Blog

  • Conversation on Resistant Systems

    Conversation on Resistant Systems

    For the exhibition Resistant Systems: Spring 2022 at the Center for Book Arts in April 2022, Kristine Khouri sat down with me for an afternoon to discuss this body of work. This was originally published in the exhibition brochure. Kristine Khouri is a researcher whose interests span the history of art collecting, exhibiting, and infrastructure […]

  • Increasing Tips and Protecting Sources

    Increasing Tips and Protecting Sources

    In 2020 there were a tremendous number of tips that came to newsrooms directly from whistleblowers. From the FinCen files, Trump’s taxes, continued revelations of sexual harrasment, discrimination and unequitable treatment within organizations, and many in the healthcare fields speaking up. But, how can a newsroom make sure that they are the one that a source turns […]

  • How to Protect Yourself From Retaliation When Filming Police Brutality

    How to Protect Yourself From Retaliation When Filming Police Brutality

    As protesters continue to occupy the streets around the U.S., many are filming police brutality. If you are in a situation with the cops or witnessing one that has the potential to turn violent, whether at a protest or simply while out in your community, you should be prepared to take video and document events […]

  • Whistleblowers Serve Veterans

    Whistleblowers Serve Veterans

    Today is Veterans Day in the United States and as the nation honors its veterans, it is important to remember that whistleblowing is a public service and one that can be a catalyst for change to better protect individuals and families that have served their country. In 2014, a number of whistleblowers began disclosing to the press […]

  • Residency at SPACES

    Residency at SPACES

    I had the good fortune of doing a residency at SPACES in Cleveland, OH in the summer of 2016. During my 6 weeks at SPACES, I helped protesters at the RNC protect themselves against cellphone tracking, led a dark web treasure hunt, and made two new artworks: Echoings and Data Transmissions. Below is a video […]

  • Guide to Becoming Anonymous

    Guide to Becoming Anonymous

    The LA Crypto Crew wrote a new article for Hyperallergic. The guide goes after some low hanging fruit with locking down your phone, but really dives into setting up an alternative identity and dropping off the digital norm grid.

  • Cell Phone Safe!

    Cell Phone Safe!

    I am going to be at SPACES in Cleveland representing the LA Cryptoparty Crew. I’ll be helping activists, protestors, and anyone that wants to protect their digital devices and digital footprint during the Republican National Convention. I’ll be holding office hours from 1-4pm Monday, July 18 – Wednesday, July 20. More info on protecting your […]

  • Developing a Missing Persons System

    Developing a Missing Persons System

    This post was written with Willow Brugh to summarize our advice for coders wanting to create a new reunification application.  When a disaster occurs, whether fast like an earthquake or slow like a drought or war, people go missing. As outsiders wishing to contribute to restoring the stability of our worlds, the desire to reunite […]

  • Patents: Team Work

    Patents: Team Work

    While at a residency at Provisions Library, I built a system for analyzing the United States patent database. Basically creating a system where I can create a family tree of patents either starting with a recent patent or a historical one. I used this software and combined it with a new drawing technique, one where I […]

  • The Right to Be Let Alone: Privacy in the United States

    The Right to Be Let Alone: Privacy in the United States

    Based on other books that I had encountered in the Reanimation Library, I expected Gerald S. Snyder’s The Right to Be Let Alone: Privacy in the United States, to be an off-the-grid, back-to-nature, survivalists musings on privacy, brimming with paranoid attitudes such as “get off my land” and “don’t trust the banks.” To my surprise The Right […]

  • L.A.’s First Crytoparty

    L.A.’s First Crytoparty

    On Friday, October 24th I hosted (along with a few others) LA’s first Cryptoparty in my trailer STAT-US. The event brought together individuals with various backgrounds to learn how to browse the web anonymously and send encrypted email.  After such a successful event we will try to host one every few months with some more […]

  • Preview: Book Futures

    Preview: Book Futures

    I have a two person show titled Book Futures, opening in September in Adelaide, Australia at the SASA gallery at the University of South Australia with Brigita Ozolins. As a lead up I have been preparing my exhibition statement and images for the catalog. As a preview, here is the text and images. The two […]

  • Announcement: Playing the Library

    Announcement: Playing the Library

    Playing the Library documents and remixes the experience of browsing a library through performances with a book scanner. A scanning system is being created that will digitize books on the fly and simultaneously create print-on-demand books, ebooks, and online editions. Artists, researchers, librarians, collectors, and library patrons will be asked to perform the scanning system […]

  • Failure: Why It’s Hard To Leave Google

    Failure: Why It’s Hard To Leave Google

    So let me begin by saying, I have largely cut Google out of my life, but I can’t get that last 1-2% out! It is really, really hard! I started out this series of posts called Getting Out of Google knowing that it would be technically possible and that it would just be a matter of […]

  • Secure Browsing: Leaving Chrome

    Secure Browsing: Leaving Chrome

    I’ve been pretty happy with Google Chrome for the last year, but with this project I thought I should reevaluate my browser and extensions. The one thing I am excited to get away from is Chrome’s Google account integration, which synchronizes your bookmarks, history, and settings among multiple Chrome instances on different devices. This inherently […]

  • Email Encryption

    Email Encryption

    This blog post was supposed to be really  inspiring about email encryption and would help people realize why it is important to be able to send encrypted messages whenever they wanted. It would also have simple and friendly tutorials that would show people how easy it is to get encryption setup for their emails. Even […]

  • Migrating Gmail Data

    Migrating Gmail Data

    So last we spoke I had chosen to use Neomailbox.com as my new email host. It was a snap to setup my email address with them: I simply had to change two IP addresses where I bought timschwartz.org and the folks at Neomailbox took care of the rest. They have a nice webmail client and […]

  • Choosing An Email Provider

    Choosing An Email Provider

    Today I stumbled on a list of privacy and security conscious email hosting providers. It seems to be up-to-date and well maintained (Lavabit and Silent Circle are gone). I ordered the list by which providers would allow me to host my own domain name and then started removing providers that wouldn’t work for me for […]

  • The Email Hosting Landscape

    The Email Hosting Landscape

    To better understand what the heck I’m getting into with migrating away from Gmail, I spent a few days doing research, reading posts on the interweb, and discussing some technical things with my technical friends. It is now clear to me that if I really wanted the highest degree of privacy and control over my […]

  • Getting Out Of Google

    Getting Out Of Google

    I have been thinking about this for a long time and have finally decided I need to extract myself and my data from Google. This includes: gmail, google analytics, google drive, google chat, google search, google maps, google chrome, and maybe even google calendar (though my wife might not like this one), youtube, and google […]

  • Commodify.us Review

    One of my projects Commodify.us is in a show in D.C.: Cyber in Securities. Also, Marc Garrett wrote a nice write up about the project on furtherfield. This is a cultural shift that demonstrates how contemporary Hacktivists are developing software that promises to start to offer realistic service infrastructures. When I interviewed Charlie Gere in […]

  • Comic Review of Materials On Reserve

    Comic Review of Materials On Reserve

    Sam Spina made a comic about my installation at Denver University, Materials On Reserve. I really love it. It is awesome not only to see yourself in comic form, but to have someone really understand and enjoy your art and then go even further and make a comic about it. Thanks Sam! There is only […]

  • Raspberry Pi Video Looper

    Raspberry Pi Video Looper

    UPDATE: I’ve updated the software and it should be much easier to install and use on any Raspberry PI. It does NOT have a GUI interface any more, but is easier to just plug and play. It is now hosted on github and all updates will be pushed there. https://github.com/timatron/videolooper-raspbian For a show I did in Japan […]