The Man Making Art From Government Surveillance

Lately, Trevor Paglen has been designing satellites that serve a purely aesthetic function — that is, without military or communications purposes. This draft is the "Prototype for a Nonfunctional Satellite (Design 4; Build 4)." Courtesy of Altman Siegel Gallery and Metro Pictures.

Trevor Paglen thinks about being monitored by things you can’t see: secret military bases, tapped cables, spy satellites. So he just sent a work of art into space.

(Image credit: Trevor Paglen/Courtesy of Nevada Museum of Art)