prosthetic knowledge
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user632
Public installation piece from undef in public window collects data of of it’s audience with a Kinect sensor - video embedded below:
User 632 is an installation that stores the behaviour of the people who look at it by monitoring them in return. It wants to know when and how a person passes by or if they stop on the way.
All data is being tracked and displayed publicly. Passers-by are stored as an anonymous number without any hints to their identities. Whoever comes to close to the camera though will be stored with a photograph next to their id.
The installation is made up of three Kinect depth cameras that constantly look for movements which are then reduced to a simple directional line in space. When a visitor enters a specific area, the algorithm is looking for a face. As soon as one is found a countdown appears that shows the time until a photo is taken automatically. At the same time the time a user is in the visible area is stored.
This data (time, path and eventually image) are stored in a database, interpreted and displayed as real-time statistics.
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Rhizome: Prosthetic Knowledge Picks: Surveillance Painting
In this submission, three painters whose work replicates the visual grammar of New Media: Enda O’Donoghue, William Betts, and Kon Trubkovich.
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Stealth Wear by Adam Harvey
Fashion exhibition of wearable anti-thermal imaging clothing to protect detection from airborne surveillance technology:
Building off previous work with CV Dazzle, camouflage from face detection, Privacy Mode continues to explore the aesthetics of privacy and the potential for fashion to challenge authoritarian surveillance. Presented by PRIMITIVE at TANK MAGAZINE HQ will be a suite of new designs, made in collaboration with NYC fashion designer Johanna Bloomfield, that tackle some of the most pressing and sophisticated forms of surveillance today. Including:
The anti-drone hoodie and anti-drone scarf: garments designed to thwart thermal imaging, a technology used widely by UAVs.
The XX-shirt: a x-ray shielding print in the shape of a heart, that protects your heart from x-ray radiation
And the Off Pocket: an anti-phone accessory that allows you to instantly zero out your phone’s signal
Accompanying each project will be videos and tests revealing the process behind each technology and counter technology.
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In-Store Facial Recognition Market Research
New technology from Japan can monitor all shop visitors, discerning age, gender, and visiting frequency, and measures the data with a system called ‘NeoFace’, all with a normal PC and webcam - via DigInfo (video embedded below):
NEC has developed a marketing service that utilizes facial recognition technology to estimates the age and gender of customers, and accumulates the data, along with the dates and times that customers visit stores. This data is then used to analyze trends in customer behavior and visit frequency.
This service is provided in Japan via NEC’s cloud computing technology, only requires a regular PC and video camera, and is available for approximately $880 (70,000 yen) per month per store.
“This service is mainly intended for retailers that have several stores. It provides retailers with customer attributes based on facial images. That information is helpful for sales strategies.”
This service can also detect repeat customers across multiple stores. It uses a face detection and comparison engine developed by NEC, called NeoFace.
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Art of Bjoern Schuelke
Kinetic installation artist has been producing surveillance drone-like / solar powered pieces well over the last decade:
Björn Schülke pursues a creative style that is equally influenced by modern abstraction and instruments of scientific measurement. The slow deliberate movements in his sculptures spatially consider mass and weight of form. Also influenced by the Dadaist tradition and Jean Tinguely, the theme of an absurd machine is key in Schülke’s work.
Playfully transforming live spatial energy into active responses, his objects experiment with solar panels, infrared surveillance, and propelled wind power. Many of his larger kinetic sculptures combine elements of surveillance technologies, robotics, interactive video and sound.
Schülke’s active sculptures question the way in which we interact with modern technology: on entering the installation site, the audience becomes part of the ‘system’ as the works (some freestanding, others suspended) monitor or react to the human element.You can find out more about the artist at his website here, including video examples and an informative pdf brochure.
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Desire of Codes - Art Installation by Seiko Mikami
Audio / Visual installation using robotics to capture video of visitors, projecting the captures onto a hexagon ‘eye’:
The “individual” visitor in a double role as a subject of expression and observation
This interactive installation consisting of three parts is set up in YCAM’s Studio A, a space that is normally used for theatre performances.
A large number of devices resembling tentacles with built-in small cameras are placed across a huge wall (Part 1), while six robotic “search arms” equipped with cameras and projectors are suspended from the ceiling (Part 2). Each device senses with insect-like wriggling movements the positions and movements of visitors, and turns toward detected persons in order to observe their actions. In addition, a giant round-shaped screen that looks like an insect’s compound eye is installed in the back of the exhibition space (Part 3). Visual data transmitted from each camera, along with footage recorded by surveillance cameras installed at various places around the world, are stored in a central database, and ultimately projected in complex images mixing elements of past and present, the venue itself and points around the globe, onto the screen. The compound eye visualizes a new reality in which fragmentary aspects of space and time are recombined, while the visitor’s position as a subject of expression and surveillance at once indicates the new appearances of human corporeality and desire.More from the artist’s website here
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Big Browser is Watching You (by Rétrofuturs)
