As a conspiracy and surveillance buff, I’m geeked about our Critics’ Choice this week in art: Echelon: Who Is Watching You?, a group show about the panopticon that is the 21st century. Besides Ground Control (detail pictured), a rug by local artist Noelle Mason and Mexican artists Jose Antonio Flores and Jonathan Samaniego whose pattern comes from satellite photos of the U.S./Mexico border, there’s Getting de Menezes, a short film by T.W. Li about the death of Jean Charles de Menezes, and other works, which you can preview at Polvo’s Web site.
The exhibition, incidentally, is named for a famous and extremely creepy SIGINT network that was allegedly part of the Bush administration’s program of domestic surveillance.
Vaguely related: If this sort of thing floats your boat, you might enjoy the great MIT art book Ctrl [Space], based on this exhibit, and this story about Wilco’s breakthrough album, spy radio stations, and international copyright law, and what that all has to do with the Conet Project (warning: terrifyingly opaque shortwave recordings). Plus: get ready for the awesomely named Real ID.