Reimagining Resistance Performing Transparency and Anonymity in Surveillance Art
"In an era of status updates, tweets, and bank check-ins, the geography of public, shared spaces needs to be reconsidered, along with our expectations of privacy in them"
James Coupe and Juan Pampin
The new media artwork I have chosen to explore in my blog this calendar week is Sanctum, an interactive installation past James Coupe and Juan Pampin. Installed on the facade of the Henry Art Galllery at the University of Washington in Seattle from May iv, 2013 to August 23, 2015, Sanctum uses surveillance technologies to raise of import questions about our expectations of privacy in an era where nosotros live under nearly constant surveillance in both public and private spaces. The reason I have chosen this artwork is because it clearly highlights artveillance not as an fine art motility, simply as a niche topic and tool that artists use in artistic creation.
Function of Digital Technologies
The role of digital technologies in this artwork are almost prevalent in its product and reception phases. The artists used a wide range of digital technologies and techniques to produce Sanctum. A network of vi surveillance cameras installed in and around the gallery's facade track and record people as they walk towards the project. As they become closer, two of these surveillance cameras grab people's facial features and scan them against a database of 50,000 other faces to try to decide their gender and guess historic period. Meanwhile, the person's live image is broadcasted onto a grid of 18 42-inch LCD monitors that wrap around the gallery. Facebook condition' and tweets identified as belonging to a person who matches the person'southward demographic profile are then stitched together to form a fictional narrative and displayed equally subtitles on the screens. There is also an sound version of these narratives, created through text-to-speech software, that is delivered via ultrasonic speakers and changes bitch co-ordinate to whether the system has identified the person as being a male or a female (Henry Art Gallery, 2020).
The reception of this artwork also requires the use of multiple digital technologies as it contains both visual and auditory elements. The audition views the footage from the video monitors, reads the substitles as the scroll across the screens, and listens to the personalised audio experience that is beamed at them via the speakers.
Information technology is of import to notation that people were able to opt-in the piece consciously and freely. There were signs at all approaches to the gallery informing people that they were about to enter a public infinite that was beingness recorded and that by entering, they would be consenting to have their imaged used in a fictional narrative. Further, in that location was a twelve human foot boundary placed around the project – just when people crossed this boundary were the artists allowed to detect people's age and gender.
Visibility Regimes
In his 2010 essay 'Artveillance: At the Crossroads of Art and Surveillance', Andrea Brighenti proposes iii models – or paradigms – of visibility. I am able to identify two of these models in Sanctum, these being: the visibility ofrecognition and the visibility ofcontrol. The visibility of recognition model emphasises the importance of visibility to one's social existence. In this vein, and to quote Brighenti (2010, p.176), "beingness visible is essential to obtain respect from others and being empowered as a subject". This visibility model is manifest in Sanctum through the audience'southward interaction with the artwork. By choosing to travel within twelve feet of the gallery'south façade and position themselves in front of surveillance cameras, the audience is demonstrating a desire to be recognised and to exist included amid others as a subject in the artwork. The installation besides just works if the surveillance cameras can recognize a passer-by equally a homo.
In the visibility of command model, on the contrary, the subject is disempowered and this is ordinarily done by a state or corporation that presents itself as "looking after us" (p.176). According to Brighenti (2010), this model works predictably in the sense that the country or corporation has the chapters to predict what an individual will do and in doing so, this undermines the agency of that individual. Sanctum uses surveillance technologies and profiling techniques to predict the blazon of Facebook condition' that its audiences would normally postal service. Coupe and Pampin also bring sensation to the deep asymmetry in visibilities that currently exist between ordinary citizens and big corporations similar Facebook. These corporations use like technologies to collect data about their customers which is and then used to predict various types of behaviours for capitalist do good.
Forms of Recognition
When analysing Sanctum, 2 types of recognition come to the fore – categorical recognition and in/dividual recognition. The showtime type of recognition is categorical recognition, which Brighenti defines as the "almost e'er routine typification of people" (2010, p.176). Whilst this type of recognition is unremarkably associated with the act of people categorizing other people, categorization can also be done algorithmically as evidenced in Sanctum. Sanctum employs motorcar learning algorithms to categorize audiences according to their age and gender. Additionally, in the second type of recognition, the "individual conceived through these technologies of power is a dividual, a social entity that tin can be segmented into traits to be controlled" (p.177). Sanctum scans an private's face up against a database to place them and through this, the element of in/dividual recognition is manifest.
Performing Transparency
Equally Gary Kafer (2016) notes in 'Reimagining Resistance: Performing Transparency and Anonymity in Surveillance Art', transparency is condign the dominant performative mode of participation in the social field. In Sanctum, the audience is "transparent not only because of surveillance, simply likewise considering of voluntary and active self-exposure" (Kafer, 2016, p.229). As same, people are informed nigh the artwork's purpose and its utilize of surveillance technologies, and can choose whether they want to participate or non. Any loss of privacy is therefore a choice they are given the conscious power to make. Co-ordinate to the artists, while some passers-by were uncomfortable with the project, about were eager to participate. This demonstrates how in this so-chosen "i-society…, the desire to participate often overwhelms any feelings of insecurity or invasion of privacy" (p.229).
Discussion Questions:
- What does it mean to participate in this installation? Does participation reflect a desire to be seen?
- Under Brighenti's 'visibility of control' model, the agency frequently presents itself as looking afterwards united states. Do you call back that large tech companies like Facebook are looking after us – helping us find the product we need? Or are they working confronting us – manipulating what we see to make us believe we need a product?
References:
Brighenti, A. Thou. (2010). Artveillance: At the Crossroads of Fine art and Surveillance. Surveillance and Gild, seven(two), 175–186.
Henry Art Gallery. (2020). Sanctum. Retrieved from https://henryart.org/exhibitions/sanctum
Kafer, G. (2016). Reimagining Resistance: Performing Transparency and Anonymity in Surveillance Fine art.Surveillance,14(2), 227–239. https://doi.org/x.24908/ss.v14i2.6005
Source: https://vickysdigitalartblog.wordpress.com/2020/10/28/week-9-artveillance-and-the-politics-of-seeing/
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