Password Breach

In “Password Breach,” passwords extracted from salient historical data breaches are presented as an additive smear on 77 small electronic-paper displays which synchronize and reset intermittently. The breaches include the Panama Papers, Ashley Madison, and RockYou2021.

Infamous large-scale password breaches, such as those that affected the companies RockYou and Ashley Madison reveal the vulnerability and interconnectedness of digital and lived realities. As such, “Password Breach” brings to the fore how random, intuitive, or personalized combinations of 6 to 20 characters are heavily relied-upon, yet fallible gatekeepers of private caches of data whose stakes range from the personal to the global.

Through displaying these private “codes” in public space in seemingly random sequences, “Password Breach” reveals curious aspects of human thought processes, which draw upon nostalgia, fetish, taboo, and tenderness to build digital locks for private information.

General info

Spanish name:
Fuga de Contraseñas
Year of creation:
2021
Technique:
Electronic-paper displays, ESP32 microcontrollers, wifi network, custom software
Power:
100W on 110 OR 240V
Dimensions:
Each display is 7 x 4 cm
Installation occupies 150 cm (L) x 125 cm (H)
Weight:
2g per screen
Keywords:
indoor, database, statistics
Edition:
6 Editions, 1 AP

Exhibitions

  • Rafael Lozano-Hemmer: EXCUSE YOU!, bitforms gallery, San Francisco, California, United States, 2023.
  • Rafael Lozano-Hemmer: EXCUSE YOU!, Wilde Gallery, Basel, Switzerland, 2022.
  • Rafael Lozano-Hemmer: Haciendo Agua, Galería Max Estrella, Madrid, Spain, 2022.
  • Untitled Art Fair, bitforms gallery, Miami, Florida, United States, 2021.

Credits

  • Programming: Emily Green, Faadhi Fauzi
  • Hardware: Emily Green, William Sutton
  • Production Assistance: Fanny Asselin, Karine Charbonneau, Stephan Schulz, Guillaume Tremblay

Links