Biography
David Huerta is an artist and technologist whose work includes digital security education, cybersecurity reporting, and a nascent artistic practice.
As a digital security trainer, he's held hundreds of workshops for journalists with Freedom of the Press Foundation, the National Association of Hispanic Journalists, and others. He's also trained librarian staff on digital security for library patrons via the Empire State Library Network and METRO. He first started out doing this sort of thing as part of CryptoParty, which he brought to New York in 2012, co-organizing digital security teach-ins with the general public at NYC Resistor, the Brooklyn Public Library, and the Whitney Museum as part of Laura Poitras's Astro Noise exhibition in 2016.
His cybersecurity expertise has been leaned on by numerous journalists at Huffington Post, Bloomberg, WIRED, Business Insider, the Washington Post, the Las Vegas Review-Journal and several freelancers. This has led to cybersecurity reporting, where he's written on anonymity networks, Wi-Fi security and VPNs with bylines at Vice, The Outline, and Wirecutter, a New York Times company.
Before coming to New York, he co-founded HeatSync Labs, Arizona's first hackerspace, which became a hub of maker culture and creative technology for the greater Phoenix area. After arriving in NYC, he became a member of NYC Resistor while working as the lead software developer at the Brooklyn Museum, where he where he and the team he led created the ASK Brooklyn Museum mobile app, which engaged visitors in direct conversation with museum staff and won multiple MUSE awards.
Along with Olof Mathé and Paul Christophe, he co-founded Art Hack Day, a hackathon for artists who's medium is technology and technologists who's medium is art. With events from San Francisco to Stockholm, this provided a platform for hundreds of artists and technologists to explore the creative potential of the recently possible in technology and collaborate with others to create a pop-up exhibit in 48 hours. Along with participants, Huerta used this platform as a springboard to develop his artistic practice, which has culminated in works making appearances at the Internet Yami-Ichi, Transmediale, Lothringer 13 Halle in Munich and the NSA's mailroom at Fort Meade.
Artist Statement
The creative inquiries that I explore are designed to invoke political possibilities. Many of the instruments of power I aim to critique are technology-based systems, so for me it makes sense to create works of technology which highlight the limits and flaws in those system to make the point that their owners are neither omniscient nor omnipotent. Works that I've produced have highlighted the limits of mass surveillance in particular, and the demonstration of effective means of resistance to them.