BREANNE

I want to start my presentation by addressing the space that we are currently occupying in relation to the possible re:definitions of intimacy, gesture, embodiment, and “the real” or “the authentic”. Right now, my computer screen serves itself as the virtual window, or membrane between “inside and outside”, through which a framing of a private view outward creates the “picture window” and a framing of the public view inward creates the “display window”. In this space, there exists profound vulnerability. The word “private” does not only come to signify the domain of capitalist economies but also the domain of personal freedom and domestic intimacy. It no longer becomes easy to distinguish spectator from creator, inside from outside. In this space, we must collectively ask, what allows us to break through the glass? What is at stake when smashing through the screen? 

These ideas tie in really well with all of the work being done by myself and the rest of the body politics group as we each confront deeply the personal as political,,,, which speaks also to a “politics of desire” where we are asking questions of: who is seen or unseen? What are the emotional and political implications of not being represented or allowed to show love? How does counter public resistance get coopted by capitalism through social media, making the public private and the private public?

STEPH

I’d like to open with a quote by artist and musician Holly Herndon, whose work negotiates our daily encounters with surveillance. She asks:

“Is everything done privately on my laptop to be considered a public performance?”

 

The four of us are interrogating the complexities of body and identity in the shifting landscape of today.

We are each trying to operate outside of what has been determined for us.

We are using the code of technology to alter the program,

and we are using our artistic practice to fuck with expectation:

expectation of fashion,

of subjecthood,

of pleasure,

and of reality.

 

I wanted to use the form of this presentation to call into question notions of the “whole” or “unified” body.

Through my research of surveillance, and especially facial recognition software, I have discovered that your physical body and the data of your body are easily separated.

I am then forced to ask:

How is my image used against me?

How is it used without my consent

and in service of capitalism, nationalism, and neo-colonialism?

 

Here is an example of the strengthening (already airtight) bonds between capitalism and surveillance:

 

https://imrsv.com/

 

In order to work efficiently, biometric surveillance relies on strict categories of identity, in particular: gender, race, age, and ability.

 

These systems must be able to place people (almost)instantaneously-

this is a process that relies on databases that are coded according to these “legible” markers.

 

But, the essentializing categories that make this software work,

can be turned back upon the system to make it fail.

 

For example: “feminine” and “masculine” hairstyles are routinely used to structure facial recognition algorithms.

It would be easy for us to bend the gendered constructions of appearance in order to create confusion in such a well-ordered system.

As artist and creator of CVDazzle, Adam Harvey, tells us:

“Surveillance relies on conformity.”

 

In my work:

I wanted to make and object

that could object.

 

I intended for my project to be an intervention into the assumed trajectory of compliance.

I’ve called this work radical camouflage, in that these wearable represent a technique of survival.

 

As I mentioned last week, I designed them through the language of code shifting,

or

the process of routinely adapting oneself to different environments.

They can be worn around the neck when one is safe,

then pulled up to obscure the face when one is not.

 

This is my response to the question I asked weeks ago:

What do you do when visibility itself becomes compliance?

 

I consider these pieces not to be an “answer” per say,

but rather a manner of speaking about

or strategy of being in the world.

 

I’ll give some highlights from my Chapter to conclude:

The title image is my attempt to broaden the familiar, visual language of surveillance. Thinking of how its common representations fail to encompass its ubiquitous nature.

The caption reads:

Portrait of the artist as a young biometric subject

 

What do we do when visibility itself

becomes compliance?

As technologies in surveillance progress, it becomes increasingly evident that the body is a contested site where negotiations with power are played out. With this

understanding, how can we adapt our interface (our very bodies) and claim

agency once again?

 

As an artist working in response to surveillance, I am looking to unmake:

-fixed notions of identity

-unconsented visibility

-our burgeoning police-state

-the racialization of suspicion

and

-our increasing inability to access

that which is collected from

us/about us.

 

“Fashion responds to the fears, anxieties, and goals of the culture at the time.”

– Adam Harvey

 

“Absence disrupts the illusion of presence, revealing its lack of originary plenitude. Randomness tears holes in pattern, allowing the white noise of the background to pour through.”- Katherine Hayle

 

DANIEL

https://www.vfiles.com/vfiles/26337

Hello! I’m Daniel and I going to tell you about our imminent demise! As the generation born into late trickledown capitalist society, we’ve witnessed firsthand accounts of events projecting the collapse of the world as we know it: ie global warming, student debt crisis, the past month has been full of police riots that have ignited feverish debate over the interconnectivity of white power, the police state, and accountability/ the lack thereof for those in positions of authority, /sighs/ oh god what else I mean there’s rampant over pollution due to overproduction and the pacific garbage island is growing rapidly every day; y’know you get the picture I only have like 10 minutes to break this down so I’m just going to move on.

So think about the prospects for the future for the millennial generation in relation to the question: “what will end first: civilization or capitalism?” it’s no doubt that capitalism is what got us here but will it survive once it’s byproducts catalyze our demise? The future is an uncertain realm to exist in, what I’ll be referring to as, the “not yet here” in relation to the “here and now” in which we currently operate. If the apocalypse is not tangibly foreseeable we can consider it to be a potentiality existing in the horizon: the mode of operation in which I refer to as “the apocalyptic horizon”.

So in regards to the question of “in a world full of too much stuff what is worth materializing?” my mind turns to the realm of fashion and clothing: a product that is dumped into landfills once it cannot be circulated in stores any longer for either being out of season or simply being of flawed quality. In addition to this, thoughtfully designed clothing items are presented a year before their release during institutions like “Fashion Weeks”, an act that is literally projecting aesthetics existing in the not yet here for the later consumption of them once the not yet here becomes the here and now.

The current influx of brands working within the aesthetic of the post apocalyptic, which examples can be found in a “VFILE” on my blog, exemplifies the symbiotic nature of pop culture (ie: we give pop culture its power, we succumb to pop’s power, pop feeds us as we give it power cyclically) and how projections of futurity often become self fulfilling prophecies. The significance of this aesthetic in relation to futurity is that these projections of the apocalyptic are, in a way, reflections of a dissatisfaction of the here and now, which is integral to the theory of queer futurity and utopianism. Jose Muñoz states that:

“Queerness is that thing that lets us feel that this world is not enough, that indeed something is indeed missing. Often we can glimpse the worlds proposed and promised by queerness and the realm of the aesthetic, frequently contains blueprints and schemata of a forward dawning futurity. Both the ornamental and the quotidian can contain a map of the utopia that is queerness. Turning to the aesthetic in the case of queerness is nothing like an escape from the social realm, insofar as queer aesthetics map future social relations… Queerness is essentially about the rejection of a here and now and an insistence on potentiality or concrete possibility for another world” (Muñoz, 1)

 

Incidentally, all of the heads of the fashion houses I have listed in my “VFILE” are queer identified and their work is an expression of a dissatisfaction of the here and now: aestheticized projections of the not yet here that will ultimately be fulfilled in what will later be the here and now. The queer artists and designers that have informed this conceptual foundation of this work of crafting blueprints towards utopian alternatives create work that are meant to arm, armor, defend against the impending doomsday that lurks in the horizon, revealing that possibly after Armageddon what will be left is queers, twinkies, and cockroaches. The notion that queerness has informed alternatives outside the here and now in order to ornament/adorn oneself for the environment of the apocalypse is an incredibly powerful statement that I assert is evident in the work I have done this quarter.

So if blueprints of utopianism are evident in queer aesthetics in the face of the apocalyptic horizon in the forms of the ornamental and quotidian, how can I make work with a 3d printer, an object that has been heavily projected with universality and accessibility in the future, and solve the issue of overproduction in the context of the garment industry? My answer is something of a cop out: overproduction in late capitalism is both an inevitability and one of the pillars upholding the apocalyptic horizon, so I created the “Kat’s Cradle” fabric which is constructed of circular chain mail style pieces that can be added and removed depending on the needs of the user. The practical application of this fabric is going to be put in use as a final product in the form of a bra for my best friend Kat, a queer identified transgender woman, that will be able to be manipulated throughout her transition as her estrogen treatments make her breasts grow. This garment is in tandem with her physical actualization, embodying her identity is on the horizon in the face of a not yet here that plagues trans women. When we consider that trans women are 16 times more likely to be murdered purely due of hate violence, and that the lifespan of a trans woman is roughly 30-32 years old simply due to being a recipient of hate violence we can see that the here and now is not a place that is kind or forgiving to those who are most marginalized in our society. Life for trans women is survival, as is most life for the marginalized, but more so for trans women. In a time when queer and trans liberation is quantified in terms of assimilation to the late capitalist society that reinforces what oppresses us, this production garment is undeniably praxis of actualizing queer aesthetics in the face of the apocalyptic horizon as a reaction against the discontents of late capitalism.

When producing this garment, my intentionality was to create an object that solves the problem of overproduction through continual production of a solid object and the issue that clothing is garbage once we cannot fit into it, I ran into many obstacles. I realized I was not as proficient in CAD software as I thought, and on top of that I had zero experience with any sort of garment or fabric production so entering this work I was wholly unprepared. However through perseverance and multiple attempts at materialization I was able to come up with a semi large scale prototype that adequately illustrates the parameters in which the fabric operates.

It is really easy to write off fashion trends like “the post apocalyptic aesthetic” as passé but in actuality, doing so is disengaging with something that we are all a part of regardless of our consciousness to our own contributions. Upon further analysis of my “Kats Cradle”, an object that is an active doing for and toward the not yet here in response to the oppression existing in the here and now, the rings that can exist on their own become a more solid object in unity: similarly to the concept of intersections in the face of oppression helping lead to more productive discourses and solidarities. Intersections of transgender oppression are contingent with that of all oppressions, which I assert is part of the blueprinting of utopia that exists in the modality of queerness.

So in conclusion: using the machine that has been so heavily projected with being “the future” by making an object that tries to solve the problem with overproduction through gradual and constant production adorned as an ornament of a transgender body in relation to queer aesthetics and the apocalyptic horizon is contingent with the idea of subverting our here and now of pollution, overproduction, and violence thus answering the question of “what is worth materializing?”. If apocalypse is on the horizon, we may as well be dressed for it.

Download (PDF, 1.65MB)

OBJECT :: object

object(n):

†b. The presentation of something to the eye or perception.
a. A goal, purpose, or aim; the end to which effort is directed; the thing sought, aimed at, or striven for.
5. Philos. A thing which is perceived, thought of, known, etc.; spec. a thing which is external to or distinct from the apprehending mind, subject, or self.
7. Computing. A distinct (or discrete) entity, as (a) a package of information (as a data structure definition) together with a description of its manipulation
9. Something put in the way; an interruption or obstruction; an obstacle, a hindrance.

object(v):

I. To oppose or disapprove.
8. trans. To expose (a person) to or against danger, evil, etc.
a. To put or place (a person or thing) so that it abuts, meets, or intercepts something, or so that it is exposed or subjected to a material object, physical phenomenon, etc.

When asked what place my project holds through the narrative of evolution, I am reminded of something I recently read in a Jean Baudrillard book:

“(Man) is the absolute horizon of evolution, since he is the destroyer of the cycle.”

(Fragments, p.7)

In evolution, new design blossoms and extinguishes the obsolete; evolution occurs through creation and destruction. My Blue Rabbit work attempts to do both (to create/and destruct) simultaneously.

Through the creation [part of me prefers the word “assembly”] of a simple accessory, I hope to participate in a process of de(con)struction. As an artist working in response to surveillance, I am looking to loosen (or entirely disband):

fixed notions of identity

unconsented visibility

our burgeoning police-state

the racialization of suspicion

and

our increasing inability to access that which is collected from us/about us. (meta-data, communication details, biometric information)

Destruction, or the re-working of the “legible” visage is a potent method of engagement with surveillance, as it moves to shift the existing relationship between self and state/private power.

Logistics:

My original vision was to develop a series of wearables, operating within the theme of radical camouflage. Once I began prototyping, I realized the time required to “make” (model, print, assemble, test, re-design, ad infinitum) mandated that I constrain my idea to a single design.

The design I chose to explore is one that addresses the lived experience of code-switching.

Code-switching is a process of adapting oneself (typically through manner of speech) according to one’s environment. Those who must adapt most often and most discretely are those who inhabit the margins of the dominant culture (race, class, sexuality, and gender all play important roles in this). Code-switching is about safety and survival.

Extrapolating this process into a functional art object:

In a non-threatening environment, my object can be worn around the neck.

In a suspect environment (one in which a person feels they need to hide), the object can be adjusted and worn over the face obscuring the brow and rendering the wearer “unreadable”.

I wanted this transition, this response to a shift from SAFE to SUSPECT, to be enacted through a singular gesture.

The future of my object lies in a further exploration of the themes of surveillance, intimacy, gesture and intervention.

– I want to probe the surfaces and experience of “that gesture” (the swift move from suspicion to protection). I want to distil it into an acute study of a single motion (an arm reaching from chest to brow), and sift out what affective meanings it holds.

– I have been trying to sort out how to “make contact” with my data double. How can she speak alone and how can we speak together? What sort of relationship do we/can we have?

– I want to continue making radical camouflage, focusing on designs that can “pass” in variant situations without calling attention to the wearer. I intend to introduce different mediums into this work, including textiles, metalwork, and language arts.

 

I believe the fate of my object is less important than what paths of inquiry have branched out from it.

Rotation: |

x= 150 mm
y= 130 mm
z= 2 mm

OBJECT(noun)

::

OBJECT(verb

object(n):

†b. The presentation of something to the eye or perception.
a. A goal, purpose, or aim; the end to which effort is directed; the thing sought, aimed at, or striven for.
5. Philos. A thing which is perceived, thought of, known, etc.; spec. a thing which is external to or distinct from the apprehending mind, subject, or self.
7. Computing. A distinct (or discrete) entity, as (a) a package of information (as a data structure definition) together with a description of its manipulation
9. Something put in the way; an interruption or obstruction; an obstacle, a hindrance.

object(v):

I. To oppose or disapprove.
8. trans. To expose (a person) to or against danger, evil, etc.
a. To put or place (a person or thing) so that it abuts, meets, or intercepts something, or so that it is exposed or subjected to a material object, physical phenomenon, etc.

When asked what place my project holds through the narrative of evolution, I am reminded of something I read in a Jean Baudrillard book:

“(Man) is the absolute horizon of evolution, since he is the destroyer of the cycle.”

(Fragments, p.7)

In evolution, new design blossoms while the obsolete is diminished; it takes place through both creation and destruction. My Blue Rabbit work attempts to do this simultaneously.

Through the creation [part of me prefers the word “assembly”] of a simple accessory, I hope to participate in a process of de(con)struction. As an artist working in response to surveillance, I am looking to loosen (or entirely disband):

fixed notions of identity

unconsented visibility

our burgeoning police-state

the racialization of suspicion

and our increasing inability to access that which is collected from us/about us (meta-data, communication details, biometric information)

Destruction, or re-working of the “legible” visage is a potent method of engagement with the current relationship between self and state/private power.

 

Logistics:

My original vision was to develop a series of wearables. Once I began prototyping, I realized the time required to “make” (modeling, printing, assembly, testing, re-designing, ad infinitum) mandated that I constrain my idea to a single design.

The design I chose to explore is one that addresses the lived experience of code-switching.

Code-switching is a process of adapting oneself (typically in manner of speech) according to one’s environment. Those who must adapt most often and most discretely are those who inhabit the margins of the dominant culture (race, class, sexuality all play important roles in this). Code-switching is about safety and survival.

Extrapolating this process into a functional art object:

In a non-threatening environment, my object can be worn around the neck.

In a suspect environment (one in which a person feels they need to hide), the object can be adjusted and worn over the face obscuring the brow and rendering the wearer “unreadable”.

I wanted this transition, in response to a shift from SAFE to SUSPECT, to be enacted through a singular gesture.

The future of my object lies in a further exploration of the themes of surveillance, intimacy, gesture and intervention.

– I want to explore the surfaces and experience of “that gesture” (the swift move from suspicion to protection). I want to distil it into an acute study of an arm reaching from chest to brow, and what affective experiences occur in it.

– I have been trying to sort out how to “make contact” with my data double. How can she speak alone and how can we speak together? What sort of relationship do we/can we have?

– I want to continue making radical camouflage, focusing on designs that can “pass” in variant situations without calling attention to the wearer. I intend to introduce different mediums into this work, including textiles, metalwork, and language arts.

 

I believe the fate of my object is less important than what its process of creation has “started”.

				
				

				

  					 
  					 
  					 
  					 
  					 
  					 
  					Rotation:  | 
				

x= 150 mm
y= 130 mm
z= 2 mm

 

so what would it mean then, to do this?

Steph Smith

Arlen Speights

Making Meaning Matter

11 4 2014

Radical Camouflage: the disassembly of visibility[i]

With and without our consent, surveillance has become an integral part of modern life. Embedded into our social, political, national, and consumer realms, we rely upon surveillance as a matter of convenience and a means of security (surveillance is a convenient security). In a post-911 world, the technologies of surveillance[ii] have raced ahead to form a “liquid modern society [that] is a ‘contraption attempting to make life with fear livable’” (Bauman, Lyon 101). The acceptance of a continual state of fear and suspicion and the constant negotiation of our rights combine to form the lived experience of surveillance. As an extension of the culture it is created in, our surveillance technologies reify our social inequalities – seamlessly reproducing evaluative tiers[iii] through the process of generalization, categorization, and privileging. To radically alter the terms of engagement with surveillance thus becomes a move to dismantle not only one’s compliance with dominative power, but the very scaffolding it is perched upon.

The lived experience of surveillance is a series of enlistments that render the individual legible, locatable, and neutralized. Michel Foucault’s theory of panopticism[iv], derived from Jeremy Bentham’s late 18^th century architectural plans for a prison watch tower, claims the power of surveillance to reside in the understanding and internalization that the self is always, or may always be, watched. Foucault enumerates: “He who is subjected to a field of visibility, and who knows it, assumes responsibility for the constraints of power; he makes them play spontaneously upon himself; he inscribes in himself the power relation in which he simultaneously plays both roles; he becomes the principle of his own subjection” (Foucault 202-203). The knowledge of one’s own surveillance engenders a productively multiplied regulation, meaning: one who knows they are being watched is inevitably enlisted in their own surveillance, monitoring their behavior and the behavior of others accordingly. Poet-activist Emily Abendroth asks: “How is ‘my safety’ turned against me? How is ‘my safety’ turned against others?” With surveillance posited as the necessary means to our security, the lived experience becomes one of the internalized police-state.

In face of the rampant development of surveillance technologies, the monolithic architecture of the panopticon has melted into the unfixed and omnipresent. Zygmut Bauman explains the certainty and breadth of modern surveillance as liquid; “without a fixed container, but jolted by ‘security demands’… surveillance spills out all over” (Bauman, Lyon 2-3). With even our most mundane moments being quantified and collected via surveillance, our lived experience mirrors that of forced symbiosis. In a network of cameras, wireless signals, thermal heat detectors, and biometric scanners, surveillance surrounds us and our relationship to it exists within a paradigm of asymmetrical transparency. Amongst its liquid spread, we are at once aware and ignorant of surveillance[v].

Although the notion of a centralized and visible panopticon is no longer relevant, our movement within the flows of a now liquid surveillance represents our compliant enlistment to the processes of our own undoing[vi]. Our compliance proves the Foucauldian notion of self-subjection as a still powerful factor in our relationship to surveillance today. “The right to privacy ceases upon the publication of the facts of the individual, or with his consent” (Brandeis, Warren 218). Our divulgement of personal information becomes a voluntary surrender of our right to privacy. Particularly in the realm of social media, we willingly surrender our rights in earnest attempts to become more connected to one another. In this yearn for social connectivity; we enlist ourselves into a process of disconnection by which information about us is deterritorialized from our physical bodies. “Knowledge of the population is now manifest in discrete bits of information which break the individual down into flows for purposes of management, profit, and entertainment” (Haggerty, Ericson 619). In the construction of our surveillant assemblage, our deterritorialized data coagulates to form a data double, by which real life consequences are predicated upon.

Despite its proclaimed[vii] mechanical objectivity, surveillance technologies replicate the socio-political ideologies of the culture that creates them. In this way, their application works in service of discriminatory practices, the commoditization of bodies, and the coded assignation of value. Where these technologies are currently deployed becomes a key insight into their dutiful purposes. The state funding of surveillance has engulfed border security, welfare programs, and the criminal justice system (Magnet 32). The move to mechanize the process of legitimation for border crossing belies an ever-increasing investment in the fixed boundaries of inclusion. Shoring up the line between US and THEM under a veil of “objective”, mechanical procedures bespeaks a deeply entrenched pedagogy of Othering that justifies the neo-colonial pursuit as well the disenfranchisement of whole populations living within[viii] our borders.

The multiple failures of biometric technologies for particular categories exemplify the embedded prejudices of which bodies have value within the dominant cultural framework. The narrative of biometric failures stands as proof to Shoshana Magnet’s proposition that “culture is always encoded into technology” (Magnet 20). Fingerprint scanners more often fail to scan the hands of Asian women and clerical, maintenance, and manual laborers. Iris scanners neglect those with visual impairments and those who use a wheelchair. Facial recognition software struggles with the elderly and the disabled (Magnet 30).  In effect, biometric surveillance sorts whole populations of people as legible or illegible, legitimate or illegitimate in the new social catalogue for order. This process designates bodies through fixed categories of race, gender, sexuality, and ability – it is predicated upon the assumed biological and static nature of identity. Within this procedure, our identity becomes not a living part of ourselves (flexible and self-authored) but rather something easy to designate, extract, and disseminate[ix].

Shifting the terms of engagement with surveillance is borne not from a simplistic denial, but rather a “radical negativity”. A strategy that “belongs neither to negation, nor to opposition, nor to correction (‘normalization’), nor to contradiction (of positive and negative, normal and abnormal, ‘serious’ and ‘unserious’, ‘clarity’ and ‘obscurity’) – it belongs precisely to scandal: to the scandal of their nonopposition” (Felman 104).

When visibility itself becomes compliance and asymmetrical transparency shrouds the domain between the surveillers and the surveilled – nonopposition becomes a strategy for the reclamation of agency. This will not be an agency self-interested and acute, but an agency enacted as a “singular plural”, in which our “entity registers as both particular in its difference but at the same time always relational to other singularities” (Munoz 10-11).  The radical task then is an armament of disassembly, with a shared recognition of the “covert” as not the proprietary province of the state or corporate enterprise. This enactment of the covert, our camouflage, begins the radical shift of engagement.

To appropriate camouflage in the service of human rights and social justice is a gesture in dissonant dissent of its ties to colonialism, empire, and violence. In order to radically disentangle ourselves from surveillance, we must first be knowledgeable about the methods of our own subjection. For example, the use of facial recognition software relies upon accurate readings of key facial features[x]. By obfuscating the markers of our assigned identifying features, we can effectively dematerialize in the face of digital observation.

Camouflage is a product of the landscape, its success contingent upon one’s ability to know the terrain and replicate it. The act of hiding in plain site, hiding from “within”[xi], mimics the techniques of surveillance while dismantling its procedural efficacy. In a speech given in 1919, Lieutenant-Commander Norman Wilkinson of the British navy (creator of Dazzle[xii]) explains, “the primary object of this scheme, [is] not so much to cause the enemy to miss… but to mislead him… as to the correct position to take up” (Newark 74). Enacting our own invisibility thus becomes a method of creating chaos in a well-monitored system; it is a technique of survival that denies access and integration upon non-consented grounds. Looking to the horizon of our “worldly bodies-in-the-making” (Haraway 137), I close with Zygmut Bauman:

“Humans constitute an endemically transgressive species… having been blessed or cursed with a language containing the particle “no” (that is, the possibility of denying or refuting what is) and the future tense (that is, the ability to be moved by a vision of reality that doesn’t exist ‘as yet’ but might in ‘a future’…” (Bauman, Lyons 143).

 

[i] VISIBILITY, STRATEGY, WARFARE, RECIPROCITY, COMPLIANCE, DENIAL, DISSONANCE, REPLICATION, AESTHETIC TERRORISM, SPECTATORSHIP, POSITIONALITY, ACCESS, TRANSPARENCY, ANONYMITY, PERSONALIZATION

[ii] Facial recognition software, CCTV, RFID microchips, fingerprint capture, iris scanners, and drones to name a few.

[iii] Along race, gender, sexuality, ability, practices of faith, citizenship status

[iv]

(Photos courtesy of University of Washington)

[v] We know of our surveillance, but we are not certain at all times which surveillance methods are being deployed nor do we know the destination of the information collected about us.

[vi] We are undone by the procedure of “making”, that is the rendering of our identity into legibility through fixed categories with attached values.

[vii] impossible?

[viii] Within but not among.

[ix] Historically contested bodies, the bodies of people of color, women, those with a disability, non-normative sizes/shapes, the elderly, and transgender and queer bodies must be cordoned to appropriate vectors of identity to fit within the framework of surveillance. Generalized categories become technologies of control, all in the name of our “freedom” from fear.

[x] “Nose Bridge: Partially obscure the nose-bridge area: The region where the nose, eyes, and forehead intersect is a key facial feature.”
“Eyes: Partially obscure one of the ocular regions: The position and darkness of eyes is a key facial feature.”
“Head: Research from Ranran Feng and Balakrishnan Prabhakaran at University of Texas, shows that obscuring the elliptical shape of a head can also improve your ability to block face detection.”
“Assymetry: Facial-recognition algorithms expect symmetry between the left and right sides of the face. By developing an asymmetrical look, you may decrease your probability of being detected” (Harvey).
[xi] Surveillance is sold to us on the grounds of national security. Yet, it is within our own borders that our greatest fears are realized.
[xii]

(Painting by Edward Wadsworth, 1919)
“The most famous camouflage in the First World War was ‘Dazzle’, the boldly modernist and highly decorative disruptive pattern designs that were applied to British ships” (Newark 74).

 

Works Cited

Bauman, Zygmunt, and David Lyon. Liquid Surveillance: a conversation. Malden: Polity Press,

2013. Print.

Felman, Shoshana. The Scandal of the Speaking Body: Don Juan with J.L. Austin, or Seduction in Two

   Languages. Stanford: Stanford University Press, 203. Print.

Foucault, Michel. Discipline and Punish: The Birth of the Prison. New York: Vintage Books,

1977. Print.

Haggerty, Kevin D., and Richard V. Ericson. “The Surveillant Assemblage.” British Journal Of

   Sociology 51.4 (2000): 605-622. SocINDEX with Full Text. Web. 4 Nov. 2014.

Haraway, Donna. Modest Witness@second Millenium.FemaleMan Meets OncoMouse: Feminism and

   Technoscience. New York: Routledge, 1997. Print.

Harvey, Adam. “Style Tips for Reclaiming Privacy.” CVDazzle. Web. 4 November 2014.

Magnet, Shoshana. When Biometrics Fail: Gender, Race, and the Technology of Identity.London:

Duke University Press, 2011. Print.

Munoz, Jose Esteban. Cruising Utopia: The Then and There of Queer Futurity. New York: New

York University Press, 2009.

Newark, Tim. Camouflage. New York: Thames & Hudson, 2007. Print.

Warren, Samuel V., and Louis D. Brandeis. “The Right To Privacy.” Harvard Law Review 4.5

(1890): 193-220. Business Source Complete. Web. 4 Nov. 2014.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Works Cited

Bauman, Zygmunt, and David Lyon. Liquid Surveillance: a conversation. Malden: Polity

Press, 2013. Print.

Felman, Shoshana. The Scandal of the Speaking Body: Don Juan with J.L. Austin, or

   Seduction in Two Languages. Stanford: Stanford University Press, 203. Print.

Foucault, Michel. Discipline and Punish: The Birth of the Prison. New York: Vintage

Books, 1977. Print.

Haggerty, Kevin D., and Richard V. Ericson. “The Surveillant Assemblage.” British Journal

   Of Sociology 51.4 (2000): 605-622. SocINDEX with Full Text. Web. 4 Nov. 2014.

Magnet, Shoshana. When Biometrics Fail: Gender, Race, and the Technology of Identity.

London: Duke University Press, 2011. Print.

Munoz, Jose Esteban. Cruising Utopia: The Then and There of Queer Futurity. New

York: New York University Press, 2009.

Newark, Tim. Camouflage. New York: Thames & Hudson, 2007. Print.

Warren, Samuel V., and Louis D. Brandeis. “The Right To Privacy.” Harvard Law Review

4.5 (1890): 193-220. Business Source Complete. Web. 4 Nov. 2014.

 

http://www.zachblas.info/projects/facial-weaponization-suite/

http://www.urmesurveillance.com/urme-paper-mask/

http://cvdazzle.com/

“First meticulously censused, and then censored…. The more the word safe is repeated, the more our fears increase.” – Emily Abendroth

“Liquid surveillance is… an orientation, a way of situating surveillance developments in the fluid and unsettling modernity of today…. Surveillance spreads in hitherto unimaginable ways, responding to and reproducing liquidity. Without a fixed container… surveillance spills out all over.” – David Lyon, Liquid Surveillance

 

What are the possibilities for interacting with and/or refusing interaction with surveillance?

 

WHAT:

-My project will be an active exploration of surveillance, with particular focus on the advent and advantageous use of facial recognition software. What are our roles in this narrative becoming? Are we co-conspirators, assisting and promoting the surveillance of one another (even in the simple, yet dogmatically tended to, act of tagging our friends in a Facebook image)? Are we merely compliant data, passively permitting the aggressive aggregation of each opportunity of information? Are we/will we be a denial to this seamless system, this situated stockpile that recedes into evermore untraceability as we become irrevocably more findable, see-able, readable?

What do we do when visibility itself becomes compliance?

-With my work, I intend to trouble the increasingly asymmetrical transparency between the surveillers and the surveilled. The resulting material will be a series of wearables that deny facial recognition software accurate readings of the face. As technologies in surveillance progress, it becomes increasingly evident that the body is a contested site where negotiations with power are played out. With this understanding, how can we adapt our interface (our very bodies) and claim agency once again?

What control can we have over our Data Double?

What control does it have over us?

“Today we are witnessing the formation and coalescence of a new type of body, a form of becoming which transcends human corporeality and reduces flesh to pure information…. [T]his new body is our ‘data double” (Haggerty, Ericson 614).

-In short, the information collected about us (our credit score, employment history, criminal record, shopping habits, etc.) creates a virtual doppelganger, a “data double” of ourselves. In the refusal to be located/sorted/catalogued, can we induce dissonance with our data doubles? By adapting our appearance IRL, can we become alienated from the biometrically constructed “double”?

Who is hiding from whom?

-I intend to contextualize my contemporary enactment of camouflage with an understanding of its history; a history long and varied, with direct links to both violence and nature. Researching the historical uses of camouflage and the politics that surround it will clarify my own intentions for the form. Access to strategies of hiding appears to be of extreme importance in the years to come.

What are the politics of privacy?

-Is privacy a basic human right or merely a bourgeoisie concept? Who historically has had the right to privacy? Who hasn’t?

 

WHY:

-The recent launch of the FBI’s Next Generation Identification program (a “faceprint” system that intends to house over 52 million criminal and non-criminal photos by 2015), a horrifying increase in drone warfare (320 strikes with 2,400 killed within the first five years of Obama’s presidency alone), and the development and implementation of RFID microchips for identification purposes (the Northside Independent School District of Texas plans to implant them into student identification cards next year) are just a few of the reasons why presently exploring our relationship to surveillance couldn’t be more important.

 

Surveillance moves forward with or without our consent,

with or without our dissent.

-The question of the future of the civil liberties, human rights, and privacy of us and our “neighbors” is tantamount to the question of surveillance. If surveillance is a chain of closely watched links, each location recorded and maintained, every dimension organized according to fixed categories, how can the simple act of covering one’s face break that chain?

 

WHO:

Bauman, Zygmunt, and David Lyon. Liquid Surveillance. Malden, MA: Polity Press, 2007. Print.

Blechman, Hardy. Disruptive pattern material: an encyclopedia of camouflage.

Buffalo, N.Y.: Firefly Books, 2004. Print.

Haggerty, Kevin D., and Richard V. Ericson. “The Surveillant Assemblage.” British Journal Of Sociology 51.4 (2000):

605-622. SocINDEX with Full Text. Web. 21 Oct. 2014.

Warren, Samuel V., and Louis D. Brandeis. “The Right To Privacy.” Harvard Law Review 4.5 (1890): 193-220. Business

   Source Complete. Web. 21 Oct. 2014.