When we heard that artists Paolo Cirio and Alessandro Ludovico were claiming to have stolen data and photos from a million Facebook profiles, uploading them to a fake dating site called lovely‐faces.com as part of an art project highlighting concerns about online privacy, we did what any other journalist in the social-media age would do — we looked Cirio up on Facebook, where his public profile offers up a surprising amount of useful data. In addition to revealing that he describes his work as "sculpting information flow," and that he is interested in women, it also offers the artist's personal email, Skype name, and cell phone number. So we gave him a ring.

ARTINFO deputy editor Ben Davis spoke to Cirio, who was in the midst of the hubbub of Berlin's technology-and-politics-themed Transmediale Festival, where the installation component of "Face to Facebook" — as the Facebook-stealing stunt is called — is making its debut.

My first question is, how real is the project? Since you can't see the Web site right now, it's hard to be certain how much of it is authentic, and how much of it is just a hypothetical proposition.

It's completely real. After the CNN article we got high traffic on the Web site, so I had to call the service provider. In the next half hour you should try again, because they promised me that they'd bring back the Web site. There are millions of people at this moment who are trying to see if they're in our dating Web site. As you can imagine, this was an art project, so it was not prepared to have millions of queries in the database. But I just called the provider now, and they promised me that it would be back up soon.

So you really stole a million Facebook profiles?

Yes. It took me a while — actually two years — to do this project. One year was mainly about downloading the profiles. Actually it was a script, a [piece of] software, that did it. It was just automatically running through the profiles. Every public profile has eight public friends, so for each of the eight, I just did a loop. So it was running by itself, and then I downloaded everything. The one million are from everywhere in the world. There are Chinese, Japanese, Indonesians, South Africans — I tried to cover the world.

Why did you chose Facebook as a target?

Facebook at the moment is the hottest company in the world, so for me it was really important how, once again, an Internet company could be vulnerable in its business and its technology. However, the project is not really about Facebook, I would say. There are many issues about Facebook. But for me it was about researching data and the power of information and seeing how a single entity, Facebook — a single, private entity — can hold 500 million profiles from all over the world, and obtain all this data. For me it was about research into this issue. It could have been another company. This was just about the power that these companies have. I don't know if you saw the two former projects: One is about Google, and the other is about Amazon. We look at the biggest companies, and this issue of power, information, of monopoly of information that should be managed in a different way.

But if I understand your artist statement correctly, the project is specifically critical of how people present themselves on Facebook, and also you have some language that suggests that you are attempting to undermine Facebook's business model by making people not want to post their personal information.

Yes. If you are speaking about Facebook you are speaking about the user, because what actually makes Facebook is the users. You have to speak about the user — that's the point. But the project is not against the user. It's a provocation, of course — I mean, we got all these public profiles. It's all data that you can find also on Google, you know. It's just a conceptual hack, a conceptual interface.

But is the point to make people not want to use Facebook?

It's really hard not to use Facebook. I consider technology in general, and also Facebook, a neutral thing that may drive all sorts of change. The problem is that Facebook should be regulated. It shouldn't be a private company owned by one person. That is completely undemocratic, and that's completely unethical and immoral. That's for certain. The project is a way of pointing this out. We should be regulating Facebook, and making it a tool that could be used properly — not like it is now.

Have you heard anything from the company? I know in the past you've faced "cease-and-desist" letters from former targets like Google.

No, at the moment they haven't contacted us. If you read the piece on Wired, the journalist called Facebook, and Facebook said that it would look at our case. I don't know what is going on in the next hour. At the moment, we're just dealing with journalists.

What has the public response been? The initial media coverage seemed to miss the point about the project's critical intent. Some people must have been angry. Have you heard from any of the specific people whose data you stole?

Yes, there are many people who are angry, because they are scared to be inside a database. They say, "If I'm inside the database, I will sue you." On the other hand, there have been many, many positive comments, people who say, "Wow, you did it, you've done a great thing, an amazing thing." Of course it's controversial. It's a provocation. As usual, some people say, "You're not an artist, you're just a motherfucker." And others get it, and say, "You're a genius." It's always like that. People are different. But still, even with the people who are angry, they will use Facebook differently from now on.

I found your data on Facebook. Isn't it ironic that you post your own personal information when your project is a critique of putting your personal information on Facebook?

Again, I am not telling people to boycott Facebook, because Facebook is a tool. You can use tools in a good way or a bad way. This is true of everything. It's like a knife. You can kill someone with a knife, or you can cut bread with it. Facebook is just like that. It's just that it should be regulated. I am not saying that Facebook is useless — but it's really dangerous. People should be aware how to use Facebook. I am not posting personal things on Facebook, for example, just using it for promoting my work or keeping in touch with people who work with me. But I am not posting sensitive data, because I know the danger behind this tool. It's like giving a knife to a kid: It's dangerous, because the kid doesn't know what it means to have a knife in their hand.