DIAP_sousveiller

Final Project Tumblr

 

Sousveillance Tumblr

As a class you will collaboratively set up a dedicated tumblr to house final project presentations. Once the tumblr is up and the design template agreed upon, you will each create a post to present your project.

This is your page to present your final work and any contextualizing information (links, etc) as you see fit. When ready, I'll create a widget to the tumblr and place it in this blog's sidebar :)

Depending on the nature of your project, your post may include documentation and/or a 'demo' of the project itself:

• title of your project
• images: documentation; installation; mock-ups
• embedded video; actual projects and/or demos
• audio/podcasts
• explanatory text/s: should be concise but thorough explanations/descriptions. Include specifications for your 'ideal' project if it can't be realized here and now
• links to source material; specimens; resources; research
• short artist bio; links to your website, blog or any other relevant sites (social media?)

This tumblr, your individual posts, choice of documentation, editing, text, content, overall design and functionality will be an important extension of your actual projects, and hence is important. Treat it as a showcase for your work.

Philip K. Dick and the future of surveillance...

The March issue of Frieze deals with Big Data, surveillance, and related topics. We already looked at the survey called 'Safety in Numbers?' with short essays by Trevor Paglen, Martha Rosler and others.

There is also co-editor Jörg Heiser's intro, 'Count Down: The art world’s ambivalent response to surveillance.'

We may have overlooked this longer article on Philip K. Dick. Please give it a read, as it ties in nicely with the film and other things we've been discussing. Here's an excerpt:

via frieze, issue 161 (march 2014):

All Watched Over

Literature

Did Philip K. Dick predict the future of surveillance?

R. Crumb, illustration from ‘The Religious Experience of Philip K. Dick’ published in Weirdo #7, 1986. Courtesy: © Robert Crumb, 1986

 

‘A cage went in search of a bird.’
Franz Kafka, ‘Reflections on Sin, Pain, Hope, and the True Way’ (1917–19)1

In Philip K. Dick’s 1974 novel Flow My Tears, the Policeman Said, Jason Taverner, a pop singer and variety show host with an audience of 30 million, wakes up one day to the ultimate nightmare for celebrities like himself and social media users under the age of 40: according to the world’s databanks, he does not exist. Given that he lives in a near-future usa recast as a high-tech police state, Taverner must not only contend with bruised vanity and existential dread in his newfound status as an ‘unperson’, he needs id and a credible web of data trails that, in his networked world (and ours), constitute evidence of an authentic human life. ‘I can’t live two hours without my id,’ Taverner reflects upon discovering his predicament. ‘I’ll spend the rest of my life as a slave doing heavy manual labor [...] One random check by a mobile vehicle and a crew of three. With their damn radio gear connecting them to pol-nat data central in Kansas City. Where they keep the dossiers.’2

Data central, where they keep the dossiers. I’ve a feeling it’s not in Kansas any more (though it may be in Utah). In the 21st century, where George Orwell’s centralized, all-seeing Big Brother has turned out to be a vast, interconnected network of Little Brothers, each a ‘data central’, your digital dossier is available for inspection, analysis and redistribution by a broad array of corporations and government agencies, sometimes working in tandem. Information-based surveillance of this sort had long suffered under the inelegant rubric ‘dataveillance’ until the emergence, in recent years, of a buzzword as seemingly cuddly as it is ominous: Big Data.

 

Read on....

 

Fallen off the map: Malaysia Airlines Flight 370

...in a world so utterly mapped and surveilled, every inch tracked and covered by radar, sonar, etc, things still **can** fall off the map: ---> http://mashable.com/2014/03/16/malaysia-airlines-runways/

...>

Officials searching for the missing Malaysia Airlines plane are fairly certain it was intentionally flown off course for an extended period of time. They are basing that theory on a series of satellite “pings” the plane sent as it soared off toward India and the Middle East — or maybe out into the expanse of the Indian Ocean.

Flying on a full tank of fuel, data show the jetliner could have traveled at least 2,200 nautical miles after it vanished from its last confirmed location over the Gulf of Thailand. If piracy was the culprit behind the plane's disappearance, then the hijackers were likely looking for a place to land. A Boeing 777-200 like Malaysia Airlines Flight 370 would need at least 5,000 feet of runway, according to an American Airlines pilot who spoke to Slate.

See also: Timeline: The Mystery of Malaysia Airlines Flight 370

Operating under the assumption that the plane flew for a maximum of five hours, that it could have landed on a runway at least 5,000 feet long, and using data provided by a company that lists coordinates for runways around the world, the Data News team at WNYC put together a map that details all of the possible runways that the plane could have reached.

There are 634 possible runways spread across 26 different countries stretching from the northern tip of India to the western coast of Australia.

Here is what one of them, the Veer Savarkar International Airport in Port Blair on India's Andaman Islands, looks like from Google's satellite map view. The airport has one runway that is more than 10,000 feet long, which is more than enough to accommodate a Boeing 777-200.

 

 

Another possible airport within range of the aircraft is Car Nicobar Air Base in the Andaman Islands, which is mainly used by the Indian Air Force. It has a runway that is nearly 9,000 feet long.

Google map satellite view of Car Nicobar Air Base in the Andaman Islands.

Image: Google Maps

A more remote possibility is that the jet landed in a populated area, such as Yangon, Myanmar. Here is a satellite view of the international airport there, which could accommodate such an aircraft.

 

 

Airport in Yangon, Myanmar, which has a runway long enough to accommodate a Boeing 777-200 series aircraft.

Image: Google maps

A Scanner Darkly (film)

Keanu Reeves, the rotoscoped version, in Richard Linklater's animated adaptation of Philip K. Dick's 1977 novel "A Scanner Darkly."

 

hi all,

Here are some info and links for A Scanner Darkly for those who missed yesterday's screening:

Website: http://wwws.warnerbros.co.uk/ascannerdarkly/

NYTimes Review:

'A Scanner Darkly': Keanu Reeves, Undercover and Flying High on a Paranoid Head Trip

By MANOHLA DARGIS Published: July 7, 2006

Identities shift and melt like shadows in Richard Linklater's animated adaptation of "A Scanner Darkly," a look at a future that looks an awful lot like today. Based on a 1977 novel by the science fiction visionary Philip K. Dick, the semispeculative story involves a cop (call him Officer Fred) who, by assuming an undercover identity (call him Bob Arctor), is inching his way up toward a big drug bust, score by score. But there's a little problem: Fred is starting to forget he's Bob, or maybe vice versa. [...]

[...] Rotoscoping makes certain sense for a film about cognitive dissonance and alternative realities.....

 

Phillip K.Dick: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Philip_K._Dick

A Scanner Darkly (novel): https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/A_Scanner_Darkly

A Scanner Darkly (film): https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/A_Scanner_Darkly (film)

The title of the novel references the Biblical phrase "Through a glass, darkly", from 1 Corinthians 13.

Trailer // Downloads: I leave it to you to find the film (it's available via torrents (free), googleplay, itunes, etc etc)....

Suffragette Surveillance, exhibitions, articles, projects, talks, links....

 

ARTICLES/IMAGES

 

1913: Suffragette Surveillance

RETRONAUT, July 5, 2011

1910-1919, Politics /  “In 1912, Scotland Yard detectives bought their first camera, to covertly photograph suffragettes. The pictures were compiled into ID sheets for officers on the ground. [...]

 

 

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Reuters

 

A Dictator's Guide to Urban Design

Matt Ford, The ATLANTIC

Feb 21, 2014

Ukraine is the size of Texas, but for the last three months its burgeoning protest movement has largely crowded into the space of 10 city blocks. [...]

 

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Radical Ethology: Jussi Parikka's Insect Media

Rhizome

Jacob Gaboury | Wed Apr 20th, 2011 10 a.m.

 

In a fundamental sense, technology is deeply non-human. While we might apply a humanist logic to the function and workings of technological systems, and view technological objects as extensions of the human body and its capacity for adaptive prosthesis, the very purpose of technology is to be that which the human is not or to achieve that which the human could not otherwise do. As such, technology exists beyond the humanist understanding of the individual, the body, and the subject, particularly in contemporary network culture in which technology is in part transformed from concrete and material objects into molecular, adaptive, and often invisible systems. Much as with the animal world, technology seems to suggest a mode of communication and media beyond that of human language, a mode of being or becoming that exceeds our own. [...]

 

 

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Photochemical Smog as New Media

 

Machinology

February 24, 2014

jussiparikka

 

Perhaps photochemical smog is the only true new visual media of post World War II technological culture. It represents the high achievements in science and technology, combined with (synthetic) chemistry and sunlight. It modulates the light like advanced visual media should and embeds us in its augmented reality as we suck it into our lungs. [...]

 

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PAST EXHIBITION (SURVEILLANCE/EXTRAORDINARY RENDITIONS)

 

 

project:rendition (2007) PDF

 

project:rendition was a collabora-tive project that incorporated elements of installation, printed agitprop, audio, and performanceinto an interactive environment. The project wasproduced by JC 2 , a collective comprising the artistsJoy Episalla, Joy Garnett, Carrie Moyer, and CarrieYamaoka.[...]

 

In Public Culture, Duke University Press

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CURRENTLY

Todd Eberle, (Untitled) IBM 1620 Data Processing System, 1968, 1999, photograph. Courtesy: © Todd Eberle

frieze

Issue 161

Safety in Numbers?

Survey

Algorithms, Big Data and surveillance: what’s the response, and responsibility, of art? Jörg Heiser asked seven artists, writers and academics to reflect. [...]

 

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PAST EXHIBITION (ON ARCHIVES)

 

Artist Nada Shalaby's "You and I and Time is Long" explores the history and myths of Tel el Yehudiya, Egypt. Image courtesy of Medrar TV.

 

References: Artists Activating the Archive

Artists Activating the Archive

December 2013 - January 2014

Contemporary Image Collective, Cairo

References—a group exhibition recently held at the Contemporary Image Collective in Cairo—presents four artistic projects that were developed over a year using research and archival processes. Nada Shalaby’s You and I and Time is Long, for example, assembles a collection of images and texts inspired by the archaeological site of Tel el Yehudiya. Shalaby’s archive presents multiple accounts of the ancient site, weaving political, social, historical, and imaginary narratives. In Aliaa Salah’s Lines in the Sea, the local newspaper becomes a site where the personal and political implications of territorial and economic claims in the eastern Mediterranean are played out. [...]

 

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CURRENT EXHIBITION (ON SECURITY, ETC)

 

Elizabeth Duffy

Security Envelope Drawing

2004-14

Pencil on Security Envelope Collage

15.75 x 9.25 inches

40 x 23.5 centimeters

  

ELIZABETH DUFFY / APARTMENT 2B - CHERYL YUN COLLECTION / STOREFRONT

Two simultaneous exhibitions by artists Elizabeth Duffy and Cheryl Yun are currently on view through 15 March, 2014. Both artists will be present at the gallery this Saturday, March 1st, 2014 from 2- 4 pm for an artist talk scheduled in conjunction with these exhibits.

 

dm contemporary NYC

39 East 29th Street, 2nd Floor

New York, NY 10016

TEL 212 576 2032

[email protected]

www.dmcontemporary.com

 

Apartment 2B is an installation in which Elizabeth Duffy transforms the main gallery space into a domestic environment that is realistic and almost credible, until one takes a closer look only to realize that the patterns throughout the space seem strangely familiar - they are the same patterns found lining security envelopes that bills get mailed in to keep sensitive information protected and private. Finding inspiration in a disposable material, that is quickly becoming a relic of the past thanks to email, Duffy collects, draws, scans, prints, and embroiders, to reproduce a variety of data protection patterns on a vast range of materials and objects.[read on...]

 

Cheryl Yun

HALTER TEDDY WITH SUICIDE BELT

Kidnapping, Beheadings, and Defining What's News (The Secret Islamic Army: there is no god but Allah, Mohammed is the messenger of Allah.)

Sunday, August 1, 2004 / 2005

Archival inkjet on Gampi Tissue

Size 8

 

In the project room of the gallery, is another thought provoking installation, The Cheryl Yun Collection / Storefront, in which Cheryl Yun sets up a high-end boutique that displays one-of-a-kind, meticulously handcrafted lingerie [....]

 

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LECTURES (UPCOMING)

 

Parsons Spring 2014 Visiting Artists Lecture Series: Trevor Paglen - Feb 26

 

Trevor Paglen Feb 26 7pm   Kellen Auditorium 66 Fifth Avenue at 13th Street, New York, NY 10011

 

Trevor Paglen's work deliberately blurs lines between science, contemporary art, journalism, and other disciplines to construct unfamiliar, yet meticulously researched ways to see and interpret the world around us. [...]

 

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"Tracking Transience:" Lecture by Hasan Elahi

Thursday, March 6, 6:30pm

At EFA Project Space, 323 W. 39th Street, 2nd floor in Manhattan

In an age where everything is archived and the need to delete is almost nonexistent, can we remain private anymore? Hasan Elahi will discuss the new normal of post 9/11 privacy and describe his experiences with FBI interrogations and his subsequent projects in the lecture, “Hiding in Plain Sight”. An erroneous tip called into law enforcement authorities in 2002 subjected Elahi to an intensive investigation by the FBI and after undergoing months of interrogations, he was finally cleared of suspicions.

After this harrowing experience, Elahi conceived “Tracking Transience” (http://trackingtransience.net) and opened just about every aspect of his life to the public. Predating the NSA’s PRISM surveillance program by nearly a decade, the project questions the consequences of living under constant surveillance and has continuously generated a database of imagery and locative information that tracks the artist and his points of transit in real-time. Although initially created for his FBI agent, the public can also monitor the artist’s communication records, banking transactions, and transportation logs along with various intelligence and government agencies who have been confirmed visiting his website.

This lecture is organized in conjunction with Distant Images, Local Positions. For more information, please email [email protected].

 

 

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Augmented Reality: Important Papers, Patents & Links

 Image: from Bladerunner

 

Definitions and some context for Augmented Reality (AR):

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Augmented_reality

http://wearcam.org/contributions.pdf

 

ISTAS'13 Conference: http://veillance.me/

Living in a Smart World – People as Sensors:

About

Download the ISTAS13_Poster

STAS’13 presenters​ and panellists addressed the implications of living in smartworlds - smart grids, smart infrastructure, smart homes, smart cars, smart fridges, and with the advent of body-worn sensors like cameras, smart people.

Focus

The environment around us is becoming “smarter”. Soon there will be a camera in nearly every streetlight enabling better occupancy sensing, while many appliances and everyday products such as automatic flush toilets, and faucets are starting to use more sophisticated camera-based computer-vision technologies.  Meanwhile, what happens when people increasingly wear these same sensors? ​

A smart world where people wear sensors such as cameras, physiological sensors (e.g. monitoring temperature, physiological characteristics), location data loggers, tokens, and other wearable and embeddable systems presents many direct benefits, especially for personal applications. However, these same “Wearable Computing” technologies and applications have the potential to become mechanisms of control by smart infrastructure monitoring those individuals that wear these sensors.

“Smart people” interacting with smart infrastructure means that intelligence is driving decisions. In essence, technology becomes society.

 

Quantigraphic camera promises HDR eyesight from Father of AR, Slashgear, Sep 12, 2012:

"Augmented reality isn't just a gimmick for Google Glass and Nokia City Lens, but could make industrial work safer and improve visibility for those with partial sight, according to new research. The team at Eyetap, led by "father of AR" Professor Steve Mann, has cooked up a so-called quantigraphic camera for a new WeldCam HDRchitecture (HDRchitecture) helmet that rather than simply mask the bright lighting produced by welding equipment, actually uses HDR photography techniques to pick out the details the wearer most needs to see...."

Steve Mann: Selected Artworks [PDF]

The inevitability of the transition from a surveillance-society to a veillance-society: Moral and economic grounding for sousveillance. By Mir Adnan Ali and Steve Mann [PDF] - Veillance part 2

Veillance and Reciprocal Transparency: Surveillance versus Sousveillance, AR Glass, Lifeglogging, and Wearable Computing. By Steve Mann [PDF] - Veillance part 1

Existential Technology: Wearable Computing Is Not the Real Issue! Steve Mann (Leonardo) [PDF] - also here in html: http://wearcam.org/leonardo/award2004.htm

 

Eyetap.org:

Formerly known as the Humanistic Intelligence Lab, the EyeTap Personal Imaging Lab specializes in the areas of personal imaging, mediated reality and wearable computing. The lab name change clearly emphasizes our strength in personal imaging through powerful technologies among which EyeTap technology plays a major role.  http://www.eyetap.org/

 

PRAXISTEMOLOGY: EARLY CHILDHOOD EDUCATION, ENGINEERING EDUCATION IN A UNIVERSITY, AND UNIVERSAL CONCEPTS FOR PEOPLE OF ALL AGES AND ABILITIES, by Steve Mann and Marko Hrelja [PDF]

Project Proposals

Image via: http://wearcam.org/virilio/scans.htm

I wanted to give you a little more 'structure' in terms of the proposals I want from you. I started to scribble down bullet points on the Google doc in class, but here is a better idea of what I want:

Please send me two proposals before the next class, February 19:

1. Individual Project Proposal;
   
2. Collaborative Project. Proposal
   

You may end up producing only one of the above projects, but thinking about each alternative will help you proceed with the option you eventually choose.

For each proposal, please include a list with brief descriptions that answer the questions in the bullet points below -- none of this is binding of course; you will change things as your projects develop:

1. Concepts: What is the underlying concept? the ideas from which you are building your work? Is it Panoptic? Will it literally embody Sousveillance? Spying? Stalking? World Domination? Containing the next plague? Personal boundaries? Small town or family nosey bodies? Government bodies? boundaries? Borders? Patrolling national borders? individual property? Policing the Commons? Policing the Internet? Policing the Police?
2. Media / mediums: What medium or media will you be working with? Will it be performative or object-based? Narrative or not? Will you use a variety of technologies or focus on using one medium? Will there be an online component? Will it require viewer interaction? Will it be contained inside a book for intimate consumption? Will it be a Public Works Project? In a City? In the Middle of Nowhere? On a Road? In a Public Square? An intervention in an online newspaper? A Life Hack? A Citibike Hack? Will it subvert an existing medium or technology? Will it attempt to invent a new one? Everything is possible, new twists on old media and new forms are welcomed.
3. Individual: will you be working in solitude? make it yourself? or will you need to out-source parts/elements? (For your Individual Proposal, describe what you might need to out-source.)
4. Collaborative: with whom and why? think about what makes 'collaboration' truly collaborative (For your Collaborative Proposal, describe what your individual contributions may be.)

Send these proposals to me when you feel ready, some time during the next week and a half. I will try to give you some private, individual feedback before Feb 19th, if there is time.

If you need more time, we can discuss some of the ready-ish proposals next class and maybe get your ideas going. In the meantime, I will make some additions to the blog....including some interesting readings from Steve Mann and info about an interesting artist named Jill Magid....

So the big question is: When do you want to start using the class time to start actually working on your projects? I think we should probably get going soon. If you have ideas for starting studio work as soon as Feb 19th, then good; if not, we can keep discussing other artists and ideas.....

 

In the meantime, again, something inspiring and disturbing from Steve Mann: (via http://wearcam.org/virilio/ and http://wearcam.org/virilio/scans.htm)

I read a lot of Virilio, and so one day I read (in one of his recent books), of my own unfortunate experience that ended my life as a cyborg.

See short quote (excerpt) below:

 

ADDENDUM:RECENTLY ADDED LINKS:

artists/projects

• Jill Magid

authors/theorists

• Steve Mann

concepts/precepts/intercepts

• Intelligence gathering disciplines
• McVeillance

Categories

• About
• George Orwell
• Jeremy Bentham
• Josh Harris
• Michel Foucault
• Panopticon
• Proposals
• Readings
• Screenings
• Steve Mann
• Virilio

Big Bro' : Readings & Proposals

The impact of George Orwell's novel Nineteen Eighty-Four (1949), via his Wikipedia entry:

 

Orwell's work continues to influence popular and political culture, and the term Orwellian — descriptive of totalitarian or authoritarian social practices — has entered the language together with several of his neologisms, including cold war, Big Brother, thought police, Room 101, doublethink, and thoughtcrime.

 

RELATED WORKS:

• Philp K. Dick: A Scanner Darkly novel (1977) and Richard Linklater's rotoscoped film adaptation A Scanner Darkly (2006)

• Cory Doctorow: Little Brother novel (2008)

 

So.....for Next Class (Feb 19):

READ or SKIM Chapter 1 from Orwell's 1984 : http://www.mondopolitico.com/library/1984/1984_c1.htm.

Prepare Two Studio Proposals: one individual and one collaborative.

NOTE:

Our Google Drive document is now linked to on the blog's navifgation bar for convenient access.

I recently added the following to the blog sidebars:

dramatis personae

• Edward Snowden
• Julian Assange
• Pirate Party

artists/projects

• A Scanner Darkly (film)

authors/theorists

• Philip K. Dick

 

We Live In Public

 

WE LIVE IN PUBLIC - Official Trailer: Uploaded on Jan 15, 2009

On the 40th anniversary of the Internet, WE LIVE IN PUBLIC tells the story of the effect it is having on our society as seen through the eyes of the greatest Internet pioneer youve never heard of, visionary Josh Harris. Award-winning director, Ondi Timoner (DIG!), documented his tumultuous life for more than a decade, to create a riveting, cautionary tale of what to expect as the virtual world inevitably takes control of our lives. Please visit the website: http://www.weliveinpublicthemovie.com for more information.

Some background:

SUDDENLY PSEUDO
Josh Harris is using his Silicon Alley millions to fuel a wild, Warholian downtown art scene while building a new company, Pseudo, that's at the forefront of interactive Net TV. (Good Lord, is this the future of television?) [can't find article's date - must have been written written 1999 or 2000]
http://nymag.com/nymetro/news/media/internet/1703/

He Said, She Said, Web Dread
Aparna Kumar, WIRED 02.23.01
http://www.wired.com/techbiz/media/news/2001/02/41997

Josh Harris
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Josh_Harris_%28internet%29

PSEUDO.com
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pseudo.com

(still there! so 90s!!)
http://www.pseudo.com/

Anecdotal (gossip = debrief): I remember Josh Harris and Tanya, his girlfriend, cropping up at various events and openings, back when the NY artworld still had a weird, noirish, digital scene (late 1990s). Tanya usually wore something striling, like a giant mink hat, a Lara-esque trapping straight from Dr. Zhivago. I went to one of their 'events' at the Soho loft where so much took place with webcams and whatnot. It was a Rhizome.org sponsored brunch. I remember bagels, screenings, and a panel.

The Panopticon (readings)

Image: courtesy University College London Library.....Go to Jeremy Bentham's Panopticon Letters (1787) and detailed architectural specifications for his surveillance machine.

 

Please read for next week:

Theory of Surveillance: The PANOPTICON, via: Bentham, Jeremy Panopticon Letters Ed.Bozovic, Miran (London: Verso, 1995). p. 29-95

PART THREE: DISCIPLINE 3. Panopticism, via: Foucault, Michel Discipline & Punish: The Birth of the Prison (NY: Vintage Books 1995) pp. 195-228