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Symposium:
- ISEA2011: 17th International Symposium on Electronic Art
- More presentations from ISEA2011:
Session Title:
- Sniff, Scrape, Crawl: Part 1
Presentation Title:
- Untitled
Presenter(s):
Venue(s):
Abstract:
Chair Person: Renée Turner
Presenters: Seda Gürses, Nicolas Malevé, Amy Suo Wu & Birgit BachlerWe are living in a time of unprecedented surveillance, but unlike the ominous spectre of Orwell’s Big Brother, where power is clearly defined and always palpable, today’s methods of information gathering are much more subtle and woven into the fabric of our everyday life. Through the use of seemingly innocuous algorithms Amazon tells us which books we might like, Google tracks our queries to perfect more accurate results, and Last.?fm connects us to people with similar music tastes. Immersed in social media, we commit to legally binding contracts by agreeing to ‘terms of use’. Having made the pact, we Twitter our subjectivities in less than 140 characters, contact our long lost friends on facebook and mobile-upload our geotagged videos on youtube. Where once surveillance technologies belonged to governmental agencies and the military domain, the web has fostered a less optically driven and participatory means of both monitoring and monetizing our intimately lived experiences. Bringing together artists, programmers and theorists, these interdisciplinary panels will look at how surveillance and data-mining technologies shape and influence our lives and the consequences they have on our civil liberties. The aim is to map the complexities of ‘sharing’ and examine how our fundamental understanding of private life has changed, as public display has become more pervasive and normalized through social networks. “Sniff, Scrape, Crawl…” is an ongoing interdisciplinary research project. Through a series of workshops, debates, lectures and presentations, the thematic project was initially launched in the beginning of 2011 at the Piet Zwart Institute, Master Media Design and Communication in the department of Networked Media. The formation of the panels at ISEA is an opportunity to show documentation and expand upon earlier research.