Mirko Tobias Schäfer / Assistant Professor
University of Utrecht Department for Media and Culture Studies
Mirko Tobias Schäfer / Assistant Professor
University of Utrecht Department for Media and Culture Studies
Date August 2008 / Category News
An often recurring motif in many films and stories is a character carrying a bag or a suitcase whose content is rather mysterious, unknown or of shady nature as purloined information, stolen goods or pornography. Inspired by these underworld milieu characters, Nancy Mauro-Flude aka sister0 conceived the performance "Bag Lady 2.0", for which she designed a bag, that is able to record, store and broadcast information in real time. Images can be taken with a camera attached to the bag, a microphone records sounds, even a GPS device can apply geographical data to identify the geographical location of the recorded sites. The functions of the bag can be controlled through a small keyboard attached to the bag. Equipped with that bag sister0 roams through urban spaces to collect images and impressions, that are then transmitted through open WLANs to a server. The bag is not only an item for collecting, but also for broadcasting gathered information in realtime.
Date August 2008 / Category News
While so far Europe's politicians have luckily been unable to install a centrally organized police authority that spies on its citizens and strips them of their citizens rights, the United States has witnessed the emergence of a powerful and frightening authority that threatens to invade all areas of private life and monitor all citizens. The Department for Homeland Security seems to top all Orwellian nightmares.
How unbalanced and unquestioned power, paired with the excessive use of information technology for surveillance and pattern recognition is undermining democracy and constituting repression is described in a timely novel by Cory Doctorow.
Tags Review