1. Motivation
I am always interested in adopting the Internet and the social
media data into artworks making, which can evoke reflections and thinkings about the
technology-related issues. During the study of creative media and digital media, I have encountered
courses concerning online identity and anonymity in the digital age, and that provoked my concern in
this topic and I want to create an artwork to express worry and to start a conversation in thinking
the future of technology.
The project is a complex of investigation of several subjects
matters, and it is an experiment of a new art-making approach for me. It is a research that has
evolved over time. New questions have emerged since the investigation started. Therefore, it is a
learning process of how to extend the area of investigation during the research and a progress of my
skill of researching and using the mediums.
These are the areas that are significant to this
project:
- 1. The history of computation, vision, and reason
- 2. The concept of governability and control in the
society
- 3. Identity and surveillance
- 4. Adopting creating invention, critical design and narrative
strategy as an approach of study
I want to question the existing surveillance technology and the
technological driven social paradigm by creating an object and a scene that the audience can have a
space to think outside of their daily life scenario. As a result, I created an imaginary scene that
contains a mask as an object, four photos to show the context of the mask and the booklets as the
narrative to introduce the audience to this imaginary world, that seems true but suspicious at the
same time.
- 2. Surveillance and the Identity
I have realized there are more and more facial recognition
softwares, as a corresponding applying of the increasingly advanced machine learning technology.
Paul Ekman, the pioneer psychologist in studying of facial expression in the 1970s, has created the
"Atlas of emotions" which collects ten thousand facial expressions and more than five thousand
muscle movements. It summed up what subtle changes in the face reflect to which different emotions.
Companies nowadays have continued his research and developed algorithms to analyze people’s faces
and emotions. They built enormous database and pattern recognition system that can predict the
emotion and behavior in just a fraction of a second.
The emotion recognition softwares have been applied in the
commercial area. Different types of governmental organizations over the world have applied
surveillance technology for achieving the so-called facilitating a more ordered world and I believe
they will also apply the emotion recognition technology into governing people.
As same as being reluctant to use the online social media,
rejecting to participate in the social activities to escape from being monitored by the facial
recognition software can harness our connectivity with people. Should we give up our rights on
anonymity for compensating the cost for the government to achieve its aim? What are the solution to
this?
I took the inspiration from the strategy suggested by Brunton
and Nissenbaum (2015). They came up with the obfuscation tactic. It is a tactic that render an
individual’s data permanently dubious and untrustworthy as a subject of analysis. It covers users’
patterns that can be traced through the collection of query logs that can reveal users’ interests
and activities.
TrackMeNot developed by Howe and Nissenbaum (2009) is an
application of ambulating obfuscation. It submits queries that generated from a seed list of terms
to mimic users’ search behaviors. The SolutionAverage adopted this strategy and created noise to the
system by providing fault facial expressions, as a tactic in the unbalanced and in the absence of
any other protection and defense.
We are the most valuable contents and the content creators at
the same time in the surveillance system. By not comforting to the system by using the tactic of
obfuscation, we could add up our individual powers and take back our basic human right of owning
anonymity.
- 3. Technological Utopianism and the Limitation
During the research on the source of the concept of
technological driven society, I researched into the related academic literatures, technological
dystopian literatures, and technological utopia documentaries.
The book 1984 (Orwell 1949) told about the problem of a
technologically driven world, which the society used the extreme monitoring system that invaded to
people’s thinkings. Although it was published in the late fifties, it implies the core of human
values, such as freedom and love, will always be existed in humans and could not be changed even
with advanced technology. By looking into the documentaries, such as All Watched Over by Machines of
Loving Grace, Welcome to Silicon Valley and Cybertopia: Dreams of Silicon Valley, I generated the
thinking that technology is a heaven for people who want to find a substitution to the old solutions
of social problems.
Halpern (2015) pointed out that "data presents stability,
wealth, and sensorial pleasure is the solution to the problem” is skeptical thinking that we believe
it is valuable even without a set of referent or value. The belief of we can solve the problem by
technology and data is constructed. The emphasize of the data-driven solution is inherited by the
military use of data.
Through depending on problem solving by computational methods,
the ethical, dehumanized phenomenon has been brought up. Through the research, I summed up that we
should believe in our decision-making ability as humans, that involves ethical, emotional, and
social relationship factors.
- 4. Critical Design Approach to Expression of
Concerns
I encountered the approach of critical design as an approach of
art-making and explored the role of as an artist in the society.
The term of critical design, defined by Dunne and Raby (2013),
means to use speculative design proposals to challenge narrow assumptions, preconceptions, and
givens about the role products play in everyday life. It is an attitude and a position rather than a
methodology. They also pointed out the significance that critical design can bring to the
society:
Critical design can be a medium for exploring the implications
of new developments in science and technology. It creates space for discussion and debate about
alternative ways of being and as a catalyst for collectively redefining our relationship to reality.
Their fictional nature requires viewers to suspend their disbelief and allow their imaginations to
wander, to momentarily forget how things are now, and wonder about how things could be.
The creating of alternative reality have been adopted in the
fictional literature and movie scenes. In the product design field, the designs usually limited to
serve to the governmental, commercial and consumerism side only, but with the critical design, the
preferable idea can be determined by more than the government and industry.
Another role of critical design is to question the limitation of
emotional and psychological experiences offered to the viewers, that neglect the full complexities
of emotion in human. Rather than that, critical design can deal with the dark themes, which creates
the excitement and challenges to the viewers. I adopted this approach into my artwork, and I want to
create a shocking effect for the viewers. It is not a visually pleasant experience for viewing the
object, but it is a mind-provoking experience that brought to deep thinking about the
technology.
My artwork serves as a window that provide the glimpse into a
larger world that linked to this object, rather than providing every detail of this narrated world.
The artwork is an object that we could use in everyday life, that can imply that the everyday
scenario could be different and things could be changed.
- 6. Emotion-Computer Interwoven
The SolutionAverage uses the coding language, the electronic
components, the Internet, the control, and emotions as the medium. Emotion as the human nature of
this work is under threat as it questions the status of the human nature with the consequences of
the applying of dehumanized technology. It challenges our understanding of the nature and starts the
conversation of discussing the relationship of the human body and the machine.
Technology has always existed with the human society. Kittler
(1999) said that technology is entrenched in our history. Latour (1994) also
mentioned:
Human and computer are interwoven. Technology is not separable
from the society and on the human. The mistake of the dualist paradigm was its definition of
humanity. Even the shape of humans, our very body, is composed in large part of sociotechnical
negotiations and artifacts.
With the more frequent interaction with the machines, the human
body can be adapted to the new setting and even enhance their ability. "After a week" of typewriting
practice, Kittler Nietzsche wrote, "the eyes no longer have to do their work”: écriture automatic
had been invented, the shadow of the wanderer incarnated (quoted in Kittler 1999).
Whether our facial expressions should be evolved as the
technological change in our living environment? The artwork is also questioning about this aspect
and invent viewers to imagine how does a future that human try to restrict their nature to adapt to
a new environment look like.
- 7. Results
The AverageSolution contains three parts.
The 3D printed mask which connects with 5 step motors that
linked to the step motor drivers and arduino UNO electronic board. The board is linked with the
program that collects 5000 tweets of the desired city that the user want to have the emotion in over
a period of time. The program then analyses the emotion of the city through these tweets by the IBM
Watson Tone Analyser.
There are four photographies presenting how the object is used,
and depicting an alternative future that the society is full of emotion recognition software. The
character in the photos has different emotions. She is trying to adapt to the city that she belongs
to in the morning and to the city she wants to go travel to. The last picture shows an awkwardly
smiling, which is generated by the mask rather just from the user. The photos is an assistance to
help the viewers imagining this alternative world with visual.
There are the booklets that introduce the mask and use a tone as
a product introduction and advertising, at the same time, promoting the attitude that we need to
have while facing the surveillance from the government. The author of this publication is unknown,
which left the viewer an imaginary of how different organizations will be in this imaginary world.
The tone of the texts inside the booklet are humorous and ironic. It pointed out the insanity of how
the nature of this product is but it is also a need for doing that. The booklets serve as an angle
for knowing the social context the object.
The purpose of the artwork is to provide a space to think, but
not an absolute answer to the questions about the consequences of surveillance. It is a
theoretically working prototype that adopts the programming skills and electronic engineer
knowledge. While it is an imaginary product, it is also composed of the component that we can find
in real life. It can tell a trustworthy alternative reality to the audience and evoke a more
deepening thinking effect as it seems to be closely related to our everyday lives.
The emotion recognition system tries to analysis humans and want
to categorize their emotion. The mask provides a limited variety of the facial expressions, which
are generated by the machine and through computation, but not by humans. This shows the interactions
between human-agent and the interface of the machine, which is not between human and human or human
and machine anymore. The definition of the society interaction became more complexed.
The artwork also intends to dismantle the “Blackbox” process by
showing how our facial expression is represented by mathematics through facial recognition or
regeneration of our facial expressions. It shows how we can modify the output by interfering the
input. These are the power relationship existed in a society that is algorithm-driven. The “impact
constituency”, who participated in the technology’s design (Brunton and Nissenbaum, 2011), designing
what and how the information are gathered from the users, while other stakeholders can hardly join
in the process.
- Reference
21st CenturyWire (2017). The TSA’s New Computerized ‘Facial
and Emotional’ Recognition System. [online] Available at:
http://21stcenturywire.com/2015/01/29/revealed-the-tsas-new-computerized-facial-and-emotional-recognition-system/
[Accessed 1 May 2017].
Orwell, G. (1949). 1984. 1st ed. New York: New American
Library.
Brunton, F and Nissenbaum, H. (2015). Obfuscation: A User’s
Guide for Privacy and Protest. 1st ed. Cambridge, Massachusetts: The MIT Press.
Brunton, F. and Nissenbaum, H. (2011). Vernacular Resistance
to Data Collection and Analysis: A Political Theory of Obfuscation'. Peer-reviewed Journal on
the Internet, vol. 16, no. 5.
CNN (2013). Artist creates faces from DNA left in
public. [online] Available at:
http://edition.cnn.com/2013/09/04/tech/innovation/dna-face-sculptures/ [ Accessed 1 May
2017].
Daniel c. Howe. (n.d.). TrackMeNot. [online] Available
at: https://rednoise.org/~dhowe/detail.html#trackmenot [Accessed 1 May 2017].
Dunne, A. and Raby, F. (2014). Speculative everything:
Design, Fiction, and Social Dreaming. 1st ed. The Mit Press.
Halpern, O. (2015). Beautiful Data: A History of Vision and
Reason Since 1945. 1st ed. Durham: Duke University Press.
Kittler, F., Winthrop-Young, G. and Wutz, M. (1999).
Gramophone, film, typewriter. 1st ed. Stanford, Calif.: Stanford
University Press, p.200.
Latour, B. (1994). On technical mediation. 1st ed.
Lund, Sweden: Lunds universitet, p.64.