may be gleaned only through recondite or suspect methods. As a work of criticism, this book oscillates between both poles, but leans more towards the latter. If cryptography exemplifies a lawful right-hand path for dealing with digital encryption—a scientific method—thenpoiesis and its interpretation pursue the left-hand path. It is the road of images and their dynamic imagination. This path may seem suspect if judged incorrectly. Yet, as the philosopher Gaston Bachelard reminds us, “Images are not concepts. They do not withdraw into their meaning. Indeed, they tend to go beyond their meaning.”1 Furthermore, “If the image that ispresent does not make us think of one that isabsent, if an image does not determine an abundance—an explosion—of unusual images, then there is no imagination.”2 Through such abundance, the alienating, guarded, or jealous implications of encrypted domains are revalued—a different operation from unlock