Bureau of Inverse Technology

The Bureau of Inverse Technology (aka bit and sometimes BIT) is an organisation of artist-engineers whose stated aim is to be an ‘information agency servicing the Information Age'. Bureau engineers, so-called BIT agents, are involved from design to deployment and documentation of radical products based on commercially available electronic entertainment components such as cameras, radios, networks, robots, sensors etc. The Bureau was founded in Melbourne in 1991 (though some accounts say 1992), and was incorporated with limited liability in the Cayman Islands in 1991 and subsequently re-incorporated in Delaware in 1997. Though its work has long been publicly available, the composition of the Bureau itself is shrouded in mystery, for some years cloaking its identity in anonymity. In 2004, the Bureau initiated a ‘retreat from anonymity' when radio journalist and BIT co-founder, Kate Rich, took up a three-month Research Fellowship at Piet Zwart Institute for Media Design Research, Rotterdam.