1. Preliminary notes on kill switches

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A bunch of rambling text that barely relates to the task.

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You probably want to skip ahead straight to the photos. I know I would.


I had some time to kill at work the other day, and came across this lovely task. That started me thinking about kill switches in general.

I decided to play a little game: spot the kill switch. I counted as many Big Red Buttons as I could find in my workplace. Note that I work in a lab filled with machines that would think nothing of burning you, electrocuting you, tearing off your fingers, and then finishing you off with a lung-full of fluorine at the first opportunity; Spot the kill switch may be less fun in an office environment.

In order to be counted, a switch must be a Big Red Button - that is, larger than a standard keyboard key, red or orange, and pressable. It must function as an emergency power-off. And, it must not be ordinarily used to turn off the machine. Power switches or mains switches that happen to be big and red don't count, except if they are also clearly labeled with text indicating that they are to be used in an emergency. Fire alarms, hazmat alarms, etc also do not count. I also chose to ignore big, grey, knife-switch circuit breakers, even though they are labeled "____ DISCONNECT" and "safety switch."

Total number of kill switches I could spot in twenty minutes without leaving the lab: 106.

That's a whole lot of instances of an object I've never spent any time looking at or considering.

What surprised me most was how diverse they are. A few designs are repeated, but there are at least 50 or 60 different parts. They're slightly different shapes and made from a range of materials. Some have twist-lock mechanisms and others have key releases. There are also quite an assortment of baffles to prevent accidental presses, from hunks of PVC pipe that have been cut down with a sawzall to intricately machined aluminum enclosures.

Some switches are actually quite beautiful. I've added snapshots of my two favorites to the end of the slide show.

The effort that must have gone into designing such an array of kill switches is astounding, given that they have to be massively over-engineered and are designed never to be used. Many, many engineer-lives have been spent creating these objects, which are ignored by everybody.

One of my hobbies is contemplating the unseen work that goes into constructing the world around us. I'm happy to have found yet another instance to ponder, thanks in large part to this task.

2. Group relation requirement.

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More rambling text, but at least this bit is explicitly required by the task.

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Keep going. You'll be at the photos in no time.


On the relationship between this task and the description/value structures of my group -

The battle for control of public space and the negotiation of individual liberties within society are both fundamental to BartPA. As we move throughout the city, we are constantly subjected to events beyond our control. We are filmed, we are bombarded by images, our movement is restricted by a range of mechanical and social restraints, etc.

When we add a kill switch to any public object, we radically alter the municipal power structure. Anyone and everyone who passes suddenly acquires the ability to control their environment, and perhaps the environment of others nearby.

When we add a non-functional kill switch, the individual may believe that an opportunity to modify the environment has been created, although in reality no such change has occurred. A fake kill switch is therefore indistinguishable from a real kill switch (unless and until it is pressed) with regard to liberating the individual.

Of course, there are two alternative outcomes. Some may inspect the switch closely and recognize that it is not functional. That immediately prompts the question, "why would someone install a fake kill switch on this object?" That cannot but lead to a discussion such as this one, and is perhaps of even greater public utility than would be a genuine kill switch.

The final possibility, that the switch may go unnoticed until destroyed by weather, is the most likely and certainly the least interesting outcome. But, as a psychological experiment designed to probe the relationship between city dwellers and their environment, this too is directly in line with the BartPA field of interest.

For a discussion of the state-changing nature of my particular kill switches, see image captions.

3. Task completion.

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The bit that may be read by someone other than myself and possibly Burn Unit.

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You're almost to the photos. Hooray!


Nothing fancy here. Just the straightforward completion of a really fun task.

I had hoped to find some real discarded kill switches, but as one might expect, they tend to be the very last thing to break on a machine and don't wind up getting thrown out very often.

So, I made my own simulated switches from disposable plastic petri dishes fished out of a waste bin, glued together, and spray-painted. With the addition of a foam-core backed sign printed on vellum paper (and later on ordinary printer paper when I ran out of vellum), they look pretty good, even up close. At a 10 cm button diameter, they're a little bit larger than any real kill switch I've seen, but not so large as to be absurd.

Once all the kill switches were assembled, I grabbed a bus to San Francisco and made a slow meandering path from the TransBay terminal to one of the principal battle grounds in the struggle for control of public space: Union Square. Along the way, I mounted switches wherever it seemed appropriate, using a combination of adhesive backed magnets and double sided tape squares.