User:Pedro Sá Couto/Graduate Research Seminar/Proposal Outline 02

What do you want to make?

I want to create a series of technologies that can question the topic of surveillance connected to digital-self-improvement. This will be done while creating or re-creating technological extensions that will/are making our life "easier" as a strategy to create innovative and critical thinking around the topic. This might turn out to be an installation further on the way.
It would also be important for this series to create a very detailed plan on how to archive these experiments, and on how to document them almost as it is a scientific procedure.

How do you plan to make it?

From my interest on how are our smartphones, computers, etc being used as personal tracking devices I want to experiment how can these be compared to the microchips implants that Nancy Nisbet documents in the article "Resisting Surveillance: Identity and Implantable Microchips".

It will be a reflection on the topic of self-improvement while addressing the issue of how are we so susceptible to accept new tech, either by convenience, peer pressure, etc, that was once seen with a dystopian point of view, without even understanding what might come with them.

We feel more and more the need to be connected, we don't carry an identity card anymore because it is stored on our smartphones, we give our fingerprints to centralized companies just because it will be easier to unlock an everyday device. A chain of power is created where it is almost mandatory to get digital, from passport checkpoints at the airport to exhaustively detailed residency permit requirements.

I would like to critically approach these thematic while developing low tech prototypes. It is imperative to create awareness from the ground up and tackle it in a very transparent way from the beginning. Low tech experiments have a strong effect on the relation that can establish with their users.

What is your timetable?

1. September 2019 — July 2020: Testing and documenting the process.
2. September – October 2019: Framework outline + Research + Prototyping
3. November 2019: +++ Prototyping
4. December 2020: Conceptualize way to turn prototypes into the final project.
5. 9 & 10 December 2020: Trim 4 Assessment
6. March 2020: Fine-tune writing. Turn prototypes into the final project.
7. April – June 2020: Finish writing, fine-tune project.
8. June 2020: Finish the project, Prepare the final presentation.
9. July 2020: Graduation Show.

Why do you want to make it?

It is a continuation of a long interest in this thematic. I have already researched around surveillance and I am now able to understand that the knowledge acquired during my first year of the program is going to play a key element while helping me further getting into the topic exploring it from a different angle and with a different critical approach.

Being a contemporary subject with an important historical background where I can re-test and comment on other experiments, but still always up to date and changing with the introduction of new technology.

Who can help you and how?

Prototyping tutors in developing fully working devices to test.
Michael more in specific with is previous research in surveillance.
XPUB squad.

Relation to previous practice

Previous research on the topic of Surveillance and how can narratives be formed around this. In the past, the experiments that I had developed were more related to face detection but I would like to explore this with a different approach.
Personal interest upon online communities and during the SI8 previous work on data gathered and explored as an artistic practice.
The interest in digital culture formed during my first year in the Piet Zwart.

Relation to a larger context

Digital surveillance is embedded in almost every action of a regular everyday routine. We have integrated technology so much in our quotidian that we have been living with it hand to hand. Surveillance might be quickly spotted as it commonly happens with CCTV because we are able to establish a physical connection with it, we can see it, we can choose a different path to walk from it or even try to mask ourselves, but digitally we are still far from connecting in such a direct way with it.
In experiments like Wearable computing (Mann, 2003), or Identity and Implantable Microchips (Nisbet, 2004), artists have been able to work with a focus on technology that could raise questions like identity control, self-determination, and privacy.

References

Nisbet, N., 2004. Resisting Surveillance: Identity and Implantable Microchips. Leonardo 37, 211–214.

In this essay from 2004, Nancy Nisbet addresses how surveillance is being used by centralized databases with the contemporary concerns of personal security and the use of technological developments to solve them. It also introduces us to Radio Frequency Identification technology (RFID) and the potential that comes with it. From tracking individuals to its use as a key in different applications. The installation ‘POP! GOES THE WEASE’ challenges its visitors to take an active part in experimenting RFID and to question on their own identity and free will. The installation also displays the documentation in the form of a video of the process of getting chipped in which the artist had gone through.

Mann, S., 2003. Existential Technology: Wearable Computing Is Not the Real Issue! Leonardo 36, 19–25.

In this essay, Steve Mann focuses on how surveillance and technology that is used to monitor individuals are linked to a chain of power where accountability is often dissolved and hard to be questioned.
It is also a documentation of what the author calls as In(ter)ventions within a project that he has developed for the last 30 years, ‘Existential Technology’. It is a set of artworks, inventions, performances, …, where he questions privacy and identity. He uses these experiments to create a different understanding of self-determination and destiny control.

Pater, Ruben., 2016. Politics of design: a not so global manual for visual communication. BIS Publishers, Amsterdam.

This book explores different visual languages of communication and how they are not neutral. It is also able to create in the reader the understanding of how culture is thought in a global context. It contains a wide variety of projects developed by contemporary artists and designers exploring the responsibility of communication that is culturally dependent with a very precise anthropological approach.

McGrath, J.E., 2004. Loving big brother: performance, privacy and surveillance space. Routledge, London ;

Velden, D. van der., Metahaven., Kruk, Vinca., 2015. Black transparency the right to know in the age of mass surveillance. Sternberg Press, Berlin.