Mark Shepard
Trained professionally to be an architect, Shepard has expanded his
role to include artist and researcher. Everything he does is
interrelated, his art is sculptural which lends itself to his
architecture, and the works are also explorative of his research
interests. His interests include the effects of pervasive media on our
cultural lives, including in the construction of our urban landscapes
and cities. This is where his sculptures come in: he conceptualizes
items that really will be useful in an imagined “Sentient City”
future. These he has compiled into a video explaining and
demonstrating their function. The website where you can find this
video is called The Sentient City Survival Kit. Viewers learn about
Shepard’s Ad-hoc Dark Roast Coffee Mug, GPS Serendipitor, RFID
Under(a)wear, and CCD-Me-Not Umbrella.
Ad-hoc Dark Roast Coffee Mug – A way to transmit messages from one mug
to the small LCD screen on the lid of another mug nearby. Tipping the
mug back and sipping form it broadcasts a typed message to the other
mugs on the network. The applications for this mug are limited since
cellphones and texting already allow for immediate transmitting of
messages. However, there is on advantage of these mugs over
cellphones: security. The mugs are secure in a way that texting would
not be, since they can only be viewed by others on the network who
also have a Ad-hoc Dark Roast Coffee Mug.
GPS Serendipitor – A cellphone application that allows users to input
a location and receive a ready-made route to get to that location,
with serendipity along the way. The application works by planning a
route for the user to take that consists of roads that person has yet
to take. This way, there is always something new to be discovered.
RFID Under(a)wear – Underwear garments with vibrating implants that
are designed to identify when Radio Frequency ID’s are nearby and
alert the wearer with vibration. RFID’s allow hackers to view the
purchases and other records of the people they scan who own RFID
credit cards (a technology that should be in widespread use in the
future.) There are currently no security measures that can prevent
this, hence Shepard’s ironic Under(a)wear. The product promises to
provide “a stimulating, if no longer secure” experience.
CCD-Me-Not Umbrella – An umbrella with implanted LEDS all along the
top dome and batteries in its stem. These LEDS were designed to blind
the security cameras of the future, making it impossible for their
movement tracking algorithms to latch onto the figure holding this
umbrella. This would allow purchasers of this CCD-Me-Not Umbrella to
maintain more privacy.
There is a blog that details the plans for these objects and allows
for comment and discussion. The link is
http://survival.sentientcity.net/blog/. The video is on the main page
of the website. Unlike the usual fate of sculpture, to be admired only
by a few who can come to view it in person, the video allows for
Shepard’s art pieces to be considered and enjoyed on a large scale.
This is another example of the irony of using technology to talk about
technology.
These artifacts are supposed to be imaginings of a particular type of
future, all from the mind of Mark Shepard. Through his research he has
discovered the ways in which technology is reaching into every aspect
of our lives and changing it. Technology will be the driving force
behind our future designs and ways of interacting. Mark’s work is an
exploration of the mind, into the matter of new technology and its
integration into our day-to-day lives. Although the works are serious
in the subject they deal with, all of the artifacts have just the
right amount of humor and entertainment.
Paulo Cirio
Paulo may be an artist, but he is one living deep in the technological
trenches. Hacktavist and programmer are also titles that he holds. His
art is meant to make a statement about technology as it exists today.
In particular, how present day users interact with those technologies.
Paulo created a three step project where he targeted some of the
biggest brands on the internet market. He called this project the
Hacking Monopolism Trilogy.
One step targeted Amazon, taking their own software that allowed
shoppers to preview a section of a book that was for sale, and
expanding it so that the whole book could be read. Then they set these
titles up on a website so that people could come and read the books
for free. By doing this Paulo was playing with the idea of paying for
copyrighted materials, materials that could be made free with some
simple hacking. This leg of the trilogy was called Amazon Noir, and
the purpose behind the hack was to turn Amazon’s tool against them, a
theme that runs through the whole trilogy.
Another of these hacks was focused on Google, and in particular a
program that Google uses to allow merchants to advertise for a small
fee per click. This program is called Google Adsense, and it works by
website hosts allowing ads on their sites in exchange for payments
depending on how many clicks those ads receive. The ad owners pay for
the clicks. It is a very successful source of income for Google, and
Paulo conceived of a way to turn this technology against the search
engine giant. The hacktavist/artist was able to change the ads to
contribute the funds to the wrong account.
However, the most famous part of the Hacking Monopolism Trilogy was
the last part of it: Face to Facebook. The project consisted of
designing software that would extract data from many different
Facebook user profiles, some of which was set to public and some data
that was not. This data was used to set up a phony dating website,
which the artist named Lovely Faces. This website was not like most
dating websites in that you could search for people not just based on
their interests, but also by whether or not they looked happy,
interesting, or any number of different ways in their photographs.
Paulo accomplished this through the creation of another set of
software, consisting of algorithms that scanned images and then placed
them into different categories. The user profile pictures that were
taken from Facebook were fed through the algorithms. Paulo’s purpose
in creating this fake website using data from real people, was to show
Facebook users that their information was not as secure as they might
think.
Face to Facebook received much media attention, probably because it
did raise some important issues about privacy. The project also
brought this issue to the attention of Facebook users who might be too
trusting of the website they give their personal information to. Many
major news organizations spread the story to the public, and even
though the website Lovely Faces was shut down it still had people
talking about what privacy they could expect when we have this kind of
technology. So, in effect, Paulo’s purpose for his art project was
successful.
Hacking Monopolism is a good example of how technology can be used to
open people’s eyes to important social issues. In the case of Amazon
Noir, the issue was copyrights. In Google Adsense and Facebook both,
the issue was security. Paulo is doing what hacktavists do best,
bucking the system just enough to open people’s eyes and hopefully
affect change.
Message
Both Shepard and Cirio are using technology in their own ways, and both should be considered to be researchers because they are exploring the impact of technology. They are the quintessential digital artists, using the digital form to describe the world and the realities they see. Where they differ is in the approach.
Shepard considers some far out future (or maybe not so far out) where the world is permeated entirely by computers. In response to the research he does in this arena, he expands the ideas he finds there into art sculptures that cause us to look at the realities of where these technologies are taking us. In his works there is also a bit of humor and light-heartedness that makes these works powerful but also personal.
Cirio is different in this respect. He does use humor but it is not so lighthearted. Also, rather than benign objects that come from the fancy and serve only as conceptual forms, Cirio uses the technologies that are already embedded in our culture to make his points. Facebook, Google, and Amazon are names that everybody knows, and at one point or another we have to come into contact with them or their influence. As such Cirio’s Hacking Monopolism Trilogy is relevant in a way that the Sentient City Survival Guide is not. It is in people’s faces because it represents reality, as it exists today.
Overall, both projects address the same issues, with data mining and security being prominent among them. Despite the many advantages to the continued advance of technology, there are some issues that deserve more attention than they are receiving. In company’s quest for more profits and cutting edge products, it is up to consumers to tell these companies that privacy has to be considered.
face-to-facebook.net
http://survival.sentientcity.net/
http://www.andinc.org/v3/
http://www.paolocirio.net/
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