Data Cam­ou­flage

Symposium:

• ISEA2011: 17th International Symposium on Electronic Art

• If You See Something Say Something: Art, War, Surveillance and the Sustainability of Urgency in the Post 9/11 Era

• Data Cam­ou­flage

• Hasan Elahi

Venue(s):

• Sabanci Center, Istanbul, Turkey

• Panel:  If You See Something Say Something: Art, War, Surveillance and the Sustainability of Urgency in the Post 9/11 Era

  With the re­cent tran­si­tion from sol­diers wear­ing con­ven­tional cam­ou­flage in war­fare to dig­i­tal pix­els on their bat­tle uni­forms, we no longer have a need for the sol­diers to blend into the land­scape of war­fare, but in­stead  we need them to blend into the ma­chin­ery of war­fare – namely the dig­i­tal noise in the chip found on night vi­sion gog­gles. With the wide­spread use of house­hold dig­i­tal tools today, for the first time in our cul­ture, we have al­most as many pro­duc­ers of in­for­ma­tion as we have con­sumers. As we gen­er­ate data at a con­tin­u­ally in­creas­ing rate, col­lec­tion of in­for­ma­tion is no longer as im­por­tant as the analy­sis of that in­for­ma­tion. In an age where every­thing is archived and the need to delete is al­most nonex­is­tent, can we hide and re­main pri­vate by gen­er­at­ing dig­i­tal noise of our own?

Category:

• Panel