At first glance, the exhibition looked like any other—until you realized the artists had not chosen the displays. A bot chose them.
Each week, the bot was given a Bitcoin allowance and left to wander the darknet, where it made purchases and mailed them to the gallery. No human intervention, no curation. Just transactions unfolding at random, inching closer to the illicit.
Ten ecstasy pills. Spy gear. A Hungarian passport scan. A Visa card. A stash can. Car locksmith tools. A tutorial on hacking a Coca-Cola machine. A Louis Vuitton Trevi PM handbag. A voice-changing mobile phone. A Bitcoin USB miner. 1.8 million email addresses. The Lord of the Rings collection. A Canadian gold coin. A guide on how not to get arrested on the deep web.
Eventually, the Swiss public prosecutor’s office seized both the items and the bot (not surprising, given that the gallery was literally next to a police station). They returned everything—except the ecstasy—citing “the overweighing public interest in the questions raised.” The artists were cleared of all charges.
It seems the bot had committed art, not a crime.
That was Random Darknet Shopper (2014-2016). Its creators, the Berlin-based duo !Mediengruppe Bitnik, pose the following questions: “What does it mean for a society when there are robots which act autonomously? Who is liable when a robot breaks the law on its own initiative?”
!Mediengruppe Bitnik (hereafter referred to as Bitnik) is driven by questions. This article follows suit, structuring its exploration of their work around the questions their projects provoke.
How Do You Access the Inaccessible?
If Bitnik is not testing what you can buy, they are testing where things can go.
Delivery for Mr. Assange (2013) was a thirty-one-hour live-streamed performance in which a camera-equipped package was sent to WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange, who had been confined at the Ecuadorian Embassy in London since 2012 to avoid extradition (until his arrest in 2019).
The package travelled 121.5 km, passing through multiple distribution centres and vehicles, capturing 11,015 live images as thousands watched online, waiting to see if it would arrive. Normally, packages are tracked by unseen systems—this time, the package was watching back. In the end, Assange completed the piece by appearing before the camera.
Bitnik later attempted to send a package on behalf of Assange to imprisoned human rights activist Nabeel Rajab, containing an appeal for his release. This time, the delivery never made it—both the original package and a second attempt were intercepted by authorities.
The delivery to Assange showed how objects slip through networks of control; the failed delivery to Rajab revealed where those networks tighten their grip.
Who Gets to Experience Art?
Bitnik’s disruptions are not just about access but also participation.
In Opera Calling (2007), they challenged the exclusivity of high culture by placing audio bugs within the Zurich Opera House and randomly dialling numbers across the city to broadcast live performances. One moment, people were going about their day; the next, their phone rang, and an automated voice greeted them:
“This is the autonomous opera telephone of Zurich. For your pleasure and entertainment, we have placed a bug in the Zurich Opera. In a few moments, you will be connected live to the opera house. You can lay back and listen to today’s performance…”
Then, the transmission began. Call recipients could listen to a live performance of Der Rosenkavalier by Richard Strauss from the comfort of their own homes. If they chose to hang up, the system simply dialed the next number, continuing the cycle.
For over two months, Bitnik’s hidden audio bugs transmitted over ninety hours of opera to 4,363 unsuspecting households across Zurich. It was not a mass broadcast—it was a personalized call. A home-delivery experience of a traditionally exclusive art form. The opera house, once confined to velvet seats and expensive tickets, had slipped into kitchens, bedrooms, and hallways.
At first, the Zurich Opera threatened legal action, butut as the debate over access played out in the media, they eventually “decided to tolerate” Opera Calling.
Who Is Allowed to Surveil?
When Bitnik was not making opera accessible to the public, they were turning surveillance into public spectacle.
In Militärstrasse 105 (2009), Bitnik intercepted and rebroadcast live footage from two police surveillance cameras in Zurich to the exhibition space, transforming law enforcement’s own tools into an exhibit. One camera captured the entrance of the police station from across the street; the other, its main customer desk inside. Normally, these surveillance feeds vanished the moment they were recorded unless something noteworthy happened, but in this piece, otherwise fleeting visuals were given permanence. Footage that would have been routine—forgotten—became the artwork itself.
CCTV–A Trail of Images (2008–2014) expanded this act of exposure beyond a single site. Over several years, Bitnik wandered city streets with self-built CCTV receivers, picking up “usually invisible” surveillance feeds and recording them. The result was a drift through the “invisible city,” exposing the hidden surveillance systems that quietly monitor public space.
Once again, they took what was meant to remain unseen and made it impossible to overlook.
Who Owns the Signal?
Making surveillance visible was not enough for Bitnik. They went further, hijacking signals and replacing live feeds with their own broadcasts.
In Surveillance Chess (2012), Bitnik intercepted the live signal of a surveillance camera inside a London tube station, replacing the real-time feed with a digital chessboard. A voice over the loudspeaker announced:
“I control your surveillance camera now. I am the one with the yellow suitcase. How about a game of chess? You are white. I am black. Call me or text me to make your move. This is my number: 07582460851.”
With that, a game of chess began between Bitnik and the surveillance operators. The monitoring system was no longer made up of one party sitting behind the camera and one party being watched. It had become “a medium of communication.”
In Pirate TV Station (2008), Bitnik collaborated with the Container Project, a rural Jamaican media lab, to launch the country’s first pirate TV station. Over three weeks, they assembled a low-range broadcasting system, trained participants in TV production, and prepared their own station’s programming. However, the experiment took an unexpected turn—when viewers tuned in, they did not find the broadcast on its intended channel. Instead, Bitnik’s signal had accidentally hijacked a national Jamaican TV station, overriding its programming and broadcasting their own content across large parts of the island. What began as a small-scale DIY project had, without warning, wiped out an official state broadcaster, turning an experiment into a full-scale media intervention.
By seizing the signal itself, Bitnik forced a confrontation over who gets to speak.
How Far Can You Push the System?
Bitnik does not just create art; they disrupt systems—from a package that watches its own journey to a TV station that accidentally hijacks. Their projects do not sit passively in galleries; they unfold unpredictably in real time, experimenting with access, surveillance, and control.
When they set a bot loose on a darknet shopping spree, its purchases forced authorities to confront questions they had never anticipated. This is the essence of Bitnik’s work—not to provide answers, but to create situations where the right questions are forced into the open.