11 days
An art experiment by artist Florian Mehnert in March 2015 lasted 11 days : it wanted to investigate the consequences of ubiquitous surveillance and the resulting use of remote-controlled armed drones . This threw u. A. raises the question of the ethical value of a rat when people are constantly being killed by automated drone attacks. After international protests, Mehnert ended the campaign prematurely after five days.
action
By means of an interactive , synchronized real-time - video project visitors to a website via keyboard or mouse click could have a paintball - gun , on a webcam was fixed, control and housed in an outlet rat via live stream watch and follow with the camera or gun.
After a countdown of 11 days from March 14th, 2015, the first visitor who decided to do so should be able to anonymously shoot the rat on March 25th of the year at 7:00 p.m. with the “weapon then armed” . The visitors to the website could say for a long time whether they would kill the rat. 40 percent of the visitors answered in the affirmative.
The project was prematurely terminated by Mehnert after a few days: the rat was handed over to officials who followed up the reports ; they confirmed that the animal had been kept in accordance with animal welfare standards. According to the responsible veterinary office, in whose care the rat was subsequently kept, the rat was kept in a suitably sized box. According to the artist, it was never planned to actually kill the rat.
Reactions
The action sparked national and international protests. Florian Mehnert was exposed to a shit storm. The action's server was hacked several times and the site was paralyzed. Animal rights activists reported Florian Mehnert.
A petition was started at change.org : This rat is symbolic of all the cruelty that humans do to animals. It is cruel that man is given the power to kill an innocent animal “in the name of art”.
“Nobody gets upset about the drone war or the total surveillance. But because of my experiment, the outrage exploded, ”Mehnert told the Kleine Zeitung.
background
The actual intention of the action artist Mehnert was to draw attention to the ubiquitous extreme modern possibilities of surveillance , which culminated in the perversion of the anonymous, remote-controlled killing of people by computer-controlled " combat drones ". Although the project was ended only 5 days after the start, the concept worked perfectly for Mehnert. His intention was to spark a discussion about what is already a reality: killing people via the Internet. Funkhaus Europa he said: "It cannot be that so many people cry out when a rat is to be or could be killed in this way, but everyone keeps their mouths shut when, for example, drone attacks have been carried out in Afghanistan and people are deliberately killed become.
See also
- Big data
- INDECT
- Metadata + (US drone app )
- Profiling
Web link
Individual evidence
- ↑ 11tage.florianmehnert.de at 11tage.florianmehnert.de
- ↑ Badische-zeitung.de , March 16, 2015, Daniel Laufer: Does the laboratory rat die? at badische-zeitung.de
- ↑ a b Archive link ( Memento from March 20, 2015 in the Internet Archive )
- ↑ Stop the rat experiment retrieved from change.org.
- ↑ Artist has rats shot at kleinezeitung.at
- ↑ Badische-zeitung.de, Interview, March 16, 2015, Daniel Laufer: "Differentiation does not take place"
- ↑ Badische-zeitung.de, Comments, March 19, 2015, Alexander Dick: What messages the rat experiment has
- ↑ I expect a massacre at sueddeutsche.de
- ↑ Controversial experiment at sueddeutsche.de/kultur
- ↑ Is it allowed to kill a rat with a click of the mouse? at welt.de
- ↑ One mouse click and a rat dies in artist's protest against drones at thetimes.co
- ↑ Art Network Istallation at deutschlandfunk.de
- ↑ Rat in focus retrieved from srf.ch.