Sousveillance: The Art of Inverse Surveillance — Conference, public interventions and concert :: February 8 - 9, 2009 :: Aarhus University, Erhus, Denmark.

With the growing spread of pervasive digital technologies the public urban space has become open for new forms of both observation and surveillance. Moving away from cameras and directional microphones, face- and voice recognition, the pervasive technologies offer not only the ability to gather and organise huge amounts of dissimilar data, but as well on grounds of these to predict probable patterns of behaviour. Commercial mobile variants of Google Maps, YouTube or Facebook are by far the only ones to make use of these possibilities. Urban games, locative art, flashmob art, pervasive games etc. all represent new forms of observational and aesthetic experiments with how we through technology perceive and make use of the urban space itself.

Sousveillance, original French, as well as inverse surveillance are terms coined by Steve Mann (Toronto, Canada) to describe the recording of an activity from the perspective of a participant. “Surveillance” denotes the act of watching from above, whereas “sousveillance” denotes bringing the practice of observation down to human level (ordinary people doing the watching, rather than higher authorities or architectures doing the watching).

The conference will be held in conjunction with two digital art exhibitions in the city of Erhus (one at ARoS and another at Skive Art Museum) and aims to create a platform for sharing and discussing the topic of surveillance, privacy and control of information, analyzing different creative, artistic and political strategies to produce fluid zones of interventions, both in the urban space and on the net. Main focus is on networking practices and urban actions that contribute to criticize the concept of surveillance, propriety of data and information, showing new activists and visionary strategies to move society toward more inclusive modes of production and sharing knowledge.

The event is presented by Digital Urban Living & Digital Aesthetics Research Center. Curated by: Tatiana Bazzichelli and Lars Bo Lxfgreen. Supported by Videnssamfundet and the Italian Culture Institute of Copenhagen. In partnership with Skive Art Museum, ARoS and Studenterhus.

Program

SUNDAY FEBRUARY 8
OUTDOORS

11:00-17:00: INTERVENTIONS BY:

* Dmytri Kleiner (CA/DE)
* Mare Tralla (UK/EE)
* Leipziger Kamera (DE) + Space Hijackers (UK)

Meeting point: Auditiorium 3, Building 1252, Aarhus University. The interventions run simultaneously from 11.30 to 17.00.

MONDAY FEBRUARY 9
CONFERENCE: At Auditorium 3, Aarhus University

09.00-09.15: INTRODUCTION - Tatiana Bazzichelli and Lars Bo Lxfgreen (Aarhus University)

09.15-10.45: 1ST PANEL - David Rokeby (CA) and Jakob Jakobsen (DK); Moderator: Christian Ulrik Andersen (Aarhus University)

10.45-11.00: BREAK

11.00-12.30: 2ND PANEL - Shining (IT), Dmytri Kleiner (Canada/DE); Moderator: Tatiana Bazzichelli (Aarhus University)

12.30-13.00: PUBLIC DISCUSSION

13.00-14.00: LUNCH

14.15-15.45: 3RD PANEL - Mare Tralla (EE/UK) and Leipziger Kamera (DE)/ Space Hijackers (UK); Moderator: Lars Bo Lxfgreen (Aarhus University)

15.45-16.00: BREAK

16.00-17.30: 4TH PANEL - Alexei Shulgin (RU) and Manu Luksch (UK); Moderator: Sxren Pold (Aarhus University)

17.30-18.00: PUBLIC DISCUSSION

18.30-20.00: DINNER

MONDAY FEBRUARY 9
EVENING PERFORMANCES

20.15-20.30: INTRODUCTION by Tatiana Bazzichelli, Lars Bo Lxfgreen
20.30-21.30: KONRAD BECKER (AT)
22.00-23.00: GOODIEPAL (DK)