aPrivate.Space is a prototype designed to examine notions of privacy within the infrastructure of the internet and e-mail.
A computer and mobile phone housed within the work create an interface through which e-mails can be sent and received. However, the service offered is different to that provided by personal devices and computers. Routing the e-mail traffic across hacked hardware, unregistered devices, and a Tor network, the design aims to anonymise the messages sent from within.
The architecture of the tent places this work at the fringe of society. The form, at once an abode and a space to be occupied, is unrecognised as an address by governmental postal services. Similarly, the server appears on the edge of digital space, challenged by spam protocols, and blocked by internet service providers.
Privacy on the internet is a silent challenge faced by technological society that has formed around the vast privatised networks of the internet. Rental of digital space, in return for access to data and consumption of advertising, is the basic condition of this infrastructure. To step outside of this system is to embrace the discomfort of its alternative; a nomadic, marginalised, and dispossessed reality. aPrivate.Space solidifies the ostracization of the individual from the hyper individualised spaces of the world wide web and offers an experience that resonates with the utopian ideals of the 1980s that surrounded the internet’s conception.
