Probe Kit is a critical software art project that puts a fragment of the network surveillance and collection capabilities available to larger entities in the hands of “hobbyist network data collectors.”
Branger_Briz in collaboration with Brannon Dorsey debuted Probe Kit at the eMerge Americas Conference, as an activist “artware” installation aimed at illustrating how simple it is to collect personal network data and how much can be inferred from that data. Sarcastically pitched as an “amateur data collector kit”, Probe Kit turns your wifi card into a “net” that catches the fluttering probe requests (data packets) emitted from the wireless devices of the people around you.
Branger_Briz is a collective of artists, educators and programmers formed in [2010] by Nick Briz, Paul Briz and Ramon Branger, among others. It has since grown from 5 people to more than a dozen. The behaviour of the user is an important starting point and often a key issue within their creative projects. Before Branger_Briz came into existence, its members were part of a more traditional marketing firm, ‘The Alten Group’. They decided to re-organize their company with a focus on confluence of digital technology and culture, as for them contemporary culture and digital culture are indistinguishably connected. Their charging station ( A Charge For Privacy ) was first programmed and installed at two commercial art shows during Art Basel Miami and later at the Neuberger Museum of Art in Purchase (NY). This installation version has been produced by Furtherfield where it was included in an exhibition curated for the International Symposium on Mixed and Augmented Reality in Munich, and later in their London gallery in Beyond the Interface.
( from the “Right Here Right Now” catalog )
“The practice of artist collective Branger_Briz provides an illustrative basis to help appreciate the postdigital conditions under which contemporary museum communication and cultural curating operate. Formed in [2010] by Nick Briz, Paul Briz, and Ramon Branger, this studio collective draws upon the expertise of artists, educators, and programmers for whom the behavior of the user is the common point of contention for their creative projects, regardless of whether applied towards more commercial or experimental outcomes. Their practice reflects how contemporary culture has become indistinguishable from digital culture;”
( from http://mw17.mwconf.org/paper/the-abcs-of-cultural-curating/ )
Nick Briz is a new-media artist, educator and organizer based in Chicago, IL. His work focuses on digital culture by investigating the promises and perils of living in an increasingly digital and networked world. He is an active participant in various online communities and conversations including glitch art, net art, remix culture, digital rights, Internet ecology and digital literacy.
His work has been exhibited internationally at major festivals such as FILE Media Arts Festival in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil and the Images Festival in Toronto Canada, as well as major cultural institutions such as the Museum of Moving Image in New York City, the Museo De Arte Contemporaneo de Caracas, Venezuela and the Museum of Contemporary Art Chicago, the Tate Exchange in London, among others. His work has been reviewed and discussed in international print publications and online platforms such as Neural Magazine (Bari, Italy), Rhizome.org (NYC) and Furtherfield (London) which are among the most influential in the field of New Media Art, as well as in traditional news outlets such as the Boston Globe, El Mundo (Spain), El Espectador (Colombia), and in an array of art and design publications including VICE, Fast Company, Art Slant and Complex.
He is Adjunct Assistant Professor at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago as well as the Chief Creative Director of the digital agency Branger_Briz, a collective of artists, strategists, educators and programmers specializing in conceiving and developing custom innovative digital projects for a wide range of clients. As an organizer he has been invited to curate events at various international galleries and conferences, he co-founded and ran an international New Media Art conference called GLI.TC/H (2010-2012), co-ran an experimental performance series in Chicago called NO-MEDIA (2012-2016), and is currently co-organizing a lecture series called d.r.e.a.m. (data rules everything around me).
Brannon Dorsey is an artist, programmer, and researcher based in Chicago, IL.
Brannon has been featured in various publications and articles, including Motherboard, The Creator’s Project, Hackaday, Bloomberg, The New York Observer, Boing Boing, and rtl-sdr.
His work has shown in Japan, Mexico, New York City, Chicago, Los Angeles, Miami, Atlanta, Washington D.C., Philadelphia, and his hometown of Richmond, VA, among other places. He has shown in group exhibitions at the Virginia Museum of Fine Arts, the Miami Art Museum, the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts, and the Smithsonian’s American Art Museum.