Check out my recent TED talk at TEDxAmsterdam:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7VRzn8hc5mc

How Micrography sparked my interest in the evolving online drug trade.

While working on the project Micrographic Stories new ideas swiftly surfaced after starting the initial project of visualising (OTC) painkillers. The project quickly expanded toward a wider spectrum of “daily” consumed (prescription) medicine and foods additives. Because some (hard) drugs are closely related to prescription medicine, the topic of visualising hard drugs was quickly raised. To elaborate on this idea and concept of visualising drugs underneath the microscope, I needed to get my hands on different kinds of drugs.

After some research, one of my acquaintances told me that getting drugs from the street was “old fashioned” these days. He said:

“Most (young) people these days get their Ecstasy, MDMA or other hard drugs by going online. Just google how to get on Agora by using TorBrowser. The quality, price, service and ‘entry level’ made it better, easier and most important ‘safer’ than getting your drugs on the corner of the street from some random guy.”

Bitcoin and the deep web were not subjects new to me when starting this project. During my first year of study (2007) at the Royal Art Academy (I/M/D department) in The Hague, a lecture was given about the deep web (invisible web). Part of this lecture was to explore, discuss, gain knowledge and understand the basics and possibilities of the deep web. At that time it was not as advanced, easy, safe and fast as today’s deep web, but it was still fascinating. A few years later Bitcoin was upcoming, and lectures were spent on crypto currency, getting me to mine my own Bitcoins. But at that time I did not see the direct (security) potential of Bitcoin, or of using it to buy things in the Deep Web.

Five minutes after using Google Search, I was browsing Agora on The Deep Web with my TorBrowser. Surprisingly things had changed a lot in the past years, websites were faster, easier to find and the user experience was better compared to the “invisible web” experience from 2007.

After looking around on Agora, I decided to make my first purchase to see if it would actually work as advertised. By transferring a small amount of my Bitcoin from my local wallet to my Agora wallet, I was ready to buy the lowest amount of MDMA possible, since I needed less than 0.1 gram to make my dilutions.

Agora displayed search results on MDMA, rendered by the TorBrowser.

I started searching on Agora for MDMA. Within seconds it gave me a list of items and its vendors. The vendor from The Netherlands who was advertising with the smallest amount of 0.3 grams and 84% purity was the one I decided to go with, costing me 0.06198347 BTC.

1BTC equals 213,56 Euro, so this purchase would cost me 13,24 Euro.

Vendor / product page on Agora. Selling 0.3gram of 84% pure MDMA

I gathered up the confidence to purchase the MDMA based on good reviews and ratings that were given by others, such as:

“Fast delivery and great stealth, good communication with vendor and products look really good !!!! Will order again !!!! Truste”

The envelope that was received after 2 days.

Two days later an envelope of “the Rotterdam School of Management” came through the mail (a fake, home printed envelope). At first I thought it had been a wrong delivery, but it had the exact information and alias on it as provided through Agora using PGP encryption. Surprised and confused at the same time, I opened the envelope.

Behind the letter a thick stack of empty graphical paper was included. The cut out was to hold the pony pack with the ordered 0.3grams of MDMA crystals in place.

It was now time to take the next step in this project.

By using a few µg of MDAM I started creating the slides, by dissolving the crystals in demineralised water. The solution was later used to create several drops of 1 to 5 µl on a slide, hoping these drops would crystallise in time. When fully dried and crystallised the slide was ready to be imaged underneath the cross polarisation microscope. Lucky as I was, one of the drops crystallised perfectly and generated an amazing result!