Locative Media & Surveillance

There's an interesting story online from the BBC on locative media and surveillance. It describes an art project at the San Jose Zero One ISEA 2006 symposium that traced attendees movements without their knowledge. The team behind it fixed nodes to traffic lights and pedestrian crossings at busy intersections, dressed in the bright orange overalls of municipal workers. Other tracking nodes were deployed in hotel lobbies, cafes and cinemas, placed in flowerpots, and buried beneath bar terraces. One of the artists involved, Drew Hemmet, was interviewed for the story:

The attendees were also sent messages through bluejacking - the process of scanning for and connecting to other Bluetooth-enabled mobile devices without the owners' consent.

"That is actually a surveillance act - so every time you use Bluetooth you're actually looking to see what other devices are around you, and without disclosing who you are," said Mr Hemmet.

"Someone received messages from someone who had intimate knowledge of their movements, that were written in such a way as to make them think that maybe they signed up to some social network, but forgot.

"Then, over the week, the messages got slowly more sinister - and changed from 'coffee later?' to 'are you ignoring me?'"

The messages ultimately directed people towards the Loca stand at Zero One, where people could scan their device and receive a personalised printout of their movements.

Some individual logs were over 100m long.

The nodes are placed on walls and street furniture. "A lot of people were very surprised that we were technically able to do it," Mr Hemmet added.

For more see BBC and Zero One

Final Assessment Task

For the final assessment task, a CDR of the blog needs to be handed in. This is a hard copy will be used to mark the online project and confirm that the work has been completed by the set deadline.

Step 1 - Save all relevant material from the blog.

From the Firefox browser window, select 'File' menu, 'Save Page As' option. Make sure the file is clearly titled, and save to the desktop.



IMPORTANT - If your blog has multiple entries or pages, be sure to make copies of ALL relevant material. This is formal requirement for assessment. Note that images and video can be left as web links, these will be loaded on screen when connected to the Net.


Step 2 - Burn to CD.

Load a blank CDR into the disc drive (blank CDRs and pockets will be made available in the workshops this week). A menu will automatically appear.

Select 'Open writable CD Folder using Windows Explorer'

Drag files into CD Drive window.

Select 'File' menu, 'Write these files to CD.'

The process begins automatically. The CD drawer will open on completion, this should only take a couple of seconds.


Step 3 - Deliver to Media Communications Office.

Label the CD clearly.

Use a CD pocket or case to hand in, attach a signed purple form and deliver to the office by Friday 5:00 pm.

A stamped and self-addressed envelope is required for comments and feedback.

Some Week 11 Links

Locative Media



Proboscis - Urban Tapestries
http://urbantapestries.net/

Volkmar Klien and Ed Lear - Traces of Fire
www.traces-of-fire.org/

Esther Polak - Amsterdam Realtime
http://realtime.waag.org/

Esther Polak, Ieva Auzina and RIXC - MILK Project
www.milkproject.net/


Alternate Reality Gaming

Pac Manhattan
www.pacmanhattan.com


Counter-Surveillance




RTM Mark - Guide to CCTV Destruction
http://www.rtmark.com/cctv/

Surveillance Camera Players
http://www.notbored.org/the-scp.html

Institute for Applied Autonomy - iSee
http://www.appliedautonomy.com/isee.html

Trevor Paglen - Limit Telephotography
http://www.paglen.com/pages/projects/nowhere/photos_images.htm

Net Communication YouTube Film Festival

Take a break from the final assignment and add your favorite YouTube video content in the comments below.

Open-Source Museum Opens in Second Life

A group of students from Brown University have launched an open-source museum in the virtual world of Second Life. Known as OSMOSA, the Open-Source Museum of Open-Source Art, the museum is located »in Second Life's Eson region« and features a mess of artworks that anyone can copy, modify, alter or otherwise contribute to. The museum itself is open to alteration as well, which is a fantastic idea. The modding got under way at the opening party Tuesday night: an already-altered image of Manet's Olympia (with space helmets added to make it more excellent) came out the other end of the night with some interesting additions and adjustments...

The museum was organized by Deborah Abramson, Kiera Feldman, and Davis Jung (aka Deborah Maertens, Koco Furse, and Jinsaedavis Jun in Second Life, respectively), and built out with help from SL residents Kenny Hubble, Soupcan Tomsen, and "the Loyalist College Team."

From http://www.3pointd.com/20070427/open-source-museum-opens-in-second-life

Net.Art

Jodi
Jodi.org (1993); http://wwwwwwwww.jodi.org/
%20Wrong; http://404.jodi.org/
ASDFG (2000); http://asdfg.jodi.org/
<$Blogtitle$>; http://blogspot.jodi.org/




Health Bunting
_readme (1998); http://www.irational.org/_readme.html

Mark Napier
Shredder 1.0 (1998); http://www.potatoland.org/shredder/

Cory Arcangel
Data Diaries (2002); http://www.turbulence.org/Works/arcangel/
Dooogle (2004); http://www.dooogle.com/

Josh On (Futurefarmers)
They Rule (2004); http://www.theyrule.net/




RTMark
http://www.rtmark.com/legacy/history.html

EToy
Toywar (1999); http://www.etoy.com/

Yes Men
Dow Ethics (2004); http://www.dowethics.com/
http://www.theyesmen.org/




Ubermorgan
Google Will Eat Itself (2005); http://gwei.org/index.php
Amazon Noir (2006); http://www.amazon-noir.com/
http://www.ubermorgen.com

Websites; Listserves
Nettime, 7-11, Syndicate
Rhizome; www.rhizome.org

Alex Galloway
StarryNight (1999 - onward); http://rhizome.org/starrynight/




Raqs Media Collective
Opus (2003); http://www.opuscommons.net/

0100101110101101.org
Life Sharing (2001); http://0100101110101101.org/

Golan Levin
Dumpster (2005); http://artport.whitney.org/commissions/thedumpster/




Abstraction
www.abstraction-now.at/the-online-project/

This is an image of drawball

Second Life Locations

Places for New Second Life Avatars

Ahern Welcome Island – Ahern (12, 12, 40)
New Citizens Plaza – Kuula (54, 175, 29)
The Shelter – Isabel (44, 244, 79) [club]
Ivory Tower Library of Primitives – Natoma (210, 164, 27) [building
tutorials]


Sights



Svarga (7, 123, 22) [living ecosystem]
Rambler Country, Texas – Gluphisia (240, 62, 93)
Anime Paradise – Nakama (128, 127, 21)
International Spaceflight Museum – Spaceport Alpha (44, 77, 24)
The Future (133, 211, 65)
Seacliff (168, 200, 24)
Something Awful - Baku (128, 128, 33)
Oil Rig – Anwr (105, 170, 40)
Phantom Island (90, 204, 21) [rollercoaster]
Jessie Combat Sim (127, 128, 40) [fighting]
Silver Motorsports Complex – Silver Island (131, 121, 22) [racing]
Cave Rua – Rua (167, 44, 7) [diving]
Neo-Realms Fishing Camp – Hearts Enchanted (203, 192, 24) [fishing]
Hollywood Sports and Entertainment Complex – Hollywood (141, 53, 25)
Xtasia – Sri Syadasti (88, 161, 80) [Mature]
Starlight Room – Starlight Isle (149, 200, 37) [casino]
Fairchange Island (178, 173, 38)





Abbott’s Aerodrome – Abbotts (16, 170, 64)
The Edge – Edge (126, 126, 101)
Sutherland Dam Club – Sutherland (199, 8, 24)
Nyte’n’Day – Couture Isle (7, 128, 49)
Midnight City (114, 141, 26)
Adidas (104, 183, 55)

Wikipedia Edits

HENRY JENKINS - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Henry_Jenkins

07:25, 16 April 2007 Mjdieter m (Added detail on convergence culture)

04:29, 17 April 2007 128.250.122.70
04:30, 17 April 2007 128.250.122.91
04:32, 17 April 2007 128.250.122.91

WEST COAST EAGLES - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/West_Coast_Eagles_FC"

22:49, 18 April 2007 138.130.53.25 (→Lyrics)
22:50, 18 April 2007 MartinBot (Reverted edits by 138.130.53.25 (talk) to last version by MartinBot)

PUSSYCAT DOLLS - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pussycat_dolls

07:37, 16 April 2007 Mjdieter (→Empowerment messages)
10:28, 16 April 2007 Design m (Undid revision 123192522 by Mjdieter)

THE PUBLIC SPHERE - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Public_sphere

07:32, 16 April 2007 Mjdieter: (→Overview and historical development)
21:59, 18 April 2007 86.41.217.49: (→Overview and historical development - deleted irrelevant reference to thomas apperly.)

Google Will Eat Itself

I was just showing the GWEI project in the Monday workshop and read this on Geert Lovink's net critique blog:

"Google Will Eat Itself (http://www.gwei.org) announced that their domain gwei.org is now fully censored on all Google Search-Indexes worldwide.

What a scandal!

The idea behind GWEI is simple:

Google Will Eat Itself generates money by serving Google text advertisments on a network of hidden Websites. With this money GWEI automatically buy Google shares. GWEI buys Google via their own advertisment. Google eats itself - but in the end “we” own it. By establishing this autocannibalistic model we deconstruct the new global advertisment mechanisms by rendering them into a surreal click-based economic model. After this process GWEI hands over the common ownership of “our” Google Shares to the GTTP Ltd. [Google To The People Public Company] which distributes them back to the user(clickers) / public.

Let’s break the silence and put a link to this project on our sites and blogs: http://www.gwei.org. Give Google back to people! GWEI is an interesting case how to imagine a new global public sphere. How to reverse privatization and rethink a truely public Internet without the Googles and Yahoos."

The Google Masterplan

A paranoid, though provocative, short film on Google and information aggregation. Though not covered specifically in this course, the concept of digital panopticism is probably closest to this position on surveillance and control, see Greg Ulmer, Profiling Machines: Mapping the Personal Information Economy (2004).

4 Corners, You Only Live Twice

The television program Four Corners on the ABC has a report on Second Life available to watch (or read the transcript) from here.

Is Second Life Ecologically Sustainable?

For later in the semester when we explore virtual worlds, from the blog Rough Type:

Philip Rosedale, the head of Linden Lab, the company behind Second Life has been quoted saying: "We're running at full power all the time, so we consume an enormous amount of electrical power in co-location facilities [where they house their 4,000 server computers]. We're running out of power for the square feet of rack space that we've got machines in. We can't for example use [blade] servers right now because they would simply require more electricity than you could get for the floor space they occupy."

If there are on average between 10,000 and 15,000 avatars 'living' in Second Life at any point, that means the world has a population of about 12,500. Supporting those 12,500 avatars requires 4,000 servers as well as the 12,500 PCs the avatars' physical alter egos are using. Conservatively, a PC consumes 120 watts and a server consumes 200 watts. Throw in another 50 watts per server for data-center air conditioning. So, on a daily basis, overall Second Life power consumption equals:

(4,000 x 250 x 24) + (12,500 x 120 x 24) = 60,000,000 watt-hours
or 60,000 kilowatt-hours

Per capita, that's:

60,000 / 12,500 = 4.8 kWh

Which, annualized, gives us 1,752 kWh. So an avatar consumes 1,752 kWh per year. By comparison, the average human, on a worldwide basis, consumes 2,436 kWh per year. So there you have it: an avatar consumes a bit less energy than a real person, though they're in the same ballpark.

<...>

UPDATE: In a comment on this post, Sun's Dave Douglas takes the calculations another step, translating electricity consumption into CO2 emissions. (Carbon dioxide, he notes, "is the most prevalent greenhouse gas from the production of electricity.") He writes: "looking at CO2 production, 1,752 kWH/year per avatar is about 1.17 tons of CO2. That's the equivalent of driving an SUV around 2,300 miles (or a Prius around 4,000)."

Tactical Media

From the lecture on tactical media, some references for those interested students:

Critical Art Ensemble - An influential art/activist collective founded by Steve Kurtz and Steve Barnes in 1986. Webpage features downloadable books on hacktivism, including Electronic Civil Disobedience and Other Unpopular Ideas (1996) and Digital Resistance: Explorations in Tactical Media (2000).

Floodnet - a piece of software that uses a technique called Distributed Denial of Service (DDoS) attack to stage political protests on the Internet.

Electronic Disturbance Theatre (EDT) staged a number of these so-called virtual sit-ins in solidarity with the Mexican Zapatista movement. In the same way that real protests are designed to bring a social or political issue to light in the public sphere, Floodnet is an attention grabbing form of tactical media – in this case, for the Internet rather than real demonstrations such as blocking city street traffic.

One idea behind this notion of the virtual sit-in is a belief that power operates differently in the network society and that traditional methods of protest are no longer suitable for the contemporary landscape of informational capitalism.

I/O/D 4: The Web Stalker - an alternate web browser (i.e. Explorer, Firefox, etc.) that offers a completely different interface for looking at HTML pages.


According to Matthew Fuller:

"The Web Stalker performs an inextricably technical, aesthetic, and ethical operation on the HTML stream that at once refines it, produces new methods of use, ignores much of the data linked to or embedded within it, and provides a mechanism through which the deeper structure of the web can be explored and used."

CarnivorePE - created by the Radical Software Group, this downloadable program is inspired by surveillance software used by the FBI. Carnivore listens to all net traffic (email, web surfing, etc.) on a specific local network and serves this data stream over the net to creative interfaces, called 'clients.' The clients are each designed to interpret the traffic in various ways, to visualise the information with unexpected and aesthetic properties.

In this manner, Carnivore operates as a platform through which artists can produce applications that re-present the data stream in unique and innovative ways (see Amalgamatmosphere, Carnivore Webcam Sniffing and Network Is Speaking).

Participatory Media

For students who are interested, there's an online video from the recent Floating Points lecture series, held last week at Emerson College in Boston. The topic of this year's session, 'participatory media,' is closely related to our concerns throughout this course. Unfortunately, the quality of the video is not great, but it's worth persisting with for a discussion of scaleable web media by Ulises Mejias and Trebor Scholz.

But for those struggling with the screen size and audio, the lecture notes and slides from Mejias' talk, 'Networked Participation: Wisdom of Crowds or Stupidity of the Masses?' are available here.

Web 2.0 ... The Machine is Us/ing Us

From YouTube

I Blog Therefore I Am