ACM Multimedia'96 Hynes Convention Center

November 18 - 22, 1996 Boston, MA, USA

Closing Art & Multimedia Session

Friday, November 21, 1:30 - 3:30 am, Room 303

Moderators: Tim Druckrey, Monika Fleischmann

Participants: all panelists of the Art & Multimedia Session and:

#Steve Mann

STOLEN STORIES FROM THE SURVEILLANCE SUPERHIGHWAY:

Detournement of surveillance using `personal imaging' and the personal documentary as a form of cultural engineering.

Three documentaries, funded in part by the Council for the Arts at

MIT, are described. All three use `personal imaging' as a new

cinematographic technique --- ``personal documentary'' addressing

video surveillance from the perspective of the surveilled.

(1) ``Shooting Back'' [http://18.85.20.100/shootingback.html],

explores the situationist tradition by confronting members of

organizations who place us under surveillance. The resulting

documentary was exhibited on the World Wide Web while it was being

generated. `Wearable wireless webcam' challenges `editing' tradition.

(2) `My Manager', borrows from the Stellarc tradition, allowing

participants to remotely contribute (via the World Wide Web) to the

creation of the documentary. Just as representatives in an

organization absolve themselves of responsibility for their

surveillance systems by blaming surveillance on managers or others

higher up their official hierarchy, the artist absolves himself of

responsibity for taking pictures of these representatives without

their permission because it is the thousands of viewers on the World

Wide Web who are `managing' (controlling) the artist and

taking the pictures. The subjects of the pictures, for example,

department store managers, who had previosly stated that ``only

criminals are afraid of video cameras'', now implicate themselves of

their own accusations by showing fear in the face of a camera. In

response to their tremendous fear and paranoia, they are handed a form

which they may use to have their pictures deleted from the artist's

manager's (the Web audience's) database. The form asks them for name,

social security number, and the reason for which they'd like to have

their images deleted, and requests that they sign a section certifying

that the reason is not one of concealing criminal activity,

e.g. hiding the fact that their fire exits illegally chained shut.

Through `reflectionism' the department store floor manager sees in the

``mirror'' the artist as a puppet on a (wireless) ``string''. `My

Manager' forces attendants/maintainers of the `Surveillance

Superhighway' to snap out of being puppets for a brief instant, and

confront the reality of what their blind obedience can lead to.

(3) `No Camera', explores the reaction of surveillance proponents to a

wearable television screen showing their likeness (recorded previously

or by transmission from another camera); any objection to the

apparatus on the grounds that photography is prohibited is ill-founded

because the artist's rig is merely a display --- there is No Camera.

CV

Steve Mann, inventor of wearable computer/personal imaging system,

co-founded ``Wearable Computing'' project at MIT Media Lab where he is

currently a doctoral student completing PhD [graduation=Spring '97]:

He explored means of characterizing response of objects to arbitrary

lighting; created self-linearizing camera calibration procedure;

formulated first true projective image mosaicing/compositing

algorithm. also interested in visual arts; has exhibited his

pencigraphic `lightspace' images in numerous art galleries + attempted

to instill change in consciousness and reorder everyday life.

He currently holds degrees in physics + electrical engineering.

His previous degree is Master of Electrical Engineering. He published

numerous scholarly articles on wearable computing, image processing,

new image representations, and photometric image-based modeling.

email: steve@media.mit.edu

Media: Lightspace/Pencigraphy, Wearable Multimedia Computer with wireless communications and video processing hardware.

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