Masterminds & The Art of Misbehaving

A DESIGN THESIS BY EDEN LEW

Š Copyright 2016 by Eden Lew

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise, without the prior permission in writing from the author.

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School of Visual Arts MFA Products of Design 136 West 21st St. New York, NY 10011-3213 productsofdesign.sva.edu

A SCHOOL VISUAL ARTS MFA PRODUCTS OF DESIGN THESIS IN NEW YORK CITY

DESIGNED & WRITTEN BY EDEN LEW EDITED BY CLAIRE ZIMOWSKI

DESIGNEDBYMASTERMINDS.TUMBLR.COM

DEDICATED TO MOM, DAD, GRANDMA, SISTER, CALVIN AND MY CAT, KARL-ANTHONY TOWNS.

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Designers should think like Criminals.

Criminal masterminds are better at being creative than the majority of designers in today’s market. They are con artists who persuade victims into giving up money and valuables. They are craftsmen and tinkerers who decipher the mechanics of systems to break them. They are hackers who write inventive code to go around highly secured firewalls and cartel kingpins who can run a business as effectively as CEOs of major corporations. Although criminal masterminds have harmful intentions, they are uniquely creative because they engage in risk-taking and rule-breaking. In order to achieve critical and strategic design that betters society, designers cannot only employ traditional design thinking strategies — they must also employ a criminal mindset. If designers today want to do good, they must first learn how to be bad.

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009

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MASTERMINDS

6 INTRO

23 CRIME BY

DESIGN

36 PRODUCTS

54 TECHNOLOGICAL

OF CRIME

WARFARE

Projects:

Projects:

40 Secret Code

56 Hiding Hood

44 MASK Encryption

62 Bounty

48 Hidden Compartments

68 Gild

50 Fake Plastic Bag

78 Metis 80 Masterminds A Con Shop

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94

QUESTIONING THE LAW

130

160

THE END

Appendix:

Projects:

Projects: 98

THE FUTURE OF CRIME

Grey Market Studios

131

Utopia/Dystopia

164

Expert Interviews

104

The Rescue Market

136

Couture Crime Tools

166

Movies & Books

108

The Book of Eden

Bibliography

Masterminds Academy

168

144

172

Thank You

116

Mass Incarceration Workshop

148

Key Hole Gigantico

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INTRODUCTION

I could use a good dose of bravery. For most of my life, I stayed quiet. I did what others told me to do and believed what others told me to believe. As a creative, I lacked the courage to speak my mind, often ending up as a pushover and a pixel-pusher. My insecurities with my skills and my ideas discouraged me and created doubt. My design work tended to avoid confrontation and conflict, and thus, I fell into the norm of inventing objects that do not need to exist and designing messages that market junk.

My professors told me that wicked, unsolvable problems are the ones designers should be working on. There are many issues in society that are worth getting passionate about: financial corruption, police brutality, climate change, etc. Throughout design school, students are taught to analyze systems and to inspire change with our creativity. But what can designers really change in this world dictated by law, politics, and money?

After years of completing social-good projects in school and anticipating a career in social design, I figured I would try taking a turn in the wrong direction and end my final year of school with a twist.

Frustrated with my hesitance to speak up and wanting to change how I view design, I dedicated my last year in school to a journey in toughening up and learning to be someone I am not: a criminal mastermind.

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This thesis is not about designing to prevent crime. This is a thesis that celebrates misbehaving as a part of being creative.

To many, the word “criminal” suggests a dangerous and violent person with a lack of empathy and an intent to harm. People tend to imagine criminals as violent murderers, muggers, or petty thieves, and it is not wrong to think so. According to Bryan Wigley, a police chief of the Houston Police Department in Texas, “for some criminals, being a criminal is their job and it is the only life they know.” Accordingly, we as designers often aim to turn these lifelong criminals’ lives around and prevent further crime.

We study cities like Compton and Baltimore to understand how negative societal and cultural factors create a culture of crime. Through my research into the generic world of crime, I have been able to speak with law and prison-reform workers who are working hard to correct the injustices of the justice system. They are leaders tackling the challenges of reducing crime rates and finding ways to spur positive change.

When I refer to criminal masterminds, I am alluding to a romanticized sector of criminals whom I believe to be creative experts at breaking the rules. In crime films like The Italian Job (2003), the audience roots for a crew of criminals planning an intricate revenge heist to steal back gold. The stories of Frank Abagnale Jr, as told in Catch Me If You Can (2002), portray an amazing con-man and check forger. And it’s crazy how the godfathers of Italian mafias or oyabun (bosses) of the Japanese Yakuza can run large-scale illegal operations while managing to keep their businesses secret from authorities. In The Right Way to Do Wrong, magician Harry Houdini claimed, “Some of the brightest brains and keenest minds belong to professional criminals. They live by their wits and must needs keep those wits sharp and active.”1 It takes high levels of leadership, wisdom, and talent to manage large criminal enterprises. As terrifying as they may seem, criminals like these deserve praise for their ingenuity.

1 Houdini, Harry. The Right Way to Do Wrong. (Brooklyn: Melville House, 2012.)

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INTRODUCTION

a crime

The word crime legally refers to an action that breaks the law.

However when referring to the word crime I also reference the more informal definition: an action or activity that, although not illegal, is considered to be evil, shameful, or wrong.

Example: a crime against humanity synonyms: sin, evil, immoral act, wrong, atrocity, abomination, disgrace, outrage

a crim·i·nal

A criminal is someone who thinks in subversive ways, usually intending to break the law. I see them as experts in how to get around rules and having the bravery to break rules. The more informal definition of the word criminal is to be someone completing an action or situation that is deplorable and shocking.

Example: a criminal waste of potential synonyms: lawbreaker, offender, villain, delinquent, felon, malefactor, wrongdoer, culprit, miscreant, thief, burglar, robber, gangster, crook, conman

a mas·ter·mind

A mastermind is a person with an outstanding intellect, and has the ability, creativity and patience to plan and direct an ingenious and complex scheme or enterprise. Example: the mastermind behind the project synonyms: genius, mind, intellect, author, architect, organizer, originator, initiator, inventor; brain, brains, ideas man plan, control, direct, be in charge of, run, conduct, organize, arrange,preside over, orchestrate, stage-manage, engineer, manage,coordinate; conceive, devise, originate, initiate, think up, frame, hatch

a de·sign

Design is to do or plan (something) with a specific purpose or intention in mind. Design is also used to mean the art or action of conceiving of and producing the purpose, planning, or intention that exists or is thought to exist behind an action, fact, or material object. This a designer’s job, which similarly relates to the definition of mastermind. synonyms: intention, aim, purpose, plan, intent, objective, object, goal, target, hope, desire, wish, dream, aspiration, ambition

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Inside Man (2006)

Seduced by Crime AN ATTRACTION TO THE RECKLESS, INSANE & BADASS

I have always had a fascination with criminal mastery. My heroes are a mix of criminal leaders and movie star bandits like Danny Ocean, from the movie Ocean’s Eleven (2001), and Charlie Croker, from The Italian Job (1969). The risk in crime is seductive. Both cinematic and real-life criminal masterminds have guts and bravado that anyone can admire.

Strategic, innovative crime is so captivating that even the news and media know to capitalize on reporting stories like car chases and prison breaks. Recently, the world has been following the story of Mexican drug lord El Chapo and his captures and escapes. The drug lord escaped from maximum security prisons multiple times, humiliating law enforcement and growing a large fan base enamored by his inventiveness in escaping. His first escape in 2001 involved the bribery of prison workers to smuggle him out in a laundry cart and into a truck, allowing him to disappear for over a decade. After being recaptured in 2014, he and his associates devised and constructed an underground tunnel leading to his escape 17 months later.2 Crime is reckless. It takes a mix of insanity and ingenuity to break the law, which is why crime-film lovers are so devoted to the genre. For example, Michael Mann’s film Heat (1995) is a classic favorite among film aficionados, and is a number one hit among prisoners as well. According to research noted in the 99% Invisible podcast episode, Breaking the Bank, the movie Heat has one of the most replicated heists. The simple scheme of driving a truck to intersect an armored car perpendicularly has apparently been tried many times in Los Angeles following the release of the movie.3 As risky and life-threatening as crime may be, people love to imagine having the skills to steal millions of dollars.

The most exceptional skill that society can learn from criminals and misfits is the ability to act in the face of adversity. After all, crime is more than just breaking the law. It is going against social norms and breaking down what society has established as right and just. This type of bravery is applicable in many areas of life that do not involve breaking the law. The ability to voice opinions, to debate, to argue and to stand up and say “no” is something everyone aspires to have.

The majority of our society lives to follow authority. However, authority is not always right or fair. To be truly free is to be able to think independently and to have a clear sense of control and direction that is unphased by the criticism of others. Confronting adversity brings out the best and worst of people, and learning to fight back is important.

The most successful designers lead a life with a clear point of view that they can confidently own and present to others in the face of dissenting opinions. While the majority of criminals act in reckless and harmful ways, I believe there are manipulative and subtle tricks that we can learn from them to employ in our own lives.

Deep down inside us all, we are seduced by crime. Whether it is kingpins escaping prisons or crews plotting to rob casinos, we cannot help but be awed by brilliance of a well-executed heist. We want to be able to pull off amazing plots, break rules without getting caught and rebel against authority. So for all my like-minded partners in crime, this thesis is for you.

2 Buchanan, Larry, Josh Keller, and Derek Watkins. "How Mexico’s Most-Wanted Drug Lord Escaped From Prison (Again)." The New York Times. The New York Times, 12 July 2015. Web. 3 Mingle, Katie. "Breaking the Bank." Audio blog post. 99% Invisible. 27 May 2014. Web.

SEDUCED BY CRIME

“THE DETECTIVE WAS MOMENTARILY OVERWHELMED BY THE SCALE OF THE HEIST. SOMEONE HAD OVERCOME ALL OF THESE SECURITY MEASURES AND MADE OFF WITH AN UNTOLD FORTUNE OF DIAMONDS, JEWELRY, PRECIOUS METALS AND CASH WITHOUT TRIPPING A SINGLE ALARM OR INJURING ANYONE. PEYS DIDN’T SAY IT OUT LOUD —NOT AT THE MOMENT, ANYWAY— BUT HE COULDN’T HELP BUT BE AWED BY THE SKILL REQUIRED FOR SUCH A HEIST.” Scott Andrew Selby and Greg Campbell Flawless: Inside the Largest Diamond Heist in History

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INTRODUCTION

The Bank Job (2008)

SUMMER MOVIE DIAGRAMS

The Italian Job (1969)

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“Any time you put to the test your own imagination of things with the prevailing parameters of the real, things become potentially illegal."

Armin Blasbichler

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CRIME BY DESIGN

“SOME OF THE SMARTEST PEOPLE I’VE MET ARE THE ONES WHO COMMITTED THE CRIME. SOME OF THE SMARTEST PEOPLE I’VE MET ARE THE ONES WHO CAUGHT THEM.” Jack Fox, Retired FBI Forensics Agent

Crime by Design THE CRIME PROCESS IS A DESIGN PROCESS

Criminals are designers too, and there is a lot that can be learned from the art of misbehavior. Criminals’ risk-taking and subversion help them innovate in ways designers would never think of.

Retired FBI Crime Scene Investigator, Jack Fox, said to me, “Some of the smartest people I’ve met are the ones who committed the crime.

Some of the smartest people I’ve met are the ones who caught them.”

Fox was committed to his role in forensics because he was intrigued by the challenge of figuring out how crimes were committed by putting them back together with evidence. His job was to build the story of how the crime was committed and to even assess what happened and the possible failures. To do so, he needed to think like a criminal. If criminals are problem makers and designers are problem solvers, we should be in tune with the tools and skills of criminals, for it is a neverending war. Studying crime is important for thinking more creatively because it requires looking at the world from a different perspective.

The most important book I read to channel this mindset of celebrating misbehavior is The Misfit Economy: Lessons in Creativity from Pirates, Hackers, Gangsters and other Informal Entrepreneurs by Alexa Clay and Kyra Maya Phillips. Clay and Phillips describe misfits as natural risk-takers who are countercultural, self-questioning, boundary pushing, system-challenging individuals, much like how entrepreneurs are described. Misfits have set up new informal structures of governance and skills we can learn from. For example, the act of pirating or stealing intellectual property can actually be seen as collaborative innovation, much like what we find in open-source communities. Clay and Phillips include an infamous ad by Apple called “Think Different” that perfectly describes their identity of rule-breaking.

“Here's to The crazy ones. The misfits. The rebels. The trouble-makers. The round pegs in the square holes. The ones who see things differently. They're not fond of rules, and they have no respect for the status-quo. You can quote them, disagree with them, glorify, or vilify them. About the only thing you can't do is ignore them. Because they change things. They push the human race forward. And while some may see them as the crazy ones, we see genius. Because the people who are crazy enough to think they can change the world are the ones who do.”

— Steve Jobs

From exploring the world of gang leaders, hackers, protestors and counterfeiters who work informally and against the grain, Clay and Phillips conclude that “criminals are no longer burdens to society; their expertise is not locked away but valued and repurposed for society’s benefit.” 4 Some transition about: in order to extract criminal learnings we need to look at the processes in planning a heist. Philippe Petit, a french highwire artist most well-known for his walk between the Twin Towers at the World Trade Center, describes his creative process as the perfect crime.

His work uses the same feelings of intuition, subversion, misdirection, mistakes, and surprises that crime does. Breaking rules is key to his creativity.5 Upon studying the skills and techniques involved in strategic illegal actions, I realized that planning heists is not that different from the design process. The scheming of bank robbers requires the same mental process that designers use everyday. Introduce a creative process. If we break down the creative processes used by innovation design firms, we are left with these simple phases: Research, Design Strategy, Prototyping & Testing, Execution and Consequences.

4 Clay, Alexa, and Kyra Maya Phillips. The Misfit Economy: Lessons in Creativity from Pirates, Hackers, Gangsters, and Other Informal Entrepreneurs. (New York: Simon & Schuster, 2015) 5 Petit, Philippe. Creativity: The Perfect Crime. (New York: Riverhead, 2014.)

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CRIME BY DESIGN

Step One: Research All great design projects start with in-depth research. Whether the task is creating a logo or redesigning a physical product, designers must learn about the subject of the problem before ideating solutions. As the design field expands into developing businesses, social structures and systems for clients, research becomes increasingly important. We are required to understand the context behind our designs and the audiences for whom they exist. Design education today teaches interview techniques and the psychological art of structuring unbiased conversations to extract key information. Research also includes observational techniques, photography, and data collection to reveal missed correlations. When interviewing users, designers tend to try and understand every little detail of users’ lives to fully paint the picture of how new products can exist within their lifestyles. Designers use observational techniques to understand the big picture of a problem in order to find the weak points to fix or innovate.

Lastly, a designer’s most important role is to clearly visualize and explain their research and findings so everyone can get on the same page.

Criminal masterminds use the same research strategies in their own work. Because their work carries such high stakes and life-threatening consequences, research becomes the most important part of any plot.

In the first leg of planning a bank heist, robbers have to “case the joint.”

They examine architectural plans, find out details about the security systems, observe the behavior of the customers and employees, and really dig into research about all operations of the bank from hours to cleaning crew schedules. Masterminds wanting to subvert the existing system must become experts of it first. From the book Flawless: Inside the Largest Diamond Heist in History, the authors Scott Andrew Selby and Greg Campbell note the specificity in the surveillance operation taken by the diamond burglars. The burglars pretended to be shopping in stores with women at their sides while taking note of the make and models of security cameras, motion detectors, the number of cameras installed, and even the angles at which they are positioned. They recorded who was in charge of the keys to open the display cases and where the keys were stored. Most importantly, they analyzed the diamond quality to make sure the taking was worth the risk. Acknowledging these meticulous details would ultimately allow them to steal millions worth of diamonds from Antwerp’s diamond district. 6

The research methods of criminal masterminds include many small crimes such as pickpocketing, impersonation and theft. In the beginning minutes of Ocean’s Eleven (2001), masterminds Danny Ocean and Rusty Ryan present a slideshow of their proposed heist to a select team of criminals. The presentation includes 3D models, architectural floorplans, and renderings of the vault residing under the Bellagio casino.

After getting onboard with the plan, the team starts proposing strategies to obtain specific information on security systems and vulnerabilities of the Bellagio and their target. Their methods include crimes like the pickpocketing of an ID badge to allow Livingston, the crew’s hacker, to infiltrate the security room and tap casino surveillance feeds. Researching every minute of Terry Benedict’s (the victim and casino owner) daily activities allows the team to pinpoint key opportunities for misdirection and subversion of the existing system.7 In another case of employing observational research for crime, Janice Kerbel, an architect, spent two years studying a bank and plotting a way to rob it. Her project Bank Job (1999) involved a master plan to rob Coutts & Co bank in London. By acting as an architecture student studying the bank’s interior design, Kerbel gathered floor plans with every detail of the building’s construction. After developing the plans, instructions, and detailed solution to robbing Coutts & Co, Kerbel published a book with all the information under the title 15 Lombard St in 2000.8 From writer Sarah Elton’s interview with Janice Kerbel, she describes the contents of 15 Lombard St: “100 pages of carefully outlined instructions and notes, street routes, time lines, and directions for three getaway vehicles to head for safety in Garrucha, Spain. To rob 15 Lombard St, you'll need a dedicated team of ten and six weeks for preparations. The heist itself, from start to finish, during which phone lines are cut, vans are blown up, and money is stolen, clocks in at 40 minutes.”

Kerbel’s instructions also included a checklist of tools needed for the heist. Technology like multi-band radios and remote-controlled explosives served as tools for the execution, while other props like passports and clothes assisted the getaway.9

6 Selby, Scott Andrew., and Greg Campbell. Flawless: Inside the Largest Diamond Heist in History. (New York: Union Square, 2010.)

8 Kerbel, Janice, and Stefan Kalmár.

15 Lombard St. (London: Book Works, 2000.)

7 Ocean's Eleven. Dir. Steven Soderbergh. Perf. George Clooney and Brad Pitt. Warner Bros. Pictures, 2001.

9 Elton, Sarah. "Perfect Heists." Lola Magazine. Web.

RESEARCH

“FIRST TASK: RECONNAISSANCE. I WANT TO KNOW EVERYTHING THAT'S GOING ON IN ALL THREE CASINOS. FROM THE ROTATION OF THE DEALERS TO THE PATH OF EVERY CASH CART… I WANNA KNOW EVERYTHING ABOUT EVERY GUARD, EVERY WATCHER, ANYONE WITH A SECURITY PASS. I WANNA KNOW WHERE THEY'RE FROM, WHAT THEIR NICKNAMES ARE, HOW THEY TAKE THEIR COFFEE… MOST OF ALL, I WANT YOU GUYS TO KNOW THESE CASINOS. THEY WERE BUILT AS LABYRINTHS, TO KEEP PEOPLE IN. I WANT YOU GUYS TO KNOW THE QUICK ROUTES OUT.” Ocean's Eleven (2001)

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CRIME BY DESIGN

“WE'LL DO IT LIKE THE ITALIAN JOB. WE'LL MAKE THIRTY MILLION IN GOLD DROP OUT OF SIGHT.” The Italian Job (2003)

STRATEGY

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Step Two: Strategy Everyone employs different mental models and interprets information in unique ways. A designer’s perspective is one that strives to improve the efficiency of a system, to bring clarity to complex ideas, or to help mitigate a problem. Design strategy is the phase of ideation to address the problems at hand. Ever since the concept of design thinking burst into the business world promising to bring innovation, clients have become more welcoming to designers, allowing them to assess their current conditions to design new, effective changes within their organizational structure, brand, or products. And designers seem qualified to do so because they bring “innovation,” “novelty,” and “creativity.”

The words creativity and innovation are meaningless terms, because what does it really mean to be creative? According to child psychologist Theo Miron, the term “creative thinking” does not mean much in the psychological world. Instead, the term should be replaced with the phrase “fluid reasoning.” Fluid reasoning is a term that refers to our cognitive ability to think flexibly and problem solve, which we consider to be our general intelligence. The term “fluid reasoning” is a better way of bringing credibility to the role of a designer. Creatives are trained in critical thinking and reasoning to raise their levels of fluid reasoning.

Planning a heist requires strategy as well, and criminal masterminds have high levels of fluid reasoning. Criminals and burglars look intently at systems to figure out how to break, infiltrate, and manipulate them.

They are interested in figuring out ways to outsmart and subvert security systems built and designed to keep intruders out. After mastering the research of the targeted security system, the architectural layout, and the details of employees working in the organization, burglars can the find the weak spots and loop-holes. In Ocean’s Eleven (2001), the crew’s research led to ideation in how to get past the surveillance system of the Bellagio. The team devised a highly complex plan that involved: building a replica of the Bellagio vault in an offshore warehouse for practice and filming, figuring out how to shut off the city’s power for thirty seconds, and designing ways to get through multiple levels of passcodes, fingerprint scans, and voice command to reach the vault.7 Furthermore, the design of a heist requires contingency plans, back ups, and escape routes because of the risks involved. Criminal masterminds require the open-mindedness and systems-thinking of information architects and can be just as clever as (if not more clever than) inventors and designers.

If design strategy is where the fluid reasoning happens, then how do designers actually do it? After researching and understanding context, designers use their perspectives, their knowledge, open-mindedness, flexibility, and good intentions to reframe the problems at hand. The IDEO process of design strategy employs the development of insights and “how might we” questions that help guide the problem-solving process. Strategists analyze research and interviews to troubleshoot points in the system that can be redesigned.10

10 Brown, Tim. "Design Thinking." Designthinking.ideo.com. IDEO, 23 Oct. 2012. Web.

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CRIME BY DESIGN

Step Three: Prototyping & Testing The execution of a criminal heist requires the same heavy prototyping and testing that is used in the profession of an industrial designer.

Industrial designers and engineers prototype product ideas with craftsmanship, hacking existing objects to make them function better or differently, and going through much testing materials and form to provide the best utility. In school, design students are taught to develop hundreds of iterations on forms, ideas, and functions to best explore all possibilities. I believe that many great criminals have an extensive knowledge of tinkering, making, and hacking, because knowing how something is made also means knowing how to take it apart to build it back in a new way.

I met with a professional safecracker and locksmith, Philip Mortillaro, where I observed his small key store. His small locksmith shop, called Greenwich Locksmiths, is about 10 feet wide and 5 feet deep and sits on the edge of 7th avenue in the West Village. The walls are covered to the ceiling in varieties of blank keys and locks. Every tabletop surface of his hole-in-the-wall shop contains a type of machine to mill metal in specific ways. One machine copies keys, another buffs keys, and others allow him to create custom locks. Mortillaro’s experience in welding and tinkering paired with his extensive knowledge of the history and typology of physical methods of security suggest a locksmith’s role is an important inventor of new forms of physical security. Currently, Mortillaro and his son’s passion for locks and safes has led him to dabble in Arduino to start designing electronic locks and to expand into personal surveillance equipment.

Crews require many expert skills to successfully pull off a heist. In Ocean’s Eleven (2001), Basher is the team’s explosive and demolition expert. His knowledge of electrical systems, chemistry, and engineering makes him an expert engineer who has assumed the role of a criminal.

For example, to break open the vault door, the crew needed to first understand its construction. Afterwards Basher was able to build the bombs accordingly to blow up the door. By understanding the way the electric grid works in powering the city and knowing the physics behind complex technology and nuclear physics, Basher is able to cause a thirty-second electrical blackout in Las Vegas providing enough time for Danny and Linus to evade the laser alarms down the elevator shaft.7

Prototyping also means testing and failing over and over in order to develop the perfect timing, equipment, and planning. With a risky plot like a heist and only one chance at execution, criminals must keep experimenting and logging their failures in order to get that one perfect successful run. Cinematically, many crime films feature the ultimate crime training session. In F. Gary Gray’s The Italian Job (2003), the crew practices and test drives a customized Mini Cooper to see if the car can withstand the weight of gold in its trunk through the sidewalks and underground tunnels of the city.11 Justin Lin’s Fast Five (2011) Brazilian heist also hosted a warehouse training ground to get the timing of the driving correct. In this scene, the drivers tested different cars around a built track, which was measured to provide the same obstacles as the surveilled garage they needed to drive through. They needed to find a way to drive fast enough around the garage corners so that the cameras could not catch the driver’s picture or license plate number.12 The use of a warehouse to build replicas of vaults and obstacles is an idea inspired from the actual practice of criminal mastermind George Leonides Leslie. Leslie was an architect turned burglar who acted as a consultant for bank robberies during the 1870s–1880s. Researchers believe that Leslie was responsible for 80% of all bank robberies committed during the decade. When preparing for a heist, he would purchase duplicates of the safe vaults to practice opening them. Even more intricately, he would rent out rooms and warehouses to build models of the insides of banks in order to brainstorm with his team and develop the plans for the robbery. Much like an artistic rehearsal, Leslie would have the team play through the robbery in the space and then critique the members’ performances. This back-end practice would eventually lead to the final one-shot execution of the staged heist.13

11 The Italian Job. Dir. Felix G. Gray. Perf. Mark Wahlberg and Charlize Theron. Paramount Pictures, 2003.

12 Fast Five. Dir. Justin Lin. Perf. Vin Diesel and Paul Walker.

Universal Pictures, 2011. DVD. 13 Conway, J. North. King of Heists: The Sensational Bank Robbery of 1878 That Shocked America. Guilford, CT: Lyons, 2009.

PROTOTYPING & TESTING

“A PINCH IS THE EQUIVALENT OF A CARDIAC ARREST FOR ANY BROAD-BAND ELECTRICAL CIRCUITRY. OR BETTER YET: A PINCH IS A BOMB... BUT WITHOUT THE BOMB. EVERY TIME A NUCLEAR WEAPON DETONATES, IT UNLEASHES AN ELECTROMAGNETIC PULSE WHICH SHUTS DOWN ANY POWER SOURCE WITHIN ITS VICINITY. THAT TENDS NOT TO MATTER IN MOST CASES BECAUSE THE NUCLEAR WEAPON DESTROYS EVERYTHING YOU MIGHT NEED POWER FOR ANYWAY. NOW A PINCH CREATES A SIMILAR ELECTROMAGNETIC PULSE, BUT WITHOUT THE HEADACHE OF MASS DESTRUCTION AND DEATH. SO INSTEAD OF HIROSHIMA, YOU GET THE SEVENTEENTH CENTURY.” Ocean's Eleven (2001)

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CRIME BY DESIGN

"DON’T LET YOURSELF GET ATTACHED TO ANYTHING YOU ARE NOT WILLING TO WALK OUT ON IN 30 SECONDS FLAT IF YOU FEEL THE HEAT AROUND THE CORNER." Heat (1995)

EXECUTION

Step Four: Execution I’ve always thought of designers as the behind-the-scenes forces of our built environment. Architects and urban planners construct the world around us. Graphic designers control the visual signage. Web designers funnel visual content into pages on the Internet. With everything designers do, the planning, the research, the designs, and the iterations lead up to one moment: the reveal. Execution is what matters most to both designers and professional criminals because it is where the money is.

The execution is where everything comes together to become one single product or plan. Whether it is releasing the new iPhone or storming a bank, all the work behind the scenes has lead up to these performances. At our moment of execution, every detail in product, graphics, interaction and copywriting has been polished to send out into the market.

For many designers and advertising creatives, the goal of their projects is popularity and mass market consumption of their product, talent and ideas. For criminals the execution is a one-shot ordeal, much like a first-impression, only riskier. The hours and days spent planning back up plans, getting the details right down to the last minute and timing the run through is crucial. On the day of the heist, the team must work like clockwork: effective, seamless, and on the dot. Every skill known by a criminal is put to use: impersonation, lying, technical skills, and quick thinking. For example, in Ocean’s 13 (2007) an unforeseen security snag reveals the criminal records of all the crew before the scam is completed. In order to distract the casino owner from looking at the crew’s records on his computer, Basher impersonates a performer to distract the owner from his computer. His distraction gave the team enough time to digitally alter the faces in their criminal records so that they would not be tracked down during the event.14

14 Ocean's Thirteen. Dir. Steven Soderbergh. Perf. George Clooney and Brad Pitt. Warner Bros. Pictures, 2007.

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CRIME BY DESIGN

Step Five: Consequences (The Getaway) Every action has its consequences. A great project, be it heist or marketable product, would take these consequences to heart in the initial stages of design. The challenge with any creative project is not being able to predict the outcomes. For designers, the end of a design project is merely the beginning. Once the work is sent out to exist in the world, designers must start predicting the next iterations of the project.

Designers must follow up with their projects in order to understand their successes and failures. Every piece of work that gets sent out becomes subject to critique and can determine whether the firm gets more work and press. In a sense, designers can create a “getaway” for themselves under the use of legal contracts. Contracts will protect creatives from being underpaid and overworked. And in the case of a project’s failure, contracts can start to erase or mitigate the blame.

The design of crimes is more challenging and requires more creativity because of the need for precision and accuracy against the risk of life damaging consequences. The riskiness and high stakes of crime call for contingency plans, calculated risks, trusted collaboration, resourceful creativity, and the recognition of moments of opportunity. More important than the actual break-in and thievery is a criminal’s ability to get away and escape the consequences.Geoff Manaugh’s new book, A Burglar’s Guide to the City, wonderfully illustrates how urban planning holds the key to the design of the getaway.He studies streets of Los Angeles through helicopter rides with an LAPD tactical flight officer, explaining the idea that “cities get the type of crime their design calls for.” Even the urban plans of Paris were devised to assist police in creating open streets that limited places for criminals to hide. Additionally, understanding traffic patterns plays a huge role in a successful getaway.

A look at digital hacks of traffic systems and google maps introduces the newfound tactics of escape routes.15 In The Italian Job, both the original and modern versions of the film, the strategy of the getaway was to cause a severe traffic jam by hacking into the traffic system and taking control of the lights. In both films, the thieves use Mini Coopers to drive off road on the city sidewalks and through underground tunnels, making it difficult for regular police cars to chase them among the traffic jam.16

15 Manaugh, Geoff. A Burglar's Guide to The City. (New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2016.)

16 The Italian Job. Dir. Peter Collinson. Perf. Michael Caine.

Paramount Pictures, 1969.

CONSEQUENCES

"A CRIME IS NOTHING IF YOU CAN'T GET AWAY." Geoff Manaugh A Burglar's Guide to the City

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“If you want to steal, steal a little cleverly, in a nice way. Only if you steal so much as to become rich overnight, you will be caught."

Mobutu Sésé Seko President of Zaire

Gone in 60 Seconds (2000)

Products of Crime TOOLS OF THE TRADE & THEN SOME

When thinking about the products and tools of crime, there is one scene in Dominic Sena’s film Gone in 60 Seconds (2000) that illustrates the perfect relationship between criminals and physical objects. When retired car thief Memphis Raines prepares to pull off a heist of fifty cars in one night, Raines spends a moment unpacking his old equipment. He unravels a pouch revealing his professionally curated tools, gathered from his years of masterfully stealing cars: a screwdriver, a ball point pen, a slide hammer to remove an ignition lock, a slim jim to shimmy car door locks, and an ordinary metal knife. Crime tools are everyday objects and materials, hacked and repurposed in ways ordinary folks would not have imagined. They are meant for stealth, hidden away in nooks and crannies, evading public suspicion. Looking through the lens of product and industrial design relating to the topic of criminal mastery, I began to unpack the fundamental products of crime.

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ITERATIVE SKETCHES

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Secret Codes

FALL 2015 // THESIS I PRODUCTS WITH ANDREW SCHLOSS

Secrecy plays the most important role in all crime and underground happenings. Secret codes and languages have existed throughout time in order to cover up communicated information, to make systems and teams flow smoothly, and to execute the biggest plots in history. For example, German engineer Arthur Scherbius developed an Enigma machine initially for use in the business market, but his invention was later adopted by the German military and ultimately the Nazi regime. The machine was a typewriter configured to scramble messages using letter substitution. The recipient of the code could only read the message if they knew the exact settings of the wheels.17 Cryptography is entirely graphic design. Designing a secret language takes into account many points of human interaction and understanding.

Visually, a secret code should adhere to a specific set of rules much like typography. Being a graphic designer, I created my own secret code to explore the workings of a secret language. First, I made graphic marks that replaced the Roman alphabet and Arabic numerals. In order to be legible but hard to decipher, each shape would need to seem random and different yet fit the family stylistically.

Next, the code would need to be read in a certain direction. I chose to stay with the western style of reading to make it a little easier to read. The code is read from left to right or up to down with the starting marker denoted by a double line. After designing the orientation and the graphic sequence of shapes, I realized that it failed in terms of communication because I was the only one who knew the rules. I would need to create a cipher in order to share the code with others. Therefore I created a circular cipher that allowed me to code six possible combinations of the language, giving the code a little more difficulty. In the double-lined starting marker of the code’s structure, I added six dots, filled and unfilled. The six dots correspond to a wheel where turning the codes every 30 degrees results in a new pattern to follow in deciphering the code. The recipient of the code must know how to read both the wheel’s orientation and the direction of the markings in order to decipher the code.

17 Lunde, Paul. The Book of Codes: Understanding the World of Hidden Messages: An Illustrated Guide to Signs, Symbols, Ciphers, and Secret Languages. (Berkeley, CA: U of California, 2009.)

SECRET CODES

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Breaking Down the Code

SECRET CODES

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MASK

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MASK

FALL 2015 // SCREEN DESIGN WITH BRENT ARNOLD

Designing a secret code was a great exercise in figuring out the tectonics and interactions with symbols; however, my code is takes time to read during a high-stakes heist. An analog codew is inefficient, slow to read, and easy to hack. Learning analog codes is equivalent to learning a new language, which is hard to do when strapped for time. Today, digital encryption is the most secure way to store classified information. Cracking digital codes requires more technological knowledge than most people have.

With so many modern security threats, digital encryption should be a tool accessible to everyone. As a way to bridge the access of encryption to a wider market, I designed a conceptual digital plug-in for e-mail.

MASK is an encryption app concept for making the sending of secret messages as easy as writing an email. When users open up a new email, a small black plug-in box pops up in their body text window.

This is the MASK plug-in. Users write their intended note (a message with confidential secrets) into the MASK plug-in. In real-time, the message is encoded in a cover up email that looks innocuous. When the receiver of the note decodes the message, she will see that the message has the secret MASK marking. The receiver taps on the marking to open the message in MASK and logs in with an individualized pattern swipe. Going further with the idea of digital encryption, I imagined the use of MASK paired with QR code technology and augmented reality. When a user spots a MASK graffiti sticker or marking somewhere in the city, she can look at the marking through her camera phone and receive digital messages as if the marking is a drop site.

MASK Phone App Screens

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MASK Phone App Screens

Augmented Reality Example

MASK

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Secret Compartments FALL 2015 // THESIS I PRODUCTS WITH ANDREW SCHLOSS

Along with the secret code, secret hiding places have also help conceal of goods. Part of the espionage tradecraft are dead drops, secret locations where agents could leave objects and information for others without having to meet. These locations were usually in semipublic places like a certain mailbox, a part of a park, or a lamppost.18 Dead drops and secret compartments are not just for spies. We all have things to hide. Homeowners buy false books to hide important documents in their bookshelves or keep journals locked away in boxes under the bed. There are a variety of false rocks for hiding spare keys outside the house for times when keys are lost and forgotten. In The Heat (2013), FBI agent Sarah Ashburn finds guns stashed in a secret compartment of the perpetrator's home by recognizing the furniture design of the fireplace as one from the Prohibition Era where “houses had all these little nooks and crannies where they could hide [alcohol].�19 For my own purposes, I created small secret compartment stickers to place around my studio.

Made with a sewn leather front and adhesive backing, these compartments held back-up keys, notes, and secret credit cards. Scoping out unnoticed areas was easier than expected. When thinking about where to hide objects, our perspective of environments completely changes. How often would we look under tables or stick our hands into cracks between shelves?

The drug trade also inspired ideas on secret compartments while shipping. In the Netflix series Breaking Bad, a fast food restaurant chain called Los Pollos Hermanos acted as a cover-up storefront for illegal activity. In season 3 episode 9 of the show, the meth chemists used Los Pollos Hermanos refrigerated trucks to ship blue meth across the Southwest by submerging plastic bags of meth into tubs of fry batter.20 In reality, drug trafficking happens like this everyday. People are smuggling marijuana in teddy bears, cocaine in meat, and methamphetamines in false-back luggage. Secret compartments are installed into seemingly innocent trucks and car trunks. As a quick sketch, I imagined how a secret compartment would be designed into a CocaCola crate. Using the spaces in the crate design, I imagined small boxes that could fit into the gaps and potentially line the crate with hidden goods.

18 Melton, H. Keith, and Robert Wallace. The Official CIA Manual of Trickery and Deception. New York: William Morrow, 2009. Print.

19 The Heat. Dir. Paul Feig. Perf. Sandra Bullock, Melissa McCarthy. Twentieth Century Fox, 2013.

20 "Kafkaesque". Breaking Bad. AMC, 2010 May 16. Television.

SECRET COMPARTMENTS

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FAKE PLASTIC BAG

Fake Plastic Bag FALL 2015 // DESIGN BRIEF BY ANDREW SCHLOSS

When trying to design new products for mischievous activities, I realized that the best secrets are hidden in plain sight. New product designs are meant to intrigue and catch attention, leaving ordinary objects to seem invisible, expected, and underrated. Jack Fox, a retired crime scene investigator for the FBI, says he pieces the puzzle of the crime together from looking for the inconsistencies in the ordinary.

Learning from crime is to learn to look from another side of the spectrum of good and bad. It is important for designers to see from new perspectives.

In crime/mischief/misbehavior, the environments built by architects and urban planners and the everyday objects created by industrial designers are misused. Burglars twist the functions of the objects and structures we take for granted everyday. Their misuse counters the original intentions of the industrial designer or the architect’s physical idea. Understanding architectural details like fire codes or prefabricated suburban floor plans helps burglars predict and maneuver through spaces. With simple tools like hairspray and styrofoam, they can knock out security cameras and motion detectors.

Geoff Manaugh illustrates this fantastically with the movie Die Hard. From his BLDGBLOG article Nakatomi Space, he writes, “John McClane, a New York cop on his Christmas vacation, moves through a Los Angeles highrise in basically every conceivable way but passing through its doors and hallways. McClane explores the tower—called Nakatomi Plaza—via elevator shafts and air ducts, crashing through windows from the outside-in and shooting open the locks of rooftop doorways. If there is not a corridor, he makes one; if there is not an opening, there will be soon.” Manaugh brings to attention the misappropriation of architectural elements and the subversion of the everyday. 21 This next design sprint was inspired by two products: artist Lauren Dicioccio’s Tyvek Thank You plastic bag and SDR Traveller’s 1M Hauly bag.

Dicioccio’s bag is a replica of a regular white plastic Thank You bag, only instead of plastic, she machine-embroidered on white taffeta to make it a truly reusable bag. With her craftsmanship, Dicioccio subverts the role of a wasteful plastic bag into recyclable product.22 Additionally, SDR Traveller, a high-end outdoor product company, designed the 1M Hauly as a way to carry $1 million undetected. “[The 1M Hauly is] designed to address the six main issues with carrying significant volume banknotes in field: risk of discovery; risk of damage (especially in high-humidity, monsoon environments); container robustness; carryability; glide; and in-field accounting.

Overtly sealed pouches attract undue attention at checkpoints, border crossings and airport security. Each pouch is built from cuben fiber...

Despite being four times stronger than Kevlar at about half the weight, the material maintains an innocuous appearance.”23

21 Manaugh, Geoff. "Nakatomi Space." BLDGBLOG. 11 Jan. 2010. Web. 22 DiCioccio, Lauren. "Thank You Reusable Tote Bag." Open-Editions, 2014. Web. 23 "1M Hauly." SDR Traveller. sdrtraveller.com. Web.

I set out to create my own fake bag as a way to hide illegal substances in plain sight by blending the two technologies from the products above. I imagined the bag to be double layered in cuben fiber and nylon. Cuben fiber (also known as Dyneema composites) is an ultra high molecular weight polyethylene. The fabric is lightweight and tear resistant, and is used in high intensity wind activities such as sailing, kiting, or the making of airship hulls. It is also 4 times stronger than kevlar and 40-70% lighter.

Inside the bag is a white cooler lined with mylar foil that can block infrared thermal imaging. Used in surveillance, thermography allows police to find suspects in the dark or in hiding by following the body heat that the suspect emits. From delivering drugs to human organs, a fake plastic bag has the potential to hide anything with its durable material technology paired with the ability to prevent thermographs from revealing the contents.

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“We aren't robbers, you and I. To rob a fool, you don't need knives: Just flatter him, tell him sweet lies, and he's yours for life."

Bulat Okudzhava, "Of Gluttons, Braggarts, and Fools (The Con Artist's Duet)"

Technological Warfare TECHNOLOGY OF THE UNDERWORLD

We all have secrets to hide. And in a world that’s always watching, it can be hard to protect your privacy. We feel constantly watched by cameras and tracked by websites even if we're not. The want for privacy becomes suspicion. The use of encryption services may actually draw attention to online behavior instead of hiding it. From the words we search to the websites we visit, we are watching our every move online.

THE INTERNET

The Internet: The New Frontier & Its Battles The Internet has become so engrained in our lives that we tend to forget how very new it still is. The laws and regulation around Internet protection and privacy are still being written today. Internet privacy advocates like the Electronic Privacy Information Center and the Center for Digital Democracy have fought hard against bills seeking to regulate and monetize the Internet. Already, many major companies like Google track and sell data on our search histories to companies in order to create targeted advertisements. Internet Service Providers (ISPs) like Comcast and Verizon have had a history of overstepping their boundaries in order to further monetize their monopolies. One of the most popular modern battles in writing cyber law has been the debate on Net Neutrality. Net Neutrality is a phrase developed by Tim Wu, a professor of media law at Columbia University. Wu argues the principle that all data on the Internet should be treated equally and should not be subjected to discrimination.24 This battle regained attention in 2015 when cable providers Comcast and Verizon tried negotiating with Netflix, an online video streaming service, to allow customers to purchase faster streaming speeds on top of the Internet service they already pay for. In a sense, this legal battle would create an Internet “fast lane” for those who can afford it, making content unequally accessible. In March 2015, the Federal Communications Commission passed net neutrality rules, forbidding the discriminatory charging of Internet access and flow of data by user, content, site, platform, application, type of attached equipment, or mode of communication. Without this rule in place, we can begin to imagine the inequality that could come to the Internet. The amount and type of information would differ based on people’s income and money spent on Internet access. Websites would be able to privilege certain users over others, granting them faster or slower access to specific content.

The Internet’s greatest advantages in anonymity and equality would be broken down by capitalist gains.25 ISP monopolies are not the only forces overstepping their powers.

As the population of Internet users grows, governments have been making efforts to regulate the Internet. In the United States, terrorism and cybercrime have pushed government agencies into bending our natural rights to privacy. In 2013, the Cyber Intelligence Sharing and Protection Act (CISPA) was reintroduced into Congress. It is a bill that would allow more than 800 private tech companies, web-based data collectors, and data brokers to mine user information to share among “appropriate Federal entities.” If allowed, private entities and government officials would be able to monitor and censor parts of the Internet.26 Currently, organizations like the Electronic Frontier Foundation, Free Press, and The American Civil Liberties Union are in opposition to the bill, fighting to protect our rights to privacy of information and data.

24 Tim Wu. "Network Neutrality, Broadband Discrimination" (PDF) Journal on telecom and high tech law. 2003.

25 Sommer, Jeff (12 March 2015). "What the Net Neutrality Rules Say". New York Times. Retrieved 13 March 2015.

26 Hayley Tsukayama (April 27, 2012). "CISPA: Who’s for it, who’s against it and how it could affect you". Washington Post.

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Hiding Hood

FALL 2015 // THESIS I PRODUCTS WITH ANDREW SCHLOSS

In an initial response to the growing fear of government surveillance, I designed a face blurring hood to be worn in public. The lower base of the garment is a black, fashionable poncho, and the top is a hooded cowl made from a flexible translucent plastic fabric. When walking past security cameras, the hood can be pulled up and subtly blur the face of an individual. Almost raincoat-like, the security hood protects users from the constant watch of security cameras. However, there are simpler solutions. After designing the hood, I watched a spectacular heist go down in Spike Lee’s movie Inside Man (2006), and learned that becoming “invisible” to security cameras is simple with the right type of light. In the film, the robbers used high intensity infrared LED lights directed at cameras to block out the taping. Bright lights directed at a straight on angle to the camera can create an overexposed lens flare in the video, causing temporary blind spots in the footage.27 This method reiterates an earlier point made that the best crime tools are not reinvented with form and novelty in mind. It is the misuse of normal everyday devices that makes criminals successful and clever.

Model: Isioma Iyamah

27 Inside Man. Dir. Spike Lee. Perf. Denzel Washington and Clive Owen. Universal Pictures, 2006.

HIDING HOOD

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07:45:08:05 WEDNESDAY 10/31/15

HIDING HOOD

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02:23:01:10 THURSDAY 12/17/15

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Surveillance

Photo of Edward Snowden from WIRED Magazine

Unfortunately, surveillance is much more than security cameras and video tapes nowadays. When talking about the political landscape of technology, it is essential to note that the current era of the Internet is in a post-Snowden state. Edward Joseph Snowden was a junior infrastructure analyst for the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) of the United States of America. During his role as a Dell contractor working with the National Security Agency’s regional cryptological center (the Central Security Service) Snowden’s liberal politics and strong view of civil liberties were being challenged by the revelation of the NSA’s surveillance activities. Being part of a spy division for monitoring the Chinese, he realized that the NSA “are intent on making every conversation and every form of behaviour in the world known to them.”28 As a fast-learning IT technician, Snowden rose the ranks to accept a job with a private contracting company which gave him clearance to see classified files of the National Security Agency. His authorization as a system admin allowed him to be “a ghost user,” granting him to open files without leaving an electronic trace. With that power, he downloaded top secret NSA files to expose the surveillance operations of the United States government.

After months of encrypted correspondence with civil liberties journalists, Snowden revealed top secret NSA documents that proved that “the agency was tapping fibre optic cables, intercepting telephone landing points and bugging on a global scale.” The documents also revealed the PRISM program, which is a clandestine surveillance partnership allowing the NSA to collect Internet communication from at least 9 major Internet corporations. Thousands of pages on collected metadata and surveillance powers illustrated the overstep of technological power by the NSA. For example, Snowden states that with its current spy technologies, the NSA is capable of turning a mobile phone into a microphone and tracking device.

Snowden ended up creating the largest intelligence leak in history and brought about a new distrust in the Internet. Being hunted by the authorities caused him to form his own methods of physical security. “[Edward] Snowden's own precautions were remarkable. He piled pillows up against the door to stop anyone eavesdropping from outside in the corridor. When putting passwords into computers, he placed a big red hood over his head and laptop, so the passwords could not be picked up by hidden cameras. On the three occasions that he left his room, Snowden put a glass of water behind the door next to a bit of tissue paper. The paper had a soy sauce mark with a distinctive pattern. If anyone entered the room, the water would fall on the paper and it would change the pattern.”28 Snowden’s leak brought about a wave of concern and new mindsets of Internet usage. Catherine Tucker, a professor of MIT’s Management Science Program, and privacy advocate Alex Marthews conducted research on how the overall shock and public perception of government surveillance has affected behavioral patterns on the Internet. They analyzed 282 phrases on Google Trends and compared the frequency of the searched phrase pre and post-Snowden’s leak. They found that the frequency of search terms like “surveillance,” “nsa,” and “revolution” declined, suggesting that users do not want to risk "searching terms that they [believe] might get them in trouble with the U.S. government."

Furthermore, users were also less likely to search topics like “suicide,” “coming out,” or “herpes” for fear of tracking by Google Ads and other companies. The study revealed that the Internet post-Snowden has heightened levels of self-censorship, whether the NSA is really watching us or not.29

SURVEILLANCE

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“IN MY HOTELS, THERE'S ALWAYS SOMEONE WATCHING.” `Oceans Eleven (2001) As I wrote and developed this thesis in February 2016, the US Federal Bureau of Investigation has requested Apple’s help in hacking into the phone of a terrorist. In December 2015, Syed Farook and Tashfeen Malik killed 14 people and injured 22 public health officials in a mass shooting in San Bernardino, California. After the incident and the deaths of the two fugitives, officials took custody of Farook’s iPhone and requested help from Apple to break through their own encryption technology to access the contents and messages of the phone. Although the government promises they will only use the hack on this one phone, Apple argued that it was not as simple a fix. From Tim Cook’s open letter to Apple customers: “In today’s digital world, the “key” to an encrypted system is a piece of information that unlocks the data, and it is only as secure as the protections around it. Once the information is known, or a way to bypass the code is revealed, the encryption can be defeated by anyone with that knowledge.

The government is asking Apple to hack our own users and undermine decades of security advancements that protect our customers — including tens of millions of American citizens — from sophisticated hackers and cybercriminals. The same engineers who built strong encryption into the iPhone to protect our users would, ironically, be ordered to weaken those protections and make our users less safe.“30 Destroying work in the digital world versus the physical world is drastically different. Once digital vulnerability is figured out, it will always be able to be replicated or copied no matter how many promises are made to eradicate it because the copying cost is so low. In early April 2016, the FBI dropped bids against Apple and paid a one-time fee to professional hackers to hack the phone. These hackers found a vulnerability in Apple’s security software. Now the US government is making a decision of exposing the vulnerability to Apple or keeping it secret. The issue is still ongoing has caused many parties to debate what this means for the future of data security and government regulation of cyber law.31

The government suggests this tool could only be used once, on one phone. But that’s simply not true. Once created, the technique could be used over and over again, on any number of devices. In the physical world, it would be the equivalent of a master key, capable of opening hundreds of millions of locks — from restaurants and banks to stores and homes. No reasonable person would find that acceptable.

28 Harding, Luke. The Snowden Files: The inside Story of the World's Most Wanted Man. N.p.: Vintage, 2014.

29 Marthews, Alex and Tucker, Catherine, Government Surveillance and Internet Search Behavior (April 29, 2015).

30 Cook, Tim. "A Message To Our Customers." Apple. Apple, 16 Feb. 2016. Web. 31 Benner, Katie, and Eric Lichtblau. "U.S. Says It Has Unlocked IPhone Without Apple." The New York Times. The New York Times, 28 Mar. 2016. Web.

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Bounty: An App for Finding People FALL 2015 // SCREEN DESIGN WITH BRENT ARNOLD

The book This Machine Kills by Andy Greenberg, from WIRED magazine’s cybercrime sector, highlights the exposition of government crimes and immoralities. Since Edward Snowden’s exposure of the NSA’s use of government surveillance, Internet privacy and security groups are now more prominent than ever. Groups like the Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) and the Tor project seek to protect our data from being breached and surveilled. Wikileaks seeks to liberate information and to expose the injustices and corruption of authority.

Governments are not the only ones who surveil. Hackers also take surveillance into their own hands. They are capable of hacking to computer webcams and home monitors to secretly spy on people.32 As a quick sketch to employ the use of user interface design for surveillance and tracking, I designed Bounty, a conceptual app that is able to track anyone through cellular data. Every digital device has a type of unique identification number. Cell phones have MAC (Media Access Control) addresses. Laptops and computers use an IP (Internet Protocol) address. These digital identifiers allow data and information on the web to be delivered to phones or laptops and become linked to all online or cellular activity they engage with. Already, police track down IP addresses to find people dealing drugs on public marketplaces or using fake credit cards. Bounty imagines a user-friendly app for tracking MAC and IP addresses and linking them to identities with ease. Ideally, the app would have access to a database of MAC/IP addresses blended with GPS and corresponding identity information, allowing users to track the phones and computers of people around them. In the illustrated situation, users use the app to find listed criminals on FBI's most wanted list. By having the ability to know the strangers around them, users can be part of the active manhunt for listed fugitives. Some criminals may not be active because the authorities have yet to track down their digital devices. Furthermore, Bounty can allow civilians to assess, follow and target the people around them. From a dystopian standpoint, an app like Bounty would breach many forms of civil liberties and natural rights to privacy. We can start to imagine the stalking, the judgement, and the decrease in trust and social interaction that would occur with an app like this.

32 Greenberg, Andy. This Machine Kills Secrets: How WikiLeakers, Cypherpunks and Hacktivists Aim to Free the World's Information. (New York: Dutton, 2012.)

33 Brandom, Russell. "The Dragnet." The Verge. 13 Jan. 2016. Web.

The scariest part of designing Bounty and researching the backend of how it could possibly work is realizing that this technology already exists, and it is in the hands of our government. Daniel Rigmaiden is an ex-convict that started off his criminal mastermind career as an identity forger and tax defrauder. He made thousands of dollars filing tax returns for the deceased and sending the returns his way through a variety of different aliases. He meticulously worked to keep his identity hidden, making sure there were no loopholes in his methods that would trace his crimes back to him. For example, every time he changed his name, he would create a new driver’s license, storage unit or post office box address and bank account. Each time Rigmaiden had a tax return delivered to an alias, he would quickly disappear and move onto the next. Everything was separated with no connection from one account to the other except for a Verizon Aircard, a device to provide Internet to a user without a fixed address, making tracking the user almost impossible. Using the physics of radio waves, the AirCard sends multiple frequencies out to distract from the main wave of data activity. When the signal reaches the cellular tower, the data would be mixed with the data from thousands of sources. Verizon could only tell which cellular tower the AirCard would connect to, but could not pinpoint the location of the user.

Because Rigmaiden’s planning was close to flawless, it was a huge concern and surprise to him to realize that the authorities were able to find him. Rigmaiden knew that breaking down his plan and being able to track him down would have required secret technology that could breach and track the AirCard. After studying his seizure affidavit report thoroughly and reading all associated case files while in prison, Rigmaiden discovered the use of a device called The Stingray, a cell-site simulator device with the ability to pinpoint cellular frequencies. The Stingray allowed officials to see every unique subscriber ID in the scanned area and could triangulate IDs with extra readings in order to pinpoint the exact source. The Stingray and other similar devices could collect thousands of phone numbers across cities all for the sake of catching one fugitive. The main issue that privacy groups have with technology like The Stingray is the fact that police officials have been using it in secret and without search warrants for years.

Police have kept the use of The Stingray out of arrest warrants and documents in fear that criminals would catch on to their technology.

It has the power to record telephone numbers, incoming and outgoing statuses, dialed telephone numbers, date, time, duration of call and call site. Even more alarming is its ability to intercept calls, to listen in on or record calls, and to block mobile communication. Although there are no public cases yet that show the government overstepping its boundaries with technology like The Stingray, privacy groups are hesitant at the potential threat of such power.

BOUNTY

BOUNTY Phone App Screens

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Stolen & Fake Identities

The most important thing we put out on the Internet is our identities. We need to protect them because they’re all we have. Our names, addresses, phone numbers, finances, photos, and tracked Internet activity all make up who we are online, yet it can be easily taken away and manipulated. By being active users of the Internet, we need to acknowledge our role as a speck in a large, digital system. Within the past decades, technological advancements have heightened the possibilities in crime and security.

Edward Snowden’s leak about the NSA’s surveillance and monitoring of American’s private digital information has influenced a large public distrust and questioning of who tracks our data. Services such as Tor, an anonymous web browser and Ghostery, a browser plug-in to reveal and block website trackers, are working to keep the Internet free from surveillance. Our data is important because it makes up our digital identities.

Our identities are not hard to steal. According to Javelin Strategy and Research 2015 Identity Fraud Report, 12.7 million identities were stolen in 2014 resulting in $16 billion worth of stolen money.34 Hacking is growing into a powerful and complex tool that can do damage with just a face and a name. Looking at social media sites, we post so much information out for the world to see. We have exposed ourselves and our identities to millions of strangers online. We are not secure.

When we, as consumers, purchase a product, we leave behind a lot of information about ourselves.

Time-stamped security cameras monitor shoppers as they enter and mingle around the store. Some store entrances even have markers that measures the height of each person who walks through the door. At the purchase, we give over our name, face, credit card information, voice, fingerprints, time and location. A store’s record of a shopper is an alibi of where she/he was, what was purchased, and how it was purchased. For most shoppers, the transaction is quotidian and mundane. For defenders of the law these detailed pieces of information that stores hold is key to recreating stories of crime. For criminals, this data pertaining to an identity is untapped potential ripe for harvest.

IDENTITIES

The world of crime has shown me how important the idea of an identity is. There are so many factors that make up our identities. There is personal identity and perceived identity. In terms of a personal identity, there is physicality material: DNA, fingerprints, hair and skin cells, retinal makeups, saliva, blood, bodily fluids, bone marrow, tissue, and physical appearance.

Personality is constructed by the personal memories, cultures, thoughts, and life experiences of the individual. Personalities can be studied, manipulated, and masked over, but nothing can take away the experiences leading to the modern you. The construction of a personality is based on internal learning experiences whereas a perceived identity is built from an external narrative of objects, stories, information, and social networks. A perceived identity can be hacked and manipulated. There are the physical objects like government IDs, student IDs, passports, and store rewards cards that link to accounts within a bigger system. There are digital identities such as social networking sites or online accounts to financial institutions among others. Finally there is the identity within social networks. Stories and memories remembered or written by family, friends, coworkers, and professional networks play into creating a perceived identity.

The TV series The Blacklist has a character named Raymond Reddington, an extremely smart and powerful fugitive that provides an intriguing service to his criminal comrades. The power he gives to his clients, meaning other criminals, is the ability to disappear. He arranges and fabricates new identities and a passage for escape for these criminals to hide from the crimes they have committed. Raymond Reddington seems to have a very clear sense of the different accounts and pieces of paper one needs to fake an identity. In order to escape a life, he knows the details and paperwork needed to get past security and systems in place that prevent people from faking an identity. In an episode of The Blacklist, the fugitive Elizabeth Keen gets help from a team of media fabricators who create fake video surveillance footage, social media pictures and GPS updates to trick and lead police away from her actual path to escape.36 With so much new technology and power in the hands of hackers, I started to wonder what information can we trust on the Internet nowadays?

Artist Curtis Wallen wanted to see what it took to create a fake identity online to preserve his anonymity. He wanted to disappear online and evade digital surveillance, and hypothesized that “generating a new digital person, complete with the markers of a physical identity” would be the best way to be untraceable on the darknet. He created the name Aaron Brown and photoshopped five portraits of his friends together to create Aaron’s new face. He registered the name on Tormail, a secure, anonymous email account. He needed “pocket litter,” or pieces of identity that act as authentication, so he used bitcoin, an anonymous digital currency, to purchase counterfeit driver’s licenses, school IDs, fake memberships, and a website. He also set up a special web proxy that allowed others to contribute to Aaron’s online identity. This way, anyone could browse as Aaron Brown, rendering the surveillance of Aaron useless and chaotic. Wallen’s project inspires me because of his grasp of the facets needed for an online identity.35

34 "$16 Billion Stolen from 12.7 Million Identity Fraud Victims in 2014, According to Javelin Strategy & Research." Javelin Strategy & Research, 3 Mar. 2015. Web. 35 Wallen, Curtis. "How to Invent a Person Online." The Atlantic. Atlantic Media Company, 23 July 2014. Web. 36 "The Troll Farmer". The Blacklist. NBC, 2015 Oct 15. Television.

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Accessing the Dark Web It’s impossible to talk about modern crime without referencing the dark web. There is a difference between the deep web and the dark web. The Deep web, makes up 90% of the Internet, pertaining to websites that are not indexed on search engines. Simply put, there are millions of websites on the internet that can’t be found unless a visitor knows the exact web address. The dark web is a subset of the deep web that is intentionally hidden and inaccessible through standard browsers. On the dark web, users can find marketplaces for illegal goods. From drugs to fake identities to contract killers, the deep web has become a dangerous informal market.37 In order to move forward with my designs of black market services and digital products, I needed to learn how to access the dark web. Accessing the deep web is not as easy as typing in a URL. It requires multiple layers of digital security and knowledge of privacy technology. Entering the deep web unprotected would have major complications including being targeted by government servers and online surveillance. First, a private browser is needed. The Tor Project is a browser that defends against traffic analysis, rendering the user anonymous. Tor’s website states their technology “prevents somebody watching an Internet connection from learning what sites were visited, and it prevents the sites from learning the user’s physical location.”38 On Tor, deep web links can be accessed through a .onion URL. These URLs are 16-character alpha-semi-numeric hashes which act as keys for encrypted hidden services on Tor. These .onion links are where the marketplaces exist.

After learning how to use Tor, the user cannot continue using the Internet in a regular way. In order to maintain anonymity while browsing, chatting, and navigating, s/he needs to refrain from giving away personal information. This means no regular purchases made online with her/his credit cards or signing up with information like an address or phone number. Getting on Facebook on Tor defeats the purpose of anonymity. To completely be anonymous on the web, we need to change the way we use the Internet. Once inside, many sources reference “Hidden Wiki” (thehiddenwiki.org) to see what’s out in the deep web. The major open marketplaces for illegal substances and trade currently are Agora and TMP. The Silk Road was the infamous illicit marketplace taken down by the Feds in 2013. With more emphasis on digital security and privacy, it’s no wonder people are swarming to Tor and learning how to access the deep web.

37 Greenberg, Andy. "Hacker Lexicon: What Is the Dark Web?" Wired.com. Conde Nast Digital, 19 Nov. 2014. Web. 38 Kagel, Jenna. "An Up-To-Date Layman's Guide To Accessing The Deep Web." Fast Company. N.p., 2 Feb. 2014. Web.

THE DARK WEB

“THE DARK WEB IS A COLLECTION OF THOUSANDS OF WEBSITES THAT USE ANONYMITY TOOLS LIKE TOR AND I2P TO HIDE THEIR IP ADDRESS. WHILE IT'S MOST FAMOUSLY BEEN USED FOR BLACK MARKET DRUG SALES AND EVEN CHILD PORNOGRAPHY, THE DARK WEB ALSO ENABLES ANONYMOUS WHISTLEBLOWING AND PROTECTS USERS FROM SURVEILLANCE AND CENSORSHIP” Andy Greenberg, Wired Magazine

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Gild 1.0

SPRING 2016 // SERVICE DESIGN WITH STEVEN DEAN & BRENT ARNOLD

With the increased awareness of surveillance methods and data tracking, more and more internet users are trying to anonymize their presence on the internet. Catherine Tucker, a professor in MIT’s Management Science, published a paper on the correlation between government surveillance and search behavior. “The increased awareness of digital surveillance led to a degree of self-censorship and altered online search behavior.”29 Our online searches have become more conservative and censored due to the awareness of surveillance. On top of that, turning to encryption may be a mistake. Encrypting messages actually attracts more attention to individual web search activity. Glen Greenwald, a journalist responsible in Snowden’s leak of the NSA documents, says, “In [the NSA’s] mind, if you want to hide what you’re saying from them, it must mean that what you’re saying is a bad thing. They view the use of encryption… as evidence that you’re suspicious and can actually target you if you use it.”39 Following artist Curtis Wallen’s identity project, Aaron Brown, I set out to design anonymity for the internet, realizing that the best way to hide online is to use a fake identity.35 Gild 1.0 started out as a service to erase digital existences. It consisted of a dark web marketplace for buying and selling fabricated “ghost identities.”

A ghost identity is a fake identity of someone who doesn’t exist on earth, but is fabricated from many pieces of information from other real human lives.

Instead of deleting personal accounts, users sell their accounts to Gild for bitcoins. Gild then proceeds to erase their lives online: photos, friends, status posts, credentials, and press. From the Gild marketplace, users can purchase a new identity. By joining the network users can use the information of others to buy what they need, to say what they want and to become untraceable. Customers use these identities to anonymously meander through the web, to make

discreet purchases, and to gain unauthorized access to certain privileges.

Gild’s intended users include fugitives on the run, people in need of witness protection services, Internet surfers who are highly suspicious of government surveillance, and users of dark web's services that are already aware of and use proper encryption software to keep their anonymity online. I arranged two personas to describe the type of user I imagined using Gild.

Persona 1: Danny Ocean7 Danny is a millionaire con man who is always on the run because he robbed a casino. He has friends in dark places and lives a risky life as a criminal. He is detail-oriented, careful, and enjoys puzzles. In his risky lifestyle, he has many enemies and needs people he can trust. Although he has money, it can all go away in an instant if he is caught. Being a wanted fugitive with a legal track record, he is always evading the authorities. He could create a cover for his real identity in order to build a safety net. He can live forever in disguise, have hidden sources of financial security and stay ahead of his captors by surveilling the police.

Person 2: “Donnie Brasco” / Joseph D. Pistone40 Joseph D. Pistone is an undercover FBI Agent living under the alias Donnie Brasco. He is trying to infiltrate New York’s Italian mafia and has been at this for years. He is an actor and a con artist, working 24/7 to make sure the mafia trusts him. On the side, he has a family to protect. Every day is a life or death situation for Pistone. He needs secret communication systems to inform the police of the evidence he brings back and a way to delete his past internet life.

39 Cheredar, Tom. "NSA Views Encryption as Evidence of Suspicion and Will Target Those Who Use It, Security Journalist says." VentureBeat. 10 Mar. 2014. Web. 40 Donnie Brasco. Dir. Mike Newell. Perf. Al Pacino and Johnny Depp. TriStar Pictures, 1997. DVD.

GILD

THIS IS FOR THE FUGITIVES WHO NEED TO DISAPPEAR. GILD IS A SERVICE THAT PROVIDES FAKE IDENTITIES FOR ESCAPE. UNLIKE OTHER FAKE ID MANUFACTURERS, GILD COMPILES A COHESIVE DIGITAL & PHYSICAL FAÇADE FOR FUGITIVES TO EXIST UNDERCOVER. OUR PRODUCT IS THE PERFECT GETAWAY.

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GILD

Chart for Understanding Parts of an Identity

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GILD

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Through word of mouth and an invitation from a current user, new members can find and enter the Gild marketplace. In order to achieve full anonymity, users must get rid of their own digital identities. Instead of simply deleting the accounts, Gild offers to buy the account information, ensuring that the contents won't get traced back to the seller. One by one, the accounts are ripped offline and deconstructed into components that Gild can use to fabricate new fake identities.

When the user becomes invisible, she/he then proceeds to the marketplace to purchase new fake identities that allow her/him to gain access to certain privileges. For example, the user can take on the identity of a fake 80-year-old woman that has easy access to pharmaceuticals. After purchasing the identity, the user will receive a digital package of all the fabricated identity components like a facebook account, social security number, and various identification cards. Gild identities come with a variety of patched information to work with. With one piece of forged information, he can potentially apply for many other forms of documents and online accounts granting him access to the depths of the Internet.

The user can use the fabricated information to apply for real (or to fake more) pieces of ID like a state issued ID card or a birth certificate.

“Don’t get too attached to any one identity. Once a pseudonym has been linked to others or to your real identity, it’s always linked.”35, 41 However when the identity becomes too connected, the user can sell it back to Gild and buy more fake identities, thus entering a constant recycling of fresh identities to use anonymously. In the back end, Gild buys back the used identities to further break down into usable assets and recycles them back into the marketplace. For security measures Gild employs back end digital monitoring and double agent infiltration of the latest police records, to find the latest seizures of false identities, making sure to tear down all associated digital information with hijacked identities.

Gild also changes its .onion link on a weekly basis, so only active users can access the site and caught fugitives lose access.

41 Quote by Gwern Branwen, writer, security research and moderator of darknetmarkets forum

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WIREFRAME: Market place for fake identities

WIREFRAME: Selling and surrending digital account information

WIREFRAME: Loading bar for selling identity

WIREFRAME: Payment for surrendering identity

WIREFRAME: Account management of bought identities

WIREFRAME: Fake identity profile dashboard

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Gild 2.0 Gild 1.0 won’t work. The idea of a marketplace where users need to give up or sell information is a bit too speculative for the dark web right now. The technology to do so does not seem feasible and the demand, low. Due to the risky, complex nature of selling away an identity, I pared down the concept of an identity marketplace and brokerage site into a simpler concept: Internet proxies for surfing the web anonymously. Current anonymous proxy servers and Virtual Private Networks help users browse the Internet anonymously by replacing a computer’s IP address under a digital disguise.42

GILD 2.0 IDENTITY PAGE: When clicking on an identity/proxy, users can view the activity of the proxy with an interface changing in real time. Users are able to see what websites are being visited on the proxy.

42 Andrew Tarantola. "VPNs: What They Do, How They Work, and Why You're Dumb for Not Using One." Gizmodo. 26 Mar. 2013.

Gild 2.0 would be an interface of anonymous web proxy server that takes on the disguise of a ghost identity. The user would first need to login to Gild 2.0 via a hidden user interface on an error screen page.

After clicking the golden tab on the error folder, the log in request will appear where users, old and new, can enter the site. The site itself is a simple interface of eight ghost identity accounts that act as anonymous web proxies. Users can choose to surf the web anonymously by hiding behind one of these accounts. They can see how many users are also surfing the web as this “person” and how the speed and bandwidth of the connection fares.

GILD

079 GILD 2.0 HOME PAGE OF FAKE IDENTITIES: Each fake identity denotes an anonymous proxy server.

The bars under each picture animate to show the amount of users and speed of connection in real time.

GILD 2.0 BROWSER TAKEOVER: When users enter a session, their Tor browser gets a GILD 2.0 informational frame.

Users can keep track of their activity and exit their session anytime.

00:34:09

HIDDEN USER INTERFACE LOGIN: Hiding the GILD 2.0 login on an error page. Users must know to click the golden tab to access the login credentials to site.

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Metis Conversational UI SPRING 2016 // SCREEN DESIGN WITH BRENT ARNOLD

As a last exercise in thinking speculatively about digital identities paired with Internet services, I imagined one more dark interface: Metis, a conversational user interface to help lie. Using a fake identities requires users to be a completely different person on the web or over phone, which also means keeping up a huge lie. Fake identities are consistently used in phone scams and catfishing, which is “a phenomenon where scammers fabricate online identities and entire social circles to trick people into romantic relationships.” The concept of Metis is inspired by real tricks of hackers that use social engineering to gather confidential information of their victims. In one instance, a hacker used a soundtrack of a crying baby during her call with a bank to complete her story of trying to access her husband’s bank account and not being able to contact him for the information.43 I wanted to imagine, a conversational UI, like the Amazon Echo’s Alexa or iPhone’s Siri as a digital partner in crime. These CUIs could be a future tool for interpreting spoken scams and lies over the phone and transcribed in real time to help the speaker remember the details of the lies they weaved throughout the conversation. Along the call, the interface can produce scripted lies for any questions that come the user’s way.

43 Roose, Kevin. "I Dared Expert Hackers to Destroy My Life. Here's What Happened Next." Real Future. Fusion, 24 Feb. 2016. Web.

For example, if someone is trying to access an actual bank account with stolen information, they can call the bank’s customer service line and lie their way through the security questions. With the Metis interface open, users can read off the correct social security numbers, answers to security questions and even start an impromptu conversation with the bank teller about weather in their city or news of the day. Metis can instantly gauge the conversation and produce searches for weather, news or extra information that can help complete the lie.

Being extremely new to the technology of proxy servers, dark web interfaces and Internet anonymity networks, I can not, at this point, validate the workings of any of these digital programs. However, speaking with programmers, I have gained insights on where these speculative ideas break and how they can begin to exist. For example, the Gild 1.0 marketplace, fights for pure anonymity yet sacrifices users’ personal accounts and private information. Consequently, it would be impossible to actual erase traces of a person since digital data can never be truly erased. The concept of Metis must also bear the hurdle of data logging and saving transcripts of the scam phone calls a user makes. When it comes down to it, all of this digital information becomes evidence for when the user is caught.

METIS

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CON SHOP

Masterminds, A Con Shop

SPRING 2016 // DESIGN DELIGHT WITH EMILIE BALTZ

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Run of Show Floor Plan

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“DON'T USE THREE WORDS WHEN ONE WILL DO, DON'T SHIFT YOUR EYES, LOOK ALWAYS AT YOUR MARK BUT DON'T STARE, BE SPECIFIC BUT NOT MEMORABLE, FUNNY BUT DON'T MAKE HIM LAUGH, HE'S GOTTA LIKE YOU THEN FORGET YOU THE MOMENT YOU'VE LEFT HIS SIGHT...”

Ocean’s 11 (2001)

To be a con man is to be someone you’re not, which in my opinion is very similar to taking a on new identity. In Maria Konnikova’s book The Confidence Game, she explains that con artists exercise soft skills in trust, sympathy and persuasion. Con artists take advantage of society’s gullibility. Con men are, as 1950’s linguist David Maurer puts it, “aristocrats of crime”. Konnikova reveals the psychological toolset of tricks that con men use to lie, scam and persuade victims with charm. They know how to lay down emotional foundations to create empathy, to use logic and persuasion and to plant evidence.44 The best con men I’d like to learn from would be the ones from movies.

The Hollywood romanticism takes away from the harsh reality of con men being scammers, liars and assholes. Danny Ocean from Ocean’s Eleven (2001) isn’t just a criminal. He’s charming, persuasive, nonchalant and confident in his skills of stealth and trickery. In the TV show The Blacklist, character Raymond Reddington holds an air of power and intimidation that sways people into doing his deeds. Mobsters in films like Goodfellas (1990) or The Godfather (1974) have a sense of honor towards their family and culture. They stick up for one another and boast their pride. Sometimes I just want to be these characters.

To take a look at the faces, characters, and personalities behind the film industry’s blockbuster heists, I designed a one day pop-up shop event called Masterminds: A Con Shop, where visitors can explore their own criminality and be rewarded for their misbehavior. Visitors were invited to become anonymous under a face mask of a movie star criminal, and brag about their crimes into a machine that would reward and rank their misbehavior. On March 14th, 2016, I invited the public to visit my popup shop at the Lazy Susan Gallery in the Lower East Side / Chinatown district of Manhattan. It was designed as a store for trying out the identities of Hollywood heist crews, most notably from Ocean’s Eleven (2001), The Italian Job (2003) and Fast Five (2011). I chose to host the event in Chinatown because its association with counterfeit goods and piracy.

The shop’s main intent was to celebrate criminal masterminds and rule-breaking. The experience in the shop consisted of 3 parts: EMBODY: REPLACE YOUR FACE Visitors walk in and see a wall of paper face masks resembling the characters from famous heist movies, i.e. George Clooney as Danny Ocean, Brad Pitt as Rusty Ryan, or Vin Diesel as Dominic Toretto. I chose to use characters from heist films because they romanticize crime in a cool, confident way. I handcrafted every face of all three crews with inspiration from the faceted paper sculptures of Bert Simons. Each face was paired with a manila case file that contained a description of the character’s role in the film, skills, and a notable quote. Upon entering, visitors were greeted by an attendant who says, “Hi, welcome to Masterminds, a Con Shop where we reward misbehavior. Please start by choosing an alias.”

EMBRACE: CRIME IS COOL Next, visitors reference scenes I cut out from the three movies to feel the vibes of these cinematic con men. I wanted people to see criminals in a romanticized way and to give participants permission to misbehave.

REWARD: WHAT’S YOUR CRIMINALITY WORTH? One by one, visitors were guided to a station in the back. In the back of the gallery, visitors approach a large mirror with the prompt, “What is your criminality worth?” The mirror turns out to be a “machine” that asks the question: Please tell me about a time you were proud of misbehaving. Visitors are prompted to spill a story (real or fake) of a time they pulled off a trick or scheme. After sharing the story, the machine says, “calculating your reward.” The machine then dispenses a prize diamond in relation to the riskiness of the misbehavior, or in another scale of “badassery.”

By wearing the mask and speaking in front of a mirror, participants are encouraged to pretend to be the character and to put themselves into the shoes of a new criminal identity. After being rewarded, participants must forge a signature onto a certification card. The card reads, “I used to be [sign name here] but now I’ve become [forge name here]” Visitors leave with a sense of fun and an invitation to continue being a character in a crime film. I wanted people to walk away feeling as if they were proud to be breaking rules. I prompted visitors to go forth and be sneaky, as a way to promote rule-breaking in their lives.

44 Konnikova, Maria. The Confidence Game: Why We Fall for It... Every Time. (New York: Viking, 2016.)

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INVITATION EXPERIMENT ONE: An experimental invitation for an idea of a city-wide game of hide and seek.

INVITATION EXPERIMENT TWO: An experimental invitation for recruiting a friend to partake in a heist. It is a concealed message within a normal looking postcard. The recipient would gather from the written letter to tear apart the postcard. The secret meeting place is the image on the front of the postcard.

CON SHOP

FINAL INVITATION FOR MASTERMINDS

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DEFACING & REPLACING FACES

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CON SHOP

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"In college I hated one of my roommates, so I cleaned the toilet bowl with her toothbrush."

"Every time my friends need supplies from the lab after hours, I break in and get it for them."

"I feel like every time I go to Chipotle, I'm misbehaving.

I have this thing where I hack the line. Every time I see an employee, I exclaim, "Oh my god I'm so hungry!"

And afterwards I ask for half chicken, half beef, but they give me regular portions of each. For the guacamole I say, "Oh your guacamole is so good!" Then I'd mumble something about sour cream so they put sour cream in it. But then I'd say, "Oh I didn't want sour cream!" So they feel guilty and give me free guacamole.

"I used to steal stamps from the toystore."

"As kids, my sister and I would shoplift for earrings to put in our Barbie Doll's hair."

"I cheated on a test by writing notes under the eraser packaging. "

CON SHOP

“I stole candy from an Albanian service station."

"I was really upset with my sister. And I went into her bedroom, took my arm and swiped everything off her desk and onto the floor because I was so mad at her."

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"I helped my friends forge bank statements to apply for an apartment."

" It was 1992. I was about 13 years old. I was one of the early kids to have a computer at home. I would dial up and connect to these bulletin board systems— this was pre-internet. And we would download books. Books don't sound that scary, but this one book was kind of scary. It was called The Anarchist Cookbook. In it were directions on how to make bombs, to steal, to get free long distance phone calls, to commit credit card fraud and to wreak havoc. With a photo copier at home, I printed out this long book, and I would make several copies. And in school, I would sell them for $20 each. I made enough money to buy my first pair of roller blades, which I was proud of. "

"I sold a lot of drugs that were prescribed to me."

"I vandalized a sign."

"I broke into an equipment cabinet and stole a projector."

“We stole the exam from the teacher's desk."

"I stole a steak knife from a hotel I was at on Super Bowl Sunday. I took it because I thought it would be a great letter opener."

"I forged three letters of recommendation for a scholarship application... and won."

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CON SHOP

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By all means break the rules, and break them beautifully, deliberately and well.

Robert Bringhurst

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QUESTIONING THE LAW

Crimes of Designers QUESTIONING THE LAW & THE ETHICS IN BEING CREATIVE

In a way, designers are criminals already. It is constantly said that a designer must wear many hats. Sometimes they act as psychologists or anthropologists to develop strategies for effective communication.

Other times they are engineers who bring imagined inventions to life.

But if designers look at the products they make and the brands they service from a larger perspective, they will find that they are part of the problems related to mass consumerism and climate change. First off, as much as architects and industrial designers support climate change and climate initiatives, nothing beats the fact that architectural construction and product manufacturing are the two largest industries behind climate change; yet industrial designers are still shelling out models for the latest plastic contraption. According to the American Institute of Architects, 25 to 40 percent of the national solid waste stream is building-related waste with only 20 percent of construction waste or demolition debris actually being recycled.45 Furthermore, designers work for the companies at fault. And from Waste Management’s report on Manufacturing & Industrial Waste Minimization, companies in the United States generate and dispose of 7.6 billion tons of non-hazardous industrial solid waste.46 Industrial designers continue to design more new objects and packages that ultimately contribute to waste. Graphic and web designers continue to help sell and market these products through a variety of media. As much as designers try to speculate utopias with cleaner climates, more justice, democracy, and equality, they have to realize that most of their work exists to perpetuate a huge money-making machine.

Designers do not have a hippocratic oath like that of doctors, but the profession is geared towards helping others, making things easier, and improving lives. Design school teaches us that we can do great things to change systems for better and to explore speculation of the future; however, when entering the workforce, our jobs become serving the market, and contributing to a capitalist culture. Designers are brought on to decorate objects and make them seductive and a attractive to a buyer’s eye. They use branding to sell ideas and persuade people into buying products for leisure. In order to appeal to the market and to gain attraction, it becomes part of a designer’s job to understand the latest trends and culture. Designers must now act as anthropologists, finding ways to instigate new cultural trends and how to manipulate communication and space. As a society, we have been reduced down into highly visual consumers. Today’s culture is one that wants to record and transmit news cinematically. Designers are the top visual content-makers orchestrating and pulling the strings behind what we see, experience, and understand about the world around us. Designers are the top visual content-makers orchestrating and pulling the strings behind what we see, experience, and understand about the world around us.

Artist and designer Ilona Gaynor looks at “design as the role of a plotter, master planner, schemer rather than the craftsman.” Her work revolves around the design of ruses and fictional plots to create disruption in order to attack something from a different perspective. Her most notable work is called Under Black Carpets, a project where she seeks to design the perfect crime. After months of research with forensic scientists, FBI, LAPD, and escape artists, Gaynor designed a heist to rob 5 major banks in Los Angeles. She presented the project through the lense of evidence.

Inspired from the field of forensic architecture, Gaynor seeks to use objects to form an argument that narrates in the absence of actuary evidence.47 Gaynor has been working on the argument that designers are master schemers. The idea that designers are master schemers begins to reveal the impact of design in shaping our values, opinions, and culture. Her argument starts with a compounded history of the term “designer.” The Greek term metis (which stands for skill, craft, and wisdom) also has original roots relating to ideas of cunningness and trickery and is the name of a Greek character in mythology. Now, the Greek word metis refers to a quality of wisdom and cunningness and is considered a highly admirable trait.48 Later on, old city documents of French city planning prohibited the drafting of architectural plans because it contained too much information about the building’s vulnerabilities.49 Gaynor argues, “Design itself is a kind of crime—it's a weapon of the weak. With enough patience and time, the weapon can get even more extreme. The work we do is all about intricate patience.”50 There are plenty of subversive tricks designers use in their everyday work. Michael Bierut’s Core 77 interview on “How to Make Your Client’s Logo Bigger Without Actually Making Their Logo Bigger” is a perfect example of a designer’s need to manipulate.Bierut comically manipulates a client into agreeing on a desired logo by printing out decoy logos that are too small.51 On a larger scale, designers hold all of the control over our visual environment. Ilona Gaynor introduced this idea of design as a plot or trap to me in a recent interview. We discussed one of the earliest designed plots of mankind --- an animal trap. In order to catch food, indigenous humans made plans and objects to lure prey in order to survive. In extending Gaynor’s metaphor, we can think of every ad, every constructed doorway, or every wayfinding sign as a trap. But not in the negative sense; the definition of the word trap is “a device or enclosure designed to catch,” and what designers and architects are trained to do is to catch attention. We know how to manipulate color, form, and text to persuade feelings of want and need. Understanding this strategy, we can start to question what is right and wrong. I spoke with Anna Kealy, a graduate of the School of Visual Art’s MFA Design Criticism program, about her thesis on the ethics of food packaging. She explained to me the various methods that designers use to manipulate food packaging.

Because it is harder to litigate against imagery rather than words, food brands that are not legally able to use the word organic can't be stopped from making their packaging feel organic. They can use craft paper brown textures and green lettering to give the sense of healthy, natural products when in truth, they have neither of those qualities.

DESIGNER CRIMES

Designers walk a fine line between manipulator and do-gooder. We are masters of forgery. Inventors of lies. Bold-faced con artists. We run the visual world today, and we have the ego to believe that we are gods of culture. Image and video editing software help us create legitimate media, capable of persuading millions of viewers. Branding can also be thought of as a way of persuading consumers with stories and manicured statements to buy products. Designers are luring people into visual traps in order to take their money. Our knowledge of typefaces, leading, and print details give us the power to forge newspapers, magazines, and advertisements. On the Internet, web interaction designers have full power to direct users straight into traps. For instance, dark UX patterns have devious details that marketing sites, airfare sites and online retailers use to trick people into spending more money. These details include confusing extra steps and buttons, all of which trap users into paying more, pre-selected check boxes that buyers might miss, and even automatically-added purchases to carts that websites tack on based on the products that are being bought.52 Geoff Manaugh’s book, A Burglar’s Guide to the City, uses the term “defector” to describe “someone who has used his access, training, or skills against the very people those talents were meant to benefit.” Manaugh discusses the life of George Leonidas Leslie, an architect turned criminal mastermind. Leslie’s knowledge of blueprints, dimensioning, and construction helped him become the genius behind many bank robberies in the nineteenth century. He even went so far as to construct entire replicas of the bank vaults in warehouses for crews to practice in until they got the sequence down to the second. Leslie became a notorious criminal consultant, which leads historians to believe he was behind 80% of the bank robberies during the 1800s. It makes sense that Leslie’s architectural background helped him become a criminal mastermind. This goes to show that any area of expertise mixed with a dose of subversive creativity can defect into criminality.

“At first glance the attempt to plan a bank robbery might sound like a post-adolescent prank. But it is not, of course. Such a project claims most of the core competences of an architect. i.e. research and value the site (if of necessity), find out weak/strong aspects, think, imagine, anticipate, sense and develop a concept, sketch, think, design, rethink, reimagine etc., prepare action plan documentation, plan the time schedule, the costs.“53 The greatest takeaway from Manaugh’s book would be that burglary cannot exist without architecture because “burglary is a crime only possible in a world that has legally recognized walls and ceilings.” Burglary in legal terms refers to the unlawful entry into almost any structure with the intent to commit any crime inside. By breaking the rules of our built environment, burglars make spatial structures a literal partner in crime.

Elevator shafts, air ducts, and roofs all act as hideouts and back channels in navigating a building. Understanding the building’s infrastructure, plumbing, electricity, and maintenance are vital to a burglar’s skill in surpassing the behavioral expectations of spaces. These alternate routes and passageways that bypass conventional doors and hallways are what make burglars masterful participants of architecture. 13,15

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In ways, designers and criminals are also like magicians. Magicians are the closest legal professionals to criminals. They are experts of illusions and trickery that delude people. Joshua Corn, a designer and professional magician, explained that magic is made up of a set of principles: misdirection, being one step ahead, using a force, understanding natural body movements (dead and alive), feeding off assumptions, and continuation. He went further to explain that there are many ways to misdirect someone’s attention. Time delays and overloading audiences with excess visual information are a few examples. We can use concepts of magic within design to draw people in and to persuade them with an idea, but these magic techniques can also be used for crime.

Alex Stone, author of Fooling Houdini, is a magician who studied crime in order to better his craft. He studied games in Chinatown that conned people into gambling against a sleight-of-hand master. He attended scam school in Vegas to learn about the design of scams and new techniques for distraction and misdirection. Crime became an area where the techniques of magic were being used for other means.54 By understanding the origins of design and the skills we possess, we can start to imagine how designers have the power to do some real damage.

45 Construction Waste Management Strategies American Institute of Architects Best Practices.

July 2008. PDF. 46 Manufacturing & Industrial Waste Minimization. Waste Management. 2013. PDF. 47 Regine. "Under Black Carpets." We Make Money Not Art. 07 Sept. 2012. Web. 48 M. Detienne and J.-P. Vernant, Les Ruses de l'intelligence: la Mètis des Grecs (Paris, 1974).

49 Godwin, George. The Builder Volume XLV Jan. 1883. Print.

50 "Ilona Gaynor Has Constructed the Perfect Heist (Wired UK)." Wired UK. 30 Oct. 2013. Web. 51 Bierut, Michael. "How to Make Your Client's Logo Bigger Without Making Their Logo Bigger".

Core 77, 9 Sept. 2009. Web. 52 "Dark Patterns: Fighting User Deception Worldwide." Dark Patterns.org. Web 53 Regine. "21 Bank Branches vs. 21 Architecture Students." We Make Money Not Art. 13 June 2011. Web. Quote from Armin Blasbichler, architecture professor who challenged his 21 students to design plots to rob their local bank branches.

54 Stone, Alex. Fooling Houdini: Magicians, Mentalists, Math Geeks, and the Hidden Powers of the Mind. (New York: Harper, 2012.)

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Corruption

Mr. Robot (2015)

Designers should learn from criminals’ mastery of subversion because not all rules are fair and correct to follow. If I’ve learned one thing from this thesis, it is that crime is not always illegal. The informal definition of the word criminal references an action or situation that is deplorable and shocking; and since paying more attention to the news, I’ve found many examples of the world’s legal injustices. From police brutality to mass incarceration to Wall Street and the 2008 Recession, there are multitudes of stories that paint the broad landscape of corruption.

My favorite fictional illustration of corruption is the plot of the TV show Mr. Robot (2015). In this show, a hacker and his crew scheme against a large corporation that they call Evil Corp. “Evil Corp” is a huge monopoly that acts as a representation of many facets of corruption in the modern world. Evil Corp runs almost everything, including the manufacture of phones and mobile systems and 70% of the fictional world’s consumer credit base. Elliot, the main character and hacker of the series, has his own issues with Evil Corp because they covered up a toxic gas leak that killed his father. He joins a hacker group called fsociety to target Evil Corp’s digital database that includes records of people’s debt from around the world. Their plan is to hack the network and erase everyone’s debt.55

Fictional as it may be, Mr. Robot touches on something chilling: Evil Corp is a portrayal of many modern forms of corruption we see today.

Recently, Governor Rick Snyder of Michigan switched the city’s water source to a cheaper option which flowed water through corroded pipes leading to lead-infused toxic water. This resulted in the poisoning of thousands of Flint residents, including many children. Despite complaints from residents and doctors, the Oregon Department of Environmental Quality ignored the public citizens took protesting and research into their own hands. Furthermore, the General Motors factory was favored over the Flint residents for access to clean water. Because General Motors complained to Governor Snyder that the Flint River water corroded their cars on the assembly line wash, and Governor Snyder changed their water source before changing the city’s.56 The story of Flint, Michigan is only one skimmed from thousands of current events in corruption. There are corrupt, unethical and powerful systems existing in society that continue to allow corporations to reign supreme over the American people, and the public can only do so much to speak out against the decisions of corporations. Corporations have the money to sway politicians into bending the rules to protect their assets.

My question is simple: when is it ethical to break the law and how can we create the changes we want to see in our society if corporate power is protected by their own written laws and governmental influence? In Mr. Robot, fsociety is a hacker group that embodies some of the traits of hacker groups like Anonymous and Lulzsec.57 These are hacktivists fighting to liberate information and to hack “ethically.” But with more than just hacking and programming skills, how can designers make a difference in combating corruption?

55 Esmail, Sam. Mr. Robot. USA. 27 May 2015. Television.

56 "Flint Water Crisis, NBC News." NBC News Storyline. 2016. Web. 57 Coleman, Gabriella. "Information Security Experts Hate Anonymous but Loved This Smart, Wacky Group." Slate Magazine. 08 Dec. 2014. Web.

CORRUPTION

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LEGAL

ILLEGAL

GOOD

LEGAL + GOOD LAW ABIDING CITIZEN

ILLEGAL + GOOD MORAL MISCHIEF AND GOOD INTENTIONS

BAD

LEGAL + BAD POWER AND CORRUPTION

ILLEGAL + BAD GREED AND DANGEROUS INTENTIONS

ACTIVISTS

CORRUPT POLITICIANS

FRUSTRATED INDIVIDUALS THE COMMON WO/MAN

CAPITALIST LEADERSHIP PROTESTS VOTING VIRAL MEDIA

CUSTOMER ADAPTATION

INNOVATORS & MISFITS

REBEL AND BREAK RULES

PASS LAWS MAKE RULES $$$ TO BUY SUPPORT

SYSTEMIC CHANGE

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Grey Market Studios FALL 2015 // SERVICE DESIGN WITH STEVEN DEAN

Designers share the skills to wreak havoc and to create lies, yet we claim to use our powers to change the world. After speaking with Alexa Clay of The Misfit Economy, she suggested that I come up with a design studio for crimes called Grey Market Studios.

Grey Market Studios is a conceptual creative agency that allows for frustrated civilians to plot against corrupt systems with the help of a network of professional subversive masterminds. It specializes in the planning and execution of heists, specifically targeted to helping activists, vigilantes, and do-gooders who want their voice to be heard.

Grey Market Studios would secretly employ designers, hackers, economists and business gurus from diverse backgrounds and expertise.

The team is made up of rebellious graphic designers, architects, web developers, hackers, locksmiths, craftsmen, and financial cubicleworkers becoming a growing network of frustrated, skilled individuals who have joined to fight for worthy causes.

For contacting Grey Market Studios, users need to figure out the subtle marketing campaign graffitied around the city. They would also have to realize that gms.org is a cover up business that leads to a .onion URL on TOR, an anonymous web browser. Through an encrypted Internet project submission form, activists and individuals can write out their ideas of schemes for overcoming authority to create change.

The user’s project submission form must pass the judgement of an ethics committee to assess motive, risk, and impact. The Grey Market Studios ethics committee filters through all the project submissions to determine the validity and risk level before accepting or declining.

If passed, over the next course of time, Grey Market Studios works with the individual to design, network, and produce the action. Skills provided by the studio include design & strategy, escape & evasion, forgery, prototyping tools, hacking, and research, while other skills may be outsourced.

There are many parts to a crime that Grey Market Studio designers can help with. The strategy for research and execution are definitely key points for development. However, back-up plans, getaways and secret communication systems are all highly valued designed pieces of crime that go overlooked. With a studio like Grey Market, first-time criminal crusaders can make sure to smartly cover all their bases in these risky projects. As for financing, Grey Market Studios uses a variety of cryptocurrency methods to receive payment. If a project involves a monetary heist, Grey Market Studios receives 30% of all earnings. Imagining a brand statement for the company, I wrote, “We believe that we can combat corporate control with great ideas fostered from the good intentions of frustrated individuals. We provide logical, smartly-planned ways to bypass systems and to start silent revolutions. There are good people; and unfortunately, there are also bad. But there are some people caught in the middle, asking good questions and imagining change. Grey Market Studios will provide the tools to help.” Thinking broadly about the service of Grey Market Studios helped me understand the audience and skills necessary to pull it off. A studio like this would need a loyal network in the underground economy, knowledge of technological hacks and accessing the deep web, ties to people in positions of authority, ties to law enforcement, and connections with strong activist groups.

CREY MARKET STUDIO

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Climate Protest

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CREY MARKET STUDIO

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CREY MARKET STUDIO

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The Rescued Market FALL 2015 // SOCIAL ENTERPRISES WITH KYLA FULLER

In order to test the workings of Grey Market Studios, I ran a quick service idea through the workings of the speculative firm. I started with a topic with many problems: food waste. According to the Food Waste Reduction Alliance, Americans threw out 35.7 million tons of food with 50-60% of tossed food coming from corporations and businesses in 2012.58 Furthermore, the Natural Resources Defense Council stated that an average of 20 to 30 percent of post-harvest produce is rejected by farmers due to cosmetic standards. This is a large amount of food that gets wasted annually and even contributes to large amounts of methane and CO2 coming from landfills. On top of this food waste, non-profit organization Feeding America states that 48 million people in the United States lack access to nutritionally adequate food to maintain a healthy diet.57 Something in the food supply system needs to change, yet many FDA rules and restrictions prevent these issues from being fully addressed.

With this issue in mind, I looked at the grocery store food waste system as a way for Grey Market Studios to intervene. I learned that grocery stores toss out huge amounts of perfectly good food because of the expiration dates, but many expiration dates are misread and pushed up earlier so that food brands can keep demand for their supply. I imagined Grey Market Studios designing a group called The Rescued Market to steal food going to the trash in grocery stores. It would be a non-profit organization of minimum wage workers who are employed at big box food retailers such as Walmart, Target, H-E-B, Whole Foods, Trader Joes, Albertsons, Walgreens, and so on. Together, they create an underground market of rescued food to gift to the homeless and the hungry. Rescued Market agents work through secrecy and goodwill. They divert healthy food products away from company trash facilities and into specialized restorative systems. They steal perfectly good food that’s about to get tossed and take it to a secret drop site for others to retrieve. The head organizers of Rescued Market make sure that all “orders and shipments” run smoothly through allocated drop sites. With a network of libraries, food banks, and goodwill stores supporting the cause, The Rescued Market exists in an informal economy. The act of taking discarded food and gifting it to people in need could create great strides in nutrition for people in need and can fight against hunger. And although stealing is an unconventional and risky route to take for accomplishing this, it can bring attention to the division between food waste and hunger statistics.

58 www.foodwastealliance.org 57 Dana Gunders. " Wasted: How America Is Losing Up to 40 Percent of Its Food from Farm to Fork to Landfill" Natural Resource Defense Council Reports. August 2011. PDF.

THE RESCUED MARKET

The Rescued Market is a non-profit organization of minimum wage workers who are employed at big box food retailers such as Walmart, Target, H-E-B, Whole Foods, Trader Joes, Albertsons, Walgreens and so on.

Together, they create an underground market of rescued food to gift to the homeless and the hungry.

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WHAT HAPPENS TO THE LEFTOVERS?

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Photograph by Fred Meyers

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THE RESCUED MARKET

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THE BOOK OF EDEN

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The Book of Eden FALL 2015 // THESIS I PRODUCTS WITH ANDREW SCHLOSS

Another project I took through the Grey Market Studio lens focused on organ donation and manipulating religion. When thinking about ethics and why we do the things we do or reason the way we reason, we have to take into account the media and propaganda all around us. Being liberal in my own religious views, I’ve come to believe that religion is made up of propaganda. The power that religion has over directing how people make decisions is not unlike the marketing and advertising that designers take part in. It’s all about communication and manipulation. One interesting fact I came across was from an article in The Atlantic about organ donation: “Catholics are less likely to donate than other religious groups, despite The Vatican’s official position in favor of it. It seems that this is due to the belief in the afterlife and the concern for maintaining body integrity.” However, around 21 Americans die each day waiting for a transplant; and even though 90 percent of people say they support organ donations in opinion polls, less than a third of people are registered donors. Furthermore, the article shows that low organ donation rates are linked to what people perceive in the media about the medical community. “We found that heavy viewers of the show saw Grey’s Anatomy as realistic, meaning that they felt the images and the stories were realistic. And the more realistic they saw these stories, the more likely they were to buy into medical mistrust.” The insignificant amount of organ donations is mostly due to a mistrust in the medical field and the lack of understanding about brain death. In the case of brain death, the next of kin would be less likely to donate organs while the heart of their loved one still beats. Brain death is still a controversial issue and cyclical guessing game of when or if someone will ever wake up.59 Because so many forces of propaganda are at play in the issue of organ donation, I saw a way Grey Market Studios could instigate some change.

As a way to persuade Catholics into donating organs, I combed through a King James Bible and highlighted passages made good arguments for organ donation. For example, I found a passage from Genesis 33:10 to be very poetic when looking from context of organ donation: “If I have found favor in your eyes, accept this gift from me. For to see your face is like seeing the face of God, now that you have received me favorably.”60 I set out to create a new amendment to the bible with text pieced together by the passages I found. I proceeded to measure every header, footer, margin, title, superscript in the existing bible and typeset the document with the typeface Usherwood Standard. I wrote an introductory description: “The letter pieces together verses scattered throughout the Holy Bible to recognize the acceptance and pursuit of organ donations from the dead. It reveals the foundation for accepting brain death as a separation between mind and body, and brings peace to those who have left us by transplanting their organs. Doing so shows the ultimate act of love to thy neighbor.”

1 Corinthians had many passages about Jesus’ representation of his body and his sacrifice that I felt was in line with organ donation. I pieced it together like so: “(1 Cor 11:23) For I received from the Lord what I also passed on to you: The Lord Jesus, on the night he was betrayed, took bread, (1 Cor 11:24) and when he had given thanks, he broke it and said, “This is my body, which is for you; do this in remembrance of me.” (1 Cor 11:25) In the same way, after supper he took the cup, saying, “This cup is the new covenant in my blood; do this, whenever you drink it, in remembrance of me.” (1 Cor 10:17) Because there is one loaf, we, who are many, are one body, for we all share the one loaf. (1 Cor 9:15) Thanks be to God for his indescribable gift!”

I created a whole new section tailored for giving the gift of life and the benefits of organ donation. In the bibliography, I referenced every passage I repurposed back to its original place in The Bible. Doing this made me realize how religious texts are all about interpretation and can be used to push certain agendas and associations.

59 Wen, Tiffanie. "Why Don't More People Want to Donate Their Organs?" The Atlantic. Atlantic Media Company, 10 Nov. 2014. Web. 60 The Holy Bible: New International Version. Zondervan Publishing.

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THE BOOK OF EDEN

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Eden Title and Background 21 people die everyday waiting for an organ transplant. There is a large disparity between the number of people who say that they support donation in theory and the number of people who actually register. to donate organs. In the UK, more than 90 percent of people say they support organ donation in opinion polls, but less than one-third are registered donors.

Author and Date of Writing The author is Eden student of Allan and Andrew — design founders of the Masters in Products of Design graduate program in New York City. It was written A.D. 2015.

Theme and Message The letter pieces together verses scattered throughout the Holy Bible to recognize the acceptance and pursuit of organ donations from the dead. It reveals the foundation for accepting brain death as a separation between mind and body, and gives peace to ones who have left us by transplanting their organs. By doing so, shows the ultimate act of love to thy neighbor.

Outline I. II. III. IV. V. VI. VII.

The Gift of Life The Powers of the Body Awaiting a Life Believers Who Have Died Living Sacrifice Sharing the Body of Christ Love in Action

The Gift of Life

1

If I have found favor in your eyes, accept this gift from me. For to see your face is like seeing the face of God, now that you have received me favorably.

2 There are different kinds of gifts, but the same Spirit distributes them. There are different kinds of service, but the same Lord. 3There are different kinds

1:1 Gen 33:10 1:2 1 Cor 12:4 1 Cor 12:5 1:3 1 Cor 12:6 1:4 1 Cor 12:7 1:5 1 Cor 12:8 1 Cor 12:9 1 Cor 12:10

of working, but in all of them and in everyone it is the same God at work.

4 Now to each one the manifestation of the Spirit is given for the common good. 5To one there is given through the Spirit a message of wisdom, to another a message of knowledge by means of the same Spirit, to another faith by the same

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EDEN 1:6

Spirit, to another gifts of healing by that one Spirit, to another miraculous powers, to another prophecy,to another distinguishing between spirits, to another speaking in different kinds of tongues, and to still another the interpretation of tongues.

6All these are the work of one and the same Spirit, and he distributes them to each one, just as he determines.

7I speak to sensible people; judge for yourselves what I say.

8Is not the cup of thanksgiving for which we give thanks a participation in the blood of Christ? And is not the bread that we break a participation in the body of Christ? While they were eating, Jesus took bread, and when he had given thanks, he broke it and gave it to his disciples, saying, “Take and eat; this is my body.”

9For I received from the Lord what I also passed on to you: The Lord Jesus, on the night he was betrayed, took bread, 10and when he had given thanks, he broke it and said, “This is my body, which is for you; do this in remembrance of me.” 11 In the same way, after supper he took the cup, saying, “This cup is the new covenant in my blood; do this, whenever you drink it, in remembrance of me.”

12Because there is one loaf,

1426 1:6 1 Cor 12:11 1:7 1 Cor 10:15 1:8 1 Cor 10:16 Mat 26:26 1:9 1 Cor 11:23 1:10 1 Cor 11:24 1:11 1 Cor 11:25 1:12 1 Cor 10:17 1:13 1 Cor 9:15 2:1 Mark 5: 26 2:2 Mark 5: 27 2:3 Mark 5: 28 2:4 Mark 5: 29 2:5 Mark 5: 30 2:6 Mark 5: 33 2:7 Mark 5: 34 2:8 1 Cor 12:12 2:9 1 Cor 12:13 2:10 1 Cor 12:14 2:11 1 Cor 12:18 2:12 1 Cor 12:19

many doctors and had spent all she had, yet instead of getting better she grew worse. 2When she heard about Jesus, she came up behind him in the crowd and touched his cloak, 3because she thought,“If I just touch his clothes, I will be healed.” 4Immediately her bleeding stopped and she felt in her body that she was freed from her suffering. 5At once Jesus realized that power had gone out from him. Jesus kept looking around to see who had done it. 6Then the woman, knowing what had happened to her, came and fell at his feet and, trembling with fear, told him the whole truth. 7He said to her, “Daughter, your faith has healed you.

Go in peace and be freed from your suffering.”

8Just as a body, though one, has many parts, but all its many parts form one body, so it is with Christ. 9For we were all baptized by one Spirit so as to form one body—whether Jews or Gentiles, slave or free—and we were all given the one Spirit to drink. 10Even so the body is not made up of one part but of many. 11But in fact God has placed the parts in the body, every one of them, just as he wanted them to be. 12If they were all one part, where would the body be? 13As it is, there are

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Mass Incarceration Workshop FALL 2015 // FUTURING WORKSHOP WITH STEVE HAMILTON

Taking the idea of Grey Market Studio’s team-plotting mindset one step further, I conducted a small workshop for plotting and scheming. Every Grey Market Studio project tackles an area of corruption and injustice.

For this meeting I chose the topic of mass incarceration to scheme against. According to The New York Times, the nation’s prison population has quadrupled to 2.2 million since the early 1970s, making the US incarceration rate five to ten times the incarceration rate in other democracies.61 The prison system is a corrupt business that runs off of high recidivism rates which leads to inhumane practices and a waste of government funding. This two hour workshop consisted of five mischievous designers from Parsons School of Design, The University of Texas at Austin, and the School of Visual Arts—all with backgrounds in some form of design and engineering educations. In introducing the workshop, I pushed them to design with illegal intent. I called it a “criminal hackathon” where I painted the broad, broken system of mass incarceration. Together, we went through the system of mass incarceration I had illustrated from my research.

Before discussing the problem, I pointed out to my attendees that designers share many of the same strategic skills as criminals, as a way to free their expectations and engage in risk for a moment. Some notable ideas that came up involved taking from the corrupt rich or white collar criminals who have not paid for their crimes to help innocent inmates.

Another interesting turn of events was the idea of providing reformed exconvicts with the ability to vote using the identities of non-voters. Other ideas sought to humanize prisoners and to smuggle in better medicines, food, and supplies. Working with current prison suppliers, employees could hide objects in certain containers and packages to deliver to certain inmates. Another lens was finding ways to infiltrate a prison and to expose the harsh realities. We thought about planting undercover cops and inmates into the system to record and dig up the truth about prison life. The group also thought about the death penalty and how to introduce less painful ways to die, like with a plastic hood and helium gas, instead of by lethal injection. Or even better, the group thought of ways to help prisoners escape. In a sense, some of these ideas probably already happen within the prison system. Without the full detailed research and strategy required for a heist, these ideas were preliminary and improbable. But as an exercise, it felt freeing for designers to begin scheming and plotting. We realized how influential the media was as we drew inspiration from many TV shows and movies. Being designers that always strive to do good and to help others, it was a refreshing change to let go and think in illegal ways.

61 "End Mass Incarceration Now." The New York Times Editorial Board. The New York Times, 24 May 2014. Web.

MASS INCARCERATION WORKSHOP

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“WELCOME TO MY CRIMINAL HACKATHON, WHERE WE ARE ACTING AS A REBELLIOUS DESIGN SYNDICATE.”

MASS INCARCERATION WORKSHOP

“OUR TARGET TODAY: MASS INCARCERATION.”

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MASS INCARCERATION WORKSHOP

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MASS INCARCERATION WORKSHOP

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MASS INCARCERATION WORKSHOP

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MASS INCARCERATION WORKSHOP

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“A key ingredient in innovation is the ability to challenge authority and break rules."

Vivkek Wadhwa

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Criminal Futures WHAT DO WE DO NOW?

Giovanni Gambino & Italian Mafia NYC

Speculative Design is a term popularized by designers Tony Dunne and Fiona Raby. It is a method used to create ideas about possible futures and how society could be. It is a method for designers to open debates and discussions around the type of future society wants to prevent or move towards. As part of an exercise in a product design course with Sinclair Scott Smith, I wrote two pieces of design fiction: a utopian society in which criminal intentions bring peace to the world, and a dystopian society that suffers at maximum extents because of crime.

UTOPIA

Utopian Tale of 2075

SPRING 2016 // 3D PRODUCT DESIGN WITH SINCLAIR SCOTT SMITH

We the people are free. Free to think, to speak, and to live the way we want to live. Unbound by the mandates of others, we set our own courses and structure our lives however we want.

Our markets are free. The informal economy became formal.

Shops and goods have diversified, and competition is healthy.

Monopolies fell with the rise of a grey market that made its own rules. The rich lost money as the poor stopped being slaves to corporations and made their own living in the grey market. No longer bound by a single form of currency, informal markets freed the 99% from the cyclical nature of scraping up an income to function in society. We have tighter knit, more diversified communities based on trust, friendship, and geographical culture. And oddly enough, mafia turfs help protect the regional markets and communities from corruption. Gangsters have become a mix of police officials, social workers. and godfathers acting as benefactors and donors.

Our culture is liberal and accepting. More of us everyday learn to hold independent thoughts, critical of the information around us. Because we understand manipulation, we are more aware of our bias and the bias of media. No longer are we ignorant to facts. We are also less greedy. It is easier to make a decent living or build a good life. We are less racist. We’ve learned to accept others, to forgive, and to become more open-minded.

Religious groups make efforts to understand each other and to put themselves in the shoes and mindsets of others. We’re mixing everything up for the better.

We owe our freedom to the hardworking misfits who worked to challenge the law back then. Grey Market Studio was a group of misfits who used their skills in law, architecture, design, technology, science, and more to break rules and bring around change. They weren’t afraid to challenge the systems, to find loopholes, to steal from the government in order to give back to communities. They were whistleblowers and protesters who called out the unethical nature of the rich. They fought corruption with crime. They broke down and helped decentralize the government. Over time, their members became leaders of their own types of interesting moral tribes and mafias, and exist in the mafia/turf/social worker system we have today.

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Dystopian Tale of 2075 SPRING 2016 // 3D PRODUCT DESIGN WITH SINCLAIR SCOTT SMITH

The world is run by criminals. We, the dwellers of Level 0, are homeless, poor, hungry and angry. Angry that society continued being ignorant to the issues that were destroying our world. Gluttonous consumerism fed only the pockets of fat cat monopolies while stripping the planet of its natural resources and littering it with our wasteful shopping. No matter how loud we cried, how hard we fought, our numerous small voices weren’t enough to combat the money and power of corrupt leaders.

The turning point was Trump. When he was elected president in 2016, our world changed. Trump was a businessman, a moneymaker; but a country can’t be run like a business. He did everything he said he would: a wall between US and Mexico, heightened security and surveillance on Muslims, no gun control, and so many other terrible ideas. These changes gave his supporters an unsaid right to expose their inner racism, the aftermath of which continues to trickle down in 2075. Not only were Blacks persecuted, but Middle Easterners, Asians, and Hispanics as well. Trump was terrorism’s key for growth, creating a common enemy to pick on and represent America.

The Asian countries started growing in power, causing distrust and disgust of Asians worldwide. South Americans were deemed violent and associated with drug trafficking. In order to avoid the racism, we rub dirt over our faces to conceal our true skin colors. Down here, we’re always hiding. Up there, they wear masks.

To combat Trump and the corrupt corporations, groups of vigilante-minded people started banning together. Anonymous, Tor Group and Grey Market Studios are just a few. They competed and partnered like businesses, dealing in projects that stole from the rich to give back to the poor. In theory it was a grand idea but the government freaked out. They called them terrorists, but the harder the government pushed back, the larger the crimes these organizations plotted. Because of this distrust and heightened fear of terrorism, vigilante-criminal groups, and international infiltration, government surveillance became rampant, and Internet freedoms were taken away. Despite the pushback from hackers and privacy groups, the NSA overstepped its constitutional powers to strengthen its surveillance. It continues to be a back-and-forth chase of cat and mouse, but now everyone is involved and angry.

The vigilante groups are blinded to the fact that they’ve become the very people they were trying to fight. With their overconfidence in skills and schemes, they became addicted to the taste of power. They now run Levels 1-4, basically like mafias. They live right under Level 5, the level reserved for the infamously rich and corrupt that ultimately control this whole world. The mafias continue to try and exploit the rich.

You can imagine there’s a lot happening between Levels 4 and 5, the transition from mafia to corporation, but I wouldn’t be surprised if they’re working together now.

I, a dweller of Level 0, live in piles of trash that will never replace the forests we killed or the wildlife we sacrificed. Down here, we feel powerless and divided as we watch the insanely rich fly in their helicopters, living at the tops of buildings and never setting foot down on the main grounds now. Level 0 is unkempt, dirty, and rampant with misfits like myself. We are the poorest of the poor, treated like the waste of the human race. I’m looking for ways to graduate to a slightly cleaner Level 1, but I’d have to join a mafia in order to do so. It’s hard to pick a side when both are bad. You can’t trust anyone around here.

The upside to living among trash is that we’ve become secret inventors, tinkerers, and engineers. We can create elaborate stealth security systems using old cell phones. These come in great supply every few months. Our designs rival the government’s surveillance equipment. We’ve got cloaking devices that protect from thermal imaging, cameras to spy on police and others, listening devices, and more. Many highlevel dwellers buy from us Level 0s because our prices and quality can’t be beat. We have a whole lab, for rebellion and scheming against the higher ups. Computers and laptops are prohibited at Levels 0,1, and 2; however, they forget that their trash is our treasure. We’ve built our own supercomputers down here right under their noses. So while the mafias fight the rich, and the government tries to get in on that action, we down here at Level 0 will start our own technological revolution. Just wait and see.

DYSTOPIA

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DYSTOPIA

Dystopian Tools

SPRING 2016 // 3D PRODUCT DESIGN WITH SINCLAIR SCOTT SMITH

From the dystopian story I wrote, I designed the front page of a newspaper from that world, and developed two speculative products from that world. The stories and advertisements of the newspaper hinted towards a world divided by money and run by crime. I wrote stories about the manipulation of the US Constitution and apocalyptic environments changed by the dying climate. Because the story consisted of a world where everyone was a criminal, I began to think about the type of products in the market. Since most criminal intention is about obtaining wealth through unethical practices, I wondered what couture brands might sell to high class criminals. Instead of selling shoes, handbags and jewelry, I designed weapons of crime through the lens of couture design. First there is the Prada Security Camera. High class criminals could flaunt their monitoring systems in their homes with glamour. Then I designed a Louis Vuitton knife as an aggressive accessory to carry around on daily commutes. I also thought about a Fendi gun and a Coco Chanel grenade as a way to embellish these violent tools. These tools begin to paint a hauntingly luxurious picture of a dystopia divided by class, corruption and anger.

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DYSTOPIA

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DYSTOPIA

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A Dying Art

Photograph from Simon Owen

Scheming diamond heists and planning intricate bank robberies are fun and exciting, and also a thing of the past. Through my research I’ve had to come to terms that criminal masterminds of the physical world are a dying breed. Old school burglars with a vast knowledge of doors, locks and safes are coming to an end. Lockpicking is becoming obsolete with the invention of smart locks and palm scanners. It has become too cumbersome to replicate large bank vaults and to practice routines minute by minute. The preparation and innovative strategies for breaking into enclosures is too risky and demanding. The world of crime is now a technological generation of hackers, drug dealers, and corrupt businessmen now who act through the Internet. With a few keyboard strokes, hackers can steal millions from banks and corporations thousands of miles away without moving from their chairs. Although technology has made crime more efficient, accessible and easier to pull off, it’s just not as satisfying as an old-fashioned rundown.

THE DYING ARTS

“ANOTHER CLUE CAN BE FOUND IN THE AGE OF THE HATTON GARDEN BURGLARS. JOHN COLLINS, 74, DOZED OFF WHILE ACTING AS A LOOKOUT AND LATER SEEMED PARTIALLY DEAF IN COURT. TERRENCE PERKINS, 67, WAS RECORDED BY POLICE COMPLAINING ABOUT HIS MEDICINE REGIME AND BOASTING THAT THE HAUL 'COULD BE HIS PENSION'. BILL LINCOLN, 60, WAS LEFT OUT OF THE RAID DUE TO BLADDER PROBLEMS AND WET HIMSELF WHILE IN POLICE CUSTODY. THE OLDEST AT 76 WAS BRIAN READER, DUBBED 'THE MASTER' OR 'THE GUV’NOR' BY HIS COLLEAGUES. ON THE FIRST DAY OF THE RAID HE RODE TO HATTON GARDEN USING A BORROWED OVER-60S TRAVEL CARD... THAT SUPPORTS THE IDEA THAT THESE MEN, HOWEVER INGENIOUS, WERE DINOSAURS, USING SKILLS AND METHODS WHICH ARE NOW INCREASINGLY RARE.” Laurence Dodds, 2016 The Telegraph UK, The Hatton Garden Raid: Is It Still Possible to Get Away with a Heist?

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Masterminds Academy

SPRING 2016 // BUSINESS STRUCTURES WITH JANNA GILBERT

Taking the idea of training a new generation of criminal masterminds, I imagined a business plan for a daycare / afterschool program that teaches vital skills for creativity that traditional public education programs do not offer (with an underlying notion of training a new generation of master burglars and heist planners). Old school burglary is becoming a lost, generational artform that requires technical skill across many platforms. Today's new criminals act behind screens and digital technologies, which is also a trend in youth education. With today's extreme focus on the education of digital technology, youth are missing out on key traditional creative skills coming from tinkering, penmanship, and the studying of the behind-the-scenes action of the city's systems. Public schools don't even teach handwriting and penmanship anymore because of the focus on typing classes.

Youth should return to the roots of understanding how physical objects work and are constructed.

Run like a regular daycare / afterschool program for 3 times a week, students will learn many skills and engage in many different activities. Masterminds Academy will partner with TOOOL to provide lock picking lessons, and arrange field trips to facilities in the city like construction sites and banks. They will learn magic tricks, sleight of hand, poker, and blackjack. They will also engage in activities that train them physically and mentally. Unique field trips to city systems like trash routes, watershed outings, waste management, and the electric grid could teach kids about the bigger systems that make up the community. By understanding larger systems, kids can begin to grasp ideas on how to subvert or change these systems for better (or for worse). By staying off screens, Internet, and computers, kids get to engage with their hands and be immersed into making and tinkering.

This will help them become more creative and knowledgeable about construction, drawing, and design.

Masterminds Academy seeks to enhance creativity in youth by providing traditional outlets for tinkering, lockpicking, safecracking, rule-breaking and manipulation of the environment around us.

Masterminds Academy welcomes students ranging from 5-18 who are interested in crafts, electronics, hacking, the maker movement, and exploration. Parents interested in providing creative life skills are the target audience of this business. The classes are tailored towards engineering, architecture, maker movement, tinkering, computation, and local exploration,

Revenue comes from the donations of parents, the payment of each class or set of classes, and cancellation fees. Initial funding can come from educational grants and donors, and later from revenue. Classes start at $30 for two hours per student, with classes running three times per week.

There is already a large market in the Maker Movement for Masterminds Academy to exist in and flourish. In 2013, Maker Faire had 280,000 attendees and 88 worldwide fairs. Many of the programs provided at Maker Faire aimed towards teaching kids the basics of coding, lockpicking, and physical making. The Maker Faire movement is inspiring many kid programs for tinkering, Arduino, and electronics.They even invite TOOOL, a society for sport lock picking, to come and teach at the fair.62 Lockpicking is a very physical exercise that really teaches kids to understand how locks are made and how to get around them. However, there are some parents and programs out there that believe lockpicking will make their children act up. I believe learning skills like lockpicking and safecracking can positively enhance creative confidence in youth and teach them valuable lessons in physical making.

Masterminds Academy is different from other maker programs because of its emphasis on rule-breaking. Currently there are competitors in the Maker Education market. Programs like r00tz Academy and Def-Con Kids are geared towards the children of privacy-saavy parents, teaching kids the basics of digital hacking.63 At Masterminds Academy, every field trip or activity is based on a skill that master burglars and con men need to know. It provides safe outlets for kids to break rules and fail, in order to think more creatively and not be limited by what other authorities tell them. Masterminds Academy strives to make sure that the arts, skills, and mindset of historical creative criminals are not lost.

62 Bajarin, Tim. "Why the Maker Movement Is Important to America's Future."

Time. Time, 19 May 2014. Web. 63 Baldwin, Roberto. "Where Kids Can Hack without Getting in Trouble." Engadget. com. Engadget, 08 Aug. 2015. Web.

MASTERMINDS ACADEMY

“Rebellious kids grow up to out-earn rule-followers.” “...rule-breaking and defiance of parental authority was the best predictor of which students ended up making higher incomes.”

Matt Phillips Quartz Magazine 2015

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From a survey of 9 parents with children ranging from 2 - 13 years old.

Would you rather have child activities that are...

When finding an activity for your child, would you rather the activity be...

Average: 3.22

Average: 4.67

1

2

3

4

5 A Physical Activity

A Digital Activity

Average: 3.89

Under Careful Guidance

2

3

2

3

4

5 Mental/ Intellectual Activities

How much are you willing to spend on a 10-week program for your child?

Would you rather have your child's learning experience be...

1

1 Physical/ Tangible Activities

4

5 Unhindered Free Exploration

Please select words that best describe the type of experience you'd like to provide for your child/children.

Team Building

7 / 78%

Explorative

6 / 67%

Design

5 / 56%

Intellectual

5 / 56%

Inventing

5 / 56%

Musical

5 / 56%

Physically Active

5 / 56%

Risk Taking

4 / 44%

Strategy

4 / 44%

Tinkering

4 / 44%

Hacking

2 / 22%

Leadership

2 / 22%

Digital Learning

1 / 11%

Logical

1 / 11%

Mentorship

1 / 11%

More than $900

1 / 11%

$700 - $900

0 / 0%

$500 – $700

2 / 29%

$300 – $500

2 / 29%

$100 – $300

1 / 11%

Less than $100

1 / 11%

Would you consider enrolling your child/ children in a 10-week program that teaches skills and activities inspired from burglary?

As a designer studying crime, I've noticed that criminal masterminds (those who plan heists and burglaries) require similar skills as artists and designers, but see problems in an entirely new and creative way. In many ways, these masterminds are incredibly smart and talented with abilities to understand large systems, to take risks and to invent new methods of their own. Examples of activities proposed for this program include: lockpicking, safecracking, understand architecture and floor plans, taking apart machinery and objects, acting, and more.

Yes

1 / 14%

No

2 / 29%

Maybe

4 / 57%

MASTERMINDS ACADEMY

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8 Sessions for $400 1

Lockpicking Basics with professional locksmiths

2 Hacking Basics with veteran hacker 3 Sleight of Hand with professional magician 4 Cryptography with graphic designer 5 Spy Tools I with ex-CIA agent and engineer 6 Spy Tools II with ex-CIA agent and engineer 7 Confidence with actor 8 The Break In with FBI Agent

Maker Programs for Kids

physical ConstructionKids

Future Makers

Superhero Camp

Maker Camp

Spy Camp entertainment based

Beam Camp

skill based

Zen Maker Lab

Robo Fun

Brain Monkeys

r00tz asylum

Pixel Academy defcon kids digital

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Keyhole Gigantico

SPRING 2016 // 3D PRODUCT DESIGN WITH SINCLAIR SCOTT SMITH

Scheming diamond heists and planning intricate bank robberies are fun and exciting, and also a thing of the past. Through my research I’ve had to come to terms that criminal masterminds of the physical world are a dying breed. Old school burglars with a vast knowledge of doors, locks and safes are coming to an end. Lockpicking is becoming obsolete with the invention of smart locks and palm scanners. It has become too cumbersome to replicate large bank vaults and to practice routines minute by minute. The preparation and innovative strategies for breaking into enclosures is too risky and demanding. The world of crime is now a technological generation of hackers, drug dealers, and corrupt businessmen now who act through the Internet. With a few keyboard strokes, hackers can steal millions from banks and corporations thousands of miles away without moving from their chairs.

Although technology has made crime more efficient, accessible and easier to pull off, it’s just not as satisfying as an old-fashioned rundown.

Losing a generation of criminal masterminds means losing a wealth of knowledge of the physical world. These are experts in tinkering and misusing everyday objects. In order to know how physical objects function, the masterminds first need to know how the objects were constructed. Then they could truly subvert the object’s original intention. Lockpicking would be the most common and obvious example of this. For my final product design, I imagined a lock pick puzzle box piggy bank for kids to learn lockpicking and to develop analog skills at a young age.

In order to know how to lockpick, the would be burglar needs to know how a lock is constructed. Traditional locks are made with a set of pins and tumblers. There is the outer casing that houses all the pin tumblers. Inside the casing is a cylindrical plug. This plug is where a key hole is machined out. Within both the plug and outer casing, three to five channels are drilled in perpendicularly to each other. These channels are where two sets of pins plus a spring live and make the lock function. There are two types of pins: the driver pin and the key pin. The driver pin sits on top of the key pin inside the channel and is pushed downwards by a spring. The gap between the plug and the outer casing is called the shear line. When a key is inserted, the specific bumps of the keys make the gaps between the driver pins and key pins line up with the shear line, allowing the plug to turn freely.

After understanding how a lock works, burglars and locksmiths can use small tools to pick the locks. The goal of lock picking is to push the key pins and driver pins up one by one until the plug is free to turn.

A lock pick set is made up of a tension rod and a variety of rakes and bump tools. The tension rod is for turning the plug while the picker uses the rakes to push the pins up. It takes a lot of practice but after a while, professional pickers can get through in minutes.

My puzzle box piggy bank is a blown up version of the pin, tumblers, and lock picks. It is a giant simplified wooden keyhole with hand held picks to push up wooden pins. The driver pins and key pins are two sets of wooden blocks, differing in size. Kids must drop the key pins into the shafts first and then drop the driver pins on top. This causes the puzzle box to lock. Kids use the picks to push up the key pins through the keyhole in order to get the gap between the key pins and driver pins to match the shear line. Once cleared, the plug can be turned and pulled out, revealing a secret compartment drawer. I hope that with a puzzle like this, children can start to grasp the inner workings of locks and become better lock pickers faster. Working with our hands makes us smarter and helps us think three-dimensionally.

It is important for kids to start grasping the mechanics of everyday objects at a young age before becoming sucked into the digital world of intangible objects.

KEYHOLE GIGANTICO

LOCKPICKING EXCERPTS: From Secrets of Lockpicking by Steven Hampton

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KEYHOLE GIGANTICO

153

154

THE FUTURE OF CRIME

KEYHOLE GIGANTICO

155

156

THE FUTURE OF CRIME

KEYHOLE THE FUTURE GIGANTICO OF CRIME

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158

THE FUTURE OF CRIME

KEYHOLE GIGANTICO

159

“It does not pay to lead a dishonest life."

Harry Houdini The Right Way to Do Wrong

Ocean’s Eleven (2001)

163

The End A NEW BEGINNING

Crime hurts people and destroys lives.

As much as we enjoy stories of escapes, plots, and break-ins, we must remember that crime is illegal and destructive. Media can romanticize criminals into action heroes and rebels, but it does not change our fears in the breached security and lost trust that result from the remains of illegal activities.

Although I’ve written thousands of words about breaking rules, I recognize that rules, authority and structure are essential to keeping peace. Design exists to improve lives and to solve problems. Creating rules to prevent crime and unethical behavior is a form of design. In exploring rebellious ways, designers can discover new possibilities in facing corruption in our society. Because in order to defeat the enemy, we must think like one. I hope to challenge designers to think with a dash of insanity. Sometimes it is necessary to discard the good, the noble and the rational in order to make way for innovation. It is important to write out the stupid ideas, the evil ideas and even the ideas that would throw the world into chaos.

Spilling these options stops the growth of poor judgement from infecting the imagination. It can also help reveal new methods for change.

Ultimately, this was a thesis to help me become brave. And I’ve found that I do my best work when I feel unbound by rules. Design is a profession that exists to serve people, but designing crimes was an exercise for me to serve myself. Over the course of this year, I’ve allowed myself to be selfish, to get angry, to become insane. I’ve snapped at people, but I’m less afraid of letting my opinions be heard.

I had spent so much time believing what others say is right, that I’ve only now begun to voice and analyze what I feel to be wrong. I let a new passion for control drive me, fuel me, for better and for worse. I’m more confident in my work and I feel free to explore the unknown. Studying how to be bad has ultimately made me a better person. I have finally grasped control and independence in my life, and I’m not letting go.

164

THE END

A Failed Attempt to interview Frank Abagnale

165

Credits

The best part of my thesis, in my opinion, was the chance to speak with amazing people, to read fantastic books, and to “study” some spectacular films. My only regret is not having enough to time to dive into even more books, interviews and films. The topic was exciting, compelling and the best time I’ve ever spent researching. I am grateful to every human being I was able to speak with and I hope this bibliography does them justice.

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APPENDIX

SUBJECT MATTER EXPERTS

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168

APPENDIX

BOOKS & MOVIES

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APPENDIX

Bibliography BOOKS Abagnale, Frank W. Catch Me If You Can. New York: Broadway Books, 1980. Print.

Lois, George. Damn Good Advice For People With Talent. London: Phaidon Inc, 2012. Print.

Antonelli, Paola, Jamer Hunt, and Michelle Millar Fisher. Design and Violence. New York: Museum of Modern Art, 2015. Print.

Macknik, Stephen L., S. Martinez-Conde, and Sandra Blakeslee. Sleights of Mind: What the Neuroscience of Magic Reveals about Our Everyday Deceptions. New York: Henry Holt, 2010. Print.

Clay, Alexa, and Kyra Maya Phillips. The Misfit Economy: Lessons in Creativity from Pirates, Hackers, Gangsters, and Other Informal Entrepreneurs. New York: Simon & Schuster, 2015 Print.

Manaugh, Geoff. A Burglar's Guide to The City. New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2016. Print.

Conway, J. North. King of Heists: The Sensational Bank Robbery of 1878 That Shocked America. Guilford, CT: Lyons, 2009. Print.

Melton, H. Keith, and Robert Wallace. The Official CIA Manual of Trickery and Deception. New York: William Morrow, 2009. Print.

Covert, Abby. How To Make Sense of Any Mess. 2015. Print.

Mitnick, Kevin D., and William L. Simon. The Art of Deception: Controlling the Human Element of Security. Indianapolis, IN: Wiley Pub., 2002. Print.

Godwin, George. The Builder Volume XLV Jan. 1883. Print.

Goodman, Marc. Future Crimes: Everything Is Connected, Everyone Is Vulnerable and What We Can Do about It. Print.

Greenberg, Andy. This Machine Kills Secrets: How WikiLeakers, Cypherpunks and Hacktivists Aim to Free the World's Information. New York: Dutton, 2012. Print.

Houdini, Harry. The Right Way to Do Wrong. Brooklyn: Melville House, 2012. Print.

Katz, Jack. Seductions of Crime: Moral and Sensual Attractions in Doing Evil. New York: Basic, 1988. Print.

Konnikova, Maria. The Confidence Game: Why We Fall for It... Every Time.

New York: Viking, 2016. Print.

Konnikova, Maria. Mastermind: How to Think Like Sherlock Holmes. New York: Penguin Books, 2013. Print.

Konnikova, Maria. The Psychopath Test: A Journey Through the Madness Industry. New York: Riverhead Books, 2011. Print.

Neuwirth, Robert. Stealth of Nations: The Global Rise of the Informal Economy. New York: Pantheon, 2011. Print.

Petit, Philippe. Creativity: The Perfect Crime. New York: Riverhead, 2014.

Print.

Polisi, Salvatore, and Steve Dougherty. The Sinatra Club. New York: Gallery, 2012. Print.

Porrello, Rick. Superthief: A Master Burglar, the Mafia and the Biggest Bank Heist in U.S. History. Novelty, OH: Next Hat, 2006. Print.

Rehder, William J., and Gordon Dillow. Where the Money Is: True Tales from the Bank Robbery Capital of the World. New York: W.W. Norton, 2003. Print.

Selby, Scott Andrew., and Greg Campbell. Flawless: Inside the Largest Diamond Heist in History. New York: Union Square, 2010. Print.

Stone, Alex. Fooling Houdini: Magicians, Mentalists, Math Geeks, and the Hidden Powers of the Mind. New York: Harper, 2012. Print.

Wittman, Robert K. Priceless: How I Went Undercover to Rescue the World's Stolen Treasures. New York: Crown, 2010. Print.

BIBLIOGRAPHY

171

ARTICLES Burnett, D. Graham. “Give and Take.” Cabinet: A Quarterly of Art and Culture, Issue 58 Theft Aug. 2015. Print.

Manaugh, Geoff. “Inside Jobs.” Cabinet: A Quarterly of Art and Culture, Issue 58 Theft Aug. 2015. Print.

Baldwin, Roberto. “Where Kids Can Hack without Getting in Trouble.”

Engadget. 13 Aug. 2015. Web. 13 Mar. 2016.

Marthews, Alex and Tucker, Catherine, Government Surveillance and Internet Search Behavior (April 29, 2015).

Bajarin, Tim. “Why the Maker Movement Is Important to America’s Future.”Time. Time, 19 May 2014. Web. 13 Mar. 2016.

Noe, Rain. “What Does a Bag Designed to Carry $1 Million in Cash Look Like?” Core77. 6 Nov. 2015. Web. 13 Mar. 2016.

Bearman, Joshuah. “The Untold Story of Silk Road, Part 1.” Wired.com.

Conde Nast Digital, Apr. 2015. Web. 13 Mar. 2016.

Peliti, Margherita. “A Phony Claim?” Cabinet: A Quarterly of Art and Culture, Issue 58 Theft Aug. 2015. Print.

Bierut, Michael. “How to Make Your Client’s Logo Bigger Without Making Their Logo Bigger.” Core77. Sept. 2009. Web. 13 Mar. 2016.

Robson, David. “The Strange Expertise of Burglars.” BBC. 18 June 2015.

Web. 13 Mar. 2016.

Brandom, Russell. “The Dragnet.” The Verge. 13 Jan. 2016. Web. 13 Mar. 2016.

R00tz. Web. 13 Mar. 2016. <http://r00tz.org/>.

Cheredar, Tom. “NSA Views Encryption as Evidence of Suspicion and Will Target Those Who Use It, Security Journalist says.” VentureBeat. 10 Mar. 2014. Web. 13 Mar. 2016.

Davis, Joshua. “The Untold Story of the World’s Biggest Diamond Heist.”

Wired.com. Conde Nast Digital, 12 Mar. 2009. Web. 13 Mar. 2016.

Dodds, Laurence. “Is It Still Possible to Get Away with a Heist?” The Telegraph. 15 Jan. 2016. Web. 13 Mar. 2016.

Famous Cases & Criminals. FBI. Web. 13 Mar. 2016.

Harding, Luke. “How Edward Snowden Went from Loyal NSA Contractor to Whistleblower.” The Guardian. Guardian News and Media, 01 Feb. 2014.

Web. 13 Mar. 2016.

“RUSSIAN CRIMINAL TATTOO ARCHIVE.” EFUEL. Web. 13 Mar. 2016.

Shannon, Hannah M. “Warren Ellis Finds Murder Just Makes Your Life Better– An Evening of Hit Men, Burglars, Secret Agents, and Thieves in New York, With Full Audio.” Bleeding Cool. 25 Nov. 2013. Web. 13 Mar. 2016.

Sheehan, Kevin, and Beckie Strum. “Ex-MIT Professor Told Friends He ‘robbed the Bank’.” New York Post. 12 Jan. 2015. Web. 13 Mar. 2016.

“Shoplifting Techniques.” Graffiti Guide. May 2009. Web. 13 Mar. 2016.

Smith, Justin E. H. “The Internet of Snails.” Cabinet: A Quarterly of Art and Culture, Issue 58 Theft Aug. 2015. Print.

Thielman, Sam. “Cybersecurity Bill Could ‘sweep Away’ Internet Users’ Privacy, Agency Warns.” The Guardian. Guardian News and Media, 03 Aug. 2015. Web. 13 Mar. 2016.

Heller, Steven. “Steve Heller Hunts down a Nazi Graphics Standards Manual.” The Design Observer Group. Design Observer, 07 Feb. 2011.

Web. 15 May 2016.

Toner, Jerry. “The Robber and the Robbed.” Cabinet: A Quarterly of Art and Culture, Issue 58 Theft Aug. 2015. Print.

Hiroshima, Naoki. “How I Lost My $50,000 Twitter Username.” Medium.

28 Jan. 2014. Web. 13 Mar. 2016.

Wallen, Curtis. “How to Invent a Person Online.” The Atlantic. Atlantic Media Company, 23 July 2014. Web. 13 Mar. 2016.

Kagel, Jenna. “An Up-To-Date Layman’s Guide To Accessing The Deep Web.” Fast Company. 26 Feb. 2014. Web. 13 Mar. 2016.

Wen, Tiffanie. “Why Don’t More People Want to Donate Their Organs?”

The Atlantic. Atlantic Media Company, 10 Nov. 2014. Web. 13 Mar. 2016.

Laddaga, Reinaldo. “A City for Poets and Pirates.” Cabinet: A Quarterly of Art and Culture, Issue 58 Theft Aug. 2015. Print.

Manaugh, Geoff. “BLDGBLOG: 15 Lombard Street.” BLDGBLOG. 30 July 2008. Web. 13 Mar. 2016.

Zetter, Kim. “Turns Out Police Stingray Spy Tools Can Indeed Record Calls.” Wired.com. Conde Nast Digital, 28 Oct. 2015. Web. 13 Mar. 2016.

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MOVIES 21. Dir. Robert Luketic. Perf. Kevin Spacey. Columbia Pictures, 2008.

DVD.

Ocean’s Eleven. Dir. Steven Soderbergh. Perf. George Clooney and Brad Pitt. Warner Bros. Pictures, 2001. DVD.

American Hustle. Dir. David O. Russell. Perf. Christian Bale, Bradley Cooper, Amy Adams, Jeremy Renner, Jennifer Lawrence. Columbia Pictures, 2013.

Ocean’s Twelve. Dir. Steven Soderbergh. Perf. George Clooney and Brad Pitt. Warner Bros. Pictures, 2004. DVD.

Bonnie and Clyde. Dir. Arthur Penn. Perf. Warren Beatty, Faye Dunaway, Michael J. Pollard, Gene Hackman and Estelle Parsons. Warner Bros., 1967.

Catch Me If You Can. Dir. Steven Spielberg. Perf. Leonardo DiCaprio and Tom Hanks. Dreamworks, 2002.

Ocean’s Thirteen. Dir. Steven Soderbergh. Perf. George Clooney and Brad Pitt. Warner Bros. Pictures, 2007. DVD. Reservoir Dogs. Dir. Quentin Tarantino. By Quentin Tarantino. Perf.

Quentin Tarantino, Harvey Keitel, Michael Madsen, and Christopher Penn.

Miramax Films, 1992.

Deep Web. Dir. Alex Winter. BOND360, 2015. DVD.

Sicario. Dir. Denis Villeneuve. Perf. Emily Blunt and Benicio del Toro.

Lionsgate, 2015.

Donnie Brasco. Dir. Mike Newell. Perf. Al Pacino and Johnny Depp. TriStar Pictures, 1997. DVD.

The Bank Job. Dir. Roger Donaldson. Perf. Jason Statham. Lionsgate, 2008. DVD.

Fast Five. Dir. Justin Lin. Perf. Vin Diesel and Paul Walker. Universal Pictures, 2011. DVD.

The Godfather. Dir. Francis Ford Coppola. By Francis Ford Coppola, Mario Puzo, Al Pacino, James Caan, Richard Castellano, Robert Duvall, Sterling Hayden, John Marley, Richard Conte, and Diane Keaton. Paramount Pictures, 1972.

Gone in 60 Seconds. Dir. Dominic Sena. Perf. Nicholas Cage. Touchstone Pictures, 2000. DVD Gone Girl Dir. David Fincher. Perf. Ben Affleck and Rosamund Pike. 20th Century Fox, 2014.

Goodfellas. Dir. Martin Scorsese. Perf. Robert De Niro, Ray Liotta, Joe Pesci. Warner Bros, 1990.

The Italian Job. Dir. Peter Collinson. Perf. Michael Caine. Paramount Pictures, 1969. DVD. The Italian Job. Dir. Felix G. Gray. Perf. Mark Wahlberg and Charlize Theron. Paramount Pictures, 2003. DVD.

Heat. Dir. Michael Mann. Perf. Al Pacino and Robert De Niro. Warner Bros., 1995. DVD.

The Shawshank Redemption. Dir. Frank Darabont. By Frank Darabont.

Perf. Tim Robbins, Morgan Freeman, Bob Gunton, and James Whitmore.

Columbia Pictures, 1994.

Infernal Affairs. Dir. Weiqiang Liu and Zhaohui Mai. Perf. Andy Lau and Tony Chiu Wai Leung. Miramax Films, 2004.

The Thieves. Dir. Choi Dong-hoon. Prod. Ahn Soo-hyun. Perf.Kim Yoonseok and Lee Jung-jae. Showbox/Mediaplex, 2012.

Inside Man. Dir. Spike Lee. Perf. Denzel Washington and Clive Owen.

Universal Pictures, 2006. DVD.

The Usual Suspects. Dir. Bryan Singer. Bad Hat Harry Productions, 1995.

DVD.

Now You See Me. Dir. Louis Leterrier. Perf. Jesse Eisenberg, Mark Ruffalo, Woody Harrelson, Mélanie Laurent, Isla Fisher and Dave Franco.

Lionsgate Films, 2013. DVD.

Pulp Fiction. Dir. Quentin Tarantino. By Quentin Tarantino. Prod. Lawrence Bender. Perf. Samuel L. Jackson and Uma Thurman. Miramax, 1995.

Ocean’s 11. Dir. Lewis Milestone. Perf. Frank Sinatra, Dean Martin, Sammy Davis, Peter Lawford, Angie Dickenson, Richard Conte, Cesar Romero, Patrice Wymore, Joey Bishop, and Akim Tamiroff. Warner Bros, 1960.

BIBLIOGRAPHY

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TELEVISION

PODCASTS & TALKS

Breaking Bad. Dir. Vince Gilligan. Sony Pictures Home Entertainment, 2014.

Anas, Anas A. “How I Named, Shamed and Jailed.” TED. TED Talks, Feb. 2013. Web. 13 Mar. 2016.

Criminal Minds. Dir. Jeff Davis. CBS. Sept. 2005. Television.

“Code Breaking.” HISTORY. A E. Web. 13 Mar. 2016.

Dexter Dir. James Manos, Jr. Showtime. Oct. 2006. Television.

Fallon, Jim. "Exploring the Mind of a Killer." TED. TED Talks, Feb. 2009.

Web. 13 Mar. 2016.

How to Get Away with Murder. Dir. Peter Nowalk. ABC. 25 Sept. 2014.

Television.

Inside the American Mob. National Geographic Channel. June 2013.

Television.

Mr. Robot. Dir. Sam Esmail. USA. 27 May 2015. Television.

Glass, Ira, Nancy Updike, Katie Davis, Aimee Bender, and Matt Malloy.

“Crime Scene.” Audio blog post. This American Life. WBEZ, 7 July 2000.

Web. Glass, Ira, Matt Malloy, Julia Sweeney, Marilyn Snell, and Jeanne Finley.

“Allure of Crime.” Audio blog post. This American Life. WBEZ, 23 July 1999. Web.

NCIS. Dir. Donald P. Bellisario and Don McGill. Sept. 2003. Television.

“Secrets of the Shoplifters.” Secrets of Pickpockets, Shoplifters, Scammers. Channel 4. Online Streaming.

Sherlock. Dir. Mark Gatiss and Steven Moffat BBC. July. 2010. Television.

The Blacklist. Dir. Jon Bokenkamp. NBC. Sept. 2013. Television.

Glenny, Misha. “How Global Crime Networks Work.” TED. TED Talks, July 2009. Web. Goodman, Marc. “A Vision of Crimes in the Future.” TED. TED Talks, June 2012. Web. Judge, Phoebe. "Pants On Fire." Audio blog post. Criminal. Criminal, 14 Feb. 2014. Web.

The Last Panthers. Dir. Jack Thorne. Sky Atlantic. Nov. 2015. Television.

Judge, Phoebe. "Dropping Like Flies." Audio blog post. Criminal. Criminal, 24 Apr. 2014. Web. Judge, Phoebe. "J.R.R. Ziemba." Audio blog post. Criminal. Criminal, 30 June 2014. Web. Judge, Phoebe. "Break The Internet." Audio blog post. Criminal. Criminal, 11 Nov. 2014. Web. Judge, Phoebe. "He's Neutral." Audio blog post. Criminal. Criminal, 30 Jan. 2015. Web. Judge, Phoebe. "Final Exit." Audio blog post. Criminal. Criminal, 13 Mar. 2015. Web. Judge, Phoebe. "Gil From London." Audio blog post. Criminal. Criminal, 15 May 2015. Web. Judge, Phoebe. "Ex Libris." Audio blog post. Criminal. Criminal, 26 June 2015. Web. Mingle, Katie. “Breaking the Bank.” Audio blog post. 99% Invisible. 99% Invisible, 27 May 2014. Web. Mingle, Katie. “The Nutshell Studies.” Audio blog post. 99% Invisible.

99% Invisible, 19 May 2015. Web. Motley, Kimberley. “How I Defend the Rule of Law.” TED. TED Talks, Oct. 2014. Web. 13 Mar. 2016.

Robbins, Apollo. “The Art of Misdirection.” TED. TED Talks, June 2013.

Web. Zimbardo, Philip. “The Psychology of Evil.” TED. TED Talks, Feb. 2008.

Web.

Thank You

175

Like any mastermind, I could not have succeeded in this effort alone. There are so many people to thank for this opportunity.

First off thank you to Claire Zimowski, my editor and friend, who graciously spent time editing this writing with me. Thank you Calvin Szeto, Adam Fujita, and Souvik Paul for doing some additional edits.

Thank you Allan Chochinov, the chair of MFA Products of Design, for accepting me into this program and granting me the chance to do a thesis on crime.

Thank you to Gabrielle Kellner, Marko Manriquez and Alisha Wessler for everything. And thank you to Chappell Ellison for introducing me to the program.

Thank you to my amazing thesis faculty who have guided me through this process and allowing me to go a little crazy: Andrew Schloss, Allan Chochinov, Abby Covert, Sinclair Scott Smith, Steven Dean, Janna Gilbert, Brent Arnold, and Emilie Baltz.

Thank you to the amazing faculty I was able to work with throughout my two years. And thank you to the VFL team for all the late nights and help with building prototypes. One more thank you for the generations of PoD students before and after year 3.

I am honored to be part of such a great family of designers.

Thank you to my amazing friends & classmates for making this graduating class so spectacular.

This is love and gratitude for all the late nights, inside jokes, ups and downs. We survived.

To Riley Triggs, Dan Olsen, Jett Butler, Kate Caterall, Gloria Lee and David Shields: Thank you for developing me into the designer I am today with the basics at the University of Texas at Austinâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s Design BFA program. I would not be here today without the recommendations and support from you all.

Without Calvin Szeto, my partner in crime and best friend, I would not be alive today. Thank you for taking great care of me during the two toughest years of my life so far.

Thank you to my sister Erin for being my role model for bravery and mischief.

And finally thank you to my parents Kent & Ping and Popo for raising me with love and support, and giving me the opportunity to attend this program. You taught me the diligence to get through this program and any projects that come my way and I am forever grateful.

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