On Being Seen 👀 at INSTALLATION SPACE

This post explains an installation art work that is on display at INSTALLATION SPACE in North Adams, MA from July 16 - August 22, 2021. You can find more info about the exhibition on my website here

On Being Seen 👀 is a two-person collaborative exhibition featuring Mac Pierce and me, Christina Balch. Mac’s work explores surveillance and privacy in the public realm, and my work navigates data privacy and tracking on personal devices and in the private realm of our homes and private lives.

My installation for On Being Seen 👀 features 3 different devices on a desk covered in paper in a home office setting. It’s a private space where one would work, shop online, listen to music, chat with friends, play games online, etc. There is a laptop, a smart phone, and a baby monitor screen on the desk. The videos playing on the 3 devices are personal, autobiographical time capsules of my digital activity. During the pandemic, I was stretched thin as a new working mother like many others and constantly consumed goods and information online on my laptop and phone. I bought items every other week on Amazon as my baby kept growing and needing bigger and different things. I researched her growth, I read about the virus, I tried to find comfortable masks, I sent gifts to friends and family, and worked remotely, and watched my baby at the same time because daycares were closed.

The laptop video is a typical day in my life during the early and middle of the pandemic. The date is May 15, 2020. All of the activities and apps used in the video were used on a daily basis by me around that time. The reality of a long-term pandemic was setting in, and I was starting to get into a rhythm with my parenting and remote work routine after maternity leave. Most of my go-to products that I use for all my personal communications are owned by big tech companies that are tracking my clicks, my purchases, my likes, my posts, my messages, my reading, my browser history, my search history, etc. Big tech has profited handsomely during the COVID pandemic and stay-at-home orders because we were all forced to move our lives online in a drastic way. I used Amazon, Facebook, Instagram and Google way more than I usually did during the pandemic because I was at home and because I was a new mother with a lot of questions. These companies profited from my isolation and constant confusion, they sold my information to third parties, they built a profile of me, and targeted ads to me. This is particularly important during the pandemic because many people were online all day, and it made it easier for big tech companies to build a more accurate profile of an individual user that can be targeted for personalized advertising more effectively.

The iPhone video is a current day Instagram scroll. People are socializing and posting again, events are on the calendar, and things almost seem normal after many people are vaccinated in the US. We’re back on social media and eager to post about our “back to normal” lives.

The baby monitor features a pre-recorded video of my baby sleeping. We’re being watched all the time online, and young parents, in turn, are surveilling their own children. Baby video monitoring is very standard in the US for safety reasons. Parents want to see that their babies are okay. However, I think baby monitors represent the new normal for the next generation of citizens and consumers that are being watched at all times - even as babies. Kids growing up now are used to being on camera and digitally tracked at all times, and don’t really care that they have no privacy because that’s the way it has always been for them. I think this is a dangerous precedent to set for the next generation, and I want better for them. We can change the direction of surveillance and data privacy for the next generation. It starts with giving consumers the power to control their own data privacy. It means regulating big tech so that there is competition, innovation, and diversity in the fields of surveillance, AI, data privacy, and advertising. We need options and a system that is designed for the people, not for the wealthy executives in big tech firms.

The paper scattered all over the desk is printed with terms and conditions and privacy policies from the big tech firms: Amazon, Google, Facebook, Apple. These are the terms that most of us have agreed to blindly in order to use these now essential digital products.

I encourage everyone to learn a little more about data privacy and why it’s important. I don’t think you need to stop using these platforms (I haven’t for the most part), but if anything is going to change, big tech companies need to hear from their customers that they need to do better. Government officials also need to hear from their constituents that big tech is too big and needs to be dealt with ASAP.

CREDITS:

I had a lot of help to make this work and exhibition happen. Mac was a huge help in organizing the show and making sure we had all the pieces together for the installation. Giuliana Funkhouser designed a stellar soundscape using a fairly complex Max patch. It’s pretty sweet. Elisabeth Eckman helped me edit the videos and did some After Effects magic to make everything in my laptop video appear as if it were May 2020. And Anna Farrington who owns INSTALLATION SPACE was a fantastic host and resource. Thank you, all!