Greetings from the Invisible Borderlands


"Greetings from the Invisible Borderlands” is a series of messages that experiment with analog steganography, the art of concealing information within plain sight, for contemporary online surveilled mediascapes.

This work is an exercise in reviving the Cardan grille, a 400 year old method of writing secret messages using a grid made of cardboard with holes cut in it. When the grille (key) is placed over a larger message (cover), the holes line up with specific letters in the message, revealing the hidden message within. 

The exercise begins when a postcard is posted to interested participants. That postcard is in fact the grille, a key that unlocks an embedded message on Google Maps. By using two separate communication channels, the postal service and the Internet, this work manoeuvres within the ‘invisible borderlands’, the unchartered cracks between online and offline communication infrastructures. Inspired by network-based experiments such as mail art and net art, it aims to explore alternative and untraceable forms of communication. 

This work was nominated for the Crypto Design Challenge 2016. Greetings from the Invisible Borderland No. 2 was made for the occasion for solo show 'The Kandinksky Collective' at Aksioma, Ljubljana in 2017.