Phreaking Birds Botnet – Der Schwarm

Kunstverein Peschkenhaus, Moers. Together with Till Nachtmann and the help of Prof. Matthias Funk, TU Eindhoven

Seven mechanical birds are sitting on branches. They move independently from each other, but every 5 minutes they synchronize their behaviour. The sounds they are making refer to special 1980s telephone and modem sounds. These sounds were used for Phreaking.Phreaking involved reverse engineering the specific tones used by phone companies to route long distance calls. By emulating those tones, “phreaks” could make free calls around the world.