Скачать или смотреть INTERNAL USE ONLY, Hosted by Dhruv Mehrotra & Brendan C. Byrne

The longest amount of time any area in the continental United States has gone without an update in Google Earth was between 2008 to 2016. The gap lied in a dry lake bed in Southwestern Nevada located in the Tonopah Test Range, a subsection of the Nellis Test and Training Range, which is jointly owned by the Department of Energy and Air Force.



When Eyebeam Resident Dhruv Mehrotra and writer Brendan C. Byrne discovered this gap and realized they could purchase the rights to the satellite image themselves, they bought it in an attempt to push Google into completing its dataset. However, the purchase came with a set of its own restrictions within layers of legalese, which frustrated this initial intent while prompting an exploration into the most notable phrase that kept appearing: FOR INTERNAL USE ONLY.



What possibilities exist between the fine print, and can creative approaches help to locate grey areas, or loopholes to work within? Can abstraction or poetry obfuscate an original to the point of no longer being confined by a legal document? Where is that line and in how many ways can we collectively push upon the boundaries defined by “internal use?” What are the implications of state secrets and corporate censorship on artistic interpretation?



In an effort to interrogate these questions, Mehrotra and Byrne have commissioned a series of abstracted paintings of the satellite image by artist Sebastian Gladstone, and original poetry by Marvin Mayfield. During INTERNAL USE ONLY, these new works will be revealed and performed to an intimate audience of “internal users,” followed by conversations joined by Washington DC Bureau Chief of Yahoo News, Sharon Weinberger, and copyright lawyer Mark Bradford.