Occasional Table #3: Mel Franklin & Alex Pollard Chain
January 17th - January 31st 2015
For the third instalment of Occasional Table, Franklin and Pollard have developed a piece of malware that abuses a weakness in the latest iPhone software. This malware hijacks any device that comes close to the phone on display, provided that device is running IOS 8. Every five seconds, hijacked devices will enter an infinite loop where the malware checks the phone’s connectivity and then proceeds to stealthily mine Bitcoins on the artists’ behalf. The ‘queen’ phone is displayed in a copper-coated case in which is embedded a copper coin artwork by the Venezualan/American artist Meyer Vaisman. The phone itself produces an ambient environment helping to create a symbolic space within the gallery where the viewer themselves are hosts to a parasitical form of accumulation.
Chain, 2015, iPhone 4s, bespoke iPhone case with Meyer Vaisman coin artwork, malware.
Review by Niki Russell on this is tomorrow here.
