Memopol-II by Timo Toots @ gateways. Art and Networked Culture (see video):

Memopol-II is a social machine that maps the visitor’s information field. By inserting an identification document such as a national ID card or EU passport into the machine, it starts collecting information about the visitor from (inter)national databases and the Internet. The data is then visualized on a large‐scale custom display. The collection panel also shows the portraits of the visitors from their ID card.

The Cyrillic spelling of the installation’s name refers to George Orwell’s concept of Big Brother from his 1949 dystopian novel 1984. Over the past decades, technological means have transformed the surveillance of society. When surfing on the Internet, paying with an ATM card, or using an ID card, people leave their digital traces everywhere. Continue reading

Scanner, The News Of The World & The Art Of Listening In by Luke Turner, The Quietus:

Robin Rimbaud - AKA Scanner - once trawled the airwaves recording ‘found’ telephone conversations. He discusses his controversial work, and remembers when the News Of The World tried to buy his archive of recordings.

“Back in the days before digital mobile technology, landline phonecalls could be surprising affairs. You’d pick up the receiver and be able to hear, faint and distant, the sound of someone else’s telephone call. As voyeur, you were presented with the moral question of whether to hang up, or else keep listening in to this unexpurgated, uncensored confessional. Generally, most of the conversations would be mundane, but the very act of listening in felt uncomfortable, with a strange and dark allure. Continue reading

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Surveillance Cinema: James Coupe :: August 11, 2011; 7:00 - 8:00 pm :: Henry Auditorium, University of Washington, 15th Ave NE and NE 41st Street, Seattle, WA.

In conjunction with the exhibition The Talent Show (through August 21), The Henry Art Gallery invites you to join artist James Coupe for a screening and discussion of the artist’s recent work with ’surveillance cinema’ in (re)collector, Surveillance Suite, and the web-based work Today, too, I experienced something… I hope to understand in a few days.

James Coupe is an artist whose work focuses on emergent systems, aesthetic machines, autonomy, and networks. Educated in Fine Art at the University of Edinburgh (Scotland) and Creative Technology at the University of Salford (England), his recent projects have included appropriative powerline networks, parasitical cellular phone agents, autonomous robot systems, self-organizing telephone call centres, and installations in which computers use spam to search for the meaning of the Internet. Continue reading

[Adam Greenfield @ Systems/Layers Walkshop] Some implications of networked sensing for privacy in public space: Toward a taxonomy of public objects by Adam Greenfield:

[...] “My feeling is that the complexity of this terrain is such that abstract principles and so-called “best practices” aren’t particularly likely to be useful in guiding us toward better decisions unless they’re firmly grounded in a concrete consideration of some present-day actualities. In our attempt to think more clearly about these issues, therefore, we start by considering five real-world informatic systems, all developed and deployed in the past three years. These are arrayed along a spectrum of concern, from a sensor I think of as self-evidently non-threatening, to something I believe the privacy community particularly — and advocates of high-quality public space in general — ought to be deeply troubled by…”

A Networked Self: Identity, Community, and Culture on Social Network Sites: Papacharissi, Zizi (Editor), Barabasi, Albert-Laszlo (Introduction by), Routledge:

A Networked Self examines self presentation and social connection in the digital age. This collection brings together new theory and research on online social networks by leading scholars from a variety of disciplines. Topics addressed include self presentation, behavioral norms, patterns and routines, social impact, privacy, class/ gender/ race divides, taste cultures online, uses of social networking sites within organizations, activism, civic engagement, and political impact.

“The complex and sometimes contradictory phenomena of social media are among the most discussed aspects of digital culture today, and A Networked Self examines these phenomena through a variety of perspectives and approaches from sociology and communication theory. Continue reading

Gap by Dušica Dražić :: June 28 - July 10, 2011 :: 15 Kordunska Street, 5th floor, 0-24h, Zagreb, Croatia.

Today, artist Dušica Dražić starts her two-week performance Gap as part of the eleventh UrbanFestival. She conceptualised Gap as an experiment: she will move into the apartment in 15 Kordunska Street, remove the front door and open the space to everyone – for stopping by, coffee, work or stay; at any time of day, regardless of her presence or absence. In the period from her moving in until July 10, we invite you to visit this neither- private- nor- public space in Kordunska and to spend time in the gap. Continue reading

Hyper-Public: A Symposium on Designing Privacy and Public Space :: June 9-10, 2011 :: Harvard University, Cambridge, Massachusetts, US.

Technology is transforming privacy and reshaping what it means to be in public. Our interactions — personal, professional, financial, etc. — increasingly take place online, where they are archived, searchable, and easily replicated. Discussions of privacy often focus solely on the question of how to protect privacy. But a thriving public sphere, whether physical or virtual, is also essential to society. Continue reading

Symposium Datapolis Mark Shepard: Pathetic Fallacies and Category Mistakes from CIANT Prague on Vimeo.

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