Imagine an identical hard drive in the room, except this one is blank. Or if the data were continuously being copied back and forth between the two drives, and the displayed values went up and down accordingly. Actually what if this one turned out to be blank?
I've concluded that the simplest, broadest, yet still useful definition of "art" is: something which is made/done for the purpose of being perceived.
In this particular instance, the item itself is not meant to be perceived. To your point, it is indistinguishable from an empty hard drive (or whatever the contents are); there may be a valid issue to discuss, but there is nothing to perceive. Someone asserts there is "$5M of pirated software" there; I assert it contains a single trillion-digit random number, and there is nothing there to perceive in differentiation, even in theory - human perception of one data storage device is indistinguishable from a duplicate device containing different data.
This "exhibit" is qualitatively different from even the "blank canvas" "art" rhetorical device. The "1m square, 2 shades of black" painting I recall from a museum at least was in and of itself meant to be looked at, even if it required 3 pages of explanation to justify its pathetic existence. John Cage's 4'33" was in fact meant to be heard, though the pianist played no notes. Resounding voids they may have been, yet they were still meant to be perceived.
In this instance, the physical artifact could be replaced by any storage device of sufficient capacity. The alleged content may be the same, but the audience cannot perceive it in any way.
It's not art. It's a point of discussion.
Now, if the "artist" had, say, covered a wall with a trillion dots colored corresponding to that alleged data content, we'd have something for humans to perceive for the purpose of perceiving it - to wit, art. The audience could examine, at least in practical theory, the totality of the image and conclude there is something of value there. And if the opposing wall were likewise marked, but instead depicting a single trillion-digit random number, the audience could decide if there were any life-affecting difference between them, or conclude that the creation & viewing was a complete waste of time.
The part's of the work you don't see can be just as important as the parts you can see. You can look at the physical device, and if found art is still art then so can a HDD. But, in the larger context this is similar to creating a sculpture and then displaying it covered in a tarp. You could take at the information inside, but that's irrelevant to what you see and feel when you look at the HDD / Tarp.
PS: I think most people would get a much stronger reaction from looking at the tarp than they would looking at most pieces of modern art.
> But, in the larger context this is similar to creating a sculpture and then displaying it covered in a tarp.
The Hope Diamond doesn't need to be covered by a tarp for 99.999% of the population to fail to distinguish it from a solid fake. I think the "is that diamond real?" question is a decent equivalen to the "is that hard drive empty?" one. Using special tools, both can be verified.
Edit: I realize that the hope diamond probably is not art, so my main point has to be about the intrinsic value of the object.
Methinks the Hope Diamond IS art: taking a grungy rock, skill was applied at great cost & risk to turn it into an object for the sole purpose of looking at it. That its value and demand is great speaks for what a great piece of art it is.
Whether the mind perceiving an object is trained to comprehend what is perceived is a different issue from whether the nature of the object can be perceived at all. This is why much of "modern art" is accompanied by several pages of explanation: given the education required, the audience has at least a hope of comprehending what is striking the senses. 4'33" makes some kind of sense given preliminary background/training; "Thidreks" is great literature if one but learns Old Norwegian; a viewer may be persuaded Pollock's paintings are great art ... in all cases, the material is there for perception, and is what it is regardless of training. Most viewers may be unable to discern the Hope Diamond from like-shaped glass, but that's not the cutter's problem - the outstanding beauty is there for the viewing, stifled only by the viewer's mind. You're hard-pressed to fake the Hope Diamond, and a solid fake WOULD share the artistry outside of the intrinsic value.
In this case, there is NOTHING in the exhibit for the audience to perceive. No application of senses can reveal what's there. Plugging it into a computer for conversion to perceptible form may reveal its intrinsic value, but as there is nothing to perceive otherwise then there is no art any more than sticking the Mona Lisa into a welded-shut steel box, covering a sculpture with a tarp, or displaying the Hope Diamond before it was cut to shape.
> "art" is: something which is made/done for the purpose of being perceived
That is actually quite Kantian. But maybe best left there: recommending a normal person look up the 'Critique of Judgement' would be like recommending a normal person read a book on computational type theory . . .
