#dataveillance

installation plan

here, i have a draft plan for the installation i have in mind at this point in the project. as you walk in the door, you instantly see the projection of a ‘technological landscape’ (one of the zoomed network images from my 3d scan) projected onto a sheer fabric hanging from the ceiling. next situated further back and to the left, will be another projection of this personal digital network on the same fabric. this is the same again to the right hand-side. the exact content would need to be experimented with as i would need to decide between having a moving image of these networks or a still one. the idea of the viewer having to move through the fabric would cause the fabric to move, creating the illusion of a moving network. this is something i need to experiment with by using projectors and fabric to see which works best. i personally love the still images, i feel they are abstract and effective however it would be interesting for them to move. it’s a shame that the moving videos are harder to film due it being difficult to make the movements smooth. certain moves aren’t available without the mouse being in shot, and some of those are a lot more effective than the ones where the mouse is invisible

something else that needs to be experimented with, is the type of fabric that i would use to hang from the ceiling and project onto. i would prefer the fabric to be sheer, and have an interesting slightly netted texture to add to the network effect. however, i don’t want it to spill too much light onto the projection behind, this is mostly the case for the right-hand side. again, something that i would need to experiment with and test. you can see the projectors dotted around and the positions i feel they would potentially be best in

within the installation, i have designed it so you walk through a digital network, as if you’re going through this technological realm, inside a huge computer network. as though you are inside the machine. the very machine that controls you. you are accessing secretive spaces that it wasn’t intended for you to see. the technological landscapes that are projected onto the fabrics give the illusion of this as you move through and have to move past the fabric to get to the end of the installation. this makes the installation somewhat immersive. you have to fly through this network, an interesting play on space rather than using a video to represent it. as you go through this computer network, you gradually get to a 3d projection of my scan. 

this 3d scan at the end of the installation is initially covered up by the fabrics you need to go through. this shows how you have to dig deep to gain access to your own data, whilst representing the difficulty in consciously understanding the amount of data that is harvested and farmed from you on a daily basis, building up a digital depiction of you. as you enter the final bit of the installation you will see this networked, incomplete scan, mapped onto a mannequin, or even better, a hologram. i need to experiment with pepper ghosting so i can decipher whether it will be possible to create the illusion of a hologram at the end. this would be a more effective technique in terms of my concept as it will add to the immaterial nature of the digital avatar created by your data. as you can see on the diagram, i have placed a projector on either side of the scan, this is presuming i would use the mannequin but i would personally rather use the hologram

i would additionally like to add a sensor to the installation. a sensor after the third piece of fabric so when you enter the end, it is initially a dark space. when moving a few inches closer the sensor is triggered and the 3d scan appears. showing the layers upon layers that are intended to hide this extreme harvesting and exploitation of our data and online interactions

self portraits

by Peter Weibel

Digital photography can be distributed wirelessly via social media. therefore, social media is an archive, a huge collection of data and metadata. in this respect, the tale of Peter Schlemihl and his shadow, which he sold to the devil, has a new meaning today: the shadows of today are the tracks left bu your data. the point is that you cannot sell your shadow - the tracks of your data - anymore. the data will follow you forever. data is stored infinitely. this is the new devilish deal in the data age that data follows you like a perennial shadow. with social media we are living in this shadow land. a photographic image today is just a tiny point in the continuous flow of data, an ephemeral island of data. millions of pieces of data assembled as images are produced, uploaded and distributed. photography disappears as a fixed image in this stream of data

If photography has been reduced to a field of data which can be distributed ubiquitously, then observation too has become ubiquitous. 

With this turn, the character of photography has also changed dramatically. The millions of users who upload millions of photographs to the social media sphere world-wide on the spot are not expressing their personal view of the world, but playing the role of suppliers and sub-suppliers for the network providers. they deliver content for social platforms, meaning they are part of a gigantic ‘dope industry’, where the fix consists of the illusion of being perceived. people expose their private views almost in panic, in order to be observed, to be seen and to be viewed. george berkeley’s phrase ‘to be is to be perceived’ gains a new meaning. people want their existence confirmed by being observed. the social platforms monopolised by big-data companies, from twitter to instagram, are the administrators of data. the users deliver the data. photography in the age of social media is the supply of data to the controllers and distributers of data. trained successfully by decades of mass media and celebrity culture, people believe that the public exposure of their private lives, that their participation in controlling data by contributing to the internet services providers’ databases, will make them famous even if only for fifteen minutes

Today, ‘to be’ means to be with others. instead of individuality and singularity, people want collectivism and connectivity. so mass media morphs and shapes the masses according to their tools and rules. up to now, the social atom was the individual. in the age of data administration, subjects become clouds of unconnected data which are distributed and shared. individuals are now divided. photography operates in the service of data administration, in the domain of domination. degrees of freedom achieved in photographic articulation in the past are endangered to turn into degrees of control in the future

In the age of data administration, subjects become clouds of unconnected data which are distributed and shared. individuals are now divided. photography operates in the service of data administration, in the domain of domination. degrees of freedom achieved by photographic articulation in the past are endangered to turn into degrees of control in the future. through the global data administration process, reality turns into cryptic messages, into a confused dust of information. the aim is no longer to make a visual picture of the world, but to interpret the data of the world

Photographs on social platforms serve to observe each other, to watch each other, to control each other, to expose oneself to each other. social platforms do not need a big brother because the participants are all little brothers to each other 

3d ipad technology

technological landscapes

3d scanning iPad

ctrl [space] rhetorics of surveillance 

the sharply visualised panoptic space of contemporary culture is rapidly shifting towards a post-optic one in which observation is quickly giving way to information gathering systems, databases and the monitoring of biological and chemical agents. the implication of the subject as a no-way passive presence in a system of social regulation in which data collection - from flat-out panoptic monitoring to the emergence of biological and genetic surveillance is mined for profiles. this profiling will doubtless link every sort of civil, medical, financial or legal transaction into increasingly dense accumulations in which the discreteness of identity becomes embedded in the territorialisation of the self in networks, the primary form of media culture. in this networked information sphere, identity itself becomes an interface. it is an infrastructure that targets by insidious invisibility

addresses the need for biometric systems for safety reasons, due to ubiquitous paranoia. these biometric platforms enable the creation of an ‘invisible shield’. under this new rubric security, invisibility is a self-deception, in which vulnerability is implicit, and in which passivity is expected, the unremitting erosion of individual privacy comes face-to-face with a technical apparatus proposing identity as statistical 

existing and proposed surveillance strategies focus on physical threats, on tracking, on identity profiling, on data-mining and on providing prophylactic ‘shields’ that identify threats to material culture. an invisible spectacle

‘we continue to come up with ever more ingenious ways to transcend the limits of the flesh’