Draft Text on Method

Describe recent work:

“Adopt a Walk” is a work I made for the publication we’ve been developing for the past three months in collaboration with “De Player”. The work consist of an audio-guide as an experiment of gait analysis, and a digital interfacing [What exactly do you mean, and experiment of digital interface Mx]. The work is functioning thanks to the series of tools that are parts of the “Tetra Gamma Circulaire”, our publication [This sentence needs some revision Mx]. The series of walks are recorded and archived temporarily on web server and can be accessed via a local webpage. The web-interface I created allows users to observe the archive of foreign walks and invites them to adopt one of them. In this way, people are potentially able to escape detection from biometric surveillance of gait, a technique recently developed to recognise individuals in public space [This sentence needs some cleaning Mx]. The question I wanted to raise is : What happens if I start to walk like somebody else? Would I look like [identify as? Mx] somebody else under the “eye” of a surveillance camera?

Describe current work:

“Interfacing the Law” is the name of the publication we are going to work in this last trimester. The core of the thematic project is an inquiry and research into different digital public libraries and their state of legality or illegality [An inquiry ``and research`` one or the other no? Mx]. In particular, the research will focus on which legal restrictions and conditions are applied to these tools for freely sharing cultural materials [When you say cultural materials, maybe you need to define this more. As far as our writeups go it talks about Knowledge sharing rather than cultural sharing. If this is something you want to identify then you may have to qualify it Mx].

Describe the relation between the two:

In both projects there’s a common interest in looking at current regulative tools [I think you can stop the sentence here and start a new sentence for this next part Mx] used for different reason, but with a common belonging to the structure of power [maybe you need to identify this structure, because if you simply mean Authorities then that is implied in "regulative tools" no? Mx]. The common denominator of every law in an interest in domination over individuals [This statement is a little brutal, not necessarily wrong but maybe you need to qualify this a little more. Also grammatically needs cleaning Mx]. From the surveillance technologies, used to provide visibility and sampling populations, to the laws of authorship and copyright, which are used for insure to certain actors the privilege of being author of something which is naturally collective and make profit out of it [This needs cleaning... I'm not sure what exactly you are trying to say... Mx].

How are the works different?

The difference lies in the different kinds of regulations I’m researching, and the different kind of spaces where those regulations are applied. In “Adopt a walk” I was focussing on the regulatory tools of identity recognition. In the second project the interest is directed towards laws of authorship and intellectual property. The gait analysis furthermore is a biometric system applied in public space (particularly on public transports), while copyright laws are “immaterial” restrictions on the abstract possession of a piece of culture [a little grammar cleaning needed hear to make it sharper Mx].

Who can help you and how? Which expertise?

As the new project Interfacing the Law just started, I think for this preliminary stage I have to focus on researching case studies and theories. I’m interested in analysing which exceptions exist from the state of the laws that are possible to exist [exceptions exists from laws that exists? or exceptions that exist from future laws? Little confusing. Mx]. I will certainly read the book “State of Exceptions” from Agamben and others with similar themes, and look at semi-legal situations and platforms (like Tor and the Deep-Web) where exceptions from copyright laws exist.

Future work:

My plan for the future, considering the common characteristics of the works I have been doing up until now, is to focus on how “structures of power” are destroying possibilities of human connection, knowledge and resilience. Which “state of exception” we should start to develop in order to escape the nowadays ordinary drift of the neoliberal mentality that is visibly not able to represent us as human beings [this sentence is a bit long, just needs some refining Mx].

[GO GIULIA!!! Mx]