Artists Covertly Scan Bust of Nefertiti and Release the Data for Free Online

An Iraqi/German pair of artists just pulled off what might be one of the most digitally-enhanced art heists in recent time. They covertly scanned the Nefertiti bust (with an Xbox 360 Kinect sensor, no less) and released the 3D printing plans online. They did so as an act of defiance, as the bust was actually looted from an Egyptian site by German archaeologists.[x]

[article by Claire Voone /Hyperallergic]

Last October, two artists entered the Neues Museum in Berlin, where they clandestinely scanned the bust of Queen Nefertiti, the state museum’s prized gem. Three months later, they released the collected 3D dataset online as a torrent, providing completely free access under public domain to the one object in the museum’s collection off-limits to photographers. Anyone may download and remix the information now; the artists themselves used it to create a 3D-printed, one-to-one polymer resin model they claim is the most precise replica of the bust ever made, with just micrometer variations. That bust now resides permanently in the American University of Cairo as a stand-in for the original, 3,300-year-old work that was removed from its country of origin shortly after its discovery in 1912 by German archaeologists in Amarna.

Nora Al-Badri and Jan Nikolai Nelles with the 3D bust in Cairo

The project, called “The Other Nefertiti,” is the work of German-Iraqi artist Nora Al-Badri and German artist Jan Nikolai Nelles, who consider their actions an artistic intervention to make cultural objects publicly available to all. For years, Germany and Egypt have hotly disputed the rightful location of the stucco-coated, limestone Queen, with Egyptian officials claiming that she left the country illegally and demanding the Neues Museum return her. With this controversy of ownership in mind, Al-Badri and Nelles also want, more broadly, for museums to reassess their collections with a critical eye and consider how they present the narratives of objects from other cultures they own as a result of colonial histories.

The Neues Museum, which the artists believe knows about their project but has chosen not to respond, is particularly guarded towards accessibility to data concerning its collections. According to the pair, although the museum has scanned Nefertiti’s bust, it will not make the information public — a choice that increasingly seems backwards as more and more museums around the world are encouraging the public to access their collections, often through digitization projects. Notably, the British Museum has hosted a “scanathon” where visitors scanned objects on display with their smartphones to crowdsource the creation of a digital archive — an event that contrasts starkly with Al-Badri and Nelles’s covert deed.

3D rendering of the bust of Nefertiti

“We appeal to [the Neues Museum] and those in charge behind it to rethink their attitude,” Al-Badri told Hyperallergic. “It is very simple to achieve a great outreach by opening their archives to the public domain, where cultural heritage is really accessible for everybody and can’t be possessed.”

In a gesture of clear defiance to institutional order, Al-Badri and Nelles leaked the information at Europe’s largest hacker conference, the annual Chaos Communication Congress. Within 24 hours, at least 1,000 people had already downloaded the torrent from the original seed, and many of them became seeders as well. Since then, the pair has also received requests from Egyptian universities asking to use the information for academic purposes and even businesses wondering if they may use it to create souvenirs. Nefertiti’s bust is one of the most copied works from Ancient Egypt — aside from those with illicit intents, others have used photogrammetry to reconstruct it — and its allure and high-profile presence make it a particularly charged work to engage with in discussions of ownership and institutional representations of artifacts.

“The head of Nefertiti represents all the other millions of stolen and looted artifacts all over the world currently happening, for example, in Syria, Iraq, and in Egypt,” Al-Badri said. “Archaeological artifacts as a cultural memory originate for the most part from the Global South; however, a vast number of important objects can be found in Western museums and private collections. We should face the fact that the colonial structures continue to exist today and still produce their inherent symbolic struggles.”

Al-Badri and Nelles take issue, for instance, with the Neues Museum’s method of displaying the bust, which apparently does not provide viewers with any context of how it arrived at the museum — thus transforming it and creating a new history tantamount to fiction, they believe. Over the years, the bust has become a symbol of German identity, a status cemented by the fact that the museum is state-run, and many Egyptians have long condemned this shaping of identity with an object from their cultural heritage.

The heist: museumshack from jnn on Vimeo

Ultimately, the artists hope their actions will place pressure on not only the Neues Museum but on all museums to repatriate objects to the communities and nations from which they came.

Rather than viewing such an idea as radical, they see it as pragmatic, as a logical update to cultural institutions in the digital era: especially given the technological possibilities of today, the pair believes museums who repatriate artifacts could then show copies or digital representatives of them. Many people have already created their own Nefertitis from the released data; the 3D statue in the American University in Cairo stands as such an example of Al-Badri and Nelles’s ideals for the future of museums, in addition to being one immediate solution that may arise from individual action.

“Luckily there are ways where we don’t even need any topdown effort from institutions or museums,” Al-Badri said, “but where the people can reclaim the museums as their public space through alternative virtual realities, fiction, or captivating the objects like we did.”

3D-printed bust of Nefertiti

[source: Hyperallergic, emphasis mine]

I am IN LOVE with EVERY SINGLE THING ABOUT THIS !!!!

These people are the fucking coolest. They’re like reverse Indiana Joneses, trying to put artifacts back in their contexts, and out of the exclusive hands of elites. “IT BELONGS IN A MUSEUM!” “THE WORLD IS OUR MUSEUM!”

Robert Boyle - Curious Mathematical Forms, 1670.

August 8 2015 - A ‘pick-up artist’ who believes rape should be legalised was chased out of a Montreal bar after trying to chat up a group of women. 

The video shows a bar full of people turning on Daryush Valizadeh, known as Roosh V, and chasing him through the streets. The 35-year-old U.S writer has said he believes sexual assault should be legalised on private property and that he treats American women like ‘disposable razors’. 

There was a public outcry over Roosh V’s trip to Canada with 37,000 people signing a petition to stop him entering the country after he wrote a blog post in February claiming rape on private property should be legal.

He wrote: ‘I thought about this problem and am sure I have the solution: make rape legal if done on private property. I propose that we make the violent taking of a woman not punishable by law when done off public grounds.’ He came to Canada to give seminars on how to pick up women to other pathetic PUA pieces of shit.

In the video women chuck beer in the man’s face as he tried to chat them up. Someone else shouts: ‘This is Roosh V, this is the guy who says rape should be legal.’ A scuffle breaks out as a group of men try to remove him from the bar. One woman shouts, ‘How dare you come to fucking Canada’, while others yell ‘Get the fuck out of here!’ and “You’re not welcome in this city!”. 

Finally he flees to his hotel while being chased by an angry group of people, and being protected by his security and some of his pathetic fans. Good job, Montreal! [video]

Reblogging as inspiration for anyone planning to go and oppose Roosh V. and his sad PUA followers on February 6th in one of the places on [this list].

CLUE 1:      “Went to Short Dog’s house,        They was watching Yo MTV RAPS” Yo MTV RAPS first aired:                Aug 6th 1988

CLUE 2: Ice Cube’s single Today Was A Good Day was released on:                Feb 23 1993

CLUE 3:       ”The Lakers beat the SuperSonics” Dates between Yo MTV Raps air date AUGUST 6 1988 and the release of the single FEBRUARY 23 1993 where the Lakers beat the SuperSonics:       Nov 11 1988    114-103       Nov 30 1988    110-106       Apr    4 1989    115-97       Apr  23 1989    121-117       Jan  17 1990    100-90       Feb  28 1990    112-107       Mar  25 1990    116-94       Apr  17  1990    102-101       Jan  18  1991    105-96       Mar  24  1991    113-96       Apr  21  1991    103-100       Jan  20  1992    116-110

CLUE 4: Dates of those Lakers won over SuperSonics where it was a clear day with no Smog:                 Nov 30 1988                 Apr   4  1989                 Jan 18  1991                 Jan 20  1992

CLUE 5:      “Got a beep from Kim, and          She can fuck all night” Beepers weren’t adopted by mobile phone companies until the 1990s. Dates left where mobile beepers were available to public:                  Jan 18 1991                  Jan 20 1992

CLUE 6: Ice Cube starred in the film “Boyz in the hood” that released late Summer of 1991, but was being filmed mid-late 1990 early 1991 and Ice Cube was busy on set filming the movie Jan 18 1991, too busy to be lounging around the streets with no plans. Ladies and Gentlemen..

The ONLY day where:

        JANUARY 20, 1992       National Good Day Day

Today is a good day

A confession

Hello there, I am a feminist. This is not meant as a surprise. If you google “Emily Heller f…” it autofills with “feminism,” because apparently I’m the only female comedian in the world whose feet the internet does not want to see. And, though it contradicts our Official Feminist Recruitment Platform, I have to confess something. Me and my friends - we hate men. I admit it! We often sit around talking about how much we hate men, and the society they made, and the shit they put us through on a daily basis. You got me! I confess! ;-P

Sure, there are some good ones in there. My boyfriend, for example. Terry Crews, for another example. AND YET. When my coven and I are sitting around bitching (lol) about men and plotting the downfall of the patriarchy, you know what we never, ever talk about doing? You know what strategy has never once crossed our minds?

Pretending to have been raped.

I know that might come as a shock to you, considering how incredibly certain some folks are that the women making these accusations against Bill Cosby, James Deen, R. Kelly, and many others are lying. You know, just making stuff up to try and destroy an innocent guy’s reputation, because they hate men or something, like I do. And while I’m not surprised people think that way, I feel I have to set things straight. Us man haters, when we want to ruin a man’s life, that’s not how we work.

I’m a little hurt, honestly. You don’t think we’re creative enough, smart enough - hell, evil enough to come up with better revenge plots than that? You know, stuff that would feel more at home in a montage under an angry Beyoncé song?

Here’s just a SHORT list of punishments I’d rather inflict on a guy I hate:

- Hide a hundred alarm clocks in his room set to various ungodly hours

- Put a bunch of wack bumper stickers on his car (I did this one time. It was great. One of them said “The Goddess is dancing and magic is afoot”).

- Stretch cellophane over his toilet bowl (but under the seat).

- Do everything they do in the song “Hit ‘Em Up Style”

- Publish his poetry (no man’s poetry is good)

- Pile a bunch of watermelons at his door and then ring the bell and run

- Release his high school band’s demo (if anyone did this to me I would die)

That’s just off the top of my head. I’m sure there are better ideas out there that would be more satisfying. I haven’t seen Waiting to Exhale, but I vaguely remember from the preview that they set someone’s car on fire in it, and while I’d never do that myself, it does seem like a hoot! Accusing someone of rape, on the other hand, isn’t even Plan Z.

You know why? Because making a false rape or abuse accusation is NOT FUN. Making a TRUE rape or abuse accusation is NOT FUN. It is, instead, a reliable way for the accuser to get harassed, doubted, mocked, threatened, sued for defamation, ostracized from her community, scrutinized for her sexual behavior, blamed for her own pain, and generally treated like crap. It’s one of the least effective, riskiest, most terrifying ways to fuck with someone’s life other than your own. And the chances of it bringing consequences for the accused are perilously low! According to RAINN, only two percent of rapists will ever see jail time. Think of all the famous men who have been accused of violence against women. Are any of them bankrupt? How many are in jail? And how many are walking around still adored millionaires?

Before she was the award-winning director / writer behind the brilliant film The Diary of a Teenage Girl, my sister Marielle Heller was making her living as a theater actor in New York. One day she called me to ask for my advice about an audition she was offered, because she knows I’m a genius. The role was a rape victim on Law & Order: SVU. You see, she wasn’t sure she even wanted to audition, because - get this - she didn’t want to pretend to have been raped. If she landed the part, they were going to pay her money! She was going to be on television! She was going to meet Richard Belzer! She would get to eat all kinds of cheeses off the craft services table! Maybe even brie! But she knew that in order to get all those things, she’d have to spend the day thinking about being raped, and talking about being raped, and acting as if she had been raped, and she wasn’t sure she could handle it. If my sister didn’t want to play a rape victim for money, an IMDB credit, and face time with the Belz, what makes you think these women want to do it for free, for fun, for spite?

So, yeah, men. Sometimes we do hate you. What do you expect? You harass us, you cheat on us, you legislate our bodies, you blame us for the Beatles breaking up.  And sometimes we even want to ruin your lives. But we’re too clever and wonderful and self interested to lie about being raped to do it.

When someone says they were raped, it’s because they were raped. When they say they were abused, it’s because they were abused. And they need you to believe it.

Vintage ‘Flying Fish’ Tee from LowSparkVintage

Minovo Wang vs. Barbara I Gongini

https://www.artstation.com/artist/minovo

today isn’t great but cats exist

this game is my life now