The Multimedia Institute in Zagreb (Croatia) has just opened the exhibition System.hack().

System.hack() is every hack that opens up a closed system or makes an open system dynamic. The exhibition seeks to find connections between moments of excellence in different fields of human production.

The exhibition is on view until June 17. Not in a gallery, but in a hotel room, as the hotel room is supposed to function as the lowest common denominator of living environments users/viewers/visitors/readers inhabit.

Hacks exhibited:

– Heath Bunting: Superweed kit, a lowtech DIY kit to produce a genetically mutant superweed, designed to attack corporate monoculture.

– Orson Wells’s The War of the Worlds. Internet Archives has the recordings: 1, 2 and 3. The story is well-known: Welles performed the radio adaptation of H. G. Wells‘ novel as a Halloween special on October 30, 1938. The live broadcast reportedly frightened many listeners into believing that an actual Martian invasion was in progress.

– John Draper‘s Captain Crunch whistle. In the late ’60s the “phreaker” used a free plastic whistle included with the breakfast cereal to emit a tone at precisely 2600 hertz—the same frequency that was used by AT&T long lines to indicate that a trunk line was available to route a new call. This allowed to fake pay phone system tones and make large quantities of free phone calls.

But also GNU General Public License by Richard Stallman; Michael Steil‘s Linux on Xbox and “unknown hacker”‘s actions of circumventing CD protection systems.

The exhibition curators are inviting you to tell them what is your favourite System.hack()s: here’s the form to contribute and the results (bit empty at the moment). I’m still trying to figure out which is my favourite hack. Would be nice if there could be loads of contributions, just to show that hacker doesn’t necessarily equals “guy eating crisps in front of their computer while trying to get access to your bank account.”

Thanks Marcell!