Art robot that buys MDMA released by authorities in the name of creative freedom

The Random Darknet Shopper was let go after being confiscated for three months by police

The Random Darknet Shopper ordered MDMA packet after being emptied by police

Should we be able to break the law in the name of art? According to Swiss authorities, if you create a robot that randomly buys MDMA over the internet as part of an art exhibition, it’s perfectly fine to.

Last year, the art collective !Mediengruppe Bitnik launched their exhibition Random Darknet Shopper at Kunst Halle St. Gallen, Switzerland.

They gave a robot they created $100 a week in bitcoins to buy whatever it wanted from the deep web, leading to the purchasing of a Hungarian passport, a baseball cap fixed with a hidden camera and 120mg of MDMA in the form of 10 yellow pills, all delivered directly to the exhibition.

At the end of the experiment in January, the robot and all the goods purchased were confiscated by Swedish police, the artists meanwhile remained free of all charges.

The MDMA ordered by Random Darknet Shopper on display

Three months on and the robot has finally been released. “This is a great day for the bot, for us and for freedom of art," the artists declared on their website.

While the ecstasy was confiscated by public authorities and destroyed, all other items purchased by the robot were deemed legitimate.

Any further prosecution of the artists has been withdrawn by public authorities: “The public prosecutor states that the possession of Ecstasy was indeed a reasonable means for the purpose of sparking public debate about questions related to the exhibition.”

"The public prosecution also asserts that the overweighing interest in the questions raised by the art work Random Darknet Shopper justify the exhibition of the drugs as artefacts, even if the exhibition does hold a small risk of endangerment of third parties through the drugs exhibited"

Whether we now see a rise in people ordering drugs under the name of sparking public debate remains to be seen, but right now art is winning the war on drugs.